...but here''s a map. Sorry for the lack of updates, there was a family emergency that overlapped with my editor moving, so things got pushed back suddenly. On the plus side, several chapters will be coming your way faster than normal because I have a backlog now. Anyway, this is a recreation of the map I made when I first planned out the overall world and plot. I thought it might help hold you all over for a little until I can get the next chapter edited and rewritten. If you have questions about the map (once again, I''m even less of an artist than I am an author) drop me a comment and I''ll answer.
EDIT: Forgot one set of mountains, image updated.
Chapter 17
Three hundred and twenty eight. That was how many stones made up the walls of Leo Feldmanis¡¯s home. He would know; he¡¯d counted them hundreds of times. There wasn¡¯t much else to do when you spent your every day in an Otharian prison. Each day blurred into the next, the passage of time told only through the movement of shadows and the arrival of the occasional meal. The ex-Voice had no idea how many years had transpired since the start of his incarceration. He¡¯d tried to keep track in the beginning, marking the days as they came and went, but soon things became fuzzy, and eventually he stopped trying altogether. There was little worth in counting towards the day of your release, after all, when you had been sentenced to a lifetime in a cell.
He¡¯d thought that he¡¯d figured it all out. He¡¯d thought that they would never notice something so small, so well-hidden. They¡¯d noticed. Now he spent his days counting stones, waiting to grow old. Waiting to die.
The worst thing about life in Eveningtide Prison was the monotony, or so he¡¯d thought. The dreary day-to-day life withered your spirit, draining you of your will to exist. He¡¯d seen many a prisoner shrivel up from it until what was a person was now nothing but an empty husk. He could feel it happening to himself as well, regardless of what little fight still burned within. One day he would fall like all the others.
But he¡¯d discovered that there was indeed something worse than the slow, inevitable erosion of the soul. That process at least had the side effect of numbing its victim, letting them slip painlessly into the night. This was the opposite. It poked at him actively, taunting him with his own futility, parading his fears and doubts before him, hinting at possibilities and leaving them to fester. For the first time since his confinement, something had happened on the outside. Something big. Something important. But he would never know what it was.
His thoughts went, as always, to his village, his wife. He¡¯d had confidence that they would survive even without him, as long as they obeyed the Church and his replacement. He¡¯d impressed that knowledge into them when the Apostle had come for him. They¡¯d trusted his judgment. Otharia was not a haven for change. Decades could pass between notable events.
But now he wasn¡¯t sure that remained true. Disquieting hints of something amiss kept appearing. Several of the prison guards were nowhere to be found, gone without warning. The others, who before would amble down the halls without a care in the world, nonchalantly going about their daily business, now walked with a tension unlike anything he¡¯d ever seen. These people, grown men and women, were scared of something. Something all-encompassing enough to scare each and every one of them.
At the same time, Leo had begun to hear sounds off in the distance that he¡¯d never noticed before. Strange, rhythmic clicks and clacks would pass by at predictable patterns each day, always too far to properly make out. He thought they sounded like footsteps, but there were too many feet. Maybe new patrols of two-man groups? He wasn¡¯t sure. What he was sure of was that these new sounds had appeared very soon after the sudden change in the guards¡¯ demeanor, and while he couldn¡¯t prove a link, everything inside him screamed that the two occurrences were related.
Divorce was not an option in Otharia. As long as he still took breath, his wife was not allowed to marry another, meaning she had no husband to help support her. Was she safe? Was she even alive? He would never know. All he could do was stew in his own worry, day after day. It was enough to make him tear his hair out, had balding not done the job for him already.
The sound of a door opening down the hallway interrupted his circuitous thoughts. Strange, it was far too early for a meal. Soon he heard the sound a chains. Now this had his full attention. The sound of chains only came with prisoner movement. He listened harder, trying to make out the number of footsteps. One set would be for a guard. If there was a second, that was a new prisoner. If not, somebody was about to leave their cell. He could only hear one.
The steps moved closer, and Leo had to force down his surging hopes. The guard would not be here for him, a man with a life sentence. Then the guard came into view, and it wasn¡¯t a guard at all. It was the warden. Leo rarely saw the warden. The man came about perhaps once a year at most to inspect the cells, flanked by guards. But today, he carried a pair of shackles, and walked alone. Leo could barely contain his shock when the man stopped in front of his cell.
¡°Present yourself for constraints,¡± the warden ordered tersely. Leo did as instructed, sticking his hands and feet through specially designed holes so that the warden could attach the shackles to them. The prisoner made sure to make no sudden movements as he withdrew his limbs back into his cell and waited for the warden to open the door. The warden fumbled with the keys, his hands trembling slightly. Leo couldn¡¯t help but notice the sweat pouring down the warden¡¯s head as he struggled to unlock the gate. The man was on edge, he realized, even more so than the guards. Finally the door opened.
¡°You will follow me,¡± came the command.
He followed the warden as quickly as he could, his weak body unused to the exercise and his strides limited by his shackles. It wouldn¡¯t do for him to fall behind and get lost. In all the years he¡¯d been in Eveningtide Prison, he¡¯d never set foot anywhere other than his cell, so within a minute Leo had no idea where in the complex he stood. All he knew was that they were headed somewhere higher, as they¡¯d already climbed several flights of stairs but descended none. Suddenly their journey ended at a large wooden door. The warden opened the door and ushered the prisoner inside. Or rather, outside, onto a large balcony.
For the first time since his conviction, Leo Feldmanis found himself before the sea. He¡¯d always loved the sea, at least as much as anybody could love a giant body of water filled with death. Almost as if on cue, water spouted from the surface of the ocean off in the horizon, leagues away. A grand leviathan, it had to be. No other living being could create something visible from such a great distance. Leo bet that it was large enough to eat the entire prison in just a few bites.
Giant aquatic life aside, it was a beautiful sight, one that brought tears to his eyes. Tears that clouded his vision so much that he nearly missed the hulking metal person right in front of him. The man, or what he assumed to be a man given that he could find no actual hint of flesh showing anywhere on his hulking frame, stood facing the ocean, back turned to the warden and his charge. His massive gray arms hung loosely behind his back, hands clasped together as he studied the scenery. Leo recognized the way the man carried himself immediately. He¡¯d seen it before from afar, whenever he¡¯d been lucky enough to snatch a glimpse of the Church leaders during the Church¡¯s yearly assembly. This was a man used to giving orders.
¡°Thank you, warden,¡± the being in the armor said suddenly, never once turning around. ¡°Now leave us.¡±
¡°Y-yes sir!¡± the warden stammered as he retreated from the balcony with haste.
¡°Now with that distraction gone,¡± the man beneath the metal began, once the warden had shut the door. Leo had confidence now that a man stood inside that great suit of armor, with its strange angles and lines running this way and that across the entire assembly. The voice had a buzzing, atonal quality to it that lent it an uncanny, emotionless quality to it, but the more he heard it, the better he could hear the human voice beneath. ¡°Leo Feldmanis. Forty-seven years of age. Graduated from the Academy Voice program with honors. Considered to be one of the best up-and-coming administrators of his generation. Sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime of siphoning off Church funds for non-Church purposes on the fifty-fourth day of winter, in the year 1755. Has been an inmate of Eveningtide Prison for the last eight years. Am I correct?¡±
¡°I am Leo Feldmanis,¡± he replied, his head buzzing from the news. Eight years... To think it had been so long. ¡°I know I am but a wretched criminal, but would you do me the honor of your name, sir?¡±
¡°You may call me High Apostle Ferros,¡± the person before him stated.
Leo jerked. A High Apostle? Here? For him? He thought he knew all the High Apostles. They were rare, after all. But much could change in eight years. ¡°With all due respect, sir, I do not understand why either of us are here.¡±
¡°It¡¯s simple,¡± the High Apostle answered. ¡°Otharia has need of your skills.¡±
His skills? The notion was absurd. Leo had been a good administrator, a great one even, but there were others that could do what he could just as well, if not better, than he. The only reason they would want him, a disgraced criminal, would be ¡ª a chill ran down his spine as he connected the dots. A sudden lack of people with his skills. The abrupt change in the the demeanor of every guard that remained, and the disappearance of the rest.
¡°Something happened, didn¡¯t it?¡± he inquired. ¡°The Elselings, they finally invaded after all these years?¡±
The metal man remained silent.
¡°How many survived? Are the villages okay? Please, tell me!¡±
¡°It was brutal campaign, but I can say without hesitation that the side of good emerged victorious.¡±
Leo fell to his knees in relief as the strength left his body momentarily upon hearing the news. ¡°Thank Othar,¡± he whispered.
¡°I have a job for you, Feldmanis,¡± the metal man said.
¡°Of course, sir,¡± the older man deferred.
¡°However, there is something you must do before you are granted freedom. Freedom that, in the eyes of the Church, you do not deserve.¡±
¡°I understand.¡±
¡°You must admit you were wrong.¡±
Silence settled over the area as Leo tried to digest what he¡¯d just heard, but after several seconds he still could not make heads not tails of it.
¡°Sir?¡±
¡°Your actions, the ones that led you to rotting away in this place, cut off from your wife, your village, from everybody you ever knew or cared about. I want to hear you admit that they were wrong, and I want you to mean it.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand. I admitted my guilt at the trial.¡±
¡°I never said anything about guilt,¡± the Apostle growled. He turned away from the ocean for the first time and Leo flinched as he laid eyes upon the man¡¯s front for the first time. Instead of a face, Leo found himself staring at a mask, flat and featureless save for a strange slit where a mouth would be and a pair of glowing, angular red eyes. There was no nose, and the contours of the mask combined with the frowning shape of the mouth slit to lend the entire mask an impression of dour disapproval. The ex-Voice found himself recoiling from the pressure the High Apostle exuded, the man¡¯s baleful red gaze pressing him down. ¡°I read the transcripts. You admitted to your crime. But not once did you say that what you did was wrong. Not once did you show any remorse. You stole from the Church, the very fabric of society! I cannot think of a greater crime! Do you really believe that we could allow an unrepentant criminal loose in our lands? Of course not! Say it! Admit to the truth of your deeds!¡±
¡°I-I-¡± Leo stammered and stuttered as the metallic Apostle¡¯s verbal blows rained down upon him. Concepts of duty and loyalty warred with each other in his head. His country needed him, but to serve would require him to sacrifice his truth, the one thing that had kept him sane since the beginning. This terrible man wanted him to give everything he had just for the privilege of helping his nation. He wanted more than anything to get out of this accursed place and once more contribute to society, but... ¡°I cannot.¡±
High Apostle Ferros towered over him, crimson judgment shining down from the mask, his fury palpable even through the suit. ¡°Explain,¡± he commanded.
¡°T-the blight struck my lands harder than most. Even after a highly successful planting season, and better than usual weather, the crops withered away. The stores would only last another half a season. We rationed, we prayed, we petitioned for aid from those above me, but nothing came of it. They were going to die. I could not allow that to happen. So I made some small alterations to the district budgets. There was a surplus anyway. It was going to go wasted anyway, spent on a third caravan when we didn¡¯t even have the people for the second! I did what I had to do. Eighty-six people! They believed in me, and trusted me to lead them to a better life. What Voice would I be if I did not do all that I could to prevent their deaths?¡±
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¡°And now? Would you do it again, if given the choice?¡±
¡°In a heartbeat,¡± the prisoner replied immediately, all doubt driven from his mind. In some odd way, the Apostle¡¯s interrogation had settled his mind. He was at peace, awaiting his punishment from his superior with a calm soul for the first time in as long as he could remember. Ferros could do as he wanted with him. His people had survived. His life was a small price to pay for that.
¡°Wonderful,¡± the Apostle replied.
Suddenly the shackles binding Leo¡¯s limbs turned to liquid, sloughing off like melting wax. He simply stared at the sight, unable to understand what was going on.
¡°Come on you two, let¡¯s get the hell out of here,¡± the Apostle said, as if suddenly a completely different person hid behind that mask. ¡°All the salt in the air makes my nose itch.¡±
You two? Who was he talking to? He turned towards the sound of steps to his left to find a girl around the age of ten walking towards him, her face sour as she stared scornfully at the Apostle beside him. She wore a large, thick collar around her neck, which mostly hid beneath her shoulder-length brown hair. How had he not noticed her until now? She must have been present the entire time, but he¡¯d been so swept up by the man in front of him that he¡¯d never realized they were not alone until now.
The girl responded to his attention by turning her dour gaze on him and his next words died in his throat. Leo wondered what could make a child have such an unpleasant face.
¡°That¡¯s Sam, don¡¯t worry about her. She¡¯s just pissed at me because I was pretending to be an Apostle.¡±
Wait, what?
Before his mind could find purchase on this constantly shifting situation, a large metallic polyhedral structure appeared on the other side of the balcony wall, rising up seemingly out of nowhere. A ramp extended down to the ground in front of Ferros and he strode inside before turning around and beckoning them to follow.
¡°Seriously though, let¡¯s get going. We should be able to make Wroetin in time for a late dinner if we really book it.¡±
Wroetin? That was at least ten full days of travel from this place! He wanted to cross that distance in... Leo looked up at the sun¡¯s position. Less than half a day? And he wasn¡¯t an Apostle? Who was he? What was this monstrosity that he stood in? Where had it come from? Why was there a little girl following him? What in the name of Othar was going on?
In a daze, Leo stumbled up the ramp after the others. The ramp magically retracted itself into the structure, and suddenly the entire place began to move, picking up speed with alarming quickness! A quick peek over the ledge revealed six long, segmented legs taking huge strides across the land, like some sort of gigantic insect. He glanced back towards the prison rapidly shrinking into the distance behind them to see several other insects, smaller four-legged ones this time, crawling about the outside. Nothing made sense.
¡°Who... are you?¡± he hesitantly asked the metal man relaxing against the cabin¡¯s side.
¡°Like I said, I¡¯m Ferros. The man who conquered Otharia. I want you to help me run the country,¡± the man replied as if he were talking about what he¡¯d had for breakfast that morning.
Leo¡¯s legs gave in and he fell onto his rear, though his head was swimming far too intensely to even notice. Otharia had been conquered? By this strange, unperturbed man? And he wanted Leo¡¯s help for what? Suddenly a nice quiet life in a cell didn¡¯t seem so bad anymore.
Wroetin glowed with an unnatural light, the myriad tall poles placed around the city cutting through the night. Leo contemplated his future as he looked over the city where he¡¯d spent his formative years learning to be a Voice. So much had changed, and yet so much remained the same. Inns and taverns still stood right where he remembered them, as if not even a day had passed, let alone the twenty-five years since his graduation from the Academy. Even the market looked similar to his hazy recollections. Only the Academy, the place where he¡¯d trained in his calling, was different, the complex now nothing more than rubble razed to the ground by Ferros¡¯s forces. That and, obviously, the Grand Cathedral.
He¡¯d already known the truth by the time they¡¯d arrived at the capital. Ferros had willingly explained much of his past actions and his future goals during the journey. Even so, despite the man¡¯s claims, his suit, and the massive six-legged metal beast that they¡¯d ridden, part of Leo had been unable to believe any of it. It was all so surreal, as if he were actually still in his cell trapped in some strange dream. That was, until he witnessed the mighty gray fortress standing where the Grand Cathedral once presided. Only then had reality truly taken hold.
The country he once knew was gone. In its place stood a grim mockery of his memories, filled with a fearful populace huddling in their homes, hoping to avoid Ferros¡¯s notice. Four-legged metal abominations patrolled the streets and strange objects hovered high up in the sky, watching everything. Ferros¡¯s presence pervaded every corner, every street, every alley, creating an atmosphere that left the citizenry ready to jump at the slightest noise.
That was part of what made this all so confusing. The man who had conquered Leo¡¯s country, who kept its people frightened and meek, didn¡¯t seem to match the man he¡¯d come to know over the last half a day. The Ferros who¡¯d freed him seemed strangely forgiving and flexible for an Elseling despot. The most prominent example of this was the reason Leo sat on the cold metal floor at the top of what Ferros called his ¡°observation tower¡±. After learning the truth of everything, Leo had expected an ultimatum. Instead, he¡¯d been given a choice: he could take the dictator¡¯s offer and work under him, or he could go free.
The decision was proving to be far harder to make than he¡¯d first thought. Ferros had suggested that he go to the ¡°observation tower¡±, as a way to gain perspective and clear his head. He was right, it was a good place to ponder. Part of the problem was that the choice was more than just between working for him or leaving. His wife, Erta, was likely still alive and out there somewhere. Ferros had offered to help locate her as an incentive for working with him. If he declined, he¡¯d have to find her on his own, a proposition that was more unlikely than he¡¯d like to admit. It complicated an already brutal decision.
The night passed slowly as the moons made their slow trek across the star-filled sky. Hours of thinking had brought Leo very close to a decision. He stretched out his legs; all the sitting on the floor had put them to sleep. He needed to head back in soon.
The sound of something locking into place behind him gave him a start. He twisted around and watched the metal door slide open, moving as if possessed. The doors, the strange little room behind them that moved itself, and all the other bizarre contraptions in the fortress unnerved him. They seemed to have minds of their own, as if they were controlled by the spirits of the dead.
To his surprise, Ferros did not emerge from behind the doors. Instead, Leo found himself meeting eyes with Samanta, the strange little girl that Ferros kept with him almost like a pet. The girl looked away after a moment and walked out onto the deck, all the way up to the fence that enclosed the entire platform. She stared out at the city, not saying anything. Leo split his time between watching the city and observing the child nearby. His eyes couldn¡¯t help but be pulled to the thick collar around her neck.
¡°Quite a view, isn¡¯t it?¡± he asked. For some reason, Leo felt the need to talk with the girl, if only for a little. He¡¯d heard barely a peep from her all day. Plus, with Ferros not around, he had a chance to get an answer or two that would confirm whether or not his decision was correct.
At first, the girl did not answer. In fact, she didn¡¯t even seem like she had heard him at all. Then, just as he was about to say something more, she spoke.
¡°Why are you still here?¡± she asked, turning to him with a puzzled expression. ¡°He said you could leave.¡±
¡°I actually wanted to ask you about that,¡± he replied. ¡°Do you really think he would honor my decision? Is he an honest man?¡±
Samanta pondered his question for a moment. ¡°Yes,¡± she said. ¡°He doesn¡¯t lie.¡±
¡°He just lied earlier today,¡± Leo reminded her. ¡°He lied about everything.¡±
¡°That was different. He was testing you. To see if you were the person he¡¯d been looking for.¡±
¡°Strange, you¡¯re defending him. I thought you didn¡¯t like the man.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t like him!¡± she cried as she began to stomp her feet and beat on the fence behind her in a tantrum, all the emotions she¡¯d been storing up coming out all at once. ¡°I hate him! I hate him! I¡¯ll never forgive him! Never! He¡¯s the worst! He should just die!¡±
Slowly Samanta lost steam, her back gradually sliding down the fence until she sat against it, her knees raised up to her chest. She hugged her legs closer and buried her head in them, defeated.
¡°I didn¡¯t get a choice,¡± she said so softly that he almost missed it. ¡°Why do you get a choice?¡±
Leo was wise enough to know not to go anywhere near that question. Whatever was going on between this child and Ferros was obviously something more complex than it initially seemed. It would be a while before he¡¯d be able to fully grasp just what was going on between them, so he decided to withhold jumping to any conclusions just yet. Instead, he moved over to her side and sat down beside her.
¡°If it makes you feel any better, I¡¯m thinking of staying,¡± he told the forlorn girl.
Her head whipped up to stare at him in stupefaction. ¡°Why? He is an Elseling!¡±
¡°Well... when I was a boy, there was this older boy in town who really wanted to be a blacksmith. The thing was, the only smith in town wasn¡¯t taking apprentices and refused to teach him. But the boy wouldn¡¯t listen. He wanted to be a blacksmith so badly that he was stuck on his course and nothing and nobody could change his mind. One night he snuck into the forge when the smith was off on business, alone, and tried to make something on his own. Instead, he burned down the smithy and two nearby homes.
¡°I couldn''t help but think of that boy when I talked to Ferros. He shares the same drive that boy once had, that quality where once he''s decided he''s going to do something, he''s going to do it no matter the consequences. I remember thinking, back when it happened, that if somebody had been in there with him maybe they¡¯d have been able to prevent the fire, or at least keep it from being as bad. That same thought sits with me today. I can¡¯t stop him. I¡¯m not a fighting type. But, if by staying here I can keep the country from falling into ruin, that¡¯s something. I can keep him from burning down the country by mistake. Who knows what might happen to Otharia without somebody to steer him in the right direction?¡±
¡°Why aren¡¯t you angry about what he did? He ruined everything!¡±
¡°I¡¯m not happy about it,¡± he admitted, ¡°but I don¡¯t think there is much to gain from living in the past. We are where we are, and we can¡¯t change how we got here. I think it is important to instead look to the future, and work to make it as grand a future as we can. Tomorrow can always be better than yesterday.¡±
Samanta pondered what he¡¯d said for a few moments.
¡°Blake,¡± she said finally.
¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡±
¡°Blake. That¡¯s his name. His real name. ¡®Ferros¡¯ is just some dumb name he made up or something because he¡¯s dumb and stupid.¡±
¡°Oh? Ohoho! Well, thank you for revealing his secret weakness,¡± he laughed and the girl giggled as he stood back up and stretched. ¡°With that said, it¡¯s late, and I¡¯m sure you understand today has taken a lot out of me. I¡¯m going to go tell ¡®Blake¡¯ my decision. Sleep well, Samanta. Remember that tomorrow can always be a better day.¡±
Chapter 18
¡°Morning Leo, how goes running the country and all that?¡± Blake asked as he put down his latest project, a small worm-like robot about the diameter of his fist that he¡¯d been working on to drill small underground passageways for his upcoming sewer systems, and turned to the man standing in the doorway to his workshop. He made sure to express a welcoming tone, since his mask hid the warm smile on his face. Leo Feldmanis was the greatest thing that had ever happened to him. Since he¡¯d hired the man, his free time had ballooned to many times what it had been before. He was making so much more progress in his creations than before.
¡°That is what I was hoping to speak with you about, Lord Ferros,¡± the smaller man said.
Blake couldn¡¯t help but note with approval just how much his assistant had filled out over the past few weeks since being freed. Blake made a mental note to find out how much of Otharia¡¯s prisons held political prisoners and consider freeing them, then scratched that out and changed it to having Leo do it for him. That was the point of hiring the man, after all.
¡°Come now, Leo, stop calling me ¡®Lord¡¯. Do I look like the lordly type?¡±
¡°Given that you ostensibly run an entire nation, I would argue you qualify,¡± came the reply.
¡°Ostensibly?¡±
¡°Yes, I can¡¯t help but notice how little actual nation-running you do,¡± said the administrator. ¡°It seems to me that you somehow dictate orders to your minions and then hide inside this room for the rest of the day. I can¡¯t escape the feeling that you want me to do all the work for you.¡±
Blake¡¯s ego bristled at the remark, but he tamped it down. It felt refreshing to be treated normally sometimes. Leo Feldmanis was the only person in Otharia who dared to treat him like a person instead of a monster would might kill everybody should the wrong word be uttered, and he didn¡¯t want to ruin that. Sam was the only other person who didn¡¯t treat him like a bomb on a hair trigger, but the events of the past tangled the relationship between them on both sides. It was complicated.
¡°Well, I basically do. I can best improve Otharia with my creations, so the more time I have to work on them, the better.¡±
Leo shook his head. ¡°That¡¯s not acceptable. Either you are the leader of this country or you are not. I cannot work with a man who is not willing to accept the responsibilities that come with his station. As leader of Otharia, it comes down to you to apply your vision. You have a vision, do you not? Or did you just wipe out the previous regime on a whim?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you think we¡¯re far too early to be talking about visions?¡± Blake countered. ¡°We can¡¯t even grow enough food to feed the entire populace. Let¡¯s hold off on talk of visions until we can at least do that.¡±
¡°That counts as a vision.¡±
¡°It does? Okay, hop to it then. I¡¯m working on a few things myself that might help.¡±
¡°Actually that brings me to the real reason I came to talk to you. I want to form a Council.¡±
¡°A ¡®Council¡¯? You mean like a Cabinet of sorts?¡±
¡°Your troops have kept order through fear so far. That won¡¯t last forever, and even now Otharia is merely a country paralyzed. A true government must rise, and soon, or absolute chaos will fill that void. That means levels of structure, starting with you and me, and working down from there. We need guards, clerks, all of it.¡±
¡°Right, sounds fair. Go round up some Ministers, then. I guess this would make you Chief of Staff. Congrats on your new title, Chief of Staff Feldmanis.¡±
¡°You will, of course, be attending the meetings of the Council.¡±
¡°Meetings? Sorry Leo, but I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m deathly allergic to meetings of any kind. Even ones with donuts.¡±
¡°We cannot develop policy if you just come stomping through later with some conflicting idea. Your participation is not only required, it is necessary.¡±
Blake groaned. ¡°If I have to.¡±
¡°Excellent. I will get to assembling a Council immediately. Finding willing participants will be a challenge. I assume you are willing to pay handsomely for the services of those I select?¡±
¡°Sure, sure,¡± Blake agreed. The old regime had plenty of coin hoarded away. He wondered how much better the peoples'' lives would have been had it been spent for their benefit.
¡°Very well. Speaking of meetings, the final foreign Many arrived late last night, from Stragma. They sent word along as well to let you know that the leader of Stragma is very excited to meet you. She says she looks forward to seeing you at the Summit later today.¡±
Blake¡¯s blood ran cold. ¡°The what now?¡±
¡°I believe it is some sort of conference via Many between the leaders of the countries of Nocend. What they discuss I cannot say. Otharia traditionally has not participated in such activities as they went against the country¡¯s isolationist policies.¡±
¡°And it¡¯s today?!¡±
¡°Yes, it seems that the Stragmans even expedited their Many here to make sure you couldn¡¯t miss it.¡±
¡°God damn it,¡± Blake muttered. ¡°How much time do I have?¡±
¡°A couple of hours. I wish I could be of more assistance but we¡¯re all equally blind in this matter.¡±
¡°I understand. I guess I¡¯ll go get ready. Tell Sam that our lesson time is going to be pushed back today.¡±
¡°Of course, Lord Ferros.¡± The now Chief of Staff turned about and began to leave.
Blake sighed. Somehow it felt like he was the underling sometimes.
¡°Leo,¡± Blake called to his retreating form. The man paused and looked back.
¡°Yes, Lord?¡±
¡°How¡¯s the search going?¡±
The man¡¯s face twisted into a mess of uncertain emotions.
¡°She¡¯s out there, somewhere,¡± he replied. ¡°I have faith.¡±
Blake sat in a seat around a large circular table, the five other seats around the table each occupied by a Many. Bernards and Agrits fussed with each of them, getting them ready for the Summit. Blake made a mental note to tell Leo to bring in more handlers. These guys worked too hard.
The Summit didn¡¯t start for another half hour or so, meaning Blake had nothing to do but look around and wait. Mostly, he found himself trying not to stare at the Manys from Drayhadal and Stragma, and failing. Just one glance at the two of them seated next to each other was enough to blow his mind. He¡¯d had no idea that elves existed until Bernards had brought in the Drayhadan Many. Throughout his travels around Otharia, before, during, and after his conquest of the country, he¡¯d never once spotted a person with the long ears and elegant features of an elf. Was Otharia a land without elves?
The same questions persisted for the Stragman Many. The man, perhaps Blake¡¯s age if not slightly older, had adorable red ears sticking out from the top of his head, and a long, fluffy red tail with white rings on it that absentmindedly wiggled back and forth as he stared blankly into the middle distance. Of course, Blake had never found somebody with a tail in Otharia either. Why didn¡¯t Otharia have either? He wouldn¡¯t put bullshit concepts like ¡°racial purity¡± past the Church. Even if it were just a benign coincidence, Blake felt miffed that he was stuck with the boring country.
Several minutes before the Summit began, the Stragman Many suddenly jerked his head up. He brought his hands forward, palms facing in with a three foot gap between them, his head turning to focus upon Blake. The image of a figure blinked into existence, slowly adding detail until it formed into a huge, muscular woman with long, shockingly white hair falling down almost to her knees. Cute little round white ears poked out of her head, the shape and color reminding Blake of a polar bear. By her side stood a massive war club nearly her height. No, to call it a war club was to do it a disservice. It was more like somebody had chopped down a tree as thick as a man is wide, cut out a piece seven feet long, and then shaved one end of it into a handle like the world¡¯s largest, crudest baseball bat. She wore simple clothing, most made of furs of some sort, and a series of bracelets on both her arms and legs. The woman, who looked to be in her late thirties, stared intently at Blake, her eyes greedily drinking him in. She smiled a sharp smile filled with sharper teeth.
¡°You are Ferros, the man who conquered an entire country on his own?¡± she asked, excitement filling her voice.
Blake wasn¡¯t sure he liked the look in her eyes, like he was some kind of prey waiting to be hunted or a mountain waiting to be scaled. He nodded.
¡°Yes... yes you look strong,¡± she said as she appraised him once more. ¡°We Stragmans respect strength. I am Akhustal Palebane-chos, leader of the Stragman people. It is good that you have come. It will be good to have another who understands the power of strength here. The others here are nothing more than money counters, backstabbers, and honor-bound fools. Perhaps later, we might find time for a more in-depth discussion? I¡¯m sure there are many issues where we would be allied.¡±
Before Blake could answer, the elven Many suddenly perked up and took a similar stance to that of her Stragman counterpart. A second image flickered into being, a beautiful elven woman who looked no more than eighteen years of age, though if the standard elven tropes were true, she was likely much older. She wore a strange dress that reminded him almost of a toga.
¡°Trying to beat the rest of us to the fresh meat, savage?¡± the new woman asked in an almost bored tone.
¡°Pyria,¡± Akhustal ground out between her clenched teeth. ¡°What are you doing here?¡±
¡°The elders couldn¡¯t be bothered, so as head of House Esmae, it fell to me,¡± the elf replied, inspecting her nails as if the conversation was the most uninteresting thing in the world. ¡°Besides, you know I would never miss a chance to see my great friend Akhustal Palebane.¡±
The Stragman leader¡¯s hands balled into fists as she fought to not fall to the elven woman¡¯s blatant provocations. One did not have to be a social savant to see that the two loathed each other.
¡°Someone separate the children before they start another war,¡± came a voice to Blake¡¯s right. He turned his head to find the Amatza Motrico, the Eterian representative, making the face his mother would make when he and his sister wouldn¡¯t stop poking each other in the back seat of the car.
¡°Suddenly growing a conscience? How very unlike an Eterian,¡± said another voice to his left. Blake turned he head back towards the newest speaker and saw a broad, stocky man with an impressively full grey beard. He felt a twinge of jealousy; he¡¯d always wanted a big bushy beard, but his attempts at ¡°lumberjack¡± always petered out at ¡°scrabbly highschool adolescent¡± instead. ¡°With the large sums of money you make supplying both sides with arms for their wars, you cannot honorably speak of peace here.¡±
¡°You and your ¡®honor¡¯, that¡¯s all you ever talk about, Adivar,¡± retorted the Seventh Seat of the Eterian Council. ¡°Sometimes I think that if you all convinced yourselves that suicide was honorable, the entire nation of Gustil would disappear overnight.¡±
¡°And I think that you would sell your own mother if you could figure out a way to make a profit from it,¡± the bearded man, apparently the leader of Gustil, replied.
The last inactive Many suddenly sat up and a final image appeared, that of a tired man with heavy bags below his eyes. ¡°My apologies for my tardiness, Lords and Ladies,¡± he said in greeting. ¡°I have been very busy today with important matters of state.¡± His eyebrows shot up as he noticed Blake for the first time. ¡°Ah, you must be Lord Ferros. I am King Iorweth Morgan of the Kingdom of Kutrad. Good tidings to you and yours.¡±
¡°Greetings and salutations,¡± Blake replied. He¡¯d expected a lot of stuffy protocol and empty gestures. Instead, they¡¯d just all started fighting like a bunch of relatives at Thanksgiving. Blake wondered what the people of Nocend would think if they knew that their leaders were no better than schoolchildren, squabbling over the pettiest of slights. The bickering was beginning to give him a headache, but he couldn¡¯t rub his temples without removing his mask.
¡°That¡¯s right, where are my manners?¡± said the bushy-haired man. ¡°I am Hamza Adivar, duly-elected leader of the Federation of Gustil. I must admit that you intrigue me greatly. We Gustilians are lauded for our impenetrable knights, but I have never seen an armor so impressive. I would love to meet the craftsman who could create such a masterpiece.¡±
¡°You¡¯re looking at him,¡± Blake responded.
¡°Oh ho, a man of many skills I see!¡± the Gustilian laughed merrily while clapping his hands in amusement.
¡°Can we just get this over with?¡± interjected the elf. ¡°I have actual governing to do today.¡±
¡°As much as I hate to agree with Princess Esmae,¡± said Amatza, ¡°in this case she is correct. We are all highly busy and there is much to discuss. I move that we begin and proceed past the standard ceremonies for this year¡¯s Summit in the interest of time. Any objections?¡±
None came.
¡°Most excellent. Let us begin with an official declaration. The Republic of Eterium formally recognizes Lord Ferros as the ruler of Otharia. Do any other powers contest his rule?¡±
¡°I¡¯m just happy that somebody¡¯s finally decided to join the rest of civilization,¡± quipped Adivar. ¡°Perhaps now we might be able to procure some chimirin?¡±
Chimirin... the drug that Yarec had consumed? The one that made him super strong? Several other Otharians had taken the drug during the last gasps of the Church¡¯s counterattack, but his overwhelming firepower had rendered their elevated powers rather moot. Given that he¡¯d seen it used several times now, Blake had assumed it was simply a rare item. He¡¯d never thought that it was an Otharian-only commodity. Strange, why had Amatza Motrico not suggested such a trade back when they¡¯d first spoken?
¡°Absolutely not!¡± barked Amatza. ¡°Chimirin is far too dangerous to be allowed to spread. Eterium will not allow such a substance to pass through its borders. We will confiscate any and all chimirin that Otharia attempts to sell.¡±
Blake¡¯s eyebrows rose at the Eterian¡¯s outburst. Her anti-chimirin fervor seemed genuine, but something still felt off about the situation.
¡°Harumph! Typical Eterian strong-arm tactics,¡± grumbled the Gustilian.
¡°Moving on,¡± said Amatza, ignoring the man¡¯s complaints, ¡°it¡¯s time we discuss the most important news in over ten years. The Ubran Empire finally made their move and the Droajan Confederation has fallen. The Emperor now has free reign to turn his eyes towards Nocend without worry of a knife in the back. Redwater Castle has held admirably since its creation over a thousand years ago, but never before has the entire continent of Obura been united under one banner. An increase in troop numbers would seem in order.¡±
¡°I came to the same conclusion,¡± noted Adivar. ¡°Craftsmen are already en route and will begin expanding the base wherever possible to accommodate more soldiers. This will, of course, be added to the dues.¡±
¡°The dues?¡± Blake inquired. ¡°What dues?¡±
¡°You are not familiar with the Begale Treaty of 844?¡± the Kutrad king asked, mild surprise in his voice.
¡°I am... new to the scene, let¡¯s say.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t forget, beneath that helm he is still just Otharian,¡± chimed in Princess Esmae. ¡°It would be folly to expect too much.¡±
¡°Ignorance is merely a temporary condition,¡± replied Blake. ¡°Underestimate me at your own peril.¡±
¡°That¡¯s enough,¡± snapped Amatza Motrico. She turned to face Blake. ¡°Long ago, the countries of Nocend decided to work together to prevent an invasion from Obura, as well as control the flow of people from one continent to the other. Redwater Castle is the key to this. It blocks the only path through the Divide that is even remotely feasible for moving an army. Centuries have gone into making the fortress the most impenetrable stronghold in the world. Though the land it occupies is technically Gustilian, each of the member countries sends a number of troops that rotate out every two years. We all also pay Gustil dues for food, maintenance, and whatnot. Otharia, given your country¡¯s unwillingness to participate on the world stage, has not participated in this neither through soldiers nor money. We of course expect this to change now that you have changed your tune.¡±
¡°I¡¯m afraid I do not have the capabilities to contribute just yet,¡± Blake deflected. ¡°Perhaps next year. What else do you have in place? What is to prevent this Empire from taking boats around the Divide?¡±
¡°A boat?¡± King Morgan laughed. ¡°They wouldn¡¯t make it two leagues before being swallowed whole by the monsters of the deep. And even if they did, they would then have to scale the sheer cliffs of Nefin just to make it to land! Or, if they went south, they¡¯d have to take an entire army through Stragma, which might be even worse!¡±
¡°Couldn¡¯t Observers who work with stone just tunnel around the castle?¡±
¡°I welcome them to try!¡± chuckled the Gustilian leader Adivar. ¡°It would take a lifetime of combined effort by dozens of stoneshapers to create a tunnel through the Divide, and that would be only if they somehow found a way to prevent the tunnel from caving in under the immense weight. Many attempts have been made over the years, but none have even approached success. The tunnels collapse in short order. No, the only way through is through Redwater Castle.¡±
¡°And you¡¯re sure you can hold them off even with the numerical advantage?¡±
¡°Bah!¡± Adivar cried. ¡°A single Gustilian on the battlefield is worth fifty Imperials! The shortest wall in Redwater is over a thousand paces high and a hundred paces thick, moulded from the mountain wall itself! We can hold against whatever they throw at us, be it a hundred-thousand or three-hundred-thousand!¡±
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¡°You seem very worried about this entire plan,¡± noted the Eterian councilwoman.
¡°It¡¯s just that it seems we¡¯re putting all our eggs in one basket here,¡± Blake explained. ¡°You have one obstacle, and a mighty obstacle it may be, but it¡¯s just one. The Empire now has the ability to put every great mind they have to figuring out ways to get through or around it. If Redwater Castle falls, what then?¡±
¡°Then we fight them with the combined might of our armies, with honor and courage!¡± exclaimed Adivar, pounding a fist into a table by his side.
¡°There are a series of outposts going from the castle back towards Gustil proper,¡± Motrico explained. ¡°At the slightest hint of trouble, the beacon in the castle will be lit. Then the beacons on each outpost will be lit in response, all the way back, giving us warning enough to mobilize before the Empire can get any large concentrations of forces through the Divide. Gustil maintains a large force at Rul, just days away, for this reason.¡±
Blake was not the greatest student of history, but he¡¯d played enough WWII-themed video games to know how the Maginot Line had worked out. They didn¡¯t seem too willing to listen though, and he didn¡¯t have too much right to make demands since he wasn¡¯t contributing to the continent¡¯s defense anyway. If the Divide was as treacherous as claimed, maybe it actually would work, like a fence all the way across the border between the two continents. Just how likely was it that an invasion would actually happen, anyway?
The rest of the Summit droned on for the next several hours, with trade talks and arguments being the main highlights. Blake resolved to find somebody else to pawn this duty off onto before next year¡¯s date came around. The way the Stragman leader, Akhustal Palebane, kept glancing at him hungrily was making him uncomfortable, the elven princess Pyria Esmae seemed completely uninterested in the entire affair, and the Kutrad king seemed utterly exhausted. He felt sorry for the man and what he¡¯d been going through.
That was the one major point of interest that he¡¯d picked up on during the deliberations ¡ª something had happened in Kutrad and destroyed an entire city, killing nearly ninety percent of the people there. Anything that could wipe out hundreds of thousands of people was worth taking note of. Just how much was known about the incident remained unclear to him. The others danced around the issue mostly, likely in an attempt to not upset the man who dealt with the calamity on a daily basis. One look at King Morgan was enough to know just how much the entire affair had taken out of him.
¡°Never make me do that ever again,¡± Blake told his Chief of Staff in Leo¡¯s office once the ordeal was over. ¡°Unless you want me to off myself next time. Actually never mind, I don¡¯t want to give you ideas.¡±
Leo¡¯s desk was covered with parchment. Writing filled nearly every page Blake could see, though Blake couldn¡¯t read any of it. He make a note to learn to read at some point in the future. Either way, it was clear that his assistant was drowning in work.
¡°So how long until you have somebody to bring in for me to interview?¡±
¡°I should have my first choice for Minister of Agriculture arriving tomorrow.¡±
¡°What.¡±
¡°I took the liberty of starting my search over ten days ago.¡±
¡°You know, you could have told me then instead of this morning. I could have sent skitters to transport candidates here faster.¡±
¡°No, I¡¯ve found that using your minions only decreases my success rate. I have already talked to several candidates for positions, and have found that they were much more likely to listen to me when I told the skitters you assigned as my guards to leave. Thank you for making it so they would actually leave when I tell them to, by the way. They were following me everywhere, even to the lavatory.¡±
¡°No prob. So before I forget, what can you tell me about chimirin?¡±
¡°The drug or the plant?¡±
¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡±
¡°Chimirin is a plant that grows in Otharia, though it is exceedingly rare. Once the use of the seed extract was realized, the Church rounded up every last plant they could find and began to raise them in protected gardens. That was hundreds of years ago. I¡¯m no chimirin expert, but I believe that no chimirin plant has been found in the wild since. The drug that can be made with the seeds is highly potent. It temporarily boosts somebody¡¯s soulforce exponentially, as well as giving them a masterful control over their discipline. The cost comes once the effect wears off. Most people die almost immediately. The rest enter a catatonic state, from which nobody has ever returned. It is a horrible thing. It is also the biggest reason Otharia still stands today. An Eterian army would likely take the country in a straight-up battle, but with chimirin using troops Otharia would be able to hold its own. It was that threat that has kept the Elseling threat in the north at bay.¡±
¡°Funny, the Eterian councilwoman said it was because Otharia doesn¡¯t have anything worth invading over.¡±
Leo made a displeased face. ¡°That may have had something to do with it as well.¡±
¡°Eh, who can know? Anyway, the reason I brought this up was I want you to take stock of the chimirin gardens and the supply of the drug. I have a bad feeling we might be missing some.¡±
¡°Noted. Anything else?¡±
¡°Nothing for now, unless you happen to have a BLT hidden in your desk there. I¡¯m starving.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what that is.¡±
¡°Nobody here does. That¡¯s half the problem with this place.¡± Blake made for the door. ¡°I¡¯ll be in my workshop. Don¡¯t bother me unless you figure out the secrets of bacon.¡±
¡°Half of the chimirin plants are missing, along with more than two thirds of the drug supplies.¡±
Blake sighed. He¡¯d had a feeling ever since he realized that Councilwoman Motrico hadn¡¯t expressed interest in chimirin during their first conversation. Some person, or people more likely, had run off with most of the chimirin plants and drug, and probably now lived cushy lives raising the plants for the Eterians. And to think that she had the gall to claim that it was too dangerous to allow to spread. They just wanted to have it all to themselves!
Not that Blake had felt the need to sell or even use the substance. The idea of a drug that turned people into the equivalent of suicide bombers, doing tons of damage in a short time right before dying, seemed like a terrible thing. Other countries having access to chimirin was a recipe for trouble. Anybody having chimirin was a recipe for trouble, really, including Otharia.
¡°How long does the drug last in storage?¡± he asked.
¡°I¡¯m not sure.¡±
¡°Find out. For now, cease production of the drug. Keep the plants.¡±
¡°...are you sure?¡±
¡°Absolutely.¡±
¡°Very well...¡± He jotted something down on a piece of parchment.
¡°I¡¯m going to go grab Sam and work on my latest project. Anything else you need to talk to me about?¡±
¡°The candidate will be here later this evening for your interview. Other than that... there is one strange thing I might as well mention. A woman actually came to the castle unbidden today. She claims she wants to work for you.¡±
¡°That seems rather suspicious, don¡¯t you think?¡±
¡°That or foolish. I told her to come back tomorrow. What would you like me to do, should she return?¡±
¡°Hmmmm... Tell her that I said no. Don¡¯t be super definitive about it but make it clear that I am not interested. Then see if she comes back. If she comes back three times even after she¡¯s told no, then I¡¯ll give her an audience. I want to see if she is committed. Meanwhile, use that time to see if you can dig up anything on her. Let me know if you find anything suspicious.¡±
¡°So you¡¯re the piece of shit Ferris who messed up my planting season? You don¡¯t look so fucking tough in person. Feh, if I was twenty years younger I¡¯d beat your ass myself, you garoph-fucking trash! We had important work to do, but no, you had to go mess everything up, you pox-riddled, seven-toed whore¡¯s son! You mangy, rancid, overgrown...¡±
A old wrinkled man stood in Blake¡¯s office, shaking the cane held in his thin, bony hands at the most powerful man in the country while pouring a nonstop torrent of verbal abuse down upon him. Blake¡¯s jaw dropped in disbelief. The old farmer had barely stepped into Blake¡¯s office before he began to just unload broadside after broadside upon Blake¡¯s ego, and it just kept coming! Blake couldn¡¯t even tell what half of the things coming out of the old coot¡¯s mouth meant, but he knew quality when he heard it. ¡°Wedded to a sow¡¯s teat¡±? He¡¯d have to remember that one.
¡°Well? What, you have no words to say for yourself?¡± the old man continued. ¡°Pah! I thought you were supposed to be a man!¡±
¡°Where in the world did you find this guy?¡± he asked his assistant. The man seemed almost petrified with shock and dismay over his recommendation¡¯s unexpected outburst. On the other hand Sam, who was sitting in the corner playing with Alpha, seemed to be loving every single second of it. A pity for her then that Blake found the old farmer¡¯s tirade to be the best thing he¡¯d heard in weeks.
¡°I¡¯m sorry Lord Ferros, I will escort him out immediately. I only ask that you forgive him for his words, he-¡±
¡°Are you kidding, this guy¡¯s fucking amazing! Sit down, mister... Upacis was it?¡±
¡°Fricis Upeslacis, and don¡¯t you forget it, Ferris! Young people these days, no respect for their elders...¡±
¡°Well then, Mr. Upeslacis, what makes you think you should be my Minister of Agriculture?¡±
¡°That means ¡®Head Farmer¡¯, right? Well I¡¯ve been farming all my life. Damned good at it, too. Fifty years I¡¯ve been working the dirt. Ya pick up a thing or two over the years, but the Church never listened to what I had to say. Bunch of ingrates if you ask me...¡±
¡°Mr. Upeslacis has been the chief farmer for his village for the last thirty years,¡± Leo cut in. ¡°His village has almost always placed top third in yearly yields.¡±
¡°So he¡¯s consistently pretty good? That¡¯s your sales pitch, Leo?¡±
¡°Let me rephrase that. The village of Larkenten is merely average in population, field size and field quality compared to farming villages nationwide. And yet, since he took over, Larkenten has placed amongst the top in all metrics that I could come up with on a per-person and per-field basis. No other village has had performance nearly that good or consistent. In my opinion, he should have been promoted years ago.¡±
¡°And yet he hasn¡¯t. I wonder why,¡± Blake said with a wry smile. He turned back to the old man sitting in the chair on the other side of his desk. ¡°Alright old man, I¡¯m convinced that you¡¯re qualified. But that¡¯s only step one. Step two: why are you willing to be here? Am I not an Elseling? Have I not torn down everything you hold dear? For what reason would you consider being my underling?¡±
The man hesitated, more than Blake expected from the blustering coot. His eyes took on a mournful quality and he seemed to think about something.
¡°Were you telling the truth, back on the first day?¡± he asked. ¡°When you said that people wouldn¡¯t have to starve anymore.¡±
¡°I meant every word.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve had fifteen children over the years. Only two are alive today. Same with their children. I have twenty-one grandchildren, but only five of them still breathe. Most don¡¯t make it to ten years old. They all die from something different, but it¡¯s the same cause in the end. They don¡¯t have enough to eat. It makes them weak, weak enough for the evil spirits to get in them and eat them from the inside out. Every time a new child enters my life, I have to tell myself not to get too close because it will hurt too much when they go. That¡¯s the life of every farmer, Mister Ferris. I¡¯m old. I don¡¯t have too many years left in me. I just want to see that one thing change before I go. If you can do that, if you can make it so my grandkids won¡¯t have to feel the same way about their children that I had to feel about mine, then I don¡¯t care if you¡¯re an Elseling, or a blasphemer, or whatever. That¡¯s a trade I¡¯m prepared to make.¡±
A silence settled around the room as Blake took several moments to collect himself before speaking. ¡°I think we have a deal,¡± he finally said. ¡°When can you start?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t agree to start anything, kid!¡± the old codger squawked.
¡°But you just said that-¡±
¡°I know what I said! I said if you can do it! IF! And I haven¡¯t seen any proof that you can do anything you claimed yet! You want my cooperation? You gotta show me you mean business!¡±
Blake considered his option for a moment before walking past the others out the door. ¡°Follow me,¡± he beckoned. ¡°You too, Sam.¡±
The others obeyed and several twists and turn later, they all found themselves on a balcony, a six-legged transport skitter waiting for them to board. Several minutes later, the four of them stepped out of the cabin and into the edge of a field not far from the city. Several other skitters appeared soon after, ready to ward off anybody stupid or fanatical enough to attack.
¡°Sure is nice out today,¡± Blake sighed as he stretched his stiff shoulders.
¡°Lord Ferros, why are we out here?¡± asked Leo.
¡°We¡¯re here to show you all my latest project.¡±
¡°Those gross little worm things you keep sticking in the ground?¡± Sam asked.
¡°Not... quite.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t see anything,¡± said Fricis.
¡°It¡¯s not here yet, patience. Actually, now is a good time to explain a bit. So the two ways that we can improve our farming is to increase the number of fields we work and increase what we can do with each field, yes? By next year, I want to triple the total area we have as working farmland.¡±
¡°Triple?!¡± stammered the farmer. ¡°Do you know how much work it takes to clear a field? It takes tens of farmers, working for a season, to get a single new field clear of rocks and trees. We wouldn¡¯t plant a single thing all year!¡±
¡°See that tree standing on its lonesome out in the middle of that field over there?¡± Blake asked while pointing out towards the field in front of them. A single, large tree stood near the center of that field, surrounded by nothing but grasses and bushes. Blake estimated its trunk to be at least six feet wide and forty feet tall. ¡°How long would it take to fully remove that when making a field?¡±
¡°That¡¯s a parn tree. They¡¯re a tremendous pain to remove because of their heart root that goes deep down. Usually we have to leave it for a few years to rot some first before we even try to pull it out. Takes hours to dig out the other roots and then you need to pull it out with raw manpower and garophs.¡±
¡°So ever since I took over, one of my biggest goals was to set up a sewer system. Let¡¯s be real here. The cities all smell like shit. If there was a valid waste-disposal sewer system, the cities would smell better, there¡¯d be less disease, and life as a whole wouldn¡¯t be so fucking gross here. But I kept hitting problems. I¡¯m sure you understand best, you old geezer. It¡¯s a mess down there. There¡¯s rocks, and roots, and who knows what else.¡±
A small but noticeable tremor rumbled through the ground, the disturbance moving past them and towards the tree in the distance.
¡°So I started looking for a way to carve out what I want down there, no matter what is down there. And that¡¯s how I came up with my ¡®worms¡¯, as Sam so eloquently called them. They exist to eat their way through whatever gets in their way, be it dirt, root, rock, whatever. They started about the width of your arm, for the pipes that connect to the houses, but sewers need bigger pipes too. Much bigger.¡±
The parn tree quivered, as if jostled by an invisible hand, and then sank several feet into the ground in a fraction of a second as if being pulled under. In just seconds, the mighty tree now stood at only half its original height, the rest of it submerged in the now-churning dirt. Then suddenly an enormous cylindrical machine surged forth from the earth, engulfing the once-proud parn whole.
¡°Forty feet wide, with a length of over two hundred feet,¡± Blake said with a smile. ¡°An array of grinders encircling the mouth funnel all the material into the central processing channel, where it¡¯s broken down through a series of mechanical gizzards that grind and crush everything to dust. The movement I¡¯m very proud of. It mimics an earthworm. See that wide ring circling the outside a few feet from the front? With the interlocking segments? That expands a little, putting pressure on the surrounding earth. Then the whole ring slides back, pushing it forward, and then contracts and moves back to its original position. The entire body is covered with them. It can move through dirt like it¡¯s nothing. Only massive rocks really slow it down as it grinds its way through. That takes time and wears out the grinders. Good thing it can replace them with spares stored throughout its body!¡±
He gave a single clap of satisfaction, causing a clang to ring out as metal hand met metal hand. ¡°Really proud of this one! So what do you say, you old fart? Soon you¡¯ll be able to make all those pesky trees and rocks just disappear. Convinced yet?¡±
He glanced over at the assembled group to find each of them in some form of shock. Leo''s eyes bulged from their sockets, the writing tablet once in his hand now fallen to his feet, while Sam clutched Alpha to her chest, her body frozen in astonishment. The old farmer leaned desperately against his cane, trying to stay upright as his mouth flapped open and shut over and over. After several minutes the giant tunneler retreated back underground and the farmer steadied himself, thoughts seemingly buzzing through his head at a million miles per hour.
"I- uh- wha- huh-" he stuttered before finally collecting his wits. "Yes, Lord Ferris, I am convinced."
"It''s Ferros."
"What was that, Lord Ferris? My hearing ain''t what it used to be."
"...never mind."
Chapter 19
Arlette Faredin grabbed hold of the side of the wagon as one wheel hit a large rock and the entire side lurched precariously into the air before smashing back down with a massive crash. She readjusted her makeshift shield, really nothing more than the top of a broken barrel, getting ready to block as many of the incoming projectiles as possible. She batted away a stone the size of her fist, then dropped to the floor to avoid the spike of ice flying in just behind it. The icicle pierced through a floorboard with a terrifying screech, lodging a good two hand widths of itself into the board. Luckily, the wood held.
The stones were annoying and posed a major injury risk, especially if somebody got hit in the head, but they wouldn¡¯t do much to stop the wagon they occupied from continuing its thundering flight through the last few leagues to Stragma. The icicles, on the other hand, were more dangerous, both to the people of the wagon and the wagon¡¯s structural integrity. Some of them, like the last one, came in at such speed that she didn¡¯t trust her impromptu shield to stop them. But rocks, ice, and even arrows weren¡¯t why she was standing at the back of the wagon. No, the real concern was the fireballs. Just one fireball landing in the wagon would start a blaze that they¡¯d be hard pressed to quench before a second fireball landed, and then a third. Only with an intact vehicle did they stand a chance to escape for the last time.
The trip had been quiet and uneventful enough for Arlette to get her hopes up. Lucas and Liela had been true to their word. They¡¯d arranged for a wagon and gotten them into a trading caravan headed for Stragma, one where, as long as they kept their heads down and faces hidden, nobody would ask questions. The group had traveled like that for almost twenty days, heading southwest through the desert sands towards the mountains that marked the border to freedom. But somehow the bounty hunters had found out. They always seemed to find out. This time, however, failure on their part meant losing their reward for good, so it seemed that those that remained had finally teamed up.
They¡¯d struck in the pre-dawn light, coming out of nowhere. Most came in battlewagons and several chariots, pulled by armored garophs. The weight of the people and armor meant that, even with more beasts per wagon, those hunters could give chase but were too heavy to easily catch up. That was not a problem, however, except for the vekkel riders.
If garophs were the ideal beast of burden for heavy loads and peaceful times, vekkels were their opposite, fast-moving lizards that carried a single rider only and excelled more at fast sudden strikes than sustained long-distance travel. Vekkels were rare and people trained enough to ride them rarer still, but somehow at least five vekkel riders had been part of the attack.
Together the bounty hunters had overwhelmed the caravan¡¯s few guards and begun to make their way through the wagons, killing anybody who wasn¡¯t one of their targets. Chaos beset the camp and Arlette¡¯s group had fled, making a break for the nearby border while they still had a chance. The vekkel riders had descended upon them fairly quickly once it became clear they were the target. Arlette had managed to kill a rider with a lucky toss of a throwing knife, but the others had veered off, using their fast, agile mounts to get ahead and set up ambushes, popping out at the worst times to attempt a strike against the garophs.
That was how Arlette and her companions had ended up careening towards the nearby mountains, garophs frothing from one part terror and one part exhaustion, as at least a hundred hunters gave chase. Jaquet stood by the front, using his weapon and anything else he could to protect the garophs and Sofie from the incoming assault and any vekkel ambushes from the front. Sofie, not one for long-range battles, or any battles really, was doing her best to steer the panicked beasts around the winding road. For somebody whose only experience driving a cart was a few shifts guiding the wagon during the earlier part of the journey, she was doing a fairly good-
The wagon lurched again as a wheel struck another rock, sending Arlette tumbling to the floor. She desperately twisted her way out of the path of an incoming arrow, managing to receive a long thin cut on her forearm instead of an arrowhead to her shoulder.
¡°Sofie,¡± she cried as she staggered back to her feet, her eyes locked on their pursuers, ¡°we¡¯re going to break an axle!¡±
¡°I¡¯m doing what I can!¡± came the reply. ¡°It¡¯s like trying to steer the Titanic!¡±
¡°Duck,¡± came a voice behind her. She did, and Basilli unleashed a fireball of his own back at the pursuing hunters. The flames rocketed towards one of the wagons, only to strike the metal armor and burst with little effect. This was just another reason they were in such dire straits. Long-range fighting was not a strength of their group. Basilli was just about the only competent long-range fighter they had. Jaquet and Arlette had a few throwing knives each, but the distance was much too great for those to do anything at all. For the thousandth time since the events in Kutrad, Arlette asked herself why she hadn¡¯t bothered to take up the bow when she was younger. Now they were stuck with nothing but Basilli and his flames as a means of counterattack, and those flames were woefully weak against these specific enemies. Well, that wasn¡¯t entirely true; there was one other thing they had up their collective sleeves.
¡°Pari! Give me another!¡±
Pari¡¯s small dark arm reached out from behind a clump of sacks, her hand holding a small red candle shorter than it was wide. Her other hand reached out over the wick and snapped its fingers, bringing a small flame into existence just above the wick. The wick caught fire and Arlette quickly reached down and grabbed the proffered weapon before spinning about and tossing it towards the oncoming mass of pursuers. The drivers of those wagons recognized what was coming at this point, having been hit by several other ¡°bangcandles¡±, as Pari called them, already, but they¡¯d made the mistake of bunching up too much, limiting their ability to maneuver.
Living up to its moniker, the bangcandle exploded with a bang, shredding apart the front section of one of the battlewagons from beneath as if it were made of straw. The wagon¡¯s wheels disintegrated and it veered to the side, clipping another battlewagon hard enough to knock it over as well. Arlette grinned. With those two disabled, that meant that only seven of the initial twelve wagons chasing them still remained. They had a chance.
¡°Great! One more, Pari!¡± she called.
¡°Pari doesn¡¯t have more! That was Pari¡¯s last one!¡±
Never mind, they were fucked.
A cry from the front drew Arlette¡¯s attention, and she spun around to see the vekkel riders attacking from the side of the road ahead as the path left the twisty cliff side and opened up into a small, heavily-wooded valley. Three of the riders charged, each leveling a lance at the garophs, while the fourth hung back and loosed an arrow at the nearer garoph. Jaquet stepped forward, his halberd whirling out and down to bisect the shaft just before the head could pierce the beast¡¯s hide.
¡°Goin¡¯ ta need some ¡®elp ¡®ere!¡± he shouted as he pulled out a throwing knife. Arlette and Basilli responded immediately. Arlette pulled her last throwing knife from the sheath strapped to her right thigh and whipped it at the farthest rider, just as the wagon hit another bump. Her aim thrown off, the knife sailed not at the rider, but at the vekkel she was riding, slicing into the beast¡¯s scaly neck. The dying mount bucked and tumbled out of control, right in front of the nearest garoph.
That was enough. Accomplishing in death what it had not in life, the vekkel¡¯s dying body tangled with the garoph¡¯s legs, tripping the barreling beast and taking it and its partner to the ground. The sudden shift in momentum was too much for the wagon and it tumbled forward and to the side, throwing Arlette and company from the cabin to the ground.
It was over. All that fighting, all that running, only to fall short within spitting distance of their goal. Arlette looked at the lance tip hovering a finger-width from her chest, then up at the vekkel rider as he stared down at her, a triumphant smile on his face. She could try something, maybe, but she just didn¡¯t have the energy anymore. She¡¯d lost. They¡¯d all lost. The sound of the seven remaining battlewagons pulling up only confirmed it.
The hunters hooted and hollered in excitement as they rounded up their prey. Several burly men yanked Arlette roughly from the ground and dragged her unresisting form towards a group of five bickering people. Looking about, she saw Jaquet on the ground, out cold, a hunter posing with a foot on his chest as if he were a prize hunt. She couldn¡¯t spot Sofie, but could hear her complaining to somebody loudly somewhere nearby. Basilli was already bound by tucrenyx cuffs, sitting dejectedly on the ground near the bickering hunters. Pari was nowhere to be seen.
¡°Here she is, Rak,¡± said one of the men holding her.
¡°Excellent, the head lady herself,¡± said a muscled man with a shaved head and an eye patch. He stepped forward and inspected her. ¡°I have to admit, you did incredibly well, my dear. Everybody knew where you had to go, and they knew how you had to do it, and yet you still very nearly made it. Your little group must be very talented. But the Trackers of Boforda always get their marks eventually. I have one question. How did you elude us in Olenset? I know now that you were there while we were. Sate my curiosity and we¡¯ll go a little easier on you on the trip back to Kutrad, hm?¡±
So this was Rak, the same man who¡¯d been just paces from them back in Olenset? Arlette wasn¡¯t too impressed. She didn¡¯t bother to answer the man¡¯s question, his ¡°incentive¡± obviously a load of crap anyway. The man bounty hunter leader clicked his tongue at her non-response.
¡°Hold her there for now,¡± he said to his men, pointing at a place beside Basilli. ¡°I¡¯ll deal with her once I finish this.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll deal with her?¡± said one of the other hunters in the small scrum. ¡°Stop acting like she¡¯s your prey. She¡¯s all of our prey. That was the deal. Even split across all of us.¡±
¡°That¡¯s strange,¡± Rak replied, ¡°I don¡¯t recall any of you providing the intelligence of where they were. That was us. Without our informant, none of you had any chance of finding her before it was too late. It is only right that we take more than an even split.¡±
¡°You bastard!¡± snapped a different hunter, a woman. ¡°You think that you can just cheat us now that the work is done? Five of my men died today!¡±
¡°I think that, of all the survivors, the Trackers of Boforda outnumber all the rest of you combined,¡± Rak replied with a malicious grin. ¡°You should be thankful for the fact that I¡¯m willing to part with any of the reward at all.¡±
¡°You hung back and let the rest of us take the losses, you cocksucker!¡±
¡°We believe in fighting smarter, not harder.¡±
¡°You-¡± the first complaining man snarled. He tried to make a move for Rak, but merely fell flat on his face instead, both his lower legs entangled by vines growing up from the ground. Rak stepped back as the other man face-planted, a smirk of bemusement on his face. Arlette¡¯s respect for the man reluctantly rose. To be able to observe plants and grow them around your opponent not only without them noticing but also while not directly looking at them took incredible skill. She would know, she had to do it all the time.
¡°If you want to even think about challenging me,¡± Rak mocked, ¡°you¡¯ll have to do better than...¡± His eyes went to the man¡¯s ankles and his voice petered off, his eyes widening with surprise. So it wasn¡¯t Rak¡¯s doing after all?
Something was off. If it wasn¡¯t Rak, then who? The other people in the group had no reason to do it, since it would be actively sabotaging their own side. The only other people who were paying attention were the people holding her down, and if their strength was anything to judge by, they were definitely Feelers. The other hunters were partying it up, celebrating the end of a long, successful hunt. So who had done it? If not the hunters then the only other option would be...
Rak apparently came to the same conclusion. He reached for the sword by his side, opening his mouth to shout, but before he could make noise a bird call echoed across the area and suddenly people all around began to drop like flies, arrows sprouting from all over their bodies. Pandemonium reigned as the remaining hunters each made a break for the nearest battlewagon, but many began to trip as plants reached out and snagged their feet as they passed by. All the while, more and more arrows rained down from all directions, taking lives left and right.
Another bird call, and the arrows instantly ceased. Slowly, men and women emerged from the forest, each holding a sword or a spear in one hand and a bow in the other. Some were human, while most sported the telltale animalistic ears and tail of a beastman. Their bodies were covered in clothes made from various furs, and some of them had strange markings painted on their faces and arms. Stragmans.
¡°Trespassing is a very serious crime in Stragma, you know,¡± said a man stepping out of the forest to Arlette¡¯s right. Her eyes immediately went to the man¡¯s long, bushy, hair which alternated between black and white in long, vertical lines. Tiny little black and white round ears poked out from his head, barely visible through his thick mane.
¡°N-n-no, it¡¯s not possible!¡± stammered Rak, who was somehow still alive and untouched. ¡°This isn¡¯t Stragma! You can¡¯t cross the border!¡±
¡°Oh, didn¡¯t you know? Stragma¡¯s border is the forest¡¯s border, and a forest grows. You¡¯re in Stragma right now. It¡¯s very strange,¡± the man said looking around, ¡°we were expecting a caravan to arrive today, but we haven¡¯t seen hide nor hair of them anywhere. Would you happen to know where they might be?¡±
¡°I-I-¡±
¡°They killed them,¡± chimed in Basilli, a sadistic grin plastered on his face. ¡°Or at least most of them. Sent the few that still live running every which way, taking your goods with them. If you¡¯re lucky, a few might still try to come this way in a few days, but most of that is gone. All thanks to that guy right there.¡±
¡°And who might you be?¡± inquired the Stragman. He approached the two of them and squatted down to get a better look, staring at Basilli¡¯s and Arlette¡¯s faces in puzzlement. ¡°You two look somewhat familiar...¡±
¡°Waterbloom-blou, sir! Over here! Look!¡± The three of them turned to see another Stragman hefting up Jaquet¡¯s unconscious form as best he could.
¡°That mustache, that weapon... no, it couldn¡¯t be!¡± Waterbloom rushed over for a closer look. ¡°It is! Jaquet the Quick himself! And that must mean you¡¯re The Dancing Phantasm, Arlette Demirt! You¡¯re here! You actually made it! Oh, Palebane-chos is going to be overjoyed! I might even get a promotion... Oh, silly me. I¡¯m Commander Ahmakiq Waterbloom-blou, the man in charge of this transport team. It¡¯s a pleasure to meet warriors as strong as yourselves. Welcome to Stragma! It is just the three of you, yes?¡±
¡°Two more,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Sofie, Pari! Get out here! Now!¡±
The two youngest members of Arlette¡¯s ragtag group each came out, Pari lugging her gigantic sack behind her.
¡°Well then,¡± the beastman said, turning back to Rak. ¡°That shipment was very important for us, you know. So I¡¯ll make you a deal. We¡¯ll wait here for several more days. Any longer and we¡¯ll miss the migration. For every wagon that arrives, we will let one of you live.¡±
¡°But that-¡±
¡°Well maybe you shouldn¡¯t have killed the merchants we needed, hm?¡±
Rak¡¯s protests continued, and the beastman continued to humor him, but none of their words reached Arlette¡¯s ears any longer. All that has been pushed aside as her mind finally came to realize the truth and an unbearable weight lifted from her soul. They¡¯d made it after all. They were finally safe again.
The incident began as many recent incidents had: with the foreboding giggling of a mischievous little girl. Pari Clansnarl was the kind of child who had a hard time sitting still and staying out trouble, and that excess energy usually came out in the form of pranks. It didn¡¯t help that Basilli was always encouraging her tomfoolery and giving her ideas for new forms of mischief.
Pari tended to exclusively target Sofie with her silliness, and Arlette¡¯s theory was that Pari and Basilli got a kick out of the older girl¡¯s overreactions. She couldn¡¯t deny, Sofie had a unique talent for unnecessary hysteria that some might find amusing. The problem with Pari as a prankster was that she was so incredibly bad at it. A truly masterful prank required a blend of timing and surprise, but Pari would get so excited about what was to come that she¡¯d start giggling before she¡¯d even done anything. Her telltale childish ¡°hehehehehehe¡± served as a harbinger that something was up well in advance of anything actually happening. And yet somehow Sofie always seemed to fall for whatever it was. Arlette had always assumed she was faking it for the younger girl¡¯s amusement, but she was rethinking that assumption now because Sofie had just thrown herself off a cliff.
It had been five days since their ¡°arrival¡± in Stragma. The group had stayed for another two days, waiting in hopes that part of the caravan would magically show up, and, to the merchants¡¯ credit, several actually did. Some had even loaded up with extra goods taken from the wagons of the slain. Between the supplies and their arrival, Commander Waterbloom had ended up in a surprisingly pleasant mood. He was true to his word and let some of the surviving hunters free, though Arlette and company made sure that Rak was not among them.
Then the journey to join up with the Stragman people began, and it became clear that they still had a long trek ahead of them. Progress came slowly as they fought their way through the thick forest on thin winding paths through the treacherous mountains on the forest¡¯s north side. Stragma was easily the lushest, densest forest Arlette had ever seen. The trees seemed nigh infinite, as every time they would crest a mountain all they would find would be another wall of green on the other side.
Arlette was not enjoying her taste of Stragma so far, and the other two mercenaries felt the same. Trees, bushes, ferns, and the like seemed to cover everything. The air was so humid she felt like she could swim through it, leaving her dripping almost constantly, unable to get dry. And that was only when it wasn¡¯t raining, which it was, a lot. The moisture was so bad that they¡¯d each been given a large bag made from some sort of monster¡¯s stomach or something, specially designed to keep out as much moisture as possible. Arlette had been keeping her sword and knives in there to prevent them from rusting, but it made her worry about accessibility. A mercenary that couldn¡¯t pull a weapon in a flash was a mercenary that felt helpless.
Their grievances, however, were but specks of dust compared to the boulder that was Sofie¡¯s displeasure. Stragma seemed like a place designed with the intention of subjecting the poor girl to everything she hated without rest. She hated the humidity, the rain, and all the rest, but nothing bothered her more than the bugs. Stragma had an endless supply of bugs, in all shapes and sizes, and Sofie hated them all with a fiery passion. Every step she took was that of a woman on edge, waiting for a trap to spring out from the concealing foliage.
Pari, on the other hand, seemed to love everything about Stragma. She would run about, inspecting every new tree, plant, and fern she could find like they were each some trove of wonder waiting to be discovered. She would break off tree branches and sniff the sap, crush berries and sniff the juices, and snap ferns and sniff them as well. Pari did a lot of sniffing, Arlette noticed. But nothing excited Pari more than a new bug, of which there were many. She¡¯d chase them around, pouncing on them when they landed, and proceed to inspect every inch of them as if they held incredible secrets. Then she¡¯d start giggling and shove them in Sofie¡¯s face. This went about as well as one would imagine. Sofie would scream and panic, Pari¡¯s giggling would intensify, and then after a few moments Pari would run off once more on her never-ending quest to look at every tree and rock in Stragma.
This time, however, things had gone somewhat differently. The group, all hundred-plus Stragmans and the five of them, had been hiking around the side of yet another mountain, the trail taking them along a narrow cliff side just six or seven paces wide. The drop off from the path was not a sheer cliff, but it was close, the angle far too steep to stand upon. Instead of falling to your death, you¡¯d tumble down, slamming against rocks and trees, until settling at the bottom as a crumpled, broken heap of flesh and bone. Then you¡¯d die. Probably. It was impossible to see how far down the cliff went, as a thick fog bank obscured the entire valley below.
It was while they were traveling this dangerous path that Arlette had heard that infamous Pari giggle start up again. Before she could say or do anything, Pari zipped past her and ran up to her ¡°sister¡±, throwing her cupped hands up high to reveal a thin insect over a hand-width long, with long, thin legs and a body that resembled a tree branch.
¡°Gaaaaahhhhh!¡± Sofie had screamed, eliciting more gleeful laughter from the tyke.
¡°Pari! You have to stop doing that!¡± she¡¯d scolded. ¡°You¡¯re going to-¡±
That was when the insect had leapt from the beastgirl¡¯s hands directly onto Sofie¡¯s face. The young woman¡¯s entire body recoiled in horror as she let loose an unholy shriek, her arms flailing about in a desperate attempt to dislodge the bug. She¡¯d taken a step back, then another, tripped over a rock, and fallen backwards over the edge. In just a moment she was gone, lost in the fog below. It had happened so quickly that Arlette hadn¡¯t even begun to react before Sofie¡¯s body disappeared.
So there Arlette stood, looking down into the grey sea below with a stone in her gut, trying to come up with the best solution. Pari was beside herself. She¡¯d initially tried to climb down after Sofie but Commander Waterbloom had hauled her back up immediately. Now she was crying and fighting with several of the members of the transport team that Waterbloom had tasked with keeping her under control.
¡°A shame, really,¡± he said as he approached. He sighed. ¡°She will nourish Ruresni, becoming one with the forest, if that is any consolation.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°We should go down there. She might still be alive.¡±
¡°Absolutely not. Nobody enters the Valley of the Mist. It is a haunted place.¡±
¡°I have to go look! If she¡¯s still alive down there then we¡¯d be leaving her to die, and I can¡¯t do that!¡±
¡°Even if she¡¯s alive, the spirits of the dead will take her before you even find her. I said no, and that¡¯s final.¡± He turned back to the group and signaled for everybody to continue and the Stragmans began to move out. Arlette had no choice but to follow or be left behind, lost in the middle of a forest of immeasurable size.
An hour or so later the path descended back to the forest floor and they all stopped for a rest. Arlette couldn¡¯t help but look back. Just a little behind them was the entrance to the ¡°Valley of the Mist¡±. Maybe she could sneak in there while the others were resting...
¡°Don¡¯t even think about it,¡± came Waterbloom¡¯s voice behind her. ¡°I¡¯ve made my decision.¡±
¡°Then I sugges¡¯ ya reconsider tha¡¯ decision.¡±
Arlette turned about to find the leader of the Stragmans with the blade of a large halberd resting against his throat. Almost as one, every Stragman with a bow took it out and drew a bead on the large mercenary¡¯s body. Basilli meanwhile observed a large ball of flame in front of him and took a stance near Jaquet.
¡°What are you doing? Put that down before any more people die today,¡± the Stragman commander demanded.
¡°Don¡¯ think ya will be gettin¡¯ ou¡¯ o¡¯ this so easily. Ya know my reputation. Ya know my strength. Tha others¡¯ll take me down eventually, bu¡¯ I¡¯ll carve yer ¡®ead clean off before then. Do ya really wanna die so readily?¡±
¡°The law is clear! No Stragman may enter the Valley of the Mist, for any reason! It is forbidden!¡±
¡°What was that?¡± Basilli interjected. ¡°No Stragman? We are not members of Stragma. At least not yet. Thus the law does not apply to us.¡±
The black and white haired beastman looked down at the blade gleaming in the light filtering through the forest canopy, thinking hard. Several moments later, he looked back up, his eyes steady.
¡°I will not have all three of you die before I deliver you to Palebane-chos,¡± he said. He looked towards Arlette. ¡°You may enter, but only you. The other two must stay. If you are not back by tomorrow morning, we will leave without you.¡±
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Jaquet withdrew the weapon from the Stragman¡¯s windpipe. The commander signaled for his people to lower their bows and they did, slowly, while continuing to eye the three mercenaries. Arlette hoped that this wouldn¡¯t hurt their relations too much in the future.
Grabbing her pack, Arlette headed back towards the opening of the Valley of the Mist. The fog thickened as she approached and she stopped several steps inside for a second to look into the valley. Practically nothing was visible through the grey haze. She sighed ¡ª finding somebody in this soup was going to be a challenge.
The pitter-patter of small feet, followed by the soft rattle of various assorted objects in a sack caught her ears, the sounds moving by her off to the side, somewhere in the mists.
¡°Pari!¡± she called sternly. A clatter and a high-pitch ¡°nya!¡± confirmed her suspicions. ¡°Pari, come here!¡±
At first Arlette didn¡¯t understand how Pari had managed to get away from the others, but on second thought it wasn¡¯t that shocking, really. The Stragmans valued combat strength, and as far as they were concerned, only she, Jaquet, and Basilli were worth anything in a fight. Commander Waterbloom had allowed Sofie and Pari to tag along out of deference to the other three¡¯s wishes, but really only the fates of the mercenaries concerned him. He¡¯d even said that he could not have the three of them getting killed, not the four, showing he hadn¡¯t even considered the little girl in his decision. Now that they were off the ledge and back on solid ground where Pari couldn¡¯t throw herself off a cliff, the Stragmans must have just stopped caring about her again.
The girl, ratty coat, sack, and all, emerged from the mist, her ears flattened down to her head. Despite Arlette¡¯s best efforts, she and Pari were still not exactly on the best of terms. Sofie was, and would probably always be, the girl¡¯s most treasured person amongst the group. Basilli came in a distant second, mostly because they shared a love of mischief-making, and possibly because he¡¯d been the least antagonistic of the three mercenaries when they¡¯d all first met.
Arlette, on the other hand, remained a figure of suspicion in the girl¡¯s eyes, despite the mercenary¡¯s best efforts. Pari didn¡¯t hide behind Sofie anymore, but she tried her best to never engage whenever possible. She didn¡¯t speak to Arlette unless spoken to and generally avoided her as much as she could. Arlette could at least be thankful that Sofie had convinced the girl to follow her Arlette¡¯s commands during battle, but that was about all.
¡°Pari, they say it¡¯s very dangerous in there. You stay here.¡±
The little girl looked up at her with sad eyes that were puffy and red from crying. Her tail jerked and twitched this way and that, broadcasting her anxiety.
"P-Pari wants to go look for Sofie-sis," she said, her lip quivering. "It''s Pari''s fault that Sofie-sis fell..."
Arlette gave the girl¡¯s request a moment of consideration. Unlike the Stragmans, Arlette was well aware of how dangerous the girl could be. She also might be able to find Sofie quickly in the fog using that nose of hers. But more than anything, Arlette knew that if she said no, Pari would just go in on her own soon after anyway. If Sofie was still alive, finding her but losing Pari would just be trading one miserable person for another.
¡°How many bangcandles do you have right now?¡±
¡°Five!¡± the girl stated proudly, opening her ragged coat to show Arlette the candles tucked in little pockets on the inside lining.
¡°Alright, you can come along, but stay close to me so you don¡¯t get lost, okay?¡±
¡°O-okay...¡±
She grabbed the child¡¯s hand and together they stepped into the mist.
Haunted or not, the Valley of the Mist sure had the atmosphere down pat. A disquieting stillness pervaded the place, the fog soaking everything from the sounds of the wildlife to their own footsteps and calls for Sofie. Light filtered through the haze and the trees to cast strange shadows across the ground. Everything felt just a little off, a little uncanny. But still, in the end the Valley of the Mist was nothing more than just that: a valley with a lot of mist in it. Or so Arlette had thought. Now, as she gazed at the strange structure before her, that talk of spirits suddenly felt far more viable.
It was a house, or something along those lines. Much of it had fallen in, the rubble overgrown with roots, vines, and the occasional tree, but parts of it still stood, unwilling to bow to the might of time just yet. These parts, unlike those that had collapsed, were almost entirely composed of metals covered with the scars of corrosion. Some pieces were obvious, beams and walls and the like, while others served purposes that she could not discern. Metal vines hung limp from walls and ceilings. Strange protrusions stuck out of floors and countertops. It felt wrong for her to be in this place, like she was trespassing on the grave of some unknown people.
As soon as it became clear that Sofie was not hiding in the house, or whatever it was, Arlette and Pari gratefully continued on, only to stumble upon a second ancient dwelling shortly after. This building was in no better condition than the first. The two wannabe rescuers searched it much like they did the other, once again finding nothing but a building sense of unease.
Arlette understood now why the Stragmans would not enter this place. This was not a land meant for the living. This was the domain of a people long past whose spirits did not find the two rescuers welcome. Arlette was sure she could feel their malevolence, the foreboding atmosphere it created eating away at her composure as they worked their way deeper and deeper into the valley. What once were simply odd shadows now became bizarre outlines filled with malice. What once was just the rustle of leaves now became the first sign of something sinister out there in the mists, lurking just beyond the limits of their vision. She would see things, hints of motion in the periphery of her vision, that she told herself were nothing more than the swaying of branches combined with her imagination, but telling herself that did nothing to silence the voices whispering in the wind. The haze pressed in around her, squeezing her, boxing her in.
But still they pressed bravely onward, hoping against hope that they would find their lost companion alive, and soon. They passed a third ancient ruined domicile, and then a fourth and a fifth. The houses were all aligned in a similar orientation, she realized, as if opening towards a street. The thing was, streets usually led to something. What did this street from a bygone era lead to? Arlette was wondering just that when the fortress emerged from the gloom, and she had her answer.
The building before her was not like a normal fortress. It wasn¡¯t more than maybe thirty paces tall, far shorter than other fortifications, though it was long and wide, stretching so far off into the distance that the fog obscured her view of its true size. She couldn¡¯t see any arrowslits, moats, or watchtowers, but still, it had to be a fortress. Why else build a giant building entirely out of metal?
Indeed, the massive structure was nothing but metal as far as she could see. No windows, no doors, just flat metal walls that curved inwards as they went higher before transitioning into a dome-shaped roof. Like the houses, the scars of time showed all across the building, but Arlette could not spot any section that had collapsed or worn away.
Either way, as peculiar and incredible as the fortress might be, with no doors or windows there was no earthly way Sofie would be inside. That meant they didn¡¯t have to explore it, thankfully. Arlette turned away, ready to head off once more, but Pari pulled back, lifting her nose and sniffing the air intently.
¡°Pari smells Sofie-sis!¡± she declared excitedly, pulling Arlette towards the gargantuan building. Of course. She should have known that nothing came easily when Sofie and Pari were involved.
Arlette held her sword in her left hand and the girl¡¯s hand in her right as the two slowly approached the fortress. Arlette braced herself for something to happen, but the spirits of those that rested there stayed their hand and did not strike. Not yet, at least. Still, she could see nothing that they could use to get inside. Together they turned to the right and made their way along the building, Arlette making sure to position herself between the wall and the girl in case the spirits changed their minds.
¡°Sofie-sis was here, Pari is sure,¡± the beastgirl stated with confidence as they continued along the wall. ¡°Pari can-¡±
A terrible screech, like the wailing of a thousand vengeful souls, erupted from the building just beside her. Arlette¡¯s body reacted before her mind could, scooping Pari into her arms and sprinting away from the spirits¡¯ wrath as fast as her legs could carry her. A second screech, similar to the first, pierced the fog and Arlette kept running. When her brain finally caught up with the rest of her, Arlette found herself huddling with Pari on the ground behind a boulder, the fortress nowhere in sight.
Arlette held the girl against her chest plate as her lungs heaved and her heart beat a thousand times a breath. Slowly the shaking in her limbs subsided and her breathing normalized. Part of her wanted to berate the rest for losing control, panicking like a greenhorn in his first battle, but this was not like the fights she was used to, where death came in the form of another person, somebody alive and breathing. No, she¡¯d never trained for this. How do you kill that which is already dead?
Pari squirmed out of Arlette¡¯s loosening grip, picking up her sack and heading back around the boulder.
¡°Pari, where are you going?¡± Arlette asked.
¡°Sofie-sis is near the metal place. Pari is going back to find Sofie-sis,¡± the little girl replied simply, as if this were all a normal occurrence.
¡°Didn¡¯t that scare you?¡±
¡°No, Pari was surprised but Pari was not scared,¡± she said matter-of-factly. ¡°Grandfather¡¯s snores are much louder.¡±
Arlette stared in disbelief as the nine-year-old girl strode confidently into the mist, ashamed that a child had more courage than she did. She had a job to do, she told herself. She would find Sofie, and then they would get the hell out of there and never go back. She pushed herself to her feet and hurried into the mist after her companion.
The walk to the fortress was filled with silence. No animals, no wind, nothing but the sound of two pairs of feet treading on the soft, wet forest floor. This time, the pair moved along the fortress at a distance as Arlette kept her sword in front of her, both hands gripping it tightly. Arlette¡¯s hands shook as they passed by the location of the spirits¡¯ attack, but strangely nothing happened. Soon after, Pari suddenly stopped.
¡°Pari can¡¯t smell Sofie-sis over here,¡± she said.
¡°Where was the place that you could smell her the most?¡± Arlette inquired.
Pari pointed at a spot near the fortress wall, and Arlette¡¯s stomach fell like a stone. The girl was pointing right where they¡¯d been attacked. Of course.
Slowly, carefully, Arlette approached the spot, her eyes moving this way and that in search of threats, but nothing stood out. Even the wall looked the same as the rest. Well, that wasn¡¯t entirely true. She did spot a small, red crystal embedded in the wall about three paces above her head. Other than that, though, everything seemed normal, or as normal as this place could be.
Taking a deep breath, Arlette took one more large step, and then jumped back as the building let loose another horrid screech, venting its fury at her trespass. Arlette leaped back as slowly the fortress opened its mouth, ready to swallow her whole, only to watch as, with one more wail, the mouth closed again and everything returned to stillness.
The strength in her legs left her and she sat down, dropping her sword and placing her head in her hands. She stared blankly at the dirt as the reality of her life hit her head on.
She heard a screech, then a second screech.
A door. She¡¯d nearly shat her pants over a door. An extremely loud door, yes. One that opened seemingly on its own, yes. Yet still just a door like any of the thousands she¡¯d opened and closed in her lifetime.
A screech. A second screech.
Once upon a time her life had been simple. She¡¯d thought it complex at the time, leading a group of mercenaries into battle, finding employers, and all the other headaches that came with being the leader of a mercenary band, but now she understood just how good she¡¯d had it.
Screech. Screech.
The old Arlette would never have been scared of doors. But that was then. The old Arlette had never watched her friends die, or been hunted by an entire country, or been forced to explore and ancient valley filled with monuments to the dead.
Screech. Screech. ¡°...hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe...¡±
This was what she was now: a nervous wreck who hung out with a crazy young woman and a bizarre beastgirl, clinging desperately to what remained of her sanity. A woman clinging to any piece of wood within reach just to keep herself from drowning in the torrential rapids that-
Screechscreechscreechscreechscreechscreechscreechscreechscreechscreech-
¡°Pari, spirits above! What in the world are you doing?¡± Arlette cried, her head shooting up from her hands to find the girl jumping forwards and backwards on the muddy ground and giggling like a madwoman while the door danced to her tune. Pari had figured out the haunted door¡¯s secret, Arlette realized. While she¡¯d been too busy being scared or awash in self-pity, the beastgirl had fearlessly deduced that it opened when you entered a certain area and had immediately proceeded to abuse that knowledge for her own amusement.
Arlette¡¯s words of protest died half-formed at the sight. Pari was no different than she, the mercenary thought. They were both swept up by chaos far beyond their control that threatened to bury them in an avalanche of the unknown, but instead of shrinking back this child chose to embrace it, welcoming the deluge of new and unexpected experiences with open arms and an inquisitive mind. What was stopping her from doing the same? Arlette had never expected to receive life lessons from a child not even ten years of age, but the girl had it right. It was time to start rolling with the punches.
¡°Pari, don¡¯t disrespect the spirits like that. We need to focus. Do you smell Sofie in there?¡± Arlette asked as she picked herself up off the ground.
¡°Ah!¡± the beastgirl cried, as if she¡¯d forgotten the reason they were there in the first place. She sniffed. ¡°Pari smells Sofie-sis even more now!¡± she exclaimed as she picked up her sack.
¡°Now remember to stay with me so we don¡¯t get separated, okay?,¡± Arlette reminded the girl as they stepped cautiously through the door.
¡°Okay.¡±
Then they were through and into the fortress, and Arlette¡¯s mind went so blank that she didn¡¯t even register the screeching of the door closing behind her. It was as if they had been transported into a whole other world. The entrance hall where they stood glowed with an ethereal light, illuminated by strange glowing rectangles set inside the ceiling every few paces. The room was perhaps forty paces deep and twenty or so paces wide, with several hallways beginning at the other end. The floor was composed of tile after tile of the smoothest, most polished stone she¡¯d ever seen. Sliding her fingers along the tiles, Arlette could see the seams where they were placed together but a strange hard, clear coating on top turned the entire floor into a single, smooth surface.
Strange fixtures and implements dotted the room and the hallways that branched from it, mixed with an array of almost-normal recognizable objects. Arlette spotted chairs, tables, a desk, and many others, though they all had something out of the ordinary. The chairs were largely metal, with strange circles attached to the ends of the legs. Wheels, perhaps? The tables were largely just tables, but the tabletops seemed to be made out of solid glass, flatter than any she¡¯d ever seen. To be able to afford to create many panes of glass to that level of perfection... The people who¡¯d created this place must have been richer than kings.
Much of it didn¡¯t make sense, though. For a fortress, the layout lacked any sense of defensibility. An unguarded gate, opening directly into a living space? The people smart enough to create such wonders would surely have understood such concepts. Perhaps she¡¯d been wrong the entire time? But if it wasn¡¯t a fortress, what was it? She wasn¡¯t sure. One thing she could be sure of was that this place was truly ancient. The inside had gone undisturbed for so long that even the layers of dust had layers of dust on them.
Following Arlette in, Pari gasped, looked around at the fortress¡¯s interior with gleaming golden eyes, and took off to explore, her promise made moments prior now completely forgotten. Arlette felt a pang of guilt as she spied the muddy prints Pari left behind on the dusty but otherwise immaculate floor. At least that would make her easy to track.
After a few more moments of contemplation, Arlette set off into the structure, following Pari¡¯s tracks down a nearby hallway. As incredible in some ways as this place was, she still wanted to get away from it as soon as possible. Where the outside had felt like treading on the bones of people long gone, this felt far more immediate, like she¡¯d snuck into some person¡¯s house while the owner had stepped out for a moment, and they could return at any time and catch her. Plus, Commander Waterbloom had given her until sundown, and the day was getting on. If Sofie was around, they just had to find her and get out, mission accomplished.
Pari¡¯s scream pierced the relative stillness, followed by a strange whooshing roar. Arlette pulled out her sword as the impish beastgirl sprinted out of a doorway farther ahead, running like her life depended on it. On her heels came the source of intense noise, a grotesque cylindrical metal beast about the same height as Pari, with a long trunk that reached all the way down to the ground. Some sort of guardian beast, perhaps? Pari cut to her right, turning up the hallway and heading away from Arlette. The guardian beast gave chase, turning to follow the girl. Arlette sprinted after them, closing the distance as quickly as she could.
Pari took a left turn this time, through another doorway, but the beast was not fazed. Its high-pitched roar continued as it followed close behind. Arlette raced through the doorway a moment later to find Pari cornered, her back up against a wall, her ears back against her head, and an expression of absolute terror on her tear-streaked face as the noisy guardian closed in, its trunk extending towards the girl.
Thinking quickly, Arlette leapt forward and tackled the beast from the side, knocking it over. It continued its gusty scream, the trunk moving back and forth in fury over being attacked. Years of training and experience told Arlette that striking something so metallic with her sword would do little good, especially since she couldn¡¯t see any obvious gaps it the beast¡¯s armor, so instead she grabbed a nearby stool, made entirely of metal like so many other things there, brought it up over her head, and swung it down with all of her might. Metal crashed against metal and the beast¡¯s armor dented slightly, but the beast roared on. Arlette raised the heavy stool back up and brought it down once more, then again, and again, and again. At some point the beast ceased to draw breath, though she could not say that it was after the final hit.
The guardian defeated, Arlette tossed the stool aside and let out a tired exhalation. ¡°You okay, Pari?¡± she asked.
The dam inside Pari broke and she ran into Arlette¡¯s arms, bawling her eyes out. ¡°Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh! Pari was so scared!¡± she sobbed as she clutched the mercenary tight.
¡°It¡¯s okay, it¡¯s dead now,¡± the mercenary replied, rubbing the poor girl¡¯s head and murmuring soothingly. She looked down at her kill as the girl let out all her emotions, studying the creature. For a guard the animal sure seemed strange. Arlette couldn¡¯t find a single claw, tooth, or any other sort of weapon on the thing. Was it really a guardian at all?
¡°Oh, there you are!¡± came a voice from the room¡¯s entrance. Arlette¡¯s head whipped around towards the familiar voice to find Sofie standing in the doorway, alive and well, waterproof bag slung over her shoulder. A glance revealed no major injuries of any sort. In fact, she got the impression that the young woman was actually somehow better off than before.
Pari¡¯s face lit up when she heard the voice, the anguish of a moment ago suddenly vanished. She dashed over to her ¡°sister¡± and leapt into her outstretched arms. Sofie caught her and lifted her up, spinning the two of them about as the beastgirl laughed happily.
¡°You little rascal!¡± Sofie play scolded. ¡°What have I told you about shoving bugs in my face?¡±
¡°Pari sorry.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll forgive you this once, but don¡¯t do it ever again, okay?¡±
¡°Okay!¡±
¡°Are you hurt?¡± Arlette asked the young woman holding the happy purring child in her arms.
¡°I¡¯m mostly alright,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°I got really lucky. Part of the cliff side juts out from the rest just beneath the mist. I hit my head and got knocked out and when I came to, you were all gone! I tried to climb back up but I couldn¡¯t make it so I had to climb down. It was really scary!¡±
¡°Well I¡¯m glad you¡¯re safe. Now let¡¯s get out of here.¡±
¡°Awwww, do we have to?¡±
Arlette stared at Sofie¡¯s disappointed face in disbelief. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me you actually like it here...¡±
¡°Are you kidding?¡± Sofie gushed. ¡°This place is the best place I¡¯ve seen since I came to this world! It¡¯s so nice and quiet! I feel so safe in here!¡±
¡°Of all the boneheaded, ignorant, crazy things that I have heard come out of your mouth since we first met, nothing even comes close to what you just said. This place is a waking nightmare. Now let¡¯s leave it while we still can.¡±
Sofie sighed and released Pari, who scurried back towards the metal beast to retrieve her sack of things.
¡°Oh?¡± she said, spying the guardian¡¯s crumpled form. ¡°What happened here?¡±
¡°A big mean thing attacked Pari, but Arly-sis beat it up! Arly-sis was so cool! Arly-sis was like wham! Bam! Bang! Arly-sis is the best!¡±
¡°¡®Arly-sis?¡¯ Uh-ohhhhhh,¡± chuckled Sofie with a devilish grin. ¡°Looks like somebody got promoted. Welcome to the family, ¡®Arly¡¯.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you dare start calling me that.¡±
¡°Would never even think of doing such a thing, Madame Demirt,¡± came the obnoxious reply. Sofie stepped over to the metal creature to get a closer look. Reaching down, she picked up the beast¡¯s trunk and inspected the oddly shaped nose filled with lines of long, bristly hairs, and let out a loud snort and then a giggle.
¡°Is... is this the big meanie that attacked you?¡± she asked Pari, trembling and fighting back more snorts of amusement.
¡°Yes!¡±
"Was it trying to... snrk... suck you up the whole time so it could eat you?"
"Yes!"
Unable to contain her mirth any longer, the young woman burst into uproarious guffaws, her body heaving with such gusto that she fell on the ground and began to roll back and forth. ¡°Oh,¡± she choked out between bouts of laughter, ¡°that must have been so very scary!¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t understand what was so funny. ¡°Don¡¯t make fun of Pari. Who knows what it might have done to her if I hadn¡¯t stopped it! The beast chased her through whole rooms, and it didn¡¯t stop roaring the whole time!¡±
Instead of stopping, Arlette¡¯s comments unexpectedly made Sofie laugh even harder. Tears pour from her eyes and she pounded the floor with her hand. ¡°I¡¯m sure it did!¡± she wheezed out, glancing at the girl¡¯s mud covered shoes for some reason. ¡°Oh god, I can¡¯t breathe. I can¡¯t breathe! AHAHAHAHAHAHA...¡±
¡°Come on, let¡¯s go,¡± said Arlette as she lifted the howling Sofie to her feet and began to escort the two back to the screeching door, a strange smile peeking through her stern facade. Sure, she was stuck with a crazy, naive young woman who made no sense half the time. Sure, she¡¯d just been adopted by a strange, feral girl with an unknown past and a penchant for explosives. Sure, she¡¯d had to run for her life across the entire continent and now had to live in a giant muggy rainforest to stay safe, but this wasn¡¯t so bad. Did she want her old life back? Yes. Without a doubt. But Jaquet was still here, as was Basilli. The Ivory Tears lived on through the three of them, and she owed it to them and to the spirits of her former companions to keep living, to keep fighting in their memory. She was still alive and she was not alone. Life was about to be a lot different, but who said that meant it had to be miserable? She just had to roll with the punches.
Chapter 20
Looking out at the vast empty clearing and mountainside that was supposed to be Krose, Stragma¡¯s summer city, Arlette Faredin realized with some discomfort that this whole ¡°disappearing metropolis¡± thing was beginning to feel rather banal. At least this time more than just a crater remained. Gazing out at the vast open space, she tried to imagine what the city had been like just days ago. The area consisted of two parts: the piedmont at the foot of the mountain and the mountain itself. The industrial and commercial buildings likely would go on the piedmont, given the space and flat ground needed for both. The hole-riddled mountainside, on the other hand, would be where all the people¡¯s homes went. The mountain was practically more cave than mountain by her estimate. She could even see more cave entrances pock-marking the adjacent mountains.
Just some days ago, when Commander Waterbloom and his team had left this place and headed north to meet the incoming caravan, they¡¯d left a bustling mega-city of twelve million people, only to return some days later to find an empty land. It was like millions of people had just all decided to leave while the task force had been out. In fact, that was exactly what had happened. Unlike normal countries, Stragma only had one city, in which the entire nation lived for mutual protection, or four cities that were each only inhabited for a quarter of the year, depending on how you looked at it. The populace would live their lives at a city until forced out by one of the many massive dangers of the forest, at which point they would pack up their homes and belongings and move the entire city, buildings and all, to the next season¡¯s location. The thing was, the Stragmans had lived this way for generation upon generation. They knew when to pack up and leave every season and had nomadic life down to an art form, or so she¡¯d been told by others who¡¯d been to the forest before.
Everything she could see, however, didn¡¯t tell the tale of an organized, normal migration. Debris littered the ground, objects of all sorts seemingly left behind on purpose or through a mistake born of haste. Half-completed projects laid strewn about. She spotted a mound of half-tanned hides, discarded midway through the tanning process. But perhaps the greatest sign that the people of Stragma had left early was the steady stream of vitriol coming from Ahmakiq Waterbloom¡¯s mouth. She did a quick survey of the group. Jaquet stared out at the clearing silently, his face serious as he studied the situation. Basilli leaned against a tree, nonplussed and annoyed. Sofie stood behind Pari, face aghast, covering the beastgirl¡¯s ears in a futile attempt to block out the commander¡¯s profuse profanity.
¡°Alright everybody, gather ¡®round!¡± the two-tone leader called after calming down a bit. ¡°We can¡¯t stay here long. Whatever made the city move early is trouble, and I don¡¯t want to run into it. Still, I think we need to do at least one sweep of the caves before we move on, make sure there aren''t any citizens that were left behind. Captains, form squads of five and report to me for assignment. You, you, you, and you,¡± he said, pointing to several members of the group, ¡°you¡¯re staying with me to coordinate and protect the Shells. Now let¡¯s move, people!¡±
The task force leapt into action, dividing itself into squads and reporting to the commander before heading off towards specific sections of the mountainside.
¡°We can help too if you need it,¡± offered Arlette. ¡°Speed things up a little.¡±
¡°Very well, your assistance is appreciated,¡± nodded Waterbloom. He pointed to a section of the mountain to the left side. ¡°You take that section. Grab a few spare torches before you go. Remember that speed is a must. Every moment we wait here is another chance for disaster to arrive.¡±
Arlette nodded and walked off, gathering her group and heading towards the area they¡¯d been given. As soon as they were out of Waterbloom¡¯s earshot, Sofie moved alongside Arlette, concern painting her face.
¡°What the hell is going on?¡± she asked rather predictably. Arlette quickly explained how Stragman cities worked, to which the other woman nodded her head in understanding. ¡°Okay, but that doesn¡¯t explain everything. Why are some people staying behind? What is a ¡®Shell¡¯?¡±
Arlette considered her answers for a moment. ¡°As far as I understand, Stragman society operates under a caste system. Have you noticed how when people refer to each other here, they keep adding honorifics at the end of each other¡¯s names?¡±
¡°Oh, are you saying that his name isn¡¯t Waterbloom-blou?¡±
¡°That¡¯s correct. His name is Ahmakiq Waterbloom, and he¡¯s a member of the blou caste. It is customary for all Stragmans to refer to each other with the honorific at the end of their names unless they are great friends or members of the same family. Most of their society is based around what caste you are. It determines what rights you have, what say you get in the government, what jobs you can do, and more.¡±
¡°So people have their lives determined for them at birth? That¡¯s terrible!¡±
¡°No, birth doesn¡¯t matter. It¡¯s more of a meritocracy than that. When you become an ¡°adult¡± you have to do some test or something, and if you pass you become a fleg. Most people are flegs. They are hunters and warriors and whatever else. Flegs that get enough accolades in hunts and battles can eventually earn a promotion into the blou caste. A blou gets to command flegs in battle and during missions, like Commander Waterbloom and the squad captains below him. Then well-performing blou can get a chance to join the hono caste, which is like being a high-ranking officer. More responsibility, more power. Then there¡¯s a caste of one, the chos. The chos is the ruler of Stragman society. They make the rules to a great degree.¡±
¡°You keep talking about everybody like they¡¯re all in a giant army.¡±
¡°Well, they kind of are. They never know when they will need to fight for their lives from some pack of wild beasts or something equally dangerous. That¡¯s why a lot of how people judge you here is based on how well you can fight. It¡¯s not like being a higher caste means that you just get to live life easy, either. The higher your caste, the higher your rights and power, but also the more dangerous your duties can be.
¡°Take scouts, for instance. A scout squad is usually a hono commanding several blou, because scout missions require them to be separated from the city for possibly a season or more, surviving in the forest all on their own. A fleg would never survive that. Then there¡¯s the subjugation division, which only allows hono in it. They get all the glory, but their job is to go into combat against waves of deadly animals and kill or divert them before they can run into the rest of the Stragman people.¡±
¡°But what about people who get hurt, or get old?¡±
¡°That¡¯s the skai caste. Skai have a strange niche because they both were warriors in the past but also are now unable to fight. They get about the same amount of rights as a fleg, perhaps more. Most of the people who do the normal jobs like a butcher or a tailor or whatever are either fleg or skai.¡±
¡°Okay, but what about this ¡®Shell¡¯ thing?¡±
¡°You know how I said that everybody has to take a test? Some people fail. Those that fail are considered to lack the qualities of a warrior, and therefore are not considered true citizens of Stragma. They don¡¯t even get a caste and an honorific. They are just called ¡®Hollows¡¯, because it is thought that they are empty inside due to their missing warrior¡¯s soul. ¡®Shell¡¯ is a slang term for a Hollow. Shells don¡¯t get weapons. They don¡¯t fight. They get no say in the government and they have no real rights. They¡¯re the people who get all the hardest jobs, especially the dirty ones and the ones that are mostly manual labor. Did you notice how the caravan task force had two types of people in it? Half with some sort of tattoo on their faces, and half with no tattoos?¡±
¡°Yeah, and the people with nothing are the ones who have to carry all those supplies on their backs!¡±
¡°It¡¯s just how they see the world. They feel like those who lack the warrior spirit are incomplete people, incapable of being a true part of Stragman society. So they get the tasks that the rest don¡¯t want.¡±
¡°But... I thought you hated slavery. Why are you okay with this? People have one failure that defines them for the rest of their lives? That¡¯s ludicrous!¡±
¡°I¡¯m not entirely okay with this, but we¡¯re about to have to deal with it for the rest of our lives so we all have to get used to it. Also, it¡¯s not the same as slavery because people don¡¯t have to stay a Hollow forever. Every year, all Hollows are given the chance to become a fleg. All they have to do is survive in a trial of combat. If they can do that, they join the fleg caste.¡±
¡°¡¯All they have to do¡¯? Don¡¯t make it sound like it¡¯s easy. There wouldn¡¯t be so many of them around if it were that easy.¡±
Arlette shrugged. ¡°Maybe there¡¯s more to it.¡±
¡°You know,¡± Sofie remarked after several moments of contemplation, ¡°you sure do know a lot of stuff about places where you¡¯ve never been.¡±
¡°Well... when you¡¯re a mercenary a lot of times, when you¡¯re just waiting for orders and stuff like that, there¡¯s nothing to do but talk. You do that enough with enough different people and you¡¯ll just end up picking up knowledge here and there,¡± Arlette replied as they arrived at the cave entrance. ¡°Anyway, make sure to stay close, everybody. We don¡¯t know what we will find inside these caves and we can¡¯t have people getting separated.¡±
The cave entrance was a good thirty paces wide or more, and perhaps twenty paces tall. The group peered in, unable to see too deep into the gloom. Basilli lit two torches, passing one to Arlette and the other to Jaquet, and they went inside.
¡°I can¡¯t believe how deep these caves go,¡± Sofie commented an hour later. The group had been moving through the cave system with a deliberate quickness, trying to move a fast as possible without getting lost. They¡¯d found nobody before finally turning back and heading for the entrance once more. Arlette believed that they were close to the outside, though the only light she could see came from the torches that were nearing out.
¡°Well they would have to be, to house an entire city,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°It must have taken them forever to dig.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think people made this,¡± chimed in Basilli. ¡°Earth and stone Observer tunnels don¡¯t have this kind of texture. It¡¯s like the ground has been melted right through or something.¡±
¡°So if they didn¡¯t, then where did they come from?¡± asked Sofie. ¡°Natural caverns don¡¯t come from melting.¡±
¡°Who knows?¡± Basilli replied. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s some kind of giant fire-breathing monster, lurking in the shadows, waiting to- you feel that?¡±
¡°Basilli, that isn¡¯t funny!¡± Sofie cried.
¡°No, I really thought I felt the ground shake for a second!¡±
¡°Yeah, right! You just wanted to prank me again!¡±
Arlette felt a tug on her tunic and looked down to find a confused Pari looking back at her. ¡°Arly-sis, why is the ground hissing?¡±
¡°What do you mean, sweetie?¡±
The girl pointed at the floor of the tunnel about a hundred paces in front of them. Arlette couldn¡¯t see anything out of the ordinary right away, but as they moved closer, she noticed a small amount of smoke rising from the ground.
¡°Pari, is the hissing getting louder?¡± she asked.
¡°Uh-huh,¡± the girl replied.
Then Arlette spied a small bubble rise up from a crack in the floor and her blood ran cold.
¡°Everybody stop! Weapons out! Something¡¯s coming!¡±
Just as she said that, the smoking ground seemed to melt, flowing down until nothing of the floor remained but a large hole. Only a small strip of the floor by the left side of the tunnel remained, about the width of a person at most. A massive scaly foot the size of a man, with three claws that looked like they could rend her in two, reached out from the pit. Then a second foot reached up beside the first and out of the abyss climbed a massive reptilian beast unlike anything she¡¯d ever seen before.
The beast¡¯s eyes gleamed in the torchlight, each sticking out slightly at an angle above a wide mouth on a flat, featureless head. Arlette thought she saw holes for nostrils above the mouth but it was hard to tell between the lack of light and the black splotches on the creature¡¯s otherwise brown hide. Large, powerful hind legs folded up beside a round, stocky body that did not seem to be in the proper proportion to its head. All in all, Arlette would have found the beast¡¯s appearance to be hilarious if it wasn¡¯t large enough to eat her whole. As goofy as it looked, the creature took up more than two-thirds of the tunnel in both width and height.
Its mouth opened and it hissed at the group, showing a long row of small but sharp teeth. Several drops of something dripped onto the stone below. Arlette heard a gasp from Sofie as the stone touching the liquid began to fizzle.
¡°Oh my god, it spits acid!¡± she exclaimed. ¡°We need to run!¡±
¡°No, it¡¯ll chase us down and even if we escape we¡¯ll probably get lost,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Plus, there might be more in there somewhere. We have to fight our way past this thing. Go hide behind that boulder.¡± She pointed to a small boulder behind them.
Sofie readily agreed, grabbing Pari¡¯s hand and heading back to cower behind the rock.
¡°Any ideas?¡± Arlette called out.
¡°Go fer tha eyes, an¡¯ work from there,¡± Jaquet suggested.
¡°Sounds good to me,¡± said Basilli.
¡°Alright then. I¡¯ll keep it busy. Basilli you try to create an opening for Jaquet, and Jaquet goes for the eyes.¡±
The beast didn¡¯t give them any more time to discuss tactics. It reared back, its chest convulsing as if it were about to vomit, and then spat several globs of fluid towards the three mercenaries before charging forward. Arlette rushed under the incoming acid with Jaquet slipping in behind her. Shadows writhed as a bright orange fireball rocketed overhead, arcing towards the incoming lizard. Arlette tracked the projectile with interest as she ran, looking to see how much damage it would do to the gargantuan thing, only to watch as the beast opened its maw wide and swallowed the flame whole, seemingly unaffected by the heat.
¡°Wha?¡± cried Basilli. It was safe to say he¡¯d never seen anything do that before. Arlette sure hadn¡¯t.
Arlette swerved to her right, an illusory doppelganger splitting off to the left and accelerating towards the beast¡¯s face. In the meantime she sprinted towards the gap to the right, hoping to get behind the beast. Somehow unfazed by the phantasm in its face, the creature swiped at her with its nearby claws. She screamed in pain as two the of huge talons caught her on the front of her left side, slicing through her cuirass as if it were made of paper and ripping two long gashes into her flesh. The impact sent her sprawling back in front of the beast, blood dripping from her side. She gritted her teeth as the wounds burned like hot pokers pressed against her torso.
Two more fireballs shot towards the beast, and it hissed, opening his giant gullet to engulf those two shots like it had the first. Taking full advantage of the distraction, Jaquet leapt atop the lizard¡¯s head and stabbed down with his halberd into the creature¡¯s skull, getting rewarded with a hissing shriek of pain. He pulled the weapon out and raised it up again for another strike, but the beast wasn¡¯t going to have that. With a mighty leap, it slammed the entire top of its head and body against the cave¡¯s ceiling with Jaquet still standing on it. Only Jaquet¡¯s heavier than average armor saved him from becoming paste dripping from the ceiling, but that didn¡¯t mean he emerged unscathed. Arlette saw him cough out blood as he fell, bouncing off the creature¡¯s body and landing on the ground a few paces to her side, clutching his chest.
"No!" she cried, manifesting another doppelganger. It sprinted towards the beast and bounded up off the wall with superhuman agility, its longsword aimed straight at the gigantic animal''s eye, but once again the beast paid it no mind. Instead, it convulsed again and a large glob of acid sailed straight towards Arlette. Caught off-guard by its complete dismissal of her illusion, Arlette was slow to react. Just before the acid made contact, something slammed into her side, knocking her out of the deadly liquid''s path. She tumbled for a moment before looking back to find Jaquet frantically removing his cuirass as it bubbled and melted away. Only the double thickness of his armor saved his skin.
¡°Are you okay?¡± she asked.
¡°Broke a bunch o¡¯ ribs,¡± he wheezed, ¡°bu¡¯ I¡¯ll be fine. Jus¡¯ can¡¯ take another o¡¯ those.¡±
A fourth fireball arced over their heads and was summarily swallowed. Arlette heard Basilli swearing back behind her. Then suddenly there was a gasp from the boulder where Sofie and Pari were hiding.
¡°Of course! That¡¯s it!¡± Sofie cried. ¡°Basilli! Make a flame as hot as you can and make it hover over that thing!¡±
¡°What?¡± he replied, not fully understanding.
¡°Just make the hottest single flame you can in front and above it! Size doesn¡¯t matter, the hotter the better!¡±
Understanding that Sofie saw something that he didn¡¯t, Basilli did as she instructed. A small flame about the size of a fist appeared in front and above the large creature, several paces from the ceiling. It started as a bright orange, but soon became yellow, and then a blue-ish white. The beast hissed mightily, as if in pain, shaking its head and blinking its massive eyes repeatedly.
Injured though he was, Jaquet wasted little time taking advantage of the lizard¡¯s vulnerability. With a single bound, the Feeler landed on the creature¡¯s head once more and once more he struck, driving the halberd deep into the beast¡¯s head. Still, it was not enough.
¡°Go on, ugly! I¡¯m righ¡¯ ¡®ere!¡± Jaquet yelled.
¡°Look out!¡± Arlette cried as the creature shook its head and flexed its mighty hind legs for another leap into the ceiling, but things went very differently this time. Jaquet, prepared for the jump, leapt off the creature¡¯s skull just as it committed to its own leap, and he left the halberd embedded in its skull. With a mighty burst, the lizard sprung upwards with all its might, slamming into the ceiling with ground-shaking force and driving Jaquet¡¯s halberd directly into its own brain. It was dead before it even hit the ground.
¡°Hahaaa! Got ya!¡± Jaquet laughed victoriously.
¡°You did it!¡± Sofie cried. She and Pari emerged from behind the boulder, gawking at the creature¡¯s corpse. The body had fallen on its side, it¡¯s massive mouth hanging open.
¡°I told you I felt something,¡± quipped Basilli.
¡°That was a coincidence!¡± Sofie retorted. ¡°You just got lucky!¡±
¡°Nope! All skill!¡±
A shout from off in the distance stole Arlette¡¯s attention from her companion¡¯s stupid arguments. She could see torchlight reflecting off the tunnel walls and the sounds of footsteps echoed into her ears. Soon she saw Commander Ahmakiq Waterbloom and several others rushing their way. They skidded to a halt at the pit and then slowly made their way across the small bit of floor that remained to the side. Arlette squeezed past the beast to join them on the other side.
¡°I was going to tell you that we know why the city left early, but it seems that you found out on your own,¡± the Stragman said.
¡°What in the world is this thing?¡± Arlette asked,
¡°A ronutepo,¡± the beastman replied. ¡°This is their nesting ground. They carved these tunnels and caves themselves. We just live in them while they aren¡¯t around and then we leave before they migrate back every year. That¡¯s the problem-¡±
¡°They migrated early,¡± Arlette guessed.
The beastman glanced at the dead ronutepo blocking most of the tunnel and sighed. ¡°The lower levels are just filled with them. Thousands and thousands of them. Judging by the state of their nests, they¡¯ve been here at least three days already. I¡¯ve never seen anything like it. They shouldn¡¯t be here for another half a season.¡±
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¡°Has this ever happened before?¡± she asked. She could hear Sofie causing a ruckus on the other side of the beast but she ignored it for the moment.
¡°I''ve never heard of it happening, not in my lifetime at least. Anyway, I must admit I¡¯m impressed that the three of you managed to slay a ronutepo. They¡¯re dangerous, especially in confined spaces where it¡¯s harder to dodge their spit. This really speaks for your battle strength.¡±
¡°Actually it was four of us,¡± Arlette said. ¡°Without Sofie, I¡¯m not sure that we would have killed it.¡±
¡°That taller one?¡± Waterbloom asked. Arlette nodded. ¡°Well, the good news is that this can easily substitute for the Test of Might. You won¡¯t have to go through with that now. Either way, we need to leave as soon as-¡±
¡°NO! PARI! STAY AWAY!¡± came Sofie¡¯s panicked shriek from the other side. Suddenly the young woman burst through the gap between the ronutepo and the wall, sprinting with reckless abandon across the small path beside the hole and up the tunnel.
¡°Hehehehehehehe...¡± giggled the little girl behind her, dripping from head to toe with thick, viscous slime from spirits knew where. Her arms were straight out, palms forward, ready to smear the slime all over Sofie¡¯s unwilling person.
¡°What in Ruresni is going on?¡± asked the Stragman commander.
¡°I don¡¯t think I want to know,¡± Arlette replied.
¡°How did you know that a hot flame would do that to the ronutepo?¡± Arlette asked Sofie as they neared the exit to the caves.
¡°I wasn¡¯t totally sure what it would do,¡± Sofie admitted. She was much calmer now that Pari had been corralled and told she couldn¡¯t touch anybody until she¡¯d been washed free of the gunk she¡¯d been covered in. ¡°I knew it would do something, though.¡±
¡°But why a flame, and why did it have to be hot?¡±
¡°Because it could see heat.¡±
¡°It¡¯s possible to see heat?¡±
¡°Oh yes, infrared radiation...¡± Sofie began, causing parts of Arlette¡¯s brain to shut off, an automatic response formed over nearly two seasons of incoherent babble. She¡¯d heard so many impossible claims from the young woman, from self-driving wagons to flying metal tubes to people that lived in boxes and talked to you, that her brain started to just filter them out after a while. She¡¯d felt bad for Sofie more than anything, really. The young woman was so wrapped up in her delusion that she¡¯d invented an entire other magical world where everybody was a wizard.
Arlette preferred to focus on the normal reality she lived in, rather than construct her own fantastical one. With her life thrown into chaos, a rational world where things made sense was one of the few things she still had left. That was why the events in the Valley of the Mist were bugging her so. Sofie had seemed to almost understand that terrible place, almost as if were her home. Once she¡¯d finally stopped laughing, she¡¯d even claimed that the guardian beast was actually a machine called a ¡°vacuum cleaner¡±, saying that it was created to clean floors and had probably never been chasing Pari at all, instead just following the muddy tracks the girl was leaving on the ground.
Arlette refused to believe the young woman¡¯s words so easily. Sofie had an explanation for everything, and they were each as nonsensical as the next. The worst part was that, when questioned, she would just make up another nonsensical explanation to explain away the problems with the first explanation. One time she had claimed that all diseases weren¡¯t caused by evil spirits but instead tiny beings so small that they could not be seen. When asked how it was possible to know about something too small to see, she¡¯d instead doubled down, claiming that there were mystical devices called ¡°microscopes¡± that let you see that which was too small to see. Arlette had heard this kind of logic before; it reminded her of the way six-year-olds tried to win arguments.
Yet deep inside, as much as she was unwilling to admit it, her experiences in the Valley of the Mist had been one more sign that maybe, just maybe, there was more to the world than she had grown up to believe. A new voice of doubt had appeared suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Sofie had some idea of what she was talking about. Try as she might, Arlette could not completely silence those doubts.
¡°Why did you think it could see heat?¡± Arlette asked again, interrupting the girl as she babbled on about ¡°light waves¡± or something equally preposterous. Water made waves, not light.
¡°Honestly it was kind of a guess on my part. It just kept acting strangely. Why didn¡¯t it care about your illusions but it kept eating Basilli¡¯s fireballs? I figured that if it could see heat, then maybe it thought that the fireballs were alive. The same logic explained why it didn¡¯t take your fake Arlettes seriously. It was more a hunch than anything, really.¡±
¡°So when Basilli made that flame, it blinded the ronutepo and that¡¯s how Jaquet was able to get on top of it and kill it.¡±
¡°Right. It wasn¡¯t ready for something so hot in the middle of the cave.¡±
Arlette patted Sofie on the shoulder as they crested the final slope to the outside. ¡°Well, no matter how you figured it out, well done.¡±
¡°Thanks. It¡¯s nice to not feel useless all the- whaaaaaaaa?¡±
The girl stopped and just stared out into the early evening light. Arlette followed her gaze and proceeded to enter a stupor of her own when she saw what Sofie was looking at.
Far, far off in the distance, rising through the clouds on the horizon, stood a tree that dwarfed mountains. A trunk that must have been at least a league wide, maybe two, stretched high into the sky. Branches leagues long reached from that trunk, each covered in green leaves that formed a massive crown thick enough to block out the sun itself. Arlette couldn¡¯t tell for sure thanks to the evening light and the distance, but she thought that she saw the tree glow just slightly.
¡°That¡¯s Ruresni, the Mother Tree,¡± said Commander Waterbloom from behind them. He chuckled. ¡°New immigrants always have that reaction when they first see it.¡±
¡°Wha... buh... How?¡± stammered a flummoxed Sofie.
¡°All of Stragma is born of the Mother Tree,¡± he replied, as if that answered anything. ¡°Now come, we have to leave this place. You will get much better views soon.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t respond, continuing to gawk at the enormous, gigantic, impossible thing. A rational world, where things made sense. Right. Deep down in her soul, the voice of her doubts chuckled wryly.
Arlette sat in the crook of a large branch, thirty paces from the ground and listened to the sounds of the forest at night. They¡¯d been hiking for three days since leaving Krose, working their way almost directly south through Stragma, or ¡°True Stragma¡± as the natives had called it. Apparently everything north of Krose, from the beginning of the mountains onward, was part of the forest but also kind of not. She understood now, to some degree. That had been the thickest, lushest, densest forest she¡¯d ever seen, but it was in many ways similar to forests she¡¯d known before. This... this was something else.
This was still a forest, in that it had all the usual components: trees, animals, insects, etc. It was just that almost everything was at least four times bigger than anything she¡¯d ever seen before. The trees were all easily three hundred paces high and twenty paces wide. Animals and the rest often shared that same trait, though not always. Gigantic birds shared the forest with tiny rodents, while spiders two paces wide lived alongside normal-sized flies. Strangely, Sofie hadn¡¯t flipped out as much as she¡¯d expected at the fact that huge insects roamed these parts. It seemed that, while a jumbo bug was worse than a normal bug, a jumbo bug was also a hundred times easier to spot and avoid than a normal one.
The task force now slept in the trees every night since leaving Krose. Something about it being safer away from the ground on the eastern side of the forest. The oversized branches of the trees easily supported the people and the supplies they carried. They had the entire exercise down to an art, from constructing pulleys to lift the supplies to making harnesses out of vines to prevent restless sleepers from falling to their doom. Stragman people slept without worry on every gigantic branch, knowing that their comrades were guarding them well. Arlette, on the other hand, couldn¡¯t sleep just yet. There were too many new sounds to fall asleep so easily.
With a groan, she worked her way to her feet and looked about for a certain somebody, but he wasn¡¯t around. She did spot Sofie, however, also still awake. The younger woman sat against the trunk, her hands slowly stroking Pari¡¯s long midnight-black hair as she cradled the sleeping child¡¯s head in her lap, lost in her own thoughts.
¡°You see where Jaquet went?¡± Arlette asked.
¡°I think I saw him climbing up the tree,¡± Sofie replied.
¡°Thanks.¡± Climbing up, huh. That didn¡¯t seem like Jaquet. Still, it was her only lead. She grabbed some handfuls of vine hanging from a branch overhead and began her own ascent.
Sofie had been correct after all. Arlette found the Feeler sitting all alone, high up in the canopy where the branches were ¡°merely¡± the width of her thigh. He sat out away from the trunk, both feet dangling off the edge and a bottle of spirits in his hand as he stared out at the gargantuan outline of Ruresni glowing in the distance through a gap in the leaves.
¡°Enjoying the view?¡± she asked.
¡°Eh... a tree is jus¡¯ a tree in tha end.¡±
¡°Then what are you doing all the way up here?¡±
¡°If I ¡®ave ta look a¡¯ nothin¡¯ bu¡¯ trees, migh¡¯ as well look a¡¯ tha biggest one.¡±
Arlette plopped down beside him on the branch, the bough shaking a bit and jiggling the large man¡¯s sizable beer gut with it.
¡°We have to get you a new cuirass, and fast,¡± Arlette commented. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize how much of your flab it hid.¡±
¡°Did ya climb all tha way up ¡®ere jus¡¯ ta call me fa¡¯?¡± Jaquet asked in reply.
¡°No, I... I guess I came up here to thank you.¡±
¡°Fer wha¡¯?¡±
¡°For... everything, really. For backing me up against Waterbloom when I needed to go after Sofie. For taking that acid in place of me. For just... for just always being here. When everything went to shit, if I had been alone... I would have probably fallen apart. But I wasn¡¯t alone. You¡¯ve always been here for me and I don¡¯t feel like I¡¯ve really told you how glad I am that you were.¡±
Jaquet didn¡¯t react to her confidence immediately, just staring out through the trees for a moment before lifting the bottle to his lips and taking a good twenty or so gulps, draining the bottle of its contents in one go before exhaling loudly.
¡°I ¡®ave been a mercenary fer over twenty years,¡± he said finally. ¡°I wandered a lo¡¯ a¡¯ tha beginnin¡¯. I would join a band an¡¯ leave a year later, then join another, jus¡¯ ta leave tha¡¯ one too. Soon I ¡®ad a fearsome reputation on tha battlefield an¡¯ bands all over were beggin¡¯ me ta join ¡®em bu¡¯ nothin¡¯ ever fel¡¯ righ¡¯. When ya proposed ta team up an¡¯ star¡¯ a band together, I though¡¯ ya were cracked, I really did. Bu¡¯ I¡¯ll be damned if tha las¡¯ five years weren¡¯t tha happies¡¯ years o¡¯ my entire life. Buildin¡¯ tha band, leadin¡¯ e¡¯rybody and fightin¡¯ alongside ¡®em... I fel¡¯ like I¡¯d found a ¡®ome, and e¡¯rybody was my family. Tha las¡¯ time I ¡®ad a family, I was still young enough ta si¡¯ on my father¡¯s knee. Fer a long time I never though¡¯ I would ever feel tha¡¯ feelin¡¯ again. So don¡¯ go actin¡¯ like I don¡¯ ge¡¯ anythin¡¯ ou¡¯ o¡¯ this partnership we ¡®ave goin¡¯ ¡®ere. I¡¯ll always be ¡®ere fer ya, whether ya wan¡¯ me or no¡¯. As long as I can carry a spear, you¡¯ll never be rid o¡¯ me.¡±
¡°Yeah, right,¡± she replied, giving him a playful shove, ¡°you just want somebody to take care of you when you¡¯re older, you sneaky bastard!¡±
¡°Gwahahahaha!¡± he guffawed into the night. ¡°Ya go¡¯ me! I ¡®ope ya are ready ta spoon feed me tha porridge fer years ta come!¡±
¡°In your dreams! See you tomorrow, asshole.¡±
Arlette climbed back down to find Sofie and Pari curled up together, the former having finally joined the latter in the land of dreams. She couldn¡¯t help but smile at the sight. The two were such an adorable pair when they weren¡¯t finding trouble or being weird or giving her a massive headache. So basically only when asleep. They had the right idea at the moment though. She sat back down in her old spot and closed her eyes. They were still many days away from Pholis, the next Stragman city site, and all that walking required lots and lots of rest.
Pholis sparkled like a brand new city, which made sense because in many ways it was literally that. Despite their best efforts, the main populace just had too great of a head start, and so they¡¯d arrived to find a city nearly complete. The new city had a completely different look and setup than what she¡¯d imagined Krose to have. Instead of Krose¡¯s expansive caves and generally horizontal layout, Pholis was nearly as high as it was wide. The trees here made the ones she¡¯d slept in just days ago look like twigs, each of them reaching over a thousand paces into the sky. Wooden platforms with houses atop them jutted out from the trunks like thousands of little leaves budding along a giant branch. Hundreds of rope bridges criss-crossed through the air, forming pathways between trees and to the ground, allowing the people to move freely. And, boy, were there people.
Arlette had been to nearly all the major cities in Gustil and Eterium at some point in her life, but none of them prepared her for the sight of twelve million people living together. The sheer density of the crowds alone made it hard to breathe as the task force, led by Commander Waterbloom himself, slowly wound their way through the teeming masses. The vast majority of the team split off at one point, heading towards a large fabric-covered building of some kind, while Arlette and her group followed the commander towards a specific tree situated in the center of the city.
Once they¡¯d pushed their way through the throngs of people, the Stragman had a short conversation with a group of guards and they stepped aside to reveal a fenced-in platform attached to a series of ropes and pulleys. One of the guards opened a gate and beckoned them to enter. Once they were all safely inside, several other people began to pull on the ropes and the platform rose into the air, slowly climbing higher and higher, until they reached a platform up near the top of the tree. Arlette guessed they were now easily more than eight-hundred paces off the ground.
The platform and the building that sat upon it were larger than the usual ones down below, and Arlette couldn¡¯t help but notice that everything up here had a little more flair and decoration than what else she¡¯d seen. She also couldn¡¯t help but notice that there were exactly zero guards anywhere to be seen. The group was ushered into what appeared to be a waiting room and sat on some cushions. Arlette¡¯s ears perked up as she heard voices on the other side of the large door that probably led to some sort of audience chamber.
¡°I just- ARGH! It makes me so angry!¡± cried a loud, low female voice. ¡°How could he just refuse like that?! What kind of person would willingly become a Shell?¡±
¡°Yes, he is quite a fool,¡± agreed a much weaker higher-pitched female. ¡°Even so, it was his choice. The trials were yesterday. There¡¯s no point in staying angry for so long. I suggest you forget about somebody as inconsequential as that idiot and get ready for court. Petitioners will be arriving soon.¡±
¡°Forget? How can I just forget? You saw that body! I¡¯ve never seen someone more physically suited to becoming a warrior than him, and now it¡¯s all going to be fucking WASTED!¡± A crash came with that final exclamation, and Arlette thought she heard the sound of something breaking and various pieces falling to the floor. ¡°And the way he looked at me, like he felt sorry for me. That fucker! You know what, Tepin? Let¡¯s just forget petitioners for today. I¡¯m not in the mood.¡±
¡°As you wish, Palebane-chos. I will go deal those who are already here.¡±
Light footsteps approached the door and it opened slightly, the face of a small woman in her early forties peeking out through the gap. Short silver hair lined her thin face, her skin unhealthily pale. Arlette noted that she bore no tattoos, meaning she was a Shell. The Shell glanced around the waiting room, her eyes dispassionate and cold.
¡°Oh, Waterbloom-blau,¡± she said upon noticing the commander. ¡°It is good that you have rejoined us. The Chos will not be meeting anyone today. I will schedule you an appointment for tomorrow morning. Come back then.¡±
Waterbloom rushed over to her as she started to close the door and the two exchanged a series of hushed whispers. The woman thought to herself for a second and then pushed the door open and waved them inside.
Inside they found a well-appointed octagonal chamber filled with animal heads and other hunting trophies hanging on the walls and a variety of pelts covering the floor. The pelts were colorful and the heads fearsome-looking, and either would normally have held her interest for a while, but Arlette¡¯s gaze was instead drawn to the figure lounging on a couch on the other side of the room. There, lying on her side with head propped up by her hand with a sour expression on her face, was Akhustal Palebane, leader of Stragma and the largest person, male or female, that Arlette had ever seen. The woman¡¯s tanned body rippled with muscle on top of more muscle. Arlette had a feeling that this woman could overpower some Feelers just through natural body strength alone. Lying on the ground in front of her was what appeared to be a gigantic log with one end cut down into a handle. The weapon was easily over six paces long and wider than Arlette¡¯s shoulders. She couldn¡¯t even begin to guess how heavy the massive club must be.
The woman¡¯s face darkened further as they entered. ¡°Tepin, are you defying me? I just told you-¡±
The Stragman leader froze mid-sentence, her eyes locked onto the massive blade of Jaquet¡¯s oversized halberd. Suddenly she sat up, then in one smooth motion grabbed the war club, lifting it like it weighed nothing, jumped to her feet, and bounded over to Jaquet. Even he looked small in comparison to her towering bulk. She inspected the large blade at the head of the halberd with an almost-reverent expression, her foul mood gone faster than Sofie facing a spider.
¡°There¡¯s only one man I know of who wields a weapon such as this,¡± she said with excitement. ¡°The Titan of Twin Rock Pass!¡±
¡°Now tha¡¯ brin¡¯s back memories,¡± replied Jaquet. ¡°Nobody¡¯s called me tha¡¯ in years.¡±
¡°You¡¯re here! You¡¯re actually here!¡± the giant woman chirped, hopping up and down like a giddy schoolgirl with her hands clasped together in front of her chest. ¡°I¡¯ve been following your career for almost two decades now! I¡¯m your biggest fan! The way you held Twin Rock Pass against thirty men by yourself, the way you turned the tide in the last Election War, how you always would move from band to band to make sure you got to fight in as many battles as possible... You were always my favorite ever since you first appeared on the scene, but I never thought I would ever get to meet you in person! Oh, this can¡¯t be real, I must be dreaming!¡±
Arlette, Basilli, Sofie, and Pari watched in bewilderment as the gigantic woman gushed, any and all dignity befitting a national leader long gone. Waterbloom and the small woman, however, seemed completely unsurprised.
¡°Ooooooooooh, I¡¯m so excited!¡± Akhustal Palebane cried, grabbing Jaquet¡¯s hand and yanking him like a rag doll towards another doorway on the other side of the room. ¡°Let¡¯s go spar right now! We need to find a good squad for you for the upcoming invasion of Drayhadal!¡±
Wait...
The what?!
Chapter 21
¡°Arlette, what the hell is going on?¡± hissed Sofie under her breath. ¡°Did I hear her right? There¡¯s an invasion coming? Did you know about this?¡±
The two of them sat against a wall in a second octagonal room adjacent to the state room where they¡¯d first met the crazy giant beastwoman Akhustal Palebane. Unlike the first room, which was adorned with evidences of conquests and victories, this room was entirely barren save for a strange wooden floor that felt almost like rock to the touch. Basilli and Pari sat alongside them, their eyes on the pair of Jaquet and Akhustal.
¡°Later,¡± Arlette Faredin whispered in return, her attention never leaving the pair of warriors in the center of the room. This whole ¡°invasion¡± thing was a huge deal worth stressing out over, but she didn¡¯t want to miss the action about to unfold before her eyes. There was a chance that she¡¯d be able to see something that she¡¯d never seen before: Jaquet losing a one-on-one fight.
She¡¯d sparred with Jaquet numerous times over the years but never once had she come out on top. Her usual formula for success ¡ª using illusions to get the opponent on the back foot and then overwhelming them with a series of simultaneous real and fake attacks that forced the opponent to choose which to guard against over and over until they chose incorrectly ¡ª didn¡¯t work against him. When presented with two identical Arlettes and given the choice of which to attack, he would choose both, swinging his massive halberd in an arc through both targets with incredible quickness. Other Feelers didn¡¯t give her this problem, but Jaquet¡¯s combination of strength, speed, and skill presented a challenge unlike any other. His strength let him wield a massive weapon with great reach, while his skill allowed him to attack at any angle and his quickness made it incredibly hard to avoid the strikes. If she could get in past a Feeler¡¯s guard, they were as good as done, but with him it was like there was an invisible wall there that prevented her from getting anywhere close.
Without her illusions, she was just a normal woman with a longsword, faster and more agile than most, but still nothing worth getting excited over. A normal swordswoman could not beat somebody on Jaquet¡¯s level. The man was a monster, even as past his prime as he was now. Arlette estimated that perhaps three or four other Feelers in Nocend could hold their own against him mano-a-mano, and that was it. One of those people stood across from him now.
While Jaquet Delon was a monster, Akhustal Palebane ate monsters for breakfast ¡ª sometimes literally. One of the largest reasons that Stragma structured its society around martial prowess was that the forest of Stragma teemed with dangerous giant beasts. Arlette hadn¡¯t seen many on the way south ¡ª avoiding such creatures was a priority when traveling through the forest ¡ª but the Stragmans had told her plenty of stories about them while they went. Some you ate, some ate you; all were huge and dangerous and, at least if the stories were to be believed, absolutely hideous. The better that you could hunt those beasts, and protect yourself and others from them, the higher your caste. Atop that social pyramid stood Palebane, the strongest warrior in a population of sixteen million people. Legend had it that she¡¯d killed a ronutepo, the same massive acid-spitting animal that the group had been lucky to defeat, all by her lonesome when she was just twelve years old.
Looking at the beastwoman, Arlette believed it. Palebane dwarfed her opponent by a comical degree, her body a mountain of muscle. The massive club, which she somehow carried as if it were made of paper, was itself taller and wider than Arlette as a whole.
¡°Ready?¡± the Stragman leader asked, taking a stance, her right arm holding the club out towards Jaquet at an upward angle.
¡°Aye,¡± responded her opponent, taking his own stance, knees bent, both hands holding his halberd outward and parallel to the floor.
They stared at each other for a moment, motionless, sizing each other up, before Jaquet suddenly burst into action, his weapon arcing through the air in a series fast and powerful strikes, each move flowing into the next like water. Without batting an eye, Akhustal parried each of them to the side as if they were nothing, before retaliating with a horizontal swing of her own. Jaquet shifted his stance, turning to face the blow with one foot in front of the other while rotating his weapon vertically, and blocked the club with the halberd¡¯s shaft. His eyes shot open with shock as his arms buckled from the blow and the club smashed into his torso, sending him shooting through the air to crash into a wall on the other side of the room.
Arlette gasped at the sight of the strongest warrior she¡¯d ever known crumpled against the wooden side, head down, halberd still clutched in his hands.
¡°Congratulations, Palebane-chos,¡± cheered Waterbloom, causing Arlette to roll her eyes. What a brown-noser. ¡°One blow as alwa-¡±
The chos silenced him with a raised palm. ¡°He¡¯s still holding his weapon. This isn¡¯t over.¡±
She was right. Jaquet stirred, shaking his head and letting out a loud cough. ¡°Ya go¡¯ me pretty good,¡± he said, slowly standing back up and assuming a combat stance once more. ¡°Bu¡¯ you¡¯ll need ta do more than tha¡¯.¡±
¡°Just what I wanted to hear,¡± Palebane replied with a wide, toothy grin.
The two combatants launched themselves are each other and exchanged a lengthy series of strikes. This time, Jaquet used his superior speed to avoid his opponent¡¯s wide swings to the best of his ability instead of blocking them. Arlette studied the Stragman leader as she fought. Something about her style seemed off. Her footwork and balance didn¡¯t match what Arlette would expect for somebody swinging something so large and heavy. She moved it almost effortlessly, as if it weighed nothing to her. Was she really so absurdly strong, or was there something else to it? The more she watched, the more she felt that something didn¡¯t add up.
Jaquet ducked past a counterswing, spinning under the giant log with an agility that portly men in their late forties shouldn¡¯t possess, striking upwards with the back of his halberd and clipping the larger woman in the jaw with the butt of his weapon. Palebane fell to her knees, shaken from the blow.
¡°Wow, he¡¯s winning,¡± Sofie said.
¡°No, he¡¯s not,¡± corrected Arlette as she watched Jaquet huff and puff. ¡°He¡¯s putting everything he has into these blows just to keep up, and he¡¯s tiring out. Did you see how his blade was just bouncing off her club? The weight difference is so great that she can just shove his weapon aside with ease unless he really strains himself, and doing that for so long takes a lot out of somebody. Meanwhile, she¡¯s barely tired.¡±
The Stragman stood back up, shaking her head from the earlier blow. ¡°That was great!¡± she said enthusiastically. ¡°I knew the stories were true! I haven¡¯t been hit in a spar in the last ten years! Of course, usually I just hit them once and that¡¯s it...¡±
A sly grin appeared on her face. ¡°Let¡¯s make things more interesting. You!¡± She pointed at Arlette. ¡°Come fight too! Both of you against me!¡±
Uh-oh. Arlette gulped, but she rose to her feet and strode to Jaquet¡¯s side anyway. It was important that they all make as good an impression as they could with the Stragman leader.
¡°Give us a moment, please,¡± she requested.
¡°To what, come up with a plan? Yeah, go for it! More fun for me!¡±
She pulled Jaquet away and they huddled up, whispering to each other in hushed tones.
¡°Any advice?¡±
¡°Don¡¯ le¡¯ tha club hi¡¯ ya.¡±
¡°No shit.¡±
¡°She¡¯s ¡®ard ta read. The way she swin¡¯s shouldn¡¯ be possible.¡±
¡°You noticed that too? I have a idea about that. Here¡¯s the plan...¡±
¡°Ready?¡± Akhustal asked as Jaquet and Arlette took stances several steps apart from each other. ¡°Let¡¯s fight!¡±
Arlette wasted no time, sprinting forward and creating a doppelganger that went right as she went left, with Jaquet following close behind and aiming straight for the beastwoman. Palebane flashed a wicked grin, swinging her massive pole in a wide arc at tremendous speed, passing through the illusory Arlette and forcing the real one to throw herself on the ground to avoid being pulverized. Suddenly the huge beam stopped in mid-swipe, as if the momentum had just disappeared, and reversed course, swinging back to collide with Jaquet¡¯s incoming spear. Arlette pushed herself off the ground and attacked but the huge woman nimbly spun aside, laughing.
¡°Yes!¡± she cried, her eyes shining wildly over a maniacal grin. ¡°I¡¯ve missed this for so long! The rush of a real fight!¡±
Ah, Arlette realized, the giant beastwoman was a battle addict. Now her excitement made sense. Arlette would wager that doing administrative work every day was driving her mad.
Jaquet pressed the attack, as Arlette summoned another doppelganger but Palebane dodged and spun forward so that the club was behind her, then swung the massive thing up, over her head, and down into the ground in front of her with incredible force. The entire platform holding the building shook wildly, as if it were about to collapse. Unprepared for the sudden quake, Arlette and Jaquet tumbled to the floor. Akhustal stepped forward and brought the club head from the floor around in an upward arc. Arlette rolled for her life and just barely avoided the upswing, a strong gust of air and a loud whooshing sound telling her just how close she¡¯d been from multiple broken bones or worse. She¡¯d also seen what she¡¯d been looking for.
Jaquet was back on his feet by that point, charging forward with an overhead strike of his own. Akhustal batted it away and the two dodged and parried each other for a moment while Arlette picked herself back up. She reentered the fray as quickly as she could, sending out a doppelganger again but this time leading with her true self and letting the copy follow just behind. The Stragman spied her coming and swung at both her and the copy, waiting, as Arlette had hoped, for the fake Arlette to enter the club¡¯s range before striking. With an acrobatic somersault Arlette barely avoided the barreling club. She¡¯d gotten in. Still in a crouch, she lashed out, forcing the large woman to jump away to avoid being cut. In an effort to buy a little space, Palebane brought her club up over her head again, ready to slam into the floor. Arlette grinned. This fight was about to be over, one way or another. It all just depended on if her theory was correct or not.
¡°Now!¡± she cried as the gargantuan weapon plunged towards the floor. Jaquet leapt forwards, his feet off the floorboard as they writhed under the impact, and grabbed the far end of the club in a giant hug.
¡°W-what?¡± Palebane cried in surprise. She tried to lift the weapon but could not, the added weight of the large, blubbery man on the other end preventing her from doing anything more than barely getting it off the ground. Her struggles ceased as she felt the cold metal of Arlette¡¯s sword against her throat.
¡°You can¡¯t lift it at all, can you?¡± Arlette asked rhetorically. ¡°I thought the way you moved was strange. No matter how strong you are, you should still need to counterbalance that crazy thing you call a weapon. It probably weighs more than you, me, and Jaquet combined. But you rarely plant your feet to counter its pull, and you move around with it like it weighs nothing. That¡¯s because it does weigh nothing, doesn¡¯t it? You¡¯re not a Feeler at all. You¡¯re an Observer. You lighten it when you swing it and make it heavier right before it hits something. That''s how you get such powerful strikes.¡±
The Stragman leader stared at Arlette in disbelief for a second. ¡°I lost...¡± she mumbled, before breaking out into uproarious laughter. ¡°I lost!¡±
Despite her best effort to stop it, the air rushed out of Arlette¡¯s lungs as a bizarrely joyous Akhustal Palebane grabbed her in a bone-crushing hug. Even if she wasn¡¯t a feeler, the woman was still strong. Then mercifully Arlette could breathe again as the beastwoman released her and helped Jaquet off the ground to hug him as well.
¡°That was so much fun! You were both great! That¡¯s it, I¡¯m putting you in the Second Army! Caprakan is going to love you both! Tepin! I changed my mind, I¡¯ll work today after all!¡± With that said, she strode out of the sparring room, humming a pleasant tune. The small, grey-haired woman hustled afterwards, spouting something about itineraries.
¡°Everythin¡¯ good?¡± asked Jaquet, eyeing Arlette¡¯s face, still red from the near-suffocation.
¡°Why is it that every time we do anything these days we just end up with more questions than answers?¡±
Arlette Faredin sat on the edge of the platform where their new home stood, leaning against the railing while drinking a large cup of fruit wine and staring down towards the ground hundreds of paces below through the waning evening light. She had to admit, there was something magical about treehouses. The way all of the homes in Pholis were high above the forest floor lent the city an alien quality that made her feel like she¡¯d been transported to a different world.
It seemed that being the new favorites of the chos came with many benefits. They¡¯d been given a rather lushly-appointed house on a platform out by the edge of the city, somewhat separated from the dense concentrations of homes and all the noise that came with it. The large house was even well-stocked with a variety of strange but admittedly delicious foods, and even had a large amount of alcoholic beverages.
The others were back inside, making a ruckus. Basilli and Jaquet were especially noisy as they did their best to consume a week¡¯s-worth of hard liquor in a single night. She, on the other hand, just wanted to think for a while, but the sound of light footsteps behind her told her that she wouldn¡¯t get to think for a bit longer. With a soft grunt, Sofie plopped herself down beside Arlette, grabbing the lower railing with a double-handed death grip.
¡°Alright, I think it¡¯s time you explain what the hell is going on,¡± she said. ¡°Somebody is invading here?¡±
¡°No, it¡¯s the other way around. Stragma is about to invade Drayhadal.¡±
Sofie blanched at the news. ¡°What?¡±
¡°Stragma and Drayhadal have fought over their border for centuries. Every so often there¡¯s some skirmishes, but there hasn¡¯t been an actual invasion on either side since before I was born.¡±
¡°But now there is, and you have to take part.¡±
Arlette spat. ¡°Yep. Me, Jaquet, and Basilli too.¡±
¡°That¡¯s bullshit. We just got here.¡±
Arlette shrugged. ¡°If you run to Stragma, you¡¯re not going for vacation. They only welcome people like us because we make the country stronger by being citizens. So if we want to be here, this is part of our duty.¡±
There was a moment of quiet as the two stared down into the city.
¡°You know,¡± Sofie eventually said, ¡°I¡¯m really angry about this. I thought you would be too.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t answer immediately. The sounds of Jaquet and Basilli laughing it up inside mixed with the calls of animals in the trees as she considered her answer.
¡°Fighting¡¯s really all I¡¯m good for anymore,¡± she replied after a while.
¡°It¡¯s depressing to hear you say that,¡± Sofie said.
¡°Say what?¡±
¡°That fighting is all you¡¯re good for.¡±
¡°Why? It¡¯s true. I¡¯ve been a mercenary all my adult life. I don¡¯t really know anything else. Same with Jaquet and Basilli. Since there¡¯s no mercenaries in Stragma, the three of us would have ended up joining the army regardless. So I guess I just see it more as an issue of timing than anything else. It¡¯s very frustrating that we¡¯re going to have to leave so soon after we got here, but if this were to happen next year instead I¡¯d still be stuck fighting it.¡±
¡°Well I think you would be just as great doing other things! You would be a great... um... uh...¡±
Arlette gave Sofie the side eye as she fumbled through the world¡¯s worst pep talk.
¡°A teacher! Yeah! You would be a great teacher! You know lots of stuff and you¡¯re good at explaining things. Or maybe a combat instructor?¡±
Arlette nearly choked on her drink trying not to laugh. ¡°A combat instructor? I¡¯ve only ever taught one person to fight, and she¡¯s the worst fighter in the history of the world.¡±
¡°That¡¯s... that¡¯s not your fault, okay? Look, just... you mean a lot to a lot of people, and they don¡¯t just think you¡¯re just a person who swings a sword around either. So stop being like that.¡±
¡°Okay, okay.¡± Arlette waved her off, no longer keen on talking about that subject any more.
The two fell silent again as they each retreated into their own thoughts, content to just absorb the evening atmosphere for a while. Finally Sofie broke the silence with a tired sigh. ¡°This whole thing is so stupid in the first place. Why are they even fighting, anyway?¡±
¡°Because their attacks upon Ruresni cannot be tolerated,¡± said a third voice behind them. Arlette spun about as best she could given her position to find a man in his mid thirties. He was a little on the short side, with jovial eyes and curly orange-brown hair that mostly concealed his large fuzzy triangular ears. A bushy tail of the same color poked out from behind. ¡°Caprakan Bloodflower-hono, General of the Second Army. Pardon my intrusion, but I had to come see the people who made Akhustal-chos so happy myself.¡±
¡°How did you get here without us hearing you?¡± Arlette asked, eying the bridge made of rope and wooden slats that constituted the only way on or off the platform. Bridges just like that one connected platforms all over the city, and they were all uniformly noisy, the wooden slats clacking together from anything stronger than a mild breeze.
¡°A lifetime of practice,¡± he replied, flashing a cheeky grin. ¡°But to answer your question, the elves hate the forest. Every day, they chop down trees all across the forest¡¯s edge and burn down as much of it as they can. They¡¯ve been doing it for generations, and so for generations we have fought them.¡±
¡°But I thought you said they attacked Ruresni, not the edge of the forest,¡± Sofie questioned.
¡°Ruresni is the forest. The forest is Ruresni,¡± the man stated as if quoting scripture. ¡°An attack on the one is an attack on the whole.¡±
Sofie¡¯s face bunched up in anger. ¡°I think I hear Pari calling me,¡± she said as she marched off.
¡°Hmmm, I don¡¯t think she likes me very much,¡± Bloodflower commented as the young woman strode into the house without looking back.
¡°Don¡¯t worry about her. She¡¯s... working through some things,¡± Arlette responded.
The man leaned his back against the railing and stared up at the leaves. ¡°Thanks for beating Akhustal-chos today.¡±
¡°Okay, why is everybody so happy she lost? I¡¯m really not getting this. She was hopping around like a child who ate too many sweets.¡±
¡°The simple answer is that she¡¯s bored. It¡¯s funny, she became the chos because she¡¯s the best fighter, but being the chos means she doesn¡¯t get to fight much. Combine that with the fact that she hasn¡¯t lost a fight in probably twenty years now, and she¡¯s basically been stuck in a rut. She needed something to show her that she still has room to grow. At least, that¡¯s how I see it.¡±
¡°And you would know?¡±
¡°Well she¡¯s my wife so I would sure hope so,¡± he replied with a smirk as he nonchalantly inspected his fingernails.
¡°...O-oh.¡±
¡°But yeah, I wanted to come thank you both in person. I haven¡¯t seen her this happy and engaged in a while. You couldn¡¯t have come at a better time, too. We had this other person show up a few days ago and she got all excited because he had the potential to be an amazing warrior. Maybe even better than her. But then yesterday at the trials he basically spat in her face in front of the entire country and she¡¯d been furious ever since. If you hadn¡¯t shown up, I think our house might not have lasted another day.¡±
¡°You¡¯re strangely laid back compared to the other military commanders I¡¯ve met.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve found that you need to be able to relax sometimes or you burn yourself out. In Stragma, your life is in danger the second you step out of the city. You have to be on high alert at all times. Being on the edge like that all the time isn¡¯t easy. I¡¯ve learned a lot since I became a hono, the most important being to trust the people under me and treat them like more than just tools.¡± He snapped his fingers and straightened as a thought came to him. ¡°Speaking of people under me, that reminds me of the other reason I came tonight. You missed the trials by a day so you won¡¯t be sorted into a caste until the next migration, but Akhustal-chos really wants you involved in the upcoming campaign. That means I need to know what you can all do so I don¡¯t put you in a bad spot.¡±
Arlette thought for a minute. ¡°Well you surely already know what Jaquet and I can do at this point...¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯ll like Basilli. Decent power, excellent accuracy and creativity for a fire Observer. He¡¯s got a lot of tricks. Sofie and Pari are... more complicated. In all honesty, neither should be anywhere near a battlefield, especially Sofie, but if we get separated I can pretty much guarantee that I¡¯ll never see them again.¡±
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¡°And you don¡¯t want that.¡±
¡°I made a promise to Sofie that I would help her. My father used to say that somebody who can¡¯t keep their promises isn¡¯t worth the ink they use to sign their name. I don¡¯t have much left to my name anymore, but I still have my pride. I keep my promises.¡±
¡°My wife asked me to allow y¡¯all some leeway with the upcoming operation, but there¡¯s limits. The role of the Second Army is vital, and I cannot afford to be slowed down because we are bringing along extra people who can¡¯t carry their share of the burden. I can see one, but two is too much.¡±
Arlette thought for a moment before pointing towards an area on the other side of the platform from where they were. On the far side another platform extended out and away from the one their house rested upon. Less than ten paces wide and ten paces long, the empty second platform seemed unfinished, as if the builders had given up halfway through construction. ¡°How bad would it be if that platform was damaged a bit?¡±
The general glanced at the object of her interest. ¡°Looks like something that was abandoned because it didn¡¯t get finished before last year¡¯s migration. Doesn¡¯t seem important to me.¡±
¡°Alright then, let me show you something you¡¯ll like.¡± She got up and turned towards the house, leaning he back against the rail like the general. ¡°Pari!¡±
Two small hands grabbed the side of the door frame and the beastgirl¡¯s dark head poked out sideways with a curious ¡°nya?¡±. Arlette waved her over.
¡°Pari, this is General Caprakan Bloodflower. If you want, he can find a family for you here to live with.¡±
The girl¡¯s head tilted in confusion. ¡°Grandfather told Pari to find Pari¡¯s family and Pari did. Why would Pari need two families?¡±
¡°Well, that settles that,¡± Arlette said to Caprakan. She looked back to Pari. ¡°Pari, you remember those candles I said you couldn¡¯t test while we were traveling?¡±
The child¡¯s eyes lit up. ¡°Pari can test them now?¡±
¡°Only on that far platform over there. Understand?¡±
¡°Okay!¡± Pari nodded. She sprinted back into the house.
A few moments later, Pari sprinted back out of the house with something tucked under her arm, her infamous giggle going at a thousand leagues an hour. She called it a ¡°boomcandle¡±, a new type of candle she¡¯d come up with using ingredients she carried around in her sack mixed with bug guts and whatnot from the Stragman wildlife she¡¯d encountered during their trip. Nobody had seen the thing in action, not even Pari, because her claims that it would probably ¡°go boom¡± had been enough to fill Arlette and Sofie with dread and forbid Pari from testing the candle while they were out in the wild. But if it did what the child claimed that it would, then it would surely make an impression on the general.
Pari covered the sixty or so paces from the house to the platform in a snap, then placed a candle about four times larger than her usual bangcandles on the center of the unfinished platform, lit it, and ran off. Unlike a bangcandle, the boomcandle¡¯s wick was nearly as long as its height, providing the girl ample time to race back to the house¡¯s door.
¡°What exactly am I watchi-¡±
The general¡¯s question was suddenly cut off as the boomcandle lived up to its name, erupting in bright light and fury as shock waves sent the platform into convulsions. Arlette threw herself to the side as a piece of wood the size of her arm whizzed through the space that her head had occupied just moments before. Her ears rang as the smoke slowly cleared from the platform, only to find that there was no platform anymore. All that remained were the remnants of several support beams sticking out from the tree below where the platform had once stood, their charred ends still smoking.
Arlette had never belittled the strange things that Pari made, but she¡¯d never viewed them as that much more than a curiosity. They had their uses, and a bangcandle in the right situation was definitely a useful and deadly weapon. Still, even that was only about as powerful as the average observer in Gustil¡¯s army. This boomcandle was something different. A ten-by-ten platform, each board a pace thick in order to bear the weight of whatever were to be placed upon it, blown to splinters by a candle slightly larger than Arlette¡¯s fist. Visions of fortress walls falling under hundreds of mighty blasts flashed through her head. This could be a gamechanger... and it all relied on the mind of a strange, feral child who didn¡¯t seem to understand how deadly her creations could be. Would she understand just how dangerous her latest creation was? Did she realize how coveted her recipe would be?
¡°Hehehehehehe boom! Heehehehehe,¡± giggled Pari.
That was a no. She¡¯d need to have a long talk with the girl about it later.
¡°I¡¯ll tell you what,¡± coughed General Bloodflower as they watched Jaquet, Basilli, and Sofie stream out of the house, ready for battle. ¡°You get me more of those and I¡¯ll let you bring the whole city along.¡±
Arlette stood atop the small hill and looked down upon the immaculate sulpa fields that stretched out into the distance. The sulpa swayed in the gentle breeze, their stalks heavy with the grain of the upcoming late-summer harvest. This was her first visit to Drayhadal, and she found the difference between it and Stragma staggering. Stragma was a wild place, and the people there had long ago learned to embrace the chaos there, to bend with it and use it to their advantage to form a strange symbiotic productivity. Nothing spoke to that more than the way the entire civilization would move about the forest with the seasons, keeping one step ahead of massive beast migrations and the like. She couldn¡¯t help but respect their flexibility.
The Drayhadans, on the other hand, perhaps due to their endless on-again-off-again war with the Stragmans, seemed to have adopted an attitude in direct opposition to that of their enemies. Or had the two opposing viewpoints been the cause of the turmoil from the start? She didn¡¯t know. What she did know was that Drayhadal, or at least the Esmae clan that ruled the northwest quadrant, did not believe in compromising with nature. They believed in dominating it. Every inch of the landscape before her looked to be sculpted by a multitude of hands over generations. Each of the many sulpa fields was exactly the same size, their borders outlined by rows of carefully-maintained bushes. Any offending rocks and trees had long been removed, leaving nothing but order as far as the eye could see. Order and control. It was kind of pretty, really. A shame it would soon be nothing but ashes.
A long series of complex bird calls interrupted her reverie. The leader of their squad perked up and signaled for the unit to halt. ¡°They¡¯ve found the main defense force a bit south,¡± she said. ¡°Our new orders are to regroup with the Northern Raid Division and strike them from the north while the main force hits from the west. Let¡¯s move.¡±
Arlette, Basilli, and Jaquet all joined the others in following their new orders. The three of them had been assigned to this skirmish squad for the last three days, splitting off from the Northern Raid Division, which itself had split from the Second Army to work its way through the farmlands north of the route the main force of the Second Army was set upon, taking out any Drayhadans that they could handle and drawing those too large to fight on their own into ambushes by other squads. It felt liberating to be able to move and fight without having to worry about protecting others, she realized. The three mercenaries could move swiftly and freely in a way they hadn¡¯t since before Zrukhora had been destroyed, as Sofie and Pari had been left with the main force and would stay behind with a smaller support group when the actual battles began. That time would soon be at hand. If they¡¯d spotted the Esmae clan¡¯s army, then the Esmae had surely spotted them as well. A clash was imminent.
The invasion of Drayhadal had turned out to be far more complex than Arlette had initially believed. The First Army, the largest of Stragma''s forces, had headed east, straight for Astryae, the city of the Astr clan who ruled the southwest. The land ruled by the Astr clan was said to be highly volcanic and fiery. This of course meant that many people in the area, and the Astr clan themselves especially, tended to grow up being very talented fire Observers. It was said that the Astr constantly burned away at the Stragman forest that bordered their land, creating a firestorm so large that it was not possible to see both edges of the blaze from any one location, not even atop a mountain.
This incensed the Stragmans more than anything. Such constant widespread devastation made the Astr public enemy number one, and as such the main invasion force would strike there. Two hundred thousand strong, a force the size of the First Army was nearly impossible to conceal, even in the forest of Stragma. The Drayhadans would meet them with force, leading to a series of brutal, bloody battles. That was the hope, at least.
The Second Army was much smaller, but had arguably an even more important goal. Only thirty thousand people, they could move more quickly and stealthily through the thick forest than the First Army. The overall plan was a fairly simple one. The First Army would show itself and force the Drayhadan clans to each send a large portion of their troops to assist the Astr. Then the Second Army would appear in the Esmae¡¯s territory and head for the city of Esmaeyae, doing as much damage to the surrounding areas as possible and hopefully decimating what remained of the Esmae¡¯s defenses.
The Esmae¡¯s lands were the most fertile areas of the country, the source of the majority of their food, and the Stragmans were about to burn it to the ground. That was the goal of the entire campaign, actually ¡ª to cause as much damage to the Drayhadan state as possible. They weren¡¯t trying to take over the country. No, the Stragmans lived in the forest and had no desire to change that. This was no attempt at conquest; it was a blood feud writ large.
The question at hand was how much damage the Second Army could do, and how quickly. Arlette fully expected the Esmae to play hard to get, running a series of delaying actions and generally trying to slow down the Stragmans as much as possible to give them as much time as they could get to acquire reinforcements, be they from other clans or from conscription. The Stragmans needed to hit them as hard as they could now, before their strategic advantage worsened.
Arlette¡¯s squad moved quickly, the fire Observers setting the land behind them alight as they went, until they joined up with the Northern Raid Division several hours later. From there they marched on, closing in on the main force of the Second Army and the upcoming battle. As they closed in, it became clear that they were late ¡ª the battle was already in full swing. She heard the sound of thousands of voices screaming at each other, of violence and death, long before she crested one last ridge and finally saw the battlefield off in the distance.
Arrows, fireballs, and more flew through the air and bloody chaos reigned as wave after wave of Stragmans pounded at the elves¡¯ hastily-prepared but still effective fortifications, seizing them through force of numbers, while various smaller groups of cavalry battled on the fringes, trying to flank the opponent. Thanks to generations of practice, the Drayhadans had perhaps the best terraforming Observers in all of the world. They¡¯d set up a series of walls and battlements to hold off the Stragmans ¡ª nothing impressive compared to a real fortress, but at least something able to slow the Stragmans down. As they approached, Arlette saw the Second Army break through a defensive line, pouring over the walls as the Esmae troops fell back to the next set of fortifications. That was their plan, Arlette surmised ¡ª they would fight and hold off the Stragmans for as long as they could at one line, then retreat and reset at the next set of fortifications once the last one fell. They wanted to bleed the Second Army as much as they could, forcing the Stragmans to pay as high as price as possible for every inch. Meanwhile, they were also buying time for their terraformers to strengthen the defenses farther back.
Their plan, unfortunately, relied on one thing: time. They needed to hold the line long enough each time for the terraformers to raise a new series of ramparts before falling back again and peppering the Stragmans with long-range attacks, all while being outnumbered five to one. The defenses helped greatly, but if the Stragmans could take a line fast enough, before a new line could be raised from the earth, the battle would be lost. Arlette knew that time was coming, and soon. The previous lines of defensive fortifications seemed entirely intact, meaning that Bloodflower was saving his little surprise for the right moment.
That moment came quickly. As the Drayhadan troops reformed atop the third line of defense, their terraforming units falling back to create the next line, several large explosions blossomed beside the walls, collapsing them like they were made of straw. Pari had been very stubborn, refusing to give up her secret boomcandle recipe to the Stragmans and only giving General Bloodflower three out of the six she¡¯d made already. But three turned out to be more than enough. The Stragmans roared and rushed through the breaches, swarming the outnumbered elves and taking the line just moments after the last had fallen. The rout was on. The Esmae cavalry tried to group up and strike the Stragmans in an attempt to push them back, but it was too late. The Northern Raid Division crashed into their flank like a tidal wave, rolling them back.
Arlette danced through the pandemonium, her sword and doppelganger doing their work on those unlucky to be before her. Together with the rest of her division, she gave chase, hounding the panicked elves as they ran for their lives. A grin grew upon her face as she noticed a palanquin farther back, its bearers beating a hasty retreat. Only the most revered and important Drayhadans rode in a palanquin. That could only be the opposing general and his staff. Along with the others who¡¯d noticed the same thing, Arlette raced after the fleeing commander, gaining quickly on the heavily-armored transport. An arrow sailed through the air and pierced the leg of elf supporting the rear left side of the litter. He fell with a cry and the massive litter, its sides covered in thick metal sheets, tilted mightily. The other bearers looked back, saw the oncoming horde, and dropped the palanquin like a load of bricks, fleeing for their lives.
Arlette had always been a great sprinter for a non-Feeler, and her speed, combined with her starting position and her early recognition of the situation, meant that she was the first to the suddenly abandoned palanquin, though others were just behind her. Eager for the rewards that came with capturing or killing an enemy commander, Arlette reached out for the door, her hand wrapping around the smooth handle of the knife before grabbing the vegetable on the counter before her and starting to slice it lengthwise. The afternoon sun filtered through the paper windows as she carefully chopped the vegetable into fine pieces, the slow up-and-down rhythm bringing her a welcome sense of calm. Birds chirped outside, their melodious cries melding with the bright laughter of children somewhere nearby. Once the chopping was completed, she placed the knife down on the wooden counter and scooped the vegetable chunks into a nearby bowl, the pieces eliciting soft tinks as they bounced off the fine white porcelain.
Suddenly Arlette¡¯s ears picked up a low, mournful wail off in the distance, its volume slowly building and its pitch rising until it became an unearthly cry that sent waves of dread washing over her. Another wail joined the first, then another, and another, each closer than before, until the entire world seemed to be screaming out in agony. Dropping the knife onto the counter, she rushed out of the kitchen and donned her straw sandals, then raced out of her small house to find a street already clogged with people. The wailing continued all around the city as thousands of others poured from their houses, all desperate to get out as quickly as possible.
Then her ears picked up a sound over the wailing, the sound of a million giant insects beating their wings in a massive swarm. The sound drove the people in the crowd to push even harder as they ran for the hills, the droning growing louder and louder until it seemed to come from directly overhead. Arlette looked up to see dozens of giant grey birds high up in the sky, the sun glinting off their long, sleek bodies. The bellies of the birds opened up and thousands of shining eggs dropped from the openings down onto the city below, sending the crowd into an absolute stampede. Everywhere the eggs landed fire bloomed, the tightly packed wooden buildings setting ablaze almost immediately. The city burned.
Arlette ran with the others, trying her best to keep up with the frenzied mob as more and more eggs fell around them. A hot, dry wind began to blow, sending embers drifting through the air to land on other buildings and spread the fire even faster. Together with the rest of the human herd, she worked her way through the streets towards the hills and the safety they provided, her legs groaning at the strain and her lungs gasping for air as she ran past houses and the occasional strange enclosed metal wagon.
She didn¡¯t see the stone in the road until she had already tripped over it, her body clumsily sprawling to the ground. The rest of the fearful people, driven by instinct for self-preservation, trampled over her. She screamed as she felt her left shoulder dislocate as somebody stepped on it. Tears in her eyes, Arlette tried her best to crawl off to the side, to find a small pocket of space where she could get up and flee again, but the people kept coming, battering at her body as they passed.
After what felt like an eternity of punishment, Arlette leaned against a doorway as her chest heaved, trying her best to breathe without taking in the ashes that blew through the city. Her vision swam from several blows to the head, dirty shoe prints covering her body from her face to her trousers providing ample evidence of the beating she¡¯d received. She clenched her teeth as she grabbed her left arm with her right. Using the door frame for extra leverage, she forced her left arm upwards. There was an audible pop as something in her shoulder tore and the pain increased, but she could move her arm again. She could run again. That was all that mattered.
Fire raged all around her now as she sprinted through the streets. Her body shook as she coughed from the smoke, but she pressed on. The scorching wind beat at her face and whipped ashes into her eyes, but she pressed on. Her lungs ached as they took in the hot air, begging for a rest, but still she pressed on. She could still see the hills not too far away, their safety beckoning to her. It wouldn¡¯t be much longer until she was out of the city.
Then disaster struck. With a loud, low groan, a three-story building to her right began to topple, most of its supports weakened by the fire. She cried out, dodging as best she could as pieces of the massive structure fell around her, but she couldn¡¯t dodge everything. A large wooden beam, itself still largely unburned but pushed over by the rest of the falling building, knocked her to the ground, pinning her legs under its heavy weight. The fire was all around her now and the beam itself had begun to burn, the flames slowly moving down the wood towards her. Arlette pushed against the beam, trying with all her might to move it enough to free her legs, but the massive piece of wood was too heavy for a single woman to budge. Instead, she began to feverishly dig into the dirt baked hard by the heat, ever so slowly creating room to pull her legs out. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, ignoring the crushing pain in her legs, ignoring the blistering heat from the inferno that roared all around her, she dug at the dirt with a desperate strength until her fingertips began to bleed. She was so close to freedom. So close to seeing another day. All she had to do was get out before the fire got closer.
Another building collapsed, this time on the other side, its bulk knocking over a flag pole as it did. Arlette¡¯s eyes grew wide as the pole tipped her way. She twisted as best she could as the pole, its flag still somehow mostly intact, came crashing down right where her head had been just moments ago. The flag, a crimson circle with rays emerging from it on a white background, fell on top of her and she grabbed it, and idea popping into her head. Arlette was too weak to move the beam that trapped her legs, but using the her grip on the flag and the nearby pole to greatly improve her leverage, Arlette might be able to pull herself free instead!
Then suddenly Arlette¡¯s ears picked up the sound of droning once more, growing ever louder in the skies above, and despair filled her soul. She turned her head to see more giant birds moving in from the east, their bellies lit up by the light of a city ablaze. Death had returned to finish the job. There would be no escape. This would be her funeral pyre.
Arlette¡¯s mind gave in, and everything went black.
Chapter 22
Sofie Ramaut sat in a library at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, located in Brussels, Belgium, studying late into the night for an upcoming paper due a week from now. Being a linguistics major in the humanities department meant an endless parade of papers coming due, to the point that the library was almost her second home. Sofie didn''t mind; she''d always loved books, and being around such a large collection excited her. Sure, she could probably find the knowledge she desired on the internet, but there was something about pulling a large book from a shelf and flipping through the pages that felt more right, more real.
Her mind was deep into a chapter on the commonalities of languages throughout the world when she felt a buzz in her pocket. She fished out her phone and her face lit up. It was her boyfriend. They''d been together since high school, and he''d been good enough to get into the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Flanders. She was jealous, but her grades had just been a little too low to make it in to such a prestigious school. It was okay though. She''d been loving her freshman year in Brussels. There was so much fun to be had there, when she wasn''t busy writing papers and studying for exams, which admittedly wasn''t often.
She hadn''t heard from him in a few days, so she eagerly unlocked her phone and began to read. Slowly that eagerness faded, replaced by disbelief. He couldn''t be... She read it again and her soul plummeted into an abyss of sorrow. He was breaking up with her. The coward was breaking up with her through text. Her eyes blinded by a sudden tidal wave of furious tears, she hurled her phone as far away as she could. The device careened off a bookshelf off in the distance somewhere as Sofie put her head in her hands and wept. The bastard! She''d loved him, and he couldn''t even find the decency to break up with her in person. This was the worst day of her life! She just wanted to die!
It was as if the world had been listening. Suddenly a strange immense pressure pushed down on her and she felt herself being sucked away somewhere in an almost metaphorical sense. She screamed in pain as the world vanished.
Impossibilities made manifest surrounded her as she plummeted through some strange hellscape that defied understanding. She could feel her very being warping, contorting in unfathomable ways. She fought it with everything she still had, closing her eyes and holding on to what she knew to be herself. The pain threatened to overwhelm her, and she could feel something building up inside her, like a billion furnaces burning in every corner of her body. She pushed back with every fiber of her will, bottling up the raging inferno inside of her as best she could, but it wouldn''t stop building. Every centimeter of her blazed with incalculable energy. She couldn''t hold it back anymore. Her eyes opened once more to gaze upon the unthinkable as her mind, body, and soul screamed its final scream. Her mind overwhelmed, she could barely process the horrors that she witnessed, barely grasp the glimpse of the being that she might possibly have seen off in the distance for just an infinitesimal fragment of a microsecond ¡ª a formless nightmare of golden, glowing eyes and an uncountable number of sharp, deadly teeth. And then, just as she knew her end had come, it was all gone. Her head slammed into a slab of stone that had not been there just before, and Sofie was out like a light.
Sofie sat in the doorway to the strange bunker where she''d arrived, trying to figure out what to do. It had been two days now since she''d awoken in an underground facility, surrounded by strange lumps of metal that she didn''t understand. It hadn''t taken her long to realize that she was not on Earth any longer; the multiple moons had made that very clear. But that knowledge hadn''t helped her actually figure out what to do. She''d spent some part of a day poking around down in the bunker behind her, finding nothing other than a few rooms, all filled with weird metal shapes and lit by a strange crystalline version of track lighting mounted on every wall. Finding nothing else, she''d settled down and waited. Somebody had brought her to this place, surely. They would have to come back, right? But so far, the bunker remained lifeless.
The gurgling of her stomach reminded Sofie that she hadn''t eaten. Two days was a lot of time between meals for somebody slight and small like her. If nobody was going to show up then she''d have to head out on her own eventually, and that was something she very much did not want to do. Sofie was a creature of cities and had been all her life ¡ª she preferred her air conditioned and her climate controlled, thank you very much.
From her vantage point overlooking the mountainside, Sofie could count dozens of strange-looking plants in a variety of colors that were just wrong. Trees weren''t supposed to be purple, but there one was, just a few hundred meters down slope. If the plants were that strange, what about the animals? What about... the bugs?! Her body gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of going even a kilometer near an alien bug. They were probably all bloodsucking and poisonous too. Nope. No, she would not leave this place unless she had to.
A day later, it was abundantly clear that she had to. The lack of nutrition had brought about a persistent light-headedness that was getting worse. Soon she wouldn''t have the energy to do anything. Reluctantly, she headed off from the strange door in the middle of a mountain where she''d waited for the past days, stopping once to look back at it for a second. Tucked under an overhang and colored like rock, the door was nearly impossible to spot from just twenty meters away. She wondered for a second just who had made such a strange place, but the rumbling in her stomach chased those thoughts away.
Making her way through the thickets of trees, bushes, and ivy that covered the mountainside, Sofie tried her best to not think about all the rashes she was probably going to get for this. Really, though, she was worried more about disease. Brussels had still been fairly warm in late September, and she''d been dressed appropriately. Never one to put fashion ahead of comfort, she''d been wearing her "study clothes", a pair of comfortable shorts and a well-fitting tee shirt with a picture of a unicorn on it. While fine for the warm nights of early autumn, her getup did little for her in the cold, rainy mountains she now found herself in.
Several regret-filled hours later, her body weak, she heard something other than the sounds of insects for the first time. Could it be? She listened closely. Voices! Those were voices!
"I don''t get it," said the first voice, a female. "There''s nothing worth hunting up here. Where''d all the fenbaras go? They were all over this place just ten days ago."
"I dunno," replied a gruff, male voice, "but we''d better find something or Cadmar''s gonna skin us. They''re running low on meat and even the slaves are gonna need a little meat for the march tomorrow."
Perhaps if she had been in a better state, Sofie would have processed those words, but she wasn''t thinking. She was only reacting. Voices meant people. People meant food. She needed food. That was all there was too it.
Emerging from the brush, panting, Sofie found herself staring at two of the strangest-dressed people she''d ever seen. It reminded her of historical re-enactments she''d see on television sometimes. The woman was perhaps one and a half meters tall, dressed in leathers with short hair and a large axe strapped to her back. The man was fairly large, coming in just a few centimeters under two meters tall. He also wore leathers all over, and carried a bow, which he had pointed at Sofie, ready to fire. Only then did Sofie begin to realize that none of this was necessarily a good idea.
"Uh, hello-" she began, hoping to explain what was going on, but the woman reacted faster than any person she''d ever seen, leaping forward faster than any human had a right to and dragging Sofie to the ground.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" she asked, a predatory grin flashing across her face. "Some sort of noble''s daughter who lost her way?"
"Let go of me, you creep!" Sofie cried. She struggled as best she could, but days of fasting had left her weak and the woman was bizarrely strong for her size.
"Isn''t this some luck?" laughed the man as he pulled out some rope. "Something tells me Cadmar will forgive us today."
The woman held Sofie still as the man tied her up. Sofie couldn''t help but notice the disturbing level of skill with which he tied her hands and feet, like he''d done it to hundreds of other people before. Once her hands, arms, and feet were bound, the woman lifted Sofie over her shoulder like she was nothing more than a sack of flour.
"Put me down!" Sofie cried. "What the hell is wrong with you people?! Put me down this instant!"
The woman sighed. "Hey," she said to the man, "she''s going to be annoying."
"Alright, alright..." the man replied, pulling out more rope.
"That doesn''t look like dinner," said a commanding voice.
"Sorry Cadmar, we couldn''t find a single animal anywhere on the mountain," replied the woman. "Got something better, though we did have to gag her."
"Let me see."
Sofie grunted as she was unceremoniously dumped onto her back. A bearded man squatted down near her face, reaching out with a finger to gently caress her skin. She recoiled at his touch, his finger sending shivers of revulsion down her spine.
"What manner of clothing is this?" he wondered, inspecting the unicorn jumping over the rainbow on her shirt. "The quality of the art, and the material! So high!"
"From her speak, probably some foreign noble''s garb."
"And she was alone?"
"Nobody but us and her."
"Excellent. I''ve never seen such flawless skin. There''s practically no blemishes. Her hands are fine as well, no calluses." He grinned. "I bet we could get more for her than the rest of the shipment combined. Well done, both of you."
Her two captor grinned. The bearded man untied the rope that crossed over her mouth that the others had put there as a gag.
"Where are you from, girl?"
Sofie didn''t respond, her lips sealed by a mixture of fear and resentment towards the three kidnappers. The man responded to her silence by pulling out the largest knife she''d ever seen and brandished it at her.
"I asked you a question."
"I, uh, come from Brussels, Belgium," she said immediately. "It''s not a place you would know, it''s in a different world and I was there and then suddenly I got sucked here and I don''t know where I am and please don''t point that thing at me I-"
"Shut up."
Sofie''s lips resealed themselves immediately.
"You didn''t tell me she was mad. Mad slaves don''t fetch much."
"Gee, we didn''t know, boss," said the first man. "Maybe if we just keep her quiet?"
Mr. Beard sighed. "It''s better than nothing." He turned back to Sofie. "Listen up. You are not to speak again until you are sold. Am I clear? I know plenty of ways to bring you pain that won''t leave a mark."
Sofie''s faced paled, her eyes never leaving the knife.
"Am. I. Clear?" he growled.
Sofie nodded her head vigorously, terrified that he might follow through on his threats. Her stomach, on the other hand, grumbled loud enough for them all to hear.
"Get her some gruel and put her in the wagon," the bearded man said. "Then inform the others. She is not to be touched. We need her unspoiled if we want to get the best price."
Maybe she would have been better off staying in the bunker after all.
Sofie sat chained inside "the wagon", which was apparently what they called some boards stuck between four wooden wheels, as it bumped its way down the road towards who-knew-where, thinking. There had been so many new things to ponder over the last week and a half that her mind almost couldn''t handle it. Somehow, through means that she could not fathom, she had ended up in a different world. The existence of alternate realities was mind-blowing enough, but then she''d witnessed magic.
One of the slavers, which was what Cadmar and his group were she''d realized rather quickly, had made a flame out of thin air. Just... poof! Fire! Sofie''s mind buzzed with the possibilities. Could the people here fly? Could they send her home? If there was magic, did that mean there were unicorns here too? What about dragons?
Unfortunately the excitement of the possibilities this world possibly had in store for her were effectively trampled by the harsh realities of everything else. The technology she could see was pathetic. Swords, bows, and wagons with wooden wheels and no suspensions, pulled by large animals called "garophs" that looked like furry rhinoceroses without the horns. No firearms, no steam engines, nothing that indicated any sort of technology past the Dark Ages, especially, as her time around the men had made abundantly clear, no deodorant. That also meant no cell phones, no internet, no texting or Facebook or Twitter... what was she supposed to do all day? Just watch trees pass by for hours on end?
She was desperate for something, anything, to take her mind off of her predicament, and even more so that of those that followed behind the wagon. Slavery. Its very existence in this world rendered everything else moot. A long train of people, twenty six to be precise, trudged along behind the wagon, pushing themselves to keep up with the vehicle. Each person''s shackles were chained to those of the person behind them, so if one of them fell, the entire train stopped. That was when the beatings would start.
The slavers, of which there seemed to be ten total, held no regard for the health or safety of the slaves. They fed them little and forced them to march many kilometers every day on their way to their final destination. None of the slaves seemed to be in good health. Most of the slaves didn''t even seem to be fully there anymore, their eyes empty as if the person inside had died long ago and only the body still clung to life. The display of abject human misery had been enough to reduce her to tears many times over the last few days.
Her own preferential treatment only made things worse, leaving her awash in guilt. She wasn''t made to march and was given larger portions during mealtimes. She wanted to share her meals with the others, to help them just a little bit, but her chains were not long enough for her to reach outside the wagon. All she could do was eat and feel the gazes of the few slaves that were still mentally whole. She hated those gazes. The glares of envy were bad enough, but the pitying ones were even worse. She found the idea that these people on the edge of life, bound for some horrible fate in a work camp or whatever, would feel bad for her and her future to be absolutely horrifying. She didn''t know exactly what was in store for her, but it wasn''t hard to come up with a few educated guesses.
Thoughts of escaping somehow, of freeing herself of her chains and running off where they would not catch her, crossed her mind with regularity, but they were nothing more than fantasies. Even if she were somehow to slip out of the shackles that held her, that in itself a practical impossibility with how tight they squeezed her wrists and ankles, she''d never actually escape without being caught. Probably because of her supposed "market value", at least one slaver seemed to be watching her at all times. She hated their gazes most of all, especially Cadmar. The bearded slaver terrified her. It had been obvious to her when he''d claimed to be able to hurt her without leaving a mark that he hadn''t been lying.
A small part of her entertained the notion of playing up the "mad noble" angle when they finally arrived at wherever they were headed, driving her own value down to spite the bastards that had done this to her, but the bearded man''s threat kept that part small and insignificant. She didn''t want to be hurt, especially not by somebody who could organize a death-march like this one and not even think twice.
A cold wind began to blow and Sofie curled up against the wagon''s side. How many more days would this continue? To think that just a little while ago, she''d thought that her boyfriend dumping her was the worst thing to ever happen to her.
The city of Zrukhora was both exactly like and nothing like what she''d expected. Having visited many historic European cities, she''d expected a mess of winding streets filled with buildings that seemed to be almost built on top of each other and that was exactly what she''d found. The place was architectural chaos made reality. It was as if not a single person had bothered to plan for the future or even consider their surroundings, instead simply staking claim to a spot and putting whatever they felt like there. At one point she saw, in order, a butcher shop, a stable, a tailor, and a building with a large sign hanging out in front of a strange-looking large bear-like creature that appeared to be... dancing? Some sort of tavern probably, judging by the hoots and hollers she could hear going on inside even at this morning hour.
What she hadn''t expected was the number of people. The streets were choked with them, though Sofie noticed that most of the people did their best to avoid going near her wagon and the slave procession that followed it. Several streets past the weird tavern with the dancing whatever, the wagon ground to a halt. Cadmar entered the wagon, unlocked her restraints, and pulled her from the vehicle. Sofie writhed in his grip but she could do nothing against his strength.
Grabbing her head, the bearded man forced her to look at him. "I''ll say this once again. No speaking until they''ve paid me. Understood?"
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Sofie withered under his gaze. She gave a tepid nod and he released his grip on her head and herded her into the building to their front. Within lay a small entrance room, perhaps four meters by four meters at most. The room was empty save a desk and two men, one sitting behind the desk and another guarding the only other door in the room, which led into the building. The man behind the desk was thin and reedy, with a thin mustache and clever eyes. The man guarding the door, on the other hand, was a large brute of a man, covered in scars. He radiated a "don''t fuck with me" quality that Sofie figured would be ideal to play the role of muscle in a place like this.
"Ah, Mister Cadmar, it''s good of you to join us," said the reedy man as they entered. "Are you here today on business or pleasure?"
"Business," the bearded man replied. "I have somebody who should interest your mistress."
"Of course, sir. One moment." The thin man rose from his desk and entered the door, leaving just Sofie, the slaver, and the guard. An awkward silence settled over the room as they waited. Sofie squirmed under the guard''s gaze. She didn''t like the hunger she saw in his eyes, like that of a starving man staring at cakes on the other side of a bakery window.
After what felt like hours, the thin man finally returned, motioning them to follow. Cadmar pulled Sofie along and they entered the main part of the building. Immediately, Sofie''s suppositions were confirmed ¡ª this was a brothel. Down at the other end, a young man, perhaps just a year or two younger than she, was being led into a side room, his wrists, ankles, and neck all encased in shackles. The restraints didn''t look anything like the thick, brutal ones that she and the other slaves had worn on their way to the city. Instead they were thin, designed towards elegance and enticement, sending messages of submission and subservience. Sofie shivered.
As they were led down a long door-lined hallway, her ears picked up the moans and cries of carnal acts emanating from behind nearly every door. At the end of the hallway was a set of wooden stairs leading upward and another door. They passed through that door to find another hallway, perpendicular to the first, and went left. At the end of that hallway was another door, this one seemingly of better quality than the others.
"Madam is waiting inside," the thin man said as he opened the door and ushered them through. The room on the other side was much more luxurious than the rest of what they''d seen. Exquisite woven rugs lined the floor and several cushy, upholstered chairs were arranged around a small, round wooden table. In one of those chairs sat a rather plump lady in her mid-fifties or so. The woman wore an excessive amount of makeup and jewelry, covering herself with rings, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.
"Cadmar," the woman said as they entered. "How good it is to see you again. It''s been so long, I''d thought you''d moved your operations elsewhere."
"It''s been harder to find good stock for you, Madam Gartruda. But this time I think we have something special."
"I see that. Bring her closer." The woman did not stand up as the slaver maneuvered the unwilling girl past the table and over to her side. She squinted at Sofie, inspecting every centimeter of her body like she was a piece of meat. "The top of this table has more curves than her."
Sofie hated her already.
"Notice how pure her skin is. So smooth and free of blemishes," said Cadmar as they began to bargain.
"Yes, this skin is extraordinary. I''ve never seen anything like it. A shame about the face, though."
The hell? Who did this woman think she was? Sofie opened her mouth to object to the woman''s comments but before she could say anything her jaw shut on its own accord thanks to a scathing glare from the slaver. Why did she have to be such a coward?
The two continued to argue for what were without a doubt the most humiliating few minutes of Sofie''s life. Like any woman on Earth, she''d faced the remnants of the world''s patriarchal systems before, but she''d never before been literally objectified, literally nothing more than a good to be bought and sold. She wanted to just shrivel up and die from the dehumanizing experience.
Eventually the two agreed on a price and the slaver left, his presence replaced by a man and a woman Sofie had not seen before. "Welcome to your new life, honey," Madam Gartruda said. "As long as you behave you''ll be just fine here. Disobedience, however, will be punished harshly. I do not tolerate insubordination from my children. Now go with Jonath and Emera here. They will get you prepared for your first clients tomorrow."
Unable to dam up her overflowing emotions any longer, Sofie collapsed on the ground and wept. From happy student to inter-dimensional traveler to sex slave in just a few weeks. Why her? Was this some sort of punishment?
Suddenly several hands grabbed her roughly and yanked her to her feet. She cried out as Gartruda''s palm slapped across her face. "What did I just say? Save those tears for the bedroom. Some like the helpless waif routine."
That was too much. Sofie''s mind shut down for the next few hours. She was taken upstairs and bathed for the first time since her arrival in this world, two weeks of muck finally washing away, but her mind didn''t register the joy of cleanliness. She was dressed in new, clean clothes, scanty things that left little to the imagination but were still the first clean things for she''d worn in two weeks, yet she took no note of it. When she finally became aware of herself again, elegant shackles, thin but strong, had replaced the blocky ones she''d had on since her capture.
"All done," the Emera said as the last band snapped into place. "Now all that''s left is the branding."
"I''ll get the iron," replied Jonath, heading out the door.
That got Sofie''s attention. "No!" she cried, struggling futilely against her restraints. She had this feeling that once she was marked, she would have crossed a line that could not be undone and she would lose herself.
"Finally back with us?" laughed Emera.
A low, rumbling roar echoed far off in the distance.
Emera stopped, puzzled. "Did you hear something?" She waited for a second. "I guess it''s noth-"
A second rumbling roar came, same as the first.
"What in the world is that noise?" Emera strode to the wooden shutters of the window and pulled them open, leaning out in an attempt to see what what going on, but her sight was blocked by the nearby buildings. "Must be something going on up north. Nothing important." She shut the shutters again.
Minute after torturous minute passed as they waited for Jonath to return. Sofie wracked her brain trying to figure out a way out, some avenue of escape, but she couldn''t come up with anything. Like a lot of the people in this world Emera was far stronger than she looked, so overpowering her was out of the question. She couldn''t really sneak away, since even the slightest movement generated clinking from her chains, and with the way that her feet were tied, the chain connecting her two ankle being perhaps forty centimeters long, running was also out of the question.
"Sorry, I couldn''t find where we''d put these," Jonath said as he eventually reentered the room brandishing several brands. "The basement is a mess."
"Excuses, excuses," complained Emera.
"Yeah, yeah," he replied. His face took on a look of concentration and suddenly a hot flame appeared just beneath one of the brands. Sofie watched in horror as the metal began to glow a bright red. She backed up as much as she could, her eyes fixed on the brand as the pair approached. She prayed in her mind for a hero, for somebody, anybody to stop this, to save her.
A massive roar crashed against the building, shaking the walls. Whatever was happening, it was much closer this time. The sudden racket stopped everybody in their tracks as the sounds of pandemonium erupted outside. The screams and shrieks of hundreds crying out filtered through from the outside.
"What in blazes?" Emera muttered to herself, marching over to the shutters again, throwing them open, and poking her head outside. "Jonath."
"Emera, get back here, I need you to hold her still so we don''t have to do this more than once."
"Jonath!"
"What?" he asked, walking over next to the woman, who proceeded to grab him and shove his head out the window for a look. He froze for second, and then the brands fell from his hands.
"Let''s get the fuck out of here," said Emera.
"Right," he replied and the two of them ran out of the room, Sofie''s existence forgotten.
Sofie sat there for a second, stunned at the sudden development. Was this some strange ruse or something? What was going on? She stumbled her way to the window and leaned out for a peek and was so shocked at the sight that she almost fell out. Through a gap in the buildings she could see, off in the west, the largest beast she''d ever imagined. Nearly ten meters tall and perhaps thirty meters long, with gigantic scaly wings and glowing golden eyes, it roared with a primal rage that instilled fear in all that heard it. It was a dragon... and it was heading her way.
Any and all thoughts other than escape disappeared from her mind. Waddling and hopping as best she could, she left the room just as a large dark shadow passed overhead. The earth shook as the dragon landed somewhere nearby, though she couldn''t see exactly where from the hallway. She was halfway down the hallway when the dragon unleashed an ear-shattering roar, shaking Sofie to her core and leaving her temporarily deaf. An oppressive wave of heat followed, drenching her in sweat in seconds as she continued to hobble towards her freedom as fast as she could.
The first floor seemed surprisingly empty when she made it down, the patrons and proprietors having already fled. Still, she didn''t want to end up running into somebody like Madam Gartruda so she headed away from the front, hoping to find a rear door somewhere. Luckily for her, she found one fairly quickly, throwing it open and hopping down into an alleyway behind the building. Many nearby buildings were already on fire, and she could see massive plumes of smoke rising up from the streets to the north. South it was then.
Hopping as best she could, Sofie worked her way down the maze of alleys, heading southward. Between her restraints and the refuse-filled alleyways, progress was slow and the fire was faster. Soon it would overtake her, she realized. She wasn''t going to be able to make it out on her own. She''d need somebody to help her. This troubled Sofie, as she had not had much luck with finding helpful, compassionate people in this world. What if somebody else just tried to enslave her again? She was already chained up; their work had been done for them!
Still, it was that or die. She''d not been the only person to think to take the back alleys, as several others had already passed her by. She saw another group, this one three men, nearing her as she turned around.
"Please help me!" she begged, but the men just raced past her.
The fire had caught up to her now, the buildings to either side catching fire quickly in the heat. Another person soon approached, racing out from the flames, coughing.
"Please, help me!" she cried, stepping into the oncoming woman''s path.
"Get out of the way!" the woman shouted, shoving Sofie violently to the side and continuing onward.
Sofie wailed as she tumbled to the ground. Hampered by the shackles, she fought her way back to her feet and pressed on. The buildings were all on fire now. She needed to get somewhere more open, away from all the wood. Her heart beat a thousand times a second as she made her way out of the alleyways towards the street. Panting and gasping for air, she stumbled to the alley entrance and looked around. To the north was nothing but flame, the street itself now a towering inferno. To the south she could see people still running, heading away from the fire and the dragon, but they were far too far away and headed away from her. She''d never catch them.
A sound caught her ears and she saw a woman, perhaps just a few years older than she, run out of the building to her left. This was her last chance! Leaping out as best she could as the woman ran past, Sofie latched on to her with all her strength. The woman staggered and fought against her grip but Sofie hung on until the woman looked down to meet her eyes.
"Please help me!" she begged the woman, putting everything she had into this one plea. "Please! Don''t leave me to die!"
Competing thoughts warred behind the woman''s light-brown irises as Sofie looked on in desperation. After a moment that seemed to take a thousand years, the woman pulled Sofie off the ground. "Come on," she said.
Days of pent-up emotion erupted from Sofie at those words. Finally, after all these days stuck with the worse people she''d ever imagined, she''d found somebody in this world who wasn''t terrible. There was good in this world after all.
The rest of the escape was a blur. They''d hopped on a wagon driven by some large, rotund man with a huge, bushy mustache and a thick accent along with a thinner man with a ponytail and hightailed their way out of the city as fast as they could. At some point the dragon had closed in, ready to turn them and anybody else nearby to cinders, but then a second dragon had appeared! But then the first dragon had passed right through the second dragon? She''d found it highly confusing, even more so than everything else that was going on. It was right about then that the woman who''d saved her collapsed into her lap. In the end, the dragon had exploded for some reason, erasing everything within a certain radius of the city in a giant white blast. She''d held on to the woman''s limp body as she watched the white wall of death approach, consuming all matter that it touched, but it petered out before getting too close. Nothing of the city remained except a massive crater kilometers wide. Sofie''s eyes never left it until it passed over the horizon.
Several hours later the turquoise-haired woman remained catatonic, her head still on Sofie''s lap as she gently stroked the woman''s beautiful hair. She''d seen people with unnatural hair colors before amongst the slaves and in the crowds of the city, and she couldn''t help but be jealous each time. She''d always wanted purple hair when she was younger, ever since she''d stumbled across anime as a child.
The wagon shuddered as the large man pulled it to the side of the road.
"Pee break?" asked the ponytailed man.
Instead of answering, the man pulled out a gigantic halberd and leveled it at Sofie.
"Ge'' ou''," he said. Malice flashed in his eyes as he glared at her.
"W-what?" Sofie stammered.
"Ya ''eard me. This is as far as ya go. Off." He waved his weapon in a dismissive gesture.
"Jaquet, what are you doing?" the ponytailed man asked, mild concern in his voice.
"I''m doin'' wha'' I ''ave ta do. Ya know ''ow Letty is. She''s too kind fer ''er own good. We don'' ''ave a job, ev''rybody''s fuckin'' dead, an'' she goes an'' picks up a worthless trollop? We can'' afford ta be dragged down by another mouth ta feed. I''m no'' gonna le'' tha'' ''appen. She''ll drag Letty down, ''er, me, all o'' us."
"This seems like a bit much," the other man said. "Can''t we at least take her to Poniren?"
"I don'' care wha'' ya think, Basilli," Jaquet spat. "Somebody''s gotta make tha ''ard decisions, and tha''s gotta be me. Letty migh'' wake up by then, an'' then she''ll wanna help ''er, jus'' like she did with Olenset, an'' those kids in Rankura, an'' all those other times before. Wha'' good did any o'' ''em ever do fer us? Nothin''! Jus'' gave us a ''eap o'' trouble and caused ''er pain ev''ry time. I''m no'' lettin'' tha'' ''appen again. Ou'' with ya."
"And how are you going to explain her sudden disappearance when Boss wakes up?"
"I''ll jus'' tell ''er tha'' she wen'' crazy an'' ran off into tha woods. Letty''ll believe me."
"I highly doubt that."
Sofie had heard enough. She''d finally found somebody who was nice in this godforsaken world, and this jerk wanted to kick her out? She couldn''t let that happen! She wrapped her arms around the woman, hoisting her body up and using it as a shield. "No!" she said. "She said she would help me! I''m not leaving!"
The large man''s face darkened at the sight of his weapon pointing at the unconscious woman. "Pu'' ''er down, righ'' now''," he said, clambering down from the wagon''s wide front bench. Sofie scooted back, away from the angry man, dragging the other woman with her.
"Jaquet, stop. This is getting out of hand."
"I''m jus'' doin'' wha'' I ''ave ta do," he said, as he strode purposefully around to the back of the wagon, a dangerous look in his eyes.
"I''ll tell her what you did," Basilli said.
The large man stopped and turned towards the other, who still sat in his seat on the right front of the wagon. "Ya sidin'' with this tramp over me?" he growled.
"No, fuck her. I''m siding with Boss. It''s her decision, not yours. What was it you always say? A mercenary has to be willing to honor his commitments with his life? If she made a commitment to this tramp, she needs to stick to it. What happens when she wakes up is up to her."
Jaquet glared bloody murder at the other man, hesitating. Finally he reached forward faster than Sofie could react, grabbing her by the neck and lifting her into the air. Sofie gasped and struggled against his ferocious grip, his hand digging painfully into her throat. "If ya pu'' ''er in danger, or anyone o'' us fer tha'' matter, I''ll make ya disappear so quick it''ll be like ya were never ''ere," he said before tossing her back into the wagon and storming back to the front of the wagon.
Sofie coughed and sputtered, trying to draw breath as she clutched at the arm of the one person who''d shown her anything other than pain and grief since she''d arrived. This woman was her only hope. She couldn''t trust anybody else.
Chapter 23
¡°An¡¯... and then ¡®e said... ¡®If tha¡¯s a vekkel, where¡¯s my wife?¡¯¡±
Sofie Ramaut sat on a rough stool in a noisy tavern in a world she barely knew, watching three people she¡¯d just met ramble and laugh drunkenly about their dead friends. In fact, drunk was putting it very lightly. She''d never seen people down goblet after goblet of liquor at such an astounding rate before, and she''d been to Oktoberfest! Speaking of which, Sofie felt like she could really use a dozen drinks herself, but with no money to her name she could do nothing but watch as the others guzzled beer in superhuman quantities, toasting the recently departed.
She¡¯d only been with the trio a few days, but she could already tell that there was a lot going on with each of them. Arlette was gruff and businesslike, but Sofie felt like that was a front, a wall she put up to hide the kind person that she really was. She¡¯d helped Sofie when nobody else would, she¡¯d listened to her, she¡¯d even lent Sofie her clothes. Sofie felt safe around her, like the woman was the big sister that she¡¯d never had.
Basilli was confusing. The man hadn¡¯t done anything actively against her. In fact, he¡¯d helped her that one time back in the wagon. But he¡¯d also called her a whore and claimed that he didn¡¯t care what happened to her, so Sofie couldn¡¯t help but dislike the man. The suave, silver-tongued, charming rogue persona he seemed to cultivate rubbed her the wrong way as well. Still, she told herself, he¡¯d kept Jaquet from abandoning her in the middle of nowhere, so he couldn¡¯t be all that bad, right?
Jaquet, on the other hand, could fuck right off. The fat fuck was nothing but a brute, and could go die in a volcano for all she cared. She hadn¡¯t forgiven him for what he¡¯d done to her. Her throat still hurt from his crushing grip. He kept looking at her like she was some kind of liability, some kind of threat. Just where did he get off on judging people like that?
Arlette treated him like an old friend. Her oldest friend, really. It was obvious that the two were closer to each other than they were to Basilli. Back in the wagon, he¡¯d tried to couch his protests as worries about her dragging down the three of them as a whole, but it was plain to Sofie that he was really worried about Arlette. He glared at Sofie like an overprotective father glares at his daughter¡¯s first boyfriend.
¡°How about you, Arlette?¡± Basilli asked. The two had been talking about another one of their dead companions, though Sofie had zoned out for a minute and missed some of it. ¡°You ever think about marrying somebody? What about Jaquet here? You spend so much time working together you might as well make it official.¡±
¡°Maybe if he was just old and fat, instead of old, fat, and ugly,¡± Arlette replied.
Maybe it was because of all the alcohol in his system, or the excessive emotions from talking about the newly deceased, but Jaquet¡¯s mask had slipped off at Arlette¡¯s words, just for a split second. The others hadn¡¯t noticed that look of pain, but Sofie had. Those words had crushed him. No way! Sofie hurriedly rewrote everything she knew about Jaquet and Arlette¡¯s relationship. That wasn¡¯t some sort of paternal protectiveness she¡¯d seen just now. That was love. Yearning. Romantic desire. Jaquet was in love with Arlette, Sofie was sure, and he was hiding it from everybody.
Gross!
Love was beautiful and all that, sure, but this dude was at least twice Arlette¡¯s age! Surely that wasn¡¯t normal here, right? Right? Now she needed those drinks more than ever.
Sofie stared at the unconscious form of her savior as she snored away on the bed in their inn and tried not to panic, but it wasn¡¯t working. She was nobody? They were going to leave her in Xoginia, wherever that was? Arlette had dropped those bombs on her in her inebriated state and just carried on for hours afterwards like nothing had happened, leaving Sofie to just twist in the wind. But now at least Sofie knew where she stood. Not even the one person she¡¯d had hope for actually gave a damn about her.
Where even was Xoginia? Was it the next town over? What if it was some place here in this town? What if they were going to leave her here? Maybe they were going to sneak off in the morning while she slept, and she¡¯d wake up alone in this terrible world again! Sofie couldn¡¯t let that happen. Her eyes fell on the slave shackles, discarded in the corner of the room she and Arlette had shared, and she had an idea. There was one way to make sure Arlette didn¡¯t leave without her...
Growing up in the peaceful country of Belgium, Sofie had never experienced true violence. She''d thought she understood it, but she''d been wrong. The truth had become clear the moment an arrow embedded itself in Arlette''s shoulder out of nowhere. The terror of the fight had nearly overwhelmed her, and that was before she''d been held hostage.
Shudders rolled through Sofie¡¯s body like waves as what little breakfast she¡¯d eaten earlier rocketed out her mouth and nose in the wrong direction. Blood. So much blood. Shaking her head, she accidentally caught a glimpse of the one man Jaquet had bisected and the retching redoubled.
This was the world that Arlette lived in? This world of butchery and pain? How could she stand it, living in a world where stuff like this was the norm?
It was bad enough to stand near the burnt and sliced corpses of the people who¡¯d attacked them. It was worse to think about just how close to death she herself had come. First there was the knife to her neck, held by a jittery hand. Just one jerk and her throat would have been cut, and that would have been the end. But that wasn¡¯t the part that really bothered her. No, what really sent shivers down her spine was the way Jaquet had killed the man who took her hostage. He was playing up the cocky attitude to Arlette right now, acting like he had been sure he wasn¡¯t going to miss, but Arlette hadn¡¯t been able to see his face when he¡¯d thrown that knife. Sofie had. Jaquet hadn¡¯t cared if he missed or not. In his mind, if he missed and killed her instead... well, that was just taking care of different problem.
Then the corpse by her side began to change into an elf and Sofie''s train of thought derailed, fell off a cliff, and exploded.
A cold wet wind blew through the campsite a week later, cutting through Sofie¡¯s clothing like it wasn¡¯t even there and chilling her to the bone. She scooted closer to the small fire and eyed the five skewered lizards roasting over the flame with suspicion. There was no way that anybody was supposed to eat these, right?
¡°Mmmm,¡± hummed Arlette as she sat down beside her and nodded to Basilli, who was busy creating the fire from the other side, ¡°smells good!¡±
Sofie just rolled her eyes. Not a minute passed where she didn¡¯t regret her decision to travel along with the three members of the Ivory Tears, for a laundry list of reasons. Back on Earth, she¡¯d always enjoyed a nice stroll through the park, and thought that meant she enjoyed nature. Now she knew that she just enjoyed parks. Nature sucked. Being hunted sucked even more. She¡¯d really underestimated just what it meant to have an entire country hunting for you. Every noise was a panic attack. She was constantly wet, tired, hungry, dirty, afraid, and miserable, and that was before you factored in the actual fights. Still, as unhappy as she was, she couldn¡¯t convince herself that there had been a better option at the time. With no money, no job, no real skills, and no allies, she probably would¡¯ve just ended up as a slave again.
Arlette had started to try to teach her how to kill people with a knife. It wasn¡¯t going well. Sofie had never been the most coordinated person, and, as much as she wanted to help Arlette and not be a burden, her heart just wasn¡¯t in it. She didn¡¯t want to kill people. There was a line there, in her mind. If she fought and killed, she would be acknowledging the ways of this world, and she could not bring herself to do that, to say ¡°well that¡¯s just how they do things here¡±. She could not and would not respect a world where slaves walked the roads in chains, where violence was as common as breathing, where murder, and let¡¯s be honest, that¡¯s what it was, was not only accepted but in some ways encouraged. She¡¯d lived in a better place, a better society, and she refused to lower her standards just because these people ¡°didn¡¯t know any better¡±. That wasn¡¯t an excuse for butchery.
Arlette plucked two of the lizard skewers from the fire, handing one to a none-too-eager Sofie. ¡°Make any progress with the fire training?¡± she asked.
Sofie sighed, her face giving Arlette all the answer she needed. Her magic practice was somehow going even worse than the murder training. God, she wanted to use magic so badly. It was the only thing that this world, called ¡°Scyria¡± apparently, had over Earth. Maybe that was why it wasn¡¯t working. She¡¯d tried everything Arlette had told her, but she couldn¡¯t feel anything. No flames poofed into existence. Given what she¡¯d been told, making a flame should have been easy for her. After all, she understood flame on an atomic level, which had to be far better than anything somebody like Basilli understood. But no amount of concentration or desire seemed to bring about any magic.
She couldn¡¯t use magic. She wasn¡¯t able to bring herself to kill people. Was she destined to be a burden on Arlette for good? She sighed again.
¡°Here¡¯s a secret,¡± Arlette said, snapping her lizard in two and exposing the creature¡¯s guts for Sofie to see. ¡°The intestines are the best part.¡± With a grin Arlette put the lizard torso to her mouth and sucked, drawing the pink, mushy mass into her mouth and chewing with gusto. Sofie fought back a gag.
¡°So how long until he¡¯s back with the others?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°Probably not before nightfall. It¡¯s a good ways south and back,¡± replied Lynn Kemble as she stirred a large cook pot over the hearth in the Kemble family¡¯s kitchen/living room combo. ¡°Would you like some more porridge?¡±
¡°Yes please,¡± Sofie said. Mrs. Kemble¡¯s porridge was the best thing she¡¯d eaten since her sudden excursion into Scyria, and she didn¡¯t even like porridge. After days of eating leaves and lizards, this flavor was enough to make her cry. Why were there so many lizards in this world, anyway?
She¡¯d been at the the Kemble¡¯s farmhouse for most of a day now, enjoyed the joys of what went for civilization here. The whole family was wonderful. Once she¡¯d passed along Arlette¡¯s message, they¡¯d welcomed her in and made her feel comfortable for the first time in what felt like forever. Sulwyn had left an hour before to pick up the others, taking along a cartload of garoph manure for some reason. His wife Lynn was hard at work, chopping up ingredients for what she assumed was soup while making Sofie feel at home. Off in the corner, amusing himself with some small rocks, sat Padrig, their young son.
"Whatcha doin''?" Sofie asked the child as she ambled over.
"Making Petra!" the kid replied.
"Petra?"
"That''s his name for one of our garophs," Lynn informed her.
Sofie looked down at the pebbles arranged on the rough wooden floor. After some squinting, she realized that Padrig had arranged them in the rough outline of a garoph, like the ones sleeping in their barn.
"Well look at that! That''s really good!," Sofie said. Padrig smiled. "How old are you, sweetie?"
The kid held up a hand with all his fingers sticking out.
"Five?!?!? Wooooowwwww! I bet soon you¡¯ll be as big and strong as your dad!"
Padrig hopped up and down on his bottom in excitement, beaming from ear to ear. "Yeah! When I grow up I''m gonna be super strong just like Daddy!"
Lynn chucked as she stirred, a tear coming to her eye. ¡°When those bastards took Padrig, I thought that I would never see him again. Those bastards would come through every winter and just take people from their homes, especially children. We couldn¡¯t fight them all off, and those flea-ridden Maddocks chose to take their coin and look the other way instead of upholding the law.¡± She spat in disgust. ¡°A pox upon nobles!
"But the Ivory Tears were passing through this year. We begged them to save our children, but even with all the village pooling our money we didn''t have enough to hire mercenaries. Yet they did it anyway. They chased down those bastards and gave them all the deaths they deserved and brought our children back. Madam Demirt wouldn''t even take what money we''d managed to collect. I''ll never forget what she and the rest did for us. I can finally have hope again, knowing that those awful people won''t be coming back. So don''t you worry about a thing, sweetheart. We''ll make sure nobody finds you. You just rest up and recover."
"Thank you, I''ll do that" Sofie smiled. What a nice family.
¡°Do it,¡± insisted the voice in her head. ¡°One upward thrust, just like she taught you. You can save them. You can be the hero.¡±
The knife shook perceptibly in Sofie¡¯s hands as she stared into the eyes of Sulwyn Kemble, her thoughts and feelings embroiled in all-out war with one another. Arlette and the others were out of commission. It was up to her to save them, but she¡¯d have to take Sulwyn¡¯s life to do so. Was there some other way out? Some solution that didn¡¯t end in death? She wanted to tell the farmer to lie down on the ground and surrender, but the words wouldn¡¯t leave her throat. She was scared. Scared of where this would go.
Every time she readied herself to strike, a scene would flash through her mind. Padrig''s bright, beaming face. Lynn''s grateful tears. What would happen to them if this man died? How would they live? They didn''t deserve to suffer. But the alternative was for them all to be captured. There were no good answers. So she stood there, eyes wide and knife hovering by Sulwyn''s abdomen, frozen by the moment, until the farmer decided for her.
Then the pain began.
¡°Stop scratching it. That only makes it spread,¡± Arlette said.
¡°Gaaahhhh, it¡¯s driving me crazy!¡± Sofie whimpered in agony as she scratched her crotch and butt. She hated her life in Scyria so much she wanted to scream until her lungs gave out. Weeks without a bath. Meal after meal of nothing but lizards, rodents, and the assorted ¡°edible¡± plants. Day after grueling day of walking, walking, and more walking, until her feet wanted to break off. Fight after terrible fight, battle after horrible battle, every day fearing the next encounter. She still got the random headache from their adventure in Olenset. In other words, she was dirty, stinky, hungry, tired, aching, scared, and injured.
Every time she thought that things couldn¡¯t get more unbearable, they somehow did. This one, however, really took the cake. She¡¯d gone off into the woods to do her business, as she always did, and finished by wiping herself with some leaves in a vain effort to be at least a little cleaner, as she always did. This time, however, she¡¯d wiped using leaves from this world¡¯s equivalent of poison sumac, creating a painful, itchy rash all over the one area of her body where it would be the most unpleasant. Now she was dirty, stinky, hungry, tired, aching, scared, injured, and torturously itchy.
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The group was resting in the late afternoon before making one final push for the day. Arlette claimed they were only a few days from the Kutrad border, after which things were supposed to get easier. Sofie was taking a less optimistic view. She¡¯d seen a lot of things that were ¡°supposed to¡± be something in this world that weren¡¯t. Sofie didn¡¯t put much credence in the woman¡¯s claims. Nothing else had gone well so far. Why should this be any different?
She needed to think about something besides how much she itched. That was another thing that sucked about this place. There was nothing to take your mind off of stuff when you really needed it. Grabbing a large stick nearby, she began to draw a map of Europe, doing her best to properly draw out the geography of each country accurately.
She¡¯d shown Arlette a pretty well-drawn map of the world she¡¯d made at a campsite once, but, like everything else, that didn¡¯t seem to faze the mercenary. Arlette seemed pretty committed to the idea that Sofie was a nut job. If she was honest with herself, the hurt she felt by how everybody acted like she was crazy bothered her, but nowhere near as much as the frustration brought about by her inability to get Arlette to even consider that she was telling the truth. Still, she planned on keeping at it until the other woman broke. She didn¡¯t have much else to do, anyway.
Speaking of Arlette, she was leaning against a tree to Sofie¡¯s right with her eyes shut. Trying to rest, Sofie supposed. Sofie didn¡¯t feel like bothering her.
Jaquet was sitting near Arlette, busy cleaning the blood from the latest battle from his halberd. Sofie felt like he obsessed over his weapon too much. He¡¯d spend all his free time cleaning it and caring for it like it was his child or something. Once, she even thought she¡¯d heard him talking to it like it was a person.
Sofie¡¯s overall perspective on the old mercenary had shifted since her realization about his unrequited love for Arlette. Now she couldn¡¯t see anything else. The way he talked to her. The way he seemed to always have a bit of his food left over for her to eat. Even the way he positioned himself relative to Arlette while they walked, so that he¡¯d be able to block arrows from the most likely direction of attack. At first Sofie had found his feelings somewhat icky, but now she found it to be downright romantic. If only he weren¡¯t a completely brutish, violent asshole who viewed Sofie¡¯s presence as a threat to Arlette and the others, she might even like the man.
Basilli had gone off to pee or something. She wasn¡¯t sure. He¡¯d maintained his ¡°not my problem¡± attitude towards her throughout their trip. Sofie was perfectly alright with keeping that the way it was.
Her stick was halfway through tracing the coast of Italy when she heard the soft rustle of leaves to her left. Basilli? She leaned her stick against a nearby rock and turned towards the sound, but found no human. Huh? Looking down, she found the source of the rustling: a small furball sniffing about near her foot. The creature was about the length of a house cat, with adorable little round ears sticking out of long, shaggy fur. It didn¡¯t move with feline grace, instead loping ponderously like a bear. Actually, that was very much what it reminded her of, a cat crossed with a bear. It¡¯s snout was longer than a cat but not quite as protruded as a bear¡¯s or a dog¡¯s. It had a long, active tail like a cat, but a stockier build, chunkier like a bear. Whatever it was, it was tiny and cute and the best thing Sofie had seen in days.
¡°Sofie,¡± Arlette said quietly, a deadly seriousness in her voice, ¡°back away slowly. Don¡¯t make any sudden moves.¡±
¡°What? From this?¡±
¡°Jus¡¯ do as she says,¡± said Jaquet. Was that fear she heard in his voice? Why were they moving away like this cutie was going to eat their faces off?
¡°Sorry to keep you waiting,¡± said Basilli as he emerged from the forest. ¡°Are we rea-¡± He stopped in his tracks, his eyes bugging out as he spotted the small creature. ¡°J-jaglioth! Oh fuck!¡±
Jaglioth? What a harsh name for such a cute animal. Sofie didn¡¯t understand why the others were all petrified over such a lovable little creature, but she knew better than to dismiss such reactions out of hand. Slowly, ponderously, she took a step back, then another. The harmless-looking animal continued to sniff about, showing no sign of why the others were so afraid.
Things were going smoothly for a moment, until her stick fell. Her drawing stick, as branches went, was not the most balanced stick in the world, and, after a few moments leaning against a rock, gravity prevailed. The branch toppled over, landing just in front of the lovable furball and giving it a fright! It startled, turning tail and scurrying back into the tree while crying out in fear.
¡°Oh no,¡± Arlette said. ¡°Everybody run!¡±
Before Sofie could even wonder what was going on, they heard a furious roar from not too far off in the forest, and everything became clear. The four of them took off in a dead sprint through the forest, heading away from that roar and its source as quickly as they could, but soon the sounds of wood snapping behind them told them that escape wouldn¡¯t be so easy. A second roar of anger shook the forest, much closer this time. Sofie looked back for a second to find a boulder of muscle barreling through the trees after them, murder in its eyes. The mother jaglioth stood twice the height of a grizzly bear, it¡¯s massive frame propelled by powerful muscular legs as it galloped after them, but Sofie¡¯s gaze focused in on the beast¡¯s maw, the canine-filled mouth of an apex predator that didn¡¯t take kindly to people messing with its kids.
The beast was gaining on them, its bulk easily brushing aside the same foliage that slowed them every so slightly. Sofie could hear it huff as it closed in. Sofie pushed herself to run even faster, ignoring the protests of her tired legs.
Suddenly Arlette¡¯s head perked up and swiveled to the right. A moment later, she abruptly changed direction, yelling ¡°This way!¡± The rest followed, the jaglioth hot on their heels. Unable to shift its bulk so easily, the beast shot past their turning point, slamming into a tree with such force that Sofie thought she heard the trunk crack before continuing its pursuit.
As they ran, Sofie began to hear a roaring of a different sort from up ahead. The noise got louder and louder until they suddenly cleared the tree line and came to a sudden halt at the edge of a cliff. Many meters down below, a river raged, its waters overflowing with snowmelt from the warming spring weather.
¡°Jump!¡± Arlette cried, leaping from the cliff. Jaquet and Basilli followed immediately, but the sight of the rushing water gave Sofie a moment of pause. Leaping from such a height into those waters was a scary proposition. She looked back to see the giant jaglioth nearly upon her, decided that there were far scarier propositions, and jumped for her life. The beast¡¯s frustrated bellow echoed off the cliff walls as she fell.
An hour later, Sofie sat upon a riverbank, somehow even more miserable than before. Now she was dirty, stinky, hungry, tired, aching, scared, injured, torturously itchy, and soggy. There was nothing good to be found in Scyria, she fumed. Even the cute things were deadly. She hated it here. The food sucked. The people sucked. The world sucked. Everything sucked.
Everything was alright, Sofie thought as she cradled the sleeping catgirl against her chest with one hand as she scratched behind the girl¡¯s ears with the other. As an only child, Sofie had always dreamed of having a little sister. She¡¯d dream of playing together with dolls, dressing her up in cute clothes, and just generally spoiling her rotten, but her parents had never seen fit to bestow upon her such a blessing. But now she had Pari. For the first time in what felt like forever, she was at peace, and all it took to get her there was the arrival of the perfect little sister.
Pari was as if an adorable jet-black kitten had been magically transmogrified into a child, with only the cute ears and tail remaining. Sofie loved to watch them twitch and move in response the the girl¡¯s emotions. Combine that with her cheerful, inquisitive personality and a smile that could melt the polar ice caps, and Pari was practically tailor-made to be the apple of Sofie¡¯s eye. Sofie was going to hug and cherish her until the end of time.
She wasn¡¯t sure why Pari had decided that they were family. She¡¯d just called herself ¡°big sister Sofie¡± at the time to make herself sound more trustworthy, but Pari had seemed to take it literally for some reason. Sofie wasn¡¯t going to complain.
Where had Pari come from? She would talk about this grandfather of hers, but he sounded more like a mythical figure than a person. She¡¯d been headed south, so she must have also been coming from Kutrad, though they¡¯d never crossed paths until the Deadlands. The biggest clue to her background was something that Sofie had found while petting the girl the night before, and which she hadn¡¯t told anybody about. On the back of Pari¡¯s neck, hidden by her long, pitch-black hair, was a brand. Unless brands were part of some ritual markings that Sofie didn¡¯t know about, this poor girl had been a slave. To be enslaved a such a young age... Sofie¡¯s heart wept. It was a miracle that Pari was still the ray of sunshine that she was.
Sofie vowed to protect her, to keep her from ever having to experience such pain ever again. She wasn¡¯t sure how she was going to do such a thing; hell, it was arguable that she couldn¡¯t even take care of herself. But Sofie didn¡¯t care. She¡¯d found something worth protecting, and she was determined to do it however she could.
Pari snuggled deeper into Sofie''s chest and began to purr, causing Sofie¡¯s heart to seize up. Dear god, this girl was weaponized cuteness. Sofie shut her eyes with a contented sigh. Scyria wasn¡¯t so bad after all.
Sofie stood outside Lucas and Liela Delon¡¯s house in Begale, unsure of what to do. Liela had handed her some coins and told her to go to the market and buy certain vegetables before shooing her and Pari out the door. Sofie wasn¡¯t against helping out, but there were several problems. She only had a vague idea of where the local market was. Liela had named several vegetables, but she didn¡¯t know what any of them were, what they looked like, or how much they cost. By the time she¡¯d realized these facts and opened her mouth to vocalize them, Liela had already shut and locked the door behind them. Now what?
They could always just ask people, she decided. If she had to expose her ignorance, it was better to do it to somebody she¡¯d never see again instead of somebody whose house she¡¯d be sleeping at. ¡°Okay Pari, let¡¯s go!¡± she said with gusto. The expected response from the girl by her side did not come. Looking down, Sofie realized that was because the catgirl wasn¡¯t by her side. Sofie looked about in alarm and spotted the child standing at the entrance to a nearby alleyway, her fuzzy tail swishing this way and that as she peered inside. ¡°Pari?¡± Suddenly the girl gave one of her trademark giggles and sprinted into the alley. Oh no. ¡°Pari! Pari, get back here! Pari!¡±
Sofie sprinted after the girl. Pari was surprisingly fast when she wasn¡¯t carrying her giant sack of candlemaking stuff. She entered the alley just in time to see a tail recede around a corner. ¡°Pari, wait!¡± She rounded the corner to find it distressingly lacking in catgirls. Now what? A giggle from above caused her to look up in dismay and catch a glimpse of black cat ears speeding along the roof. How the hell did she get up there? ¡°Pari, get down from there!¡± she cried as she gave chase, a giggle being the only response.
Sofie huffed and puffed as she followed the mischievous child on her rooftop adventure, leaping from roof to roof and apparently having a grand old time. She didn¡¯t blame the girl for wanting to explore but there was a time and a way to go about it and this was neither.
Several corners later, Sofie had a thought. She wasn¡¯t making any progress in her chase from down on the ground, but in this particular alley were some barrels. If she stood on top of one and jumped with all her might... Several moments later, Sofie pulled herself up onto a roof, took one look down, and wondered why she¡¯d ever though that was a good idea. Then she spotted Pari one roof over, running along the edge as carefree as could be.
The catgirl paused at the corner of her roof and looked about, confused, before looking back and spotting Sofie steadying her balance one roof back. Pari¡¯s eyes lit up and she waved, a bright smile on her face. Sofie¡¯s anger melted away in an instant. How was she supposed to stay made at that face?
Sofie leapt across the gap, barely making it and almost losing her balance upon landing, but she righted herself just in time. ¡°You little twerp,¡± she said as she finally caught up to the girl. ¡°Having fun with your little game?¡±
¡°Uh-huh!¡± Pari enthusiastically replied.
¡°Oh, you...¡± Sofie scooped the girl up into a hug. ¡°You need to be careful! If you fell, you¡¯d get hurt really-¡± She stopped mid-sentence as Pari began to sniff about and squirm out of her embrace. ¡°What is it?¡±
¡°Basilli!¡± Pari replied. She slowly made her way down the roof¡¯s edge, sniffing as she went, as Sofie followed carefully. ¡°I smell Basilli!¡± With a running start, Pari leapt over to the next rooftop and began to move along, sniffing all the while. Sofie jumped after her, once again barely making it.
The catgirl hunkered down low against the roof once she got to the other side. Her eyes shone with mischief as she pointed to a figure entering a nearby alleyway. ¡°Basilli! Hehehehehehe!¡±
¡°Shhhh! Be quiet,¡± Sofie said as she laid down flat on her stomach besides Pari. The figure was hidden in a cloak, but it definitely had the right height and build to be Basilli. What was he doing in this alley? The figure looked around for anybody watching before knocking on a door. A panel slid away for a moment before sliding back. The door opened, a rough looking man in the doorway.
¡°Well what do you know! Jakob Barabe! Finally showing your face after all these years, huh?¡±
¡°Shut up and let me in,¡± replied the figure with what was definitely Basilli¡¯s voice as he pushed past the other man and entered the building. The door closed behind them and Sofie couldn¡¯t see or hear anything that followed.
¡°We should get down from here,¡± she told Pari. ¡°We have a job to do, remember?¡±
¡°Aw, but I wanna surprise Basilli!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think he wants to be surprised, sweetie,¡± she said, scratching the girl¡¯s head as Pari affectionately rubbed her face against Sofie¡¯s chest. ¡°We need to find a way down from here and get going, okay? You¡¯ve had enough fun for now.¡±
¡°Okayyyy,¡± replied a reluctant Pari.
Together they headed back in search of a place where Sofie could get back to the ground without breaking her legs. Sofie¡¯s mind was filled with questions. Who or what was Jakob Barabe? Was Basilli Jakob, or was Jakob Basilli? Did it matter? And most importantly, how the hell could they get to the market from here?
Chapter 24
Once there was a country filled with happy people. They lived happily in their lands, where life was peaceful and food was plentiful. But the gods became jealous of their happiness and laid a curse upon the people and their lands. They stole away the sun, covering the sky in gray, and sent the lands into a harsh winter. Crops would not grow and snows covered the ground land.
The people despaired. They begged the gods for their forgiveness, but the selfish gods wanted the sun for themselves and themselves only. Then one day, the spirits of the world took pity on the people, and they sent great storms to wash away the gray. The people rejoiced, dancing between the raindrops, each drop having absorbed the gray that shrouded the sky and become a milky white, like ivory tears falling from the-
¡°HOLD ON A GODDAMNED MINUTE! THAT¡¯S NOT THE STORY YOU TOLD ME!¡±
Sofie grabbed Pari away from Basilli and Jaquet as the two mercenaries broke into peals of laughter. She pulled the confused catgirl into a protective embrace and glared daggers at the men as they hooted in amusement. Basilli was even laughing so hard that he¡¯d fallen off his chair, the asshole. ¡°Come on,¡± Sofie told the child, leading her out of the Delons¡¯ living room, ¡°let¡¯s go talk to people who appreciate us.¡±
Together they headed down the hallway towards the bedroom where they and Arlette slept. Lucas and Liela¡¯s house was not the biggest, but it was well-laid-out, making good use of the space it had. It was a tight squeeze, but with the help of some cots they¡¯d been able to fit the five unexpected visitors into two small spare rooms. They found Arlette in their ¡°bedroom¡± sitting against a wall with a large metal needle, slowly patching holes in her clothing. To say that her ensemble had taken a beating over the last season was putting it lightly. The cloth was riddled with puncture holes and long slashes from the dozens of fights she¡¯d been in since leaving Poniren, but the chance to fix any of it had not presented itself until now.
¡°What¡¯s gotten into you?¡± Arlette inquired as Sofie stormed in with Pari in tow.
¡°Your friends think we¡¯re nothing but a free source of guffaws,¡± Sofie huffed. ¡°Pari just wanted to know why you¡¯re called the Ivory Tears, but they decided to lie to her about it for fun.¡±
¡°Yeah, that¡¯s kind of a thing they do. It¡¯s a game for them.¡±
¡°Why not just tell us the truth? Why do they have to be so mean about it?¡±
¡°They don¡¯t know the truth.¡±
¡°They don¡¯t?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve never told anybody the reasons behind the name.¡±
¡°Tell Pari!¡± urged Pari.
¡°No.¡± Arlette refocused on the tunic on her lap.
¡°Come onnnnnn,¡± whined Sofie.
¡°Nope.¡±
Pari and Sofie pouted, but no amount of pleading or puppy dog eyes would sway the mercenary¡¯s hardened heart.
¡°Oh yeah!¡± Sofie said, straightening up as a thought came to her. She stuck her head out into the hallway and peered down towards the living room area. She could hear Jaquet and Basilli chatting about something, so they were still where Sofie had left them. Good. She shut the door to their room quietly. ¡°There¡¯s something we wanted to tell you about Basilli. We ended up following him by accident, you see, and-¡±
¡°Stop right there,¡± Arlette said, her tone harsh and commanding. ¡°I don¡¯t want to hear another word.¡±
¡°Wha... why not?¡± Sofie asked incredulously.
¡°One of the cardinal rules of being a mercenary is that you never pry into others¡¯ pasts. Period.¡±
¡°Really?¡±
¡°Being a mercenary is a brutal, dangerous job. Most people don¡¯t become mercenaries because they think it¡¯s a good life. They do it because they¡¯re running from their pasts and have no better options. So we don¡¯t ask questions about each other. It¡¯s one of the most important principles of being a soldier for hire.¡±
¡°Are you running from your past too?¡±
Arlette gave her a glare.
¡°Sorry...¡±
An awkward silence filled the room. Pari drifted away and started messing with her candlemaking apparatus.
¡°No,¡± Arlette said after a while.
¡°No what?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not running from my past.¡±
¡°Then why? I¡¯ve always wondered why somebody as young as you would choose to be a mercenary. You¡¯re smart, you¡¯re strong, there must have been plenty of other paths to take.¡±
¡°Control,¡± Arlette replied, before continuing upon seeing Sofie¡¯s perplexed face. ¡°The one thing about being a mercenary that is different than other jobs is that you have control over your own life. If you¡¯re a farmer and your country¡¯s rulers decide that they need extra soldiers and that includes you, you either serve or get executed for disobedience. Same deal if you¡¯re a tailor, a blacksmith, whatever. Your life is yours only until those in power decide your fate for you. But being a mercenary is different. You work for whoever you want to work for. You abide by the terms that you decide upon with your employer. Other than that, you¡¯re free. Countries can¡¯t touch you, they can¡¯t conscript you, they can¡¯t force you to do anything.¡±
¡°Why not?¡±
"You mess with one mercenary band, you mess with every mercenary band. It''s part of the mercenary code. Every band will walk, and nobody will hire on with you. The bigger ones like the Scions of the Black Dawn are basically their own private armies. If a country tries to strong-arm a mercenary band, they might suddenly find that a third of their fighting strength has suddenly left and joined their rivals."
Sofie smirked at the idea of an unofficial mercenary union going on strike. ¡°And that outweighs all the downsides, huh?¡±
Arlette scowled down at the needle as she brought it up and through the cloth. ¡°I refuse to be a tool ever again,¡± she stated with a finality that told Sofie the conversation was over. ¡°Never.¡±
Just then, Sofie heard footsteps outside and turned towards the window just in time to watch through the small opening between the two shutters as a foreboding silhouette passed by. As the footsteps receded, she pulled the shutters open and stuck her head out to find a figure bending over and picking up several pieces of trash from the street. A large cloak covered the figure''s entire body, its loose folds concealing the person''s gender and overall build. The only distinctive things she could see from the back was the sack on the ground to their side and the large broom strapped to their back. The figure paused at the sound of Sofie''s actions and swiveled their head to look directly at her. Sofie''s head instinctively reared back as she found herself staring not at a face but a mask. The mask, an unsettling depiction of a lizard with tusks sticking out of its mouth, completely covered the person''s entire head. Combined with the cloak and a pair of leather gloves, the ensemble covered the person''s body from head to toe, obscuring any hint of skin from her view. For a moment, Sofie lost herself in the mask''s inhuman eyes. Then the moment passed, and the person turned away and resumed filling their sack. Sofie''s skin crawled as she watched the figure slink away through the darkness of the alley. It wasn''t until the figure was completely out of sight that Sofie pulled herself back into the room and shut the shutters.
¡°Arlette, there¡¯s a creepy guy in a lizard mask outside,¡± she said.
"Stay away from it. Sweepers are unclean, you''ll get sick."
"What do you mean?"
"They remove the filth and trash of the cities here in Eterium. I heard that they have to fill their masks with herbs to be able to breath without vomiting from the smell of all the foulness that surrounds them."
"So they''re like garbage men mixed with janitors? That doesn''t mean you''ll get sick just by being around one. You just have to make sure you wash properly. Also, don''t call them ''it''!" She put her hands on her hips in frustration.
"Sofie, I''m telling you. They''re barely people. If you stay around one of them too long, you''ll be cursed. Everybody knows this."
"Okay, okay, I get it," Sofie gave in. It was a shame, but even seemingly rational, level-headed people like Arlette had their prejudices in this world.
Sofie leaned against the side of their covered wagon and chewed on a chunk of pickled meat, watching the wind ripple through the tall grasses of the Eterian plains. The meat had a strong vinegar flavor and was as salty as the ocean, but she''d take it over a lizard any day of the week. That was assuming this meat wasn''t from some giant lizard... Sofie stuffed that thought in a box and threw it into a mental closet, never to be opened again. This was garoph jerky, she told herself. Yeah. Definitely garoph meat.
The caravan had stopped for the day. They¡¯d left Begale eight days ago, making their way southwest towards the Stragman border. Two days ago, the desert sands had begun to transition into a multicolored grassland, and now all Sofie could see was a rainbow of grass and the occasional tree from horizon to horizon. One thing Sofie had never quite gotten over was the plant colors in this world. Looking at a small rise to the south, she could see purple grass, red grass, yellow grass, and even some black blades of grass, all mixed in with the normal green she was used to. Weren¡¯t plants green because of chlorophyll? How did the other grasses live?
Off in the distance, a small flock of birds took off for the skies, their territory disturbed by a particularly hyper catgirl with an abundance of energy to burn after a day of sitting still in a wagon. Keeping the child from going stir-crazy every day was primarily Sofie¡¯s task, and it consumed a great deal of her attention. She had to pull out every trick in the book to keep Pari from going out of control, from every game she could remember, to stories pulled from her childhood or just straight made up, and anything else she could think of, but she was scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point. It took a lot to keep a child from going crazy during a month-long journey. Yesterday she¡¯d been so desperate that she¡¯d even tried to teach the girl how to juggle, which, given that they were in a wagon at the time, had gone about as well as one might imagine.
A few more birds took flight closer to the convoy, and then several moments later Pari popped out of the tall grass, a variety of plants in her grasp. Every evening, once the convoy had stopped for the day, Pari would run off to explore the local area and return later with a collection of anything she found that she considered new or interesting. Today was no exception. The girl raced past Sofie and climbed into their wagon. After a series of clanks and clangs she emerged again, this time laden with her sack of candlemaking equipment, tottered over to Sofie, and sat down.
Sofie found what came next fascinating every time she watched it. The girl whipped out a series of equipment and set it up with practiced precision. Sofie recognized some of the ensemble, like the stone mortar and pestle that Pari was currently using to grind up some orange flowers, but some of the rest, like one series of metal tubes that seemed to twist around each other, were completely mystifying.
If somebody were to ask the girl what her favorite thing to do was, there was no doubt she would say ¡°making candles¡±. But what she actually did was something far different, some form of mad chemistry that used the inert properties of the wax to seal in various ingredients until released by the flame. This extreme candlemaking put her much closer to being an alchemist than a candlemaker, though Sofie wasn¡¯t sure that Pari understood just how different her version of candlemaking was.
The girl was on a constant search for new recipes for her candles, always experimenting with new ingredients she¡¯d find on their travels. Today that was the orange flowers, a few purple stems, and some sort of root she¡¯d dug up. Pari ground the flower petals into a paste before putting it in some sort of sieve and squeezing out the juices from the pulp.
Pari smelled the liquid collected in a small bone cup, her ears twitching as she sniffed it repeatedly. Sofie was convinced that the girl did most of her experimenting based off of smell, using her powerful nose to analyze the chemical contents of her materials and predict how best to combine them. Done sniffing, the girl poured the liquid into a hollow candle and mixed in several other ingredients from her sack. Sofie found it interesting how she used wax to store her ingredients as well, ripping open a small gap in the wax with her nails or a knife, pouring out however much she wanted, and then resealing the wax with her hands. Within a few minutes, the candle had been filled with this strange concoction, a wick had been inserted, and a wax cover had been placed on top, the warm wax melting just enough to seal the inside from the outside air.
¡°Pari, why did your grandfather teach you to make candles like this?¡± Sofie asked after a while.
¡°Grandfather says Pari¡¯s soul is the weakest,¡± the child replied with a depressed frown, her ears flat against her head. She snapped her fingers and a small flame, no bigger than a candle flame, appeared where the two fingers had pressed together. ¡°Grandfather taught Pari candlemaking to protect Pari because Pari can only do this.¡± The girl looked at the weak, pathetic flame with shame in her eyes, like she viewed herself as a disappointment.
¡°Awww, it¡¯s okay, sweetie,¡± Sofie said, giving the sad girl a warm hug. ¡°I can¡¯t even do that.¡±
¡°Really? Sofie-sis is weaker than Pari?¡±
¡°I can¡¯t even make a flame like you, and I¡¯ve been trying for weeks now. Maybe you could teach me later?¡±
¡°Okay! Pari will teach Sofie-sis to be strong like Pari!¡± the girl declared. That said, she picked up the container housing her newest experiment and shook the still-cooling candle from its container.
Sofie wondered where Pari¡¯s wax had come from as the child snapped her fingers, lighting the wick, and tossed the candle onto the ground a few feet away. A few second later, clouds of brown, noxious smoke suddenly spewed out from the candle, engulfing the two, their wagon, and some of the campsite beyond. Sofie coughed as a foul smell worse than anything she had ever experienced filled her nostrils. The world blurred as her eyes filled with tears. All this from some orange flower petals? Cries and coughs could be heard from elsewhere in the smoke as it spread through the camp.
¡°Smelly!¡± gagged Pari. ¡°Yuck!¡±
Sofie coughed again as she rubbed her face with her hands, feeling an oily residue on both. Oh lord, they were going to smell like this for hours.
¡°Pari! Sofie! Get over here!¡± came Arlette¡¯s angry, hacking shout from the other side of the wagon.
¡°Having indigestion again, Jaquet?¡± coughed Basilli. A loud thud followed. "Ow! That hurt!"
After what became known as the ¡°stinkcandle incident¡±, new rules were put in place. From that point forward, Pari had to do all her testing away from the campsite and downwind. Always downwind. Always.
Consciousness returned to Sofie slowly. She groaned. Her body hurt all over, her head most of all. Why did everything hurt? Her eyes snapped open as previous events came rushing back. Her hands shot to her face, searching for that horrible bug, but finding nothing. A breath of relief escaped her lips.
Picking herself up off the ground and looking about, Sofie found little to see except mist and a cliff face. It seemed like she¡¯d tumbled onto a ledge about five meters long sticking out from the wall. She shuddered to think of what could have happened if she¡¯d been anywhere else along that path.
¡°Hello?¡± she called upwards into the mist. The haze was too thick to see where she¡¯d fallen from, but the others would surely still be able to hear her. She waited for a response but none came. ¡°Arlette? Pari? Anybody?¡± Still nothing.
How long had she been out? I was still daytime, but she couldn¡¯t say more than that. She called out again, as loud as her lungs could manage, but once again only the birds and insects replied.
No, there was no way Arlette would just abandon her now. The mercenary tried to put up a hard front, but Sofie knew that there was a caring soul hiding beneath all that armor. Arlette was probably down in the valley below, combing the area for her at this very moment. Looking down, Sofie searched for a way to descend without breaking something. Luckily this was Stragma, and trees grew everywhere. Even the cliff side had small trees growing out of it that she could use to slowly make her way down. Cautiously she tested one, seeing if it could support her weight. The trunk bent under her, but held. Finally! A situation in this world where it paid to be thin!
As she ever-so-slowly made her way down to the forest floor, Sofie couldn¡¯t help but ponder if the others would come back for her. Were they working their way through the valley, on their way to find her, or had they just written her off and moved on? They were coming back, she decided after just a moment¡¯s consideration.
Basilli never seemed to care one way or the other and that hadn¡¯t changed, but detachment was pretty much his style with everything. He threw in a joke or a prank here and there to convince people that there were connections between him and others, but really he seemed to not care one way or the other what happened to people that weren¡¯t him. Still, he wouldn¡¯t rock the boat if the others wanted to come look for her.
Jaquet probably still wanted her gone, but he hadn''t been saying it out loud for a while now. Were it his call, Sofie would probably never see any of them again. But it wasn''t his call, and it seemed that he''d finally recognized that fact and started keeping his opinions to himself.
Arlette¡¯s decision was really all that mattered, and it was why Sofie was so certain that she¡¯d be seeing them all again quite soon. She¡¯d pondered many-a-time why the mercenary had put herself out on a limb for her so often, and had never been able to come up with a concrete reason. At first she¡¯d thought that, as much as the woman tried to hide it behind a gruff exterior, Arlette just cared too much to not help her. She still believed that was a large part of it, but as she¡¯d come to understand her savior better she¡¯d realized it was more complicated than that.
First of all, Arlette had given Sofie a promise that she¡¯d help Sofie get home in exchange for Sofie¡¯s help back in Poniren. At the time, Sofie hadn¡¯t understood just how seriously Arlette took her promises. The woman seemed to place a large amount of her self-worth on her ability to follow through on her commitments, no matter how large or small. Sofie admired that in her.
There was another thought, however, that had been creeping up on Sofie recently, one she couldn¡¯t dismiss out of hand ¡ª that Arlette kept her around because she was lonely. It was incredible just how little Sofie actually knew about the woman that was Arlette Demirt. As far as she could tell, nobody knew much about the woman, not even Jaquet. Such was the mercenary way, Sofie figured. Don¡¯t ask questions.
Still, for a person who¡¯d claimed she wasn¡¯t running from her past, she sure did go out of her way to avoid talking about it. But putting up all those walls around herself had just served to make her feel more isolated. Sofie¡¯d seen it several times now, when the woman had thought nobody was looking ¡ª that empty, forlorn gaze into the middle distance of somebody who felt like she was alone even amongst friends.
The valley¡¯s floor looked little different than much of the rest of the forest. Trees, ferns, ivy, and all sorts of other plants filled her view. Her eyes caught a strange shape lying on the ground not far from the cliff. Oh, it was the waterproof bag she¡¯d been given by the Stragmans back at the start of her journey. She¡¯d been holding it at the time of her... misstep... and it must have fallen off the ledge when she¡¯d landed.
She picked the item up, lifting it easily because it was empty. She¡¯d never had anything to put inside the bag, but had kept it around just in case it proved useful in the future. In comparison, Pari¡¯s bag was nearly overflowing with a random assortment of items she¡¯d collected as they made their way deeper into the forest.
Getting down without plummeting to her death had taken longer than she¡¯d planned. The light was fading. Now what? After a moment of contemplation, she decided that she needed to find a place to stay for the night before all the light was gone. Slowly, Sofie made her way deeper into the valley in search of a place to stay, and with luck, her friends.
The massive wall of metal loomed over her, but Sofie was far too excited to be intimidated by the foreboding ruin. It had been so long since she¡¯d spent those few days alone in that bunker inside a mountain in Kutrad that she¡¯d basically forgotten that there was more to this world than its barbaric medieval cultures. Here stood an undeniable reminder that civilization had existed here once, long ago. Not the pathetic attempts she¡¯d been dragged through so far, but real, true civilization.
Walking along the building, Sofie ran her hand along the worn metal in appreciation and awe. To make structures like this and that bunker which could survive the ravages of time was a monumentally impressive feat. She stiffened in shock as a door suddenly slid to the side, its gears squealing in protest against the passage of time, but it was what she saw inside that nearly blew her mind.
As she walked down the empty, lifeless halls, she could not get over just how much the inside of this building reminded her of a fancy office back on her world. Beneath the dust she found polished stone floors coated with some sort of epoxy. Glowing panels lit the rooms and hallways almost like rows of fluorescent lights back home. Many rooms had large, solid metal tables in their centers and long counters along the walls. Each room held strange contraptions, each different than the last. Some were on the middle table, others on the outside counters, and some large ones were even built into the walls of the rooms themselves. Many of the machines featured switches next to small diodes that shined an eerie blue light. Sofie was smart enough to keep her hands away from those.
A laboratory; that¡¯s what this was, she realized. This was a place of science. What kind, she could not say, but she couldn¡¯t help but feel warm in this place. Everything here, even those things that she could not recognize, felt so much more real to her than the crude wagons and stone walls of the world outside.
Sofie paused for a moment as she passed by an open door. This room was different, smaller than most of the others, with only a single large desk and a chair covered with what she believed had once been padding. On the desk sat a box very much like ones she''d seen in most of the other rooms. Some sort of computer, perhaps? Shutting the door behind her more out of habit than anything else, she bent over the desk and inspected the box on the desk closely.
The box was perhaps half a meter long and wide, with a rectangular crystal panel sticking out from the top at an angle. Looking around it, she spotted a switch with a blue diode on the back and toggled it. The diode shifted color to orange and the crystal panel at the top began to glow, but no matter how long she waited, nothing appeared. What a tease.
Looking around some more, another blue diode caught her eye down by her feet. Embedded into the side of the desk was some kind of panel with knobs and buttons on it, all next to a large lever. On a whim, she grabbed the lever and gave it a tug. To her surprise, it rotated and the entire panel swung out, revealing a cavity behind it. A safe!
Sofie peeked inside, not expecting to find anything, but instead found something boxy was sitting in the shadows in the back. Pulling it out, her jaw dropped to the floor. It was a large book! The first book she''d seen since that fateful day in the library!
All other thoughts forgotten, Sofie reverently placed the book on the desk. Most likely thanks to being inside the tightly sealed safe all these years, none of the pages had decomposed. It was as if the book had been printed just a few years ago.
Large, circular patterns decorated the cover. Carefully opening the book, Sofie realized that the patterns weren¡¯t decorations at all. Long complicated lines looped and twisted from the top of the page down to the bottom in vertical rows, sometimes throwing in the occasional sharp angle or two on their way down. The lines, once started at the top, rarely stopped until it reached the bottom, instead forming complex patterns that flow downward in one single unbroken trail of ink. The language of an ancient culture, long dead. Even though she couldn¡¯t make heads nor tails of it, Sofie found the scrawl-covered page to be the most beautiful thing she¡¯d ever seen.
Hours vanished as she turned the pages, her mind consumed by the book. Many pages were covered with the squirrelly writing, though she started to notice some patterns that popped up with frequency in the same spot in the upper left. Numbers? Dates perhaps? The rest of the book was filled with detailed drawings of various things covered in notes, including a map. The final third of the book was entirely writing and drawing of a plant, with many notes squeezed into the margins between the images, before the author simply stopped and left the final thirty or so pages blank. Strange.
She¡¯d turned back to the first few pages for a second look when she thought she heard a soft, muffled crash somewhere in the building. Was somebody out there? Another crash.
Quietly she closed the book, placed it inside her waterproof bag, and opened the office door. Immediately she picked up the sound of metal pounding against metal echoing down the halls. Keeping a lookout for anybody as she went, she moved cautiously towards the banging, until it suddenly stopped. As she crept closer, she could hear voices. Familiar voices. She ran the final few meters to towards the next doorway and peered inside.
¡°Oh, there you are!¡± she said in relief after rounding the corner and finding her two would-be rescuers. After all that time Sofie had begun to worry that she¡¯d been abandoned for real.
Her heart soared when she saw a Pari¡¯s dazzling smile. Putting out her arms, she caught her adopted sister as she jumped and swung her about in joy. How could she stay mad at that cute face? ¡°You little rascal!¡± she play scolded, pulling the child into a hug. ¡°What have I told you about shoving bugs in my face?¡±
¡°Pari sorry.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll forgive you this once, but don¡¯t do it ever again, okay?¡±
¡°Okay!¡± The little munchkin nuzzled up against Sofie¡¯s shoulder and began to purr, making Sofie want to never let her go.
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¡°Are you hurt?¡± asked Arlette. Right. She¡¯d been there too this whole time. Whoops.
¡°I¡¯m mostly alright,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°I got really lucky. Part of the cliff side juts out from the rest just beneath the mist. I hit my head and got knocked out and when I came to, you were all gone! I tried to climb back up but I couldn¡¯t make it so I had to climb down. It was really scary!¡±
¡°Well I¡¯m glad you¡¯re safe. Now let¡¯s get out of here.¡±
¡°Awwww, do we have to?¡±
Arlette stared at Sofie¡¯s disappointed face in disbelief. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me you actually like it here...¡±
¡°Are you kidding?¡± Sofie gushed. ¡°This place is the best place I¡¯ve seen since I came to this world! It¡¯s so nice and quiet! I feel so safe in here!¡± Come on, who wouldn¡¯t like this place? Sure it was dusty, but it was clean, and safe, with working lights and who knew what else!
¡°Of all the boneheaded, ignorant, crazy things that I have heard come out of your mouth since we first met, nothing even comes close to what you just said. This place is a waking nightmare. Now let¡¯s leave it while we still can.¡±
Sofie sighed. There were times when she thought she understood the mercenary, but the rest of the time, she felt like they were looking at two entirely different worlds. She had been about to tell Arlette about the book, but now decided not to. With that attitude, Arlette would probably say something about "stealing from the spirits" and make her put it back where she''d found it. She set Pari down and watched as she scurried over to her bag, purposely skirting a trashed machine lying on the floor.
¡°Oh?¡± she said. ¡°What happened here?¡±
¡°A big mean thing attacked Pari, but Arly-sis beat it up! Arly-sis was so cool! Arly-sis was like wham! Bam! Bang! Arly-sis is the best!¡±
¡°¡®Arly-sis?¡¯ Uh-ohhhhhh,¡± chuckled Sofie. She hadn¡¯t expected Pari to change her tune towards the other woman so quickly. She had to admit, she¡¯d felt a ping of jealousy mixed in with the happiness at the child¡¯s words. ¡°Looks like somebody got promoted. Welcome to the family, ¡®Arly¡¯.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you dare start calling me that.¡±
¡°Would never even think of doing such a thing, Madame Demirt.¡± Sofie was sooooo totally going to call her that. She stepped over to the crumpled metal contraption to get a closer look. A long hose protruded from one side, with a strange attachment on the end. She looked closer. Was that a brushroll? No. It couldn¡¯t be. She took a glance at the floor and noticed a single lane dust free, from where the machine lay going all the way back to the room¡¯s entrance. Right in front of the machine were a series of dirty footprints the size of a child¡¯s feet. It didn¡¯t take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. A snort fought its way out of her mouth against her will, followed by a giggle.
¡°Is... is this the big meanie that attacked you?¡± she asked Pari while doing her best to keep a straight face.
¡°Yes!¡±
"Was it trying to... snrk... suck you up the whole time so it could eat you?"
"Yes!"
Sofie couldn¡¯t hold it in any longer as she began to cackle uproariously, releasing all the worries and frustrations of the day in the form of breathless guffaws. With all the other differences between Scyria and Earth, it felt good to know that no matter where you were, cats were still afraid of vacuum cleaners.
¡°So, I don¡¯t really understand why they move so much,¡± Sofie said as she relaxed inside their borrowed house in Pholis. ¡°I get that they needed to leave Krose to avoid those giant, ugly, acid-spitting lizards, but why not just stay here? It¡¯s nice here.¡±
Basilli and Jaquet paused their drunken revelry for a moment at her question. ¡°Ya ever heard o¡¯ a komori?¡± Jaquet asked.
¡°No...¡± Sofie replied. The man¡¯s sadistic, knowing smile worried her.
¡°Wha¡¯ abou¡¯ a frog?¡±
¡°Sure...¡± she said warily.
¡°Ever seen a leech?¡±
"I know what they are," she replied with a slight shiver. She didn¡¯t like where this was headed.
¡°Imagine a leech tha¡¯ could jump like a frog.¡±
Sofie¡¯s face paled.
¡°Now imagine millions o¡¯ ¡®em migratin¡¯ through ¡®ere,¡± the man continued, leaning in for effect, ¡°dozens o¡¯ ¡®em jumpin¡¯ on ya, latchin¡¯ onto your skin with their sticky fee¡¯, and suckin¡¯ ou¡¯ every. las¡¯. drop.¡±
Nope nope nope nope nope nope. There was no way that was true. That had to be made up. Had to be. Such nightmares could never be real.
Sofie didn¡¯t even have to say a word. Her look of abject horror was enough to send the two drunken mercenaries into fits of hilarity. ¡°You think that¡¯s bad?¡± Basilli teased. ¡°Do you know why they move to Krose from Kukego in the first place?¡±
¡°No, and I don¡¯t want to know, thank you.¡±
¡°Insects, long and thin like ropes, with hundreds of legs.¡±
¡°No! Shut up!¡± Not centipedes! Sofie hated centipedes more than almost anything.
¡°A swarm leagues wide moves through Kukego every spring. Hundreds of millions of them, some the size of your arm, some bigger than this house, devouring every single living thing, plant or animal-¡±
¡°Shutupshutupshutup!¡±
¡°-They say that you can¡¯t even see the ground, the trees, or any other surface. All you can see is a writhing black mass, wriggling its way towards you-¡±
Sofie shrieked as the image of a mass of centipedes descending upon her, crawling all over her with their horrid little legs, and biting into her flesh with their terrible pincers played through her mind on loop.
The two men laughed twice as hard, the jerks.
¡°Look ou¡¯, they¡¯re gonna ge¡¯ ya!¡±
¡°Leave me alone you-¡±
Nobody heard her next words over the explosion, not even her. A massive tremor rocked the house and the entire structure swayed dangerously, as if it were thinking about falling in. Basilli and Jaquet raced outside, Jaquet brandishing his huge halberd, ready for a fight. Sofie followed, afraid the house was going to collapse, to find a giggling catgirl.
¡°Hehehehehehe boom! Heehehehehe.¡±
Strange, Sofie thought. Hadn''t there been another platform before?
Sofie rummaged through crates and sacks, pulling out bandages, leaves, and berries as per her instructions. Once her arms were full, she hurried over to a group of people tending to fires lit under large pots nearly half her height and deposited the materials nearby.
¡°Thank you, dearie,¡± said the gaunt middle-aged woman leading the group. ¡°That should be enough for now.¡±
The general leading this expedition had been kind enough to allow Sofie and Pari to tag along with the army¡¯s support staff, which was good, because there was no way in hell that Sofie was going to let herself get separated from Arlette after all she¡¯d been through to stay by the mercenary¡¯s side. Deep down inside her was this irrepressible certainty that if they split up, even for just a few days, she¡¯d never see Arlette again. So Sofie was coming along, no matter what. Even if it meant heading back out into that horrid jungle.
Sofie hadn¡¯t realized that an army of this size needed a lot of people who didn¡¯t actually fight to tag along. Right now, she, Pari, and the other non-combatants were camped out on a small hill, watching the rest of the army do battle off in the distance. The army was several kilometers away, but the sound of combat was so loud that they could all hear the carnage going down with disturbing clarity.
Other than a small group of soldiers tasked with guarding the support staff, everybody here was a Hollow. Much like the first trip through Stragma, Sofie had been able to feel the contempt that the soldiers had for the ones they called ¡°Shells¡±. Judging by the conversations she¡¯d had with some of those in the group, the life of a Hollow seemed a harsh one. You got the worst food, the pay was so low that it was almost an insult, and worst of all you had to obey non-Hollows and their orders no matter what. You had no control over your own life. If you were told that you had to put your life on pause and carry supplies from the northern border to Krose, for example, that was your new job and you couldn¡¯t refuse without severe consequences. Physical abuse of Hollows was generally outlawed, but there was an exception in place for cases of disobedience.
Arlette had downplayed it before, but Sofie didn¡¯t see too much of a difference between this and the slavery in Kutrad. Sure it wasn¡¯t a life of non-stop suffering, but you still had no real say in your own future. It was just a matter of degrees. Did a country with a good, wholesome society exist in this world? Eterium had seemed okay, but there was probably some terrible thing about it lurking below the surface, knowing her luck. Maybe Gustil?
Currently her task was to supply ingredients for a group of Hollows who were making some sort of paste and putting it on bandages to create a dressing that they said helped to ¡°keep evil spirits out¡±. In other words, these plants had anti-bacterial properties, and by mashing them up, boiling them, and putting them on the bandages, they could help prevent infection. Sofie was completely against the idea of this war, or any war, for that matter, but it did feel good to be able to help save lives. She could already spot some Stragman soldiers, too injured to fight but still able to walk, making their way towards her.
¡°Having fun, Pari?¡± she asked the girl. Pari was sitting near the others, mashing some leaves and berries into a paste between two stones.
¡°Bored,¡± came the reply.
¡°I know it¡¯s not very exciting, but you¡¯re helping people,¡± Sofie said as she sat down next to the child. ¡°I¡¯m sure it will be over soon.¡±
¡°Pari wants to make candles.¡±
¡°I know...¡± She ruffled the child¡¯s head just as several loud booms rumbled across the plain. She grimaced as she watched Drayhadan soldiers tumbling from their hurriedly constructed fortifications as the stone disintegrated under the powerful blasts of three boomcandles. ¡°Pari, look at me... We have to talk about something.¡±
¡°Nya?¡± said Pari as Sofie took her hands in her own.
¡°I worry that you sometimes don¡¯t seem to understand just how dangerous the candles you make can be. A bangcandle can really hurt somebody, and if it went off in the right position it could even kill somebody. And your new boomcandles are way worse. They¡¯re very deadly weapons, and you need to be very careful about how you make them and what they end up being used for.¡±
¡°But grandfather said that it¡¯s okay,¡± countered the confused catgirl. ¡°Grandfather said that if people die it¡¯s because people were too weak. Grandfather said that weak people deserve death.¡±
What the fuck? Sofie wished she could find this mystery person and give him a good slap or two. Who the hell would teach a child such a savage philosophy?
¡°I¡¯m sorry, but your grandfather is wrong. Life is very precious. Once it¡¯s gone, you can¡¯t get it back.¡±
¡°Grandfather isn¡¯t wrong!¡± Pari protested. ¡°Grandfather is super smart!¡±
¡°Pari, listen to me. Aren¡¯t I super weak?¡±
¡°Yes!¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t help but sigh at how quickly and readily Pari had agreed with that question.
¡°If I died, would you be sad? Or would you say it¡¯s okay that you¡¯d never see me again because I¡¯m weak?¡±
¡°B-but Pari doesn¡¯t want Sofie-sis to die,¡± the girl whimpered, her lip trembling at the thought. Sofie instinctively pulled the child into an embrace.
¡°That¡¯s why you have to protect life. I need to make sure that you understand that killing is bad. I¡¯m going to say this very clearly because it¡¯s very important. Don¡¯t kill people. Okay?¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
¡°Do you promise to be careful with your candles from now on? To make sure that they¡¯re not used for bad things?
¡°Pari promise.¡±
¡°Thank you, Pari. You¡¯ve made me a very happy sister. Now how about I go find a rock and we mash these up together, huh?¡±
¡°Okay!¡±
Sofie rose to her feet and wandered away, looking around for a rock of suitable size and heft to brandish. The land around her possessed an open beauty to it that really appealed to her after weeks of nothing but leaves, leaves, and more leaves. It was refreshing to see the sky again. A shame that everything was ruined by the butchery going on behind her. The cries of pain and bloodlust still filled the air as the Stragman army hounded the retreating Drayhadan troops. Then, without warning, everything fell silent.
Like the rest of those around her, Sofie turned back towards the battle, disturbed by the sudden hush. Something was wrong; tens of thousands of people weren¡¯t supposed to all go quiet simultaneously like that. What she saw upset her. Off in the distance, men and women on both sides had stopped moving, as if in a trance. The entirety of both armies stood motionless, still as pond water on a windless morning.
What was going on? Hushed, fearful discussions rose around her, urgency growing in the voices of the participants. Then everybody off in the distance fell over, as if they were all puppets with their strings cut, and those discussions turned into panic. Suddenly only a small group of guards was there to protect them in the middle of their greatest enemy¡¯s lands!
Almost as if on cue, rows of elven soldiers came into view, coming around the side of the hill. Sofie took off in the opposite direction like the rest, only to find more elves coming around the other side, their faces adorned with wicked grins and mocking eyes.
Where had these troops come from? The Stragman soldiers, outnumbered ten to one, were easily overwhelmed and within minutes the entire group had been surrounded. Sofie quailed when she saw the manacles the elves carried, but there was nothing she could do. Like the others, she and Pari surrendered with fear in their hearts.
¡°Filthy, tree-hugging savages,¡± spat one of the elven soldiers to another as they stood guard over the captured Hollows. Only several remained nearby, the rest having moved on to the unconscious Stragman Second Army. ¡°How dare they invade our lands?¡±
¡°Heh,¡± chuckled the other soldier, ¡°the entire battle went as Madam Esmae predicted. Nobody can withstand the Mother of Nightmares. They never stood a chance.¡±
Sofie was stunned. Looking back at the soldiers off in the distance, this time she spied carts filled with shackles. Lots of shackles. Enough to cuff an entire army. This had all been a trap.
As the Drayhadans marched the entire Second Army deeper into Esmae territory over the next several days, Sofie had nothing to do but ponder many questions. Who was this ¡°Mother of Nightmares¡±? Could one single person really be strong enough to take down an entire army on her own? How had this ¡°Madam Esmae¡±, whoever she was, known that they were coming far enough in advance to acquire the restraints needed to capture tens of thousands of people? Where were they going? Were Arlette and the others okay? Most importantly, what was going to happen to them? Those questions and more floated through her mind as she trudged along the plains, Pari thankfully by her side, but answers were much harder to come by.
At least just a little while later she got the answer to one question, as the prisoner of war procession came to a merciful halt at a large fortress. There she was herded into one of many large metal cages, along with dozens of others, and left for hours to bake in the hot summer sun. Her body felt weak from hunger, as the Drayhadans had only fed them all once a day, and very little food at that. Instead of giving in to despair, she put every last ounce of focus into soothing her adopted sister, holding her and petting her as best she could with bound hands.
The Drayhadans laughed at and mocked the miserable Stragman soldiers crammed into the pens, purposely eating food within their view and then throwing scraps into the cages when they were finished. Sofie couldn¡¯t understand why the two sides hated each other so much, but the enmity was plain as day to see.
The next day several soldiers came by, inspecting the cages, and stopped at the one with Sofie and Pari inside.
¡°That¡¯s her,¡± said one, pointing at Pari. Sofie immediately latched onto the child protectively. ¡°And there¡¯s the other one.¡±
¡°You two,¡± a more important-looking guard said, pointing at them both, ¡°follow me.¡± He unlocked the door to the cage and several other guards stepped in, waving swords around menacingly to keep anybody from getting thoughts about rushing the door.
Confused and frightened, the sisters obeyed, emerging from the cage into the courtyard and following the guard to a different area. There on the ground sat a large palanquin, big enough to hold perhaps ten people comfortably inside, and tall enough to stand in. The guard pulled out a large key chain and went through each until he found the one he was looking for, and then unlocked both their shackles. Another guard opened the palanquin¡¯s door.
¡°Please enter, miss,¡± the important-looking guard respectfully said, beckoning for them to do as he requested. Confused and frightened by these sudden developments, they did. To her shock, the three mercenaries were inside.
"You''re alright!" Sofie cried happily, giving Arlette an enthusiastic hug. "I was so worried when everyone just stopped and fell over like that! And then we got captured and I wasn''t sure I would ever see you again! What the hell happened, anyway?"
Arlette grunted in response, returning her hug with a lukewarm pat on the back, but didn¡¯t answer her question. Neither did the other two mercenaries.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Sofie asked, confused, as the door shut behind them. The palanquin rocked as it lifted off the ground, forcing her to take a seat.
¡°They¡¯re letting us go,¡± Arlette said. ¡°Taking us to the Eterian border.¡±
¡°What? But why? How? Why us?¡±
¡°We don¡¯ know,¡± replied Jaquet.
¡°Somebody must have pulled some strings to help us out,¡± chimed in Basilli, ¡°but none of us know who or why.¡±
¡°Still, shouldn¡¯t we be happy about this? It¡¯s gotta be better than being back there. They stuck us in a cage!¡±
¡°This is too suspicious,¡± Jaquet replied. ¡°Tha only reason we¡¯re bein¡¯ le¡¯ go is because somebody¡¯ll ge¡¯ somethin¡¯ from lettin¡¯ us go. Tha¡¯ doesn¡¯ mean they ¡®ave our bes¡¯ interests a¡¯ ¡®eart.¡±
¡°We¡¯re being used,¡± spat Arlette, arms crossed, a dour scowl on her face.
"Plus, what are we supposed to do once we''re in Eterium?" Basilli pointed out. "There''s still that bounty on us. If we make a break for Stragma again, the Stragmans won¡¯t trust us. Why would they believe that the Drayhadans just let us go, when the rest of the Second Army is still kept prisoner? They''ll probably treat us like spies or traitors."
Sofie¡¯s hopes fell. She hadn¡¯t thought about that. Basilli was correct ¡ª as suspicious as these developments looked to them, they would be even more suspicious in the eyes of the Stragmans.
No! She have herself a mental smack, straightening up in her seat. She refused to fall into despair. ¡°Well, we¡¯re still better off here than there,¡± she said, trying to rally the others¡¯ spirits. ¡°We have our freedom again. You have your weapons. We can still fight!¡±
Despite her efforts, for some reason her words could not reach them. Instead they just sighed and stared off into the middle distance, their minds preoccupied with something.
Sofie gave up for the moment, choosing instead to push aside the nearby curtain and watch the scenery pass by. The ride north to Eterium took far less time than a normal journey in this world. Four Feelers, probably trained for this very function, smoothly carried the palanquin as they ran for hours without stopping, their long powerful strides eating up kilometer after kilometer far faster than any garoph could.
¡°Are we close to the border yet?¡± Sofie asked hours later as the sun dipped below the horizon.
¡°The border is just on the other side of this small mountain range,¡± Arlette responded gloomily as she glanced outside to gauge their progress.
Sofie sighed as she watched Arlette glumly continue to stare out the window.
¡°Tell me about the flying things,¡± the mercenary suddenly said after minutes of silence. ¡°The ones you told Pari about.¡±
¡°Wha? Now?¡±
¡°Please.¡±
¡°Well... uh... we have this thing called an airplane,¡± Sofie began. ¡°Basically, um, it¡¯s a machine that moves through the air really fast. The air moving over the wings keeps it in the sky so it doesn¡¯t crash. People ride in them to go from one place to another really quickly. Uh... what else...¡±
¡°Are they just used to carry people?¡±
"I guess? I mean, they¡¯re used for shipping and war and stuff, but I-."
¡°What do they sound like? Like a swarm of giant rota beetles flapping their wings all at once?¡±
¡°No, they¡¯re more like a roaring sound. Well, I guess the old propeller planes would have sounded like that. They¡¯re not very common anymore... Look, why are you asking me this all of a sudden?¡±
Arlette¡¯s eyes shifted away and she didn¡¯t say anything.
¡°Because she saw something, I believe¡± Basilli said. ¡°And I¡¯d bet money it¡¯s the same thing I saw.¡±
Jaquet grunted and nodded.
"What do you mean?"
¡°I can¡¯t stop thinking about it,¡± Arlette began. ¡°I had just made it to the general¡¯s palanquin. I reached for the handle, to yank open the door, and suddenly I was... somewhere else. But it didn¡¯t feel like that at the time, like I had been taken some place. It was like I had always been there. Like being there was normal, and right...¡±
Slowly, haltingly, the three began to tell their story. Arlette took the lead, while the other mercenaries chimed in from time to time, all three of them seeming to have experienced the same thing. Sofie listed with puzzlement, unsure about what was going on at first, but the more they talked, the more a creeping realization began to form in the back of her mind. Her heart began to beat faster, her breaths becoming labored as their tale continued. It couldn¡¯t be... All this time, she¡¯d never even considered the possibility...
¡°I watched my friends and companions burn to death. I watched an entire city get destroyed by a creature far greater and scarier than anything I¡¯ve ever seen. But somehow this was many times worse than anything I¡¯ve ever experienced. The terror and helplessness I felt when I heard that terrible droning sound return... I still feel it now. It won¡¯t leave me. Maybe it will never-¡±
¡°T-the flag...¡± Sofie interrupted, her whole body shaking. ¡°Did you see it? D-did you see what was on it?¡±
¡°It was a... a red circle, with red lines coming out. I¡¯m not sure-¡±
¡°A sun,¡± Jaquet said with absolute certainty. ¡°Tha flag was a red sun.¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t breathe. Her heart pounded in her chest, ready to explode. Her whole body trembled as she connected the final dots in her mind. The giant metal birds, the eggs that spread fire everywhere they fell, and most of all that flag. They¡¯d somehow experienced a bombing raid in Japan during World War II. There was no other explanation that fit.
Somebody knew about World War II. About Japan. About things she''d read about in books, but only understood in general terms. All three of them had experienced the same events in the exact same way, like watching a movie. Like experiencing a memory. The memory of somebody who''d lived it. Somebody else. Somebody here.
She wasn¡¯t alone.
¡°Sofie-sis, don¡¯t cry,¡± Pari said, rubbing her head against Sofie¡¯s shoulder. She was crying? She touched her face and found it tear-soaked.
¡°We have to go back,¡± she said, the words barely making it out of her dry, constricted throat. ¡°Tell them to turn around!¡±
¡°They won¡¯ take orders from us,¡± replied Jaquet with a shake of his head. ¡°They won¡¯ le¡¯ us back in to Drayhadal after this, anyway.¡±
¡°But we need to go back! There¡¯s somebody else! Somebody like me! Somebody from my world!¡±
"I''m sorry, Sofie," Arlette said, "but we aren¡¯t elves. The Drayhadans are very strict about who they let in their country, and they aren''t going to allow us back in, probably ever."
¡°No! I have to go back! I-¡±
A several screams of pain cut off Sofie¡¯s pending tirade and the palanquin tumbled to the side and dropped, the windows on the left side shattering as they slammed into the ground. Sofie and the others were thrown into the broken glass. Sofie cried out as one large shard embedded itself into her left shoulder and several others cut into her side.
More screams came from outside, and the door to the vehicle, now opening towards the sky, was ripped off its hinges. Two people, a man and a woman, stood over the newly created hole, each holding a large bladder with a tube sticking out under their arm. Sofie had just enough time to note how much they reminded her of bagpipes before they each squeezed their bag and a yellow powder shot from the tube, filling the cabin. Sofie and the others coughed, and the world went dark.
Head throbbing and body sluggish, Sofie regained awareness in the gloom of a dungeon. Cold, hard, rough stone pressed against her back, her arms and neck chained to thick metal rings embedded into the wall. Around her she could make out the four others as they stirred as well. Arlette was across from her on the other side of the cell. To Sofie¡¯s left sat Basilli, and to the left of Arlette was Pari. Past those two stood a metal door, the only way in or out of the cell. To Arlette and Sofie¡¯s right, chained facing the door, was Jaquet. Unlike the others, who were bound by several shackles, Jaquet was practically mummified in thick metal restraints to the point where it looked like he couldn¡¯t even move.
¡°Everybody okay?¡± Sofie asked. A chorus of mumbles came back.
¡°What happened?¡± asked Pari. ¡°Pari¡¯s head hurts.¡±
¡°It looks like the other shoe dropped,¡± Sofie said. ¡°You guys were right.¡±
Arlette just grunted in reply.
¡°Anybody know where we-¡±
¡°Shhhh!¡± Arlette hissed, cutting Sofie off as the sound of a door opening reached their ears. The clacking of boots walking down stairs slowly grew in volume. Sofie wasn¡¯t sure but she believed that she could make out at least three people on their way down. The footsteps grew closer and closer, until they stopped just outside the door to their cell.
A panel on the door swung oven, revealing the shoulders and head of somebody looking in. The lighting was too dark to see more than a silhouette, but she guessed it was a man from the height and broad shoulders.
"It¡¯s been a long time, Miss Faredin." Miss Faredin? What? There was no "Faredin" here. But just as she was thinking that, Arlette''s head whipped up to look towards the door.
¡°No!¡± she cried when she heard the man¡¯s words, horror in her voice. She scrambled away from the door as much as the chains would allow. ¡°You can¡¯t be here! Why are you here?!¡±
¡°Come now, is that how you greet an old friend?¡± the man replied menacingly. ¡°You remember your etiquette lessons, don¡¯t you princess?¡±
Chapter 25
Arlette Faredin wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run. But it didn¡¯t matter what she wanted; her body wouldn¡¯t listen to her mind. It was paralyzed by the sight of this nightmare from her past.
The door swung open and the man strode in, confident and in control. Dressed in armor from the shoulders down, with a strong, handsome face and wavy blond hair, he was every bit the knight in shining armor he¡¯d been all those years ago, just on the mature end now. But that heartthrob appearance held no sway over Arlette. She knew what the man really was.
Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, the man walked closer and closer, enjoying the sight of her panic. His blue eyes pierced through her, peeling away at her defenses, his gaze reopening wounds she¡¯d thought had been healed for good. It was like she was a child again, powerless before him, and he knew it.
¡°Did you enjoy playing mercenary these last few years?¡± he asked.
¡°Sebastian!¡± She spat out the name like piece of rotten fruit, but he only smiled in return.
¡°Did you miss me?¡± he asked with a chuckle as he stood over her trembling form. ¡°I sure missed you, princess. I wanted to reintroduce myself so many times over the years, but it just never felt right, you know? After all, it wouldn¡¯t be enough to simply kill you. After what you did, I need to watch you crumble first. So I¡¯ve waited all these years for the proper time, and here we are! Almost everybody you¡¯ve ever cared about is dead and gone. You have nowhere to run. There¡¯s no handholds left to grab onto this time, princess. This time, you¡¯re falling all the way down, and you get to know that I was the one that pushed you.¡±
A derisive laugh from the opposite corner bounced off the cell walls. ¡°Ooooooh, sooooo scary!¡± mocked Basilli.
¡°Basilli, no!¡± Arlette cried.
¡°Cut the shit. I don¡¯t know what history you and Boss have, but we all know that¡¯s not what¡¯s going on here. You want the bounty, same as everybody else. You just want to stroke your ego first, that¡¯s all. I¡¯m sure you feel like a real man, standing over a person in chains like that. Real big shot.¡±
Sebastian¡¯s face grew dark as he turned away from Arlette and moved towards Basilli.
¡°Sebastian, no, please!¡± Arlette begged her captor. ¡°Your quarrel is with me, right? You hate me, right? He¡¯s nothing! He¡¯s not important!¡±
¡°The man has a point, princess,¡± Sebastian replied as he stalked over to Basilli, who stared at him defiantly. ¡°I can¡¯t have you thinking I only care about money and privilege. I¡¯m sure you know that the bounty is only for presenting all three of you alive.¡± Suddenly his hands shot out, grabbing the surprised Observer¡¯s head with surprising speed.
¡°Hey wai-¡± was all Basilli could muster before Sebastian roughly twisted Basilli¡¯s head around, far past the point a human neck could turn. A sickening snap resounded throughout the room. Basilli¡¯s body went limp, and a shocked silence fell upon the prisoners. Then the cell exploded with noise. Sofie screamed and wailed. Metal clanked and rattled as Jaquet fought mightily against his abundant restraints, muffled roars of rage coming from behind the metal covering his mouth.
¡°You fucking bastard!¡± Arlette cried, a helpless rage overflowing from her soul. She tugged at her chains with all her might, but they would not budge. She was powerless, unable to do anything but watch as he tore her life apart. Just like he had before.
¡°I hope that clears up any confusion,¡± the large man sneered. He motioned to several others outside. ¡°Take care of this trash.¡±
Arlette wanted to look away, but she couldn¡¯t. Her gaze wouldn¡¯t leave her dead companion¡¯s face. Basilli¡¯s head hung at an unnatural angle, his dead, glassy eyes staring at her, almost as if blaming her for his death. Her whole body shuddered under his silent accusation.
Two others entered the cell and freed Basilli¡¯s body from its shackles, before dragging the corpse from the room.
¡°It¡¯s a real shame that I won¡¯t be able to witness your death firsthand, but I have other responsibilities. I¡¯m sure you understand,¡± Sebastian said with a contemptuous grin as he casually strode back to the cell door. ¡°There¡¯s a storm brewing, princess. Shame you won¡¯t be around to see it.¡±
The door closed. On the other side of the cell, Sofie continued to weep loudly. Jaquet was still struggling with the mass of metal holding him down, making no progress but plenty of noise. But Arlette didn¡¯t hear any of that. All she could hear was Sebastian¡¯s haunting laughter echoing down the stairwell.
A cold, damp breeze blew through the fog, giving Arlette¡¯s legs goosebumps. She sat against the withered tree again. The gnarled trunk was cold to the touch, chilling Arlette to the core. Arlette sat in silence, her legs pulled up into her chest and her head buried into her knees. Eventually an annoyed sigh came from her side.
¡°Did you just call me here to watch you feel bad for yourself?¡± Peko asked. ¡°Because anybody can do that.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t say anything.
¡°I¡¯m serious. Remember back when you were a kid, and we got to have fun together? We¡¯d talk about anything and everything. We¡¯d run through the plains before dinner. We¡¯d tease the farm animals. Those were good times. Now all I do it sit and wait for something bad to happen to you, so I can tell you to stop beating yourself up about it. Then you ignore me and do it anyway, and we repeat the process the next time something happens.¡±
Arlette finally reacted, her head turning to face the imaginary man beside her.
¡°Oh, did I hit a nerve? That¡¯s because you know I¡¯m right. And while we¡¯re talking about things that I¡¯m right about, let¡¯s get this over with. This wasn¡¯t your fault any more than what Sebastian did back then. Basilli brought that on himself.¡±
¡°No,¡± Arlette said mournfully, ¡°he killed Basilli because of me. He killed him because he wanted to hurt me. He killed Basilli because he knew I cared.¡±
¡°That¡¯s... a bit of a stretch, isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°You know just as well as I do how Sebastian is. You saw the hate in his eyes. He wanted to make me suffer.¡±
¡°So, what, because some asshole is mad at you, anything he does is your fault? Get out of here. What are you going to do, never have another friend in your life? You going to split with Jaquet after all these years?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what to do,¡± Arlette admitted. ¡°I don¡¯t even know if it matters. We¡¯re all going to die soon anyway.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t give up just yet. It¡¯s a long way to Xoginia. You never know what could happen. You¡¯ve gotten through plenty of tough scrapes before.¡±
¡°This isn¡¯t like those other times. Sebastian doesn¡¯t make mistakes.¡±
Arlette, Sofie, and Pari sat inside a wagon, bound in chains like before. Outside, the convoy thundered north through the Eterian heartland. Axles squeaked and wooden wheels rattled. Garoph hooves pounded the dirt and vekkel claws ripped into the soil. The clicks and clacks of over thirty men and women clad in armor riding alongside the several wagons filled the air. Inside, however, it was relatively quiet, the silence of the defeated having fallen over the three.
Some time after Sebastian¡¯s departure, several people had entered and dosed them all with the same powder that had knocked them out before. They¡¯d woken up in a wagon already in transit, with Jaquet strapped in to a reinforced wagon all his own. Not one of them had spoken since.
Arlette remained lost in her thoughts. She felt completely and utterly demoralized by the events of the recent past. First the psychological trauma of the vision had drowned her in overwhelming waves of terror, then a ghost from her past had appeared out of nowhere to inflict crippling emotional pain upon her, and to top it all off, everything she¡¯d accomplished since the destruction of Zrukhora had been undone. She¡¯d lost. That was all there was to it. She¡¯d lost and Sebastian had won, like always. The thought left her empty.
Sofie, on the other hand, seemed to be overflowing with emotion. She hadn¡¯t stopped weeping since Basilli¡¯s death. She seemed to be a bundle of grief forever unraveling. Arlette recognized those overflowing emotions. The young woman had seen plenty of death since joining up with Arlette, but this was the first time somebody she¡¯d known had lost their life. The girl had always seemed lukewarm about the deceased Observer, but Arlette knew that the first time hit you hard regardless. She had been the same way when it had happened to her, year ago. Now that pain was more muted, pushed deeper inside but still real all the same.
Unlike Sofie, Pari had been surprisingly muted through the entire ordeal. She hadn¡¯t screamed or cried once since Basilli¡¯s death, and in fact spent a lot of time looking at Sofie in a puzzled manner.
¡°Why is Sofie-sis crying?¡± Pari asked eventually.
¡°Basilli- Basilli¡¯s gone. He¡¯s dead. We¡¯re all sad.¡±
¡°But why? Basilli was too weak. The bad man was stronger, so Basilli died. Grandfather says that the strong killing the weak is the way of the world.¡±
Arlette gave the beastgirl a disturbed glance. She''d always believed Pari to be a cute, ignorant little girl. A little feral, a little strange, but that was all. It was at this moment that she realized how off her assessment had been. It was now that Arlette realized just how little she understood of the savage child.
¡°Pari, we talked about this. Nothing about what happened there was natural. It¡¯s normal to feel sad about it.¡±
¡°But Sofie-sis didn¡¯t even like Basilli.¡±
¡°Pari! That doesn¡¯t mean I wanted him to die! He had so many years ahead of him! So much that he could have done...¡±
¡°Pari sorry.¡±
¡°It¡¯s okay, sweetie...¡±
Arlette rubbed her face with her hands. A bizarre little alchemist with a disturbing attitude towards murder, a girl who claimed to be from a different dimension and was somehow possibly telling the truth, and her, all stuck together in a wagon on a journey together towards their own doom. When was the last time she¡¯d had actual control over the course of her own life? It seemed like ages ago. Maybe she never had control. Maybe it had all just been a delusion. Something she¡¯d constructed so she wouldn¡¯t buckle under the weight of her own life.
The group settled back into silence for a little while before Sofie spoke again.
¡°So, uh, shouldn¡¯t we have one of those wakes for him? Like what you did for the others back in Poniren.¡±
Arlette grunted. There was a conspicuous lack of alcohol available, and wakes like that were supposed to be done by the survivors. She doubted that they counted as survivors at this point. But still, he deserved one like all the rest, and there likely wouldn¡¯t be a better time to do it anyway. ¡°Sure. Let¡¯s do it.¡±
Things went quiet for a moment as Arlette reached back into the past.
¡°Did he ever tell you how he ended up joining the Ivory Tears?¡± Sofie shook her head. ¡°It might surprise you, but he never actually wanted to join up with us.¡±
¡°What happened?¡±
¡°Several years ago, we took a job from the government of Begale. Every society has crime lords and whatnot, but Eterium had a particular problem ¡ª a certain crime lord had grown too powerful. They were known as the ¡°Hidden Shadow¡±. Nobody knows anything about them, not even their gender, but they were swallowing other crime lords left and right. Begale was where they¡¯d made the most headway, basically consuming all the crime in the city until every crime boss in town answered to them.
¡°Begale¡¯s head officials decided to knock them down a peg or two. Wipe some of their people out, take their stuff, create an environment where others would be able to challenge the Hidden Shadow. Show them who¡¯s still in charge. Now normally if you have a problem as the ruler of a city, you send some of the city watch out and they take care of the problem. But when you¡¯re dealing with organized crime, chances are half the guards are on the take, so instead you bring in people from outside. You bring in mercenaries.
¡°We were one of several bands that took the job. The plan was to strike this one compound at night, but a few hours before, somebody delivered a note to our inn warning us that it was a trap. It was. Without the details about the trap in the note, we probably would have all died that night.
¡°Two days later, Basilli showed up, bleeding from all over, asking for protection. I was skeptical but he knew everything written in the note, including details we didn¡¯t share with the others. He¡¯d been working as a double-agent for the city watch, playing the role of a mid-level criminal. When he learned about the trap he wanted to report it but he believed that people inside the government were compromised, so instead he reached out to us.
¡°He was right. The Hidden Shadow used their contacts inside the watch and figured out it was him. They tried to kill him four times while we were still in the city. Eventually we left Begale, and he had to come along or die. He had to leave his entire life behind. That¡¯s how he ended up stuck as a member of our band. And then...¡± Arlette let out a sigh. ¡°And then he died anyway.¡±
¡°I feel guilty now that I always thought he was a little skeezy,¡± sniffed Sofie. ¡°He always seemed to keep people at arm¡¯s length. Never wanted to open up, like he was hiding something.¡±
¡°Everybody thought that about him. Personally, I think somebody who¡¯s been in that kind of work is always going to be that way. He lived a life where he had to be somebody else on the outside every day, and I think he started seeing everybody else as being just like him, people hiding behind masks. I imagine that it¡¯s really difficult to let go of that suspicion once you¡¯ve latched on to it.¡±
Sofie began to weep again. ¡°And here I was, going to tattle on him because I overheard somebody called him ¡®Jakob Barabe¡¯ once. I¡¯m the worst.¡±
Arlette sighed. Now she knew why they always drank when they did this. This wasn¡¯t how it was supposed to go. Now they were both feeling even worse.
¡°To Basilli Inciar,¡± Arlette intoned mournfully, raising an empty hand as if it held a stein.
¡°To Basilli Inciar,¡± Sofie sobbed in reply, raising her hand to match, ¡°or Jakob Barabe, or whatever his real name was. May he rest in peace.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s talk about something else,¡± Sofie said, wiping the tears and mucus from her face. ¡°So... you¡¯re a princess?¡±
Arlette felt her soul go cold. She leveled a glare that could freeze the ocean at the young woman.
¡°I guess that explains why you know so much stuff about the world, huh?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not talking about it.¡±
¡°I just thought that maybe it would take our minds off of-¡±
¡°I said no! Don¡¯t ask again!¡±
¡°...Okay. I¡¯m sorry.¡±
The conversation lapsed once more, and silence reigned. Arlette sat there, rocking back and forth with the wagon, a soup of forlorn regret simmering inside her.
¡°I apologize,¡± she said an hour later. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t have yelled at you.¡±
¡°It¡¯s alright. You don¡¯t have to say anything you don¡¯t want to.¡±
¡°I have a request.¡±
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
¡°Yeah?¡±
¡°Tell me about your world. What was it called again?¡±
¡°Earth.¡±
¡°Like... dirt?¡±
¡°Yeah. Not very creative, I know.¡±
¡°I just... I want to hear about it. Please.¡±
¡°Pari wants to hear too!¡±
Sofie chuckled. "Okay, okay..." And so she began to talk. She talked about "supermarkets" and "microwaves" and hot fresh water that came out of tubes and other strange and wondrous things. She talked about government, and music, and everything and anything else that came to her mind. She talked for hours, her voice halting only rarely as she paused to think about what to talk of next.
Arlette had never been able to accept Sofie¡¯s fantasy world. Even as the evidence had mounted that there was something more to this than the insane ramblings of a girl detached from reality, the skeptic in her had always fought back and prevented her from really, truly believing in this place called ¡°Earth¡±. But at the moment that voice had gone silent. For just a little while, Arlette closed her eyes and listened to Sofie¡¯s words, trying to imagine the place the young woman described. For just a little while, Arlette wanted to believe. A world where people didn¡¯t live in fear of each other and the world around them. A world where people weren¡¯t subject to the whims of a powerful few. A world where people harnessed lightning every day, flew through the air, and lived long, fulfilling lives. For just a little while, Arlette wanted to believe that somewhere out there a world existed where she could have been truly happy.
As their unwilling journey back to Kutrad continued, the days fell into a routine. Every morning, a small loaf of bread was thrown at each of them, and they¡¯d get a drink from a mostly-clean bucket of water. That was to be their breakfast and their only meal until nightfall, when some more loaves would be tossed in their general direction. Arlette couldn¡¯t get a good glimpse of what they did with Jaquet. They were probably feeding him by hand, judging by the mocking laughter she¡¯d hear during mealtime coming from the wagon where he was being kept. There was no way they would let him move even a single arm to feed himself. That would be disastrous for them all.
They traveled throughout the day, rarely stopping for anything. They definitely didn¡¯t stop so that any of the prisoners could urinate or defecate, much to Sofie¡¯s horror. No, they let their prisoners do their business where they sat. At the end of the day, or when the smell became too much, a water Observer would spray down the wagon and the prisoners with blasts of water, removing the waste. Arlette found the entire experience profoundly humiliating. She was certain that this treatment was something Sebastian had directly ordered.
Speaking of Sebastian, the man seemed to lead a mercenary band these days, judging by the thirty men and women who protected the wagon from anybody who might get a dumb idea. She couldn¡¯t tell what band, though. None of the mercenaries wore anything with their band¡¯s emblem on it, and they never talked about it where Arlette could hear. This was undoubtedly another one of Sebastian¡¯s instructions. The man was meticulous in his planning. He wouldn¡¯t tip his hand any more than necessary, even to those about to die.
¡°Sofie-sis, I¡¯m bored,¡± Pari whined one afternoon as they approached the Kutrad border.
¡°Alright, let me think,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°Oh I know, remember how you were going to teach me to be strong like you? Let¡¯s do that!¡±
¡°Okay! Just watch Pari!¡±
¡°Pari, don¡¯t-¡± Arlette started to say, but it was too late.
Pari snapped her fingers, her face showing her concentration. Instead of a small flame appearing where her fingers had pressed together, nothing happened. Then the girl began to scream and writhe.
¡°Pari, what¡¯s wrong?¡± cried an alarmed Sofie. She reached her hands out towards the girl but the chains prevented her from getting close enough to touch.
¡°Hurt!¡± the beastgirl whimpered and tears of pain streamed down her face. ¡°Pari hurt!¡±
¡°Arlette, what¡¯s happening?¡±
Arlette sighed. ¡°These chains are made of tucrenyx. Did you ever wonder why Basilli didn¡¯t just melt away the chains when we were captured? Or why not a single Observer in the Second Army tried to do anything after being captured? It¡¯s because tucrenyx is an evil metal. It prevents anybody from Observing, instead bringing tremendous pain when anybody tries. I¡¯m sorry, I forgot you didn¡¯t know that. The pain goes away after a bit.¡±
¡°Did you hear that? It¡¯s going to be okay, Pari. Just breathe.¡±
¡°P-pari heard...¡± the girl gasped. Her breathing had already calmed down a little. The pain would be fully gone soon.
¡°So, what about Feelers like Jaquet?¡± Sofie asked. ¡°Does it not affect them?¡±
¡°Well it saps your soulforce little by little over time. Eventually anybody, be it Feeler or Observer, wouldn¡¯t be able to do anything until they¡¯d been freed. But other than that, no. Did you ever wonder why Jaquet is practically encased in metal right now? Anything less and he¡¯d be tearing himself free.¡±
¡°Nothing I do makes it hurt,¡± mumbled Sofie glumly. ¡°I guess I really don¡¯t have magic after all.¡±
None of it mattered anymore. The fights in the forests of Kutrad. The hushed, tense journey through the Deadlands. The calmer but anxious days at Lucas and Liela¡¯s home in Begale. The frenzied flight through the Eterian southwest. All of that might as well have never happened, Arlette mused as she stared at yet another dungeon ceiling, this one of the Kutrad variety.
In the end, she¡¯d ended up in a cell in Xoginia, the nation¡¯s capital, with the same fate she¡¯d been running from the whole time. The only difference now was that two innocent others had been roped in with them. Soon they would be paraded before hundreds of thousands of people, all braying for their execution for a crime they¡¯d never committed. Arlette had never believed that life was fair, but this took things to an absurd degree.
Everything had been one giant exercise in futility. She¡¯d been nothing more than a rat running inside a wheel ¡ª all that work for nothing more than the illusion of progress. Now for her efforts she was a rat in a cage, waiting to be exterminated. What a fool. She¡¯d not only let herself down, but everybody else as well. Her soul weighed heavy with the burden of her failures.
¡°Hey, is Jaquet okay?¡± Sofie asked from her spot to Arlette¡¯s left, bringing her back to the moment. The two of them sat along one wall while Pari and Jaquet sat along the other. To her left stood the cell¡¯s only entrance, a door made of metal bars that let somebody outside see everything in the cell without having to open the door.
Arlette grunted in response, a proper answer not something she had in her at the moment. Something was wrong with Jaquet. He didn¡¯t move, he didn¡¯t speak. He just laid there encased in his restraints. She couldn¡¯t even tell if he was breathing under all that metal. Maybe he was already dead. Maybe he¡¯d escaped in the only way that remained.
A series of footfalls broke her from her thoughts. They were coming to take her away, to throw her up in front of everybody, to end her life in humiliation and defeat. She had accepted that fact now. There was no struggle left.
The footsteps slowed, and a man came into view. He looked surprisingly average, really, with a moderately handsome face, slightly droopy eyes, short silver hair, and a thin, well-trimmed silver beard. A little taller than most, his body seemed fairly fit, with a slight chubbiness creeping in. In a crowd he would have blended right in. That is, once he discarded the crown, cape, and scepter. Iorweth Morgan. The man who¡¯d set everything in motion.
The man stared at them all for a moment before opening his mouth to speak. ¡°I wanted to come down here to apologize to you all,¡± he said. ¡°Your futures are not just, and that is my doing. But know that through this farce you have saved this country from ruin, and for that I shall always remember you. If you have any requests, you may speak them to me now.¡±
¡°Let these two go,¡± Arlette pleaded immediately, motioning to Sofie and Pari. ¡°They were never involved in this.¡±
¡°Arlette, what are you doing?¡± Sofie asked, alarmed.
¡°Getting you two out of this while I still can. You don¡¯t deserve to die here.¡±
¡°Neither do you!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, but they must join you in your fate,¡± the king said.
¡°What! But why? They¡¯re nobodies! Just people we ran across along the way!¡±
¡°They have use. With the death of third member of your group, others must take his place. This one will serve as proof that your conspiracy extends beyond what we knew, raising fears of a larger conspiracy lurking in the shadows,¡± he said, pointing at Sofie. ¡°Also, judging by the brand on her neck, the beastgirl must be a freed slave, which will be used to demonstrate your goals and motivations. As you Gustilians are well known for your desire to emancipate the slaves in this country, the people will believe the claim. They need an enemy to rally against, to triumph over. While I take no pleasure in this, such measures are necessary in these troubled times. Your sacrifice will allow Kutrad to unite for-¡±
¡°Fuck off, shitbag.¡±
Shocked at the sudden outburst, Morgan stumbled mid-sentence and stared at the young woman who had the audacity to interrupt a king.
¡°Unity?¡± Sofie fumed, incredulous. ¡°That¡¯s what all this was about? All that blood and pain and terror and anger was just so you could pull some false flag bullshit? Fuck you, you entitled little shit.¡±
¡°I understand your anger-¡±
¡°Shut your fucking trap!¡± Sofie spat. Arlette had never seen her like this before. ¡°You know full well that this whole thing is bullshit. You¡¯re not here for us, you¡¯re here for yourself. You¡¯re here to feel better about what you¡¯re doing. You¡¯re here so that when you lie down to sleep tonight you can tell yourself that you did what you could for us, you coward. You think that after you made our lives into a living hell for months you can just waltz in here and say you¡¯re sorry and everything is okay? Fuck. That.
¡°You¡¯re nothing but a fucking failure. You know what kind of countries have to try this kind of desperate crap? Failed states. Sad little dictatorships led by blustering strongmen clinging to power through fear and anger. The kind of people who go down in history as fucking jokes. That¡¯s who. That¡¯s all you are. A real leader would never pull this shit. A real leader wouldn¡¯t have to lie to his own people. But you¡¯re nothing like a real leader. So go soothe your feelings someplace else, you pathetic little man. Because if I hear another word out of you, I don¡¯t care how many chains are holding me down; I¡¯ll kick you in the balls so hard you¡¯ll fucking choke on them.¡±
For what felt like an eternity, the only sound anybody could hear were the huffs of Sofie¡¯s angry breaths. Arlette braced herself for the worst. You couldn¡¯t talk that way to a ruler of a country! But instead of signaling for guards to come punish the young woman, Morgan almost seemed to deflate. Finally he simply sighed.
¡°The executions will begin tomorrow morning,¡± he said as he turned away and left.
¡°What in the world was that?¡± demanded an incredulous Arlette once the king had retreated.
¡°I¡¯m not sorry. He deserved everything I said and more.¡± Sofie stated defiantly.
¡°But I might have been able to convince him to let you go. There¡¯s no reason why you should have to die with us.¡±
¡°He wouldn¡¯t have. People like him think of people like us as pieces in a game, not as human beings. Besides, even if you did, we¡¯d just end up as slaves again anyway, and I¡¯d rather die with you than be a slave again.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t deserve to die!¡±
¡°And you do?¡±
¡°I... it doesn¡¯t matter what I deserve anymore.¡±
The dungeon quieted down as Sofie¡¯s fury began to abate, and they settled into an awkward stillness again. Every so often, Sofie would chat with Pari, making sure the girl wasn¡¯t too frightened or upset, but Pari still seemed mostly oblivious to what was to come.
It was hard to know how many hours had passed since Sofie¡¯s eruption. There was no natural light to be seen, the damp stone lit by the light of a single torch and nothing more. With nothing else to do, Arlette began to spiral from a deep depression into bottomless despair, her mind going over every mistake, every decision, wondering where she had gone wrong in her life. She¡¯d never imagined that there was something even more terrible than death, but the long, silent wait for the inevitable was somehow worse. Nothing but time with which to contemplate your mortality, to stew in every self-recrimination, to reach out into the darkness looking for something, anything to grab on to and find only nothingness.
¡°I¡¯m scared,¡± Sofie whispered into the gloom.
¡°Me too,¡± Arlette replied.
¡°We¡¯re really going to die, aren¡¯t we?¡± the young woman sniffed. ¡°It never felt real to me until just now. This whole world in a lot of ways has never felt real to me. All this time, part of me has just been waiting for me to wake up, for this all to be a dream... but I¡¯m not going to wake up, am I.¡±
¡°...yeah...¡±
¡°Do you think anybody will mourn our deaths? Do you think they will give us a funeral like you gave your friends?¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t answer.
A cough pierced the silence. ¡°Arlette.¡±
Arlette¡¯s head shot up at the sound of Jaquet¡¯s voice. Something was off.
"Arlette... I''m sorry. I didn''t want this to happen."
"Jaquet, what''s wrong?"
"I didn''t want it to come to this. But I don''t have a choice anymore."
"What''s with your voice? What in the world are you going on-" The words died in her throat as her best friend, the one person who she''d always believed in, who had stood tall with her through thick and thin, began to shrink.
¡°No...¡± she begged. ¡°No, Jaquet, you aren¡¯t... you can¡¯t be one of...¡±
The man she¡¯d known as ¡°Jaquet¡± did not reply. The smaller, lithe elf working his way out of restraints meant for a Feeler twice his weight was all the answer that was needed. With a supple ease, the elf bent and twisted one last time and the last of his restraints fell to the floor, leaving him naked but free.
The world dropped out from beneath her. Life was empty. Everything was a lie. She¡¯d thought she¡¯d seen the bottom. She¡¯d been wrong.
Avoiding eye contact, the man she¡¯d once trusted more than anybody else walked towards the cell door. Putting his palms up to his mouth, he bit them deep enough to draw blood. Dark crimson liquid rushed from his hands, lashing and writhing about. He put his left hand against the back of the door, the blood flowing around to the other side where the keyhole would be. A soft click echoed off the stone walls, the elf pushed the door aside, and strode out into the hallway.
Several moments later, a hand reached around the doorway and tossed a large keyring onto the ground by her side. ¡°Live well, Arlette,¡± said a voice she didn¡¯t recognize. Then he was gone.
First it came out as a chuckle. Soon, it grew into a giggle, and then into a full-blown belly laugh. Tears fell from her cheeks like a river as the truth of her reality was uncovered, raw and undeniable. She was alone. She¡¯d always been alone. She¡¯d just never realized it.
Chapter 26
Arlette tossed the keys to Sofie and sprinted down the hallway after the man she¡¯d once called her friend. At the end of the hallway lined with cells, she came across a guard station. At first she thought it empty, but on closer inspection she found three dead bodies hidden away in a corner. All three had only a single mark on them, a puncture wound as thick as her thumb. Two had the holes in their foreheads while the other¡¯s was straight through her heart. The elf didn¡¯t fight like the Jaquet she knew, but it seemed he was just as deadly.
¡°We need to get moving,¡± said Peko behind her. ¡°There isn¡¯t much time before the alarm is raised.¡±
She turned around to find her imaginary friend standing behind her, a worried look on his face. ¡°You¡¯re out,¡± she observed.
¡°That¡¯s not important right now. You need to escape.¡±
¡°Later,¡± Arlette replied, looting a large dagger from the nearest corpse.
¡°Later? You can¡¯t be seriously thinking about what I think you¡¯re thinking about.¡±
¡°This is my one chance.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll never make it.¡±
¡°Then I¡¯ll go out how I want to, not how they want me to.¡±
The sounds of several pairs of feet on the cold stone floor made her tense up, but she quickly realized it was just Sofie and Pari. Peko vanished just as the pair entered the room, looking about in confusion.
¡°Who were you talking to?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°Nobody,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°You¡¯re just confused.¡±
¡°I am confused! What the hell is going on? Jaquet was an elf? Was it him the entire time? What was he doing here? Why did he-¡±
¡°Sofie, be quiet for a moment and listen,¡± Arlette interrupted, grabbing the other woman¡¯s shoulder with a tight grip. ¡°I want you and Pari to go find a place to hide yourselves down here. When I¡¯m done I¡¯ll come find you and we¡¯ll all get out of here together.¡±
¡°When you¡¯re done with what? What are you going to do?¡±
¡°I¡¯m going to end this.¡±
¡°You¡¯re going to... Arlette, no! You can¡¯t!¡±
¡°If I don¡¯t come back in a few hours then you two are on your own. I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°Arlette! Wait! This is crazy!¡±
Arlette paid no attention to the young woman¡¯s words as she dashed up the stairs towards the castle proper, a Kutrad female servant¡¯s outfit, along with another person¡¯s face, forming around her, hiding her filthy body from view. The castle¡¯s underbelly was immense, with not only dungeons but storage cellars branching out into the depths of the earth, but Arlette just kept going upwards until she emerged into a large chamber at ground level. The light of the three moons shone through the stained glass windows, adding to the torches hanging from the walls.
Arlette didn¡¯t know exactly where in the castle she was, but she did know where she needed to go. Up. Towards the back of the castle stood a tower, with the only way in or out being a stone bridge hanging high off the ground connecting it to the castle proper. The tower was guarded on the castle side of the bridge, as well as by others on the ground to make sure nobody could climb up its smooth stone sides. A Xoginian landmark known to the public as the King¡¯s Tower, it had been built with protection through maximum isolation in mind, and it got the job done. If you wanted to kill the King, you first had to fight your way into the castle. Then you had to fight your way through the castle. Finally you had to fight through the guards at the bridge, and then get into the tower itself. All that was a nearly impossible task for a single person.
Arlette, on the other hand, was already inside. Few people knew of her presence, and fewer still knew that she was free. If she could make it to the bridge unnoticed, then she had a shot. Take out the guards, cross the bridge, break into the tower, do the deed. If she failed... well then at least they¡¯d have nobody left for their little show.
Trying her best to play the part of a new servant, Arlette headed off in the general direction of her target. The castle was busier than she¡¯d expected for the night. Every so often another servant would hustle by, busy on some errand or another, but nobody paid her any mind. She smiled. The first rule of infiltration was just acting like you belonged.
Still, that only worked for so long. As she made her way higher and closer to her goal, the number of servants decreased, until she arrived on the top floor to find the area practically deserted. No matter how confident she acted, she stood out in the empty hallways. Keeping her steps as light as possible, Arlette continued working towards her destination, not entirely sure where exactly the bridge entrance was but fairly certain she was getting closer, when a harsh voice called out to her.
¡°Hey you!¡± the voice said, accusingly. She jumped slightly, spinning about to find an elderly male servant glaring at her. ¡°Are you the new girl? You were supposed to be up here an hour ago!¡±
¡°Uhhh, sorry,¡± Arlette replied meekly, doing her best to play the part she¡¯d been given. ¡°I, umm, got lost.¡±
¡°Everybody gets lost when they first start working here, but other people don¡¯t lose an hour from it. Might I suggest asking for help next time? Now come. We have many rooms to clean before daybreak.¡±
¡°Yes, sir...¡±
Arlette unwillingly followed the man as he led her down several hallways and into what appeared to be a conference room. ¡°Well?¡± he said. ¡°Don¡¯t just stand there, grab a broom and get sweeping!¡± Arlette was pretty sure she heard him muttering about ¡°the youth these days¡± under his breath. Unsure of what else she could do, Arlette complied, grabbing a nearby broom and beginning to sweep the smooth stone floor.
¡°Umm, sir...¡± she began, playing up the timidity.
¡°Call me Marlon,¡± the man replied, not looking up from his dusting.
¡°Yes, sir, uh-I mean Marlon, sir. Ummm, could you tell me about this floor? I¡¯ve never been up here before. What happens up here? Why are there so few servants?¡±
¡°This is the floor where the king does his business,¡± Marlon replied. ¡°Meeting rooms, offices, the Many chamber, that¡¯s all here. You won¡¯t find many servants up here for anything other than cleaning because not much happens up here at night. There¡¯s only you, me, and the guards up here right now.¡±
¡°There¡¯s guards up here? Where?¡±
¡°Down that way, by the bridge to the King¡¯s Tower, of course,¡± he elderly man said, waving dismissively towards a corner of the room.
¡°Are there a lot of guards there?¡±
The man eyed her, suddenly suspicious. Uh-oh. Had she pressed too hard?
¡°Why are you so curious about guards?¡± he asked.
¡°No reason, just making conversation,¡± Arlette replied.
¡°Come to think of it, wasn¡¯t the new girl supposed to be shorter than you?¡±
The blast of a horn shattered the castle¡¯s peace, it¡¯s alarming cry reverberating around the stone walls. The man¡¯s eyes went wide with fear.
¡°The alarm! You¡¯re not-¡± he gasped, turning to run. ¡°HELP!¡± Gua-¡±
The solid wooden broom handle caught Marlon across the head, knocking him to the floor unconscious with a single blow. Arlette stepped over him and ran down the hallways, heading in the direction the old man had indicated earlier. She knew now where to go, but all hope of stealth was now lost. Any hope of sneaking about was now gone.
Thinking quickly as she approached the bridge, Arlette took out her pilfered knife and covered it in her hand with an illusion of a feather duster to match her illusory outfit. Everything had to look the part for her upcoming plan to work. Blood splatter appeared on her immaterial clothes, while fake tears wet her fake face. The bridge would be around the next corner, she believed. Time to begin the show.
Arlette flung open the door to the bridge entranceway in a panic, her mind consumed by fear. On the other side of the door stood a chamber perhaps thirty paces long and forty paces wide. To her left she saw a door-less archway about thirty paces away, with the long stone bridge to the King¡¯s Tower visible on the other side. Between that arch and herself stood four very competent-looking soldiers, three of them with swords drawn and at the ready. She glanced back down the hallway, her wide eyes growing even wider, wild with terror. ¡°Save me!¡± she cried, stumbling towards them. ¡°He¡¯s coming! Please, you have to stop him!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t move!¡± one of the guards shouted as the four of them approached, their swords pointed in her direction. Each donning a cuirass and a helmet, they struck a compromise between protection and mobility, which was unfortunate for all involved. Were they fully armored and slow, she¡¯d have considered just making a break for the tower. As they were now, she¡¯d never outrun all four of them, which means she¡¯d have to kill them instead.
¡°He killed everybody! Please, I don¡¯t want to die! You have to help me!¡± she begged, clutching her feather duster in front of her chest like it was the only thing keeping her alive as she approached, the guard¡¯s orders failing to pierce through her panic.
¡°I said don¡¯t-¡±
The guard¡¯s shout cut itself short as Sebastian stepped through the doorway, his large armor covered in blood. He carried a huge sword in one hand and a severed head in the other as he leered at Arlette. ¡°Did you really think you could get away?¡± he laughed wickedly. ¡°My mission was just to kill the king, but it¡¯s so much more fun to just kill everybody, don¡¯t you agree?¡± The large knight held up the head in his hand for closer inspection. Arlette let out a piercing scream.
¡°Marlon, no!¡± one of the guards gasped. ¡°Bastard!¡±
Arlette retreated behind the guards as the three of them with swords rushed the large laughing man while the fourth stayed several paces back, a metal blade manifesting before her and launching forwards. A metal Observer! It made sense that she would be guarding the king. Such people were rare and powerful, as they could not only create deadly projectiles from thin air but also render others¡¯ blades soft and useless. It was a good thing, then, that she had her back turned towards Arlette at the moment.
The metal Observer¡¯s blade sailed through the illusory Sebastian at the same time as Arlette¡¯s hidden dagger pierced through his neck, slicing through veins and arteries as it plunged in between her vertebrae. The guard collapsed, her now-lifeless body limp, as shouts of confusion erupted from the three swordsmen as their weapons swept through the projection.
The dead guard¡¯s armor let out a loud clank as it impacted against the solid stone floor, causing the other guards to turn back, but Arlette was already in motion. Rushing towards the guard on the left, she went low while a doppelganger split off and launched itself at the guard¡¯s face. Like most people, the man instinctively reacted to the object heading towards his eyes over everything else, bringing his sword up to block the imaginary weapon of the false Arlette. Meanwhile, real Arlette lashed out with her leg, striking the man¡¯s knee from the side hard enough that it bent unnaturally to the side. The man cried out in pain as he toppled over, his cry cut short as Arlette buried her knife in his skull with one smooth motion. Two down.
Just as she was starting to think this would be easier than expected, a boot slammed into her ribcage. She heard cracking sounds coming from her side, and pain shot through her as she sprawled across the room. She coughed as she pushed herself to her hands and knees. It hurt to breathe. Luckily she¡¯d held on to her knife, she thought, before a glance revealed that the blade had snapped in half from the blow, with the other half still lodged in the second guard¡¯s skull.
This was much closer to what she¡¯d been expecting. No armor, no real weapon, with only her wits and the fact that she didn¡¯t care if she lived until tomorrow on her side. Pushing the pain aside, Arlette threw herself out of the way of an oncoming swing, but she wasn¡¯t fast enough. The guard¡¯s sword sliced a long cut down the side of her torso that didn¡¯t have crushed ribs. She clenched her teeth, turning what would have been an agonized scream into a pained moan.
Arlette made a break for the bridge, a copy splitting off in the other direction and heading for the door back into the castle. The two guards each took one Arlette for themselves, the one dealing with the real Arlette using his Feeler-enhanced speed to interpose himself between her and the bridge. But that had never been Arlette''s true intention. Suddenly changing direction, she dove for the sword lying on the ground beside the body of the guard she''d last killed, grabbing it with her free right hand and rolling to one knee and raising the blade up just in time to parry her opponent''s hurried incoming blow. The force nearly knocked the weapon from her grip, but she held on through will and adrenaline alone.
Overextended, the guard lashed out with a desperate but powerful kick, but Arlette was already rolling to the side. The man¡¯s foot whooshed by her shoulder as her roll took her to his side. With as much force as she could muster, she thrust her sword upwards, piercing into her opponent¡¯s side just under the bottom of his cuirass and stabbing up behind his ribs and towards his heart. His body jerked as her blade struck home, his last words a wet gurgle as he collapsed.
Arlette breathed a sigh of relief. If she¡¯d been even a fraction of a moment later on either her parry or her dodge, she¡¯d likely be dead. She thanked her second father for the many days he¡¯d spent training such reflexes into her.
A subtle movement to her left told her that such relief was premature. Releasing her grip on the sword, which was still stuck in her former opponent¡¯s side, she rolled to the side just as the last guard¡¯s blade passed through where she¡¯d just been. She swayed unsteadily to her feet and steadied herself before sprinting towards the final guard, a doppelganger splitting from her like always. Just like last time, she went low while her fake partner went high. The guard brought his sword up to pierce the doppelganger, and Arlette smiled. Every time. It was almost too ea-
A blast of water slammed into her face, knocking her off balance. She stumbled. A Weaver, she realized as she caught herself. A rare type of person with enough talent or training to be both a Feeler and an Observer. Sometimes neither aspect would be strong enough to matter, or they wouldn¡¯t be able to utilize both well enough simultaneously to matter. But those that could were people to be feared on the battlefield. Many of the most legendary warriors had been Weavers who were able to combine their two skills in synergistic ways that made them nigh-unstoppable. This man was no legendary warrior, but he was good enough to pose a problem. He seemed to use water to knock his enemies off balance, a seemingly small thing that with proper timing could completely shift a fight.
The guard advanced, his weapon at the ready, a large sphere of water forming by his side. Arlette rushed back in to meet him, this time going for his right side while the clone went for the left, both aiming for his legs. Once again, the man chose the wrong target, swinging his blade towards the illusion. Arlette spun away from the expected blast of water aiming for her, only to be caught by a second unexpected blast she hadn¡¯t seen. Already off balance from the dodge, the unexpected push sent her staggering out of control. She twisted away from the Weaver but he was already attacking, his sword thrusting towards her left leg.
Time seemed to slow as Arlette realized that she wouldn¡¯t be able to completely avoid his attack. Normally she¡¯d spin or dodge as best she could, lessening the damage and continuing the battle. But today was different. Today time was of the essence, and she wasn¡¯t expecting to be alive much longer anyway. So instead she took it head on, moving her leg slightly so the blade would strike directly into her thigh. The blade stabbed into the muscle with a sickening squelch, piercing all the way through and out the other side. Arlette growled in agony and squeezed her thigh as hard as she could. The blade became stuck, lodged deep in the muscle. It was only for a second, but that was all she needed.
Launching herself at him with her good leg, Arlette rammed her broken knife into the guard¡¯s neck as hard as she could. The man¡¯s body spasmed, but he did not fall, so she ripped it out and did it again and again, the jagged, broken blade ripping and slicing through his flesh.
Finally he fell, and she followed, her body spent for the moment. Laying on the cold stone, panting, she took a mental survey of the damage to her body. Blood oozed from the many cuts around her body. A good number of her ribs were likely broken, judging by the pain in her side. Oh, and she had a sword still sticking through her thigh. Everything hurt. Even breathing. Especially breathing. But she¡¯d made it through. She was one step closer to her revenge.
With a series of grunts, Arlette worked the final guard¡¯s sword from her thigh. Struggling to her feet, she took a moment to cut off some of the guards¡¯ uniforms and use them as makeshift bandages, tying them around her waist and leg.
¡°There you are!¡± cried a familiar voice. Arlette turned to find Sofie and Pari crossing through the doorway, Pari¡¯s large sack slung over her shoulder. The young woman¡¯s eyes went wide at the sight of the carnage around room, her gaze settling on Arlette¡¯s bleeding wounds. ¡°Oh God! What happened here?! Are you okay? You look terrible!¡±
¡°What are you doing here?¡± Arlette demanded, ignoring the questions. ¡°I told you to go hide!¡±
¡°They found out that we escaped. Luckily we found our stuff in a room near the cells,¡± Sofie replied, clutching her own waterproof bag she¡¯d gotten in Stragma. ¡°We set off some of Pari¡¯s stinkbombs and ran away. We even threw several out a window towards the wall. Hopefully they¡¯ll think we tried to escape in that direction. Then we just followed your smell here. It took time because we had to hide and avoid everybody. What are you doing here? We need to get away! Look at yourself!¡±
¡°Shit!¡± Arlette swore as she turned and dashed towards the bridge that connected to the King¡¯s Tower. Sofie and Pari¡¯s unexpected appearance had distracted her from her goal. Any time now reinforcements would arrive, and any chance of success would disappear with them.
Arlette¡¯s ears picked up cries from below as she sprinted across the long, thin stone archway. If somehow nobody was on their way before, they definitely were now. She ducked and dodged as she crossed the bridge, avoiding a series of desperate shots from the guards below. Soon she arrived at the other side, the bridge widening as it approached the tower.
The door to the tower loomed over her, easily three times her height. She stepped up and grabbed the large metal rings sticking out of the middle and tugged with all her might. Nothing moved. Switching tactics, she pushed against the massive thing instead. Still, the door wouldn¡¯t budge.
¡°FUCK!¡± she screamed, slamming her clenched fist against the wood. To make it this far, only to be stymied by a door? Was that how she was going to go out? She turned around to find that Sofie and Pari had followed her and were nearly across. The sight of the beastgirl¡¯s sack got Arlette¡¯s mind churning. Made of thick pieces of wood reinforced by bands of metal, the towering door looked like it could take some serious punishment. But it was still mostly wood, and wood had its limits.
¡°Pari, do you have any boomcandles left?¡± she called.
¡°Pari has... two left!¡± the girl said after a moment of thought.
¡°Give them to me,¡± Arlette said, holding her hands out. The beastgirl did as requested.
After a moment of concentration, a Arlette manifested a small flame in the air before her. With it, she lit the candle in her right hand and threw it back towards the other end of the bridge. The candle bounced and rolled down the stone walkway, coming to rest about two thirds of the way to the other side. Before the wick had fully burned, she lit the other candle and placed it beside the door and ran.
¡°What are you, crazy?!¡± Sofie exclaimed as she sprinted after her.
¡°Get down!¡± Arlette cried, diving flat onto the bridge. A thunderous crack erupted from the first candle, the force of the explosion pulverizing the nearby solid stone into small pebbles. The arch broken, the bridge became unstable. Cracks began to form as the remaining bridge struggled to maintain its form against the ceaseless pull of gravity. Then the second blast came.
Arlette sprinted back towards the remains of the tower¡¯s giant door as the bridge shook and began to collapse behind her. The area around the door, being at the end of the bridge, was much wider and thicker. The only visible damage to that part of the bridge was a crater several paces wide. The door, on the other hand, was mostly gone, the wood reduced to splinters by the explosion.
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Without missing a step, Arlette leapt across the hole and into the tower. The room inside, which appeared to be a reading room of some kind, had been utterly trashed by the blast. Pieces of wooden shrapnel were strewn about the floor and lodged in furniture. Her sight focused in on the king, leaning against a table across the room. A splinter of wood half the length of Arlette¡¯s arm stuck out from the man¡¯s leg, and blood dripped from several cuts on his body.
Arlette¡¯s vision went red. She rushed forward, pushing her body, weak, tired, and injured, as hard as it could handle. The king, a panicked look in his eyes, stared at the floor and several pieces of wood rose into the air and launched themselves towards her. Arlette didn¡¯t try to dodge. She raised her arms up to cover her head and neck, refusing to alter course. She felt the wood pierce her arms and chest, but she felt no pain. Pain could come later.
Her body collided with the king¡¯s, knocking him down onto his back, and then she was upon him, straddling his torso, his arms pinned beneath her knees. Her right fist lashed out, catching the man in the mouth. She felt her knuckles slice open on the man¡¯s teeth but she paid it no mind.
¡°Give them back!¡± she howled.
Her left fist fell like a hammer upon his face. She felt his nose break.
¡°Give back Lilybeth!¡±
Her right fist slammed into the man¡¯s eye, fracturing the orbital bone and visibly caving in his face.
¡°Give back Olaf!¡±
Her left again, striking him in the mouth once more.
¡°Give back Telephus!¡±
Another blow.
¡°Give back Gretel!¡±
Another.
¡°Give back Adron!¡±
Another still.
¡°Give back Tayt! And Virdisa! And Kunjana! And Vingon! And Raka!¡±
Arlette¡¯s tears and fists fell equally upon the King of Kutrad like rain as she unleashed everything she had onto him. Every grievance. Every agony. Every wound to her soul.
¡°Give back Basilli! Give back Jaquet! Damn you!¡±
She ripped one of the wooden splinters from her shoulder, bringing the dagger-sized piece up above her head.
¡°GIVE ME BACK MY LIFE!¡±
She plunged the makeshift weapon down towards the man¡¯s heart.
¡°Arlette, stop!¡±
The wooden spike halted as two hands grabbed her arms and held them still. Try as she might, Arlette could not shake free of Sofie¡¯s grip.
¡°Sofie, what are you doing?¡± Arlette cried. ¡°He needs to die!¡±
¡°I¡¯m saving you from making a terrible mistake,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°Don¡¯t kill him.¡±
¡°No!¡± she hollered. ¡°He has to die! He deserves to die!¡±
¡°Nobody deserves to die,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°If anybody did, he would be one, yes. But that doesn¡¯t change the fact that you can¡¯t kill him. If you kill him they¡¯ll hunt us to the ends of the earth. We¡¯ll never be free.¡±
Arlette cackled. ¡°There is no freedom for us anymore. There is only death.¡±
Arlette¡¯s face stung as Sofie palm struck her cheek.
¡°Stop it!¡± Sofie shouted. ¡°I refuse to believe that the strong and proud woman whom I admire is just giving up like this! We¡¯re going to get out of here.¡±
¡°W-what-¡± Arlette faltered. ¡°What do we do? How do we get out of this?¡±
¡°Leave this to me,¡± Sofie said, a rock-hard look of determination on her face. She squatted beside King Morgan¡¯s head as Arlette stood back up. The king¡¯s face looked like it had been trampled by stampeding garophs. His teeth had been knocked in, while his jaw had been broken in at least two places. His nose stuck out to the side at an unnatural angle, and most of the rest of his face was battered and swelling. His eyes were barely lucid, as if he were drifting in and out.
¡°Don¡¯t go losing consciousness on us now,¡± Sofie said, smacking the king¡¯s face with the back of her hand. ¡°We need you here.¡±
The man¡¯s eyes regained focus. He mumbled something. Sofie grabbed his broken mouth roughly, eliciting a moan of pain.
¡°Nuh-uh-uh,¡± Sofie chided. ¡°Don¡¯t say another word. You don¡¯t get to speak right now. You just get to listen, and nod. Understood?¡±
The two stared each others in the eyes for a tense moment before the king eventually nodded.
¡°Alright. Here¡¯s the deal,¡± Sofie stated, confident and in control, her hand still gripping the king¡¯s busted jaw and mouth. ¡°You¡¯re going to do what I say, and in return you¡¯ll still be breathing when we leave. Don¡¯t think about going against us on this. Got it?¡±
Nod.
¡°Excellent. It¡¯s simple, really. You¡¯re going to leave us alone. We¡¯re going to walk out of this castle, leave this city, go to Eterium, and never come back. Nobody comes after us. Nobody tries to kill us or capture us. No bounties. No assassins. The old bounty on her head, if it even still exists after we got captured, that goes away too. And don¡¯t you dare even consider backstabbing us over anything I just said. Because you know what this woman can do,¡± she said, jabbing a thumb in Arlette¡¯s general direction.
¡°See, the thing is, all this time we¡¯ve been on the back foot. Everything was a mess with the attack on Zrukhora, and then you blindsided us with your bullshit, and we never got our balance back. But this time we¡¯ll be ready. We¡¯ll prepare. We¡¯ll have plans. You can¡¯t stop somebody like her when she¡¯s coming for you with a plan. She can be anybody, anywhere. You think you¡¯ll be able to function when you know that any person around you, even your most trusted adviser, might just be waiting for you to turn your back? You won¡¯t. Nobody can live like that. And if you try to just hide away from everybody in this sad little tower, we¡¯ll bring the whole thing down with you inside. So this is your one and only chance. Everybody walks away and it¡¯s over. This is the best deal you¡¯re going to get. Understood?¡±
The man stared at Sofie for a second, his breath hissing through his wrecked teeth, before slowly nodding.
¡°Good boy. Now where¡¯s the exit?¡±
¡°We blew up the exit,¡± Arlette said, peeking out of the gaping hole where the door used to be. Shouts had been coming from outside for a little while now. A mass of guards had congregated on the other side of the bridge, arguing about something. It seemed that they¡¯d decided to rebuild the bridge as best they could, with two people on their hands and knees slowly extending the remaining stone towards the tower. Several others had tried leaping the chasm. The distance was too great for even their Feeler-enhanced abilities, but soon that would change. ¡°We don¡¯t have much time left.¡±
¡°There¡¯s a secret exit here. Has to be,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°No way they would build a place like this with only one way in or out. You have to be able to run away somehow. Right?¡± She glared at the king.
He shook his head.
¡°Don¡¯t lie to me,¡± Sofie growled through clenched teeth, her hand squeezing the man¡¯s busted jaw until he squirmed with pain. ¡°Is there a secret exit?¡±
A nod.
¡°Where?¡±
The king pointed to a seemingly non-descript wall. Arlette strode over to it and began to inspect it, feeling around on the solid stone. The surface was immaculate, with not a single crack visible. Was there really an exit here? Suddenly a small part of the wall, no more than half the size of her palm, tilted inward from her pressure. There was a hidden little hole inside, with just enough room for her to grab a handhold and pull. Grunting with effort Arlette watched as a large stone slab about half her height rotated out, revealing a passageway hidden behind it. She couldn¡¯t help but be impressed by the craftsmanship. To think that this entire section had been separate from the rest of the solid stone tower! She hadn¡¯t even been able to see a seam where the two pieces had met!
¡°Awesome,¡± Sofie said, holding her bag out towards Pari, who had just been watching the guards outside. ¡°Pari, quickly go and put everything shiny that you see into this bag. Be quick!¡±
¡°We¡¯re looting him now, too?¡±
¡°Fuck yes, we¡¯re looting the bastard. We¡¯re getting something positive out of this.¡±
¡°The guards will be here any second. If we¡¯re going to go we need to go now.¡±
¡°Okay, one second. There¡¯s only last thing I need to do. Pari! Go be with Arlette now.¡±
The beastgirl scampered over, Sofie¡¯s bag now heavy with an assortment of gold and silver items from around the chamber, while Sofie strode calmly back over to the incapacitated ruler. Her leg cocked back and swung forward, slamming into the man¡¯s groin. A pained gasp escaped his lips and he rolled about in agony.
¡°That was for what you did to us,¡± she said.
Her leg pulled back again, and once more drove her foot into his crotch. Then again. And again. King Morgan tried to curl into ball to protect himself but Sofie grabbed his legs, turn him onto his back, yanked his legs apart, and stomped down onto his privates with as much force as she could muster before raising her foot up and pounding it down over and over.
¡°And that,¡± she told the whimpering man, loathing dripping from every syllable, ¡°is for allowing slavery.¡±
Arlette watched in amazement as the young woman marched back to the hidden exit, grabbed her bag, and climbed inside. ¡°I¡¯m done,¡± she said. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±
Arlette and Pari followed her in, ducking through the hole. Before they pulled the stone back into place, Pari pulled out a small candle, lit it, and tossed it back into the room with a mischevious giggle.
"Pari! Be careful to not waste your candles like that!" Sofie warned.
"No! The bad man made Arly-sis cry! Pari hates bad man! Pari will make bad man smelly!" she declared as smoke began to pour from the wax cylinder.
The three of them hurriedly moved the stone back into its slot before the stinkcandle¡¯s noxious smoke could reach them, and everything went dark. Pari snapped her fingers again, lighting the room with the soft glow of a small flame, and they headed out. The passageway wound down the tower and even deeper into the earth before flattening out into a long tunnel. The trio traversed the tunnel in silence, unwilling to make a sound in the gloom when they couldn¡¯t see more than ten paces into the darkness. The tunnel just kept going and going, with nothing to see but more of its smooth stone walls.
After what felt like hours, the tunnel rose and terminated in a heavy stone doorway. It took all three of them pushing to open the exit, but eventually the weighty thing opened and the group stumbled out to find themselves surrounded by trees.
¡°This is... a forest? Are we completely out of the city?¡± Sofie asked in surprise.
¡°Makes sense,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°A tunnel like that would be made for a situation where the whole city has fallen. So the king can escape.¡±
¡°So he can run away and leave everybody behind, you mean,¡± Sofie grunted as they pushed the door back into place. The outside was disguised as part of a rock face, making it nearly unnoticeable once closed. Once again Arlette couldn¡¯t help but admire the person who¡¯d made such quality work. ¡°Anyway, if we¡¯re out of the city, we should stop and take a break for a while.¡±
¡°No, we need to keep moving,¡± Arlette argued. ¡°There¡¯s no way he¡¯ll keep his side of the deal. We need to find a place to hide.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think you realized just how bad you look, Arlette,¡± Sofie countered. ¡°You¡¯re pale as a ghost and you look like you¡¯re going to fall over any second now. You even still have some of that wood sticking out of you.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll be fine,¡± insisted Arlette. ¡°I can keep going.¡±
A small pair of hands placed themselves flat against the side of her hip. Arlette looked down to find that Pari had snuck up on her, just as the little girl shoved as hard as she could. Despite her best efforts, Arlette staggered and fell against a nearby tree. The world spun slightly and her heart pounded in her ears.
"If Arly-sis can''t stand against Pari''s push, Arly-sis is tired."
Arlette slowly sunk down against the tree trunk in defeat with a sigh. Sofie had a point. Now that the immediate danger seemed over, the pain and exhaustion she¡¯d been ignoring for the last few hours was all coming back even stronger than before. She grabbed one of the remaining slivers and yanked it from her shoulder with a gasp, panting as more pain coursed through her. With a tired grunt of her own, Sofie sat down beside her, dropping her bag of purloined goods between them.
¡°Seriously though,¡± Arlette said as she opened the bag to see what Pari had considered worth taking, ¡°you challenged a king. He won¡¯t take that lightly. He agreed to what you said only under the threat of death. He¡¯ll be sending people after us soon, if he hasn¡¯t already.¡± A small variety of gold and silver items, like goblets and candlesticks, made up the vast majority of the haul. Arlette noticed a dark glint coming from under one of the cups and reached into to pull out, to her surprise, a crystal decanter filled with liquor. She smiled as she undid the stopper and took a large gulp. The spirits poured down her gullet, stinging all the way down. The first alcoholic beverage in almost half a season. It felt good.
¡°He won¡¯t do anything,¡± Sofie scoffed. ¡°I¡¯m sure of it.¡±
¡°How can you be so sure?¡±
¡°Because he¡¯s a coward. It¡¯s that simple. He wouldn¡¯t do it unless he was absolutely sure it would succeed, and given how we escaped both the first time and just now, he knows there¡¯s no guarantee we won¡¯t survive whatever he tried next. And he knows what I said was true ¡ª if we put our mind to it, with your powers and Pari¡¯s candles, there¡¯s no way he¡¯d be able to stop us from killing him.¡±
¡°Sofie, what¡¯s gotten into you?¡± Arlette asked after another swig. She could feel the welcome buzz of inebriation creeping into her mind. ¡°It¡¯s like you¡¯re a totally different person all of a sudden.¡±
¡°I...¡± Sofie began before leaning back and staring into the sky for a moment in contemplation. Only the sounds of the birds and Pari rummaging through a nearby bush reached Arlette¡¯s ears. Arlette closed her eyes and drank in the peace. There had been a lot of quiet in the past days, but this was a different kind of quiet. One that lacked the ominous undertones of the journey and the dungeons that had filled her recent existence.
¡°When I first arrived here, everything scared me,¡± the young woman said after a while. ¡°I had trouble understanding anything about this world. I mean, there¡¯s magic and giant animals and so much violence and all this other stuff that I couldn¡¯t comprehend, and it made me feel like a fish stranded on land. I felt completely unequipped to deal with life here. I felt weak and helpless and scared, and I pretty much just shriveled up inside.
¡°But the more I¡¯ve been here, the more I¡¯ve come to realize that I actually understand this world much more than I first thought. When that asshat came down to the dungeon and tried to act all high and benevolent, everything finally clicked into place for me. Yeah, there¡¯s still magic and giant beasts and everybody killing everybody way too often, but the way the world works, the way people work, it¡¯s the same as where I¡¯m from. All the petty jealousies, the cruelty, the corruption, the dehumanization of others... everything I hated about my old world is here too. It¡¯s worse, don¡¯t get me wrong, but it¡¯s still the same basic shit that I¡¯m familiar with.
¡°I¡¯m still weak. I¡¯m still pretty helpless. I know that. I don¡¯t have it in me to kill people. I¡¯m sorry, Arlette, I know you tried to help, but I can¡¯t do it. It¡¯s not who I am. But I¡¯m done being scared. I¡¯ve seen this stuff before and it doesn¡¯t scare me. It just pisses me off. I still want to go home more than anything, but I¡¯ve decided that while I¡¯m here I¡¯m not going to shrink away from the moment anymore. I¡¯m going to stand tall and do whatever I can to make a world where you and Pari can be a little happier, even if what I can do isn¡¯t much of anything. Because I know that life can be better than this.¡±
¡°So by ¡®stand tall¡¯, you mean ¡®kick a man in his manhood over and over¡¯?¡± Arlette asked.
¡°Don¡¯t tell me you didn¡¯t enjoy that.¡±
Arlette took another long swig. ¡°It was something to see, I¡¯ll admit,¡± she said with a cough.
¡°So what now?¡±
¡°Now we get out of this place. Go lie low in Eterium, at least for a while. I¡¯m still not convinced King Morgan won¡¯t trying something. The sooner we get underground the better.¡±
¡°He¡¯s not going to do anything,¡± Sofie repeated, ¡°but I agree. The sooner we are out of this godforsaken country the better I¡¯ll feel. But then what?¡±
¡°Then we find you a situation where you can live, and go our separate ways.¡±
¡°WHAT?!¡± Sofie shrieked, jumping to her feet in alarm. ¡°What happened to helping me find a way home?!¡±
¡°There¡¯s something I have to do first, something incredibly dangerous. It might take me years, and I might not survive it, but if I do I¡¯ll come find you and we can go search for a way to get you home. I¡¯m sorry, but this is something I have to do no matter what.¡±
¡°I thought you put a lot of stock in keeping your commitments,¡± Sofie replied, her pained expression making guilt churn through Arlette¡¯s soul. ¡°What is so important that you¡¯ll throw away that kind of a conviction?¡±
Arlette took a long swallow this time. ¡°Sebastian is back.¡±
¡°So?! He¡¯s gone! We don¡¯t ever have to see him again! And even if we do, I¡¯m not scared of him!¡±
¡°You should be. Sebastian isn¡¯t just some ordinary man. He¡¯s the most dangerous person I¡¯ve ever known. But that¡¯s not the point. The point is that he¡¯s back. He¡¯s here, in Nocend. It¡¯s what that means that scares me.¡±
¡°And what does that mean?¡±
¡°The last time I saw Sebastian Cunningham, fifteen years ago, he stood alone in a room surrounded by the corpses of the entire Ofrax royal family, as well as every important government official. Coincidentally, the Ubran Empire invaded Ofrax the same day. The country didn¡¯t stand a chance. That¡¯s what he does. He worms his way into a society somehow and starts pulling strings. Then, when the Empire¡¯s armies come knocking, somehow the back door¡¯s been left unbolted. Do you remember what he said to me before he left?¡±
¡°Uh...¡±
¡°He said ¡®there¡¯s a storm brewing¡¯. He wasn¡¯t talking about the weather. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s tomorrow or two years from now, but the Ubran Empire is coming. They¡¯re going to invade Nocend, and he¡¯ll be in the middle of everything. I have to find him and stop him, or the same thing that happened to my country will happen here. I already lost one home. I can¡¯t lose a second.¡±
¡°Then let¡¯s do it together! As a team!¡±
¡°A team?¡± Arlette laughed. ¡°No. I can¡¯t trust anybody but myself with this.¡±
¡°Come on, Arlette! You can trust us, and you know it!¡±
¡°Can I?¡± Arlette shot back. ¡°Can I trust you to kill somebody when the situation requires it? Can I trust you to have my back when the knives are out and all around us? Sofie, you and Pari are nice people, and I like you, but I don¡¯t trust you. I barely even understand either of you! I mean, you both just showed up! You each came out of nowhere and I¡¯m supposed to just trust you, when I couldn¡¯t even... I... couldn¡¯t trust my best...¡±
She never finished her sentence. The dam burst and all the sadness and grief she¡¯d walled off that night rushed over her in a single massive flood, washing her away. The decanter fell to the ground as she shuddered and cried, a waterfall of tears flowing down her face. Memories of her past with Jaquet, of the laughs and the arguments, of the rollicking adventures and the days filled with boredom, all surfaced unbidden, playing out in front of her as she wept.
Two small arms wrapped themselves around her torso, an adorable face looking up at her with concern. ¡°Don¡¯t cry, Arly-sis. Pari is here, okay?¡±
Sofie sat down beside Arlette and wrapped her shaking form in a comforting embrace.
¡°He was my brother!¡± Arlette sobbed. ¡°He was my friend! My last friend! I believed in him! He promised me! That we would stick together through thick and thin! Through everything! But now he¡¯s gone... now I¡¯m all alone...¡±
¡°But Arly-sis is not alone,¡± Pari objected. ¡°Arly-sis has Pari! And Sofie-sis!¡±
¡°That¡¯s right, Arly-sis,¡± Sofie agreed. ¡°You have a family right here. Two people who look up to you and care about you and never want to see you in pain. I know it hurts and you feel like you¡¯re being pulled under right now but we¡¯ll be here for you until the end, alright? It¡¯s going to be okay.¡±
The night wore on as Arlette wept into their arms. They needed to move, she knew. They needed to get as far away from Xoginia as they could before time ran out. But Arlette found herself unable to end this moment, this embrace. And so she just sat there against the tree, her head hung low as she clung desperately to the embrace of the two strangest people she¡¯d ever met and cried until she had nothing left.
Chapter 27
¡°So as you can see, three times ¡®x¡¯, then times ¡®y¡¯ is in fact equal to three times the result of ¡®x¡¯ times ¡®y¡¯. This is known as the ¡®Associative Property of Multiplication¡¯.¡±
Samanta watched her captor scribble feverishly on a large, flat slate board using a piece of chalk, his other arm gesticulating wildly as he spoke. Every day, he¡¯d usher her into a small room deep inside his fortress and proceed to talk at her about various subjects. The man¡¯s words were often hard to understand, his ideas even more so, but she did her best to soak in everything he said, memorizing as much as she could and asking questions when she needed.
She¡¯d been a massive fool before, always fighting with him, resisting him at every opportunity. That night, when he¡¯d banished the darkness from the city, she¡¯d finally realized that she¡¯d been going about everything all wrong. All the mightiest people in Otharia had gone up against this man and died. She wouldn¡¯t stand a chance against him anymore, so she¡¯d decided to take a different tack.
This idiot wanted to share his every secret with her. He wanted to teach her how to stop him. How could she not listen? And so every day he would go on and on, and every day she would dutifully listen. One day she would know enough to save her country. Then he would pay for his crimes.
There was a subject, however, that was unlike the others. One that genuinely captured her interest in ways she¡¯d never expected. Mathematics. Samanta had always been good with numbers, and she¡¯d been very proud of that fact. Her parents would praise her, saying that she was better than even the children of the rich and powerful who got to go to the best schools. She didn¡¯t know if that was actually true, but she¡¯d always liked to believe that it was just because it made her feel a little special. But then Blake had opened her eyes and shown her just how little she really understood.
This ¡°algebra¡± that he kept talking about made her head hurt. Exponents, and factorials, and variables, and all these weird curving ¡°graph¡± things... it was almost too much for her young mind to handle. To think that once she¡¯d proudly boasted of her division skills! Still, this new world of numbers and letters, despite its complexity, left her intrigued. There was just one tiny problem...
¡°Any questions so far?¡±
¡°How is any of this useful? It just seems like moving letters around.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not about its direct use. It¡¯s about how you see and understand the world.¡±
¡°So it¡¯s useless.¡±
¡°Not at all! It can be used in many fields. Architecture, for example. I bet that whoever designed the Grand Cathedral used algebra all the time.¡±
¡°How could he?¡± she replied with a scowl. He talked about the Grand Cathedral like he wasn¡¯t the person who¡¯d destroyed it. ¡°There¡¯s no way he would know your Elseling secrets!¡±
Blake rubbed his forehead with his free hand. ¡°Sam, I¡¯ve been trying to explain this to you for weeks now. Knowledge isn¡¯t some secret possession that only special people can have. Knowledge comes from understanding the world around you. Figuring out how it works. Its patterns. Anybody can do that if they put time and effort into it. It doesn¡¯t matter who you are or where you grew up. I¡¯d bet everything I had that whoever designed the Grand Cathedral, or the arena in Eflok for that matter, used the stuff I¡¯m teaching you now and will teach you in the future.¡±
Samanta gave him a dubious look. How could shuffling numbers back and forth build a giant building? ¡°Why would they need to? They could just grow the stone like they do now.¡±
¡°You still don¡¯t believe me?¡± Blake sighed. ¡°I wish I could just show... you...¡± His voice trailed off as his eyes took on a far away look and he started to smile. Samanta blanched. He¡¯d just had an idea, and that was always a bother. ¡°Let¡¯s end this here for today and go get an early lunch. Come on.¡±
A helmet re-forming on his head, Blake stood up and opened the door. Always playing the obedient child, she followed along as they walked through the halls on their way towards the dining hall, the loud clanks of the man¡¯s metal boots mixing with her softer footsteps and the light taps of Alpha¡¯s four tiny metal legs as he chased after them.
After much consideration, she¡¯d decided that Alpha was a ¡®he¡¯. It felt weird to think of the little skitter as an ¡®it¡¯, as an object, when he was basically her pet now. She wasn¡¯t sure when it had happened, but at some point she¡¯d stopped thinking of the miniature skitter as a hideous abomination and instead began to view him as some sort of strange metallic animal companion. He liked to run around and chase after things she would throw. He always seemed to know when she was sad, and would climb up onto her bed and snuggle up against her to try to make her feel better. He was just a walking piece of metal, but at least he was there for her when nobody else was.
¡°Lord Ferros, a moment of your time,¡± came a voice from a nearby room as they passed by.
¡°What¡¯s up, Leo?¡±
¡°Simona was asking for you. Something about trade proposals.¡±
¡°Tell her I¡¯ll deal with that tomorrow. Got plans today. Anything else?¡±
¡°Zigmars wants to discuss taxes with you some more, and Gunta says she has a preliminary version of that report on the prisons that you wanted. Other than that, don¡¯t forget about the Council Meeting tomorrow morning.¡±
¡°Got it. We¡¯re going on a trip for the rest of the day. See ya!¡±
People scattered to the winds as Blake steered the giant six-legged, open-topped skitter away from his fortress, a cadre of well-armed and deadly skitters forming up around the larger vehicle. Samanta would sometimes watch the market and other parts of the city from high up at the top of the fortress¡¯s observation tower, caught between her desire to be somewhere else and the knowledge that she didn¡¯t have anywhere to go. As she watched over the two seasons since his takeover, she¡¯d noticed with dismay how the public was slowly coming to tolerate the presence of Blake¡¯s four-legged monstrosities around the city. That wasn¡¯t to say that they liked them, but they didn¡¯t run away or look at them in constant fear like they first had. That was, at least, while they stood still, as they usually did.
¡°Where are we going?¡± Samanta asked.
"We''re going to a place I should have returned to a long time ago, but was too scared to." Her eyebrows rose at his words, his tone telling her he was smirking behind his mask. "You''ll see. Sit back and relax. It''s going to take a few hours." Now out of the city, Blake steered them northeast and they began to speed through the nearby farmland.
Samanta tugged at the collar ringing her throat. The thick metal band bothered her to this day. Not physically, for the most part. She¡¯d mostly gotten used to the device and rarely felt it when she was just going about her day; only when she tried to sleep did its physical presence bother her. No, what bothered her was its significance. It was proof that he had control. That he owned her. The thought filled her with hatred.
¡°Say, Sam,¡± he said after a little while as he sat in his seat, his armored body leaning lazily against the side, an arm propped up on the railing, ¡°don¡¯t you have some sort off superpower, like everybody else here?¡±
¡°What¡¯s a superpower?¡±
¡°Like making rocks change shape or shooting icicles or being super strong or whatever. I saw Gunta make a flame out of thin air once. I thought everybody had something. Am I wrong?¡±
Samanta grumbled. ¡°I¡¯m not really good at it,¡± she admitted after a pause. Other people could do useful things like lift heavy objects or make clean water for drinking or washing, but she couldn¡¯t do anything nice like that. She could make a flame, but it took her a lot of work. She¡¯d never been able to Feel. Almost nothing came easily. ¡°I can do one thing, but it¡¯s not helpful for anything.¡±
¡°What¡¯s that?¡±
Samanta brought her hands up in front of her, palms facing each other with a small gap of space between them. She concentrated, seeing the tiny luminescent lines, hearing the ¡°tck¡± sound they each made inside her head, willing them into existence. Suddenly, several minuscule lightning bolts jumped between her hands. It had started as a joke. One day she¡¯d shocked herself on one of the metal farm tools that they¡¯d been transporting and her older brother had laughed at her so hard that she¡¯d sworn revenge. For some reason, creating her own little shocks had turned out to be quite easy for her. As a revenge, it had worked out fabulously ¡ª she used it on him all the time, especially to wake him when he overslept. Outside of petty vengeance, however, her talent had no real use. At first she¡¯d dreamed of becoming a human storm, blasting down trees with massive displays of fury, but such thoughts were nothing more than childish delusions. Sparks were all she¡¯d ever been able to do from the start. She¡¯d long ago come to grips with the fact that she¡¯d have to earn her keep with her mind, not her soul. That was why she¡¯d always planned on becoming a merchant like her parents, using her skills with numbers. That is, until everything went wrong.
Strangely, Blake did not laugh at her like others had. Instead, he stopped the skitter they were riding, along with the other guard skitters, leaving them standing above a forest in the middle of nowhere. Getting up from his seat, he got down to one knee in front of her and removed his mask. ¡°Do that again,¡± he said.
She did, envisioning the sparks jumping from her hands once more. Blake stared intently as the tiny lightning returned, crisscrossing between her palms and fingers.
¡°Can you make all of them come from just one hand?¡±
¡°I guess? I¡¯ve never tried before.¡± She focused, trying to control how the sparks traveled, and found that with a little difficulty she could. The sparks were a little larger and brighter, she noticed.
¡°Do you feel anything coming from the hand where the electricity comes out?¡±
¡°What¡¯s electricity?¡±
¡°The sparks.¡±
¡°Um, a little...¡±
¡°What about the other hand? Does it feel a certain way?¡±
¡°Kind of?¡±
¡°Does it feel different?¡±
¡°Yeah?¡±
¡°Okay we¡¯re going to try something.¡± Cold metal hands grabbed her wrists and pulled them apart until the space between them was wider than her head. ¡°I want you to imagine the feeling from the hand where they come from. I want you to build up that feeling in that hand, stronger and stronger. BUT! Don¡¯t let the second hand feel like it just did. I want that hand to feel perfectly normal. Then, when I say so, make that hand feel they way it did just now. Can you do that?¡±
¡°Ummm...¡± This was all very sudden, and a lot of handle at once.
¡°Just give it a try.¡±
¡°Fine...¡± Samanta said with a sigh. Maybe if she indulged him for a minute he¡¯d leave her alone. She refocused on her hands, willing the strange sensation into her right hand, feeling it build and build. It felt strange, like her palm began to itch, the itching feeling growing in intensity faster and faster.
¡°Alright, now add in the second hand.¡±
ZAP!
Samanta rocked back in surprise as bolts thicker than her fingers jumped from her one hand to the other for several moments before petering out. That was... that was almost real lightning!
¡°Holy shit!¡± Blake cried, rocking back at the sudden light show. ¡°Did that hurt?¡±
¡°Not really.¡±
¡°Hmmmm. Okay, listen up, Sam. If you¡¯re ever in a fight, or in danger from somebody, here¡¯s what you do. You put your hands on that person¡¯s head here, and here,¡± he said, putting his hands on her temples. ¡°And then you release exactly like you just did now right through their head. Depending on how strong it is, that might even kill somebody.¡±
Samanta¡¯s arms shot towards her captor¡¯s head as fast as she could move them, but smooth metal gloves seized her arms before she could fully extend. ¡°Come on,¡± Blake scoffed with wry amusement, ¡°everybody and their mother saw that coming a mile away.¡±
¡°Here we are!¡±
¡°There¡¯s nothing here.¡±
¡°Ah, you may not be able to see it, but hidden beneath this mountainside is something incredible. Behold!¡± Blake¡¯s eyes unfocused and his breath became ragged.
For several moments, Samanta looked at him, then back at the mountainside, then back at him again, waiting for something to happen. ¡°There¡¯s nothing here,¡± she repeated.
¡°Must be the wrong hill,¡± he said after another moment. ¡°They all kind of look alike.¡±
¡°You¡¯re an idiot.¡±
And so they continued to the next mountainside, and then to the next one, and the one after that as Blake searched futilely for something.
¡°Okay, it¡¯s got to be this one,¡± he said on the fifth mountainside. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure I recognize that tree.¡±
¡°You said the same thing about a rock the last time.¡±
¡°Shut up.¡± Once again he entered his strange trance, but this time he came right back out. ¡°Here it is! Behold!¡±
Slowly and loudly, a portion of the rock shifted out of position, revealing a dark passageway behind it. The six-legged skitter lowered itself down, a ramp emerging from the side, and they disembarked. The air inside the passage was musty and stale. Samanta followed behind the metal-clad man as they descended a long spiraling stairwell lit by glowing crystals that reminded her of the lights Blake had set up in Wroetin.
¡°Did you make this?¡± she asked.
¡°What? No! This place is ancient! If anything, you could say that in some ways it made me.¡± He chuckled at his own wit, ignoring the fact that it didn¡¯t make any sense to anybody but him.
¡°So why are we here again?¡±
¡°We¡¯re here for answers.¡±
¡°To what?¡±
¡°To lots of questions, many of which we don¡¯t know we even have yet, and one very important one that I¡¯d almost rather not know.¡± As he said that, the two finished their descent and entered a short hallway.
¡°Man I must have been really out of it when I first got here. To think that I didn¡¯t even notice these side rooms when I left...¡±
The hallway terminated in a large room filled with an assortment of metal objects that seemed to serve no purpose. More glowing crystals lined the walls, their eerie luminescence casting strange shadows across the chamber. The entire ensemble made Samanta feel mildly uncomfortable just being there.
¡°What is this place?¡± she asked.
¡°This,¡± replied Blake with excitement, spinning about with his arms wide, ¡°is the greatest feat of engineering and physics that I have ever seen.¡±
¡°This... bunch of shapes?¡±
¡°Sam, this ¡®bunch of shapes¡¯ pierced the very fabric of reality! It broke through into another dimension and plucked me from my... uh... my house, and spat me out here! In all of the history of my world, nobody has ever been able to do anything like that! Hell, we didn¡¯t even know for sure if other dimensions existed! And all of it was done by people who lived right here! Don¡¯t you see? You think everything I¡¯ve been teaching you is some weird shit from my world, but it¡¯s not! Your own ancestors were fucking amazing!¡±
Samanta looked around at the mysterious devices. They sure didn¡¯t look impressive. Still, as much as she despised the man before her, she couldn¡¯t help but admit that he was capable of technological feats she¡¯d never thought possible ¡ª if he thought this was amazing, then maybe it was true. Maybe her ancestors were workers of miracles. But that just left one problem...
¡°So then what happened? Why don¡¯t people make stuff like this today?¡±
¡°That¡¯s what I want to know,¡± he said as he strode back into the hallway.
Samanta followed him as he turned into a doorway and found herself in a room that reminded her of Leo¡¯s office, except more crowded. Three metal desks lined the three other walls, with several metal boxes on each one. Each box had a transparent pane sticking out from the top and a strange board protruding from the front with dozens of buttons on it.
¡°Oh, ho!¡± Blake exclaimed. ¡°What have we here?¡± Eagerly, he grabbed a box and began to fiddle with it. With the flick of a switch, the pane lit up and he clapped his hands together with delight. ¡°Yes!¡±
¡°What are you doing?¡± she asked as he gazed at the box expectantly.
¡°I¡¯m going to try to figure out how this computer and screen works, and then I¡¯m going to steal everything I can from it.¡±
¡°You¡¯re going to steal from my ancestors too?¡± This was beginning to feel like grave robbing. Had he no respect for the dead?
¡°A good programmer never duplicates work when he doesn¡¯t have to.¡±
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
All Samanta could do was harrumph and stand there, waiting for him to finish as he removed a side from the box and began to peer inside, muttering to himself as he went.
¡°So how does this work... so the energy goes in through there, and then it cycles into that, and then... oh, that¡¯s really smart, why didn¡¯t I think of that... so if I adjust the energy flow here... what¡¯s this do here... what the hell?¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°There¡¯s some kind of memory in here. It¡¯s a brilliant design, and I might use it myself in newer models, but... it¡¯s empty. I know it¡¯s working because I was able to store some random filler data in it, but there¡¯s nothing inside. No operating system, no instructions at all. This machine is completely empty. Like it was wiped on purpose or something. Which fucking sucks, because I was thinking we might be able to find answers on these things.¡± He walked over to another machine and inspected it. ¡°This one too.¡± He strode to the third machine. ¡°And this one. All of them are wiped. God dammit!¡± With a sigh, he back into the hallway. ¡°Let¡¯s look elsewhere. Maybe we¡¯ll find something.¡±
The next several hours were spent by Blake puttering about in various rooms while Samanta waited uncomfortably nearby. She didn¡¯t like this place one bit. The entire facility unnerved her, like the spirits of the past still roamed these halls. She was not supposed to be here. Not that she voiced those feelings to Blake, of course. He wouldn¡¯t listen either way.
Every so often, Blake would call her over to look at some incomprehensible doodad. She never understood any of what he was talking about, but that didn¡¯t stop him. He¡¯d just babble on about ¡®crystals¡¯ and ¡®circuits¡¯ and ¡®capacitors¡¯ and whatever else. Soon Samanta found herself wishing for anything else, even the dreaded ¡®chemistry¡¯ lessons.
¡°Can we go now?¡± she pleaded as they exited the fourth room.
"Soon. There''s just one more thing I need to check first. You go play or something. I''ll be out when I''m done."
¡°Okay.¡± Grateful to be anywhere but in that place, Samanta rushed outside into the open air. Judging by the position of the sun, it was mid afternoon by now. Sitting down for a spell, she relaxed and enjoyed herself by playing a game with Alpha. She would throw rocks at him, and he would try to dodge them. It was a fun game that had been born out of her initial sadness and frustration at her new life. It was good that Alpha was metal, because he would never have survived the things that she¡¯d thrown at him in the beginning were he flesh.
The day stretched on, and on, and on. The afternoon had depleted into evening when Blake finally emerged from the place beneath the mountain. Immediately she knew that something was off. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± she asked.
¡°Nothing,¡± he replied. She didn¡¯t believe him for a second.
The trip back was as boring everything else in that day. Samanta spent her trip practicing her new lightning powers, secretly delighted with the sudden improvement. Not that she would tell Blake that.
¡°Leo, don¡¯t you ever leave this room?¡± Blake asked with some exasperation. Sam stared at the massive pile of documents that had moved from one side of Leo Feldmanis¡¯s desk to the other. She didn¡¯t entirely agree with the man¡¯s philosophies, but his work ethic left no doubt as to his love for their country.
¡°Maybe if the ruler of this nation would stop going on vacation all the time, I¡¯d be able to,¡± the administrator replied.
¡°Hey, we went on an important mission today, didn¡¯t we Sam?¡±
¡°You took me to a mountain and then stared at objects for hours.¡±
¡°See? Important! And there¡¯s still more to do today!¡±
¡°There is?!¡± Samanta cried in dismay.
¡°Leo, the Church has a main library where it keeps all its old books and stuff, right?¡±
¡°It had a main library, yes.¡±
¡°Had?¡± Blake wondered. ¡°What happened to it?¡±
¡°You happened to it,¡± Leo replied, doing little to hide the displeasure in his gaze.
¡°Yes, well... uh... hmm... I... you see...¡± Blake coughed. ¡°That is quite regrettable. Might there be a... backup library somewhere?¡±
¡°Somewhat, assuming you didn¡¯t happen to that too,¡± Leo responded. ¡°Out by the Academy, there¡¯s a small stone building on a corner with a round roof. I ended up going there once, back when I was a student looking for a hard-to-find text. It¡¯s not a library, really. It¡¯s an archive, and then only for the tomes that were not deemed important enough for the main library.¡±
¡°Oh, sounds wonderful,¡± came Blake¡¯s sarcastic reply. ¡°Super useful. Exactly what I was looking for.¡±
¡°If you have a problem with it, I suggest you take your complaint to the perpetrator. You¡¯re lucky it exists at all.¡±
¡°Yeah, yeah,¡± Blake said, waiving dismissively. ¡°Come on, Sam, let¡¯s go.¡±
¡°Do I have to?¡±
¡°Yep! We¡¯re getting answers to something today if it kills us.¡± A low growl emanated from inside his armor. ¡°After we eat, that is.¡±
With a sigh, Samanta fell in behind him as he headed off in search of a meal. This was turning into a long, long day.
The sun was nearly past the horizon and the ¡®street lamps¡¯, as Blake called them, were beginning to light as they set off towards the Academy. What was left of it, at least. The place had been the second to fall, after the Grand Cathedral, but unlike the Cathedral, the country¡¯s conqueror had done nothing to replace it. Ruined walls and collapsed ceilings littered the grounds of the former institution. She could still remember the panicked people pouring from the exits as the compound burned, Blake¡¯s metal creatures descending upon the section where Apostles were trained, ripping and tearing, massacring hundreds.
It was that truth that scared her more than anything. Most of the time her captor seemed like somebody¡¯s fun uncle, cheerful and a bit of a goof, but she knew all too well that all that just served to hide the terrible butcher that was his true self. Something told her that the others, like Leo and the others who had joined in later, didn¡¯t fully understand that a monster lurked beneath Blake¡¯s affable veneer. She was the only one who¡¯d been there, who¡¯d seen the madness in his eyes as blood soaked the streets of the capital. To be fair, they¡¯d never seen his eyes at all, or any of his face for that matter. He never took off his mask unless only the two of them were alone.
Makeshift tents dotted the ruins now, meager attempts at shelter from the destitute and desperate. Samanta wasn¡¯t sure why Blake had left the ruins there instead of replacing them as he had the Grand Cathedral. Was it some sort of warning, or did he just not care?
¡°This must be it,¡± Blake said, pulling her from her thoughts. The skitter had stopped outside a nondescript three-story stone building that matched Leo¡¯s description. Blake hopped down and strode up to the wooden door, pounding on it with his metal fist. ¡°Yo! Anybody here?¡±
A soft light illuminated an upstairs window, before disappearing again for a moment. Several moments later they heard several bolts sliding out of their holes and the door creaked open slightly.
¡°I was trying to sleep,¡± complained an old man with a long white beard and shiny bald scalp as he stuck his head through the gap. ¡°Whatever it is you need, come back tomorr-eeeep!¡± His eyes flew open at the sight of Blake¡¯s imposing armored figure.
¡°Is this the archives?¡± Blake asked.
¡°I-I-I-I,¡± the elderly man stammered.
¡°Is this the backup archives?¡±
¡°M-my apologies, sir, I meant no d-disrespect. Please, if you will f-forgive my remarks I would be forever grateful to-¡±
¡°You got books in there or not?¡±
The man swallowed. ¡°Y-yes sir, though at this hour I¡¯m afraid reading them would be quite-¡±
¡°Great!¡± Blake pushed the door open and strode in, ignoring the old man¡¯s cowering. Several small skitters no larger than Alpha crawled out of the transport, smaller versions of the street lamp crystals sticking out from the top of their backs. Strange, she hadn¡¯t noticed those on the way over.
¡°Sam, you can read, right?¡±
¡°Yeah...¡±
¡°Good, because I can¡¯t.¡±
¡°Um, sir, if I may,¡± interjected the elderly keeper, ¡°what are you looking for?¡±
¡°Old books. The oldest ones you have.¡±
¡°I-I see. If that is what you require... though I doubt you will get much from it.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll be the judge of that.¡±
¡°As you wish.¡± The man headed off into the gloom, a glowing skitter following him. He eyed it warily. Soon he returned with three ancient-looking, dust-covered books, placing them gently on a nearby table.
Blake took the first one and placed it to the side, opening it up carefully and beckoning her over. ¡°So, what does it say?¡±
Samanta stared at the ink flowing down the page, its paths looping about in strange squiggles that were as beautiful as they were incomprehensible. ¡°I can¡¯t read this,¡± she said.
¡°I thought you said you could read.¡±
¡°This isn¡¯t writing.¡±
¡°Hey old man! What is this?¡±
¡°T-those are the oldest books we have, m-my Lord. Y-you asked for the oldest.¡±
¡°Can you read it?¡±
¡°N-no. They are older than Otharia itself. Nobody can read them. I believe they were kept back in the past to study their materials in the hopes of figuring out why they have decomposed so little over the years, but then were eventually forgotten. Everything is forgotten in this place...¡±
¡°Interesting. What about old things that we can read?¡±
¡°T-there is nothing original, but I have some reproductions...¡± He walked off into the gloom again, before coming back with several more books, these ones marked with a different script, one she could recognize.
¡°Can you read these?¡±
¡°Yeah...¡±
Blake opened the top book carefully, its pages far more delicate than the strange ancient tomes.
¡°The Writ of Otharo?¡± she wondered. ¡°That¡¯s not right... It¡¯s called the Word of Othar.¡±
The Word of Othar formed the foundation of the Church. It told of the life, words, and deeds of Othar, a simple farmer who took up arms against the bane that was the dragons, slaying them with his holy might before ascending to the afterlife to protect the spirits of those who would come after. Samanta loved the Word of Othar. Like almost all other Otharians, she could recite the entire scripture from memory.
"The Writ of Otharo is one of several early variations that later became the Word of Othar," chimed in the old man, his voice no longer quavering now that he was talking about an apparent subject of interest. "It differs in some substantial ways from the more recent texts that were codified in the Convention of Nont."
"The rough draft, huh?" Blake said, intrigued, motioning impatiently to Samanta. "Go on, read it!"
"Once there was a time when the people feared the sky as they trembled beneath the shadows of the scourge of the old gods, for they were mighty and terrible things that brought disaster upon the world. And the people cried out in despair, for they were weak. And lo, did Otharo descend to them from the mountains, fully formed, to battle the old gods for the sake of the people." She couldn''t believe her eyes. This was not the Word of Othar! This was completely different and wrong!
¡°Woah woah woah, hold up. Read that again.¡±
Samanta repeated it.
¡°Nooooooooo, no way, it can¡¯t be.¡± He held his head in his hands and rocked back and forth for a moment before realizing what he was doing and stopping. ¡°Sorry, keep going. This just suddenly got much more interesting.¡±
Samanta did, slowly reading the words on the pages. It was hard, as not all the words made sense and the language was archaic, but she worked through it.
¡°... and so the Godslayer spoke unto the people, and he said ¡®call them not gods but dragons, they cannot call down the might of the heavens like Zeus, they cannot unleash the mighty tides as Poseidon can, they cannot sway the hearts of men or prophesy the future like Aphrodite or Apollo. These beasts may be mighty, but they are not divine.¡¯ And so Otharo became known no longer as the Godslayer and instead as the Dragonslayer.¡±
¡°Jesus Christ on a cracker, I was right,¡± Blake muttered to himself. ¡°Sam, skip ahead to the end, would you?¡±
¡°The end?¡±
¡°Maybe not the end, the part where he what, leaves? Goes away?¡±
¡°The part where he ascends to protect the spirits of the people?¡±
¡°Yeah, sure, around there. Maybe a little before that.¡±
Samanta carefully turned the pages until she found a section that she somewhat recognized ¡ª Othar¡¯s speech prior to the final victory against the vile dragons.
¡°Otharo said to the people, ¡®The final battle is upon us, and so I must journey forth. The battle will be great, but know that, no matter what becomes of me, I will be with you always, either in flesh or in spirit.¡¯ And the people did rejoice in the truth that the Dragonslayer would be with them for eternity, protecting them from evil.
¡°And so Otharo set forth to the home of the dragons, and he did war with them. The sky shook and the very earth was rent asunder by their blows. Finally Otharo struck down the last of the great beasts, but as it lay dying it sent out a great storm, to curse the world with its anger. But Otharo would not allow the people to suffer. He...¡±
¡°He what?¡±
¡°That¡¯s it.¡±
¡°What do you mean ¡®that¡¯s it¡¯?! What happened to him? Did he get to go home?¡±
Samanta showed him the book. The writing simply stopped there, the sentence incomplete.
¡°Yo, old man, what the fuck is this?¡± Blake yelled.
¡°T-t-that¡¯s all there i-is,¡± the archivist stammered. ¡°T-t-the o-original m-must have been d-damaged, the rest l-lost...¡±
¡°What about your version?¡± he asked Samanta, his voice filled with a desperation that she couldn¡¯t understand. ¡°What happens to Othar? Did he leave?¡±
¡°Othar ascended to the heavens after his battle with the dragons, to protect the spirits of the people for all of eternity from the dragons¡¯ curse.¡±
"He ascended?! What the flying fuck does that even mean? Did he die? Did he find a way back? That could mean fucking anything! FUCK!" Blake''s right arm slammed down upon the table with terrifying force, splitting it into two pieces, catapulting books across the room. Samanta yelped in surprise and the old archivist scurried for cover. The armored man sighed. "Shit, sorry about that." He picked the broken table up, holding it together as some metal melted off a nearby skitter and bonded the two pieces back together.
¡°I think it¡¯s best if we leave,¡± he said as he picked up the books scattered across the floor. ¡°I¡¯m taking these. Come on, Sam.¡±
Without another word, Blake opened the front door and walked out, books underneath both arms. Samanta followed and they boarded the transport skitter, setting off for the fortress looming over the city.
Samanta couldn¡¯t help but give the man several worried glances as they went. For just a moment, the man she feared had shown through. She wondered what would happen when it fully got loose again.
¡°I never thought I would see the day where I would actually care about religion,¡± the man mused, glumly. ¡°Never thought I¡¯d ever be in the same position as a man named ¡®Otharo¡¯ either. Life comes at you fast...¡±
¡°His name is ¡®Othar¡¯,¡± Samanta interjected. ¡°And don¡¯t talk like you and he are the same.¡±
¡°But we are, Sam, don¡¯t you get it? Nobody knew where he came from. He just appeared out of nowhere, from the mountains. He talks about gods like Zeus, a god from my world, not from here... Othar was an Elseling.¡±
Samanta shot out of her seat in fury. ¡°You take that back!¡± she cried.
¡°It¡¯s true. We¡¯re the same.¡±
¡°No you¡¯re not! He was a hero! The man that became a god! Protector of the people! Savior to Otharia!¡±
¡°He was a xenophobic asshole who preached hatred towards anything he didn¡¯t understand,¡± Blake replied. ¡°Or did you forget the part you read tonight where he talks about how all elves and people with animal tails and whatever are ¡®chimeras¡¯ who cannot be trusted and should be put down?¡±
¡°Shut up! He¡¯s nothing like you! You¡¯re just a murderer! A killer!¡±
¡°That¡¯s enough, Sam,¡± Blake said, warning in his voice.
¡°You¡¯re nothing but a monster who pretends to be a person! I wish I had killed you when I had the chance!¡±
Blake stood up and Samanta¡¯s blood ran cold. She¡¯d said too much. Her mind went back to the day they¡¯d met, to the collar that she still wore. With just a thought, he could make that collar explode and kill her, any time he wished. The man crouched down, his head level with hers. She could hear his muffled breathing behind his mask, could hear the rage boiling beneath the surface. Would now be the time?
¡°You,¡± he growled, ¡°are soooooooo grounded.¡±
Chapter 28
¡°Alright everybody, let¡¯s get this over with,¡± Blake said as he marched into what he called the ¡°Council Room¡±, a meeting room with a large circular table in the center surrounded by chairs. Blake hated this place. This was where boring happened.
¡°My Lord,¡± Leo said, rising from his seat as Blake entered the room. His greeting was repeated by the others present, each with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Nearly all of the chairs were already filled by the members of Blake and Leo¡¯s ¡°Council¡±, a selection of people who were all intelligent, capable, and willing to be his lackey. The reasons each was willing to collaborate with an ¡°Elseling¡±, and the degree to which they seemed happy about it, seemed to vary from person to person, but Blake didn¡¯t care as long as they were willing and good at what they did.
¡°Where¡¯s the kid?¡± Fricis Upeslacis, his ornery Minister of Agriculture, inquired.
¡°She¡¯s grounded until she learns to behave herself,¡± Blake replied.
¡°Grounded?¡± Fricis repeated, confused. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±
¡°She can¡¯t leave her room until I say so,¡± Blake explained.
¡°Bah! No namby-pamby punishment like that will fix what ails her!¡± the older man scoffed incredulously. ¡°Take a switch to her backside! Then she¡¯ll learn to respect her elders! Why, back in my day, my father would smack me good if I even looked like I was going to be disrespectful! Raise me right, he did.¡±
¡°Yes, Fricis, a real bang-up job ol¡¯ dad did with you,¡± Blake replied sarcastically, eyes rolling behind his mask. He turned to Leo, sitting to Blake¡¯s right. ¡°Is everybody here? Where¡¯s Martis?¡±
¡°Martis is still on the road. He did, however, send back a report.¡±
¡°Great. Then let¡¯s begin. Fricis, how¡¯re the crops doing?¡±
¡°Crop yields are up significantly. If we can harvest and distribute it properly, this might be the first year I can remember where everybody has something to eat this winter. Not a lot, but at least enough to get by.¡±
¡°Well done! A round of applause for Minister Upeslacis, everyone!¡± Blake proclaimed, clapping his metal hands together. Tackling the lack of food was Blake¡¯s first, most important milestone, and it was good to see that the situation improving so quickly. The others joined in as well. Regardless of their feelings on Blake and the baggage that came with him, they all understood the shadow that starvation that had cast over their country for their entire lifetimes.
¡°Shaddap! I¡¯m not done!¡± barked the elder farmer. ¡°There¡¯s a problem. We don¡¯t have enough people to harvest everything. The only way to pick everything is to reassign the field-clearing crews. We¡¯re a little behind on the new fields as it is. This will make us miss your goal by a wide margin, but I don¡¯t see any way around it. Can¡¯t have fruit rotting on the vine.¡±
¡°No, keep the field-clearing crews as they are,¡± Blake responded. ¡°I have some ideas for mechanical reapers and whatnot that should fix the issue. We can talk about it tomorrow.¡±
¡°Er, if you insist, Lord Ferros.¡±
¡°I do. I don¡¯t want to slow down expansion unless we have no other options.¡± Blake smacked his hand against the metal table with enthusiasm. ¡°Alright, let¡¯s keep this moving! Age before beauty! Zigmars, how¡¯s my income tax looking?¡±
Zigmars Vietnieks looked up from his papers. The thirty-four-year-old man was the second oldest member of the Council after Fricis. Blake wanted young people working for him. People who weren''t entirely wedded to their worldviews just yet. People who would consider his perspective for reasons beyond the fact that he could easily kill them and everybody they loved. He wasn''t entirely sure that he''d found such mythical people yet. Certain members still seemed very conflicted with the idea of his rule. Still, they''d all been doing a good job so far, as far as he could tell. He could settle with some distrusting glances for the moment, as long as they performed. Zigmars performed.
As Minister of the Treasury, the man was some kind of number wizard ¡ª within just a few days he''d organized the entire country''s finances, figured out how much was still left in the treasury, and more. Blake, who until his sudden trip had basically just used credit cards to pay for everything, could not help but be in awe of the man''s abilities. That was why Blake continued to employ the accountant even though the only word he seemed to enjoy using was "no".
¡°I looked into it and determined that it¡¯s entirely infeasible, my Lord,¡± the man said. ¡°To tax the wealthy by their gains is an absurd idea. I don¡¯t see how it could realistically be implemented.¡±
¡°Why not?¡±
¡°First of all, to tax them by their income would require us to know how much they are making, which we don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°So ask them.¡±
¡°Ask them? You want me to just go to the largest clans and say ¡®tell me your income¡¯?¡±
¡°No, of course not.¡±
Zigmars let out a breath of relief. ¡°So you understand-¡±
¡°You¡¯re going to have to audit them.¡±
¡°A-audit?¡±
¡°And don¡¯t tell them you¡¯re coming, either. Just show up and demand to see all their records. Even the secret ones.¡±
¡°My Lord, I don¡¯t think such records even exist, I mean-¡±
¡°Then make them exist.¡± Blake growled. A hush fell over the room at the first sign of his temper flaring. ¡°Listen up, Zigmars. And this goes for the rest of you, too. You work for me. I am the law here. That means, by extension, you are the law. If you need these families to do all their accounting in some new way just so you can get the data that you need, then they¡¯re going to do them in that way. If you need them to give you access to all their holdings so you can get an accurate picture of their value, then they¡¯re going give you that access. If you need them to do all their paperwork in the blood of their fucking first-born children, then they¡¯re going to have books filled with red writing soon, or I¡¯m going to come down on them.
¡°What I¡¯m trying to say is, I¡¯m here to back you up. What you need to do is to figure out what you need from these families to accomplish this goal. Then you go to them, maybe with a few skitters for show and backup, and you tell them that they¡¯re going to do the things you need them to do. Because if they refuse, I¡¯m going to pay them a personal visit, and I will be very, very unhappy. Capiche?¡±
¡°Y-yes, my Lord.¡±
¡°Great. Gunta! Talk to me! I hear the new draft of the prison report is ready?¡±
Gunta Izkapts coughed, probably to give herself a second to collect her thoughts. Gunta, as the Minister of Justice, predictably was also the person in the room who had the hardest time coming to grips with her situation. After all, how could you believe in justice and then work for a murderer? Blake believed that she viewed it as some sort of sacrifice so nobody else had to do it, some version of ¡°taking one for the team¡±. They were both still adjusting to each other, and it had not been the smoothest of rides so far. Such was to be expected, Blake figured, both because of the aforementioned issue and because her idea of justice still leaned towards the previous regime¡¯s definition.
¡°Yes, my Lord,¡± the thirty-one-year-old replied. ¡°Currently there are over two thousand prisoners accounted for across five prisons. By your definition of unjust imprisonment, about four hundred prisoners qualify for release. The full breakdown on the prisoners and the quality of the facilities are in my full report.¡±
Blake¡¯s eye twitched as he noted the subtle emphasis the woman put on the words ¡°your definition¡±. He¡¯d tasked Gunta with this report before, only to learn that she viewed every prisoner to be justly imprisoned. If you were rightfully convicted then you were rightfully imprisoned, no matter how bullshit the laws were. He¡¯d put his foot down after that and made her redo it, only to find that their perspectives still did not match when she found that only seven people deserved freedom. Eventually he¡¯d had to give her a literal list of all the crimes that shouldn¡¯t have counted as crimes. Going through the old system with Leo, he¡¯d been astonished at the absurd ways you could end up behind bars during the past regime. Vomiting on a high priest was a crime? It was lunacy. Gunta would realize this too, eventually. A work in progress she was.
¡°That few? There¡¯s what, a million people in this country? At least? How can there only be two thousand prisoners?¡± Blake asked.
¡°Low-level criminals are dealt with by the local law enforcement. Anybody can chop off a thief¡¯s hand, after all,¡± Gunta replied. ¡°Also, the poor food and lack of concern for the prisoners¡¯ health means that many die in their cells.¡±
Blake let out a sigh. There was still such a long way left to go...
¡°Alright,¡± he said after a second. ¡°Release the four hundred. Work with Zigmars to coordinate a sum for damages so they can at least make it back home. Those who don¡¯t have a home or don¡¯t want to go back, send them to me. We could always use more people willing to work.¡±
¡°You wish to employ these... degenerates?¡± the woman questioned, appalled.
¡°Hey, watch your mouth,¡± Blake warned. ¡°Leo¡¯s a fine man.¡±
¡°I-I apologize, my Lord, I was not aware that Minister Feldmanis was...¡±
¡°Leo, if I had just let you out of prison after years inside, and you had nothing to do every day, how would that have gone for you?¡±
¡°If I didn¡¯t have my wife and this labor, I would likely have gone mad,¡± Leo responded.
¡°See?¡± Blake said, pointing towards Leo. ¡°What¡¯s the point of letting them out if they just end up on the street in a few months?¡±
¡°As you wish, my Lord.¡±
¡°Anything else besides the report?¡±
¡°No, my Lord.¡±
¡°Very well. Next! Uhhhh... Leo who¡¯s older between Simona and Martis?¡±
¡°Martis, my Lord.¡±
¡°Dude, you didn¡¯t even look that up. How do you remember all that shit?¡±
¡°Minister Tievais reports that his team has located a significant deposit of cantacrenyx crystals west of Nont.¡±
¡°Yesssssssss!¡± Blake let loose a fist pump of victory. Cantacrenyx was the bottleneck to Blake¡¯s long-term plans. He needed more crystals to power his upcoming creations, but more importantly he needed bigger crystals. Stuff with the juice to power freight trains, perhaps literally. ¡°How soon can get them out?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll ask him the next time he is near a Many, but it will likely take a while. Setting up a proper mine takes time.¡±
Blake grumbled unhappily at the answer. Ideas for strip-mining passed through his head, but he discarded them. He didn¡¯t have the large, high-capacity crystals needed to power the mining machines ¡ª ironically, the needed crystals were what he needed to dig up. All his largest crystals had gone into his tunnel-borers, and those were completely unsuited for the task. He needed those buried crystals intact, not ground into dust, and the borers were busy chewing up trees and rocks out in the country anyway.
¡°Alright, Simona, sorry to keep you waiting. What have you got for me?¡±
¡°It¡¯s alright sir,¡± the twenty-six-year-old chirped. ¡°Gotta save the best for last, after all.¡±
Almost everything about Simona Jumala was... different from the others. Born in one of the northernmost villages in the country, close to the Eterian border, Simona grew up watching the local Eterian border partols waltz into Otharian lands and take whatever they wanted from the areas near the border, making her life and the lives of her family and friends miserable. Otharia seemed completely unwilling to challenge the stronger country as long as it was just a dozen troops here and a hundred troops there and as long as they didn''t go more than a few miles in, so the Eterians did as they pleased for years and years. That was why she''d grown up with a healthy dislike of both other countries and her own regime.
Desperate to escape, she¡¯d studied as best she could and left for the Wroetin as soon as she was old enough to get a job as a aide, with the hope of joining the government and eventually working her way up high enough to make a difference. What she¡¯d discovered was a disgusting, demoralizing morass of apathy, greed, and complacency that drove her to drink. She¡¯d felt lost and hopeless, unable to accomplish anything against such an entrenched, uncaring system.
Then Blake appeared and everything changed. The words he¡¯d said, the promises he¡¯d made of a bold new Otharia, one that cared about its people and wouldn¡¯t allow others to walk all over it, struck the mightiest of chords within her heart. And so, Simona Jumala had become something Blake had thought impossible at this juncture: an honest-to-goodness Lord Ferros fan. That¡¯s when she¡¯d started knocking on his door and refusing to take ¡®no¡¯ for an answer.
Many days back, when Leo had first mentioned a woman actively seeking audience with him, Blake had never thought they¡¯d be talking about his future Minister of State, but life was funny sometimes. Simona was brash, confident, and kind of a jerk, which in no way seemed the usual portrait of a diplomat. That was part of the appeal. The other countries looked down on him and Otharia, laughing at the country and its backwards ways. This was with good reason, of course ¡ª were Blake anywhere else, he¡¯d likely be laughing at them too. But this was a new era, a new Otharia, one that wouldn¡¯t be taking shit from others anymore. Blake needed a representative that embodied that ¡°you¡¯re not going to fuck with us any longer¡± attitude, and Simona had that in spades. She seemed to take an almost perverse glee in making life harder for whoever was on the other end of the negotiating table.
¡°What¡¯s the rest of the world up to?¡± Blake asked.
¡°A lot of people want to trade with us,¡± Simona replied. ¡°I get requests for trade negotiations every day.¡±
¡°Have they said anything about what they want?¡±
¡°They don¡¯t get that far, but we both know what they want.¡±
¡°Right, and that¡¯s not going to happen.¡±
Otharia didn¡¯t have enough food to feed its own people, let alone export any. They didn¡¯t have the infrastructure to harvest and export raw materials. Their produced commodities, be they tools, weapons and armor, or textiles, were low in quantity and generally inferior to their foreign counterparts. No, there was only one thing that Otharia had that anybody else wanted, and Blake would never give that up to anybody. He couldn¡¯t even trust his subjects with his secrets. How could he give away his only card to another country?
¡°Are we going to begin trading with others in the future?¡± Zigmars inquired. ¡°An extra revenue stream would always help.¡±
¡°At some point, yes. But first we need to get to the point where we can produce enough of something that we can afford to sell what¡¯s left. That¡¯s one reason I¡¯m pushing for as much farm expansion as possible. The soil quality in Otharia isn¡¯t the best, but we should be able to produce more than enough food to sell off a good amount in a few years. In the meantime, I¡¯m going to work on improving the industrial sector of our economy shortly. That¡¯s another reason I want you to get all the info you can on the rich merchant clans. I have a feeling they have a stranglehold on the market, and we might have to bust up some monopolies fairly soon.¡±
¡°I-I see, my Lord,¡± came the reply. ¡°I¡¯ll endeavor to find what you are looking for.¡±
¡°Only if it¡¯s there,¡± Blake reminded the Minister. He took a look around the table at all the others. ¡°I want to make clear to all of you, if I haven¡¯t already, that I value the truth far more than I value being right. If what you find goes counter to what I expect, let me know. Don¡¯t go massaging the truth to tell me what you think I want to hear. If I find that anybody here is feeding me false information, let¡¯s just say things will get very ugly very quickly. You all understand?¡± A smattering of nods and acquiescences came in return.
¡°Alright then!¡± Blake pounded both palms against the table and stood up. ¡°Let¡¯s all get out of here and on with our days. Leo, I have something special I need from you, so meet me by the front entrance in an hour.¡±
¡°Yes, Lord Ferros.¡±
Satisfied with the proceedings and eager to be anywhere else, Blake strode quickly from the room and headed off to get a bite to eat in the cafeteria. The fortress employed several cooks now, enough to feed all the ministers, their assistants, and all the other employees who now worked in various sections of the building. While the center half remained his and Samanta¡¯s exclusive area, the start of an actual fully-functioning government was now present in this very facility. Soon, he figured, he¡¯d have to build more offices. Perhaps over the ruined Academy? He¡¯d probably need to find some housing for the vagrants living in those ruins first. It didn¡¯t feel right to pick on the weak. Those people had it hard enough as it was.
The cooks in his kitchen were fairly good at their jobs, he had to admit, given the limited ingredients and spices they had to work with. Still, he didn¡¯t trust them, despite Leo¡¯s assurances. If somebody wanted to kill him, the single best way was likely through poisoning his food. Maybe his new body was resistant or immune to poisons, but there was only one way to find out for sure and it would be too late at that point if he wasn¡¯t. That was why he refused to eat specially-prepared meals made just for him, instead insisting on eating the same stuff that was prepared for the others. The consequences of his death, and what it would do to their families, had been made quite clear to all the cooks, but one never knew for sure. Maybe one of them would think it was worth the sacrifice.
His stew-filled bowl in his hand, Blake glanced around at the few others currently in eating in the dining hall. They were each partially through and having no problems, so he made his way to an empty room, sealed the door, removed his mask, and tucked in. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. All this social interaction was wearing him out. He needed a little alone time.
Still, he had to admit that the meetings and whatnot were at least distracting him from the massive potential problem he¡¯d discovered the day before. Yesterday, after sending Sam outside, he¡¯d entered into Hyper Mode with the intent of finally studying the complex contraptions that had plucked him from his friendly abode. He didn¡¯t know anything about dimensional physics, of course; the theoretical aspect of reality had never interested him. His world consisted of levers and gears, circuits and motors. But he knew that, given enough time to study and tweak the ensemble, poking and prodding at his leisure, he¡¯d be able to figure out a thing or two. Good thing Hyper Mode gave him a lot of time to work with.
After more than four hours, or internally more than one hundred days, of non-stop scrutiny, his findings left him incredibly worried. From what he could tell, the device was not some sort of two-way contraption where he could just flick a lever and throw it all in reverse. Instead, the whole thing seemed sort of like a bowl under a faucet, something designed to suck in and capture what came out, collecting it and absorbing it. While the possibility existed that he just didn¡¯t understand enough to grasp the machine¡¯s true nature, he¡¯d found enough to be very, very disturbed by what he could deduce. The signs suggested that this was a one-way street, and he¡¯d never go home again.
That was why he¡¯d embarked on a search for documentation. Blake found the fact that the computers in the facility had been wiped to be both frustrating and concerning. Why had they bothered to do such a thing? Whatever the reason, it certainly made researching much tougher. He¡¯d been forced to look for alternative sources, which was why he and Sam had ended up in the weird backup archive last night. Maybe the answers lay in one of the weird books with the flowing vertical script that he¡¯d liberated from the repository, but since nobody could understand any of it he had no way of knowing at the moment.
Blake had never expected to discover that Otharia¡¯s beloved hero/god was actually an ancient Greek man. In some ways, it made everything about this place even more laughable than it already was. On the other hand, it was precisely the sort of story he¡¯d been afraid of. The idea that a man as heralded as Otharo had gone off to battle and then just... vanished frightened him. The man would have had to return to Otharia to use the machines in the mountain to go home. Would he have been able to do that with nobody knowing, given that he¡¯d be a conquering hero, loved by all? Blake found the possibility doubtful. Even more, judging by the man¡¯s personality, Otharo seemed to seek out adulation. Then suddenly no farewell speeches? No victory parades? It just didn¡¯t add up. Maybe he¡¯d just died in battle?
Either way, the hoped-for ¡°and then he went home¡± line was nowhere to be found within the legend in the book or the official Samanta-approved version. After all his searching yesterday, all that he had was some very discouraging technical findings and nothing to contradict them. He¡¯d have to go back later and conduct more research. It would be nice if he could turn the devices on, but he couldn¡¯t risk dragging another person into his mess, especially if there really was no way back.
The stew all finished, Blake was just standing back up when a massive wave of agony washed over his body, sending him to the ground. Another attack. The frequency of these pain-filled episodes was rising in the recent weeks. What had been one or two a day was now up to three or four. Stress, most likely. The burden of ruling, combined with his unknown future, was beginning to wear on him in ways that he wasn¡¯t used to. This wasn¡¯t like the stress of crunching at the end of a project or dealing with student loans. This was a constant grind, each day harsher than the last. There were days that he felt like he might drown beneath it all, but all he could do was keep pushing. Anything less than his all might lead to disaster for him, or perhaps even for the entire country.
He was late for his rendezvous with Leo. Pushing himself back to his feet, Blake headed for the main entrance. Today was an important day. One of his pet projects, the sewer system, would take another step forward today. Soon, very soon, this city would no longer smell like ass all the time, and it wouldn¡¯t be so hard to get water. Maybe then the people would begin to understand.
Blake found his Chief of Staff waiting for him by the gate. Employing the ex-prisoner administrator had ended up being perhaps the best decision Blake had ever made. The man was diligent, intelligent, organized, and trustworthy. Blake did worry about the older man¡¯s health, however. The days of long hours spent keeping Otharia an arm¡¯s length from chaos, combined with his endless off-hour search for his missing wife, were taking their toll on him. Dark bags underlined his tired eyes, standing out on his pale face. Blake couldn¡¯t help but notice that he¡¯d been losing weight recently, as well.
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¡°Jeez, Leo, you look terrible.¡±
¡°Thank you for your concern, Lord Ferros, but I¡¯m just fine.¡±
¡°Like hell you are. Once we¡¯re done with what I¡¯m about to show you, I want you to take a week or two off and relax. Doctor¡¯s orders.¡±
¡°If those are your orders, my Lord.¡±
¡°Come now, Leo,¡± Blake said as the gate opened and a squad of skitters, each as tall as a man, formed up around them, ¡°aren¡¯t we friends? I shouldn¡¯t have to order you to take care of yourself. It¡¯s okay to be selfish every so often.¡±
¡°... very well,¡± Leo replied as they both walked out of the fortress. ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind.¡±
¡°You do that.¡±
The pair walked a short distance from the central fortress, coming to stop in the middle of a nearby main avenue. The guard skitters fanned out, forming a wide defensive perimeter to protect him from the... complete lack of nearby people. The citizens had scattered as soon as they¡¯d spotted him heading their way. Some were hiding inside houses while others had just run for the hills. Either way, he had a nice, unobstructed view of the nearby avenue, stretching away from him straight towards the city walls. He walked over to a nearby building and leaned his shoulder against it, motioning his assistant to do the same.
¡°So all the main sewer tunnels were completed a few weeks ago,¡± he began, holding his arm out towards the empty avenue as Leo came to stand a few feet away. ¡°They follow the main streets, like this one, all the way down. Since then I sent the borers out to join the others working on clearing new farm fields, and have been working on making enough smaller borers to do the rest.¡±
¡°You¡¯re saying there¡¯s a tunnel here? Right beneath us?¡±
¡°Yep, a huge one several feet beneath us, going all the way down this street. They all eventually converge and drain into the river to the east, the one that flows straight into the sea.¡±
¡°Why do you follow the streets?¡±
¡°Basements.¡±
¡°Basements?¡±
¡°Basements. This sewer does nobody any good if they can¡¯t actually use it. For now I¡¯m going to place some temporary public toilets around on the main streets along with some faucets, but ideally we want actual plumbing coming out of everybody¡¯s ground floors both for waste going out and also fresh water coming in. I now have enough small borers to dig the tunnels from the main sewer pipes into everybody¡¯s homes, but before we begin we need to know where the basements are so we can watch out for them. That¡¯s where you come in. I need you to find every basement in this city and its dimensions.¡±
¡°Every single one?¡± the man gulped, looking about at the sea of houses just on their current avenue.
¡°Every one,¡± Blake responded. ¡°Of course, you can have whatever resources you need that I can provide to get this done as fast and accurately as possible.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll need to hire a good amount of people.¡±
¡°Might I suggest looking into the prisoners that we¡¯re about to let out?¡±
¡°Going from such a sequestered existence to that might be too much of a jump.¡±
¡°Well, at least consider it. The last thing I want to do is let these people go and then have them just end up in alleys somewhere. That used to happen a lot in my old world, you know. People would end up in prison again in part because they¡¯d be left out to dry with no help after getting out the first time. I¡¯d like to avoid that in this case if we c-¡±
SMASH!
Out of nowhere, something bashed into Blake¡¯s side like a tractor-trailer going a hundred miles an hour. The impact threw him across the avenue with incredible force, sending him crashing through the shop on the other side like an impromptu wrecking ball, battering his body and knocking him nearly senseless as his armor hurtled through the wooden building. Tumbling completely through the now-destroyed store, he smashed into the building behind it before finally coming to rest amidst a pile of broken wood.
Blake coughed and groaned in pain as he quickly took stock of his situation. His head hurt, his arm hurt, his torso hurt... if he could still feel his legs he was sure those would be hurting now as well. Something pressed painfully against his side. Looking down, Blake was shocked to find a massive dent more than a foot in diameter in his thick powered armor. Just a little more, and the metal would have completely ruptured! Quickly the dent disappeared as he entered Hyper Mode, checking the damage across his body. He needed his armor at full capacity if shit was going down. He found extensive damage all over his suit and went about repairing all the damaged circuits and mechanisms, sending out a distress signal to every skitter in the city to swarm towards him as he did so. After weeks of adjustments and improvements, his battle suit was now orders of magnitude more complex than its initial form, and restoring it to how it was just moments prior would take a few seconds.
The wind whipped about him as he pushed himself to his feet, his repairs completed. Whipped about him? It had been a calm sunny day just a minute ago, and now the wind was whirling around like he was in the center of a tornado. Wait a second... Blake took a look around him, eyes growing wide as first one piece of broken wood lifted off the ground, followed by another as the wind¡¯s velocity continued to increase. While in Hyper Mode, it was easy for Blake to lose track of his surroundings as the world slowed to a crawl and his focus shifted to the metal around him. Somehow, in the scant seconds it had taken him to repair his suit, an actual cyclone had spawned, wrapping his world in an endless wall of flying dirt and debris!
Through that wall stepped two men, walking through the raging winds as if they were not even truly there. One was a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall with broad shoulders and a chiseled, muscular body. His large hands held a massive hammer, its head easily twice the diameter of Blake¡¯s head. Blake decided to call him ¡®Smashy¡¯. The other man was smaller and older with a well-trimmed gray beard, but still fit. He carried no weapon, so was probably the one making the tornado. Blake tentatively named him ¡®Windy¡¯.
Blake swore as he spotted the pair¡¯s glowing yellow eyes. This was a hit, a well-planned one at that. Ever since his battle with Yarec, Blake had learned to respect the abilities of somebody on chimirin. That was why he would always strike them with superior numbers and range, overwhelming them with firepower before they could even get close enough to strike back. But this pair had caught him unaware. It was likely that they had expected the initial blow to kill him, but once that had failed they¡¯d immediately isolated him so they could finish the job. Try as he might, Blake could see no metal anywhere on either of his assailants. Even Smashy¡¯s hammer was entirely composed of stone and wood. Yes, these people had come prepared.
Through the dusty winds, Blake saw a guard skitter arrive and try to chase them through the howling storm, only to get thrown helplessly to the side like a child¡¯s toy. Another came just after, its guns blazing, but the wind smacked down the bullets like it would an insect. He was on his own for the moment.
Sending new instructions to his nearby skitters, he took a balanced stance, or as balanced as he could manage in the middle of the maelstrom pushing him back and forth. Metal began flowing towards his right hand. ¡°Fuck it, I needed to let off some steam anyway,¡± he muttered.
Blake¡¯s supply of metal on hand, especially tucrenyx, was alarmingly low. Everything around him was wood, leaving nothing for him to work with but his suit. Not sure if his armor could take another hit like the first, Blake didn¡¯t want to risk weakening his chest protection, instead drawing his resources by thinning out some of the armor on his legs. A small tube formed over his right wrist, wide enough to fire small bullets the rough equivalent of piston rounds at his unexpected opponents. He couldn¡¯t make anything larger or he¡¯d risk running out of metal.
The large man rushed forward, weapon at the ready. He was faster than he looked, moving through the mighty gusts as if they had no effect on him. They probably didn¡¯t. Neither of the two seemed to be affected by the wind, the no-good cheaters.
Despite the fact that Smashy was the one being the aggressor, Blake decided to deal with the smaller man first. The tornado was a massive disadvantage. Unlike them, Blake was having trouble breathing, could barely hear anything besides the wind howling through the cracks in his armor, and couldn¡¯t move freely with being buffeted about by the currents. He thanked fortune that he wore a giant suit of heavy armor. Without it, he¡¯d likely be a hundred feet in the air already. Luckily it looked like this whirlwind was the small man¡¯s limit, even with chimirin; as long as Blake avoided the screaming wall of air circling the perimeter, he wouldn¡¯t be sailing off into the atmosphere any time soon.
Circling around the oncoming brute, Blake took aim and let loose several shots towards Windy off in the distance. None of the bullets even got close, the wind knocking his projectiles from the air far before they reached their target. With a curse, Blake began to close the distance.
Smashy had different ideas. Blake hopped back as the gargantuan warhammer dove through the space he¡¯d occupied just a split second ago. The mallet struck the ground with shocking power, the tremor knocking Blake off balance and throwing dirt into the air. The soil quickly blew off to the side as Blake took aim at the hammer wielder¡¯s skull, holding his right arm with his left to steady it against the push and pull of the air around him. Just as he was drawing a bead on Smashy¡¯s head, he saw a hint of movement to his left and instinctively let go with his left hand, raising it up to ward off any attack coming from that side. Stability gone, his shot flew wide.
However, Blake didn¡¯t have time to think about his missed shot, because he was suddenly busy with a dagger rising towards his chest, wielded by a lanky woman who had not been there just moments ago. He could not help but notice not just her glowing yellow eyes but also her knowing grin as the bone dagger collided with his forearm and, instead of scraping off, sank into his armor like his arm was made of liquid! The woman laughed as she released the knife, the tip of the long blade now poking out the other side of his prosthetic.
Without hesitation, Blake fired three rounds point blank into the woman¡¯s chest, only to watch in astonishment as the rounds passed through her like she was just an illusion! Was this woman phasing through objects like some kind of ghost? Was that how she¡¯d bypassed his armor? It would explain how she¡¯d snuck up on him at least. First Smashy and Windy, and now ¡®Ghosty¡¯? This was getting downright unfair!
As if to reinforce such thoughts, Smashy sent his mallet whipping around in a mighty horizontal swing. Blake did his best to duck out of the way but the top corner of the hammer¡¯s head clipped the side of his torso. The sound of metal ripping graced his ears as he rolled and tumbled across the rubble-filled area before stumbling back to his feet.
As he stood back up, Blake noticed Ghosty¡¯s look of disbelief. Why did she seem so shocked that he was still able to fight? He glanced at the bone knife still lodged in his fake arm and his blood ran cold as he noticed the blade¡¯s glistening blue sheen. Poison!
Judging by the look on their faces, whatever was on that blade was strong enough that he should have been dead already. He couldn¡¯t risk getting hit anymore. Not by anything, especially the new knife Ghosty had just pulled out. But his plan wasn¡¯t ready yet. He needed to play keep-away for just a little while longer. The question was, how could he manage it wearing a large metal suit while inside a tornado? The center. He had to get as close to the center as possible, where the winds would be negligible, and then he¡¯d have a chance.
Blake made a break towards the tornado¡¯s eye, but Smashy wasn¡¯t having any of it. He charged forward, swinging his mallet about like a baseball bat with enough force to knock his head clean off. Blake jumped to his left and let loose several more shots towards the large man. One aimed towards his head missed again, but two others struck his upper torso, lodging themselves in his massive pectoral and shoulder muscles. Smashy roared with pain and swung his hammer down towards him once more. Great, all Blake had accomplished was making him mad.
Blake hopped to the left again, avoiding the hammer by a hair¡¯s breadth while keeping Ghosty on the other side of Smashy, but she simply jumped through the large man as if he were immaterial. How did the woman keep from falling into the earth? Blake¡¯s mind raced as he desperately tumbled away from the woman¡¯s unexpected strike, trying to find a weakness. Ghosty¡¯s body seemed to lack substance, and yet he noticed that the she was careful with where she put her feet as they traversed the littered ground. Could it be that her feet were solid?
Backing away from the incoming specter, Blake quickly fired towards the woman¡¯s shoes. She immediately jumped away, her eyes suddenly far more wary. He¡¯d found a crack in her ability. There was just one problem ¡ª he was practically out of metal to use for bullets. What was he supposed to do now? Make his left arm into a blade and fight them up close? That was basically a death sentence!
Blake backed away, trying to make for the tornado¡¯s eye. If he could just last a few more seconds...
The duo didn¡¯t give him a chance. In one swift motion, Smashy grabbed his partner in crime and hurled her headfirst right at Blake¡¯s chest. Blake dodged to the side with everything he had and time seemed to slow as he realized it wouldn¡¯t be enough. Ghosty¡¯s long arms would still reach him with ease, piercing through his armor to deliver a deadly stab wherever she could. If only this godforsaken wind weren¡¯t getting in his way...
Suddenly a thought flashed through his mind, offering salvation. If he couldn¡¯t beat the wind, he needed to use it to his advantage instead. Blake entered Hyper Mode for a split second. In a flash, long, thin sheets of metal emerged from his limbs and torso, connecting and fusing to one another to create what looked like a wingsuit made out of aluminum foil on his armor. The tornado caught his new form with gusto, ripping him away from Ghosty just before she was close enough. He grinned as she let loose a howl of anger as she flew by.
It was finally time. His pieces were in place. He¡¯d checked while in Hyper Mode. Windy noticed his new shape and Blake felt himself lifted into the air, but it was too little, too late.
All this time, Windy had constructed what seemed to be an almost insurmountable defense. His winds would knock away any projectiles headed his way from anywhere around him, even above, while also preventing others from closing in on him. But there was one thing the man hadn¡¯t realized: he¡¯d been standing directly over Blake¡¯s new sewer. As soon as Blake had grasped that neither he nor his minions could easily reach him from above ground, he¡¯d ordered several of the nearby guard skitters into the sewer tunnels to drill up through the tunnel ceiling beneath the older man. Then, once the hole was big enough, they¡¯d switched out with the one other robot he¡¯d sent down there: a battle skitter. One of the ones with gatling guns.
Blake¡¯s larger battle-only skitters were generally retired now that he¡¯d conquered the country. For one they were much larger than the average skitter, with the smallest being over ten feet wide. They were also only good for killing things, meaning they didn¡¯t handle guard duty or police work well. But Blake kept them around anyway just in case, tucking them away in a hangar within his fortress for the next situation that needed overwhelming firepower. A situation like today. The sewers were large enough that a small battle skitter could squeeze down the main tunnels, and now one had it¡¯s gatling cannon pointing straight up at the unsuspecting man with only a foot of dirt between them, its cannon revved up and ready to go.
The ground beneath Windy exploded as the massive rounds blew through the remaining ground like a hot knife through butter, tearing the doomed man¡¯s body to shreds in just a second. It¡¯s power shut off, the tornado dissipated in mere moments, leaving the other two assassins looking about in surprise as over a dozen skitters surrounded them.
¡°Playtime¡¯s over, fuckers,¡± Blake snarled as he crashed back down to earth, giving his units the green light.
Hundreds of bullets from all directions ripped into Smashy¡¯s body, rendering him into bloody pulp. With a cry of fury, Ghosty, the only assailant remaining, streaked towards Blake, the bullets passing through her like before. Blake adjusted the skitters¡¯ target downward, peppering the ground around her with bullets, but she kept coming, screaming through the pain as rounds pierced through her feet. He shouldn¡¯t have been surprised; nobody ever survived a dose of chimirin, so why not kamikaze yourself to get the job done if you had to?
Luckily the gap between them was now considerable. At Blake¡¯s orders, a skitter interposed itself between the two of them and began to melt as he willed the metal to liquefy and spread along the ground between them, creating a puddle many feet wide and long and a few inches deep. The woman paid no heed to the spreading muck, charging straight into the gray soup with her eyes locked on him. With a thought, the metal hardened around her front foot and she tripped forward onto her face. Blake winced as her ankle twisted and snapped from the sudden torque. Ghosty flailed about, materializing various parts of her body in an attempt to get closer, but Blake had her trapped now. Every time she tried to put leverage on a body part, Blake would just trap that part in the tucrenyx puddle.
¡°You might as well give up,¡± he said after a minute of her struggles getting her nowhere. ¡°I can do this all day.¡±
The woman glared at him, hatred in her eyes, and laughed. Then suddenly she was gone, her whole body disappeaing into the earth.
¡°Shit!¡± Blake cried. He¡¯d always known Ghosty and the rest were consigned to die; they¡¯d sealed their fates as soon as they¡¯d consumed that damnable drug. But he¡¯d been hoping to use her body, at least, to look for clues to where these people were from. The other two were far too destroyed to get any real evidence. But she¡¯d robbed him of that. There were no sewer tunnels beneath where they stood. There was nothing but dirt and rock, all the way down. Perhaps she would fall all the way to the core. What a way to go that would be.
Hurriedly, Blake entered Hyper Mode and repaired his suit once more, rebuilding the melted skitter while he was as it. It was imperative that he looked unhurt, untouchable. He had to seem strong and unbeatable at all times. The public¡¯s belief in his invincibility was key to his control over them.
¡°Leo!¡± he called, his repairs done. He looked around. People were just beginning to poke their heads from their houses now that the ruckus had died down. Blake spotted his assistant peeking around the corner a block down the street. He waved the man over.
¡°Find out where those people came from,¡± he ordered. ¡°By any means necessary. Do whatever you have to.¡±
¡°Surely they were part of the resistance?¡± the other man wondered.
¡°Not a chance. There¡¯s no way what remains of the resistance movement would have three people that powerful and not use them earlier. This was a team sent in from somewhere else.¡±
¡°Do we have any clues?¡±
¡°Just what remains of those two men, and this,¡± he said as he liberated the bone knife from his prosthetic arm. The part of the knife¡¯s blade that had been inside his arm seemed to be made of a different material now, as if the tucrenyx and bone had fused together into a new substance. Crafting a small box from some metal taken from the nearest skitter, Blake placed the knife into the box, closed it, and handed it to Leo. ¡°Be careful, there¡¯s something on the blade. Probably deadly poison. I don¡¯t care what you have to break to get me this, Leo. I want answers.¡±
¡°Understood, Lord Ferros,¡± Leo replied, eying the box in his hands warily.
¡°I¡¯m going back. Sorry but your vacation will have to be postponed.¡±
With that, Blake marched back to his nearby fortress, his strides filled with purpose. He could feel the awe-filled stares of the Otharian citizens as he made his way home. He would bow to no one, and he made sure that all who witnessed him knew that. He was Lord Ferros, and he could not be defeated.
Blake¡¯s strength gave out as soon as he was back in his chambers, where he was sure to be alone. Unable to maintain the facade any longer, he staggered and fell to the floor, his armor melting away as he hugged himself while trembling uncontrollably. His breath came in fits and gasps, his heart pounding in his chest as he shook and rocked back and forth. His mind raced through the prior events over and over, consumed with one simple fact. He¡¯d been lucky.
Everything had worked out in his favor. His armor had held against the initial attack. He¡¯d been near his fortress, meaning plenty of skitters on hand, as well as battle skitters. The wind Observer had been standing over a sewer tunnel. Plus all the near misses where he¡¯d escaped death by a fraction of an inch.
But his mind kept coming back to one thing: the first stab. He should have died right there, he knew. That was where they¡¯d won. Only the fact that both his arms looked the same with his armor on had saved him. If they¡¯d known, or if she¡¯d just picked the other side for her initial strike...
This wouldn¡¯t be the end. They were going to keep coming. The whole world might be after him now, for all he knew, and they had plenty of lives to throw at him. He only had the one. All it would take was one stray arrow, one lucky strike... How much longer could his luck hold? Not long enough, surely.
He needed to redesign his home. If one person could phase through objects, why not others? He needed to make thicker walls, and motion detectors, and maybe even facial recognition if he could manage it. Yes. Cameras everywhere. But was that enough? No. They¡¯d gotten into Otharia somehow. He wasn¡¯t patrolling the border enough. No, every square inch of the border needed to be monitored. He couldn¡¯t let more people get in like that. Otharia needed to lock down.
Better security. Better border control. Better surveillance. Blake laid there on the floor, naked and helpless, grasping at straws, searching for a way out. A way to safety, to peace. A way to happiness. A way to home.
Chapter 29
¡°Where¡¯d I go wrong, Arun?¡± Rudra Kapadia slurred to the bartender as he slumped forward on the barstool. He downed his third shot of the night. He wasn¡¯t drunk enough for the occasion, but he¡¯d fix that soon enough.
¡°What¡¯s the problem now, Rudra?¡± Arun the bartender replied, refilling Rudra¡¯s shot glass. ¡°Your coworkers disrespecting you at work again?¡±
¡°Oh, shut it,¡± Rudra huffed, before returning to his solemn mood. He ran his fingers through his bushy mustache and sighed. ¡°I turn forty tomorrow. Forty years of living and what do I have to show for it? A mediocre construction job, a single-room apartment, and an empty existence. Sometimes I wonder why I keep going on, when all I get from living is the right to keep living.¡±
¡°Oh come now, forty isn¡¯t that old these days. If your life is that empty, do something about it. Maybe try one of those new online matchmaking sites.¡±
¡°I tried. I can¡¯t,¡± Rudra responded, downing the fourth shot with a cough. ¡°It¡¯s just not the same anymore. Not since Jaya left.¡±
The bartender sighed. ¡°Rudra. Listen to me. You¡¯ve been drinking here for what, almost two decades now, yes? I¡¯m no stranger to your hardships. I remember how inconsolable you were when she first left you. I told you that you needed to move past her then, but you didn¡¯t listen. Then when she hadn¡¯t returned in two years and you finally petitioned for divorce I thought you were finally going to let her go, but no. You¡¯re still like this. She left you eight years ago, Rudra, and you haven¡¯t stopped pining for her ever since. It¡¯s way past time to move on.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t just forget her,¡± Rudra lamented. ¡°She saved me, gave me a path when I had none. If I hadn¡¯t met her I¡¯d... I¡¯d probably be dead by now.¡±
¡°Love can do incredible things. But it isn¡¯t infinite.¡±
¡°It wasn¡¯t love, though. The love came later. That¡¯s what made her so special. She cared about me like she cared about everybody. Everything she did for me she would have done for anybody else in the same situation. She was... the best person I ever knew. And she was everything to me...¡±
Rudra stared into his reflection in the counter as Arun poured another shot.
¡°What do you think it was, Arun? What did I do to lose her?¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s a mistake to assume that you did anything wrong. People change. Yours was a love marriage, yes? Sometimes love just runs dry, and there¡¯s nothing you can do about it. What you can do, however, is finally admit to yourself that she isn¡¯t walking back through that door ever again. It¡¯s time to take the next step with your life. If not a partner, then something else. Something to keep you going, so life doesn¡¯t feel so empty anymore.¡±
¡°Like what?¡°
¡°I don¡¯t know. That¡¯s on you.¡±
Rudra sat on the barstool and drunkenly argued with the bartender deep into the night before getting kicked out at closing time. Stumbling dejectedly home, he had just enough presence of mind to change into his pajamas before missing the bed entirely and falling unconscious on the floor beside it.
Rudra awoke to the worst hangover of his life as he vomited onto the cold stone floor. His sleep had been plagued with nightmares, more terrible and painful than anything he could remember, not that he usually remembered his dreams. This one on the other hand, a kaleidoscopic fever dream of agony and horror, would likely stay with him until his dying day. Which might just be today, given how his head ached at the moment. Wonderful. The perfect start to his fifth decade on Earth.
Speaking of which... where on Earth was he? He seemed to have ended up in some kind of basement, with what looked to be melted lumps of metal thrown against the walls. This wouldn¡¯t be the first time he¡¯d wandered off somewhere in the middle of the night after drinking too much, but he¡¯d never ended up more than a block from his apartment before. This was a new low.
Staggering to his feet, Rudra made his way around the misshapen metal to a hallway on the other side of the basement. A set of stairs led upwards. As he climbed up, he strained his hearing, searching for familiar sounds. Strange, he couldn¡¯t hear the bustle of the city anywhere. How deep was this place? And how had he gotten himself inside it?
The stairs terminated in a door, one of strange design that he could not recognize off hand. The overall aesthetic reminded him of the kind of doors found in nuclear shelters in movies. A button blinked to the side and he pressed it without even thinking. The door began to open, tilting up like a gull-wing car door, but slowly, as if struggling. Rudra scooted his way under and out as soon as the gap was large enough. It was night. He must have only slept a few hours. He seemed to be in some sort of a small depression. What? This wasn¡¯t New Delhi. This wasn¡¯t a city anywhere! He quickly climbed out of the hole, only to almost fall back in as his legs trembled at the sight before him.
Trees. Trees as far as the eye could see, lit by the bright light of three moons. Rudra stood high up on a slope looking down upon an endless sea of green unlike anything he had ever witnessed. The forest began several hundred meters down the hill and stretched off into the horizon. Far off in the distance, barely visible through the haze, Rudra thought he could see a giant tree, one that must have rivaled Mount Everest in height, seemingly glowing in the night.
Was he hallucinating? Had he, in his drunken state, moved on to more potent substances? Or was this all just an impossible dream? He pinched himself, much much harder than intended, and cried out as the pain coursed through his body. Ow. Okay, not a dream. Still, maybe a drug trip? There were limits to how long those could last, right?
Turning back towards the ¡°basement¡±, or whatever it was, Rudra¡¯s eyes went wide. He wasn¡¯t on some small slope or hill. No, what he saw before he fell was a mountain range of absurd proportions, one whose smallest peaks reached higher than he¡¯d ever thought possible. He¡¯d been to the Himalayas once on vacation some years ago and marveled at their incredible stature. These mountains laughed at his memories, towering into the night sky like an endless array of jagged, deadly shark¡¯s teeth. It seemed like they could almost touch the moons themselves.
The shock was enough for him to stumble and lose his footing. He fell backwards down the hill, tumbling out of control. Several seconds of rolling down the slope and pinballing off random trees later, Rudra came to rest against the trunk of a particularly thick tree with a crash. The back of his head thwacked against the trunk with concussive force, and he blacked out.
¡°I¡¯m just shocked he wasn¡¯t eaten by something.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t you notice that all the beasts have fled? It¡¯s not just the ronutepo.¡±
¡°That¡¯s true. Do you think he had something to do with it? If those damned elves figured out a way to mess with the migration patterns-¡±
¡°Quiet! He¡¯s waking up.¡±
Rudra groaned, rubbing the back his head with his hand. He could feel a large bump sticking out from the back of his skull where he¡¯d struck the tree. Man, what had he gotten up to last n- Everything came rushing back in one giant wave of memory and he bolted upright, his eyes flying open. His chest hit something, stopping his ascension, and he became fully aware for the first time. Five spears pointed at his chest, just centimeters away. Only the foot of the closest man had kept him from sitting fully upright and impaling himself on the weapons before he even realized they were there.
¡°Don¡¯t go punching holes in yourself yet, elf,¡± the man who¡¯d saved him said with a chilling smile. ¡°Not until we¡¯ve pried some answers out of you, at least.¡±
¡°Who... what?¡± Rudra asked, looking about in confusion. He was surrounded by what looked to be over thirty people. More than two thirds of them were carrying some sort of weapon, while the rest had huge packs slung across their backs. All of them, armed or not, eyed him with a hostile suspicion. His eyes were drawn to the animal-like ears and tails sported by the vast majority of the people present. Were those some sort of fashion accessory or something in their culture?
¡°Back with us now, are you?¡± the man asked. He seemed to be the leader. ¡°Excellent. Now listen up. One wrong move, one hint that you¡¯re Feeling or Observing, and you¡¯ll have more holes in you than a saccha fruit found by paruna worms. You can start by undoing your transformation.¡±
Rudra¡¯s head swam as the man gazed at him expectantly. This was too much for the construction assistant foreman to wrap his mind around right away. Processing everything would take time. The man didn¡¯t give him time.
Turning his spear around, the leader brought the butt of his weapon around from the side, striking a painful blow to Rudra¡¯s jaw. Rudra¡¯s head snapped around from the force of the strike. Absentmindedly, he brought his one hand up to his jaw and felt around, to make sure things were still in one piece. The movement caused the other spears to inch closer.
¡°Don¡¯t ignore me, elf!¡± the leader snapped, bring the back of his spear around again. Rudra intercepted the weapon with his free hand, grabbing on to the pole as hard as he could. The man¡¯s eyes widened as he tried to pull his weapon back and failed. The other blades shot forward and Rudra reflexively released his grip and both his hands shot up, palms open and facing forward.
¡°Wait!¡± he cried. The spears stopped just a hair¡¯s breadth from his body. ¡°Hold on! I¡¯m sorry, I don¡¯t understand what you¡¯re talking about.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t play dumb, Drayhadan. There¡¯s no reason anybody should be here on the western edge of the forest, so far from civilization. I know foul intentions when I smell them.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not Drayhadan or whatever you¡¯re saying I am. I don¡¯t even know what that is!¡±
¡°Oh? Then how did you get here then, hmm? Are you a Droajan who crossed the Divide, all on his own? Or are you just a Gustilian that got terribly, horribly lost?¡± Several of the onlookers chuckled.
¡°Look, I don¡¯t know what any of that is. I just got drunk, and then I went to sleep, and then when I woke up I was in this basement and when I left it I found myself here. That¡¯s all I know.¡±
¡°A basement?¡± The leader laughed. ¡°Here? In the middle of nowhere, as far from a city as you can find on this land? That might be the worst lie I¡¯ve ever heard.¡±
¡°It¡¯s true!¡±
¡°Oh yeah? Where is it then?¡±
¡°It¡¯s right up there,¡± he insisted, pointing up the slope. ¡°There¡¯s a small depression right over that little ridge. It¡¯s in there.¡±
¡°Is it, now?¡± The leader looked at another man and tilted his head up the slope. ¡°Go check it out.¡±
The man raced up the slope and over the ridge¡¯s crest, disappearing from view. A few seconds later, he popped back into view and held up his arms like an ¡®X¡¯.
¡°If you¡¯re going to lie, at least make up something that takes more than a few moments to disprove,¡± the leader mocked. ¡°I¡¯m actually disappointed.¡±
¡°No! It¡¯s there, I swear on my life! Look, let me up and I¡¯ll show you.¡±
The man stared quizzically at Rudra for a few seconds before flipping his weapon back around to the pointy end. ¡°Surround him,¡± he said to the others, and every person holding a weapon approached him with their blades out, wary and ready to kill. They joined with the people standing at Rudra¡¯s front so that he was completely enclosed by sharp, deadly weapons.
¡°Get down on the ground, face first,¡± the man commanded. Rudra obeyed. Two pairs of hands grabbed each of his arms and yanked them roughly behind his back. Ten seconds later, his hands were bound by a thick, rough rope.
¡°Alright then, show me,¡± the leader said. ¡°Slowly.¡±
Together, the entire group slowly climbed the incline up to the small depression where the door to the basement stood. ¡°Look, it¡¯s right in here,¡± Rudra explained as he took the final steps to the top. ¡°I just woke up in there with no idea how I...¡±
His voice trailed off as he got his first look at the depression where he¡¯d crawled out just hours ago. The door was gone. Rudra stared at the place where the door at been the night before, completely flummoxed. A rough, craggy rock wall stood where the door once was, with no sign of there having been a door there at any point.
The leader stared at his prisoner, his eyes taking in every square centimeter of Rudra¡¯s disbelieving face. ¡°Stay where you are,¡± he said, putting his hand one of his subordinate¡¯s shoulder and motioning for her to step back. Together they walked several meters from the rest and began to confer in hushed tones. Rudra was surprised to find that he could pick up their conversation, though just barely.
¡°What do you think?¡± the leader asked the woman.
¡°I don¡¯t believe a word of it,¡± she replied.
¡°I don¡¯t either.¡±
¡°But... I think he believes it. I can¡¯t detect a single trace of falsehood. His heart is racing but that¡¯s only normal. Same with the breathing. He didn¡¯t tense, didn¡¯t show any sign of deception. I think we need to take him back with us. Talk to him when he¡¯s got a wruelit on him.¡±
¡°Take him all the way back? We have no idea what he¡¯s capable of! We don¡¯t have any cuffs with us, so we¡¯d have to have, what, a third of the group guarding him at all times? That would slow us down too much.¡±
¡°Not if we cut through the Weald of Lords.¡±
¡°Cut through the... are you crazy?! You want to try to take that route with ten Shells?!¡±
¡°We need to take him with us. We need answers, as soon we can get them. None of this makes sense. The ronutepos shouldn¡¯t have left here for another half season. And then less than two days later we find him here? Dressed like that? He doesn¡¯t even have any shoes!¡±
Hearing the woman¡¯s comments, Rudra realized for the first time that he was still dressed in his pajamas. He looked like a doofus.
¡°He¡¯s related to this somehow. Let¡¯s take him back, give him a real interrogation, and then if he¡¯s lying we kill him. Simple as that.¡±
Rudra¡¯s breath caught at the sound of those words, the blood draining from his face. The woman stiffened, her triangular animal ears on the top of her head rotating towards the group.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
¡°He can hear us,¡± she stated.
The leader glared at him and walked back towards him and the twenty others pointing weapons at his body. ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡±
¡°Rudra Kapadia.¡±
¡°Well, ¡®Rudra¡¯, we¡¯re going to go on a little trip together. Do anything even bordering on suspicious and I will put you down myself without hesitation. Any questions?¡±
¡°Aren¡¯t you going to tell me your name?¡±
¡°No.¡± The man looked about at the many faces staring back at him and clapped once, loudly. ¡°Alright, everybody, listen well! The events of the last two days have changed our mission. We¡¯ve done what we can to warn home, but you all know that messenger birds don¡¯t always make it. Our best option now is to hope that it does and head towards Pholis. But if we want to make it in a timely manner, we¡¯re going to need to take a risk. We¡¯re going to need to pass through the Weald of Lords.¡±
Several gasps and murmurs sprung up amongst the people gathered. The leader held up his hands for silence. ¡°I know it¡¯s a dangerous place, but we don¡¯t have time to go back around. We can do this. Questions?¡±
¡°Why not just go north to Krose?¡± a voice asked.
¡°They¡¯ll already be gone by the time we arrive, either from our warning or because the ranutepos will beat us there. Pholis is the correct destination. Anybody else?¡± Nobody said anything. ¡°Alright then. I want at least six people guarding ¡®Rudra¡¯ here at all times. Here¡¯s how we¡¯ll split it up...¡±
¡°We need to talk.¡±
Rudra looked up from the fire to see who had just spoken and saw the woman whom the leader had consulted on the day they¡¯d all first met. Even weeks later, he still didn¡¯t know her name. He didn¡¯t know anybody¡¯s name, to be fair. There seemed to be some sort of standing orders that nobody was allowed to talk to him. Normally this would have driven him up a wall, but so many new things had been thrown at him so far that he didn¡¯t mind it as much as he otherwise would have.
Rudra found this new world, and the forest they¡¯d been hiking through since the day he¡¯d been captured, to be strangely fascinating. The woods teemed with all sorts of life unlike anything he¡¯d ever seen. Brightly-colored birds with four wings flew about. Strange rodents with bizarrely long legs and massive eyes scampered along the branches above. Insects that seemed to have two distinct and equal heads crawled up and down the tree trunks. Even the trees themselves had become strange, slowly getting bigger and bigger as they went deeper into the forest until they were all over four meters wide. For somebody whose only real experience with jungles stemmed from the ¡°urban¡± variety, it was a lot to get used to.
¡°What is it?¡± he asked as the woman sat down beside him, forcing one of the people guarding him to move over. Her face took on a red hue in the firelight, the flickering flames making her neck tattoos seem almost alive. Most people in the group had some sort of neck tattoos. Rudra believed that they were some sort of status symbol, as the leader had the most complex designs on him, while the only people with no markings were the ones who had no weapons. Everybody referred to them as ¡°Shells¡±.
Shells did all the boring physical labor, setting up the camp, making the fires, cooking, carrying the supplies as they walked, and anything else that the others didn¡¯t seem to feel like doing. Rudra didn¡¯t understand why they obeyed everybody else¡¯s commands so readily. It wasn¡¯t like he saw any joy in them as they worked.
¡°Tomorrow we will enter the Weald of Lords. The Weald is an incredibly dangerous place, where some of the most powerful beasts in the entire forest live, and we could all die at any time. So here¡¯s the rules while we¡¯re in there. First, no talking unless absolutely necessary. Anything we can do to avoid the attention of one of the monsters in there we need to do. Second, no fires. Out here, fire can ward off a lot of the dangers of the night. In there, it will only serve as a beacon to draw them in. Third, you follow the leader¡¯s orders to the letter at all times. If he says to jump, you jump. If he says to climb, you climb. If he says to run, you run. If we all follow these rules, there¡¯s a good chance we all make it out the other side alive.¡±
¡°Okay. None of you talk to me anyway.¡±
¡°We still don¡¯t trust you. You¡¯ve been very cooperative since the beginning, and I thank you for that, but I hope you understand that there¡¯s just far too many things wrong with your situation for us to trust you with anything. Especially not in the Weald. I hope you understand.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t.¡±
¡°Well, once we give you a proper interrogation back home that might change. Depending on what we find.¡± She paused and changed topics. ¡°How are your clothes holding up?¡±
¡°They chafe,¡± he replied. Before the start of their journey, Rudra had been loaned a set of spare clothes and shoes, as walking barefoot through a heavily-wooded forest in sleepwear was not something worth attempting. Unfortunately Rudra was a very large man, well above-average in height, meaning there was only one group member even close to his stature. The loaned clothing clung to his body like spandex, constantly rubbing in the worst of ways. The shoes weren¡¯t much better. Perhaps two sizes too small, they were a pain to wear and an even greater pain to put on. Still, it was better than walking on bloody, cut feet so he didn¡¯t complain.
There was one other strange thing he¡¯d discovered, though he couldn¡¯t complain about it either. When undressing to change after receiving his replacement outfit, Rudra had discovered that his body was not the one he¡¯d gone to bed with on the eve of his fortieth birthday. Working construction had kept him a very fit individual even as he entered middle age, but his body now was a whole different animal. To put it delicately, he was fucking jacked. Massive muscles flexed under smooth, unblemished skin. Not an ounce of fat could be found anywhere on his body. His physique reminded him of a bodybuilder.
What struck him as strange, besides the whole sudden change of course, was that he hadn¡¯t noticed until removing his clothes. Sure, there was the whole ¡°I¡¯m on a different planet¡± panic, followed by the ¡°I¡¯m surrounded by spear-wielding natives¡± deal, but even after that, when he¡¯d had a chance to calm down a little, nothing had felt amiss. His body had just felt normal. It had felt like... him. Still, he wasn¡¯t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Being ripped felt pretty great.
¡°We¡¯re almost halfway there. It shouldn¡¯t be too much longer before we can get you better clothes. That¡¯s all for now. Remember what I said.¡±
¡°I will.¡±
Three days later, the sun filtered through the canopy of the Weald of Lords as the group traveled as silently through the area as they could. Rudra had thought that the trees in the last area were large, but he¡¯d been wrong. Every tree in this forest stood tall in defiance of gravity, each trunk at least ten meters in diameter stretching up and up into the sky. No trees on Earth could even approach their majesty. The size change didn¡¯t only apply to foliage; everything here was many times larger than anything he¡¯d seen before. Ant-like insects the size of his thigh. Lizards that would put komodo dragons to shame. And then there were the ¡°Lords¡± of the Weald of Lords.
Only one such Lord had graced him with its presence so far, and as far as he was concerned that was one too many. As they¡¯d made their way through the forest the day before, Rudra had noticed a strangely-colored tree that had fallen over off in the distance. He hadn¡¯t been the only person to notice, as the leader had immediately given the sign for quiet and they¡¯d moved away as quickly as they could. He¡¯d been confused at first, but as they¡¯d retreated he¡¯d watched as the log flexed and began to slither off somewhere. Only then had he realized that the meters-high object he¡¯d thought was a fallen tree trunk was actually just a small part of a snake hundreds of meters long. What other monsters lurked in this place?
As if to answer his silent question, a sudden low, rumbling roar off in the distance split the silence and everybody froze. A thunderous hiss answered the howl, and suddenly the ground began to tremble as two behemoths began to battle. The sound of breaking wood echoed off the trees as the two Lords fought somewhere out of view. Rudra thanked fortune that they were too far away to even see, but then the crashing grew louder and the ground shook with greater and greater intensity.
¡°Run!¡± the group leader cried. The whole group turned and began to hightail it as far away from the tussling giants as they could. Still, the sounds of the fight continued to grow and grow, the earth quaking furiously. Rudra glanced back to see two enormous beings going at each other with everything they had. Some sort of six-legged creature that looked like a mix between a bear and a sloth was struggling with a giant snake, perhaps even the snake they¡¯d seen earlier. The snake had managed to wrap itself around the sloth-bear¡¯s chest and neck and the other animal was fighting desperately to dislodge it, slamming the snake into nearby rocks and trees, pulverizing them.
Thrashing about, the beast rammed its side into another tree. A massive ¡®CRACK¡¯ reverberated through the forest as the gargantuan trunk began to topple towards the fleeing group. The world seemed to slow down as Rudra looked back and saw an older Shell trip over an exposed root and fall to the ground, his pack of supplies spilling all over. Before Rudra even realized what he was doing he¡¯d already changed course, sprinting towards the doomed man. The Shell looked up at the descending mass of wood and cried out in terror. Rudra tackled the man and dove with him into a nearby hole in the surrounding root structure. The trunk crashed down onto the ground, flattening the earth beneath it and crushing the huge thick roots of the nearby trees into splinters. Rudra felt a great weight pinning him and the Shell beneath him as the fallen tree pressed down on the pulverized roots and earth all around him. The weight was intense, but they were alive. For now.
The roars of battle slowly faded as the combatants¡¯ fight took them elsewhere, and the scene grew quiet. Soon the Shell¡¯s panicked eyes regained their focus, and he looked at Rudra with an almost accusatory glare.
¡°Why? Why did you do that? I¡¯m just a Shell.¡±
¡°W-what?¡± That was perhaps the last thing Rudra had expected to hear.
¡°Now we will both die here, slowly, instead of just me dying quickly.¡±
¡°What is wrong with you? I¡¯m sure they¡¯re rushing over to lift this thing off of us right now!¡±
¡°For a Shell?¡± The old man laughed morosely.
Rudra strained his hearing as far as he could, and could just make out a conversation going on on the other side of ten meters of wood.
¡°What an idiot. Trying to sacrifice himself for a Shell?¡± He recognized that voice. It was the group leader. ¡°Damn! And we really needed answers from him, too.¡±
¡°What if they¡¯re still alive under there?¡± asked a different voice that he didn¡¯t recognize immediately.
¡°There¡¯s no way they survived that. And even if they did, look at this thing! There¡¯s no way we could move it, not even with all our Feelers working together. If we had a plant Observer that would be another story, but nobody thought we¡¯d need one on a routine patrol like this. Ugh, what a mess.¡±
¡°Shouldn¡¯t we at least try? If the Hidden Fang finds out that we left a Shell to die, we all might be in danger.¡±
¡°The Hidden Fang? You¡¯re not actually scared of them, are you? A few Shells too afraid to show their faces, running around in the middle of the night and declaring themselves the protectors of Shells across the country? If they were anything to fear, they wouldn¡¯t be Shells.¡±
¡°Hey, my friend¡¯s uncle told him that his coworker beat a Shell into a coma for being disobedient, and then two days later they found the man¡¯s body in his bed, dead, with seventeen stab wounds to the chest. I¡¯m just saying-¡±
¡°You don¡¯t know that was the Hidden Fang. That could have been completely unrelated. Maybe he welched on some gambling debts.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know...¡±
¡°Hey!¡± Rudra yelled. ¡°Hey! We¡¯re still alive!¡±
The leader¡¯s conversation continued unabated.
¡°HEY!¡±
They couldn¡¯t hear him. Maybe the woman with the great hearing wasn¡¯t nearby. Rudra decided to try again later. But there was no reason to just lie there and hope.
¡°Alright, here¡¯s the plan,¡± he told the man beneath him. ¡°I¡¯ll try to lift up these roots just a little, and you start digging. We¡¯ll dig our way out of here.¡±
¡°Do... do you think you can move the roots with the tree pressing down on them like that?¡±
¡°It¡¯s worth a shot. I think we got lucky and most of the weight of this thing is pressing down on some rocks or something somewhere else, because this is nowhere near as heavy as it should be. Okay, on three, I¡¯ll lift and you turn over and start digging. Got it?¡± The man nodded. ¡°Okay, one, two, three!¡±
Pushing his biceps to their limits, Rudra pushed himself up to his hands and knees. It wasn¡¯t as hard as he thought it would be. ¡°Hold on,¡± he said as the Shell twisted about, ¡°I think I can get you some more room.¡±
Slowly he bent his right leg so he could push off of it. Then, using that for leverage, did the same with his left so he was in an awkward, hunched squat. He felt a pressure on his back, but it wasn¡¯t anything he couldn¡¯t handle. With a grunt, he straightened his legs, pushing the roots up even more. The Shell had stopped any pretense of digging now, instead just staring up at Rudra in shock.
¡°Come on,¡± Rudra said as he stuck his hands up by his head and pushed, raising mass of broken wood up over his head. ¡°That should be more than enough for...¡± His sentence faded away as pieces of root and earth fell around him and the light of the forest washed over him. To his left, Rudra saw the stunned faces of the group leader and his conversation partner, their wide-eyed stares alternating between him and what was above him. He looked up.
His hands weren¡¯t on roots like he¡¯d thought. They were on the tree. The giant, dozen-meter-thick tree. The thing had to weigh two hundred metric tons, at least. Yet he was lifting it. Over his head. It wasn¡¯t even that hard.
Well.
This was different.
Chapter 30
¡°How much longer until we¡¯re there?¡± Rudra asked Eztli Silverwater, one of the people guarding him at the moment.
¡°If we make good time, we should be there before nightfall,¡± the man replied cordially. Rudra sighed with relief at the news. After weeks and weeks of pushing through brush, sleeping on the ground, and not taking baths, Rudra was desperate for whatever counted as civilization for these people. His whole body felt like one giant rash.
Rudra had lost count of how many days he¡¯d been in this accursed wilderness. At first he¡¯d thought that the trip would take a few days, maybe a week. He¡¯d been wrong. Each day seemed tougher than the last. What started as annoying and impeding foliage grew thicker and thicker until half of the group had to constantly cut a path through the plant life just so they could proceed forward. There were days where they had to stop and hunt to replenish their food supplies. There were days where it rained so hard that the forest floor became a treacherous swamp, where each step felt like walking through quicksand and one unlucky move was all it took to trip over a hidden root and fall face-first into the mud. And then there were the migrations.
Initially, Rudra had not understood why the Stragmans cared about migrations so much that they seemed to have encyclopedic knowledge of each and every mass movement that happened in the forest. Then they¡¯d had to stop for one. Hiding with everybody in a modest cave that they¡¯d blocked off with some small boulders, Rudra had watched as a veritable tide of venomous lizards swept over the surrounding area and didn¡¯t stop. Hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, of the meter-long creatures passed by the cave. Only three days later did the last of them pass and the group resume their journey.
Still, everything could have been even worse. Things had changed rather dramatically since the incident in the Weald of Lords. The group as a whole seemed to have decided that he wasn¡¯t as bad as they¡¯d initially believed, and his treatment had changed for the better because of it. People actually talked to him now and he got to learn their names. The group leader, Votan Stonefist, only assigned two people to guard him these days, and they didn¡¯t seem ready to jump him if he so much as sneezed like they had before. Rudra wasn¡¯t sure if it was because they trusted him more for saving the Shell or because his feat of strength had impressed them, though he somewhat doubted it was the former. Perhaps they¡¯d just decided that if he wanted to make a break for it, they had no chance of stopping him. They were wrong, but Rudra had no hope of convincing them of that. You can¡¯t have a superpower and expect people to treat you normally.
Then again, it wasn¡¯t like he was alone. Every person in the group had displayed some level of superhumanity during the preceding weeks. He¡¯d seen spontaneous fire and wind appear from nowhere. He¡¯d watched several of the Stragmans, as he¡¯d learned they were called, run and jump many times faster and farther than what should be possible for even the greatest Olympic athlete. What made his feats any more special than theirs? Even the Shells seemed capable of some fairly impressive deeds. Why didn¡¯t the others give them any of the respect he was suddenly receiving? He wanted to just ask somebody outright, but it seemed like a touchy subject and he could never seem to find the right opportunity for it.
Eztli¡¯s prediction came true as their group began to encounter patrols that afternoon. Rudra¡¯s enhanced hearing picked up several puzzling phrases in the overheard conversations, none more puzzling than ¡°the city arrived less than two days ago¡±. How could a city move?
¡°So if we¡¯re almost at the city, why are the trees here so large like in the Weald of Lords?¡± Rudra asked the talkative guard. ¡°Won¡¯t there be huge monsters here too?¡±
¡°Oh no, the reason the Lords live there is because of how close it is to Ruresni.¡± Ruresni. He¡¯d heard that word before. If his guess was correct, it was their name for the impossible tree that stood at the center of the forest. The one that rivaled the mountains of Earth. ¡°If a Lord were ever to come out here, it wouldn¡¯t be too bad anyway. The Hono would take care of it, or the Chos if it¡¯s really strong. The real threats to the city aren¡¯t the solitary big ones, it¡¯s all the little ones. A lot harder to stop a swarm than a giant.¡±
Soon enough, Rudra found himself amidst a swarm himself. A swarm of people, that is. Perhaps to keep up appearances, the guards went back up to six as soon as they entered the city. The teeming mass of bodies pressed in around them, impeding their progress severely enough that several members had to move out in front and start yelling and clearing a path. Like the group that he¡¯d been traveling with, the vast majority of the people surrounding him had the ears and tail of some sort of animal. Some people stared at him as he passed by, six blades pointed at him from every direction, but most seemed to be too wrapped up in their own business to bother more than a passing glance. A cacophony of conversations assaulted his ears, each melting into the next. With effort, Rudra was able to make out some pieces of individual conversations as he went by.
¡°Where¡¯s the next piece of the roof?¡± ¡°I think Mulac put it over by the support beams over there.¡± ¡°One of these days we¡¯re gonna have to teach that asshole that we have a fucking system where we put everything.¡± ¡°Only reason he even has this job is because he¡¯s the son of a Blou.¡±
¡°So your daughter is of age this year, right? You worried?¡± ¡°Oh no, we¡¯ve taken her out hunting a bunch of times now. She¡¯s strong enough to take down a barloc all on her own! You should have seen her during the Test of Strength. She was the top in her group!¡± ¡°Oh my, that¡¯s quite impressive! She might even make it into the advanced exams like that.¡± ¡°Oh, that would be wonderful! I would be the proudest mother in Stragma!¡±
¡°So I said to him, ¡®I know a good place where we could be alone for a while, if you know what I-¡¯ aww, shit.¡± ¡°Oh no! It¡¯s everywhere!¡± ¡°Ugh, my clothes are going to smell all day unless I go change. Let¡¯s go back.¡± ¡°Aren¡¯t you going to clean it up?¡± ¡°Nah, that¡¯s what the Shell¡¯s for, isn¡¯t it?¡±
As he continued in, Rudra found himself flabbergasted by the city¡¯s layout. While any other city would stretch out horizontally, Pholis stretched upward instead. Built in a giant grove of humongous trees, the Stragmans had constructed what was basically an entire city of organic skyscrapers. Hundreds of platforms protruded from the massive trunks, rising high into the sky, and on each platform stood a home. A maze of rope bridges that seemed almost like a massive spider¡¯s web connected platforms to each other, larger hub platforms with larger bridges, and hundreds of elevator platforms. Commercial buildings like stores and taverns, in the meantime, were on or near the ground. Rudra marveled at the insanity of it all.
Still, his construction background meant that he couldn¡¯t help but notice that the city seemed... incomplete. Everywhere he looked, for every five completed buildings he noticed one currently being assembled. ¡®Assembled¡¯ was the correct term in his mind, as they reminded him less of solid, permanent structures being built from raw materials and more like some sort of assembly kit where walls, floors, and everything else were discrete parts that snapped in and out. Nearly every single structure he saw featured this assembly-driven design, with some rare exceptions on the ground. Perhaps the notion of an entire city moving wasn¡¯t as crazy as he¡¯d first thought.
He also couldn¡¯t help but notice that the vast majority of the people laboring to assemble the remaining buildings were Shells. Observing the strange underclass, he found that few if any of them appeared malnourished. He also didn¡¯t see anybody lording over them with whips or anything like that. Still, there was a resigned weariness to them that bothered Rudra, like they lived life under a perpetual sigh.
¡°We¡¯re here.¡± Votan¡¯s words pulled him back to the present. They stood outside a complex of buildings, the largest and most complicated he¡¯d seen so far. Was this place, capable of holding thousands, really something that had been transported from somewhere else into the middle of the forest? How did they move it all? People, each holding a weapon of some sort, flowed in and out of the facility¡¯s many entrances seemingly nonstop, all in some rush to do something or other. He and the group entered a large door on the right, one that seemed ignored by most of the other bustling Stragmans. Inside Rudra found a nondescript room, with some chairs and a table and several doorways that led elsewhere.
¡°You six stay,¡± Votan told the guards. ¡°The rest of you report to the patrol office for the usual follow-up and payment. Good job, each and every one of you.¡±
The others did as he instructed, filing out the door with weary but jubilant grins. The guards remained, as did Votan¡¯s second in command Itotia Stormcloud, the woman whose hearing was good enough that she seemed to be able to hear his heartbeat.
¡°Itotia-blou, you get everything set up. I have to go report this up the chain.¡±
¡°Of course, Votan-blou.¡± The woman led Rudra and the guards down a long hallway and into another room with several people sitting behind desks. They all looked up as the group entered. ¡°I have a prisoner here for immediate interrogation under the orders of Commander Votan Stonefist-blou,¡± she stated.
The people in the room immediately flew into action. One of them ushered them all through a door behind him, down another hallway, and into a dark room that contained nothing but a single, rough wooden chair. ¡°Sit down,¡± Itotia instructed him. He did.
Perhaps twenty minutes later, one of the clerks from before entered holding what looked like a long, stretched-out mongoose in her hands and handed it to Itotia, who stepped forward and placed the elongated mongoose on top of Rudra¡¯s head. The furry critter scrabbled around on his head before wrapping itself around his skull and letting out cute little squeaks. Rudra fought back a wince as the fuzzy animal dug its claws into his scalp slightly as it struggled to steady itself.
¡°This is a wruelit,¡± she explained. ¡°Wruelits have the greatest sense of smell of any animal ever known. So good, they can even be trained to smell lies. You can control your face and your heartbeat and your breathing, but you cannot control your smell. If you try to deceive us, it will know and it will get rather upset.¡±
Rudra tried to pet the chittering beast, but it bit down on his finger hard enough to draw blood. ¡°Ow! So now what?¡± he asked.
¡°Now we wait for the rest of the party to arrive.¡±
Another few minutes passed. The atmosphere in the room had become tense, and the only noises breaking the silence were the wruelit¡¯s soft squeaks. Suddenly Rudra picked up on some footsteps outside the door and Votan entered the room, followed by a smaller man with curly orange-brown hair and bushy tail of the same hue. Itotia immediately went stiff.
The new man looked over Rudra and let out a whistle. ¡°That¡¯s quite a specimen you got here,¡± he remarked with a smirk.
¡°General, this is Itotia Stormcloud-blou, by extremely capable second-in-command. Itotia-blou, I¡¯m sure you recognize General Caprakan Bloodflower-hono.¡±
¡°I-it¡¯s an honor, sir,¡± the woman stammered.
¡°Now now, no need to get so uptight,¡± the General said, waving nonchalantly. ¡°I¡¯m no different than the rest of you. Save your anxiety for when my wife shows up.¡± He chuckled.
Now everybody in the room stiffened.
¡°The... the Chos is coming here?¡± asked a suddenly nervous Votan.
¡°Of course! Interrogating a possible Masked Battalion member, one that¡¯s actually alive? Nothing in the world would keep her from this. You know how much she hates the Drayhadans. Speaking of which, with her and me here, there¡¯s no need for guards. I¡¯d rather keep what happens in here between as few ears as possible.¡±
¡°Of course,¡± replied Votan. He nodded towards the guards and they all shuffled out, disappointed. As they left, Rudra heard some sort of commotion coming from down the hall. Several moments later, in stepped the largest person that Rudra had ever seen. Rudra himself stood at almost exactly two meters tall, but she dwarfed him with ease. She carried with her a massive wooden club nearly as tall as her as easily as if it were made of paper. Her predatory gaze made him feel like a helpless little mouse before a tiger. This was a woman who owned every room she entered.
Everybody else in the room bowed. She walked over to the general and smiled. ¡°You¡¯ve brought us something very interesting, Commander Stonefist-blou. Well done.¡±
¡°T-thank you, Chos. Your words honor me greatly.¡±
¡°Tepin, are you ready?¡±
Tepin? Looking about, Rudra noticed that one other person had entered the room and he¡¯d been so preoccupied by the giant that he hadn¡¯t noticed. Beside the massive woman stood a second woman who seemed to be nearly her exact opposite. Small and frail, she looked like she could be knocked over by a harsh glare. Floppy silver canine ears stuck out of her short, silver hair, while a silver dog¡¯s tail hung limply down between her legs. Dark bags stuck out on her pale, sickly skin. The only signs of life Rudra saw could be found in the woman¡¯s harsh, judgmental stare. Her eyes glowed with intelligence, and he could feel her measuring every inch of his being, analyzing it, pulling back the curtain in search of the man hiding behind it. She also bore no markings on her body. A Shell.
¡°I am ready,¡± the tiny woman said dispassionately, a brush in one hand and a board with some parchment stretched across it in the other. A small inkwell stuck out of the bottom right of the board.
¡°I can¡¯t wait any longer!¡± the giant woman cried. ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡±
¡°Very well,¡± agreed the general. He motioned to the group leader and his second. ¡°You two have the best grasp on what happened, so you begin. We¡¯ll step in when the time comes.¡±
¡°Yes sir,¡± said Votan. He cleared his throat. ¡°Let¡¯s start with the basics. What is your name?¡±
Rudra looked up at the soft creature latched onto his head, sniffing away. His ears picked up the sound of Tepin¡¯s brush swishing across the parchment, recording what was about to happen for posterity. Time to finally clear things up. ¡°Rudra Kapadia.¡±
¡°How old are you?¡±
¡°Forty years old.¡±
¡°Where are you from?¡±
¡°New Delhi.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not familiar with that town. What country is that in?¡±
¡°India.¡±
The group looked at each other and back at him, or specifically at the wruelit chilling on his dome.
¡°India is... not a country.¡±
¡°No, it is not a country here. I¡¯m from a different world.¡±
An awkward silence settled throughout the room.
¡°Should we try a different wruelit?¡± asked General Bloodflower.
¡°This is just...¡± The general rubbed his temples in exasperation. Three hours had passed and they were on their third wruelit, this one a cute shade of pink. Everybody looked as tired as Rudra felt. ¡°So you just... woke up here. In some cave in the side of the Divide.¡±
¡°For the last time, yes. Except it wasn¡¯t a cave. It was built.¡±
¡°And when you went back, the entrance was gone.¡±
¡°It must have closed or something. Maybe it was hidden. I don¡¯t know what happened.¡±
¡°And you don¡¯t know anything about ranutepo migrations.¡±
¡°I still don¡¯t even know what they are.¡±
¡°If what he¡¯s saying is true, we have to send a team to investigate,¡± the general said to his wife.
¡°I agree. And make sure there¡¯s at least one earth and stone Observer. If there¡¯s something hiding under there I want to know what it is.¡±
¡°What if it was built by the Metalshapers, like the Valley of the Mist or the Cavern of Voices?¡±
¡°Then they stop and come back. But if it¡¯s elven, we need to know. Or maybe those bastards actually dare to defile the graves of the Metalshapers with their presence. You saw what happened when we had to move out of Krose early. We¡¯ll be in huge trouble if they can break the balance of our migrations. We need to know if we¡¯re vulnerable.¡±
¡°I agree.¡±
¡°Tepin,¡± the giant woman said.
¡°Yes, Palebane-chos.¡±
¡°Set up an expedition like we just discussed. Make sure there¡¯s the proper Observers on the team.¡±
¡°As you command, Palebane-chos.¡±
¡°So Rudra,¡± the general said, turning back to the sitting man. ¡°If we were to let you go, what would you do?¡±
¡°Take a bath.¡±
The general chuckled. ¡°Fair enough. You need it. But I¡¯m talking more long term here.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Rudra shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know where I am. I don¡¯t know anything about the world. I don¡¯t know what opportunities would be here for me. I don¡¯t know enough about anything to make a decision yet. I don¡¯t think I would even be able to make it out of here without somebody¡¯s help, so a lot about what I do or don¡¯t do depends on what you will allow.¡±
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¡°Don¡¯t you want to go home?¡±
¡°I...¡± Rudra stopped and thought for a minute. ¡°I don¡¯t know. There¡¯s isn¡¯t much there for me anymore. And even if there was, I wouldn¡¯t know how to go back anyway.¡±
¡°Enough of this depressing shit! Let¡¯s talk about something much more important!¡± the Chos exclaimed. She eyed Rudra with a hungry smile. ¡°I hear you¡¯re strong.¡±
¡°More! More!¡± shouted the Chos.
Rudra stood in what he¡¯d been told was Akhustal Palebane¡¯s private training chamber, a large hall made entirely out of stone, holding giant blocks of wood over his head while the massive woman grew more and more excited. Every so often she¡¯d grab another block and toss it on top of the others like it was made of styrofoam. At first he wouldn¡¯t feel the extra weight. Then suddenly the burden upon him would grow dramatically, like the wood had turned into concrete. Was this some sort of magic wood? Six blocks he currently supported felt at least twice as heavy as the tree back in the Weald. The weight was starting to bother him, though not as much as the way the Chos was practically drooling at the sight of him carrying the weights.
¡°Incredible!¡± Palebane exclaimed. ¡°This is just... impossible! The twenty greatest Feelers in Stragma combined wouldn¡¯t be able to do what you¡¯re doing!¡±
¡°Can I be done now?¡±
¡°No, no, let¡¯s see how far you can go!¡±
¡°Honey, look at him. He¡¯s exhausted,¡± chimed in General Bloodflower. ¡°You¡¯ve had your fun. Let¡¯s finish this up.¡±
¡°We should put him in the advanced exams!¡±
¡°Sweetums, slow down. He just got here.¡± Bloodflower sighed. ¡°Let me talk to him. It¡¯s getting late, you need to sleep for the ceremony tomorrow.¡±
The air seemed to come out of the large and now dejected woman. ¡°Oh, alright...¡± She grabbed her massive club and walked out. Suddenly, the wooden blocks above Rudra lightened immensely and he let them crash to the ground to his side.
¡°I¡¯m sorry about that,¡± the shorter man said. ¡°Nothing gets her more excited than strong people, and you¡¯re the strongest person any of us have ever seen. Let¡¯s cut to the chase. Stragma has always been a society that values the strong. We want you on our side. You need a place to settle down. If you become a full citizen, we can provide you with a house, food, whatever you need. You use your strength for the good of the country. We both benefit. How does that sound?¡±
Rudra thought about it for a moment. He didn¡¯t want to paint himself into a corner option-wise, but he didn¡¯t see any other choice. This was the only island of civilization in this endless sea of trees. What choice did he have? Maybe he could go elsewhere later, but that was a question for a different day. ¡°That sounds acceptable.¡±
¡°Wonderful. There¡¯s one other step that needs to happen before you can be officially inducted. All Stragman citizens must pass two tests before they can be a Fleg, which is the lowest form of citizenry. You missed the Test of Strength but nobody will make a fuss if we just pass you through that, not after what you just did. What¡¯s left is the Test of Courage, which will be held tomorrow. I don¡¯t see why you¡¯d have any trouble with that either.¡±
¡°Sounds good.¡±
¡°There¡¯s one slight wrinkle. Akhustal-chos wants to nominate you for the advanced exam, which you by right are allowed to decline.¡±
¡°What makes it different?¡±
¡°It¡¯s tougher, for one. But other than that it¡¯s pretty much the same, except it happens at night and the entire nation watches through the Manys. The advanced exams is where the best and brightest of the upcoming generation of Stragman citizens get to show their stuff before the whole country. Those that make the best impressions get sponsored by a Hono, or even the Chos, which means they get to skip being a Fleg and become a Blou right from the start, working under their sponsor.¡±
¡°And I would want to be a Blou?¡±
¡°Oh yeah, it¡¯s a much better life than being a Fleg, trust me. Not as good as being a Hono, of course, but graduating from Blou to Hono takes a long time and a lot of notable feats. Same, to a lesser extent, with Fleg to Blou. That¡¯s why if you can just skip it, you absolutely should.¡±
¡°You think I¡¯ll do well enough to get a sponsor?¡±
¡°Are you kidding? My wife has practically sponsored you already. That¡¯s a tremendous honor. All you have to do is just complete the Test of Courage to make it official. I¡¯m sure you can do that, no problem.¡±
¡°All right. I¡¯m going to need some new clothes, though. By the way, what happens if you fail one of the tests?¡±
The man paused for a second. ¡°Those that cannot show strength or courage lack the essential qualities that make a Stragman a Stragman. They are empty inside. That is why we call them the Hollow. Most people these days tend to call them ¡®Shells¡¯.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t say I¡¯ve been impressed with what I¡¯ve seen of their treatment.¡±
¡°They¡¯re lucky that their presence is tolerated at all. Long ago, Shells were killed for their failure. There is no place for the weak in Stragma. The forest does not allow it.¡± With that the man left, instructing two guards to show Rudra to his temporary home. Rudra just watched him leave, unsure of what to think.
The sound of tens of thousands of voices chattering expectantly filtered through the thick stone walls and into Rudra¡¯s ears. He and some other examinees stood in an antechamber, waiting for the ceremony to begin. To pass the time and ignore the many stares pointed his way, Rudra inspected the smooth walls of the amphitheater. Unlike nearly all the other buildings in Pholis, this was a permanent installation. So much about it seemed to defy the principles of construction. It didn¡¯t feel built, but rather grown. Even though he¡¯d seen other things that defied his understanding since his arrival in this world, this place really drove home just how different this world was from what he had always known. This was a different normal, one he didn¡¯t fully understand just yet, and one he wasn¡¯t sure he liked very much.
The stares were getting to him a little. It couldn¡¯t be helped; he just stood out too much. It wasn¡¯t the color of his skin, as a variety of skin shades could be found throughout the group. Nor was it the fact that he was human. While the majority of those around him sported some sort of mammalian ears and tail, Rudra estimated that perhaps a quarter of them were normal humans. Well, as normal as you could be with hair every color of the rainbow. No, what set him apart was his height and his age. He towered over the rest of the people, none of whom looked to be over sixteen years old. He was every bit the outsider, and he felt it.
A door opened and people began filing out of the room. Rudra joined the queue near the back and proceeded through a long hallway before emerging into the arena. The noise of the crowd grew until it became nearly deafening as he exited the hallway, thousands of voices cheering and hollering as the examinees climbed up onto a stone platform tens of meters wide rising up from the ground in the arena¡¯s center.
Together the examinees lined up on one side of the platform and faced the center. The crowd began to clap as one, chanting and clapping in rhythm, their volume and fervor growing and growing as Akhustal Palebane, clad in pelts and furs and still carrying her massive club, ascended to the platform on the other side from Rudra and the others. Behind her followed an older man, walking respectfully to the side and behind her, and behind them came a procession of people who assembled on the other side of the platform facing Rudra. He noticed that they were older than the kids on his side. The Chos began crossing the platform and then suddenly stopped a 3rd of the way across, violently thrusting her club into the air. The crowd suddenly went silent.
¡°We are the people of the forest!¡± she roared, her voice booming out to everybody in the theater via some sort of magical amplification.
The crowd responded with a single short, emphatic shout.
¡°We are the strong!¡±
The crowd shouted again, and continued to do so after every one of the woman¡¯s hollered declarations.
¡°We were the outcasts! The homeless! The hunted! We were those who were unwanted! But we are outcasts no longer! Homeless no longer! Now we are the hunters! We are wanted! We are the forest! By the blessings of Ruresni, we thrive! No matter the danger, no matter the hardship, we will survive, because we! Are! STRAGMA!¡±
With a brutal finality, the Chos slammed her club into the ground, cracking the stone and sending tremors through the entire platform. The tens of thousands of people in the stands went absolutely wild, cheering so loud that Rudra thought his eardrums were about to burst. The Chos simply stood still for a moment, soaking in the crowd¡¯s adulation. After a moment, the crowd quieted down a little and Palebane spoke again.
¡°Tonight we will show proof that the might of Stragma will continue into the future! Tonight the most promising of the next generation of Stragmans will showcase their will! Let the Test of Courage begin!¡± The crowd erupted. Akhustal turned and walked to the side of the platform, standing halfway between the two lines of people. She pointed to the young man at the end of the line, just two positions away from Rudra. The boy walked out towards the center of the platform and bowed to Akhustal Palebane. Meanwhile, his counterpart from the other side walked out as well, bowed to the Chos, and took a fighting stance. The boy entered a stance of his own.
Rudra¡¯s stomach sank like a stone as he realized what was going on. Of course this was what the Test of Courage would be. He should have realized it earlier.
Without warning the young man rushed his opponent, who backpedaled, a length of vine growing out from his hand into a long, barbed whip. He struck at the boy, who blocked it with his arm. A complex dance of violence followed, the boy trying to rush in while the older man kept him at bay with his whip, but Rudra was no longer paying attention. He was too focused on what would happen when his turn arrived.
The match ended suddenly, when the boy purposely let the man¡¯s whip wrap around his arm and grabbed hold tightly despite the piercing thorns, pulling the man to him instead. They traded blows but the boy¡¯s strength was obviously much greater than the older man, and the man went down quickly after several punches to his head and gut. The Chos slammed her club down once, signaling the end of the match, and the boy raised his bloody fist in triumph, basking in the crowd¡¯s vocal approval.
The boy returned to his spot and the girl to Rudra¡¯s side stepped forward, bowing to the Chos. Another man, her counterpart, joined her, and in just a few seconds their battle had begun. Blasts of steam shot into the air as the two blasted each other with balls of flame and jets of water. The man¡¯s water slowly pushed back the girl¡¯s fire, until one of her fireballs collided with a water jet close enough to her that the resulting steam left her side badly burned and she fell over. Palebane thumped the end of her club and the bout ended. The girl pushed herself to her feet, gritting her teeth through the pain, and retreated to her spot in line to a smattering of applause. For somebody in such pain, she didn¡¯t seem too upset. Perhaps victory was not required to pass the test.
Rudra knew it wouldn¡¯t change what was about to happen either way. Palebane point in his direction, an eagerness shining in her eyes, and he obeyed. The crowd¡¯s excitement grew as he strode out to the center of the platform. Once in position, he turned to the Stragman leader and gave a slight bow. His opponent gave a larger bow and took a fighting stance. The crowd buzzed with energy now, as everybody waited to see how the new outsider would fight. Rudra looked around the crowd for a moment, then back at Akhustal Palebane¡¯s keen gaze, and sighed. There was no way around it. As an entire nation watched, Rudra sat down and crossed his legs, resting his arms lightly against his thighs. Memories surfaced, unbidden but not entirely unwelcome. Time slowed as he recalled his past.
Rudra¡¯s eyes opened slowly, the sun peeking through the window to his right and shining its radiance right onto his face. The soft sound of a song coming from a radio in another room drifted into his ears, mixing with the creaking of the slowly spinning ceiling fan above. His chest burned as he tried to take a deep breath and sit up. He coughed and fell back on his back again. Where was he? What had happened? Suddenly he remembered. He and his crew had gotten into a little tussle with another gang. The fight his side had won, technically, but he¡¯d taken a few from a man with a knife and collapsed shortly after the fight was over. He looked down and found much of his chest wrapped in bandages.
¡°Try not to move yet,¡± said a strong, confident voice to his right. ¡°I¡¯m not finished dressing your stab wounds.¡±
Rudra turned his head to see the voice¡¯s source, his head moving sluggishly, his body lethargic. In the doorway to the other room with the radio stood a woman about his age, a concerned frown on her face. His eyes locked with hers, and he saw within them intelligence and humor, but most of all compassion.
¡°You¡¯ve lost a lot of blood,¡± the woman continued as she approached, bandages and other medical implements in her hands. ¡°I stopped the bleeding, but you¡¯re going to need to see a real doctor soon. Once I finish we¡¯ll take you to a real hospital.¡±
A thousand questions popped into Rudra¡¯s addled mind, but one stood above the rest. ¡°Why?¡± he rasped.
¡°Why what?¡±
¡°Why did you save me?¡±
The woman looked at him like he¡¯d grown a second head. ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I save you?¡± She began dressing another wound. ¡°All lives are precious, you know, even if they don¡¯t think so themselves. Hold still, this is going to sting.¡±
Rudra grimaced as the woman began dabbing the wound with hydrogen peroxide.
¡°I found you in a ditch down the road,¡± the woman said. ¡°Did you get attacked? A robber?¡±
¡°No,¡± Rudra said after a moment. ¡°We were protecting our turf.¡±
¡°We?¡±
¡°My crew. We all fought them off. We won.¡±
¡°Oh, this is what winning looks like? Bleeding out in a ditch on the side of an alley, abandoned?,¡± the woman replied, gesturing to his bandaged form. ¡°Your ¡®crew¡¯ isn''t as grand as you thought if they just left you there to die. If I hadn¡¯t come along, you¡¯d be gone by now.¡±
Rudra didn¡¯t know how to respond to that. He¡¯d always thought that fighting together bred loyalty and camaraderie, but it looked like he¡¯d been wrong. To think the people he¡¯d thought his mates had just dumped him by the side of a road...
¡°Can I ask you something?¡± the woman said, interrupting his thoughts. ¡°Why do you fight?¡±
Rudra thought about her question for a good while. These last few wild, violent years, wandering the city streets with the rest of his crew, searching for a hit or a thrill... what had they really been for? ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he finally answered. ¡°I guess it¡¯s just what I know.¡±
¡°Then learn something else. You don''t have to stay the man you are today, forever.¡± She smiled a soft smile. ¡°I¡¯m Jaya, by the way. I¡¯m training to be a nurse.¡±
¡°Rudra,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m... just a nobody.¡±
¡°Nobody is a nobody. There¡¯s something inside of you that makes you special, I¡¯m sure of it. You just have to find it.¡±
He scoffed, before grimacing at the pain he¡¯d just caused himself. ¡°Prove it.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t believe me?¡± She stared him in the eyes defiantly. ¡°Fine. I¡¯ll show you. We¡¯ll find it together. But that means you have to leave this life behind. All of it.¡±
Rudra gazed back, the determination and will in her stare nearly blinding him. She was beautiful, he realized. Not in an aesthetic sense, but in her soul. Willful, committed, caring, grounded, purposeful... everything that he was not, yet desired to be. Maybe she could help him find himself. Maybe she could show him the way.
He returned her gaze with a wry, resigned grin. ¡°What do I have to lose?¡±
The memory faded as quickly as it came, nothing more than a flash in his mind. Rudra smiled a small, bittersweet smile, any regret he may have felt before now banished from his conscience.
Rudra¡¯s opponent stared at him in confusion and didn¡¯t make a move. Puzzled chatter bubbled up from the crowd, growing louder as the seconds ticked on.
¡°Rudra, what are you doing?¡± shouted an apprehensive Chos.
¡°I refuse to fight,¡± he stated, his voice strong and clear. Pandemonium erupted throughout the watching crowd at the preposterous declaration.
¡°What do you mean you refuse?¡± came the incredulous response.
¡°I am a pacifist. I will not harm another person.¡±
The arena descended into chaos.
Chapter 31
Rudra Kapadia leaned back against the wall of his prison cell, feeling the smooth wood against his back and pondering whether or not to try to break out. The subject was far more complicated than it seemed. The material composing his cell, and the other cells that he could see through the wooden bars, was some sort of lightweight wood that was far, far stronger than any wood that light had any right to be. Still, strong or not, no wood could keep Rudra from leaving this cell if he so chose. But exiting the cell didn¡¯t actually mean Rudra could leave, because of one simple fact: the Stragmans were insane. That was the only justification Rudra could come up with to explain why they thought it was a good idea to literally suspend an entire prison building in midair, hundreds of meters above the ground.
It was a surprisingly standard prison, given the circumstances. There were two sections: the regular prison where prisoners could intermingle and the smaller solitary confinement section where Rudra sat, alone in his cell. As far as he could tell, the solitary section was little more than two rows of cells on either side of a hallway. He¡¯d noticed as they¡¯d marched him down the hallway that many of the cells were empty. His cell in particular was all the way down at the end, separated from the other prisoners. Rudra was no jail expert, but there was little he saw that jumped out to him as strange, other than, of course, the fact that it was far from solid ground.
During the trip from the arena Rudra had gotten a very good look at the entire place, and he still couldn¡¯t get over its sheer audaciousness. Hundreds of ropes as thick as his waist hung down from massive branches, each looping through one of many thick rings sticking vertically from the building¡¯s roof. The entire idea struck him as an exercise in absurdity, but he couldn¡¯t deny that it worked ¡ª it turned the idea of escape into less of a hope and more of a deathwish.
In Rudra¡¯s cell was a small hole, just a centimeter or two smaller in diameter than his head. The toilet, he assumed. Through this hole he could see the forest floor far below and by his best guess, he was at least two hundred meters in the air. There was no way he¡¯d survive a drop like that. The only other way out was up, climbing the large ropes. But guards watched those ropes from above, meaning he¡¯d be a pincushion far before he made it up to the top. The only way on or off the prison was an elevator platform that would come down from the tree branches above. If he timed his escape right, while the elevator was down, maybe get a hostage...
The sound of footsteps brought Rudra¡¯s attention back to the present. He looked up just as several guards marched another prisoner into his view and locked him in the cell across the hall. The prisoner, a man of average height with large ears sticking out of his spotted tan hair. The man stretched and let out a small groan of relief before turning around and freezing at the sight of Rudra in the cell across from him.
¡°Well I¡¯ll be,¡± he laughed. ¡°It¡¯s you!¡±
Rudra raised an eyebrow in confusion. ¡°You know me?¡±
¡°Everybody knows you, my friend,¡± the other prisoner laughed, his one ear twitching. ¡°The advanced examinations are watched by the entire country. Even we prisoners get to watch it every year. Nobody has ever done what you did. Willingly choosing to be a Shell? You¡¯re crazy, my friend. But boy was that entertaining, at least. Ah! Where are my manners? Bitol Fogrunner-fleg, at your service.¡± He chuckled again.
¡°Rudra Kapadia,¡± Rudra replied.
¡°You¡¯re quite an interesting fellow, Rudra. What are you doing here, in the high-security section of a prison?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not really sure myself. This place confuses me much of the time.¡±
¡°Well why don¡¯t you tell me all about it? Maybe I can help you understand.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know...¡±
The man chuckled again. ¡°Let me tell you, Rudra. The days grow long in here. You¡¯re gonna need somebody who¡¯s willing to talk to you, or you¡¯ll go mad eventually. So why not your old pal Bitol-fleg here?¡±
¡°Alright, fine...¡± And so Rudra relayed to him the events of the last few weeks as Bitol listened with a wry, amused smile on his face the entire time.
¡°That¡¯s quite a story you have there,¡± Bitol said after Rudra had finished. ¡°To me, it looks like you¡¯re in here for two reasons, but only one action. You chose to be a Shell. As I said before, nobody¡¯s ever willingly become a Shell. Only the permanently ill become Shells without taking the Tests, and it¡¯s not like they want to be Shells, they just don¡¯t have a choice. But you... you had a choice. And you said ¡®no¡¯.¡±
¡°And that¡¯s a crime?¡± Rudra asked.
¡°I mean, it¡¯s not really. Not on its own, at least. But look at it from the other end. Everything about you is unbelievably suspicious. Your story makes no sense and is suspicious. The fact that the wruelits didn¡¯t detect any lies actually in some ways makes you even more suspicious. But you¡¯d cooperated, and the Chos liked you, and so they probably decided to watch you and see what you did. But then you chose to become a Shell, which is something that nobody would ever do unless they were up to no good. And so I would imagine that they decided that you were too suspicious to let be free.¡±
Rudra sighed. ¡°It¡¯s not like I decided I wanted to be a Shell, I just am not willing to pay the price to be anything else. And it¡¯s not like I can help being suspicious. I didn¡¯t choose to be here.¡±
¡°But you did choose to anger the Chos. That¡¯s actually the real reason you¡¯re here, I reckon. You insulted her in front of the entire country.¡± He laughed again. ¡°I bet she¡¯s still fuming.¡±
¡°She can just lock me up like that?¡±
¡°She can do whatever she wants. She¡¯s the Chos. She¡¯s the strongest. That¡¯s how things work here. The weak obey the strong.¡±
Rudra grumbled. That was no way to run a country. ¡°What about you?¡± he asked. ¡°What¡¯s your story?¡±
¡°Ahhh, well, I¡¯m just a guy who sometimes helps himself to a little something here or there that might not be entirely mine, so to speak.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t you say this was the ¡®high-security¡¯ section? How does theft get you here?¡±
Bitol looked away. ¡°Well let¡¯s just say that I may have... um... angered a rather powerful criminal in the other side of the prison, and his... associates... would have killed me. Sooooo... I attacked a guard to get myself thrown in here, where they can¡¯t touch me!¡± He grinned again. ¡°I won¡¯t be free for a good long time now, but... it¡¯s better than dying, I guess.¡± Bitol¡¯s smile stayed on his face, but Rudra couldn¡¯t help but notice the sadness in the man¡¯s eyes.
Rudra leaned against the side of the cell again, his eyes closed as he listened to the sounds of the forest at night. The prison hung from two trees by the edge of the city, meaning he heard more hoots, chirps, and howls than he did laughs, shouts, and screams. The sounds of the forest had grown on him over the last few weeks, but only a little. He still found himself yearning for the sound of vehicles driving by his apartment window late at night.
Rudra¡¯s ears picked up the sound of his neighbor Bitol¡¯s breathing as the other prisoner slept soundly. Rudra wasn¡¯t sure how the man fell asleep so easily in an empty cell that lacked even a single cushion to sleep on. Maybe he¡¯d just had plenty of practice. Rudra thanked fortune that the other man wasn¡¯t a snorer.
The two of them had chatted all day, off and on. It was nice for once to have somebody to talk to who didn¡¯t want something from him or see the need to keep things from him. He¡¯d learned a good deal about Stragma from those loose lips. Stragma seemed to be a land of contradictions. On one hand, the people reminded him of the stereotypical ¡°natives¡± found in modern movies and television shows. They worshiped a giant tree, hunted wild beasts and used fangs and claws from those hunts as status symbols, and in many ways seemed shackled with their traditions of old. Yet at the same time, they were incredibly well-organized, their entire country run like one giant army. Any society that could pick its entire city up and move it through a giant, dense forest filled with dangers every few months was one that had its shit together to at least some degree. Their societal structure was even a meritocracy, which he found commendable in the abstract. It was just a shame that their entire perspective on ¡®merit¡¯ consisted of one¡¯s ability to kill. His thoughts faded as the soft rhythms of the forest lulled him to sleep. He had a lot to think about tomorrow...
¡°So you¡¯re the man who wanted to be a Shell...¡±
A voice in his cell yanked him back to reality just before his consciousness crossed the border into the land of dreams. His head shot up towards the voice and his body tensed, cracking the wall behind him accidentally with his panicked strength. He stood up and backed away as a man emerged from the shadows in the back of his cell. Rudra couldn¡¯t see the man¡¯s face beneath the shadows and the hood of the man¡¯s robe.
¡°Who are you? What do you want?¡± Rudra demanded, his back bumping into the bars of his cell.
¡°Oh I go by a lot of names, but you can call me ¡®Sneak¡¯. That¡¯s what most people call me these days. As for why I¡¯m here...¡± The man shrugged beneath his robe. ¡°I was just curious, is all. You¡¯ve become a bit of a celebrity amongst the Shells, you see. Even some of us in the Hidden Fang took notice. I just wanted to see you with my own eyes.¡±
¡°Is that all?¡± Rudra squirmed. He couldn¡¯t see the man¡¯s eyes, but he could feel Sneak¡¯s gaze appraising his body, inspecting every centimeter.
¡°Pretty much. Rumors say you¡¯re stronger than a markuut, and you sure look it. What a waste...¡± The man turned his back to Rudra and stepped back into the shadows, becoming nearing impossible for Rudra to see. ¡°I¡¯ll come see you again if the leader deems you worth it. Probably won¡¯t though, since you¡¯re a coward. Ta ta.¡± And with that, he was gone.
¡°You don¡¯t look so good,¡± Bitol observed the next morning.
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¡°I didn¡¯t sleep much,¡± Rudra replied.
¡°No bed bothering you?¡±
¡°Not entirely. Somebody visited me last night.¡±
¡°Oh?¡±
¡°Yeah, you slept through it all.¡±
The other man laughed. ¡°I¡¯ve been known to sleep like a rock. So somebody sneaked past the guards down the hall and came to see you?¡±
¡°No, he was in my cell. He somehow got in and out and I have no idea how he did it. I was up checking the walls all night. There¡¯s no cracks, no hidden doors, nothing I can find in the walls, floor, or ceiling.¡±
Bitol¡¯s smile faded. ¡°What did he come to see you for?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure. He claimed he was just curious, and wanted to see me. Said I was famous amongst Shells now or something. Also something about the ¡®Hidden Fang¡¯, whatever that means. Then he just stared at me and-¡±
¡°Rudra. Hold on.¡± Bitol¡¯s face was dour now, serious in a way that Rudra had never seen until now. ¡°What was that about the Hidden Fang?¡±
¡°He just mentioned it in passing.¡±
¡°Think back to it. What were his exact words?¡±
¡°Ummmm... ¡®Even some of us in the Hidden Fang took notice.¡¯ Something like that.¡±
Bitol let out a breath and closed his eyes for a second. ¡°Listen to me. No matter what, do not get involved with the Hidden Fang. You do not want anything to do with those people.¡±
¡°Why? What are they, anyway? I heard some mention of them before too.¡±
¡°The Hidden Fang is a secretive group of radical Shells who appeared perhaps fifteen years ago and dubbed themselves the protectors of Shells throughout Stragma. Or at least that¡¯s what they claim. Nobody really knows what they¡¯re up to because they¡¯ve never been caught. But you hear rumors, tales of people who abused a Shell in public being murdered in their sleep soon after, and a single black fang being left on their corpse so everybody knows it was the Hidden Fang that killed them. They¡¯re fanatics. If I were you, I¡¯d do everything in my power to avoid their attention.¡±
¡°Well the guy called me a coward and said that he would probably never see me again, so...¡±
¡°Good. They¡¯re not interested in you then. Keep it that way.¡±
¡°How do you know all this stuff, Bitol?¡±
¡°Ehh, you hear things in my line of work. Gotta keep your ear to the ground and whatnot, even when you¡¯re on the inside.¡± He grinned a knowing grin. ¡°Want to know something I heard just before getting myself sent over to this side? There¡¯s going to be an attack on Drayhadal soon. Real soon. I think the Chos is aiming to use the fact that we¡¯re in Pholis ahead of schedule to her advantage. Hit those elven bastards before they¡¯re ready.¡± His grin widened. ¡°Those fuckers will never see it coming.¡±
¡°Hey Rudra.¡±
¡°Yeah?¡±
¡°Why are you still here? It¡¯s been what, fifteen days since I got myself transferred? Why haven¡¯t you tried to break out yet? Don¡¯t you want to be free?¡±
¡°Sure I do. It¡¯s just...¡± Rudra sat back, his head leaning back as he thought about the best way to explain his problem. ¡°Let¡¯s say that I break out of this cell, and then I get off of this hanging prison without getting killed. Then what?¡±
¡°You run, obviously. Hide in the city, or head for a neighboring country.¡±
¡°But how do I do that? I can¡¯t hide in a city I don¡¯t really know, especially when people would recognize me because of what happened at the Test. And if I run into the forest I would probably die. I¡¯ve never been much of a wilderness person. Grew up in the city all my life. I¡¯d get lost, turned around, probably starve or get eaten by something. The forest is the real prison here. So I¡¯ve cooperated as much as I could, in the hope that whatever damage I¡¯ve done to my future here can be repaired.¡±
Bitol seemed to consider Rudra¡¯s words for a few moments. ¡°If you break me out of here with you, I¡¯ll get you through the forest,¡± he finally said. ¡°It won¡¯t be easy, but with your strength and my smarts, we could do it. Move to Gustil, or Eterium, and start a new life.¡±
¡°You would leave your own country so readily?¡± Rudra asked in shock. ¡°You always sound so proud of Stragma when you talk about it.¡±
¡°Yeah, well... the guy I pissed off has people outside this prison too. I¡¯d probably find myself gutted in under a week if I got back out into the city. So it¡¯s sit in this cell for the rest of my life, or get all the way out. And as much fun as it¡¯s been here with you, I¡¯m starting to get a little bored of the scenery. Aren¡¯t you?¡±
Rudra didn¡¯t reply for a few minutes. Instead, he thought about Bitol¡¯s offer. Pairing up with the man didn¡¯t sound half bad. They¡¯d grown fairly close since they¡¯d met just over two weeks ago. But did he want to throw away what he had for certain in the hope that a better alternative existed somewhere else? Was his situation here irreparable? ¡°I¡¯ll have to think about it for a while,¡± he finally replied.
Bitol just laughed his trademark amused laugh. ¡°Take your time,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯re not going anywhere.¡±
Later that night, Rudra¡¯s eyes flashed open and he shot up into a sitting position, his mind ablaze with warning signals as adrenaline coursed through his veins. Something had penetrated the bubble of sleep and woken him with a start. A sound. Still groggy, he couldn¡¯t quite remember the exact noise, but he felt like it had been some sort of... clack?
His eyes wide, Rudra quickly searched through the darkness in the back of his cell. Ever since that night, he made it a point to sleep with his feet towards the back, so that when he sat up the first thing he would see would be that area of his room, just in case. Yet as he strained his eyes, searching for a cloaked figure in the darkness, he found nothing. Nobody stood in those shadows this night. So what had woken him up?
Another sound caught his attention, a sound that he hadn¡¯t heard in a long time but knew all too well. It was the wet ¡®sshhluk¡¯ of a knife being pulled from its victim, and it was coming from behind him. It was coming from Bitol¡¯s cell.
Rudra spun about, rising to his feet in alarm as a large cloaked figure rushed from the cell across from him and fled down the hallway. His eyes caught a glimpse of the large dagger in the figure¡¯s hand, its blade dripping with blood and... something else. Something pink and white.
No...
¡°Bitol!¡± Rudra cried, as he shoved with all his might against the bars to his cell. The wood shattered under the sudden force, and he quickly stepped into the hallway and through the open door to Bitol¡¯s cell. The sight of his friend¡¯s body froze him in his tracks. Bitol¡¯s glassy, dead eyes stared back at him, his gaze seeming to ask why this had all happened. Between his eyes was a large, gaping hole where the blade had plunged deep into his skull. Several bits of the man¡¯s brain decorated the blood-covered floor.
His only friend in this world was dead.
Filled with sorrow, Rudra sat down and cradled the lifeless body in his arms and wept. Another life cut short through the tragedy of violence. When would people learn?
The sounds of boots echoed down the hallway and several moments later three guards arrived, weapons out and ready. ¡°Move away from the body!¡± the one in front commanded.
¡°You!¡± Rudra growled, his fury barely contained. ¡°How much money did they pay you to let somebody in here? Answer me!¡±
¡°Shut your mouth, Shell,¡± snarled the guard in front. He stepped towards the sitting Rudra, Bitol¡¯s body still slowly bleeding onto Rudra¡¯s lap. ¡°Hand over the body or-¡±
Without warning, Rudra swung his right hand around, smashing it into the nearby wall with tremendous force. The thick wooden wall practically exploded, leaving a large opening to the outside where much of the wall had just been seconds before. The man leapt back, wide-eyed, his hands suddenly shaking. ¡°Go get the warden,¡± he muttered to one of guards beside him. The man turned and ran back down the hallway, leaving just the front guard and one other.
Rudra watched them for a moment, but they held back, too afraid to approach for the moment. Good. He only wanted a little time to remember his friend before he never saw him again.
Looking down at his buddy¡¯s deceased form, he thought back to how he¡¯d been just earlier that day. He remembered Bitol¡¯s round face split open by a wide grin as he laughed over his own terrible joke, his large ears twitching as he chuckled, his sly eyes glinting with the promise of salacious rumors and scuttlebutt, his head... whole. That was the man he wanted to remember, not this desiccated corpse. And so that was what he did, visualizing the man from the past over the body of the present, replacing one for the other in his mind, just for a moment. Just long enough for something to happen.
As Rudra tried to overlay his image of his friend¡¯s past with the horrible reality of the moment, he felt some sort of presence. Not in a physical way, but in another way that he couldn¡¯t understand. The sensation was new to him, but if he had to describe it he would have said that it felt like some sort of pressure, like something was pushing up against him in some strangely immaterial way. Whatever it was, the object, which he could not see nor feel in the traditional sense, seemed to be getting in his way. He could feel it preventing him from his remembrances, keeping him from his goal, and so, without thinking, he pushed it away. Using his mind, or his soul, or whatever inside of him could feel this thing, he shoved it back. And Bitol began to change.
Almost as if part of a VHS tape set on rewind, the pieces of brain matter seemed to leap from the floor and reform inside his skull, the blood joining in as it flowed up into the air and back into his body. Bitol¡¯s face and body regained its healthy color, and his eyes opened, immediately focusing in on his friend¡¯s face.
¡°Rudra! How did you get over here? And why are you... holding me like this?¡± He sat up, confused, as Rudra and the guards looked on, flabbergasted. He did a double take when he saw the wall nearby. ¡°What in Ruresni happened here?¡± he squawked. ¡°And when did it become night? And-¡±
Rudra interrupted the man¡¯s questions with a bone-crushing hug. He didn¡¯t know how, but his friend was alive again!
¡°Can¡¯t... breathe... gonna... die...¡±
Whoops. He lighted his grip. One Bitol death was more than enough for today.
Chapter 32
Akhustal Palebane swung her massive war club around in a wide arc, the giant weapon, carved over years from a piece of Ruresni herself and stronger than the hardest stone, hurtling towards the nearest Drayhadan at tremendous speed. The Drayhadan, likely the strongest fighter on that area of the wall, threw up his shield in a desperate attempt to ward off her blow, but to no avail. The massive woman Observed the club¡¯s weight from light to heavy just before impact. Now weighing over fifty times its already considerable normal weight, the blood-covered bat crumpled the doomed man¡¯s shield as if it were made of paper and slammed into his torso with devastating force. The soldier¡¯s half-pulped body flew down the rampart, crashing into the other Drayhadans behind him and knocking them over. Her countrymen pounced upon them.
The Chos laughed heartily at the carnage she wrought with each swing of her absurd weapon. This was what she lived for, what she craved every day as she took petitions and managed patrols and did all the rest of that governing crap that came with being Chos. This strife, this struggle, where you put everything you had on the line to survive. Her heart pounded in her chest as she danced through the carnage, each thunderous beat echoing in her head - ¡°you are alive¡±.
Fireballs and arrows rained down towards her, as they always did, and she avoided some and blocked the rest with her massive weapon like she always did. Whenever she showed her face in battle, the Drayhadans naturally focused as much of their power on her as they could. Part of the attention came from the fact that she was the leader of Stragma, but she knew that there was a greater reason. They feared her. They were right to fear her. She was the tip of the spear driving straight towards Astryae, the heart of the hated Astr clan. She was the embodiment of her country¡¯s wrath, and she would not be denied.
More and more of her people swarmed up onto the battlements, their numbers too great for the undermanned defenders. Akhustal smiled. Her gambit had worked. The elves just didn¡¯t have the troops needed to hold Astronta Keep. Her invasion was sure to go down in history as the turning point in Stragman history.
For generations, the nations of Stragma and Drayhadal had engaged in what could best be described as ¡®seasonal warfare¡¯. Stragma¡¯s cyclical migration cycle meant that the two populations were only close enough for large, sustained battle for one quarter of every year, when the Stragmans moved to Pholis at the start of Autumn. While Stragma did not attack Drayhadal every year, when they did it was always during this window of time.
Such predictability was Drayhadal¡¯s greatest advantage, in that it allowed them to plan and muster up the most of their limited resources before the Stragmans invaded. Unlike Stragma, Drayhadal lacked manpower. While the elves lived for hundreds of years, they also reproduced at a rate many times slower than any other race. Combined with how their society sequestered women away from danger, only by rounding up every male on hand, be they farmers, tailors, bakers, or merchants, could they field enough troops to counter Stragma¡¯s armies. Logistics on that scale took a long time, and only the clockwork nature of Stragma¡¯s window of opportunity allowed them to fully prepare each year.
The hurried evacuation of Krose had cost Stragma dearly. Each seasonal city had its role in their society, and Krose¡¯s was industry. The more-open area was better suited for industrial operations than the other cities, and the supply of ore from the ronutepo tunnels allowed them to replenish their weapons and armor. For the next cycle, life in the forest would be much more difficult for everybody as they struggled to make do without much of their usual supplies.
But there was one single benefit to this unexpected turn ¡ª they were in position to attack their hated enemy early. Akhustal had bet heavily on the idea that the Drayhadans would not be ready for an invasion almost a season before the normal time, and she¡¯d been right. The ramparts of Astronta Keep would normally have been lined with defenders, but today only perhaps a third of their normal force could be seen manning the walls. Astronta Keep would fall today, the first day of battle.
Until now, each invasion of the Astr clan¡¯s territory followed the same pattern. The Stragmans would cross into Drayhadal, weaving around and between the many massive blazes burning furiously across the nearby edge of the forest, and assault Astronta Keep. Specifically built to be the first line of defense against the ¡®forest savages¡¯, Astronta Keep was the single most fortified place in the Astr clan¡¯s dominion outside of the city of Astryae itself. Eventually the keep would fall, and the Stragmans would push onward to do as much damage as they could before their time ran out and they had to retreat back to Pholis and prepare for the next migration. In a way, Astronta Keep did not need to stop the Stragmans; it merely had to slow them down long enough that they wouldn¡¯t have the time to do much significant damage before they had to leave.
This time would be different. Astronta Keep had no hope of containing the Stragman horde with its current garrison. With the time gained by the quick capture of the fortress, plus the extra time afforded by their early invasion, Palebane had enough days left to accomplish something that every Stragman dreamed of doing. She would raze Astryae to the ground and slaughter their ruling clan down to the last man.
A blazing heat from her left triggered her battle instincts and she rolled behind a nearby merlon just as a ball of flame wider than she was tall exploded where she¡¯d been standing just a moment ago. A blast of searing heat washed over her, singeing her skin. The ground where she¡¯d stood just before glowed red, visible even in the daylight. Speaking of those Astr bastards, an attack of that magnitude could only come from an elder of the Astr clan itself. She¡¯d finally drawn the fort¡¯s commander into the fray. Everything was going according to plan.
Akhustal peeked out from behind the stone wall, tracing the path of the fireball to its source. Fifty paces down the wall, in front of one of the many small towers that rose up from the wall, stood an elderly elf, surrounded by six younger elves, all in exquisite shining metal armor. The commander looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, but she knew that meant he was over three hundred years old. He glared at her with disdain and loathing as four of his bodyguards charged towards her, swords drawn, while the other two hefted large metal shields by his sides, ready to intercept incoming attacks.
¡°Savage barbarians!¡± he shrieked. ¡°Drayhadal will never yield to you!¡± He focused on a point in front of him and a ball of fire formed, growing steadily in size and heat.
Akhustal put two fingers into her mouth and blew, letting out a shrill whistle just before the new fireball collided against the stone merlon in front of her. Then, taking a step away, she brought her club back and swung it with all her might at the merlon. The club blurred as it arced towards the stone. The merlon exploded into several pieces, each at least a pace wide, and most of them sailing towards the commander and his two guards. Quickly she increased their weight as they arced through the air. The two shield-bearers jumped in front of the commander, their shields up and ready to intercept the incoming rocks. But these were no longer merely rocks. They crashed into the guards¡¯ shields with the weight of boulders, buckling them and slamming the two guards backwards, knocking them and their commander into the wall at their backs with great force. The three of them collapsed to the ground.
The Chos laughed at the scene as she hefted her war club and strode towards the four approaching soldiers. It was hilarious how often people seemed to think that she was just an exceptionally powerful Feeler. For reasons like the preceding events, she liked to keep it that way. People never seemed to see it coming. Well, not never. A few had figured it out. The first had been her husband, Caprakan Bloodflower-hono, back when they had both been Blou fresh out of the advanced exams. He¡¯d realized it after only a single spar, though he¡¯d intentionally pretended not to until he could surprise her in the middle of the second spar. It was that combination of intelligence and slyness that had caught her interest then, and they¡¯d become a couple just a few seasons later.
The latest to realize her secret had been Jaquet Delon¡¯s companion, Arlette Demirt. At first, Akhustal had disapproved of her childhood hero¡¯s entourage. They¡¯d seemed weak and helpless, especially that young woman Sofa. But outside of Sofa, time had proved her initial impressions incorrect. Demirt¡¯s ability to Observe while simultaneously engaging in melee combat struck her as incredibly impressive and versatile. She¡¯d never before heard of any Observer capable of maintaining an Observation while doing anything more than walking or running. She¡¯d heard good things about the fire Observer as well, and then there was the beastkin girl. According to her husband, she was some sort of genius alchemist, capable of creating powerful explosions through unknown means, but also somehow completely untrained in her body control. The child¡¯s tail and ears broadcast every emotion to anybody watching as they twitched, waved, and wagged. Such shameful behaviors, known among beastkin as being ¡®open¡¯, were normally corrected by a parent before the end of a beastkin¡¯s fourth year. To still be open at her age... it was a wonder the girl wasn¡¯t constantly mortified about it. Beastkin in general would rather walk around naked than be open in public.
Such actions would normally have jumped out at her, but Akhustal had been a little too distracted at the time to notice. After all, it wasn¡¯t often that one got to meet their heroes. She still couldn¡¯t believe that just a few days ago she¡¯d gotten the opportunity to fight The Titan of Twin Rock Pass. It still didn¡¯t seem real.
Years ago, back before she was the Chos, back even before she¡¯d taken the Tests of Strength and Courage, Akhustal Palebane had been very much alone. Even in a culture that revered strength she¡¯d been too strong, her feats in hunting and monster extermination so absurd that all the other children avoided her. Then one day, talking to a newly arrived bounty while cleaning her family¡¯s tavern, she¡¯d heard tales of a mercenary, a butcher on the battlefield so strong that it isolated him, and she had connected. From that day forth, as the years went by, she would always take time to hunt down anybody running to Stragma to escape a bounty and question them for new stories of the man who¡¯d understood her pain without ever knowing her. She¡¯d delighted in each new tale, from the Battle of Barstook to her favorite, the tale of Twin Rock Pass, where Jaquet had held back over thirty men by himself long enough for his injured band to escape.
Akhustal had never thought she¡¯d ever get the chance to meet this role model of hers until the bounty had appeared. Others had thought it insane but she¡¯d believed it. Only somebody as strong as Jaquet the Quick could wipe out an entire city without an army. And to think that he¡¯d actually made it to her before the invasion! She could sleep easy knowing that both Jaquet and her husband were up north, guiding the Second Army. In fact, his arrival had been a blessing twice over, as it had also helped her forget about- No. Now was not the time to think about that man.
With a few quick swipes, the Chos knocked the first two charging soldiers from the wall with ease. She didn¡¯t like to say that Observers gave her more trouble than Feelers, because that implied that Observers gave her trouble; they didn¡¯t, they were just a bit more annoying. But it was true that she¡¯d only met several Feelers in her entire life that she even had to work to beat. Her club lashed out like a snake, crumpling in the elf¡¯s torso as he flew over the side, then back towards the fourth and final man, who successfully ducked beneath her strike and rushed for her. With a yawn, she brought her club back over the man and just dropped it, once again raising its weight to an absurd degree. The giant log crushed the soldier just before his blade could reach her, his armor doing nothing to keep his bones from being pulverized under the massive burden. This was too easy.
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¡°There¡¯s nowhere to run now, wretched woman! This will be your end!¡± Akhustal looked over to find the elven commander back on his feet, a massive fireball charging up before him. ¡°I will burn you to cinders and take my rightful place as-mmmph!¡±
The incomplete fireball, still a good four paces wide, shot wildly into the air as dozens of massive thorny vines as thick as her arm wrapped around the elf¡¯s head and neck and yanked him into the air. The old elf thrashed about violently as the vines slowly squeezed the life out of him. Akhustal followed the writhing vines up to find them all emerging from the arms of a man standing atop the tower ¡ª General Ikal Fernfeather-hono her second in command.
¡°You¡¯re late,¡± she said with annoyance.
¡°You said you¡¯d whistle when he showed himself,¡± he replied.
¡°I did!¡±
¡°Well, do it louder next time.¡±
¡°Ugh. You¡¯re deaf, you know that?¡± She hefted her club up onto her shoulder. ¡°Bring the elf. It¡¯s time we sent them running.¡±
¡°To Stragma! To victory!¡±
A chorus of cheers erupted from the assembled Hono as Akhustal Palebane raised a large cask of mead over her head. The best part of conquest was raiding the enemy¡¯s liquor supply. Everybody gathered around and took their fill before sitting down around a large table for the war council.
¡°Hey, save some for Stormstrider-hono and Skyrunner-hono,¡± she said as several generals got up for refills. ¡°They should be back from hunting the runners fairly soon. Tepin!¡±
¡°Yes, Chos?¡± said a voice off to her side. Tepin Silverfall had toiled by her side for more than a decade now, but it still amazed Akhustal just how little presence the woman possessed. Small and meek, she seemed to almost blend in with the room when surrounded by so many strong, boisterous individuals, like a grennig amidst a korlach stampede.
¡°I¡¯m in a grand mood right now, so to celebrate our victory you may also have a drink.¡±
The small woman coughed. ¡°You honor me, Chos, but I am afraid that I cannot handle-¡± She coughed again. ¡°-something so strong.¡±
Akhustal frowned. Yes, of course. She¡¯d been too caught-up in her success and forgotten her assistant¡¯s condition. Tepin Silverfall was an indispensable asset to the Chos. She took notes, wrote written notices and communications, set up meetings, organized patrols and supply movements, and more. Tepin did the boring, the menial, and the time-intensive tasks that would otherwise bog Akhustal down so much that she¡¯d never get to do anything. Somebody with her skills could go incredibly far in this world, which was why Akhustal thought it such a shame that Tepin was a Shell.
Most Shells were those that failed the Test of Courage, the cowards and the inept. Those that failed the Test of Strength like Tepin, however, were rare, because parents usually killed sickly babies rather than live with the shame of producing a guaranteed Shell. Tepin¡¯s parents were one of the few couples who decided to raise their child anyway, and she had grown up weak and feeble her whole life, always knowing that she would be a Shell when she came of age no matter how hard she tried.
Akhustal felt bad for the other woman, knowing that she deserved better, but Stragma¡¯s laws and traditions were clear. Akhustal believed in following those laws and traditions. Their way of life kept them strong, kept them alive in the harsh forest. Ruresni loved them, yes, but she would not pamper them. She demanded that the people of the forest earn their lives through struggle. To succeed through struggle was to be strong. That was what it meant to be Stragman.
Still, as far as the Chos was concerned, a feeble woman like Tepin who strove to get everything she could out of her meager strength, was a million times better than somebody with power but without the courage to use it. Somebody like- No! She gritted her teeth as memories of the last Trial of Courage flashed into her mind against her will. That bastard... days later she could still clearly see the judgment in his eyes as he declared that he would never harm a person. She could see his pity, as if he felt sorry for her! Him, a coward without the conviction to do what needed to be done, feel sorry for her, the mightiest warrior in the nation? How dare he! And for that man to be so strong, so full of potential, only to throw it all away. Argh! It made her blood boil even now! She grunted and released a long breath. It wouldn¡¯t do for her to lose control now. Now was a time for celebration and planning. Yes, she needed to start the war council, get her mind off of that fool...
¡°Let¡¯s begin!¡± the Chos declared, slamming a fist down on the table. The assembled Hono quieted down. ¡°So far, I believe our plan to be working about as well as could be. Fernfeather-hono believes that we were first discovered about seven days ago. That should have given the long-ears just enough time to organize troops but not long enough to get them here before we arrived. Given how quickly we took their stronghold, I think that our original goal of Astryae is very achievable. We will need to meet the incoming reinforcements on the way so they cannot hit us from behind when we arrive at their city, so we¡¯ll need three divisions scouting...¡±
The war council continued as she and the generals plotted their next moves. About an hour later, somebody knocked on the door and Tepin moved to answer it, peeking her head out as she was wont to do and writing something down before closing the door again.
¡°What is it, Tepin?¡± Akhustal asked.
¡°The final casualty count is in, Chos,¡± the Shell replied. ¡°Thirty-two thousand dead, ten thousand too injured to fight.¡±
Akhustal fought back a wince. There was no denying it, she¡¯d traded lives for time, but still that number was far, far higher than she¡¯d hoped it would be. The Drayhadans were the best in the world at defensive warfare, so between their fortifications and the fifty thousand troops they¡¯d had holding it, high casualty numbers were to be expected, but...
¡°Have the the Shells bring their bodies home. We¡¯ll have to send one division back to ensure their safety.¡±
¡°Chos, are you sure?¡± asked General Fernfeather-hono. ¡°With everything we are planning for the next phase, now would be a bad time to lose ten thousand more soldiers.¡±
Akhustal glared at her second in command. ¡°Their bodies must return to the forest. Such is tradition.¡± Fernfeather-hono just reluctantly nodded. Her tone held no room for debate on this matter.
The council resumed, this time discussing whether or not to send a full division back, or to take some troops from each division so as not to rob one unlucky group from the upcoming glory. Suddenly somebody insistently pounded on the door. Tepin once again answered, and Akhustal saw her stiffen as she listened to the words of whoever was on the other side. The Shell glanced back at the Chos for a moment before continuing her conversation, and then closed the door.
¡°What is it this time?¡± General Fernfeather-hono demanded, his temper beginning to rise.
The Shell coughed and swallowed. ¡°The Many from the Second Army has called.¡±
¡°Oh! Is my husband reporting in early?¡± Akhustal asked.
Tepin frowned. ¡°The caller is not General Bloodflower-hono. It is... someone else.¡±
¡°Akhustal Palebane! How¡¯s my favorite savage doing? Did you miss me?¡±
Akhustal stared in horror at the woman in the projection, trying her best to hold back her emotions. It was important that she not show weakness in front of others. Especially her, Pyria Esmae. The elf smiled nonchalantly back at her through the Many¡¯s transmission as if this were nothing more than a normal friendly conversation, the two of them chatting about their days and their husbands and the like. But it wasn¡¯t normal. Her eyes were drawn to the familiar figure lying in the elf¡¯s lap, the orange-brown hair curls a dead giveaway. Caprakan! Looking closely, she could see that her husband still breathed, but he seemed completely unconscious.
¡°What have you done to him!?¡± she cried.
Pyria merely giggled and pulled out a small, shiny golden knife, twirling it about between the delicate fingers of her right hand.
¡°Don¡¯t you touch him!¡± Akhustal cried. ¡°You put him down right-¡±
¡°Oh, you¡¯re in no position to tell me to do anything,¡± Pyria interrupted, her eyes glinting, ominous and deadly. She brought the knife down slowly, closer and closer to Caprakan¡¯s exposed throat. ¡°You see, I have your husband. But I have more than just him. I have your army. All thirty thousand of them. They¡¯re alive, for now. And they¡¯ll stay that way, as long as you do everything. I. Say.¡± The knife¡¯s point now rested against her love¡¯s neck, its edge glistening with malice.
Back before she had power and status, Caprakan had been the only person to reach out to her, to break through the bubble of fear that isolated her from others. He was her lifeline, the one person she¡¯d gladly give up her life to save, and now he was just one quick movement from death. The sight of him helpless before her hated enemy chilled her to her core. Pyria liked to play coy, but the elf woman was never one to make idle threats. Akhustal had no option other than to obey. If she didn¡¯t, Pyria would kill Caprakan and the rest of the Second Army while Akhustal watched, and she¡¯d do it with a smile of satisfaction.
¡°What... do you need me to do?¡± Akhustal rasped, her throat dry with defeat. She felt like she was going to be sick.
¡°Let¡¯s start with you turning your adorable little army around and running back home.¡±
¡°And then you¡¯ll let him go?¡±
The elf laugh mirthfully. ¡°Oh no, of course not! We¡¯re going to have so much fun, you and I. I¡¯ll contact you again the next time I have a task for you. Until then, don¡¯t do anything stupid or he¡¯ll be the first to go.¡± Her smile widened. ¡°It was so good to see your face again, my dear. Have a good trip back home!¡± She laughed again and the transmission cut off.
Akhustal fell to her knees as reality came rushing back. Disaster. Everything had been going so wonderfully, and then... it was all gone. Her victory, her chance at greatness, her family... all stolen by that horrid woman. Pyria had her husband at her mercy. What choice did she have?
Exiting the Many¡¯s chamber, she found her generals standing outside, their faces lit up with anticipation. She frowned. ¡°Tomorrow we return to Stragma at first light.¡± The generals all looked at her and each other, not sure they¡¯d heard correctly. ¡°Spread the word. No more celebrations tonight.¡±
¡°What?¡± Fernfeather-hono stuttered in disbelief. ¡°After all the progress and the planning, you now want to-¡±
¡°YOU DO NOT GET TO QUESTION ME!¡± she roared, slamming her club into a nearby wall. ¡°NOW GO!¡±
The generals quickly left to carry out her orders. With nobody left but Tepin, Akhustal made her way to the commander¡¯s chambers, her head pounding with rage. The room was filled with exquisite decor, from fancy cabinets to a large, detailed bed carved from the long leg bones of a plaxis. Letting out a primal scream, Akhustal brought her club down upon a small table near the door, rendering the furniture into nothing but splinters with a single blow.
¡°That fucking long-eared bitch!¡± she cried as she reduced a cabinet to mulch. ¡°I¡¯ll kill her! I¡¯ll fucking rip her guts out with my bare hands!¡±
Minutes later, a panting Akhustal stood surrounded by the remains of all the furniture that had once stood proudly in the chamber, her rage unquenched. She¡¯d never felt this helpless before. She¡¯d never felt so... weak. This would not stand. She swore on her honor as a Stragman and as a Chos that she would get her husband and her army back, but more, she swore that Pyria would pay in blood a hundred times over for this humiliation. She just didn¡¯t know how.
Chapter 33
Akhustal Palebane let out a sigh as she crested a ridge and spotted a glimpse of Titan Grove far off in the distance through the forest canopy. Coming home had never felt so terrible before. Her body ached from the trip back, but not at much as her spirit. She¡¯d spent the entire journey questioning her every decision. Had she been too greedy? Too reckless? Had there been some way to avoid the disaster she¡¯d walked into, or was this simply fate? These questions lingered inside her, the lack of answers wracking her with guilt.
Every leader dealt with the burden of command, and this was not the first time she¡¯d made decisions that had cost lives. But this was the first time Stragma had paid such a price without anything to show for it. Not only that, but a chance for a historic victory over the hated elves was now lost as well. With the time, manpower, and strategic surprise they¡¯d had, Akhustal should have gone down as the Chos who razed Astryae to the ground. Any hope of that had vanished now. Drayhadal would adjust and be ready next time. The opportunity would not present itself again.
Part of her thought it would have been better to push ahead anyway and let Pyria do what she may. That part said that Caprakan was as good as dead already, that the Second Army would never be returned. It said that bargaining with Pyria was a fool¡¯s errand and that she would never honor her word. But she couldn¡¯t do it. Not while her husband still lived. Not while there was a chance to get him back.
She was a failure of a Chos. A Chos was supposed to know no fear. A Chos was supposed to stand strong against all foes, and for over a decade she had done so admirably. She¡¯d faced down beasts ten times her size with a grin. She¡¯d laughed in the face of opposing armies. But now, for the first time since childhood, Akhustal Palebane was afraid. The thought of life without Caprakan terrified her. She couldn¡¯t handle the thought of being alone again.
Her gloom remained even as she and her army entered Pholis later that day. Unsurprisingly, the city looked like she felt. One of the first actions the army had taken, naturally, had been to let those she¡¯d left in charge in her absence know of what had happened and that they¡¯d be returning early. Information on that level never stayed secret for long, and from the looks of things, everybody knew about it by now. A malaise blanketed the people. Her people. This was her fault.
Like many times before, the army split into smaller groups before disbanding. As soon as the Flegs and the Blous had left, the Hono congregated around her for a quick meeting. Each of her generals had taken the events of the last days slightly differently. Some, especially General Fernfeather-hono, were still angry about her decision, but nobody would dare defy her. She was the Chos, after all.
¡°There isn¡¯t much to say right now,¡± she began once they¡¯d all assembled. ¡°Tomorrow morning there will be a council to discuss where we go from here. Every general Hono must attend.¡± She turned towards General Riverbiter-hono, who had been in charge of supervising the Shells. ¡°All the dead have been properly stored?¡± A nod came in reply. ¡°Good. The Rites of Renewal will take place tomorrow night. You are all dismissed.¡±
Everybody went their separate ways after that, leaving only Akhustal and her thoughts in the room. Another in a long line of sighs escaped her lips. This wasn¡¯t getting any easier as time went on. The door to the chamber opened and Tepin entered.
¡°Her again?¡± Akhustal asked before Tepin even said a word.
¡°Yes.¡±
Wearily, she rose to her feet and plodded towards where their Manys lived. Time for the worst part of the day.
¡°You¡¯re late,¡± Pyria chided as Akhustal entered the Many¡¯s chamber. The Chos did not reply immediately, her gaze instead settling on the dirty, disheveled figure strategically placed in the background behind the long-eared witch.
Ever since that first horrible day, the head of the Esmae clan would contact her using the Second Army¡¯s Many at the same time each night. Each time, Akhustal¡¯s husband would be lying in the background, chained to a wall, blindfolded, gagged, and bound by restraints made from the poison metal tucrenyx. The wicked woman always had a few new petty demands that she wished to foist upon Akhustal¡¯s already-burdened shoulders, but Akhustal knew that the real reason for these conversations was to make sure she saw her husband and remembered the price she would pay should she entertain rebellious thoughts.
This was how Pyria Esmae liked it. She lived for control and delighted in twisting the knife. Such qualities made her perfect to lead the Esmae, the clan that ruled the northwest quadrant of Drayhadal, north of the Astr clan¡¯s territory. The four clans that ruled the country, the Esmae, the Astr, the Casm, and the Kechou, needed each other too much to actually go to war with one another, so instead their battles took place in courtrooms and dark alleys, where betrayals and backstabbings were equally common.
¡°I came as quickly as I could.¡±
¡°Not quickly enough,¡± the elf sniffed. ¡°I was feeling lenient today, but I see that you need to be disciplined. For the entire day tomorrow, no carrying that stupid overgrown twig you take everywhere with you. Leave it at home.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t be serious.¡± Akhustal instinctively pulled her club tightly against her side. She¡¯d had it for years and she carried it everywhere. It was as much as part of her as her knees or her liver.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, what was that?¡± Pyria asked with a malicious grin. ¡°You say you don¡¯t care about your lover after all? Alright, I¡¯ll start with a finger.¡±
¡°No! No, I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯ll... I¡¯ll do it.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t think I won¡¯t know if you don¡¯t. We have eyes and ears everywhere. How else do you think I knew about your ¡®secret¡¯ invasion, hmmm?¡± She laughed haughtily. ¡°I hope you have lots of fun tomorrow. Until then...¡± She waved a spitefully cheery farewell and the projection cut off.
Every time Akhustal thought she couldn¡¯t hate Pyria Esmae more, the elf found a way to prove her wrong. This latest decree about her club wasn¡¯t going to inconvenience Akhustal in any way. It wasn¡¯t like she needed the weapon in her own city. No, Pyria just wanted to drive home how powerless Akhustal was, to slowly push her deeper and deeper into despair. And Akhustal knew that she couldn¡¯t take the risk of defying her. The Drayhadans, with their closely-guarded full-body transformation techniques, were the greatest spies in the world after all. Who knew how many lurked in the city?
Pyria had known about Akhustal¡¯s plans. That was the only explanation. She¡¯d known, and known for a long time. Long enough to plan a trap of the magnitude needed to capture thirty thousand people. But how? Was there a traitor in the inner council? No, that seemed impossible.
¡°Stay strong,¡± she said to herself. It wouldn''t do to give up hope just yet.
¡°...time is of the essence. We have perhaps two-thirds of a season to find a solution and act on it before the migration. Our goal is simple ¡ª to free our people, alive.¡± Akhustal looked around the chamber after finishing her explanation. The solemn faces of every general in Stragma stared back. Many of them had already known the situation, especially those who had been a part of the invasion. But everybody needed to be on the same page if they were to figure out some way out of this.
¡°Do we know where they are being held?¡± a general asked.
¡°It seems that the elves raised up a massive prison southwest of Esmaeyae,¡± replied the general in charge of intelligence, General Stonefist-hono. He also happened to be the older cousin of the Blou whose scouting team had originally found Rudra. ¡°We believe that the Second Army is being held there. General Caprakan-hono, however, is likely in the Esmae clan¡¯s estate.¡±
¡°They keep our people in cages,¡± Akhustal spat. ¡°Pyria Esmae made sure to show me their suffering.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s send covert teams in to break them out,¡± suggested a second general.
¡°That would never work,¡± responded General Fernfeather-hono. ¡°First, most of our best stealth squads were members of the Second Army. Second, you¡¯ve seen the land of the Esmae clan before. It¡¯s a nightmare for anybody trying to move about unnoticed. Nothing but wide, open spaces with nothing to hide behind, and that¡¯s not considering the extra lookouts that they¡¯re sure to have now that they have something that they know we want. It¡¯s almost guaranteed to fail. Even if they did manage to infiltrate the prison and free the soldiers, those soldiers are likely half starved to death by now. They¡¯ll be in no condition to fight or make it back to Stragma on their own.¡±
¡°Then forget stealth,¡± said another general. ¡°Call their bluff. They won¡¯t want to kill their hostages because they¡¯re hoping we won¡¯t have the will to act. Just take the prison by force. We still have enough troops to manage that without a problem.¡±
¡°Let me ask you something,¡± said General Fernfeather-hono to the other general. ¡°Do you know how the Esmae captured the entire Second Army alive?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Then how do you know another army wouldn¡¯t fall to the same fate? We have no idea how they pulled this off, and there¡¯s no saying if they could do it again. But one lost army, while a horrible, terrible tragedy, is still something Stragma can survive. Two, on the other hand, would be the end of us.¡±
¡°How long would it take to find out what they did? If we could avoid it this time, an attack might still work,¡± speculated another general.
¡°Unfortunately, we have few spies in the Esmae territory,¡± Stonefist-hono chimed in. ¡°All we¡¯ve heard so far is that something happened over a season ago and that the Esmae have been acting a little strange since. I wouldn¡¯t bet on us getting proper knowledge of this threat until it is far too late.¡±
¡°Then if we can¡¯t take our people back, we make the Esmae clan give them back,¡± said a soft voice towards the back. Akhustal looked that way to find General Cloudburner-hono, one of the younger generals whose main job was leading wildlife subjugation teams. The woman had been the first person Akhustal had ever sponsored, and Akhustal was proud of how far she¡¯d come. ¡°The Drayhadans have always claimed that one of theirs is worth ten of ours. Let¡¯s put that to the test. We need to get our own hostages and force a trade.¡±
¡°Interesting,¡± Akhustal said, thinking it over. ¡°Where would you suggest we find these hostages?¡±
¡°Astronta Keep.¡±
¡°The place we just killed everybody?¡± another general asked mockingly.
¡°No, I think she¡¯s right,¡± said Stonefist-hono. ¡°This is all about the politics of their clans. We made the Astr look weak when we took Astronta Keep in less than a day. The other clans are likely maneuvering to weaken them over it, especially since the Esmae were victorious on their side. I¡¯d bet that the Astr are reinforcing Astronta Keep with even more men than normal, as a show of strength for the other clans. That and the reinforcements that were already on their way from the other clans should be there now as well.¡±
¡°If we can capture enough of their men, the other clans will put enough pressure on the Esmae that they will have no choice but to conduct an exchange,¡± Cloudburner-hono asserted.
Akhustal considered her proposal. Such a development would make Pyria a hero and leave the other clans in debt to her. The very idea put a bad taste in the Chos¡¯s mouth, but at the same time, it meant that Pyria would be more willing to do it because she would still come out a winner. Winning was everything to that elven shrew.
¡°An interesting idea,¡± mused Fernfeather-hono, ¡°but we lost more people taking that fort the last time than there are in the entire Second Army.¡± He shook his head. ¡°That was with their garrison at perhaps a third of normal. If we wanted to take the keep now, our losses would be far, far greater. Not to mention that taking prisoners is much harder than just killing them. We¡¯d lose three times as many people, easily. There¡¯s no use in paying with the lives of ninety thousand people just to get thirty thousand back.¡±
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¡°Maybe if we threw everything we had at them, all at once,¡± mused Akhustal. ¡°Overwhelm them with sheer numbers...¡±
¡°You can¡¯t be serious, Chos!¡± Fernfeather-hono objected. ¡°You would leave the city defenseless just to try to rescue your husband?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t like your tone, general,¡± she growled back. Ikal Fernfeather-hono was her second-in-command not by choice, but because he had been the runner-up to be Chos after the last one had passed away. She put up with him and he with her enough that they were able to work together, though they had clashed more than enough times that they would never have a relationship stronger than that of coworkers. But ever since the retreat from Drayhadal, he¡¯d been getting more rebellious and less respectful. He was beginning to question her decisions and authority not just in private but in public. This, however, was bold even for him.
¡°Let me ask you a question, my Chos,¡± he said, a stubborn look in his eyes. ¡°I want the Second Army back just as much as you do. But if we try something and we fail, and our window closes, will you let your husband die?¡±
¡°What?!¡± she sputtered.
¡°You already made the wrong choice back when we abandoned the invasion. You became compromised the moment you gave in to their demands, and a compromised Chos is a compromised Stragma. You¡¯re still obeying their every command, are you not? Or is there a different reason why you aren¡¯t carrying your club with you? In all the years I¡¯ve known you, you¡¯ve never let it out of your sight. Why the sudden change?¡±
The other generals began to talk amongst themselves, murmurs of worry reaching her ears. Akhustal felt her anger rising. She stared him directly in the eyes. ¡°Do you really dare to challenge my authority? To go against thousands of years of Stragman tradition?¡±
¡°I dare to do what is necessary to protect this country!¡± he shot back, fire in his gaze. ¡°If you are too compromised to properly lead our people, then I will have no choice but to take action. Find a way to save the Second Army that doesn¡¯t involve sacrificing three other armies to do it. If there is no way, then give up on them and free yourself and this country from the Drayhadan¡¯s snare. If you cannot, I will begin the Challenge of Ruresni.¡±
Akhustal rocked back in shock, while several generals gasped at Fernfeather-hono¡¯s declaration. The whole room began to buzz with anxious conversation. Direct challenges were practically unheard of. Only four times in all of Stragman history had there ever been one.
¡°Excuse me,¡± called a tall, lanky man out on the left edge of the group, his voice cutting through the clamor and quieting the group. She recognized him as General Nightclaw-hono, the man in charge of the country¡¯s prison system. While many other countries preferred to chop off a hand to deter criminals, Stragma preferred to make them prisoners. There were always dangerous tasks that needed doing in the forest, after all, and who better than prisoners? ¡°I think I know a way we can capture Astronta Keep without losing our own troops.¡±
¡°Oh? You know a way we can assault a massive fortress manned by tens of thousands defenders without our people dying?¡± Fernfeather-hono scoffed.
The man paused for a moment, his face showing his conflicted thoughts as he considered his reply. ¡°Not exactly.¡±
¡°A few days after the armies set off, there was a murder in Prison Three. Now, prisoners killing each other is of course nothing out of the ordinary, but the strange thing was, the man didn¡¯t stay dead. According to the guards who witnessed it, another prisoner brought the dead man back to life and healed his wounds so well that there aren¡¯t even any scars. Something like that merits investigation, of course, and so I requested several other bodies from...¡±
Akhustal Palebane stood on a large wooden elevator with seven of her most important generals, Tepin Silverfall, and General Nightclaw-hono as they slowly descended towards one of Stragma¡¯s suspended prisons. Nightclaw-hono droned on and on, but Akhustal didn¡¯t hear his words. In fact, her mind barely registered anything, not the creak of the ropes, not Tepin¡¯s weak sporadic coughing, not even the incredulous arguments of General Fernfeather-hono. No, she was far too preoccupied with the thought of an upcoming Challenge from her second-in-command to pay attention to anything else.
A Challenge was serious business. It took days of travel and days more for the actual event, and it was the last thing she needed right now. She knew she¡¯d win, and so did he. The fact that he would even threaten such a thing told her that her hold over her subjects was in peril, even more than she¡¯d previously thought. She needed something to regain their respect, and fast.
The platform came to a halt and the group stepped into the prison. They entered a nearby hallway and slowly wound their way towards one corner of the prison. The hallways were fairly slim, a design concession to lower the total weight and improve structural integrity, so they had to proceed single file. General Nightclaw-hono led the way, followed by Akhustal, then the other generals. Tepin, naturally, came last, even behind the one general carrying a large sack containing one of the warriors who died assaulting Astronta Keep. Nightclaw-hono had requested one, mentioning healing or resurrecting or something. She hadn¡¯t been paying attention.
¡°Here we are,¡± Nightclaw-hono said, stopping at the last cells at the end of the hallway and indicating the cell on the left. Akhustal glanced into the cell and froze, her vision going red.
¡°You!¡±
¡°Me?¡± said the man inside the cell. His face was mostly covered in a bushy beard now, but Akhustal would never forget those eyes. They stared at her questioningly as she glared into them, her hands balling into fists. Rudra Kapadia was the last person she wanted to see right now.
¡°Is this some kind of joke?¡± she asked the general.
¡°I wouldn¡¯t dare, Chos,¡± he replied. Taking out a key, he unlocked the door and the whole group entered.
¡°Why are you here?¡± Rudra inquired. ¡°I thought you never wanted to see me again.¡±
¡°Silence, Shell!¡± she snarled. ¡°You have no right to question me! Know your place!¡±
Rudra just stared at her again with those judgmental eyes. She felt his pity and it took everything she had to not lash out.
At Nightclaw-hono¡¯s direction, the general with the sack opened it up and dumped its contents on the floor. A woman rolled out, her head caved in by a heavy blow from something or other many days ago. As was tradition, her body¡¯s decomposition had been slowed by the application of mullara weed so that she could be properly honored by her family back in the city, giving it a green and gray pallor. Even with the discoloration, Akhustal could see the simple markings of a Fleg on her body.
¡°Rudra, would you be so kind as to show us what you can do?¡±
The man stared at the body and then back at the group, thinking for several moments before finally squatting down near the body and closing his eyes. Akhustal watched him skeptically. What was he going to do, ¡®refuse to fight¡¯ it back to life?
But then, to her amazement, the body began to swiftly change! The head filled out and the skull reformed into its original shape, while the body lost its pallor and regained its normal almond hue. The body spasmed and it lashed out at the air above before freezing mid-strike and looking about in puzzlement.
¡°What? Where am-¡± Her eyes fell on Akhustal¡¯s form and she paled, quickly getting to her feet and bowing. ¡°My greatest apologies, Chos! I never meant to disrespect you!¡±
¡°Calm yourself,¡± General Nightclaw-hono replied. ¡°Come with me and I shall explain everything.¡± He glanced at Akhustal and she nodded. He nodded back and led the Fleg out of the cell and down the hallway.
Akhustal¡¯s mind whirled at the implications of what she¡¯d just witnessed. He¡¯d turned a corpse back into a person in less than three breaths! Given a few days, everybody who¡¯d died at Astronta Keep could return! And if her armies didn¡¯t have to fear death...
A vision of waves of Stragmans washing over the walls of Astronta Keep, fighting without the fear of death while incapacitating everybody in their way, trading three bodies for one prisoner if need be... It could work. It would work. They¡¯d be able to get the pieces they needed. No, they¡¯d be able to get more. Far more!
¡°Is that all?¡± Rudra asked.
¡°My army suffered heavy losses in the last battle,¡± she told the prisoner. ¡°You will bring them back, as you did her.¡±
The man seemed to think for another moment. ¡°No, I don¡¯t want to do that,¡± he said, shaking his head. ¡°That sounds like a lot of work, and I don¡¯t work for free.¡±
Akhustal¡¯s world went red. This coward thought he could dictate terms?!
The other generals seemed to be thinking the same. ¡°Impudence! A Shell has no right to argue with his betters!¡± Fernfeather-hono shouted as he stepped forward and struck at Rudra with a fist, but the large man simply raised a hand and blocked it as if it were nothing. Fernfeather-hono howled in fury and massive vines sprouted from his body, wrapping around Rudra¡¯s large muscled neck and squeezing with great strength, but the prisoner just stared back in defiance.
¡°Go ahead, kill me,¡± Rudra said, seemingly unbothered by the vines strangling his throat. ¡°Then you¡¯ll never get your people back.¡±
Akhustal shook with rage. For a Shell to have the audacity to dare to make demands of anyone was a direct slap at the laws and traditions that kept Stragma strong and vital through the centuries. And to do so against both Hono and her, the Chos herself? Such a transgression deserved worse than death. But she needed him, and he knew it. And if this insufferable man could get her husband back...
¡°Very well. I will grant you your freedom as payment.¡±
Fernfeather-hono¡¯s head whipped about in alarm to stare at her. ¡°Chos, you would allow this man to go against our way? Our traditions are what keep us safe! If we let one flaunt them, what is next?¡±
¡°You think I don¡¯t know that? You think I want this?¡± she roared. She turned back to the Shell. ¡°You will bring back my army and I will set you free. Deal?¡±
¡°Not good enough,¡± came the infuriatingly unconcerned reply.
¡°You!¡± Perhaps it was a good thing that Pyria had forbidden her from carrying her club. She would have pulverized Rudra ten times over already were it in her hands.
¡°Let¡¯s see,¡± he said, thinking for a moment. ¡°I want a steady income so I don¡¯t have to work. I want a house. A nice one. I want Bitol over there to be freed too, and for him to be escorted out of the country if he wants it...¡±
Akhustal¡¯s eye twitched. ¡°Is that all?¡± she asked through clenched teeth.
¡°And I want a wruelit.¡±
¡°...what?¡±
¡°They¡¯re cute!¡± He smiled, his eyes glinting with mirth. ¡°A little money and a house in exchange for thousands of lives. Sure sounds like a bargain to me!¡±
Akhustal stared into his eyes and thought. To allow a Shell to not just disobey the orders of his betters but to actually demand something from them was anathema to her, and to all the generals in that room. It would just be a one-time thing, but allowing someone to go against the natural order even once set a dangerous precedent for the future. But even with that said, she would take that risk if it meant she could see her lover again. Just this once.
¡°Very well. I agree to your terms. But you start right now.¡±
¡°This is a mistake,¡± General Fernfeather-hono warned.
¡°Perhaps. It¡¯s also the best chance we have. Let us return and begin planning our assault on Astronta Keep.¡±
Akhustal Palebane strode from the cell a new woman, one with purpose and hope for the first time in days. She¡¯d show Pyria what happened when somebody messed with her family. She¡¯d show everybody.
Chapter 34
The man came to life with a roar, struggling against the four Feelers holding his limbs still. Rudra was used to such reactions by now. Most of the people he¡¯d healed so far reacted that way. Just as familiar with the situation as he, the four Feelers pulled the man off the ground and carried him off to the side. A second group of Feelers took their place an set down another corpse. As he¡¯d done hundreds and hundreds of times already that day, he reached out with that new sense of his and pushed her time back, rewinding the deceased to before her death. This time the patient¡¯s eyes refocused and she froze, glancing about in confusion just before the Feelers lifted her off the floor and moved her out of the way. Whoops. He¡¯d rewound this one a bit too far.
It had become clear rather quickly that Rudra was not actually ¡°healing¡± people. Every so often he¡¯d ¡°heal¡± somebody a little too much, and instead of coming back to life fighting, they¡¯d be confused. Apparently, these people didn¡¯t even remember the battle where they¡¯d died. They remembered doing something else before the battle and then suddenly they were back in Pholis with nothing between. That¡¯s when everybody had realized that he wasn¡¯t healing people as much as he was reverting them to a previous point in their lives. It made for an interesting thought, but Rudra didn¡¯t feel like it actually mattered. Somebody had suggested that he try doing the opposite and pushing somebody forward in time, but he refused to even consider it. To rob somebody of their life, even by a few days, counted as violence in his eyes.
The process continued as the day wore on. Thousands of people who¡¯d met their ends suddenly drew breath again, but as night began to fall it became clear that there was still much to be done. Looking about as he stood up for the first time in hours, Rudra realized that even with all that work they hadn¡¯t even finished a third of the dead.
¡°Uuunnggh,¡± he moaned as he stretched out his stiff back. ¡°I think that¡¯s all I can do for the day. Anybody know where I can get something to eat? Preferably something spicy. I¡¯ve been craving that for weeks!¡±
A soft cough came from his side and he turned to find a small woman with silver hair and droopy dog ears standing nearby. ¡°There is plenty of food at your new home,¡± said Tepin Silverfall.
¡°How long have you been standing there?¡±
¡°Long enough,¡± she replied wearily. She turned to the nearest Feeler, who was having a conversation with two others nearby. ¡°Pardon me, sir.¡±
The man she spoke to ignored her, instead continuing his coversation with the other Feelers. Tepin coughed, but still the Feelers ignored her.
¡°Hey!¡± Rudra barked. Finally, the Feelers paused, turning towards them with scowls of irritation on their faces.
¡°With your permission, I request that this Shell be dismissed,¡± Tepin said quickly with a respectful bow. The man let out a harumph and gave a dismissive wave before returning to his conversation.
"Come with me. Once I show you to your house I can go home," Tepin said as she grabbed Rudra¡¯s hand and led him away. Without a word, several guards joined them, taking places in front and behind. Apparently he needed to be guarded around the clock. He wasn¡¯t thrilled by the prospect, but he knew he needed to accept it. His ability was far too important to the Stragmans to allow even the smallest chance that something might happen to him. They walked in silence for a while, riding elevator platforms and crossing rope bridges as they slowly worked their way higher.
¡°So you¡¯re the leader¡¯s helper, right?¡± he asked after a while.
¡°I assist the Chos in her duties,¡± the small woman curtly replied. ¡°Why do you ask?¡±
¡°That makes you pretty important, right? So people should know who you are.¡±
¡°As much as they would care about a Shell, yes.¡±
¡°Aren¡¯t you upset about how rude that man was to you earlier? You¡¯re the assistant to the Chos and he ignored you like you were nothing.¡±
Tepin coughed weakly. ¡°He is Fleg, and we are Shell. He is our superior no matter our function. We acted above our station when we interrupted him, and we should consider ourselves lucky he did not deem our actions worthy of discipline.¡±
¡°Then why did you even bother him at all?¡±
¡°So I could release you from their command, of course.¡±
Rudra scoffed. ¡°I wasn¡¯t under their command.¡±
Tepin threw an unimpressed glance his way. ¡°Of course you were. They are Fleg, we are Shell. They command, we obey, until we are dismissed. It is the way of things.¡±
¡°How can you put up with a system like that?¡±
This time he got a withering glare. ¡°Don¡¯t speak as if you understand. Our traditions keep order in this lawless world. They make Stragma strong, and keep us alive inside the forest. Without them there would be only chaos and death. What right have you to judge us? You know nothing.¡±
Rudra rolled his eyes so hard that they nearly got stuck. What kind of person just laid down in the face of such treatment? ¡°Well you can let other people order you around like a slave all you want, but I¡¯m not going to take that. I don¡¯t care what you or anybody else has to say about it,¡± he declared.
Tepin let out a derisive snort. ¡°Big words from a coward who couldn¡¯t even fight a Fleg.¡±
¡°At least I know how to stand up for myself. You don¡¯t seem to know anything other than lying down and letting everybody else walk all over you.¡±
The woman whirled around to face him, her hands grasping at a nearby rope railing to steady herself. ¡°I know what I need to know,¡± she growled. ¡°I know my place. You would do well to learn yours before it is too late.¡± She let out a heavy cough and swayed unsteadily, leaning against the rope railing to keep herself upright.
¡°Are you okay?¡± Rudra asked. He reached out to help her but she smacked his hand aside.
¡°Don¡¯t touch me,¡± she said with another disapproving glare. ¡°I don¡¯t need the help of somebody like you.¡±
After a moment more she continued onward with determined steps, her gaze set forward with determination.
¡°Hey, look,¡± Rudra began.
¡°Enough,¡± she replied. ¡°I will speak no more of this.¡±
Rudra could hear the finality in her voice, so he decided to leave her alone and instead enjoy the ambiance of the city at night. Even after the sun sank beneath the horizon, the bustle of the city continued. Burning torches stood in stands or literally stuck out of holes carved into the massive trees Pholis was built upon. Rudra didn¡¯t understand how the city hadn¡¯t burned down yet. Nearly every building was entirely made of wood and other flammable material, while the town itself was built upon giant towers of wood. A thought of what would happen if just one of the trees caught on fire and became a massive infernal column of flame reaching high into the sky flitted through his mind, but he chased it out. He didn¡¯t want to think about just how many people would die in such a disaster. But nobody else seemed even the slightest bit worried about it. Perhaps the trees were too large and vibrant to burn, or perhaps it didn¡¯t matter since somebody could just show up and magic up some water to put it out if need be.
Rudra wondered how the ability to just create something out of nothing changed how societies in this world functioned. Pholis was a perfect example. Sixteen million people, and yet seemingly no river or other abundant water source anywhere to be found. Normally a city of that size in a place without enough water would perish, but here it seemed that certain people could just create all the water the society required and everything was just fine. How did magical talent affect your future? If you could make water, did that just mean you were set for life since you¡¯d have a steady income?
He couldn¡¯t help but notice how different the gender dynamics were in Stragma compared to India. Things seemed much more equal. Perhaps all it took was the fact that a small woman could actually be stronger than a large man or could set him on fire. What other far-reaching effects did these wondrous powers have on the people of this world?
The sounds of the city were quiet now that they¡¯d ascended so high. Rudra took a risk and glanced over the edge. The lights dancing below, so far off that they were little more than tiny specks of light, reminded him of fireflies from back home.
Home. It had been a while since he¡¯d thought about his past life. In fact, he¡¯d spent most of his time here specifically avoiding such thoughts. If he were given the choice to return to his old life, would he even want to? He missed certain things, of course ¡ª television, the internet, electricity in general, the food... but when it came to his personal existence, his old world had little to offer him. He¡¯d fallen into a serious rut, and if he hadn¡¯t stumbled into this impossible place he¡¯d probably still be spending every day the same as the day before ¡ª waking up, working, getting drunk, sleeping, and generally just living to live and nothing more. This world offered something new, something different to light the fire within him again.
On the other hand, the more time he spent in this place and learned how it worked, the less he liked what he saw. The stratified social structure of Stragma bothered him deeply, though everybody¡¯s tacit acceptance of it bothered him more. It seemed like the Shells felt like their treatment was something they deserved, like a punishment for being weak. The very concept drove him crazy because he¡¯d been like them a long time ago. Then he¡¯d met a girl who¡¯d shown him that there was so much more to strength than just fighting, and everything had changed. Why couldn¡¯t these people see what he saw?
¡°We have arrived.¡± Tepin¡¯s soft voice pulled Rudra from his thoughts back to reality. Before him stood a rather large home on a solitary platform by the edge of the city. Off to the side was another platform, or at least what looked to have once been one. Now only several broken beams remained, their remnants burnt and their ends jagged as if torn apart with extreme force.
¡°You will find everything you need inside.¡± She turned to the nearest guard. ¡°May I be dismissed from my duties, sir?¡± The guard nodded and so she slowly walked away, though not without giving Rudra one last disdainful look as she passed.
Rudra walked inside the house to find a nearly-fully furnished home. There were chairs, tables, chests... the only thing he found that seemed off was that instead of a bed with a mattress, he found a thick bedroll lying in a corner. The pantry was chock full of food, and there were even spare outfits in a chest. Whoever had set this up had put in a lot of work. Grabbing some fruits and other things that struck his fancy, Rudra sat down for his first meal as a free man in a long time.
The sound of rustling from under a nearby chair startled him. Looking carefully, he noticed a pair of small, beady eyes staring out from beneath the chair.
¡°Well, hello, little guy,¡± he said softly, getting down on his hands and knees to get a better look. Down under the chair sat a long furry wruelit about three quarters of a meter long. The beast eyed Rudra warily as he slowly extended a hand towards it¡¯s head. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m not going to hurt you.¡± He curled all but one of his fingers in, letting the adorable fuzzball sniff carefully at his digit. ¡°My, you¡¯re a real cutie, aren¡¯t you?¡± he said. ¡°You and I are going to be the best of- AUGH!¡±
Without warning the beast bit down hard on his finger, its sharp teeth digging deep into his flesh. Rudra yanked his hand back but the wruelit did not let go. ¡°Get off!¡± he cried, shaking his waving his hand in the air, but the beast held on, the ripples from Rudra¡¯s shaking traveling down its body like they would a slinky. Finally the creature let go with a squeak and scampered back under the chair.
¡°Stupid asshole,¡± Rudra muttered, though he wasn¡¯t sure if he was referring to himself or the animal. Wrapping his finger with a piece of cloth found in the clothes chest, he glared at the beast, who glared warily back. ¡°What am I going to call you?¡± he wondered. An evil grin crept onto his face as the image of the shaking wruelit latched onto his finger played back through his mind. ¡°I know. I¡¯m going to call you ¡®Slinky¡¯.¡± Slinky squeaked, possibly in protest. ¡°Nope! This is your punishment for biting me. You¡¯re just going to have to deal with it.¡± Slinky squeaked again before retreating out of view. Rudra made a mental note to ask somebody the next morning what wruelits ate, how they pooped, what they liked, and... man, he really hadn''t thought any of this pet thing through.
This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The next few hours went quickly. He ate, relaxed, cleaned himself, and generally just unwound from the stress of the last few weeks. Back in India his single-person apartment had felt like a prison, but his outlook on things had swayed since his arrival. Finally, as the three moons journeyed through the sky above, their light poking through holes in the massive canopy above, Rudra laid down and closed his eyes.
¡°I guess I was wrong about you after all.¡±
Rudra¡¯s droopy eyes snapped open in panic and he sat up faster than he¡¯d ever sat up in his entire life. Looking about, he saw still-unfamiliar furniture and Slinky¡¯s tiny head poking out from beneath a chair, but that was it. Had he imagined the voice? The sudden feeling of a cold blade against his throat informed him that no, he had not.
¡°Nice and quiet now,¡± murmured Sneak behind him. ¡°No need to let the guards know I¡¯m here.¡±
The Hidden Fang. Rudra had been so busy with raising the dead and getting his freedom that he¡¯d forgotten all about the elusive group of vigilante killer Shells. The stories Bitol had told him resurfaced in his mind. Tales of brutal assassinations taking place in the middle of the night, of people waking up in the morning to find a family member beheaded, disemboweled, or worse. And now they were here him. He gulped. ¡°What do you want?¡± he asked.
¡°The leader just wants to see you, is all. No need to make a fuss.¡±
¡°Uhhh... at least let me get dressed first.¡±
The knife slid away from his neck and Rudra released the breath he hadn¡¯t realized he¡¯d been holding. ¡°Hurry up. We don¡¯t have all night.¡±
Rudra quickly threw on what he¡¯d been wearing that day. ¡°Okay, I¡¯m ready,¡± he said as he turned back towards his bedroll, only to find nobody over there.
¡°Let¡¯s go then. The leader doesn¡¯t like to be kept waiting,¡± said a voice right behind him.
Rudra nearly jumped out of his pants. ¡°Do you have to keep doing that?¡± he whined.
¡°Only as long as you keep making it hilarious,¡± Sneak replied. He grabbed Rudra, one hand on each shoulder, and pulled him into the nearby darkness. ¡°Here we go. Try not to puke.¡±
Suddenly Rudra¡¯s stomach lurched as the ground seemed to give way and he fell into darkness. Nothingness overtook him, a void so oppressive that his soul screamed in agony at the unbearable solitude. Then in just moments he was somewhere else, his whole body spasming as he spilled his dinner all over the wooden floor below.
¡°Why do they always have to puke?¡± Sneak groaned as he pulled Rudra to his feet. ¡°Come on, get a hold of yourself. We still have plenty more shadowdives left before we get where we¡¯re going.¡±
¡°There¡¯s more?¡± Rudra cried in horror. ¡°Nononono-¡±
The darkness swallowed him once more.
¡°The leader will be here in a moment,¡± Sneak said as he left the small room.
Rudra looked about the room as he tried to recover from his trip to... wherever this was. He was in a room with several small, wide stools and a table, all made from some sort of dark brown wood. There were no windows, and just a single doorway that led to a hallway. The room was bare save for the table and the stools, with the one exception of a pelt hanging on the wall opposite the doorway. Rudra approached it and inspected the mottled gray and gold fur, wondering from what manner of beast it came.
¡°A wruelit,¡± said a voice from behind him, scorn dripping from each and every syllable. ¡°A wruelit and a house. You brainless simpleton! She was in the palm of your hand! I¡¯ve never seen her so desperate in all my life! She would have agreed to anything you wanted. Anything. You could have changed society itself, and instead you asked for a pet. You. Make. Me. Sick.¡±
Confusion washed over him. He knew that voice, but what was it doing here? There was no way... unless the situation was far more complicated than he¡¯d ever thought. He turned around, a smile of false confidence on his face. Standing in the doorway behind him was a small woman, her silver hair shining an orange hue in the torchlight. ¡°Hello, Tepin. I thought you didn¡¯t want to see me anymore.¡±
¡°Shut your mouth, you pathetic excuse for a man,¡± came her scathing reply. A soft glint of reflected firelight made Rudra suddenly aware of the large serrated knife in her left hand. ¡°Sit down,¡± she commanded, pointing at a nearby stool. ¡°We¡¯re going to have a little talk.¡±
Rudra did as ordered. His sitting merely served to bring him down to her diminutive height, a fact that would have earned a chuckle if not for the cold fury he saw in the woman¡¯s eyes. ¡°So you¡¯re the leader of the Hidden Fang?¡± he inquired.
¡°No, I just got lost and ended up here,¡± she replied. ¡°Of course I am, you imbecile.¡±
¡°What happened to ¡®I know my place¡¯ and all that?¡±
¡°You think I would say anything else out loud? Surrounded by guards?¡± She laughed a derisive laugh. ¡°I¡¯m the most wanted person in this entire country, and I have been for over a decade. I didn¡¯t stay free by being stupid. I have to keep up that meek facade at all times. You never know who might be listening.¡±
¡°So why risk bringing me here? You have to know I¡¯m being guarded.¡±
¡°Know?¡± She laughed again. ¡°Please. I organized the guard rotations! But enough of that.¡± The woman¡¯s face lost all signs of joviality and became deathly serious. ¡°Who are you working for?¡±
¡°I already told my story. You were there.¡±
¡°And I don¡¯t believe it. You appear out of nowhere, just as all my work is about to come to fruition, and put it all in jeopardy? Too convenient. Who sent you?¡±
¡°Look, I don¡¯t know what I can say at this point to convince you about any of this, but everything I said back then was true. I¡¯m not working for anybody. I don¡¯t answer to anybody. I have no orders, no instructions, nothing. I¡¯m just a man.¡±
Tepin¡¯s grip on her knife tightened as she heard his words. ¡°Then why didn¡¯t you save us when you had the chance?¡± she spat, as she stared him in the eyes. The anger, pain, and betrayal he saw in her gaze sliced deep into his soul.
¡°Because I¡¯m an idiot. Alright? I¡¯m a complete idiot.¡± He slumped over as he spoke, his strong, proud body seeming to deflate at the admission. ¡°I got too caught up with my own situation and didn¡¯t think about what was going on around me. You¡¯re right. You¡¯re totally right. I fucked up.¡± A defeated sigh escaped his lips as he put his head in his hands. ¡°Jaya would never forgive me for what I¡¯ve done,¡± he mumbled to himself.
Tepin blinked at his confession and didn¡¯t immediately reply. Apparently that had not been what she¡¯d expected him to say. ¡°Alright then,¡± she said after a moment. ¡°You work for me now.¡±
¡°Wait, what?¡±
¡°I have pushed myself to the brink of death for fifteen years working to free my people, and I¡¯ll be damned if I am going to let everything I¡¯ve strived for be ruined by some jackass from another world who doesn¡¯t know what the fuck he¡¯s doing. You say you don¡¯t answer to anybody? Well, now you do.¡±
¡°And if I refuse?¡± Rudra replied, crossing his arms in defiance.
¡°Then one day soon you will go to sleep and never wake up,¡± the small woman replied, taking her knife and driving it into a nearby stool. It quivered as it stood there, its tip lodged into the wood just enough to keep it from falling out. ¡°Do you know how many Shells live in Stragma right now? Over three million. You are not important enough to risk the salvation of three million people. Neither am I.¡±
Rudra studied Tepin¡¯s face, trying to figure her out. The frail woman looked like a mild breeze would knock her over. He¡¯d even seen her nearly collapse just from walking. Where did she get the strength to carry on day after day? Where did that drive come from?
¡°I guess I don¡¯t have a choice, do I?¡± he sighed. ¡°What do you want me to do?¡±
¡°For now, continue your agreement, but nothing more. Next time she comes demanding your help, you require things to improve our lives.¡±
¡°Next time?¡±
¡°Did you think this was a one-time arrangement?¡± She chuckled. ¡°Oh no, she¡¯ll be back with more demands soon enough. Who wouldn¡¯t be tempted by what you have to offer?¡±
¡°What do you want me to say?¡±
¡°That depends on what she wants. The bigger the demand, the greater the price. We have to make sure we don¡¯t push her too far or she¡¯ll just snap and lose it. She won¡¯t be as vulnerable as she was last time.¡± She shot a hot glare at Rudra. ¡°I¡¯ll come up with an ordered list later. For now, a good thing would be a large increase in our wages.¡±
¡°You get paid?¡±
¡°Of course we get paid. This isn¡¯t Kutrad. The problem is we don¡¯t get paid enough. The roof on my home leaks when it rains. I run this entire country. You think that the Chos could govern sixteen million people without me?¡± She scoffed. ¡°The entire nation would fall to chaos if I were to disappear, and yet I can¡¯t even afford to fix my roof properly. Start with that.¡±
¡°Alright. But I want something from you in return. I want you to stop killing people.¡±
¡°Absolutely not. Those people deserve worse than death for what they do. The government has overlooked their crimes for centuries. If they will not protect us, we must protect ourselves.¡±
¡°Then I won¡¯t cooperate with you.¡±
¡°How are we supposed to fight for our wellbeing if we can¡¯t fight? We have to be strong! Strength is all that matters in this world!¡±
Rudra stood up slowly, a disappointed frown on his face. ¡°There¡¯s so much more to strength than killing,¡± he said. ¡°Maybe one day I¡¯ll get you all to understand that. I¡¯ll give what you said some thought. Now if you¡¯ll excuse me, I¡¯m tired and I have a lot of work to do tomorrow.¡± She made no effort to stop him as he strode past her. ¡°Thank you for not using that knife.¡±
Tepin didn¡¯t say anything more as he walked by her and left the room. Down the hallway, he found Sneak waiting for him.
¡°You look entirely in one piece,¡± the man observed when he spotted Rudra, a speck of surprise in his voice. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen the leader so mad before. Thought she was gonna rough you up a bunch at least.¡±
¡°We worked something out. Can you take me back please?¡± he asked with no small amount of dread for what was to come.
Sneak waved him over and grabbed him on the shoulders like before. The horrid falling feeling swept through him again as the world plunged into darkness.
Rudra fell down onto all fours as they emerged into his bedroom many shadowdives later, trying his best to fight back the dry heaves. ¡°How do you stand it?¡± he asked between pants.
¡°You get used to it eventually,¡± the man chuckled. ¡°Have a nice rest, Rudra. I have a feeling that we¡¯ll be seeing each other a lot in the future.¡± And with that, he was gone.
After taking a few minutes to calm down and undress, Rudra laid down on his bedroll. Try as he might, sleep would not come. There was just too much to think about. He thought about Stragma, Shells, and his place in their society. He thought about Akhustal Palebane and Tepin Silverfall and Caprakan Bloodflower and Sneak, and everything else. But most of all, his mind kept coming back to a sound he¡¯d heard as he¡¯d walked down the hall after his discussion with the leader of the Hidden Fang. It was the sound of Tepin collapsing as soon as she thought he was too far away to hear it.
Chapter 35
Akhustal Palebane-chos watched with glee as her warriors returned to the land of the living, their journey to rejoin Ruresni forestalled. One by one they stumbled towards an official who, once enough had assembled, would take them to a nearby room and explain to them their situation. Once they had adjusted to their sudden revivals, they left the facility through a long, newly-constructed tunnel connecting their current location with a hidden location outside the city, where they would wait until the entire army was back and ready to move.
Such an arrangement was possible only through a lucky coincidence of city planning. One of the most ironclad traditions of Stragman society was the cycle of reincarnation and rebirth. Stragmans were given life from the Mother Tree, and when they died it was imperative that they be returned to the forest so that their spirits could reunite with Ruresni and begin the cycle anew. When the death was simply a single individual, the family would hold a small ceremony, known as the Ceremony of Restoration. When the death toll was high however, such as in the case of a war, the ceremony would be communal and was led by the Chos. Such rituals couldn¡¯t happen on the spot, so the bodies would be stored in a massive tent set up on the very edge of the city. After all, the bodies smelled even after being treated to slow their deterioration.
It was this quirk that allowed Akhustal to implement her plan. It was paramount that Rudra¡¯s abilities be kept secret for as long as possible, both for his protection and for surprise. The Drayhadans would discover him eventually; one could only hide thirty thousand people for so long, after all. What mattered was striking before they found out.
With that in mind, Akhustal and her team had done everything in their power to hide their plans. The revived warriors had orders to remain in their hidden location and were forbidden from even approaching the city. Their families believed them dead, and her government made sure they continued to hold that belief, as cruel and painful as it might be. Resources posed another challenge. Thanks to their sudden early departure from Krose, Stragma was now running low on certain crucial metal goods, specifically weapons and armor. Finding replacements was not an easy task on its own, but when you added in that it needed to be done quickly and stealthily it became nearly impossible to carry out.
Fortunately, Akhustal had just the right person for the job ¡ª Tepin Silverfall. When Tepin had first assumed her current role as the Chos¡¯ assistant over fifteen years ago after the terrible accident of her predecessor, Akhustal had been skeptical to say the least. The position had never been filled by a Shell before, and no matter how qualified the woman was said to be, the Chos had trouble getting over the fact that the woman looked like she could die from a bad fart. But over the years Tepin had proven herself thousands of times over, never letting Akhustal down no matter the task given to her. It had only taken a few short years before Akhustal began to think of the little Shell as her most reliable helper. No matter the situation, Akhustal knew that she could count on Tepin.
After a little while Akhustal Palebane left the scene. Her visit could be written off by any observers simply as her preparing for the mass ceremony as long as she didn¡¯t spend too much time there. She had to be back at headquarters for the upcoming council meeting anyway.
¡°...and the Fifth and Seventh divisions will head east and then north to meet us on day eight.¡±
¡°And the elves haven¡¯t figured out what we¡¯re doing yet, right?¡± Palebane asked as General Fernfeather-hono finished his summary of their logistical plans.
¡°Not as far as we can tell,¡± Stonefist-hono replied. ¡°Little to no troop movement.¡±
While the thirty-two thousand revived warriors made a formidable force in most cases, only an army over twice that size could take a fully-garrisoned Astronta Keep. Add in the need to take the fortress quickly and with as many living Drayhadans as possible, and a force over a hundred thousand strong became necessary. But that meant redeploying the entire army that had just returned from the first aborted campaign, and doing so without the Drayhadans noticing until it was too late.
What they¡¯d decided upon was to send out different divisions on fake wildlife subjugation missions. Living in the Stragman forest required constant management of the plants and animals, even some days of travel away. Sometimes thousands of warriors needed to be sent out to depopulate a species that was overproducing, or to divert a small migration, or even to put down or chase away some forest Lords that were straying too far from their territory. Using the excuse that these soldiers were available because they weren¡¯t supposed to be back yet, along with the excuse that their early arrival in Pholis had upset the balance of the forest¡¯s ecology, they¡¯d split their army up with orders to head off towards some subjugation missions and then meet up secretly on the way to Astronta Keep.
¡°Are we going to have enough shackles for everybody?¡± Akhustal asked.
¡°We are requisitioning the restraints used for prisoners during migration,¡± replied General Nightclaw-hono. ¡°We should have enough for nearly twenty thousand captives.¡±
¡°Excellent. Most excellent.¡± Akhustal tried to tamp down her excitement at how well everything was progressing, but found it hard. She couldn¡¯t help but envision Pyria¡¯s face when the longear realized that the Chos was no longer under her thumb. The image alone almost made her giddy. But there was still work to be done and many things that could still go wrong. She needed to keep her eye on the target. ¡°Well done, everyone. Dismissed!¡±
The assembled generals filed out of the briefing chamber one by one until only one remained.
¡°What is it?¡± Akhustal asked, her tone far less accommodating now that the others were no longer around.
¡°I hope you understand why I said what I said a few days ago,¡± General Fernfeather began.
¡°Oh, did you change your mind?¡± Akhustal asked, a mocking sneer on her lips. ¡°What happened to your courage? Or can you only muster up your defiance when a whole room of Hono are with you?¡±
¡°You were making poor decisions, letting that woman get in your head and control you. You were putting our entire nation at risk with your actions. You know I would never have dared if I didn¡¯t feel it was needed. I meant-¡±
¡°But you did dare,¡± she interrupted, her voice cold and hard. ¡°You crossed that line, and you don¡¯t get to pretend now like it never happened.¡± She hoisted her massive warclub up onto her shoulder, rose up to her full towering height, and stared the closest person she had to a rival directly in his eyes. ¡°I say this to you now, and to anybody bold and stupid enough to question me like that in the future ¡ª go ahead. Challenge me if you don¡¯t like my leadership, I welcome it. But you had better come with everything you have, because I will crush you. I will show you no mercy. I am the Chos. Not you, not anybody else. Me. And I will tolerate disrespect no longer.¡±
Her anger vented, Akhustal Palebane strode purposefully from the room with a smile, leaving a sweating General Fernfeather-hono alone to pick up what remained of his nerve.
Standing outside the Many tent, the Chos slapped her cheeks lightly, trying to force the grin off her face. She¡¯d been waiting for this moment for days now, ever since leaving Pholis for the second time and heading for war and vengeance, and it was hard to keep from being giddy. Still, it wouldn¡¯t do to be too open in her enjoyment. She represented Stragma, after all. Once she felt she had been sufficiently de-smiled, she began to count slowly in her head. Once she had reached two hundred, she pulled the flap back and entered the enclosure.
¡°I apologize deeply for my tardiness,¡± she said to the projection of the irate elf standing on the ground before her, a large chain in her hand leading out of the projection. ¡°I rushed here at the earliest possible opportunity.¡± The glare that came in return warmed her spirit like a hot bowl of hearty soup.
¡°I thought you many things, savage, but I did not take you to be a fool,¡± Pyria growled. She yanked the chain and a bedraggled man, blindfolded and gagged, stumbled into view. Both parties knew who the man was even before his appearance, but the disheveled red-orange hair confirmed it ¡ª Caprakan. Unlike the previous times, this time they¡¯d stripped him of clothing so Akhustal got a first-time look at how he¡¯d been treated. Bruises covered his body, melding with his Hono markings so that it seemed like his entire body was some shifting shade of purple or black. Mixed in with the bruises were hundreds of little cuts in various stages of healing. Some still bled, his blood leaving tiny drops of red on the stone floor.
Akhustal grit her teeth in rage. These wounds were attacks on him, of course, but they were also attacks on her. Everything Pyria had done to Caprakan had been done with the intention of hurting Akhustal in ways that she couldn¡¯t deflect. But to react was to give Pyria victory, and she had given the elf enough victories in the previous days. Never again. The Chos had to be strong.
¡°I¡¯m not sure what you are referring to,¡± Akhustal said.
¡°Don¡¯t play dumb with me! Withdraw your army immediately. I will not give you a second chance.¡±
¡°My army? Oh, the one just two days from Astronta Keep? That one? Why are you contacting me about that now? Whatever happened to your ¡®vast network of spies¡¯? Shouldn¡¯t they have informed you about it days ago?¡±
¡°I see... so you¡¯ve finally decided to grow a spine.¡± The elven princess pulled Caprakan closer and brought out the ornate knife that she liked to play with during their ¡®chats¡¯. ¡°Perhaps some surgery is needed to remove it.¡±
With her free hand the elf removed her prisoner¡¯s blindfold, letting Akhustal lock eyes with her husband for the first time since they¡¯d kissed goodbye so many days ago. In those eyes she saw many things ¡ª pain, anger, and hate, but also a hope and joy from finally seeing his beloved. She smiled a reassuring grin in return.
¡°This is your absolute final warning. Turn your army around this instant, or he will be the first of many to die today.¡±
Akhustal stood straight and didn¡¯t back down. ¡°I am ridding myself of you, you vile wretch. No longer do you get to push me around. Do your worst.¡±
Pyria blinked and the Chos thought she saw an inferno of anger blazing in her eyes for just a fraction of a moment, but the elf recovered quickly. ¡°Very well. Then you can live the rest of your life knowing that you killed your own husband.¡± She brought her knife up and slit Caprakan¡¯s throat with a single quick, practiced motion.
The man writhed as blood spurted out onto the floor below, but his eyes never left his wife¡¯s. In them she saw love and longing, but also bewilderment and betrayal. In many ways, that hurt more than any physical wound ever could. Then he was gone.
Waves of warriors poured over the walls of Astronta Keep in overwhelming numbers, sweeping over the assembled elves in a wave of flesh and fury. Armed with a variety of weapons, from metal swords and spears to long and thin poles recently cut from trees in the forest, the Stragmans threw themselves upon the defending Drayhadans with reckless abandon. Amidst those waves was Akhustal, who, after watching her love die just two days ago at the hands of an elf, needed to let out some rage.
With a quick swing, Akhustal smashed her club into a nearby defender¡¯s skull, intentionally lightening the weapon so as not to pulverize the man¡¯s head. The elf¡¯s head twisted sideways from the force of the blow and a ¡®snap¡¯ sound came from his neck. He fell over, body limp. Whoops.
With a second swing, she struck another nearby elf, only this time she went for his chest instead. Off balance from the heavy blow, the man stumbled backwards into another elf¡¯s spear, impaling himself. Whoops.
Looking about, the Chos saw was satisfaction that while the battle would rage for another few hours, the result was already clear. The fortress had only been held by three quarters of what they¡¯d originally estimated and planned for, making the outcome easy to predict. They would have their prisoners. The only question would be how many, and at what cost?
With a cry, another defender launched himself at her and she twisted to the side, bringing her weapon about to clip his shoulder as he passed. Out of control, the man flew past her and over the rampart wall. Akhustal sighed. This whole ¡®not killing¡¯ thing was harder than she¡¯d thought.
The elderly elf peered through the projection, his face awash with displeasure. Old even for somebody of his race, he sported a long white beard that fell down nearly to his waist, and yet in true elven fashion still had smooth, wrinkle-free face beneath it. No matter how old, elves never seemed to have the wrinkles or pock marks or wear that others acquired as they aged. Instead they simply seemed to slowly shrink until one day they died.
Old as he was, his deep blue eyes still shined with intellect. Such was to be expected of Qoton Casm, the head of the Casm clan in the northeast of Drayhadal and the current leader of the nation. Given Drayhadal¡¯s isolationist leanings, Qoton preferred to leave dealing with other countries to somebody else ¡ª Pyria, the last few decades. That was why Akhustal was using one of Astronta Keep¡¯s Manys instead of the usual Stragma-Drayhadal line. Today called for a more direct conversation.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
¡°Are you here to gloat, savage?¡± the man asked sourly.
¡°My, my,¡± Akhustal replied, her tone dripping with condescension. ¡°I would have thought that someone of your station would have the sense to know when to keep the insults to themselves. Are you becoming senile? I guess age must strike everybody eventually.¡±
¡°So that is a ¡®yes¡¯, then?¡±
¡°Twenty-seven thousand, four hundred and eight. That¡¯s how many of your glorious elven people are in my possession. They are all alive, for now, and for the right price I¡¯ll even give them back. Isn¡¯t that nice of me?¡±
The man glowered at her, his evident displeasure bringing the Chos great joy. This was a man who was used to always having the upper hand. ¡°Name your terms and I¡¯ll consider it.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s keep it simple. One living Drayhadan for three living Stragmans seems fair.¡±
¡°What? Insanity!¡±
¡°Is it? But I thought that one Drayhadan was worth ten savages. Isn¡¯t that what you elves always love to say? If you think about it, I¡¯m actually giving you a discount!¡±
¡°Wha- thi-this is an outrage!¡±
¡°Well, if you don¡¯t need them, I can always just kill them...¡±
¡°W-wait! Very well, I agree to your terms.¡±
¡°Great! I will take my army to the border between Stragma and the Esmae. We can conduct the exchange there. Don¡¯t forget to bring eighty-two thousand, two hundred and twenty four captive Stragmans! You do have that many, right?¡±
¡°Enough of your mockery! Of course we don¡¯t! You know that as well as I do!¡±
¡°Oh... well, it seems we have a problem then. If all you have is my Second Army, then I guess I could give back ten thousand of your people. But then what would happen to the others?¡± She scratched her chin in mock puzzlement. ¡°Perhaps if you paid in other ways, such as food, or weapons, or maybe both? We can work out the exact exchange rates later.¡±
¡°I will not forget this, you monster.¡±
¡°Monster? Why thank you! I assume that means you agree to my terms?¡±
¡°I will allow the exchange to occur this once, but only once, so don¡¯t start thinking you can do this again.¡±
¡°Oh, I wouldn¡¯t have even thought of it at all if it weren¡¯t for you and your wonderful clans,¡± she replied with a smile. ¡°Glad we could do business! So to make sure we¡¯re in agreement, you will exchange my Second Army for five thousand of your people, and then food, weapons, and goods for the rest.¡±
¡°Five- you said ten thousand!¡±
¡°Did I?¡±
¡°One Drayhadan for three sav- three Stragmans. That was the deal.¡±
¡°Oh, no no no, I said one Drayhadan for three living Stragmans. And I don¡¯t believe you have any of those on hand, do you? Or did Pyria Esmae not tell you that she killed all my people just a few days ago?¡±
¡°She-¡±
¡°I¡¯m sure she must have. Well, I¡¯m glad we could work this all out. I¡¯ll leave the rest to you. Give my regards to Pyria.¡± With a wave of her hand the connection cut and she left the old man to stew in his bile.
For the thousandth time, Akhustal congratulated herself on her idea. Stragma¡¯s economy was suffering a crippling shortage of materials and metal due to their early flight from Krose. Why not use their upper hand to relieve her people¡¯s burdens while she could? Even a little extra goods would go a long way. This, she thought as she looked over the mountains of goods extorted from the Drayhadans, was far more than a little.
In the end, she¡¯d ¡®relented¡¯ and lowered the ratio of dead Stragmans to Drayhadans down from six-to-one to five-to-one, still giving her people more than enough to celebrate over. People swarmed over the piles, counting, categorizing, and measuring the goods to make sure enough had been provided to honor the deal. Others checked the actual quality of the goods, making sure that the weapons weren¡¯t defective and the food was not poisoned.
Off to the side of the piles of goods was another series of piles, one far more morbid. Thirty thousand-or-so bodies laid in a series of large heaps with people carrying them from one pile to another as the bodies were processed. She headed over that way for a status report.
¡°How¡¯s the body count coming?¡± she asked General Fernfeather-hono.
¡°We¡¯re confirming the numbers now. If the early count is correct, we are missing less than a thousand warriors, possibly those that died in the original battle.¡±
¡°Did you find him?¡±
Fernfeather-hono paused for a moment. ¡°We did. You might not want to look.¡±
¡°No, I must. Show me.¡±
The general led her around the piles to a small tent set up by the piles. Inside on the ground was a single body, one in absolutely terrible shape. Cut and gashes were everywhere. The eyes were gone, the face had been disfigured almost to the point of unrecognizability, and it was missing its left arm and right leg. Somebody had been really angry. Still, she knew on sight that it was him. She was looking at her husband¡¯s corpse.
¡°Heh... heh heh...¡± she began to giggle. The giggles grew louder and louder, turning into laughs, until finally she lost all control and began to let loose full-blown guffaws. Soon she was laughing so hard that tears were streaking down her face, though if they were from mirth or relief she wasn¡¯t sure.
¡°Look at what they did to him,¡± she eventually said to General Fernfeather-hono between laughs. ¡°They have no idea! In a few days he¡¯ll be walking around like nothing ever happened and they have no idea! Everybody out there is going to be fine and they have no idea! They think they got some petty little revenge on me, but they didn¡¯t! Nothing they did matters! Nothing!¡± She cackled some more. ¡°It¡¯s... it feels like we¡¯re cheating, doesn¡¯t it? They can¡¯t do anything to us now!¡±
Several hours later, the goods had been counted and everything was ready to go. Perhaps because they had so much to lose, the Drayhadans hadn¡¯t tried to play any tricks for once. With a smug grin on her face, she initiated contact with Pyria through a captured Drayhadan many. The woman was actually nearby with the Drayhadan forces, but instead of talking face-to-face, Pyria chose to keep her distance. A wise move. Akhustal would have ripped her in half as soon as they were together.
The elf looked deliciously sour. Akhustal bet Pyria was still angry about her and Qoton¡¯s conversation. While killing the hostages was an expected move, and something Qoton would probably have done in the same situation, the action had apparently not actually been an order, but rather Pyria taking initiative. Since it had backfired on them, that meant that Qoton got to blame her for the results, and she was none too happy about it.
¡°Finally done?¡± the Esmae princess huffed. ¡°It figures that you savages would take forever to count.¡±
Akhustal ignored the jab. Normally she¡¯d find Pyria¡¯s petty insults at least mildly irritating, but today nothing could bother her. Today, she was victorious. ¡°You have fulfilled the agreement. The hostages will be released shortly.¡±
¡°Hurry up and get it over with. The sooner you¡¯re away from here the better.¡±
¡°I wholeheartedly agree. Farewell, princess. Perhaps next time you will reconsider before you think to try to cross me.¡±
The elf gave no reply other than a chilling glare. It was the most delightful thing the Chos had seen in days.
¡°Come on, Tepin, hurry up!¡± Akhustal called to her sickly assistant. Normally the Chos liked to walk at a calm, reasonable pace, which had the side effect of allowing the smaller Ms. Silverfall to keep up. But today was different. Today they had returned to Pholis victorious. Today, she would see her husband alive again. It was no wonder that she couldn¡¯t help but stride with speed and purpose. Looking back at the woman struggling to follow, Akhustal decided to just go ahead without her. Tepin knew where they were going, she¡¯d show up a little later.
The guards snapped to attention as soon as they saw her approaching the house on the outskirts of the city. She made a mental note to have the guard on Rudra doubled... or maybe even tripled. His abilities were just too important to allow for any chance of something happening. Humming a pleasant tune, she walked right by and opened the front door.
Once inside, she paused to let her eyes adjust to the light and looked around. Strangely, the visitor from another world was nowhere to be found. Panic quickly rose up inside her. Had something happened? Where was he when she needed him?
¡°Hello? Who¡¯s there?¡± came a call from somewhere in the room.
Akhustal looked around to find the man bent over, his upper body squeezed beneath a low table with his butt sticking foolishly into the air as if asking to be spanked.
¡°What are you doing?¡± she asked.
¡°Oh it¡¯s you!¡± he said without coming out from under the table. ¡°I¡¯m just feeding Slinky, one moment. That¡¯s right, eat up... good girl! Good Slinky! That¡¯s ri-OW!¡± His body shot up and the table fell over. A small shape darted into a dark corner of the room.
¡°I have another task for you. There are over sixty thousand people I need you to bring back.¡±
¡°Another army?¡±
¡°Yes. Come, I want you to begin immediately.¡±
The man frowned and shook his head, his hands on his hips. ¡°You want me to keep giving you armies so that you can go to war without consequence? I can¡¯t enable violence like that. Do you even know what a pacifist is?¡±
The Chos felt her ire grow as she remembered just how irritating this man could be. ¡°You did it once already.¡±
¡°And it was a mistake, one I¡¯ll have to live with for the rest of my life. If you want me to do that again, you¡¯ll have to pay a price.¡±
Akhustal¡¯s grip on her club tightened. ¡°I already paid your price. You have your freedom, a home, everything you asked for.¡±
¡°That was the price for the last time. Did you think that it was forever?¡±
¡°You little...¡± Her temper flared, but she caught herself just in time. Yes, he was a Shell, and yes, he had no right to speak to her that way or make demands. But he was unfortunately a special case, and she needed him more than anything. He could bring her husband back to her, and nobody else, be they Shell, Fleg, Blou, or Hono, could say the same. She would allow him his little power trip, get him whatever inconsequential things he asked for, and continue forward. She was bigger than this. ¡°Very well, what is your price this time?¡±
¡°I want all Shells to get three times what they used to get paid from this point onward.¡±
Akhustal nearly choked at his words, unable to believe her ears. Slowly, a red mist filled her vision. ¡°What... did you say?¡±
¡°I said I want all Shells to get three times what they get paid now from this point forward. Oh, and they don¡¯t have to ask permission to leave anymore, too. That¡¯s bullshit.¡±
A rage hotter than anything she¡¯d ever felt before burst into existence inside of her. Before she even knew what she was doing, her club was swinging at full speed towards Rudra¡¯s torso. The man threw his hands up to guard from the blow but the club¡¯s massive weight lifted him from the ground and threw him with incredible force away from her. His large, muscular body slammed into the nearby wall and it splintered under the mighty impact. The man tumbled out onto the platform before crashing into the fence that kept people from falling off the edge. Dazed, he stumbled as he tried to get back to his feet.
¡°Who the fuck do you think you are, worm?!¡± Akhustal bellowed as she stepped through the newly-created hole. ¡°First the longears, then my own generals, and now you, a measly fucking Shell, think you can tell me what to do? You think I am your fucking plaything?!¡±
Her leg shot forward and she delivered a vicious kick to his gut, causing him to crumple over. ¡°The people of this land have survived for centuries because our traditions strengthen us. They make us whole! You think you can just walk in and change everything to your liking? You think that if you hold him hostage I will crumble? No! I¡¯m done being pushed around! I¡¯m done being disrespected! I am the Chos, ruler of Stragma, and I bow to NO ONE! YOU HEAR ME?!¡±
With her free hand she pulled the Shell to his feet and lifted him up so that his face was level with hers. ¡°I gave into your petty demands once, but no longer. I am the Chos and you are nothing compared to me! If I order, you obey! Nothing more! You do not get to make demands! You do not get to add conditions! You do not get a choice! Now you will bring him back to me this instant or I will end you. Right here, right now.¡±
The man coughed and mumbled something.
¡°What was that?¡± she asked, pulling him closer.
¡°I said, now it¡¯s gone up to four times the pay.¡±
With a violent roar, Akhustal Palebane grabbed the Shell¡¯s head and slammed it against the nearby fencepost with all her might. The post shattered under the assault and the man fell to the ground, unconscious. ¡°Tepin!¡± she cried.
¡°Yes, Chos?¡± the woman asked. She must have arrived at some point during the altercation.
¡°I want a new suspended prison built just for him. Nothing but a room hanging in midair. Nothing to do, nothing to see, nobody to talk to. Nothing. He will live there until he gives me what I want. Understood?¡±
¡°Absolutely, Chos,¡± she sniffed, giving the man slumped over on the ground a dispassionate eye. ¡°It will be done immediately.¡±
¡°Good. Also have the bodies preserved, however you have to. They need to last until he breaks.¡±
¡°Of course, Chos.¡±
¡°Thank you, Tepin. That is all.¡± Akhustal gave one last look at the unconscious figure before turning away and heading for the elevator. He wanted to play rough? Then she would do the same.
Chapter 36
¡°I¡¯m very proud of you, you know.¡±
Rudra grumbled and winced as the bandages slowly tightened around his torso. ¡°It hurts to breathe,¡± he complained.
¡°Of course it hurts to breathe, you have two fractured ribs! Those are painful! Now hold still,¡± Jaya chided. ¡°Given your bruises, you should feel lucky you don¡¯t have more.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know if I¡¯m cut out for this whole pacifism thing,¡± Rudra sighed. ¡°I don¡¯t see what¡¯s to gain from just letting people beat you up or worse.¡±
The bandage wrapping halted suddenly. ¡°Hold on a minute, did you...¡± The woman rubbed her temples in exasperation. ¡°Tell me everything that happened.¡±
¡°Well I was walking along when this one guy from a different gang who I¡¯d beaten up before saw me and attacked me. He came at me with a piece of pipe and I was about to punch his lights out but then I remembered that I¡¯m not supposed to fight so I didn¡¯t and he got me. Then I fell to the ground and he kicked me a bunch and then he left.¡±
¡°You let him break your ribs?!¡±
¡°You said I can¡¯t fight! No violence!¡±
¡°That doesn¡¯t mean you do nothing, dummy! Uuuuugggghhh...¡± she moaned, her face in her hands. ¡°All right, apparently I need to explain basic concepts to you. Let¡¯s go over how you could have done this right.¡± She began to count on her fingers. ¡°One, you could have tried to talk with him. Maybe work something out. If he knew you weren¡¯t part of the gang anymore, maybe he wouldn¡¯t have wanted to hurt you so much.¡±
¡°I doubt it. He seemed to take it personally.¡±
¡°Two, you could have run away.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not the sort of person who runs away. I¡¯m not a coward.¡±
¡°There¡¯s nothing wrong with avoiding conflict when it¡¯s not needed, but fine, whatever. Three, if you didn¡¯t want to run away, at least you could have dodged. Just because you don¡¯t fight doesn¡¯t mean you have to just stand still. Even more, if you had the chance, you could have tried to disarm him. Take his pipe away, and maybe he would have run.¡±
¡°That doesn¡¯t count as violence?¡±
¡°You¡¯re not hurting him, are you? There¡¯s many ways to prevent violence that don¡¯t count as violence. I mean, you could have even gotten him on the ground and just sat on him so he couldn¡¯t move if you wanted. As long as you¡¯re not injuring him, you shouldn¡¯t worry.
¡°The point is, being a pacifist doesn¡¯t mean you have to be passive. In fact, being proactive is usually the best way to prevent violence. You need to see it coming and head it off at the pass.¡±
¡°And then what? How do you make things change?¡±
¡°Any way you can. Start a dialogue. Make a deal. Just because violence is off the table doesn¡¯t mean that you have nothing to use as leverage. Find those things. Apply pressure. Or just refuse to cooperate. Sometimes doing nothing accomplishes more than doing something ever could.¡±
¡°This is more complicated than you made it sound before.¡±
¡°The world is rarely simple, Rudra. But that doesn¡¯t mean a simple and pure idea isn¡¯t what the world needs sometimes. Now stop squirming so I can finish this.¡±
He¡¯d felt this pain before, though it had been much less painful last time. His head spinning and his consciousness still only half-there, Rudra took a deep breath and doubled over in agony. The pain made him cough, which only made it hurt more and triggered more coughs.
His vision swam, the world around him refusing to immediately form into recognizable shapes and patterns. He rolled over and suddenly pain shot through his hand as he put weight on it. He tried to move his fingers and found his hands wrapped in so much cloth that they were nearly spherical. The cloth was bound tight, keeping the hand and fingers unable to easily move. They throbbed like his ribs.
Slowly, as the coughing subsided, the world took shape and it became apparent that he was no longer in his home. The events from before crystallized in his memory ¡ª the Chos¡¯s boiling rage, her swift and sudden attack, and everything that had come after that. He would be lying if he claimed that he¡¯d expected such a reaction. He¡¯d thought she would be upset, but not to such an extreme. But here he was, broken ribs, broken hands, fuzzy head, and now stuck here, wherever ¡®here¡¯ was.
He seemed to be in a cell similar to the one he¡¯d been in before. The familiar poop trap door was back, and he could hear the sound of ropes creaking in the breeze as the cell swayed back and forth. The only difference was that what before had been a wall made from wooden bars with a door embedded in it was now a solid wall with a small barred open window and some sort of slot at the bottom just tall enough to slide a tray with food through.
Grunting through the pain, Rudra pushed himself to his feet with his elbows and staggered over to the window. Instead of the usual hallway and neighboring cells, Rudra found nothing but air. Dozens of meters off in the distance stood normal people¡¯s houses placed on large platforms emerging from the trunks of the nearby trees, like everywhere else. Listening closely, he could hear murmurs of activity far down below. He was still in the city then, and not way out on the edge.
Unable to get a satisfactory picture from the small window alone, Rudra made his way over to the small trap door on the other side of the cell. It took him longer than he wanted to admit to lift the wooden plank with his bandaged hands, but eventually it flipped over and revealed the small head-sized hole beneath. Peering through the gap, Rudra saw dozens of people moving about far down below. Wait a minute... was he expected to poop through this hole with the knowledge that other people were walking below, blissfully unaware of the impending bombardment? How terrible!
Rudra fumbled the plank back into place and sat down against the back wall facing the wall with the window. He wasn¡¯t sure exactly what was going on at this point, but he knew that answers would come soon. So he waited, counting the hours until nightfall. Maybe he¡¯d take a nap.
He was ready for once. A few hours after nightfall, Rudra watched with a victorious smile as the shadows in the back of his cell seemed to bulge, the darkness seeming to gain substance. The bulge swiftly grew and sharpened, quickly gaining definition until it turned into two figures ¡ª Tepin and Sneak.
¡°Hello,¡± he said. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect you to come yourself.¡±
¡°This is practically the perfect place for a clandestine conversation,¡± Tepin replied. ¡°Hundreds of paces from anybody, isolated in the air so it would take minutes to approach, no clear way to see in... it¡¯s perfect. Since the Chos didn¡¯t give me specifics for your prison, I was free to make sure we¡¯d have some privacy.¡±
¡°I see. Why am I in here, exactly?¡±
¡°Sneak, go stand watch outside. Come back in an hour if nothing happens.¡±
¡°Sure thing.¡± Sneak nodded and seemed to melt, his form melding with the shadows around him.
¡°How are you feeling?¡± Tepin asked once they were alone.
¡°I¡¯ve been better,¡± Rudra admitted. ¡°The pain¡¯s not as bad as it was this afternoon, at least. Doesn¡¯t hurt too bad to breathe now.¡±
Rudra watched as Tepin inspected him, her eyes taking in his damaged hands, his torso, his head, and more. He could see indecision in her eyes as she debated something with herself. ¡°I¡¯m sorry this happened to you,¡± she said finally. ¡°I wanted to warn you, but I... couldn¡¯t get to you fast enough.¡± She hung her head in shame.
¡°I don¡¯t understand why she blew her top,¡± Rudra admitted. ¡°I thought she would be angry, but not that angry.¡±
¡°One of the dead people is her husband.¡±
¡°Oh. Oh.¡±
¡°She¡¯s become very sensitive about people extorting her ever since the Drayhadans held her husband hostage and demanded that she obey them or they¡¯d kill him. In a way, you did the same thing.¡±
¡°Those are not the same at all!¡±
¡°She would disagree.¡± Tepin shrugged. ¡°Another factor might be her husband¡¯s views. He¡¯s much more traditionalist than even she is. He believes that the existence of us Shells are not just a stain upon the nation and that the current ways are too forgiving.¡±
¡°Hmmmm, yeah, I remember that now. The way he talked made it sound like he thought Shells weren¡¯t even people.¡±
¡°Some people still believe that, sadly enough. But yes. I think a big reason she doesn¡¯t want to give in to your demands is that she doesn¡¯t want to disrespect her husband by contradicting his beliefs in order to get him back. She probably thinks that he wouldn¡¯t want her to pay that price to save him.¡±
¡°Sounds like we¡¯re in for the long haul.¡±
Tepin sighed and massaged her forehead. ¡°I just wanted some extra leverage for later. I didn¡¯t expect things to end up like this. We can take you out of here any time, just ask.¡±
¡°It¡¯s fine, don¡¯t worry about it.¡±
¡°How are you so calm about this? Are you really fine being locked up indefinitely?¡±
¡°Well with my strength I should be able to escape on my own if I really want to. It would just take some time to figure out how, and I have nothing but time. So I¡¯m not really imprisoned indefinitely as much as I¡¯m imprisoned only as long as I choose to be.¡±
¡°But why would you choose to stay?¡±
¡°Because I feel like I¡¯ve finally found a reason to live again. Ever since my wife Jaya left me I¡¯ve felt like life just didn¡¯t have a point, you know? It was all just this endless cycle of nothing. Working a job, to pay the bills, so you can afford to eat and go home to your empty apartment to sleep, so you can get up the next day and do it all over again. I was just living for nothing other than to keep living, and it was killing me.
¡°When I was a kid, my grandfather used to tell me stories about the years before my country gained its independence. He worked in a textile factory and his life was hard, way harder than mine ever was. He had trouble getting enough money to feed his family and take care of them, and his work was tiring and paid little. But even though he suffered, he talked about those days with pride.
¡°When I was younger I never could understand why he felt that way, but I get it now. There¡¯d been meaning to his life. There¡¯d been a cause that he shared with millions of others ¡ª the liberation of India. And so even though life was tough and painful, he would speak of those times as if they were the greatest times of his life.
¡°When I look at you and the Shells, I feel like I found my purpose. It¡¯s selfish, I know, that I¡¯m thinking about this more as something for me than something for all of you, but the truth is that I feel more fulfilled right now, after sitting around in a box and doing nothing all day, than I have felt in years. So yeah, I¡¯d like to stay. I¡¯d like to help change the fate of a country, like my grandfather did.¡±
"That''s all well and good," Tepin stated, still unconvinced. ¡°Forgive me but I can¡¯t help but have doubts that you¡¯ll still think the same twenty days from now. The Chos is focused on you now and she won¡¯t hold back.¡±
¡°There¡¯s only so much that she can do. She needs me if she wants her husband back. If she tries something too wild, I¡¯ll just escape.¡± He flashed a confident smile. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m very very stubborn when I want to be.¡±
¡°Very well. I should take my leave then.¡±
¡°Are you going to come back tomorrow?¡±
¡°You want me to return tomorrow night?¡±
¡°Yeah, why not? It¡¯s nice to have somebody to talk to. Think of it as keeping me strong so I can hold out as long as possible.¡±
¡°If you insist.¡±
¡°Oh also, bring Slinky with you from now on. I miss my little girl already.¡±
¡°You¡¯re stuck in a cell hanging hundreds of paces above the ground and all you can think about is your little pet. You need help.¡±
¡°Doesn¡¯t everybody, in their own way?¡±
¡°Not like you.¡± Tepin walked to the small window nearby and held up her hand. Suddenly her hand began to glow, pulsing twice. A few moments later, the shadows bulged again and Sneak reappeared. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t forget my Slinky! And bring some food for her too!¡±
Tepin didn¡¯t answer as the shadows enveloped the pair and they disappeared.
The next day passed relatively like the last. Using his teeth, Rudra undid the bandages on his hands. The fingers hurt when bent, but not as much as they¡¯d hurt the day before. His chest felt much better as well. Breathing still hurt, but it was noticeably better than yesterday. Around midday he heard the sound of pulleys and a small platform descended past the window, large enough for a single person to stand on it. Without a word, a tray with a single meal on it was slid through the slot at the bottom of the wall. Rudra eagerly ate everything provided. The food tasted bland but at least it was filling.
As the day passed, Rudra noticed the murmuring of the market below had grown louder. Not by much but enough for him and his extra-sensitive ears to pick up. At first he¡¯d explained it away as an evening post-work rush, but the voices grew louder still even as the evening aged. Confused, he flipped over the poop door and took another peek down. This time, he saw hundreds of people below him staring up at his cell in the waning light. How strange. What were they doing there? Why had they stopped? He mentally shrugged. No use wondering about it too much. Tepin would explain it all later.
As expected, Tepin and Sneak appeared once again that night. Sneak held a wooden cage in one hand. ¡°Here, take this blasted thing away from me before I murder it,¡± the man said, tossing the cage at Rudra. Rudra noticed that his one hand had several fingers wrapped in bandages.
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¡°Slinky, don¡¯t go biting other people!¡± Rudra chided as he let the animal out into the cell. The wruelit squeaked and skittered away from Sneak, eying the man suspiciously. Rudra chuckled and reached a hand out to scratch the furry beast¡¯s head. Thanks to days of feeding the animal, Slinky had become far more accepting of him in the last few days before he¡¯d been thrown in prison. He¡¯d even woken up once to find her hiding under his covers for warmth. She still bit sometimes, however. Also, she was a female. He¡¯d mistakenly assumed the wruelit to be male in the beginning. Good thing he¡¯d chosen a genderless name.
¡°Sneak, leave us,¡± Tepin commanded. ¡°Same as yesterday.¡±
¡°With pleasure,¡± the man replied, his eyes throwing daggers at the long fuzzy beast on the other side of the room. Quickly he was gone.
¡°Tepin, did you do something? There were a bunch of people standing around down there looking up at me earlier today and it creeped me out.¡±
¡°I may have helped spread a word or two about you,¡± she admitted.
¡°Why?¡±
¡°Rudra, I¡¯m not sure you realize it but you¡¯re famous. Everybody in Stragma knows who you are.¡±
¡°For what?¡±
¡°What do you mean, ¡®for what¡¯? For everything! First you humiliated the Chos in front of the whole country and willingly chose to be a Shell. That was enough for everybody to recognize you and made you a minor celebrity in the Shell community. Then you brought thousands of people back from the dead. Did you think people wouldn¡¯t notice? Now that the army is back from the campaign, they¡¯re all talking about it. You¡¯re the talk of the city. And then you went and got yourself thrown in here. All the guards saw it happen, so now everybody knows you¡¯re in here. All I did was spread rumors about why you¡¯re in here so that Shells at least would know you¡¯re on their side. You¡¯re a bonafide hero to Shells all over. As much as I hate to say it, you might have built more influence amongst the Shell population in a season than the Hidden Fang has built in over a decade of effort!¡±
¡°That¡¯s... uh... hmmmm. I don¡¯t know what to say.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t have to say anything. I just ask that you be willing to use that influence for a good cause in the future.¡±
¡°Gladly.¡±
¡°Very well, I shall be off.¡±
¡°Wait, hold on! You just got here! Stick around and talk for a little while. You¡¯re my only conversation partner, after all.¡±
¡°There¡¯s nothing to talk about.¡±
¡°Sure there is! Like... uh... how did you learn to do that glowy thing with your hand? It¡¯s neat.¡±
The wolf-eared woman¡¯s face became guarded. ¡°I don¡¯t see the need to talk about it.¡±
¡°Give me a break. I told you all about my sad life. Why not give a little after all that taking?¡±
Tepin¡¯s eyes grew pensive. She looked away, seeming to withdraw back into a painful memory.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, if it hurts to talk about you don¡¯t have to tell me anything,¡± Rudra said.
¡°No, I... when I was young, I was just as weak as I am now. Weaker, even. They all shunned me. The other children would mock me and refuse to associate with me. The adults looked at me like I was an eyesore. Even my own parents treated me like I was nothing but a burden and a disappointment. I hated my life. There was only one time when I felt any better, and that was during the summer, when I could sneak out of my house at night and sit with the glowflies.
¡°I always found the glowflies calming. They flutter around, shining their lights without a care in the world. It didn¡¯t matter to them that I was sickly. They¡¯d land on me all the same. In a way, they were my only friends. It¡¯s funny, at one point I even dreamed of running away and living with them, following them as they moved through the forest. I wanted to be able to talk with them, so I started to imitate their lights. That¡¯s where this came from. It¡¯s not a very good ability but sadly it¡¯s all I have. If I tried to study a new ability it would tax my soulforce too much and put my life in danger.¡±
¡°Well I think it¡¯s great. Being a living light bulb seems really useful.¡±
¡°What is a light bulb?¡±
¡°It¡¯s... uhhh... imagine a torch, except it doesn¡¯t burn. We use them to light our world.¡±
¡°A torch that doesn¡¯t burn? Then how does it light anything?¡±
¡°It uses lightning. Basically.¡±
¡°Your people harness lightning?¡± she laughed, shaking her head. ¡°No, I don¡¯t believe you. There¡¯s no way people who can tame storms would produce somebody as dense as you.¡±
¡°Heyyyyy! It¡¯s true!¡±
¡°And how do you tame the sky¡¯s fury, oh mighty one?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know that! I just plug it in and it works!¡±
¡°Then why are you taking credit for things you don¡¯t even understand? Are you trying to impress me? Because it¡¯s not working.¡±
¡°Quiet, you!¡±
For a little while longer, the two of them bickered and argued, talked and laughed. Rudra fed his pet and Tepin wrapped his finger when Slinky chomped down on it. Eventually Tepin took her leave, and to Rudra¡¯s dismay, she took Slinky with her.
The rattling of pulleys woke Rudra from his nap. Strange, this was too early for his daily meal. Soon the single-person platform dropped down into his view and the fog from his nap vanished at the sight of a large wooden club standing next to two large feet as they passed the window.
¡°Why are you here?¡± Rudra asked as Akhustal Palebane¡¯s face entered his view.
¡°I¡¯ve come to see if you¡¯ve come to your senses. I can have you released at any time. All you have to do is one simple task.¡±
¡°So what, you can lock me up again the next time you want my services? Give me a break.¡±
¡°We don¡¯t have to be enemies. I can provide you with a life of ease and comfort.¡±
¡°You know my price. Quadruple every Shell¡¯s pay and remove the rules about dismissal and I¡¯ll bring you back your army. Until then, get out of my sight.¡±
¡°You... YOU!!¡± the woman snarled, her entire head quaking with fury. However, unlike before, she seemed to swiftly bottle it up. She gazed into his eyes with a steely conviction that frightened him far more than her explosive outbursts. ¡°Remember, you brought this on yourself.¡± The elevator slowly raised her back up and out of sight.
¡°Here,¡± Tepin said immediately upon her arrival that night. She tossed a small sack of food in his direction.
¡°Oh thanks!¡± Rudra replied, catching the bag with his hands. No pain assaulted his mind as the bag landed in his fingers. It seemed that his body had healed multiple fractures in only a matter of days. On an abstract level such it freaked him out, but he wasn¡¯t going to complain about being abnormally healthy. ¡°I was getting really hungry. They didn¡¯t bring me any food today.¡±
¡°The Chos has decided to starve you into submission. She¡¯ll do whatever it takes now to get what she wants. The migration is closing in and she¡¯s getting desperate to break you before that happens.¡±
¡°That doesn¡¯t sound good. Do you think I should start planning my escape?¡±
¡°No, we can bring you food. As long as you don¡¯t defecate in public they won¡¯t know for a while.¡±
¡°So, what, you want me to poop in a pot or something?¡±
¡°Just for a few days.¡±
¡°Why, do you think she¡¯ll change her mind after a while?¡±
¡°No, because after the uprising she¡¯ll be dead.¡±
¡°The what?!¡±
¡°Did you think I created the Hidden Fang and spent years of my life cultivating the Shell population trust in my organization for nothing? I¡¯ve been working towards this moment since the beginning!¡±
¡°Why didn¡¯t you mention this before?¡±
¡°I couldn¡¯t tell you until I was sure I could trust you. But now that I know that I can, I was hoping you would be willing to lend your support. I know you refuse to fight, but the others look up to you and even a word in our favor would be immensely useful.¡±
¡°Tepin, you know I can¡¯t support anything of the sort. But even if I did, what you¡¯re saying is crazy talk! You¡¯ll all die!¡±
¡°You take us too lightly, Rudra. We¡¯ve been planning this for years. In a few days, we will slay as many high-ranking Honos as possible while they are asleep and defenseless, crippling their organization. Then when they¡¯re disorganized we strike with everything we have. Our people are angry, Rudra. They¡¯re at the tipping point! If even a third of the Shells answer the call, that¡¯s a million people striking from within the very heart of the city itself!¡±
¡°Tepin, you¡¯re all Shells for a reason! Even if you catch them by surprise and unorganized, they¡¯ll wipe the floor with you!¡±
¡°We have to show them that we are strong, that we can and will fight! That¡¯s what we Stragmans understand! If we can show them that we have the soul of a warrior then they will have to respect us even if we fail! That¡¯s what this is about, Rudra. If we succeed, then the age of Shells is over. If we fail, then we can still make the case for better treatment.¡±
¡°What if there¡¯s another way?¡±
¡°There is no other way.¡±
¡°Sure there is! What about me? What about all of this?¡± he asked, waving his hands around to indicate the cell they stood in.
¡°The Chos¡¯s love of her husband is not going to free us. It¡¯s not enough. We know this now.¡±
¡°But what if it wasn¡¯t just me?¡± Rudra asked, his thoughts whirling in his head. ¡°Look, Tepin, I¡¯m not against the idea of the people taking action. I just think you¡¯re going about it all wrong. You¡¯re trying to fight the wrong fight. Instead of playing their game, make them play yours.¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°Look, you¡¯re never going to beat warriors in a war with a bunch of janitors, porters, and others who didn¡¯t have what it takes to be a warrior. You¡¯re just setting yourself up for failure. You¡¯re playing by their rules. You need to play by your own rules. What do Shells do? It¡¯s all the stuff that other people don¡¯t want to do, right? I saw how it worked on the trip through the forest. They did all the lifting, the cooking, the cleaning, the packing ¡ª you all built this whole society that relies on this group of people doing all the hard, bad jobs. So what would happen if they just stopped? What would happen if tomorrow every Shell in the city just sat down and refused to obey any order whatsoever?¡±
Tepin¡¯s eyes widened. ¡°All of Stragma would grind to a halt.¡± She began to pace, thinking about the ramifications of his proposal.
¡°What about that migration you were talking about? What happens without Shells?¡±
¡°It would be a disaster! Shells do most of the preparation. Without us... They¡¯ll be in real danger. They won¡¯t take this lightly, you know. They¡¯ll try to stop it. They¡¯ll hurt us and beat us, maybe even kill us.¡±
¡°But they need you. If you want respect, the most important thing to drive home is how critical Shells are to the workings of Stragman society.¡±
¡°What you propose will be hard. Anger and rage can be harnessed for a short while, but it will take something more to keep our people from breaking under the fear and the pressure.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll need a symbol. A figurehead. Somebody to inspire, to provide hope and courage when it¡¯s hard to come by.¡±
¡°Somebody like you.¡±
¡°Somebody like- wait, me? I was going to say you.¡±
¡°Can you name somebody more suited to the task? Somebody able to bear the brunt of the Chos¡¯s anger? Somebody able to stand against the pressure of all the warrior castes and laugh in their faces? Somebody not just with the vision to carry through with the fight but with enough fame and respect to lift up those who doubt their own worth? Those who tremble under the harsh gazes of a Fleg or a Blou? Those who fear for their safety and that of their loved ones?¡±
¡°I... I guess it could only be me, huh.¡±
¡°But are you sure you can do it?¡±
¡°I...¡± Rudra reflexively began to answer, but stopped himself. It was a legitimate question. Was he up to such a daunting task? He liked to think he was, but that didn¡¯t make it so. But even if he was the best man for the job, did he want to go through with it? While he was already involved to some degree with the Shells¡¯ struggle, there¡¯d be no going back after this. He¡¯d be fully committed from the jump, and there would be no room for second thoughts.
What would Jaya have done in his situation? She¡¯d have jumped at the chance, of course. Giving her all to help others was in her nature. She would want him to do it. Nothing would have made her happier. Rudra chuckled ruefully. Even now, on a different world, he lived for the imagined smile of a woman he¡¯d never see again.
¡°I am,¡± Rudra said with renewed conviction. ¡°And hey, the Chos already hates me anyway. At least it will take some of the boredom out of my life.¡±
¡°I need some time to think about this.¡± She flashed two flashes through the window. Seconds later, like always, Sneak appeared. ¡°I¡¯ll contact you soon.¡±
The time had come. Tepin had returned the following day and agreed to alter their plans to fit his suggestion, then asked for several days to prepare. Today was the day it would all begin, and it would begin with him.
Rudra grasped the side of the small window with his hands and pulled as hard as he could. With a mighty crack, a large portion of the wall broke free, leaving a hole in the side of his cell about a meter and a half wide and two meters tall. Making sure not to damage the wood any more, he put the piece in his hands to the side. He¡¯d want to put it back into place later for some privacy.
He had no privacy now, however. Thousands of people looked up at him from the forest floor below, waiting for him to say something. Instead he simply sat down at the edge of the cell where everybody could see, folded his legs into the lotus position, closed his eyes, and didn¡¯t move. He was never one for fiery speeches, but rather somebody who preferred to lead by example. After all, inaction spoke louder than words.
Chapter 37
Hector Miranda let out a contented sigh as he snuggled into the plush pillows covering the massive four poster bed. This was the life ¡ª relaxing in luxury after a long night of drinking and fucking, a pair of nines passed out on each side. It had taken him hours but he¡¯d finally worn down each girl¡¯s stamina to the point that they fell asleep as soon as their bodies hit the bed. Not that he was complaining; a night-long orgy was one of his favorite ways to pass the time. He had to find something to fill the hours with in this world without the internet and basketball, after all.
Had it really only been a bit more than half a year since he¡¯d ended up in this world? Just two seasons since he¡¯d stumbled down a mountain and into the path of a patrolling Gustilian platoon? It felt like so much had happened since that fateful day. But now here he was, the rising star of the Gustilian army, with fame, fortune, and smoking hot girls climbing over each other to be the one he chose to bed each night.
A rank odor wafted into Hector¡¯s nostrils, making it abundantly clear that he reeked of sweat. Time for a bath. He grabbed several handfuls as he climbed over the still forms of tonight¡¯s conquests. Gustilian women tended towards the meatier side of the spectrum, which matched his tastes. Naked as a jaybird, he strode casually into an adjacent room, where in the center sat a large wooden tub filled with clear water.
The rudimentary nature of the bathroom served as a stark reminder of the many amenities that Scyria lacked when compared to Earth, but Hector didn¡¯t really miss his homeworld much at all. Growing up in Argentina, he¡¯d watched as his national basketball team, built on the backs of a group of players known as the Golden Generation, changed the sport on a global level. All through his childhood he¡¯d dreamed about being a part of the next wave of Argentinian basketball. He¡¯d practiced and trained every day, working on his skills and understanding of the game. He¡¯d joined every league he could and played as much as possible to get the most experience. He¡¯d even had the luck to grow tall, standing at an impressive two meters. But when the time had come, he¡¯d been passed over for others. Despite his skills and feel for the game, they¡¯d told him that he was too slow, that his jump wasn¡¯t high enough, that his wingspan was too short, that he was too weak.
Unable to realize his dreams, Hector had ended up playing professionally for a second division team in the Japanese ¡°B.League¡±, fighting through the low pay and poor conditions in an effort to show the world his greatness. Yet every time he tried to get a spot in a more prestigious league, the spot would be filled by somebody stronger, somebody faster, somebody longer. That was when he¡¯d realized that talent was everything on Earth. Hard work and practice meant nothing, because in the end, talent won over skill every time. It wasn¡¯t fair.
Hector grabbed a small wooden pail from the floor beside the tub and stepped into the cold water. In one smooth motion, he scooped up a pail¡¯s-worth of bathwater and poured it over his head. An invigorating chill cascaded down his bare body, washing away the sweat. Droplets of water glistened in the light of the three moons as they fell from his powerful muscles. He smiled. Nobody could say those things about him anymore. These days he could outrun a car. These days he could lift a boulder the size of a house over his head. These days he could jump over a basketball hoop with ease.
He wasn¡¯t entirely alone in his awesomeness; most people here seemed capable of some sort of minor miracle. A select few were even able to rival aspects of his physical prowess. But that was where the similarities ended. Yes, he now possessed a body that would make heroes of myths turn green with envy, but he felt that was almost a secondary feature, a byproduct of his transformation. His true gift wasn¡¯t physical prowess. It was something far better.
Hector reached for the soap, only to find it missing. He¡¯d forgotten to grab it from the edge of the small table near the room¡¯s entrance. This presented a problem ¡ª he wanted to get fully clean, but he didn¡¯t want to get out of the tub before he was finished. Luckily, he had a solution. Hefting the empty pail in his right hand, he chucked the wooden container bottom first in the direction of the doorway, the bucket spinning in a perfect spiral. The pail caromed off of the side wall, then the back, and careened towards the table in a loose tumble. As if guided by an invisible hand, the bucket clipped the soap as it bounced off the edge of the table, knocking the soap off the counter. Still tumbling, the bucket bounced against the ground, its opening rotating up just in time to catch the falling soap before the container¡¯s remaining momentum tipped it on its side and sent it rolling in a slow, wide arc that ended just beside the tub.
Bending over to pick up his prize, Hector chuckled at the thought of what his coaches would think if they could see him now. It would take a normal person hundreds of thousands of attempts to pull off what he¡¯d done on his first try. But this outcome wasn¡¯t the product of luck; no, it was skill. Ultimate, innate skill. As soon as he¡¯d come up with the idea, he¡¯d known the proper angle, speed, and rotation to throw it, as well as where and how to hold it, as if he¡¯d thrown that very bucket a trillion times... but he¡¯d never held the thing in before in his life until just that night.
That was his gift ¡ª mastery. As soon as he held an inanimate object, it was as if he was the world¡¯s preeminent master of it until several minutes after he let it go. It didn¡¯t matter what the object was. As soon as he grabbed it, he knew exactly how to use it properly and perfectly. With a sword in his hand, he could parry the blows of ten people at once. With a bow in his grasp, he could hit any target within range. If a feat was possible, he could do it and make it look easy.
There were limits, of course. He never gained any sort of permanent knowledge or understanding. This strange, wondrous skill worked on an almost subconscious level. He¡¯d want to do something and then he¡¯d do it, the actions just flowing out of his body like some sort of hyper-charged muscle memory. But that muscle memory extended to more than just executing singular actions. It encompassed all the instincts of the ultimate expert. He would fall into a perfect stance. He would feel the proper way to use what he held. He would be able to feel if the object was going to break. He just wouldn¡¯t be able to explain the reasons for any of it.
With such an impossible power, it was no surprise that he¡¯d become a celebrity in this country of knights. All it had taken was a single tournament to rocket him to stardom. The audience had oohed and ahhed as he¡¯d danced through the early free-for-alls. Designed to weed out the weaker entrants, those battles for him had been little more than exercises in free-form improvisation as he¡¯d fought with whatever he could get his hands on mid-fight. A shield, a whip, a club, it didn¡¯t matter ¡ª he was unparalleled no matter what he held, a whirlwind of destruction that earned him the nickname ¡°The Storm¡±. Then, in the later one-on-one duels, he¡¯d made the crowd gasp by purposely choosing his weapons to match his opponent every time, embarrassing his foes in front of everybody through displays of superior skill.
Sufficiently rinsed, Hector stepped back out of the tub and grabbed a nearby towel. The water dripping off his body pooled around him on the smooth stone floor. He had to admit that the Gustilians'' ability to construct whole buildings out of stone was rather impressive. The floor beneath him felt so solid that he would have thought he were on the ground floor if he hadn¡¯t climbed two flights of stairs to get to his room. Of course, not all buildings in Gustil were made from solid stone; only important buildings and the homes of the wealthy got the full stone treatment. The rest of the poor sods had to make do with wood like the sad losers they were.
Hector wasn¡¯t a loser anymore, so he¡¯d taken up temporary residence in the penthouse of a fancy hotel. No creaky wood for him, not even now while on vacation. In the interest of national morale, the Gustilian Army¡¯s top brass had decided to send him on a tour around the country to show off his awesomeness to the public. He personally loved the idea, since it basically meant he was being paid to go on holiday. He would arrive at some city, put on a few shows for the locals, and sample the region¡¯s food, fun, and females while he was there.
His current location was the city of Nefin, home to three-quarters of a million people. The city held the distinction of the number one tourist city in Gustil, though in this society ¡°tourism¡± basically meant this was where the rich people from the capital owned their second or third homes and spent the hot summers. It was cooler here than in most of Gustil thanks to its close proximity to the ocean, the water only a kilometer or two north of the city wall. You wouldn¡¯t find any beaches here, however. Sitting in the shadow of the enormous mountains known as the Divide, Nefin stood well above sea level. Instead of beaches, there was only a cliff ¡ª a sheer vertical cliff hundreds of meters high. Down below, the deep sea battered the cliff side with wave after wave, slowly wearing away at the bedrock. To Hector, it was as if some giant had taken a giant chainsaw and cut out the rest of the earth.
Even if there were a beach, nobody here would go anywhere near it. The locals seemed to fear the ocean for reasons he couldn¡¯t quite understand. Something about giant sea monsters. He chalked it up to the same superstitions as their gods and everything else. He didn¡¯t believe in that nonsense, Scyrian nor Terran. He didn¡¯t believe in any religion other than himself. Sure, his family had dragged him to the local Catholic church every Sunday throughout his entire childhood, but he¡¯d never been interested in such things, especially Catholicism. He hated the whole idea of being a ¡°servant¡± to anything or anybody, even to a ¡°higher power¡±, and it didn¡¯t help that Jesus was one weak-ass higher power. The dude always seemed like such a little bitch.
As soon as he¡¯d become old enough to live on his own he¡¯d stopped attending any sort of religious service. When his mother asked about it, he¡¯d just lie. What she didn¡¯t know couldn¡¯t hurt her, right? For a split second, the thought of his mother led to thoughts of his family, and to how they were doing after his disappearance, but he mentally shoved those thoughts aside. Nothing he could do about it, after all. They were there and he was h-
Naked and still holding the small bucket in his hand, Hector froze halfway just before the bedroom doorway, his body suddenly still and his senses set to max. Closing his eyes, he concentrated fully on his hearing, trying to filter out the sounds of his body and the rooms. There. He hadn¡¯t imagined it. Every so often he could hear the soft scrabbling of somebody climbing their way up the outside of the hotel, and trying to be a quiet as possible about it. His head twitched as his ears caught new sounds elsewhere outside. Correction ¡ª three people. And they were getting closer.
His eyes darting about the rooms, Hector felt his heartbeat quicken. Two windows in the bedroom, one in the bathroom. One person per window. Whoever they were, they were coming for him, not that this wasn¡¯t obvious from the start. Who else would they be here for? One of the sluts on the bed? Not a chance.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A cold grin slowly grew on his face. Tiptoeing to the closest window in the bedroom, he paused and listened again. Somebody was close ¡ª just a few meters. His grin widened. Silently, he raised his right foot and began to count to twenty. Nefin architecture seemed to stress large, tall windows with the bottom of the frame no more than half a meter from the floor, perhaps in an effort to maximize airflow in the hot summers. This inn was no exception. At first he¡¯d found the large gaps annoying. There was always a draft and he had to keep the shutters on every window fully closed so as not to broadcast the minutiae of his nightly exploits to the whole city. But he¡¯d changed his mind now, because the low window meant he could do this.
Once his mental count hit twenty, Hector kicked his foot forward as hard as he could. There was a nanosecond of resistance as the sole of his foot met the thick wooden shutters, but with his impossible strength the wood might as well have been paper, shattering the lower half into pieces. A split second later his foot hit something else, something soft and fleshy. He could feel bone snap under the force of his mighty blow. A cry rang out.
¡°Surprise, fuckers!¡± Hector laughed as the voice quickly grew softer before suddenly cutting off with a sickening thud from down below.
There was a moment of stunned silence before the window to his right slammed open, a long, lithe woman rolling into the room. Wearing a tight black outfit that seemed tailored for flexibility and speed, the woman rose to her feet with a deadly calm in her eyes. Her short green hair accented her cute boyish face, lending her an attractive tomboyish quality, but her body was sadly lacking in curves, her chest as flat as a board and her body far too muscular. A seven at best. In the woman¡¯s hands two long hooked knives gleamed in the moonlight.
Hector grinned a predatory grin and readied his wooden bucket in his right hand. Sure, several weapons sat in the corner on the other side of the room, but he needed a little excitement in his life. Even bedding gorgeous women got old eventually. Plus, using a real weapon would be giving these mysterious assailants more respect than they¡¯d given him. Three people? That was all? It was positively insulting!
The woman charged him, her knives held low and out to her sides. As she came within range, she struck with both weapons, one slightly after the other. Hector stepped to the side, out of the path of the first blade, and parried the second attack with the bucket, using the lip to catch the curved blade and pull his opponent off balance. With his free left hand he delivered a mighty punch to her gut, and immediately had to fight back a hiss of pain. It was like punching a rock!
The force of the blow sent her tumbling back, but she immediately popped back up as if none the worse for wear. Hector shook his hand to drive the pain away.
¡°Who are you people?¡± he asked. The woman just grunted and charged again.
Dodging and blocking the flurry of swipes and thrusts, Hector slowly backed away until he found himself cornered between the outside wall and the wall between the bedroom and bathroom. Her prey trapped, the woman went in with even more fervor, trying to press her advantage, but Hector just chuckled and jumped straight up, kicking off of the wall so that he flipped easily over her and her attacks. As he passed overhead, Hector pushed the pail down over her head with an amused smirk, cutting off her vision. His assailant went stiff in panic for a split second as the world went dark around her, before trying to dodge away while removing the bucket, but it was too late. Hector¡¯s leg swept her off her feet, toppling her to the ground.
Before the woman could even react, Hector¡¯s strong hands had seized her ankles. If directly hitting this woman hurt, he¡¯d just have to let something else hard deal the damage! With a quick jerk, he lifted her off the ground legs first and swung her about, the bucket popping off and bouncing towards the doorway to the bathroom. The woman put her arms around her head as Hector swung her through the nearby furniture as hard as he could, including a nearby dresser and table, before letting her go and watching her fly across the room, crashing through one of the bed¡¯s bedposts and breaking it in two on her way through. She slammed into the wall on the other side of the room and slumped down to the ground, woozy but still conscious, the impact knocking her two knives from her grip and sending them skidding across the floor.
Shrill shrieks pierced the late night air. All this commotion had roused Hector¡¯s bedmates from their slumber. They stared with confusion and horror at the broken shutters, the pieces of destroyed furniture, and the stunned woman slumped against the wall. Oh, right. He¡¯d completely forgotten about them.
¡°What are you still doing here?!¡± he barked, annoyed at their lollygagging. ¡°Get the fuck out! You¡¯ll get in my way!¡±
The girls fled quickly as he approached the downed woman. Groggy as she was, she was still trying her hardest to stagger back to her feet before he got to her. She wasn¡¯t going to make it. Towering over her, Hector raised his foot up, ready for a stomp, when his ears caught a soft whistling sound coming from his right side. His instincts screaming at him, he jumped backwards and landed on the bed as a large curved sword rocketed through his previous position. Then to his shock, the sword¡¯s vector changed, arcing towards him, the blade seeming to home in on his position. He rolled desperately to the side and the blade missed him by less than a centimeter before seemingly being pulled back by something.
Rolling himself off the far side of the bed, Hector looked up to find a man with long, thin limbs and a curved sword in each hand, standing in the doorway to the bathroom. The third enemy had finally appeared. Wasting no time, the man drew his arms back, his shoulders seeming to bunch up, before he swung both his arms forward. Hector¡¯s eyes widened as the man¡¯s arms seemed to stretch, the limbs elongating until they snapped at him almost like whips, the sword in each hand coming after him with unexpected speed. Hector threw himself to the ground, using the bed as cover to avoid the blades, and grumbled. What the hell was this annoying Fantastic Four bullshit?
Hector juked, twisted, and dodged his way around the bed and towards his opponent, using his superior strength and flexibility to avoid the man¡¯s whip-like strikes. Luckily for Hector, the room¡¯s walls and the posts of the bed worked to constrict the possible directions the man could strike from. Clearly frustrated at his lack of success, the man¡¯s shoulders bunched up again and both swords rocketed straight at Hector even faster than before, but this time Hector was ready. In fact, this was what he¡¯d been waiting for.
Springing to the side, the swords whizzing just centimeters from his flesh, Hector grabbed the nearby bucket and spun about, sending the wooden container hurtling toward the new opponent as blinding speed. His arms outstretched to several meters long, the man was unable to bring his arms up quickly enough to block. With a sickening crunch, the pail smashed into his face, pulverizing his nose and sending him rocking back. The bucket bounced off of his face and tumbled through the air in the beginning of a slow arc, but before it could move more than half a meter Hector was already there, flipping through the air towards the impromptu projectile. With a swing of one mighty leg, he executed Scyria¡¯s very first bicycle kick, sending the bucket slamming back into the man¡¯s head with brutal force. The pail splintered into tiny pieces and the man dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks.
A rage-filled grunt brought Hector¡¯s attention to his left, where his original opponent had finished picking herself up. Finding herself weaponless, she let out a defiant scream and sent a fist his way, but Hector simply caught her by the wrist, grabbed her shoulder with his other hand, and threw her to the ground. ¡°I¡¯m disappointed,¡± he said as he grabbed the woman roughly by the back of her neck and lifted her roughly into the air. ¡°I thought you would be more fun than this.¡±
The woman squirmed and fought but given that he was behind her, she couldn¡¯t generate enough force to make him even bother to care. Without her knives, she couldn¡¯t do anything to hurt him as she was. ¡°This is your last chance to tell me who you are and why you¡¯re here,¡± Hector said, twisting the woman¡¯s head so they could look each other in the eyes. She responded by spitting in his face.
¡°Fucking bitch!¡± he growled. ¡°Fine! Let¡¯s get this over with. I bet you think I can¡¯t kill you with your hard body bullshit. Let¡¯s find out, shall we?¡±
Hector forcefully pulled the woman over to the broken bedpost. The pole, once over two meters tall, now stood at little over a meter, the tip of the wood a sharp jagged edge left over from the break. With his right hand still holding her by the neck, Hector grabbed the top of her head with his left hand and squeezed, making sure to get a good grip. ¡°You can make the outside of your body hard, but can you do the same for the inside?¡± he asked, malice dripping from every word. He let go of her neck with his right hand and grabbed her jaw with his vice-like fingers. ¡°Say ¡®ahhhh¡¯!¡±
The woman struggled frantically, but she was no match for Hector¡¯s vastly superior strength. With a triumphant grin, he forced the woman¡¯s mouth wide, and then plunged her head towards the jagged bedpost with overwhelming force so that the spike entered her mouth and stabbed its way straight into her brain with a disgusting ¡®shluck¡¯. The woman¡¯s body twitched violently for a moment and then went still.
How boring. With a sigh, Hector straightened up and surveyed the room. Pieces of wood from the broken table, dresser, shutters, and bucket were strewn about the floor, leaving the room looking like a war zone, and that was before you looked at the freshly cooling body beside him. The impaled woman¡¯s dead eyes stared vacantly forward as blood dripped slowly down the bedpost, her body slumped awkwardly against the end of the bed. It was a gruesome sight, but somebody would clean it up. That somebody being somebody else, of course.
Just as he was about to head down and notify somebody about the attack, the crash of a gong rang out off in the distance, loud enough to wake the entire city. Another crash followed moments later. Leaning out the broken window, Hector realized the sound was coming from the city¡¯s north wall. The city was under attack! He glanced at the dead woman behind him and the limp but breathing form near the bathroom. Perhaps this wasn¡¯t a coincidence...
Either way, Hector knew one thing: an attack was a great time to show off his greatness. Quickly he dug through the wreckage of the hotel¡¯s dresser and pulled out the most fashionable clothes he could find and threw them on. He had to make sure he looked fine when the whole city watched, after all. Once he was finished dressing, he sauntered over to his personal weapon collection and tried to figure out which weapon to take with him. He had knives, several swords of varying sizes, a mace, an axe, a polearm, a bow... The choice wasn¡¯t an easy one, since he was equally incredible with all of his options. Finally, he decided on the polearm, since its size made look the most impressive. His preparations complete, he grabbed the unconscious form of his male attacker, slung him over his shoulder, and leapt out of the window towards a nearby rooftop. Time to turn some heads.
Chapter 38
Every city in existence possesses its own unique architectural quirks, and Nefin was no exception. The unusually large windows, designed to invite in the ocean winds in order to combat the city¡¯s notoriously sweltering summers, were one salient example. The basketball-sized statues placed on every corner of every roof were another. Known as ¡®svanta¡¯, they were apparently part of an old superstition from long ago. For the people of Nefin, they were guardians of a sort, placed on the outermost perimeter of every house to ward against evil. For Hector Miranda, they were stepping stones.
He¡¯d asked one of his lays about the statues once, as even the most oblivious person would be hard pressed to miss their omnipresence. She¡¯d babbled on and on about spirits and gods and fire from the skies or something; he¡¯d zoned out once it had become clear that her answer was longer than a few sentences. Whatever the reason for their existence, he appreciated their presence in the moment. The roofs of Nefin tended to be heavily sloped, and running horizontally on a steep slope sucked. You couldn¡¯t push off properly and all it took was one bad shingle for you to slip and fall. Luckily for him, there were these convenient stone statues for him to use instead.
Each svanta was unique, hand carved by some Nefin sculptors who designed them to stand up to the wind and rain that came from the sea just kilometers north of the city. What the sculptors didn¡¯t design for was the weight of a muscular superhuman carrying a second man, and the crushing force said superhuman generated when pushing off. Some svanta shifted on their base, others cracked, and many crumbled into pieces as Hector used them as launching pads. Not that the trail of destruction left in his wake bothered the twenty-five year old former athlete. He had somewhere to be, and this seemed like the fastest and most direct way of getting there.
His judgment was almost immediately called into question. Leaping over one of the city¡¯s widest boulevards, the svanta beneath him crumbled as he leapt, reducing the force of his jump just slightly. As he sailed over the crowded street below, it became clear to Hector that he would fall short of his targeted roof and instead fly smack into the wall below.
Thinking quickly, Hector realized that the wall rushing at him was made of wood, not stone like his inn. Having spent so much of his time in the richest sections of the city, he¡¯d forgotten that wood was actually the main building material for the majority of the structures in Nefin, as the mages, or ¡®Observers¡¯ as the locals called them, that specialized in building with stone charged exorbitant prices for their work. Hector liked to avoid poorer areas as much as possible. He was a big shot now, and slumming it with the peasantry wasn¡¯t something an elite like him had time for. This time, however, he was glad to see the rough brown wood approaching, because it meant he had a way to salvage his leap.
Gripping his polearm tightly in his left hand, he drew his left arm back and then thrust it forward just as the wall was about four meters away. The large weapon, an extra long and durable variant designed to hold up to the rigors of Feeler combat, shot out, the massive blade plunging deep into the wooden wall, effectively turning into a flagpole sticking out from the surface. Keeping his strong grip on the shaft so that his hands wouldn¡¯t move, Hector let his momentum swing himself around ninety degrees so that he was now perpendicular to the wall. He slammed into the side of the building feet first, his strong legs absorbing the momentum enough to prevent injury. The wooden wall flexed and shook from the heavy impact of his body, but thankfully held.
The momentum now dissipated, Hector fell from the wall and hung two stories in the air, his grip on the polearm and its purchase in the wall the only things keeping him from plummeting into the chaos below. And chaos it was. The boulevard was filled with panicking Gustilians running towards the richer inner section of the city, their most prized possessions in their hands. This was the main reason that he¡¯d chosen to stick to the rooftops ¡ª the streets were a frothing sea of fearful families and paranoid merchants all desperate to escape. Getting to the wall, where the crash of the gong continued even now, would take forever if he tried it down there.
Hector couldn¡¯t help but scoff disdainfully at the sight of the crazed people beneath him. If there was one overarching aspect to the Gustilian national character, it was pride. Their society, so heavily built on chivalry and honor, prided itself on its people''s fighting spirit and refusal to back down from any and all challenges. The funny thing was, Gustil hadn¡¯t fought a war against another nation in generations. From what little history of the region he understood, the continent of Nocend was largely peaceful, without a major conflict in over a century. Sure, there were the occasional battles between Drayhadal and Stragma to the south, and of course Gustil¡¯s own bizarre tradition of using ¡°civil war¡± as a form of elections could not be forgotten, but on the whole the people of Gustil had spent decades bragging about their backbone without actually having to back it up. Now this was being put to the test, and they were failing tremendously to back up their boasts. Where were the bold citizens rushing towards the wall to help the soldiers? It wasn¡¯t like they didn¡¯t have training. Law required every Gustilian to serve in the army for a five years before they were official adults. Yet tonight it seemed like all these former soldiers felt content to let others deal with the problem instead. Bunch of hypocrites. It reminded him of those fools on the playground who talked a big game but couldn¡¯t back it up on the court. More glory for him, at least.
The lip of the roof was just an arm¡¯s reach above the pole, but reaching it would be easier said than done. Hector¡¯s right arm was rather full with the unconscious body of one of his attackers ¡ª the man with the stretchy arms, who had taken a bucket to the head so hard that the container had broken into twenty small pieces. Hector had a feeling that this man might be a key to figuring out what was going on, so he¡¯d decided to take the man with him to the wall and hand him over to the authorities. To Hector¡¯s annoyance, The man had turned out to be heavier than he looked and he kept flopping about whenever Hector moved.
With both hands occupied, Hector needed to get creative. Rocking forward and back, he began to swing around the polearm like an Olympic gymnast, getting higher and higher until he was swinging fully around the pole. With each rotation the pole bent and swayed, the blade slowly working its way out of the wall. He needed to be careful; the weapon had not been designed for this sort of use and if he put too much force on it at the wrong angle the blade would snap in two and send him towards the dirt in a hurry. Fortunately, with his ability he could tell that he hadn¡¯t hit the danger zone just yet, and the blade was nearly out of the wood. On the next rotation, while on his way upwards Hector yanked as hard as he could on the weapon, ripping it free from the wall. Pulling on the polearm had the dual benefit of freeing him to continue upward while also sending him towards the nearby rooftop, and the next thing he knew he had alighted onto the sloped surface with catlike grace.
He laughed. Absurd acrobatics were child¡¯s play to him now. This world was awesome. Checking the polearm¡¯s blade, he found it to be just fine, unbent and free of cracks. Not that he¡¯d needed to verify it; if his actions would have damaged the blade, he would have felt it.
Hector arrived at the wall just a few minutes later to find the area engulfed in battle. The armies of this world that Hector had seen didn¡¯t have strict uniforms or equipment like the armies of Earth; each member wore the armor and wielded the weapons that they felt would serve them best. In order to tell friend from foe, soldiers each wore a sash over their shoulder bearing the color and emblem of their country. Before him pockets of Gustilians with their vibrant red sashes fought desperately against an increasing tide of black-sashed attackers, doing their best to hold out until reinforcements from the city could arrive. Feelers fought to hold a perimeter around Observers while simultaneously trying to stay as spread out as possible so a single well-placed wide-area projectile wouldn¡¯t take out five soldiers at once. Fire blazed, ice covered the ground in spots, and in some places the wall itself seemed to be shifting as both sides sought to turn the battleground itself into an ally.
To his west, several larger groups of Gustilians had their hands full with the oncoming enemy but seemed to be holding their own relatively well. The command center for the northern side of the city was close to that side, and so the strongest soldiers who had the misfortune of being stationed on the graveyard shift were probably that way. The scene to his right was a different story. There the Gustilians looked close to being overwhelmed as more and more enemy troops surmounted the wall. The opposition looked to outnumber the home team at least three to one and it was getting more lopsided by the second.
To his east he also saw the massive gong that had awoken the entire city, surrounded by perhaps forty soldiers. The enormous metal disc hung by a thick rope suspended under an equally enormous wooden frame built to support the incredible weight of the thick metal. The instrument was nearly a quarter of a meter thick and if laid down would very nearly fill the entire eight or so meters of walkable space between the front and back lips of the wall. In fact, if it...
A smile crept onto Hector¡¯s face as an idea popped into his head. A fun, crazy idea. Without wasting another second, he jumped over to the wall¡¯s outer lip and headed east, running with unnatural grace along the edge and lopping off any enemy heads within range as he sprinted by. Jubilant shouts rose up from the Gustilians as he passed and the soldiers cheered as he sprinted by and they redoubled their efforts to delay the swarming invaders.
¡°The Storm!¡±
¡°The Storm is here!¡±
¡°Thank the spirits, we¡¯re saved!¡±
The troops by the gong were arranged in several lines on each side, with several people standing by the outside edge of the wall to handle anybody getting behind either line. With a great leap, Hector cleared the crowd of attackers and the lines of defenders, landing in the mostly empty middle. A man nearby turned, ready to strike, but paused when he saw who Hector was. He saluted quickly.
¡°Sir, it¡¯s great to see you sir! Your orders?¡±
Hector smiled as he noticed the man¡¯s large warhammer. ¡°Here,¡± he said, tossing the unconscious enemy at the man. ¡°Take care of this guy for a bit. I¡¯ll be borrowing that.¡± He pulled the hammer from the befuddled soldier¡¯s hands and tied it to his back using the red sash that he had, just like everybody else, before tossing his polearm to the side.
¡°Sir, what-¡±
¡°Just keep him alive for now.¡±
Climbing up to the top of the frame with ease, Hector straddled the large wooden cross beam, grabbed the thick rope with both hands as best he could given that the rope was thicker than his arm, and lifted the enormous metal disc off the two hooks by which it hung. Dropping the instrument temporarily, he jumped off the frame back towards the center of the wall. The gong landed on its edge and released a loud clang before tipping and falling towards Hector, who caught it by the rope with ease. The clamor was loud enough that everybody in the area stopped for a moment and looked in bewilderment at the source of the sound.
¡°Everybody get down!¡± Hector roared. Most of the Gustilians threw themselves to the ground just in time as Hector began to spin, swinging the gong around him in a wide arc with everything he had. It plowed through the nearby enemy troops, and the slower Gustilians, throwing many of them off the wall and crushing others into the ground with amazing force. It crashed through the thick beams of its frame, splintering the wood and sending the beams toppling off the inner side of the wall. After one full rotation, nothing stood within a ten meter radius but Hector. Only he and the gong stood tall, the ground covered by trembling Gustilian soldiers and the bodies of the slow and unlucky.
Still, Hector did not stop. He continued to spin, he and the gong speeding up rapidly. In a mere moment, Hector had the instrument whirling about at over eighty kilometers per hour, the rope in his hands about to break from the incredible strain. ¡°I think it¡¯s time for a music lesson!¡± he quipped. Then he let go.
The gong careened eastward along the wall, ricocheting back and forth off the outer and inner edges with the force of an eighteen-wheel truck, bulldozing through dozens of enemy soldiers with deadly force. The massive metal disc filled nearly the entire walkway between the sides, leaving almost no room to dodge the oncoming mass. Blood and organs flew through the air as the blunt object¡¯s momentum was so immense that it literally ripped people in half as it went.
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With a leap, Hector charged after it, sprinting through its trail of destruction. Thanks to his new body¡¯s incredible speed, he caught up to the rampaging instrument moments later and jumped onto it, riding atop it as it skidded down the lane like the world¡¯s largest shuffleboard puck. The gargantuan disc¡¯s inertia let it bowl through crowds of enemy soldiers while Hector¡¯s borrowed war hammer flashed out periodically to knock those that managed to avoid the oncoming hunk of metal off of the wall.
Eventually the gong¡¯s momentum ran out and it slid to a stop over a hundred meters from where Hector had thrown it. Countless bodies littered the ground between those two points, some crushed against the floor, others against the sides. Farther down, he could see the Gustilians who had been fighting near the gong slowly pushing their way back towards allied troops. But down here where Hector stood, enemy troops still remained. Several hundred men and women dressed in black sashes stood between him and the point where the north wall took a sharp right and became the east wall. Down the east wall he could make out a large group of Gustilian reinforcements headed his way, so all he had to do was hold out for another few minutes. It was time for ¡°Part 2¡± of his super-cool gong strategy.
Hopping off the instrument and away from the soldiers bearing down on him, Hector wedged his hands beneath the gong, ducking out of the way of an incoming arrow while he did so. ¡°Heave ho!¡± he called out as he heaved the mass of metal upward with all his might. The eight meter wide disc tumbled over itself into the air, flipping over itself as if it were a giant coin being used by a god to make a decision. Arrows and other projectiles heading towards Hector bounced off the suddenly airborne shield and the closest enemies halted their charge, hesitant to run close to the twirling instrument.
Hector wasn¡¯t done, however. Pulling the warhammer from his back, he reared back building up strength as best he could before hurling the heavy metal mallet as hard as he could at the center of the spinning gong and then as quickly as he could covered his ears with his hands. The hammer struck the gong head first, right in the very center of the disc, and the world seemed to explode.
A wall of force knocked Hector off his feet, throwing him a dozen meters back. A cacophonous roar assaulted his ears, and he felt his entire body shake like it was a doll in the grip of a hyperactive child throwing a tantrum. After what felt like a minute but was probably only several seconds at most, the gong crashed back into the wall with a crushing finality and a deathly silence fell over the area. Or at least that¡¯s what Hector assumed. He couldn¡¯t really tell because all he could hear was a loud ringing in both ears. He coughed and tasted a hint of blood.
Staggering to his feet, Hector¡¯s jaw dropped at the sight before him. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Dozens of enemy soldiers lay still on along the wall; whether they breathed or not Hector could not tell. Others, mostly those farther away, writhed on the ground in pain, their hands at their ears or their head. But what shocked him the most was the large vertical crack present in the wall itself, located directly below where the gong had been when first struck. Formed as a single solid piece of stone for maximum structural integrity, the walls of major cities were the most durable non-metal structures Hector had ever seen, capable of withstanding serious punishment, and he¡¯d damaged one with sound alone. His strength surprised even him sometimes.
Jogging back towards the west, Hector stopped at the now empty gong frame to pick up his polearm. The battle in this direction had taken a major turn for the better. Freed from the need to hold two lines simultaneously, the group around the gong had been able to make steady progress, pushing the enemy back. In the meantime, the trickle of reinforcements coming from the city had turned into a torrent, with more troops entering the fray every second. This battle was effectively over.
¡°Sir! That was incredible, sir!¡± A soldier approached him, showering him with platitudes. It was strange how he could understand the man even though his ears were ringing so loudly that he couldn¡¯t hear a single thing the soldier said. Hector saw it was the man he¡¯d dumped his unconscious attacker on, and whose warhammer he¡¯d borrowed. He had forgotten all about the guy. Looking back at the hundreds of other incapacitated, identically dressed people on the ground behind him, he grumbled at the realization that all the effort he¡¯d expended carrying the unconscious man to the wall had been a foolish waste of energy. Oh well, there was no use harping on it now. With a shrug, he lifted the man off the soldier¡¯s shoulder and tossed him over the wall, ignoring the way the soldier gaped in befuddlement.
Looking back once more upon the carnage that he had wrought, Hector spotted somebody headed his way yelling what he believed to be ¡°Captain!¡± and waving for his attention.
¡°Captain, sir!¡± the man said as he skidded to a stop and saluted. Hector noticed the long ears sticking out from the man¡¯s hair. An elf. Elves weren¡¯t common in Gustil, but enough lived in the country that seeing one wasn¡¯t considered a rare or noteworthy occurrence. The same could be said of the beastpeople. He¡¯d been told that about fifteen percent of all Gustilians were non-human. For his part, he did his best to treat elves like he did anybody else, but secretly they bothered him, especially the male ones. The male elves he¡¯d met possessed an alluring femininity in their features that made him uncomfortable.
¡°What is it, soldier?¡± Hector responded, nodding but not returning a salute. Saluting wasn¡¯t something he did.
¡°General Ozek requires your presence immediately at the Many House, sir!¡±
Hector smiled. ¡°Just the words I was hoping to hear,¡± he said as he turned and leapt off the wall and onto the nearest roof, leaving the messenger to stand there, confused and unsure what to do next. A smile of anticipation slowly grew on his face as he made his way towards the city center as fast as he could.
Bodies, both Gustilian and invader, littered the area around the Many House. A fierce battle had been fought here just a little while ago. It made sense. The Many House was the nerve center of the city. Through Manys, efficient communication throughout the country was possible. If you wanted to blind a city and cut it off from the rest of the country, the Many House would be the place to strike. Such tactics were common, of course, so every Many House in Gustil was well-guarded at all times.
¡°Captain Miranda!¡± the guard greeted Hector when Hector approached. ¡°General Ozek is expecting you inside in the administrator¡¯s office. Top floor, down the hallway on the left.¡±
¡°Got it, thanks,¡± Hector replied as he strode through the doorway. Following the guard¡¯s directions, he quickly found himself approaching a fancy looking door at the end of a corridor. Wasting no time, he opened the door and found before him a sight that made him nearly weep. There she stood, bent over a desk as she studied a map, her back to him and her rear jutting out in all its wonder.
Blessed with a rack that would make cantaloupes jealous and an ass that just wouldn¡¯t quit, yet somehow toned with a hint of muscle everywhere else, General Beren Ozek was, in Hector¡¯s opinion, the hottest, most beautiful woman in all of Gustil and perhaps beyond. Her long, fiery red braids of hair cascaded down over flawless golden skin that seemed to shine even when no light fell upon it. She had an elegant, refined face with lips softer than the softest pillow and haughty eyes that seemed to find everything within their gaze to be unworthy. The woman was the ultimate stone cold fox ¡ª literally, even. Perky fox ears poked out of the top of her hair, swiveling this way and that, while a long, bushy fox tail emerged from just above her ample, glorious posterior. Hector had never thought he¡¯d be into that kind of thing, but the animal bits lent an exotic savagery that only served to enhance her already-immeasurable sexiness. She was perfect. The mythical eleven out of ten. So, of course, it figured that she was playing hard to get.
Other Generals who were stationed in other cities Hector had visited made it a point to be seen with him as much as possible and curry his favor. He was the country¡¯s rising star, after all. Any association with him would only benefit their standing. But General Ozek seemed to avoid meeting with him whenever possible. She wanted him to prove himself to her, he knew. He could see it in her eyes during the few times they¡¯d met, behind her carefully constructed facade of disdain and disapproval ¡ª she wanted him. This was no surprise; every female wanted him, even if they didn¡¯t know it yet.
¡°Hey there, hot stuff,¡± he greeted as he sauntered into the office. His left hand swung out to give the woman¡¯s fine backside a playful slap, only halt just centimeters away as a dagger suddenly flew in between his palm and its target and floated there in midair, blocking access. The general was a very rare form of Observer that could move material objects with their minds, sometimes known by the term ¡®blade caller¡¯. Unlike most Observers, blade callers waded into the front lines like a feeler, wielding a small arsenal of different weapons and controlling them simultaneously, a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. While there were exceedingly few blade callers in the world, they tended to occupy high positions in their society through their battle prowess alone. If he recalled correctly, the king of Kutrad, another country to Gustil¡¯s east, was a blade caller.
¡°Move that hand any closer and I will skin you alive, Captain,¡± General Ozek said, turning to level him with a withering glare.
Hector retracted his hand and saluted with it. ¡°Aye aye, beautiful.¡±
¡°I swear, if you weren¡¯t the king¡¯s shiny new toy I would have done it already. Now listen well, because I¡¯m only going to say this once and then you¡¯re going to leave. The high brass have ordered you to make south for Rul at maximum speed. Gustil is under attack.¡±
¡°By who? I didn¡¯t recognize the symbol on the black sashes the guys I was killing wore.¡±
¡°The Ubran Empire.¡±
¡°The Ubrans? Everybody told me that there was no way they¡¯d be able to attack Nefin from the north. That they¡¯d be eaten by the leviathans as they made their way across the sea and even if they did make it they¡¯d have to scale those giant cliffs. They¡¯d all said it was impossible.¡±
¡°We were wrong. They likely lost thousands crossing the water, but they did it somehow.¡±
¡°But why even bother? They had the element of surprise and they timed their attack well, but they didn¡¯t have enough people to even think of taking the city.¡±
The general scowled. ¡°They didn¡¯t care about that. The attack was only a distraction, meant to divert attention so they could kill the Manys. They wanted us deaf and blind so we wouldn¡¯t hear the news.¡±
¡°What news?¡±
The woman closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep, solemn breath, her face lined with worry. ¡°Redwater Castle has fallen. The Empire now has a clear path directly from Obura into Nocend.¡±
¡°No way! Are you serious? That place?!¡± Hector couldn¡¯t believe his ears. Redwater Castle was where he¡¯d first made a name for himself, the site of the tournament he¡¯d won. He¡¯d never seen fortifications like that anywhere in his life, on either world. The walls there were easily five times the size of the ones here in Nefin, maybe more. The nearby terrain was nothing but jagged peaks covered by ice and snow. The fort was known as unconquerable, and having been there he¡¯d believed it.
¡°Yes, I can¡¯t even imagine such a thing, but it is true. That¡¯s why the Ubrans struck here. They hoped that if we could not hear of events down south, we would not send troops, making it easier for them to establish their army on this continent. But enough of this. You have your orders. Leave.¡±
¡°As you wish,¡± Hector replied with a bow. His arm lashed out, impossibly fast, and delivered a playful smack to her divine hindquarters. ¡°See you in Rul, sweet cheeks.¡±
Beren Ozek¡¯s face twisted into a raging fury as five knives, a sword, and a candlestick all levitated into the air and shot towards him. ¡°OUT!¡±
Hector laughed as he dodged, tumbled, and rolled his way through the doorway, parrying and deflecting the blades as they went for his face, his heart, and, most notably, his groin. He could still hear her shrieking in rage as he exited the building and made his way back towards his hotel room to pack before heading out, a cocky smile never leaving his face.
She totally wanted him.
Chapter 39
¡°Just say it.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t wanna.¡±
¡°Come on, Sam. I don¡¯t have all day. Just say ¡®Next stop¡¯.¡±
¡°Why do I have to say it?¡±
Blake Myers massaged his forehead and fought back an aggravated groan. Kids. Always a headache. ¡°Because I said so, that¡¯s why. Just say what I need you to say and I¡¯ll let you go eat dinner.¡±
¡°...next stop.¡±
¡°Now say ¡®Please stand clear of the closing doors¡¯.¡±
¡°This is stupid!¡±
¡°Hey, I didn¡¯t make the rules for how this shit works.¡±
¡°Just say it yourself!¡±
¡°You think it¡¯s easy to just learn a whole other fucking language? When the hell am I supposed to find the time for that, huh? Is it after I work on the border security system? Or before I finish fixing all the problems with the sewers? Or should I do it instead of running the fucking country?! HUH!? Tell me, Sam, if you think it¡¯s so fucking easy!¡±
Samanta seemed to shrivel under the heat of his sudden tirade. Her eyes grew wide with fear and her body began to tremble. Blake gave himself a mental slap. He¡¯d gone too far. Again.
¡°Go eat,¡± he said, waving her towards the door, willing it to open. ¡°We can do this some other time.¡±
Without a word, Samanta sprinted out of the room. Blake shut the door again and put his head in his hands, letting out an exhausted sigh. Sam reminded him of his grandmother¡¯s chihuahua, who¡¯d been beaten by its previous owner. She¡¯d spoiled the heck out of that dog, loving it, giving it attention, and feeding it the best food, but one loud noise and...
On the outside, Sam had improved immensely since he¡¯d first set up shop in Wroetin. No longer a sullen robot, the now ten-year-old child was more... child-like, for lack of a better term. She argued, she whined, she made sarcastic comments, and just overall acted like the selfish pre-teen pushing against boundaries that ten-year-olds were supposed to be. But it was all just on the outside. Underneath lurked the same terrified child that she¡¯d been back in the early days. All it took was one outburst to pierce that outer coating and bring out that core of fear, and, as much as he didn¡¯t want to admit it, there¡¯d been a lot more outbursts recently.
Exhaustion was a way of life for Blake now. He slept only a few hours a day and pushed himself with little rest while awake. Only his superhuman body allowed such behavior, but there were limits to everything. His brain hurt. His body hurt more. The ¡®episodes¡¯ now came as many as three times a day, and their intensity was now more terrible than ever. And with all that pain came his frayed self control. He¡¯d erupt over the tiniest of things, and his own awareness of the problem only helped so much. Blake didn¡¯t know how much longer he could keep this up.
But what choice did he have? There was so much to be done every single day and only he could do it. Nobody else was going to build the robots needed to fully lock down the border with Eterium and keep any unwanted visitors from sneaking in to the country. Nobody else could overhaul Otharia¡¯s transportation infrastructure like he could, building new bridges, fixing roads, and installing railroads. Nobody else could drag this sad excuse for a nation into the modern era. The list went on and on, and every day, as he watched his to-do list grow and grow, Blake felt that he was being pulled under by the tide of responsibility. A responsibility that he¡¯d put on his own shoulders.
Sure, he wasn¡¯t entirely alone in his endeavors. Leo continued to be the steady, reliable workaholic administrator that he always was, while the various ministers had all proved to be at least adequately competent and obedient so far. But how much could he really trust any of these people? They were Otharians and he was not. If given the opportunity to overthrow his regime, there was a gallingly high chance that some, if not all, would take it. Except for Simona. Unless her back story and personality was just an act. But Leo had verified her past. But what if he¡¯d lied to get her into her position? He had nothing to go on but the man¡¯s word.
No. Blake shook his head to clear himself of his doubts. If Leo had wanted to install somebody as Minister of State he could have just recommended that person like he¡¯d done for all the others. Blake would have gone along with the pick. There would be no reason to go through all the song and dance they¡¯d gone through just to get the same result. He had to trust Leo. He had to believe in him and the others, because otherwise he¡¯d tear himself apart with paranoia in under a week. Many enemies lurked outside, be they devout Otharians pretending to submit like their countrymen, foreign agents blending in with the local populace, or entire nations plotting his and his country¡¯s demise. He didn¡¯t need to create more in his head.
A buzzer went off by the door, the screen embedded in the wall beside it lighting up to show an image of another room, with the perspective coming from above like a security camera. Which made sense, because that was precisely what it was ¡ª the feed from a security camera, just a small part of the comprehensive security system he¡¯d designed and installed almost immediately after being ambushed by those three chimirin-dosed assassins over a month ago.
Using designs and techniques he¡¯d blatantly and unapologetically copied from technology found in the bunker where he¡¯d first arrived, Blake had finally been able to create working computer screens, making his entire life a billion times easier. To his delight, reversing the design had allowed for the creation of cameras as well. Now every inch of his fortress was constantly being recorded and analyzed for intruders, allowing him to sleep without fear... or at least with less fear. Invisible people could exist, after all. If somebody could phase through solid matter, really anything was possible. After the ambush he¡¯d redesigned the fortress, thickening the walls and doors so it would be impossible for the phasing woman to go from room to room in a single step. Not that he had to worry about her specifically; she¡¯d sent herself towards the planet core with no way back. But there could be others like her still out there...
Blake glanced at the screen. Speak of the devil, it was Leo, holding some papers in his hand, along with a book. Blake pressed a button under the screen to acknowledge Leo¡¯s request for an audience, then headed out of the room and made his way towards the ¡®audience chamber¡¯, as he¡¯d come to call it. Just a small room with some furniture, it was the farthest into the core of the fortress that anybody other than Sam and he were allowed to enter. Blake spent the vast majority of his time in the core these days. It was easier to work remotely, he liked to tell himself, but he knew deep down that the main reason was that it was safer. In a world overflowing with threats, there was no reason for him to drag his half-dead corpse of a body needlessly into danger any more than absolutely necessary, even if his body, or what parts of it still worked, were superhuman.
As he walked, his armor flowed up and over his body almost automatically. Though the design was incredibly complex, at this point he could construct it around himself practically without thinking. He kept improving it over time, adding new features and improving current ones, to the point where it made his original version seem like the work of a caveman. Then again, he¡¯d been in a cave at the time, so it wasn¡¯t that untrue.
Arriving at the audience chamber, he lowered his massive metal-encased bulk onto a specially-reinforced chair, closed the door behind him, and opened the other door. Leo entered and bowed to him. Blake hated being bowed to. He would never bow in respect to somebody else and so never wanted or expected the same from others. But much like the man¡¯s insistence on calling him ¡°Lord Ferros¡±, this was something Blake had learned to just deal with. Some things even he was powerless to change.
¡°Lord Ferros,¡± the administrator began, ¡°the investigation into the source of the assassins has completed. I thought you would want to have the results immediately instead of waiting for the morning.¡±
¡°You thought correctly, as usual. What does it say.¡±
¡°Many of the avenues of inquiry proved to be relatively fruitless,¡± Leo began, summarizing the report. He didn¡¯t even attempt to hand the text itself to his leader, as they both knew that Blake was still illiterate. The magical, incomprehensible Google Translate that allowed him to speak with his subordinate didn¡¯t apply to the written word. It didn¡¯t even apply to spoken word through speakers, which was a whole other rabbit hole filled with heavy implications that Blake didn¡¯t have the time to really delve into yet. ¡°Given the state of the recovered bodies, we were unable to find any markings that could narrow down our search. The same is true for their clothing ¡ª unremarkable armor of quality make. However, we did manage a breakthrough on the knife itself. Specifically the poison.¡±
¡°Oh ho? Do go on.¡±
¡°It seems that the poison on the blade is an incredibly obscure one, which is the primary cause of the delay. Apparently tracking it down proved quite difficult for the scholar I assigned the task. He only narrowed it down after using the poison on farm animals and watching how they died.¡± He held up an ancient looking book, its pages open to show a faded drawing of a flower. ¡°The entrada flower was an extremely rare plant that grew in a very small area of Eterium. The oil in its seeds could be refined, and through some sort of unknown method it would become a poison known as ¡®bairac¡¯.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t help but notice the way you keep using past tense there.¡±
¡°That is because, to our limited knowledge, the plant no longer exists. Once its capabilities were recognized by the Eterians, they removed the plant entirely from where it grew and it has not been seen since. This record,¡± he explained as he pointed to the book, ¡°is the most recent mention of the plant that we have. It¡¯s over nine hundred years old.¡±
¡°But it is obviously still around. The Eterians must have it growing in a secret garden somewhere for stuff just like this. It all makes sense, especially since they¡¯re the people who I think stole the chimirin as well. It all makes fucking sense.¡± The image of Amatza Motrico flashed before his eyes, her unimpressed, smug gaze bubbled forth from his memory. At first, her condescending ¡°I¡¯m the only adult here¡± act had been an annoyance; now that he knew this, it made his blood boil.
¡°I came to a similar conclusion,¡± Leo replied. ¡°Given that only the Eterians have this poison, it would seem that the source of the attack is clear. What should be done about it, my Lord?¡±
Blake opened his mouth, but stopped himself. He wanted to say that he¡¯d get his revenge, that he¡¯d make them pay, but his wiser side made him pause. He was in no position to start a war right now. Hadn¡¯t he just been complaining to himself about how overburdened he already was? How stupid would it be to add a war with what was widely considered the most powerful country on the continent to his already long list of problems? He was sure he would be able to win in the end, but he¡¯d probably have to shelve most if not all of his other projects to do it. Still, he couldn¡¯t just let them get away with an attempt on his life, could he?
¡°There¡¯s no reason to rush to a decision right now,¡± Blake said. ¡°I¡¯m going to sleep on it. We¡¯ll make them pay for this at some point. It doesn¡¯t have to be tomorrow.¡±
¡°As you wish.¡± Leo bowed again.
¡°Anything else while you¡¯re here?¡±
¡°Not at the moment, no.¡±
¡°Alright. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I¡¯ll see you tomorrow for the council meeting.¡±
¡°Yes, Lord Ferros.¡±
Blake let his assistant out, and then retreated to his bedroom, where he flopped down onto his bed face first. When he¡¯d said that he was going to sleep on it, he¡¯d meant it literally. Decisions like this took thought, the kind of thought that he wasn¡¯t capable of with how frayed his self-control had become. It was the perfect excuse to put everything on hold for just one night and sleep a good twelve hours straight. Who cared that it was just after sundown? Not him. Closing his eyes, the tucrenyx melted away and he fell into slumber before he even realized it.
Blake¡¯s eyes opened to darkness. The buzzing of his alarm clock rattled in his ears, but something was off. Where were the lights? Long ago, he¡¯d set up the lighting in his room to emulate the sun. Given that the central rooms to his fortress had no windows, it was important to keep his body¡¯s rhythms working right. He could always override the lights¡¯ dimming if he was still working, something he¡¯d been doing basically every night now. Given that his alarm was going off, the room should have been lit like it were mid-morning, but instead there was only blackness.
With a groan, Blake rolled himself over to look at his clock. Once upon a time it would have been a simple maneuver, but with only his right arm working fully the task required actual sustained concentration. Now fully rotated, Blake blinked his bleary eyes and checked the time on the clock he¡¯d placed across the room and puzzled over the numbers in his sleep-addled mind. A three, a four, and a two shone back at him through the darkness. This world used a different time system than Earth. Instead of twenty-four hours in a day, the locals divided the day into twenty hours, with one hundred minutes in each. While Blake tended to shake his head in scorn at the way the natives usually did things, he couldn¡¯t help but admit that this made a hell of a lot more sense than Earth¡¯s system, except for the fact that they didn¡¯t seem to have the concept of seconds. Minutes was as low at they went. Still, three forty-two was fucking early no matter what system you used. Why had he set his alarm for such an absurd time?
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He hadn¡¯t. Finally, enough neurons in Blake¡¯s skull shook off their lethargy for him to realize that the buzzing he was hearing wasn¡¯t his alarm clock at all. It was the higher-pitched, more insistent tone of his door buzzer. Blake¡¯s blood ran cold. Everybody who worked for him knew how much he loved his sleep. They wouldn¡¯t do this without a damned good reason... which meant an emergency.
His armor flowed up over his listless legs, giving them support, and he staggered to his feet. By the time he made it to the door, the armor was complete, prosthetic arm, mask, and all. The screen beside the door activated to show a nervous and sweating middle-aged man. The lights reflected off his shiny, sweat-covered scalp, and his pronounced gut trembled as he fidgeted in front of the door. Between his half-asleep brain and the overhead camera angle, it took Blake several seconds to recognize the man as Bernards Bergmanis, one of the two chief Many handlers in his employ.
Rushing down to the meeting room, he unceremoniously opened the door, causing rotund man to hop back in surprise.
¡°Emergency?¡± he asked the Many handler before the door was even fully open.
¡°M-my Lord! I ap-p-pologize for i-interrupting your slumber, but-¡±
¡°Calm down. What happened?¡±
¡°Gustil is calling a meeting in under half an hour. They said that it is of the gravest importance that you attend.¡±
¡°Thank you, Bernards. Go get everything set up. I¡¯ll be down there in just a moment.¡±
¡°Y-yes, my Lord!¡± the man replied with a quick bow before turning and racing off faster than Blake had thought possible for a man of his size. Blake sighed. This screamed trouble.
Akhustal Palebane and Iorweth Morgan were both already present. One look at both of them was enough for Blake to realize that he wasn¡¯t the only person whose worries usually kept him up at night. The King of Kutrad¡¯s lower face was still wrapped in bandages even several months since the injury to his face and the man who spoke for him sat to his side. Blake couldn¡¯t help but find this strange. How long did it take to heal a broken face or jaw? Surely he should have been at least past the need for bandages by this point?
As for the Chos, it seemed that Blake had found the one world leader more run down than he. Dark bags hung beneath her eyes. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes seemed to always be staring out into the middle distance, unfocused on the moment. Thanks to Otharia¡¯s traditional disinterest in the goings on of other nations, Blake did not have access to a spy network like everybody else, so he had no idea what could have caused her to be like this.
Before he could even say hello, another person appeared ¡ª Minister Motrico, the Eterian Minister of External Affairs. The sight of her set Blake¡¯s fury blazing once more, but he was able to just barely hold himself back. He had an image to maintain, one of the calm, collected, ruthless overlord. Once again, he thanked fate that he¡¯d decided to use a mask.
¡°Have you been able to establish contact?¡± the woman asked the Kutradian, a look a concern on her normally carefully controlled face. The king merely shook his head, and Blake noticed a spot of fear in his eyes. What was going on? The Eterian looked over to the large Stragman woman. ¡°What about you, Chos?¡±
¡°...wha?¡± Palebane responded after a moment, her eyes focusing in on the others for the first time since Blake¡¯s arrival.
¡°Have you been able to contact Redwater Castle?¡±
¡°No, I didn¡¯t try. Why, do you think that¡¯s what this is about?¡± A look of horror swept over her face. ¡°Oh no, that would be the worst possible-¡±
¡°The worst possible timing?¡± interrupted a lithe elf that had just appeared. ¡°What¡¯s wrong, my dear, something happening with you and the rest of your happy tree friends?¡±
¡°Princess Pyria, this is not the time for your petty grudges,¡± scolded the Eterian.
¡°Oh come off it, Motrico,¡± the Drayhadan replied. ¡°I¡¯m twice your age. Stop acting like you¡¯re my mother.¡±
The Eterian opened her mouth to retort but held in her words as the final member of the group appeared and immediately began to speak.
¡°My fellows, I bring the gravest of news,¡± the King of Gustil Hamza Adivar began, his features grim. ¡°Redwater Castle has fallen. With every passing hour more and more Ubrans flow through the pass into the shrublands. Nocend¡¯s darkest hour has arrived.¡±
¡°Spirits protect us!¡± Minister Motrico muttered at the confirmation of her fears.
¡°Hold on,¡± Blake said. ¡°What happened to the castle? You all told me it would never fall in a thousand years! What happened to all those boasts from last time?¡±
¡°Lord Ferros, the time for blame can come later,¡± Minister Motrico began.
¡°No, he¡¯s at least partially correct,¡± King Adivar interjected. ¡°While he may not have meant it this way, ¡®What happened to the castle?¡¯ is indeed a crucial question, in large because we do not actually know the answer. No beacons were lit until the Ubrans had already made it most of the way through our side of the pass, meaning the castle fell at least a day before the first beacon. Yet not only were there no beacons, but we received no messages from our Manys. I assume the same is true with you all.¡± The rest of the group nodded. ¡°That means we have no idea how the castle fell, or what weapons the Empire has up their sleeves. We will have to make our stand mostly blind to our enemy¡¯s capabilities.¡±
¡°We know enough,¡± the Eterian replied. ¡°We know that they will have a large numerical advantage. We know that it will take the combined might of the entire continent to push them back.¡±
¡°Indeed,¡± the Gustilian agreed. ¡°What troops I have in the area are focusing on hit-and-run attacks to slow their forces down as much as possible. Every soldier in Gustil will be on the march by the morrow. The pass is narrow enough that they cannot get their full army across for another several days. There is still time to act. This is not over yet.¡±
¡°Eterium will assemble and march as quickly as we can,¡± Minister Motrico stated definitively. ¡°Our troops stationed in Begale should be able to reach your position before you make your first stand. The rest will follow as soon as can be done. You have my word.¡±
¡°And you have my thanks.¡±
¡°I am merely honoring the pact that all our countries made. The treaty has held for generations because the Empire has long been the greatest threat to our survival and I am not foolish enough to overlook this.¡±
¡°King Morgan, how soon will you be able to get your forces on the move?¡± the Gustilian king asked.
The Kutradian wrote something down and the man beside him spoke. ¡°My King says that every unit will be headed west by midday tomorrow.¡±
¡°Including your cavalry?¡±
King Morgan wrote again. ¡°Of course. My King would like to remind you, however, that jaglioths are not built for sustained speed. They will not arrive as soon as you may hope.¡±
¡°Then we will simply have to hold the Empire off a little longer,¡± King Adivar replied with a courageous smile. He turned to the Akhustal Palebane, who looked deathly pale now. ¡°Lady Palebane-Chos, when can your people arrive?¡±
The confident aura that Blake was used to seeing from the giant bear-lady was missing today. Instead of answering immediately, the woman stared off into space for a moment, mouthing something to herself. When she finally spoke, Blake could hear the shame in her voice.
¡°We... we will not uphold the pact. We cannot.¡±
¡°W-what?!?¡± the Eterian minister cried, her eye wide with shock. ¡°You are the single greatest threat to the Empire! Nobody else can field the numbers that you can! With your warriors, we would be able to nearly match the Empire soldier for soldier! I know that your country is going through a little turmoil, but this must not come second!¡±
Princess Pyria let out a mocking laugh. ¡°Amatza, sweetie, I don¡¯t know what your spies are telling you, but this is much more than a ¡®little turmoil¡¯. Her entire society is falling apart. Isn¡¯t that right, Palebane?¡±
¡°The Shells are refusing to work,¡± the Chos admitted, her voice weak. ¡°Nothing we¡¯ve tried has broken them. The next migration is only a few days away, and without the Shells I must use the soldiers in their stead. If I were to send them to you, the migration would fail. Stragma would die. I cannot allow that. I¡¯m sorry.¡±
A stunned silence swept over the room. This time it was the Eterian who stared blankly ahead, her eyes unfocused as she contemplated the ramifications of what she¡¯d just heard.
¡°The Drayhadans are well known to be the greatest defensive warfare specialists around,¡± the Kutradian speaker read, breaking the silence. ¡°Perhaps with that expertise, we can buy enough time for the Stragmans to resolve their issue and send reinforcements.¡±
¡°Ah, a fine suggestion,¡± the Gustilian king replied.
¡°Unfortunately, Drayhadal will also not uphold the pact,¡± the elven princess remarked unenthusiastically.
Minister Motrico gasped in astonishment. ¡°Princess Pyria, surely you jest!¡±
¡°If only,¡± the elf replied with a detached tone and a roll of her eyes. ¡°Drayhadal signed a secret peace treaty with the Empire some four hundred years ago. I don¡¯t agree with it, but I do not have enough say to sway this decision. The old fogies are too busy looking inward to notice the beast creeping up behind them. My hands are tied.¡±
The declaration seemed to rip the life right out of the three northern rulers. The Gustilian king looked like he¡¯d just swallowed a grenade. Minister Motrico turned to Blake, a desperation in her eyes that he¡¯d never expected to witness from such a composed official. ¡°Lord Ferros,¡± she pleaded, her face as white as a ghost, ¡°I know you are not of the pact, but surely you are wise enough to see that we must work together to save us all.¡±
Blake leaned back in his chair, laughing to himself on the inside. Who would have thought such a perfect opportunity would present itself so soon? ¡°Tell me, Minister, have you ever heard of bairac?¡±
¡°No, I cannot say I have,¡± the woman replied, puzzled by the non sequitur.
¡°I have,¡± Princess Pyria said. ¡°Poisons are a... hobby of mine, you could say.¡±
For some reason, this revelation did not surprise Blake one bit. ¡°Well then, would you be so kind as to educate us all?¡± he requested.
¡°Bairac ¡ª an ancient poison that was considered one of the four most deadly poisons known centuries ago. Made from a plant that only grew in the Lemac Valley in Eterium, it vanished from the world when the plant was eradicated from its home. Since then bairac has faded from the world, only appearing every few decades inside the bodies of people the Republic of Eterium wants really, truly dead.¡±
Blake hadn¡¯t thought it was possible for the Eterian to get any whiter, but once she put two and two together she managed it somehow. ¡°Lord Ferros, I assure you, the Republic of Eterium has never acted against your life,¡± she desperately pleaded. ¡°I swear it on my life! Why would we try to kill a future lucrative trading partner?¡±
¡°Why indeed?¡± he replied.
¡°Please, Lord Ferros, you must believe me! We would never-¡±
¡°I will enjoy watching you burn.¡±
The room went silent, save for a single mournful sob that escaped the diplomat¡¯s lips.
¡°This is the end,¡± the Gustilian king muttered. ¡°The end of all of us. A bunch of fools.¡±
¡°Well, this has been fun,¡± Blake said as stood up. ¡°Let¡¯s do it again some time.¡± He strode from the room and did not look back.
Blake moseyed through the halls in high spirits. Such a wonderful way to start the day! Oh, the look on that smug woman¡¯s face! He wanted to laugh out loud just thinking about it.
The only problem was that now it was still way too early and he had nothing to do. He hadn¡¯t planned on waking up this early, and now he was far too wired to go back to sleep. Quickly going through his mental list of projects, he began tossing out the ones that needed the help of others, then the ones that were best done during a certain time of day. In the middle of it all, a single project popped into his head and he smiled. Yes. Now was the perfect time to work on that. Given the upcoming war, it might even find use earlier than expected.
Soon Blake was atop one of this transports, a small army of skitters surrounding him in the predawn light as he made his way out of his fortress and towards the outskirts of Wroetin. There, on the other side of the wall, stood a massive metal building, newly constructed just weeks before. While taller than the wall to the city and equally as wide, it was the length of the building that most found truly remarkable. Over four times as long as it was tall, the building was nearly as long as his fortress looming in the city¡¯s center.
No windows could be found on this mysterious building. No door either, for that matter. Only impenetrable walls of solid metal as far as the eyes could see... and then some skitters patrolling for good measure. This was the housing for one of Blake¡¯s big dream projects, and he wasn¡¯t going to show it off until it was truly ready. So far, only he and Sam had ever been inside.
The metal flowed out of his way as he walked directly through the nearest wall, reforming behind him as if it had never moved. Once inside, he looked up and grinned. He was getting closer, he could feel it. Soon it would be ready, and he¡¯d change the world once more.
Chapter 40
A palpable tension hung over Rul, a sense of impending doom that seemed to almost choke the air from the city and its populace. This wasn¡¯t the Rul that Hector remembered. Back when he¡¯d left the strange, creepy facility where he¡¯d found himself without explanation, he¡¯d wandered the hills at the foot of the mountains, unsure about where to go or what to do. It was then when he¡¯d run across a Gustilian patrol and been taken to the nearest city ¡ª Rul. The Rul of his memories was a lively one, where the streets were filled with vendors hawking their wares, children frolicking, and a wide selection of comely lasses busy going about their days. Those people were gone. Everybody with the means to leave had left, leaving only the desperate and destitute behind. Not to say that the city was a ghost town now; thousands of people still walked the streets everywhere he looked. But those people all sported weapons in hand and a grim look in their eyes. This was a city waiting to fight. Waiting to die. It annoyed him, frankly. He was never the type to fall into such a malaise. If you had time to mope, you had time to do something about it.
Hector made his way through the crowd, his head high and his eyes proud. People parted as he passed, some because they recognized him, others because of the wide berth needed to avoid his enormous backpack. Over a dozen weapons poked out in various directions from the overstuffed pack. He¡¯d brought everything he thought he¡¯d need down from Nefin, including a battle axe, a polearm, two swords, a dozen daggers, an oversized bow, and a crossbow large enough that it bordered on qualifying as a ballista. If he could carry it all, why not bring it all?
A wry grin grew on his face as soldiers noticed him as he passed, his ears picking up whispers of admiration and awe. In only half a year he was already famous amongst the military. Soon all of Gustil would know his name, then all of the continent of Nocend, then all of Scyria! Nothing would stop his rise! Not even some bullshit invasion! He¡¯d beat down the entire Ubran Empire if that was what it took!
Soon he arrived at the Gustilian Army¡¯s makeshift headquarters, a repurposed mansion on the eastern side of the city. The army already had several stations around Rul, but those were meant for the city¡¯s usual garrison and couldn¡¯t accommodate the magnitude of the current force¡¯s command structure. That and the fact that a certain person would be arriving later that day, which meant certain luxury requirements needed to be met.
The guards let him pass with little more than a flash of his captain¡¯s badge. They knew who he was and why he was here. Taking his sweet time, he walked along the path through a series of immaculate flower gardens filled with statues of what looked to be mighty heroes of Gustil. He smiled. Soon they¡¯d be making statues of him.
The mansion itself stood tall and proud in the center of the grounds. Looking at the lavish exterior, Hector wondered as to whom this place belonged. Whoever it was, they sure had deep pockets. The first thing his eyes were drawn to was not the gold and platinum embedded in the walls, nor the wide, opulent double door that served at the main entrance to the abode. No, it was the windows. The clear glass windows. He could count the number of times he¡¯d seen glass windows in this world on one hand. Given that people could control fire and stone with their minds here, he¡¯d thought that something like glass would have been a fairly common thing, but no. Clear glass was still an exorbitantly expensive material, especially pieces large enough to work as window panes.
Extravagance characterized the inside as well. Golden candelabras dotted the entrance hall. Rugs made of animal pelts lined the halls. Large portraits of various people hung on nearly every wall. Everything here felt like an exercise in wasteful overcompensation, and Hector was totally down for it. If you have the goods, you have to flaunt them.
¡°Captain Miranda?¡± asked a disbelieving voice. Hector looked over to find a face he recognized ¡ª standing in the hallway was the head aide for one of the generals he¡¯d met before. Hector couldn¡¯t recall the man¡¯s name; admittedly, he had probably never bothered to ask.
¡°Hey, where are the big boys?¡± Hector asked with an acknowledging nod.
¡°The... generals are currently preparing a battle plan to present to the king upon his arrival.¡±
¡°Cool, take me there.¡±
The man paused, as if considering whether to honor Hector¡¯s request. ¡°Leave your weapons here,¡± the aide said after a moment of consideration. He called to a younger man who was walking through the entrance hall at that moment. ¡°Jeaston, take the Storm¡¯s weapons to the armory.¡±
Hector couldn¡¯t help but grin. Technically, as the right hand of a general, the aide outranked Hector by a number of ranks, but only one of the two of them was the new star of the Gustilian army. Fame could get you anywhere.
¡°Have fun, kid,¡± Hector said as he removed his pack and dropped it strap-first into Jeaston¡¯s hands. The younger soldier nearly buckled over under the weight. Hector snickered as Jeaston staggered comically off in the opposite direction.
Following the aide, Hector soon found himself outside a large room. Two voices could be heard arguing on the other side of the wall. The aide entered the room to inform the generals of Hector¡¯s arrival, then waived him in.
¡°Captain Hector Miranda, reporting as ordered,¡± Hector said as he walked in to the stunned faces of two generals and seven of their aides.
Standing on one side of a large round table was a large man. Broad-shouldered and square-jawed, General Ediz Bayrak seemed to personify the quintessential old soldier. The general in charge of protecting Rul, he wore the scars of battle proudly, from his multitude of scars to his three missing fingers on his left hand. A battle junkie through and through, he had become one of Hector¡¯s greatest supporters as soon as he¡¯d seen Hector¡¯s skills.
Across the table stood General Oren Aldemir, one of the top three generals in Gustil and the general in charge of the southwestern third of the country. A tall woman, who looked to be in her mid thirties, she stared at Hector with a single piercing, hawk-like eye, an eyepatch covering the other. Frizzy magenta hair dropped down in a scattered mess around her shoulders. She sported a decent figure, with two perky C-cups visible beneath her tunic. Not much of a rear end, however, and the eyepatch was a major bummer. A six. Okay, a seven, but only because Hector found powerful women sexy.
¡°Captain Miranda,¡± General Aldemir said, shock in her voice, ¡°I thought you were currently stationed in Nefin. Was I misinformed?¡±
¡°No, I was just there.¡±
¡°Are you saying that it took you two whole days to travel here from Nefin?¡± Bayrak inquired, astonishment in his voice as well.
¡°Yeah, I¡¯m sorry,¡± Hector replied. ¡°I ended up getting lost. Took a few wrong turns.¡±
¡°A few wrong turns, you say?¡± the man chuckled. ¡°Come, approach the map. Perhaps you can help settle this argument we are having. You see-¡±
Before General Bayrak could finish his explanation, a man in an ornate uniform entered the room. ¡°His Highness Hamza Adivar, King of Gustil, Victor of the Eighteenth War of Election, has arrived!¡± the man called out to the assembled people.
Suddenly everybody stood up straight, the somewhat relaxed atmosphere in the room replaced by a stiff formality. Hector hurriedly backed off to the side to make way for the king and his attendants. A moment later they entered the room. First came three members of the King¡¯s Guard ¡ª a large man with a sword on his hip, his hand always near the hilt; a smaller woman with a bandolier filled with large needles strapped across her chest, and a rather nondescript older man who didn¡¯t seem to have any weapons on him. All three guards eyed the room and the people in it with watchful, suspicious gazes. Hector couldn¡¯t help but notice that each of their gazes settled on him for a much longer duration than they did on anybody else.
Following the three guards came a middle-aged man with a strong, bushy beard ¡ª King Hamza Adivar himself. The king wore a suit of armor unlike any that Hector had seen before. Hundreds of finely detailed engravings on the chest plate and the shield told the story of the man¡¯s triumphs in the last election war, though the scratches in the armor told a better one. King Adivar was not a man who wore impressive armor and stood in the back as others died in his name. This was a man who was not afraid to put his life on the line. Hector respected that.
Finally, following the king came another two guards and a mildly obese man that Hector had never seen before. Like the other three, these last two guards seemed deadly serious about their duty of protecting the king. Almost as one, everybody who had been in the chamber prior to the king¡¯s arrival brought their two fists up to their chests, the customary Gustilian salute.
¡°Your Highness,¡± General Aldemir greeted, ¡°I hope your journey here was pleasant.¡±
¡°About as pleasant as any travel can be at such a pace,¡± the king replied. ¡°It is good that I was hunting just a few days away. I do not think these old bones could handle another ten days of such hard riding.¡±
¡°Of course, your Majesty.¡±
The king waved dismissively at his general. ¡°Let us forgo formalities for now. There is far too much to deal with and not enough time to deal with it. I hope you have been able to come up with a good plan of attack while I was on the road.¡±
¡°We have several,¡± the tall woman replied. ¡°However, there are many details that are still up in the air given how little we know about the situation.¡±
¡°Sorry to interrupt you, General Aldemir,¡± said the heavyset man by the king¡¯s side, ¡°but is it such a good idea to discuss strategy in the company of a newcomer?¡± He gestured towards Hector.
This time General Bayrak spoke up. ¡°Adviser Ilyata, Captain Miranda is the most capable soldier that we have. Possibly the greatest warrior on the continent. While he is simply here because he arrived earlier than expected, I see no reason why his presence should be questioned.¡±
¡°No reason?¡± Adviser Ilyata replied. ¡°Why just a year ago nobody knew this man existed. We don¡¯t know where he¡¯s from, his background, or how he arrived in Gustil. How can you so willingly trust a man that could easily be an Ubran spy? This invasion was not a whim. The Ubrans have been planting as many seeds as they could for a long time, preparing for this day. And you want to believe a man without a history?¡±
¡°My adviser makes a solid point,¡± the king stated. He took several steps towards Hector, a twinkle in his eye. ¡°Captain Miranda, was it? I must say, as impressive as I found you watching the tournament through the Many, you are far more impressive in person. Tell me, Captain, how do we know you are not an agent of the enemy?¡±
Hector flashed a wicked grin. ¡°It¡¯s simple. If I were an enemy agent, the single greatest thing I could do to hurt your side would be to assassinate everybody in this room, right now. And I can.¡± All five members of the King¡¯s Guard tensed at his words, but he ignored them. ¡°I have no weapons on me and I¡¯m wearing no armor, but even now I can kill you all without breaking a sweat. Not even all of you combined would be able to stop me. If I were a secret Ubran, you wouldn¡¯t be asking me this question because you¡¯d already be dead.¡±
The king stared Hector in the eyes for a second before throwing his head back and unleashing a series of mighty guffaws. His bodyguards relaxed slightly. ¡°Well if that isn¡¯t a compelling argument, I don¡¯t know what is,¡± he chortled. ¡°Now general, I believe you were saying?¡±
The general let out an awkward cough before regaining his poise. ¡°Yes, Your Highness. We have a series of battle plans drawn up, but various unknown factors have made it hard for us to determine which is the best course of action. The two most important unknowns are the size of the Ubran force that has made it through the pass into Nocend and both the size of the incoming Eterian reinforcements and just when they will arrive.¡±
¡°The Eterians contacted me this morning. They will arrive in five days with a force seventy-five thousand strong, with more coming as quickly as they can send them. I will have my Eterian Many transferred to you for the time being.¡±
¡°I see. Thank you, Your Grace.¡± General Aldemir stroked the side of her eyepatch in thought.
¡°What about the other nearby countries?¡± Hector asked. ¡°Are they not sending troops?¡±
The faces of everybody around the table grew dark.
¡°It seems that honor is a rare thing in this world,¡± the king sighed. ¡°The elves have betrayed us. They care only for themselves. The Stragmans have fallen for what I can only believe to be an Ubran plot to destabilize their country. We will get no help from them either. We should consider ourselves lucky that Kutrad is willing to uphold their end of the bargain.¡±
¡°This battle would have been a challenge even with the help of the others,¡± General Bayrak said, ¡°but it will be downright impossible if we cannot get a good idea of just what the Empire can bring to bear against us. We need better information on their strength, and we need it now.¡±
¡°What have our scouts been able to tell us?¡± the king inquired.
¡°Not much, sadly,¡± the general replied. ¡°The Ubrans have set up a very strong perimeter and are patrolling with great numbers. Those that have returned report they are unable to get close enough to properly assess the Empire¡¯s capabilities. Those that tried... have not returned.¡±
¡°Let me go,¡± Hector suggested. ¡°I can get deep enough to find out what you need to know.¡±
¡°No,¡± the king answered, ¡°we cannot risk our best warriors, and we cannot have you out of reach for so long at such a critical juncture.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry about it, I¡¯ll be fine and I¡¯ll be back by midday tomorrow.¡±
¡°By midday tomorrow?¡± Adviser Ilyata scoffed. ¡°You cannot be trusted with such a task if you don¡¯t even understand how long it takes to travel to the Divide. It would take two days at full speed on a vekkel just to get there.¡±
¡°That¡¯s where you¡¯re wrong, Adviser,¡± chuckled General Bayrak. ¡°The captain just arrived from Nefin. He made the trip in two days.¡±
¡°T-two days?!¡± the adviser cried. ¡°Impossible! That journey takes our fastest riders seven days!¡±
The king laughed heartily. ¡°Young man, you continue to surprise me,¡± he said to Hector. ¡°It is good that you are here, for the more I learn about you, the more I feel like we still have a hope of victory. Very well. I am convinced. Go and get us the knowledge we require.¡±
Hector saluted and left the room with a smile.
A cold wind blew through Hector¡¯s hair as he squatted behind a rock and peered down into the valley below. He frowned. That was a lot of people down there. Easily over two hundred thousand. And even more were on their way. Squinting at the far side of the camp, he counted as, one by one, more and more soldiers entered the camp. It looked like they were coming in at a rate of about one person every second.
That turned into how many new people a day? He puzzled over the question for several minutes. Math had never been his strong suit. Eventually he settled on an estimate of fifty thousand people descending from the Divide every day, assuming that they only moved during the day. And they would, he believed. He¡¯d taken the path up to Redwater Castle; it wasn¡¯t something you traveled in the dark unless you wanted to fall to your death.
A soft whizzing sound caught Hector¡¯s attention. His right hand shot up to pluck an arrow from the air. They¡¯d found him. For a moment he considered staying and kicking some ass, but decided against it. What was the point if there was nobody around to see it?
Three hundred thousand men and women marched west, their faces set with a grim resolve. The sum total of every available man and woman in Gustil able to arrive in Rul in time, along with the early Eterian force that had arrived yesterday, they represented the hopes of everyone in Gustil and beyond. Theirs was a herculean task ¡ª to hold off a force likely twice their size and bottled them up against the jagged cliffs of the Divide until reinforcements could arrive. That, or perhaps to even rout them all together, wiping them out before pushing into the pass and taking back Redwater Castle.
The odds of success were slim, but onward they marched regardless, their steps sending small tremors through the hardening earth. As if sharing their sentiments, Old Man Winter had decided to finally assert himself these last few days, sending the temperature plummeting towards freezing. According to Hector¡¯s understanding of the weather in Scyria, it never got quite as hot or cold as it did on Earth. There was variance, sure, but overall the winters were warmer and the summers cooler than they would be back home. It was still cold.
A lone horn sounded off in the distance. Contact already? Last they knew, the enemy had yet to leave its foothold on the edge of the mountains, and they were still several hours march away from there. Hector looked out over the horizon to see a squad of vekkel-riding scouts making their way back to the main force. Quickly they dismounted and reported to the central command, after which orders began flying left and right.
The army fanned out, deploying atop a nearby ridge in three large divisions. Hector was placed in the central division. He idled in the back, waiting for the enemy to appear. His orders were simple. First, he was to observe from the rear for a short time, find the most dangerous and deadly enemy warriors, and then carve a path of death and destruction towards and through them. In this world where one elite soldier could be worth a hundred lesser men, this would serve to dull the Ubrans¡¯ numeric advantage the most efficiently, as well as deal a severe blow to their morale. Then, once the Empire¡¯s best and brightest were no more, it would be time to go wild. General Aldemir liked to say that a battle between armies was really decided by a multitude of smaller battles across the battlefield. If he could win all his battles, victory would still be possible.
The valley before them, known as the Moro Valley, was fairly flat and plain as far as valleys in the area went. The ground sloped gently down towards a small stream before rising back up on the other side to a ridge similar to the one he stood upon. A few shrubs and bushes dotted the area, but only a handful of trees stood within view. It was largely a wide, clear area ¡ª perfect for a good fight.
A hush fell over the army as the first Ubran poked his head over the ridge across from them. Then another came into view, and another, and then suddenly thousands all at once. Hector heard muttering from nearby soldiers as the more and more Ubran troops crested the ridge.
¡°Draw your weapons!¡± shouted General Aldemir. ¡°Steel your courage! This is for your children! This is for your homes! This is for Gustil! We will stand tall! Advance!¡±
The troops shouted out their resolve as they readied their weapons and began to descend into the valley. On the other side, the Ubrans did the same. Slowly the two sides approached one another, the troops slowly picking up speed until the two armies seemed to literally slam into each other and became a wild mess of flesh and metal. Fireballs arced through the sky, falling to the ground and detonating in bright orange blasts. Blasts of water knocked people over, leaving them open to a blade in the gut. Rocks larger than his head flew through the air, each one capable of crushing bones or worse.
Hector had never witnessed such chaos before. The raid on Nefin could never compare to this. It would have been easy to get lost watching the slaughter, but Hector kept his mind focused. Using his vantage point, he kept watch, searching for pockets of emptiness in the writhing sea of bodies or some sort of flashy observer. Soon he found what he was looking for: three individuals who were reaping their way through the crowd as if everyone else were merely wheat to be harvested.
Hefting a massive warhammer over his shoulder as if it were a hollow plastic toy, Hector took off down the slope. He¡¯d chosen two main weapons for the battle today ¡ª the warhammer and a two-handed sword he¡¯d strapped to his back. Given the situation, he believed that it would be best to focus on power over finesse in order to wrack up the highest possible body count. He also had half a dozen throwing knives attached to his belt just in case. You never knew when a long-distance stabbing would become necessary.
Weaving his way through the Gustilian Observers, he leapt into the fray, his hammer swinging about with unnatural precision as he danced through the melee. Gustilian soldiers cheered as he swept through, every bit the storm his title claimed him to be. Finally he was through the mess and in a pocket of space. In the center of the clearing stood a man surrounded by dozens of dead Gustilians ¡ª Target One.
Standing an impressive two meters, Hector towered over the vast majority of the people, and yet the man before him dwarfed him by a considerable degree. Clad from helmet to boot in the thickest armor Hector had ever seen, this man seemed to be the closest thing to a walking tank this world could create. In his massive hands an equally massive blade spun in quick, short circles on a thick chain as thick as Hector¡¯s wrist. The weapon reminded Hector of a chain sickle, one of those weapons you only saw in ninja movies, except on steroids.
The giant noticed Hector¡¯s arrival almost instantly, loading up before swinging the chain in Hector¡¯s direction. The massive blade whipped through the air at incredible speeds, but not incredible enough to catch somebody like Hector. Rolling beneath the incoming blade, Hector launched himself at his opponent and closed the five meters between the two of them in a fraction of a second. The man took a step back in surprise, his arms pulling the heavy chain to send the blade whirling back towards them both.
With a snort, Hector deftly dodged the returning weapon and delivered a powerful blow with his hammer to the side of the large man¡¯s knee. To the giant¡¯s obvious shock, the thick metal buckled inward, leaving the interlocking pieces of armor suddenly unable to move. The man had probably thought it impossible for somebody to be able to truly damage such thick armor. But Hector lived to do the impossible.
¡°Sorry, bro,¡± Hector said, ¡°I¡¯m not just faster, I¡¯m stronger too.¡±
The man cried out and struck with the blade, but Hector would never be touched by a weapon moving at such dismal speeds. Spinning around behind the man, he lashed out once more with his hammer and smashed in the man¡¯s shoulder plates, stifling his arm movements. Then, without pause, he delivered another swift blow, this time to the man¡¯s other knee, sending the giant to the ground. The man struggled to get up, the weight and bent metal interfering with his attempts.
¡°This armor will be your coffin,¡± Hector sneered. With a single crushing strike, he caved in the man¡¯s helmet. One down.
Drinking in the cheers of his nearby allies, Hector pulled out his sword for a change of pace and strapped his hammer to his back before looking about to find his next target. Soon he spotted her carving through Gustilians off in the distance. Ducking back into the fray, Hector bobbed and weaved his way towards his mark, his large sword finding its way into chinks in every Ubran armor he passed.
Target Two was a woman of average height, her tanned body fit and shapely but covered in scars. Her glossy indigo hair was tied up in braids that bounced and danced as she sliced through nearby Gustilians with a sword that was literally covered in flames. She laughed as her enemies fell, their bodies charred black. An eight.
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Several nearby Gustilians cheered his arrival, prompting the woman to turn back and spot him. She pulled her sword from her latest victim with a massive grin on her face. Lifting her sword out in front of her, she charged. Hector did the same.
The two lashed out at each other, their swords colliding in a shower of sparks. Hector was surprised at the woman¡¯s strength; it wasn¡¯t on the level of the giant, but it was still most definitely superhuman. So she was both a Feeler and an Observer? Interesting! Hector had been told such people existed, but he¡¯d never met one before. Still, Feeler or no, her strength paled in comparison to his, so why hadn¡¯t her sword gone flying when their weapons had collided?
Looking closely at where the two blades met, Hector found with horror that his blade was melting, the woman¡¯s blade biting nearly a third of the way through his weapon and slowly eating its way deeper. Letting lose a series of profanities, he ripped his blade free. The woman laughed again and swung her blade about horizontally towards his hips. Hector jumped back, getting out of range of the strike, but a fan of flames shot out from the woman¡¯s sword as it went. With another series of curses, he leaned his upper body back as far as he could until he looked like a competitor in a limbo contest, just barely getting out of the way as the flames passed.
Flipping back upright, Hector immediately charged back in. He¡¯d underestimated his opponent and lost the initiative for a moment, but he wouldn¡¯t make the same mistake again. Once again their blades clashed, and once again her sword began to melt his. But this time he was ready. Using his large strength advantage, he threw his weapon up and to the left, pushing her sword back and knocking her off balance. Letting go of his weapon, he shot forward, his hand pulling a knife from his belt. Panicked, the woman let go of the sword with one hand an conjured a gout of flame directly at him, but Hector put his head down and ran through it using every ounce of his blinding speed. Years of playing with fire as a child had taught him that flame wouldn¡¯t hurt him if he didn¡¯t stay in it long enough to get burned. Searing heat enveloped him for a fraction of a moment but then he was through, hot but unharmed. Grabbing the woman¡¯s hair with his free hand, Hector drove his dagger into her left eye, through the socket, and into her brain. Her body shook for a moment before going limp. Two down.
¡°A shame,¡± he said to the corpse as he picked up his sword, inspected the heavy damage, and tossed it aside in favor of hers, ¡°You were pretty hot.¡±
More cheers erupted at the sight of his second victory. All around, the Gustilians and Eterians fought harder, their hopes of survival and victory buoyed by his presence. Hector couldn¡¯t help but grin. This was what he had been put on this world for. By the end of this battle he would be more than famous. He would be a legend.
A series of small clouds seemed to cover the area around where he¡¯d first spotted Target Three. Confused, he made his way in that direction, his new sword striking down enemy after enemy as he went. He liked it; the blade had a good weight and balance to it and the handle fit well in his hand.
As he approached the clouds, Hector spotted an allied soldier stumbling his way out of the nearby fog and nearly lost his breakfast. The man¡¯s skin bubbled and sizzled as it slowly melted. Something was eating away at every exposed surface, corroding not just his flesh but his clothes, his armor, and his weapon. Hector paled. Acid?
There was no way Hector was going into that cloud. But this sure seemed like the work of Target Three, or at the least somebody very worth killing. But how to do the deed without losing his stellar looks? Looking around, he realized that the clouds of acid stayed low to the ground, rising at most three meters from the earth. Suddenly he had an idea.
Backing up to get a better view, Hector inspected the clouds, searching for the extent of their reach. After moving about a little he had a good idea of the location of the area¡¯s center. That was where Target Three lurked, surely.
Taking one throwing knife into each hand, Hector crept closer to the mist, though not too close. The clouds were still moving after all, and he didn¡¯t want to end up inside them by accident. Then, crouching down, he leapt as hard as he could, shooting himself over a dozen meters straight upwards. Now airborne, it was a simple matter to spot the Observer close to where Hector had guessed. Standing in a pocket of clean air, the elderly man was surrounded by three guards looking about for any potential threats.
The guard closest to Hector spotted Hector¡¯s ascendance just as the Earthling reached the peak of his jump, and by that time it was too late. Hector whipped his arms forward with all his considerable might and two knives plummeted down towards Target Three at speeds that approached that of a bullet. The guard was barely able to shout before one of the blades stabbed deep into the elder¡¯s heart. Three down.
The central division of the Gustilian army let out the loudest cheer yet as the clouds slowly dissipated, revealing a dead old man and three other soldiers quickly retreating as soon as the acid was out of their path. Hector held his sword aloft in triumph, looking around at the battlefield. Though greatly outnumbered, the average Gustilian soldier was superior to the average Ubran. Well-trained and drilled, the defending forces still mostly held. The same could be said for the left and right divisions. Given time, the Gustilians and Eterians would tire and fall, but all they had to do was hold out long enough for somebody to break the Ubrans¡¯ spirits. Somebody like him.
Just as he was about to get back to killing, a loud, low horn blast echoed across the valley. Hector looked up towards the ridge on the Ubran side to find a lone figure heading towards the battle. To his surprise, he realized that they weren¡¯t just heading towards the crowd, but they were heading directly for him. He smiled. Had the Ubrans been holding back?
The Empire¡¯s forces parted like the sea, allowing the person an unobstructed path. Hector studied the figure as they approached, and was not impressed. A small woman, barely one and a half meters tall, strode towards him, a look of unease on her round, flat face. Thin, unkempt black hair fell limply onto the shoulders of her squat, unflattering body clad in leather armor. She looked to be in her late twenties, though Hector wasn¡¯t as confident as he normally would be on account of her bland features. A four, at best. What caught his eye, however, was the sword she carried. Two meters long and wider than the woman¡¯s torso, the massive blade looked to be made of some sort of shiny, pitch black crystal that glinted ominously in the sunlight. Hector immediately knew he needed that sword in his hands.
The woman stopped several meters from Hector. The nearby Gustilian soldiers stayed back, focusing on other enemies and leaving the woman to Hector out of respect. The woman coughed. ¡°You... are you from Earth too?¡± she asked, her voice unsure.
Hector rocked back. He had not expected such a question. More than that, he hadn¡¯t expected to hear it in Spanish! Looking closer, he saw it. With her tanned skin, black hair, her language... if he had to guess, he¡¯d say she was from somewhere in Central America.
¡°What if I am?¡± he replied.
The woman¡¯s eyes widened at his answer and she began to tremble. ¡°I¡¯m Gabriela! Please, come join me!¡± she cried, a wild hope in her eyes. ¡°The Empire knows how to send us home! All we have to do is get the energy to send us back and we can leave this place!¡±
¡°Leave this place?¡± Hector repeated with a mocking laugh. ¡°Bitch, are you crazy? Why would I ever want to leave this place? Coming here is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me! On Earth I was a nobody. Here, I¡¯m a celebrity! A hero!¡±
This time it was the woman¡¯s turn to rock back in shock. ¡°N-no! Please, I need to get back as quickly as possible! I need your help!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t give a fuck about what you need,¡± Hector snarled. Putting his new sword onto his back, he pulled out his warhammer and hefted it in front of him. ¡°You deal with your own problems, woman. Now are we going to do this or not?¡±
Gabriela swallowed and lifted her sword into a basic stance. ¡°Please, we don¡¯t have to-¡±
¡°Shut up, hag!¡± Hector shouted as he launched himself at the meek woman. As soon as he got within range, he swung his hammer towards her head. She blocked the attack with her massive sword, and to his surprise the force of his blow didn¡¯t even stagger her. Her strength seemed to be considerable. Her reactions were good as well. Was she as strong as him? She couldn¡¯t be. Not with a body like hers.
¡°I don¡¯t want to fight you!¡± Gabriela cried. ¡°We can work together!¡± Hesitation in her eyes, she struck at him with her sword, sending the blade carving through the air with a speed equal to Hector¡¯s best. Not even Hector¡¯s incredible reflexes could react to such a blow if he were caught unprepared, but he easily ducked beneath it. The woman had the form of somebody who¡¯d never touched a sword until just half a year ago. He could read her every action like an open book. There was no way she¡¯d be able to touch him like this.
¡°I don¡¯t work with dogs,¡± Hector replied, sending a knife hurtling towards her right leg like a gunshot. Perhaps his insult shocked her. Perhaps it was just her inexperience. Whatever the reason, the woman barely moved in reaction and the knife buried itself into her knee. She cried out in pain as her leg started to give way and she staggered. Hector was ready. Stepping up beside her, he knocked her blade aside and slammed warhammer into her upper torso with his full power. The hammer¡¯s weighty head ripped straight through her leather armor and caved in her chest, pulverizing her ribs into powder and mashing the organs inside into a bloody pulp before throwing her body a good ten meters away. The crystal sword flew as well, landing two meters from the corpse of the former Earthling.
The Gustilians nearby cheered once more as another ¡°special¡± Ubran fell, though Hector didn¡¯t think her to be too special, really. Honestly he¡¯d put the other three he¡¯d fought above her. While she¡¯d been stronger than the others physically, her lack of skill was just too much of a detriment to her abilities. Still, he soaked in the cheers anyway, throwing his hands in the air and turning about to bask in the adulation from all directions. But then the cheering abruptly died off.
Confused, Hector looked back and couldn¡¯t believe what he saw. Gabriela was standing. What? How? He¡¯d destroyed her heart! Her lungs! A wide hole gaped in the middle of her armor, but beneath the leather and cloth Hector could see her unmarred flesh. She was whole again. Impossible!
Gritting his teeth, Hector charged the woman. In response, Gabriela ran over and picked up her sword, swinging it at him with gritted teeth. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the back of his mind that noticed that the hesitation in her eyes had disappeared. Whatever it was, it triggered alarm bells in Hector¡¯s head and he abandoned his charge at the last moment, throwing himself backwards with everything he had. It saved his life.
The crystal blade flashed through the space Hector would have been in with a speed and power beyond anything he¡¯d been prepared for. A thunderous crack rang out, echoing across the battlefield, and a force slammed into him, knocking him back a step. Once again, Hector couldn¡¯t believe what he was witnessing. This tiny woman had swung her massive sword with enough power to break the sound barrier! She¡¯d made a sonic boom!
Who the fuck was this woman? Not only had she healed an instantly fatal wound, she was even stronger than him to boot? Suddenly Hector¡¯s mind flashed back to his previous life, when he¡¯d been overshadowed by others who could run faster and jump higher, even though they didn¡¯t have an ounce of the skill he possessed. He ground his teeth in fury. No. Not this time. Never again.
But then Gabriela was in front of him, moving faster than he¡¯d ever moved. He threw himself back again and once more barely dodged her strike, the shock wave of the supersonic swing pushing him back even farther. Just as he regained his balance she was already almost on top of him, the blade crashing downward like a meteor. Hector jumped to his right and rolled as the sword struck the ground where he¡¯d just stood, the impact sending tremors through the earth.
As the small woman pulled her weapon from the soil, Hector took advantage of her momentary lapse to hurl a dagger at her head. At first he thought he¡¯d hit her, but Gabriela tilted her head aside when the blade¡¯s tip was just a centimeter from her face and it flew by without touching her.
What the fuck. What the FUCK! Hector fought to keep his wits about him, his thoughts dangerously close to breaking down. He was still alive. As terrifying as this woman was, she was still incredibly raw, her movements filled with wasted motion and tells. All that crazy speed, power, and reflexes meant nothing if she couldn¡¯t hit him. She fought in simple ways. Powerful, yes, but rudimentary. He was already starting to get a hang of her patterns. All he had to do was create an opening and kill her. Again. He had an idea of how he could make it permanent this time.
As Gabriela rushed him once more, Hector tossed one of his last two daggers up into the air towards a spot to her left and waited. She came at him in the same way as before, bringing her sword back to her side and sending it in a wide, horizontal arc. This time he was ready. Bracing himself for the shock wave, he spun himself to his right, bending and contorting to get his whole body beneath the sword. The blade rushed overhead, just a centimeter from his, but he emerged unscathed. Gritting his teeth, he continued his spin as the shock wave hit, planting his feet into the earth to avoid being pushed back.
Then the dagger fell back down, it¡¯s high arc taking it over Gabriela¡¯s sonic boom. Just as planned. His whole body still spinning, Hector twisted with all his might and used his momentum to swing his warhammer in a powerful arc right into the path of the falling knife. The hammer¡¯s face collided with the bottom of the dagger¡¯s hilt, driving the small blade directly at the side of his opponent¡¯s head at insane speeds. A grin split his face. She wasn¡¯t the only one who could make something move super fast.
Gabriela¡¯s reaction time was ludicrous, but even she could not avoid something moving so quickly so close to her. The knife slammed into the side of her neck, slicing through throat and severing her carotid artery on the way through before exiting the other side in a fountain of gore. The woman shuddered and shook, but Hector was not finished. Still spinning, he stepped closer and delivered a heavy blow to his enemy¡¯s skull. Though she tried to avoid it, Gabriela¡¯s heavily damaged neck muscles could only move her neck just enough to soften the blow, turning a strike that would have splattered her brain all over the ground into one that merely broke through her skull and left a three centimeter indentation in the side of her head.
The impact sent the small woman tumbling and she finally came to a stop a good six meters from Hector, her body chest-down on the ground and her head laying facing him. The Gustilians cheered again, but Hector did not join them in their celebration this time. He¡¯d hoped that by hitting her brain he could keep Gabriela down, but he couldn¡¯t help notice the determined fire in the supposedly dead woman¡¯s eyes and the fact that she still gripped her sword. Then he saw it ¡ª a strange red smoke that seemed to materialize out of nothing just centimeters from Gabriela¡¯s wounds and flow into them. To his horror, in just a second the woman¡¯s injuries filled in and disappeared.
She wouldn¡¯t die. What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to win? Could he run? No, if he ran from this fight his life would be as good as over anyway. He had to win. There were no other options. But how could he kill this woman?
A thought crossed his mind and he grabbed onto it, desperate for any solution ¡ª he needed to do more damage. There had to be a limit to what she could regenerate. Maybe instead of crushing and stabbing, he needed to cut. Maybe he needed to literally remove parts of her body until there was nothing left to heal. But to accomplish that, he¡¯d need the right tool. Tossing his hammer to the side, he pulled out his sword as a plan began to form.
Gabriela stood up once more, her face filled with pain and anger. She screamed her rage at him and surged forward even faster than before. Hector backed away as quickly as he could, but she wouldn¡¯t give him any breathing room. Her attacks came faster and harder and it took everything he had to keep himself in once piece as she steadily pushed him down the slope towards the center of the valley. Soldiers on both sides made way for the pair, their combat on hold. At some point in the previous round, the fighting had slowly ground to a halt as every man and woman in the valley stopped to watch in awe as the the two titans battled. It was as if they knew that this duel would determine the outcome of the engagement, as whichever one was left standing would then proceed to wreak havoc on the opposing side.
Hector dodged and weaved, rolled and tumbled, jumped and flipped, and did anything and everything else he could possibly do to keep himself away from Gabriela¡¯s supersonic blade. Not once did he try to parry her blows; he could feel for certain that his blade would never stand up to the strain. To his concern, part of his mind noted that her form was improving, little by little. She was getting better. He had to end this soon. He had a plan to end it, but it needed an opening. The problem was getting that opening.
A splash of water sounded from below as he took another step backwards. She¡¯d pushed him all the way down into the stream that ran through the center of the valley. An idea popped into his head. It was a huge gamble, for sure, but he couldn¡¯t think of any alternatives while so much of his concentration was currently being spent on playing keep away.
Hector jumped back into the middle of the stream. His opponent followed, a fire raging behind her eyes. Without hesitation she rushed forward again, striking out with furious energy. This time, instead of backing up again, he dodged to the side. The small woman turned and struck out again, and he maneuvered to the side again, staying just a hair¡¯s breadth away from her attacks. She growled in frustration and swung once more, this time starting from her lower right to her upper left. Hector bent himself out of the way as best he could, but he couldn¡¯t avoid the blade completely this time. He gritted his teeth as it sliced a long, thin cut about a centimeter deep into his side.
Gabriela¡¯s face lit up at the sight, but she didn¡¯t realize that Hector had let it happen. He could have dodged better, but it was important to his gamble that he take a hit here. One reason was that he wanted her overconfident. The other was that for this gamble, he needed to be in his current position so that she wouldn¡¯t move either, meaning he couldn¡¯t back up. As her blade continued it path upwards and past Hector¡¯s head, he pulled out his final knife, hurled it at the inside of Gabriela¡¯s right knee.
He needed her to try to dodge it. That was why he had chosen that knee ¡ª it was the one he¡¯d injured before, and the sight of another dagger heading for the same target might trigger a response that otherwise might not happen. He¡¯d thrown it towards the inner side of her knee in the hopes that she¡¯d move her leg outward to avoid it. A lot of small things needed to go right for this to work, and so he held his breath as the knife streaked towards Gabriela¡¯s leg.
The stream was fairly wide, perhaps four meters from side to side, but it was not deep ¡ª only a centimeter or two deep in most places. But not all places. To Hector¡¯s utter delight, as the dagger hurtled towards her knee, Gabriela moved her leg outwards... and right into a hole in the stream bed twenty centimeters deep. She stumbled and lost her balance.
Hector was ready. Quick as lightning, he closed in, his sword whipping out to sever the woman¡¯s arms just above the wrist. She cried out in pain as her sword fell, her hands losing their grip and falling from the hilt. But Hector did not stop there. Dropping his own sword, he spun behind his flailing enemy so that he was directly behind her and facing her back. Grabbing her shoulders with a mighty grip, he pulled her off her feet and began to fall backwards, bringing her down with him. Hector curled his legs up towards his chest so that his feet were placed on her lower back as she toppled backward above him. The moment that the disoriented woman was directly above him, he kicked his legs out, launching her high into the sky.
Gabriela screamed as she tumbled wildly through the air, but Hector ignored her for a moment. Quickly bending down, he scooped up her crystal sword and smiled as the feeling came rushing in. Oh, the things he¡¯d be able to do with this beauty.
The small woman had begun her descent now. Hector moved over a little, adjusting to her vector, and pulled the massive sword back. Then, as she came within range, he thrust the pitch black weapon upward, spearing Gabriela in the heart. The blade, wider than she, split her in two as blood and flesh rained down upon Hector. Gabriela¡¯s lower half fell behind him, while her upper body tumbled down to into the stream in front of him, the light in her eyes that he¡¯d seen before absent. She was finally gone.
Turning to the Gustilians, Hector stabbed the crystal sword point-first into the stream bed and flexed, unleashing a primal roar of triumph. He¡¯d done it. He¡¯d proven once and for all that he was the greatest warrior in all the lands. The Gustilian side exploded with cheers, while the Ubrans looked as if the life had been sucked from them.
Hector reveled in it all. This was his time. His moment of glory. Still, a part of his mind, far in the back, couldn¡¯t help but note that it was a shame his time of greatness came with his entire outfit stained with blood. He looked down at himself and grimaced. He sure was a mess. Nearly his entire torso was stained red. Bits of organs speckled him all over. He brushed a bit of flesh from his shoulder and rubbed his eye. Ugh. He was so covered in blood it was getting in his eyes, staining everything red. He blinked, but the tinge remained, almost as if the entire area was enveloped in a red... mist.
A pair of vice grips grabbed his ankles.
Hector fell, howling in agony. Pain coursed through him as he struggled to roll over on the slippery stream¡¯s bottom, but after a few moments he was able to get a better view of his legs. He paled at the sight. His feet were gone, his ankles squeezed into a red paste. The pain was nearly enough to overwhelm him, but he could not look away. And then he saw her.
Gabriela rose to her feet, her body whole once more, a look of unholy vengeance on her face. Her lower body now completely uncovered, she slowly, deliberately, stepped over to her sword, pulled it from the river, and raised it over her head.
He¡¯d never had a chance. He realized that now, as he stared into the woman¡¯s crimson eyes. Within them he saw only death. A demon. El Diablo.
The demon in human skin whispered something to herself and swung. The blade carved down through the air with gruesome finality, its arc unstoppable, its edge unavoidable. Hector¡¯s final thought, as death descended, was the realization he¡¯d been wrong. Talent won over skill in this world too. It just wasn¡¯t fair.
Chapter 41
¡°Mama! Up!¡±
Gabriela Carreno put her knife down beside the half-chopped onion and bent down to scoop up her beloved son. She grunted as she lifted the two-year-old up to eye level. ¡°You¡¯re getting heavy, Javier. You¡¯re Mommy¡¯s big boy now!¡± she said to the giggling toddler as she bounced him in her arms.
Carrying him against her shoulder, she walked over to the nearby table, grabbed the cheap plastic toy truck that was sitting idle on the table top, and set Javier down in the corner next to a crib. ¡°Here, play with your truck for a while. Mama has to cook.¡±
Before she turned back around, Gabriela took a moment to glance into the crib. Inside, Anahi slept soundly. She smiled at the sight of her precious daughter. Only six months old, the baby still slept a lot, which was good. Gabriela didn¡¯t know what she was going to do once they were both able to walk around at once.
Turning back towards the kitchen counter, Gabriela walked the six steps it took to go from one side of the room to the other, weaving around the table and the wheeled cart where a small television rested. Even with just her and her two children, the room felt cramped and crowded, but it couldn¡¯t be helped. Her tiny apartment only had two rooms, after all, their bedroom being the other, so this space served as the kitchen, the dining room, and the living room all in one.
She sighed. This place was already too small for them, and it would only get worse as her babies grew. But there was only so much that she, a single mother, could afford. So much of her income already went to pay Maria, the kindly elderly lady next door, to take care of them while she worked her two jobs, one cleaning office buildings and the other at a warehouse.
Every day she would come home from her jobs, collect her children from Maria, cook dinner and the next day¡¯s breakfast and lunch all together, and spend a few hours with her children before passing out. Then she''d get up the next morning and do it all over again. The strain of caring for her babies on her own with her low income pressed down on her daily, but she refused to buckle under the pressure. She was determined to give her children the life she¡¯d never been lucky enough to have: a life of love.
Gabriela had never met her parents. Left at an orphanage here in Mexico City just days after her birth, she¡¯d never known the feeling of family growing up. Sure, the adults at the orphanage had tried their best to fill that void, but nothing really could. Every night she¡¯d fallen asleep to the sound of the sobs of a child who knew they were alone but didn¡¯t know why. Sometimes those sobs had been her own.
Life had remained tough even after leaving the orphanage. Her lack of a family meant that she had basically nobody to lean on, be it for money, friends, or companionship. Through her strong work ethic she¡¯d landed herself a job that provided a modest but steady living, but even at work she was alone. In part due to her upbringing leaving her with little in common with others and in part because she wasn¡¯t the prettiest girl around, friends and relationships were hard to come by and rarely seemed to last. Then, one day four years ago, she¡¯d run into Juan again.
Like her, Juan had been a child at the orphanage, though he¡¯d been a few years older so they hadn¡¯t interacted as much. She¡¯d been shocked to find that he had been going through many of the same issues she¡¯d been dealing with. Perhaps as a side-effect of the isolation in her life, she¡¯d always thought her problems were hers and hers alone, impossible for others to understand. Juan had shown her just how wrong she¡¯d been.
It had started as a chance meeting in a bar. They¡¯d chatted about this and that, catching up on things after ten years of separation. But what began as two lonely people clinging to each other for a momentary reprieve from their involuntary solitude had grown into something more. They¡¯d decided to meet again to chat. Soon, those chats turned into dates, and then those dates had become something serious. Very serious.
Gabriela had heard other women say that the day they¡¯d gotten married was the happiest day of their lives. She didn¡¯t understand that. For her, it was the day Juan had proposed, the day when that loneliness had finally disappeared. Everything after that had just been a formality to recognize the feelings created that day.
Together, she and Juan had started a family. Both of them had vowed to each other to create the family they¡¯d always dreamed of having as children. But then, a year ago, as she was three months pregnant with their second child, her husband had died in an accident caused by a drunk driver and everything had nearly fallen apart.
But things were different this time. Juan was gone, but the product of their love was not. She had vowed to create a family of warmth and love, and her husband¡¯s death did not free her of that commitment. No, it only strengthened it. Now she was all that stood between them and a childhood like hers. Javier and Anahi needed her more than ever. She needed them even more. It didn¡¯t matter if she had to work three jobs, or never sleep, or go hungry so her kids could eat. She didn¡¯t care if she had to grind her body into dust, she would do whatever it took to see her children grow up healthy, happy, and loved.
She let out a tired groan as she stretched out her weary muscles before getting back to chopping. At least tomorrow was Sunday. She only had to work one job on Sunday. Of course, there was mass as well.
Back at the orphanage, faith in God, specifically the Catholic variety, had been fundamental to growing up. Even after leaving the place, her belief in the Christ remained strong. In fact, at some points in her life, it had been the only thing keeping her going. She found comfort in it, in the idea that she was loved in Heaven even if she was alone on Earth. It calmed her soul to know that Juan was looking down at her, watching her. She knew he was proud of her and what she¡¯d done in the year since his death.
A soft wail broke Gabriela from her thoughts. Anahi was awake and hungry. She needed to get-
A sudden pain, unlike anything she¡¯d felt before, enveloped her very being and she let out a scream of agony. The knife dropped from her hand as her vision blurred. She felt something grab a hold of her soul and pull... and then she was somewhere else and everything was so much worse. Existence was pain, a trillion red-hot pokers stabbing into each and every cell in her body. Her vision swam with strange, unintelligible sights, where everything seemed wrong and the very act of being felt like a crime against nature. Was this Hell?
Then, as suddenly as it started, it was gone again. Gabriela¡¯s body slammed against something cold and hard, forcing a gasp of pain from her lips. Slowly she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, her vision clearing. She froze. Her palms weren¡¯t resting on the old, faded tiles of her kitchen floor. Instead, they pressed against smooth, grey stone. Her mind spun, unable to come to grips with this strange happening.
¡°The Champion has arrived! All hail the Champion!¡± called out a commanding voice somewhere off to her right.
¡°Hail!¡± cried a chorus of other voices.
Gabriela¡¯s head turned towards the voices and she froze, a scream caught in her throat. A good twenty people stood before her in several rows, all of them dressed in strange robes and bowing towards her. Behind them stood a solitary man, dressed in finer, more colorful robes and wearing a large amount of jewelry and an elaborate crown covered in jewels. He was bowing as well, though not as much.
They were all in a weird stone room ringed in metal machines she couldn¡¯t recognize comprised of cables, crystals, and pieces of metal in bizarre abstract shapes that looked like some form of bad modern art. Light from glowing crystals shone down from above, reflecting off the metal and crystal below. A stairway led upwards from the other end of the room.
After a split second of bewilderment, instinct kicked in and Gabriela scrambled to her feet, backing away from these strange people ¡ª these unknown kidnappers. That was what had happened. She didn¡¯t know how, but somehow this weird cult had kidnapped her, stolen her away from her-
Her children.
Desperately she looked around, hoping beyond hope, but nobody else other than the robed strangers could be seen in the wide open room. They weren¡¯t here. Her children weren¡¯t here.
¡°Take me back!¡± Gabriela hollered in panic at her kidnappers. ¡°I need to go back! Take me back!¡±
One of the robed men approached her, a soft smile on his handsome face. ¡°Please calm yourself, Champion,¡± he began. ¡°I am-¡±
¡°My babies!¡± Gabriela cried. She reached forward with both hands, grabbing the man¡¯s shoulders and squeezing with panicked strength. ¡°Take me back to my babies!¡±
Gabriela¡¯s fingers went through the man¡¯s flesh and bone as if his body were made of half-melted butter, her hands balling into fists due to the unexpected lack of resistance. His arms, now only connected to his torso by a few cords of muscle and skin, swung limply. Fountains of blood squirted out from the bloody pulp that had been his shoulders just a moment ago.
The man screamed. Gabriela looked at the crimson mash in her hands and screamed. Quickly the chamber filled with the sound of the assembly''s horrified cries as blood pooled on the stone floor below.
Something inside Gabriela snapped. She ran. She ran through the crowd, past the man the back, and up the stairs, running faster than she¡¯d ever run before. She ran down hallways and up stairs, dodging frightened and confused people as she went. She ran and ran, following no predetermined path other than to keep going up and away until she couldn¡¯t anymore.
Her flight ended in a room at the end of a hallway. Looking about, she saw some brooms, some buckets, and something that seemed like some sort of rudimentary mop. If things were different she would have laughed at the sight ¡ª she¡¯d seen enough janitor¡¯s closets in her life as a cleaner to realize where she¡¯d ended up. Instead, she focused on the complete lack of other exits. The only way out of the storage room was the door from whence she¡¯d come and a window.
Approaching the window, she looked out and her mind went numb as the sight before her eyes threatening to break her apart. Outside the window stood a city. A huge, gigantic city unlike anything she¡¯d ever seen. Strange stone buildings covered the land as far as her eyes could see, lining streets filled with people dressed in bizarre fashion, some leading animals that shouldn¡¯t exist. Then there were the monuments ¡ª giant stone statues towering dozens of meters high, each of a different imposing figure striking a regal pose. Dozens of them sprouted up from the city, as if watching over its inhabitants, or more likely demanding their awe and worship.
This wasn¡¯t Earth.
Gabriela¡¯s world came crashing down around her. Her body began to shake and she fell against the wall, tears streaming down her face. All alone in a foreign land, she felt like she was drowning as an overwhelming helplessness dragged her deeper and deeper into depths of despair.
Her children were gone.
The sound of several different people slowly walking down the hallway brought Gabriela back to reality. How long had it been? She wasn¡¯t sure. She couldn¡¯t see the sun from the window, though the sky had begun to tint orange.
Backing away from the door, she cowered behind a stack of buckets. It did little to hide her, but there wasn¡¯t much to work with inside the room. Her mind raced as she tried to think of what she could do in this situation.
A voice said something that she could not make out and all the footsteps halted, save one. That person continued to approach until they were just outside the open door and then stopped.
¡°I am coming in,¡± a clear, calm male voice stated. ¡°I mean you no harm, and merely wish to talk.¡±
Gabriela didn¡¯t say a word as she remained in her hiding place.
After a moment of silence, the man crossed through the doorway. The colorful glint of gold and gemstones caught Gabriela¡¯s eyes as a crown glistened in the early evening light. The crown sat on a balding head lined with grey hair around a long face with a pointed chin and regal beard. He was the man who¡¯d been in the back of the crowd when she¡¯d first appeared.
The man entered the room as if he were merely taking an evening stroll, unbothered by anything. He stopped several steps from the doorway and looked about, spotting her in an instant. She squirmed as he inspected her, his eyes seeming to soak in every possible detail no matter how small.
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She studied him in return, noting the fine craftsmanship and ornate decorations of his clothes. He seemed to be in his fifties, perhaps, his body of average height but somewhat on the thin side. His hands grasped a large, thick book, a metal chain emerging from the bottom of the spine and running up into his robes. He¡¯d been holding that book back then too, she realized, but she¡¯d been too off balance to really notice until now.
¡°I greet you, Champion, and come in the name of peace,¡± he said, his voice clear and polite. He bowed to her again, this time deeper than before. ¡°I am Emperor Haidar Batra, ruler of Ubrus, the land which you see before you. May I have the honor of knowing your name?¡±
¡°Why? Why did you take me?¡± Gabriela pleaded, her voice weak. ¡°Please, just send me home. I need to go home!¡±
The Emperor gazed at her wretched form for a moment before speaking again. ¡°Champion, I give you my humblest apologies. Anyone with eyes could see how much you are in distress, but it seems that there has been a great deal of confusion. Your arrival was not brought about by our hands.¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°May I approach?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°I merely wish to show you something, if you will permit me.¡±
¡°Why are you aski-¡± The image of that other man flashed before her eyes, his face contorted in pain as he writhed on the ground, blood spurting out of two large holes where his shoulder blades used to be. She took a look at her hands and found them stained red with dried blood. ¡°Is... is he going to be alright?¡±
Emperor Batra frowned. ¡°He will likely not survive the night. Even if he does, he will live the rest of his life without arms. A sad fate for a promising young man.¡±
Gabriela felt her legs losing strength and she slowly sank down to the floor. She¡¯d killed somebody. Not intentionally, but the result was the same. She was a murderer now.
¡°I will provide for his family, do not worry. They will not suffer no matter the outcome. Now please, if you would, I will explain the truth about all of this. I know that you are frightened and confused, and I only wish to help.¡±
Gabriela nodded, slowly, her mind still churning over the implications of her unintended actions. Now that she¡¯d recalled those horrid events down below, she couldn¡¯t seem to shut them off. Her guilt grew. She felt as if she would vomit any moment now.
The Emperor walked back to the doorway and closed the door before walking around the buckets to stand before her. With a weary sigh, Emperor Batra sat down beside her. ¡°What I am about to show you is the greatest secret of the Imperial family. Nobody but the Emperor is allowed to read it, but we will overlook that in this case because of the unique nature of this situation.¡± He opened the book. ¡°This is The Compass. Each ruler of Ubrus, before their passing, leaves behind their wisdom within, allowing them to aid their successors and pass down their most important knowledge.¡± He turned to the first page, revealing a page filled with angular text that Gabriela couldn¡¯t understand. ¡°These pages at the start are the words of the First Emperor, the founder of this country. His words are holy and it is every Emperor¡¯s duty to follow his teachings to his best ability.¡±
Turning the page several times, the Emperor stopped at a page filled with drawings. Gabriela caught her breath as she recognized the pictures as depictions of the strange machine in the stone room.
¡°The ruins below are older than almost anything that we know. Far older than the Empire, that is to be sure. When the First Emperor died, he left behind his greatest commandment, and a prophecy. He built this palace atop the ruins to hide them and protect them, and instructed future Emperors to guard them and keep watch, saying that one day the ruins would awaken and bring forth a Champion chosen by the spirits to bring salvation. And so, for many centuries, we have watched, and waited, but the ruins remained silent. But that changed yesterday, when the devices within that room began to glow for the first time. And so, with great joy, we prepared to welcome the Champion of prophecy. And then you arrived.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, I can¡¯t be your Champion,¡± Gabriela said. ¡°I have to get back to my children. They need me.¡±
¡°It pains me to know that you are suffering so,¡± the emperor replied, ¡°but unfortunately I am unable to return you to your home. Not even the First understood the magic by which these machines operate, and none have dared to try to find out, lest some fool accidentally break them and disrupt the prophecy.¡±
Gabriela began to hyperventilate as the man¡¯s words hit home. ¡°No, please, no...¡± she sobbed, tears staining her cheeks once more.
¡°Please, calm yourself,¡± Emperor Batra said, placing a comforting hand upon her shoulder. ¡°Given time, my scholars may be able to find a way to return you to your family. Now that the prophecy has been fulfilled, there is no need to keep them away from the ruins any longer.¡±
A sudden hope sprang up within her at his words. ¡°Y-you would do that for me? But what about being a Champion?¡±
¡°We can discuss that another time,¡± he chuckled. ¡°The thing is, we do not actually need a Champion at the moment. Ubrus is stronger than it has ever been. My people live in happiness, their stomachs full and their minds at ease. I¡¯m sure there are many tasks for which you would excel, but as to why the spirits sent you to us now I cannot guess.¡±
Gabriela didn¡¯t know what to think anymore. Stolen from her children by an ancient machine to be a Champion for people who didn¡¯t need one? She would have laughed at the absurdity if it weren¡¯t her in the middle of it all.
Emperor Batra rose back up to his feet with a groan. ¡°Every day these old bones get wearier,¡± he muttered. He extended her a hand. ¡°I¡¯ll ask again, would you permit me the honor of knowing your name?¡±
¡°Gabriela Carreno,¡± she replied, taking his hand.
¡°Come, Gabriela, let us leave this dreary room before my guard breaks the door down in worry.¡±
Her mind still spinning from all these revelations, Gabriela staggered to her feet and numbly followed. They exited the storage room into the hallway as two people, one man and one woman, approached. Gabriela took an involuntary step back at the sight of the pair.
¡°This is Taras, my bodyguard,¡± Emperor Batra said with a wave towards the man. The bodyguard towered over the others in the hallway, standing at least two meters high. His body rippled with muscle and two large swords were strapped to his back in the shape of the ¡®X¡¯. Gabriela couldn¡¯t help but notice the man¡¯s milky eyes that stared straight ahead without focusing on anything. Was he blind? Cataracts, perhaps?
¡°And this is Chitra, one of the Batranala,¡± the Emperor continued. ¡°I have assigned her to serve you for the duration of your stay.¡±
The woman who stood to the bodyguard¡¯s side was the most beautiful woman that Gabriela had ever seen. Standing a head taller than Gabriela, the woman smiled a welcoming smile with her perfect lips, her gorgeous emerald eyes radiating warmth. Perhaps in her mid twenties, woman bowed, giving Gabriela a better view of her silky amber hair against her alabaster skin.
¡°It is the greatest honor to serve you, Champion. Please rely on me for anything you might require.¡±
¡°Chitra, show our guest to her room. She is very tired.¡±
¡°As His Eminence desires. Please come with me, Champion.¡±
In a daze, Gabriela followed the resplendent woman as she walked with sure steps down a maze of halls and hallways. Many others passed by in both directions. Some glanced at Chitra with a tinge of fear. Others glanced at Gabriela with curiosity or disdain. All gave the two of them a wide berth.
It only took Gabriela five minutes to feel completely lost. She knew they were going somewhere high, higher than the storage room at least, but past that she had no idea. She did notice, however, that the number of people in the halls kept dropping. After what felt like half an hour of walking, they entered a hallway completely devoid of other people. It was quiet here, the hallway gloomy in the soft light of the evening. Unlike the hallway she¡¯d ended up in before, this one had no doors anywhere along it except all the way at the end.
¡°These are the best guest chambers in the palace,¡± Chitra said, breaking the silence. ¡°I hope they will not disappoint. I¡¯m sure someone as great as yourself has high standards.¡± She opened the door and ushered Gabriela inside.
Gabriela froze in the doorway, staring at her room and the opulence within. Elegant furniture, polished to a shine, filled the room. Plush chairs and sofas covered in furs, tables and dressers carved with incredibly delicate decoration, one of those massive beds that had their own curtains... any single one of them likely would cost more money than she¡¯d made in her lifetime. And they were everywhere.
¡°Is it not to your liking?¡± Chitra asked with trepidation in her voice.
¡°N-no! It¡¯s amazing!¡±
¡°Oh, good! It is important that the Champion get only the best after all. Please, go in and I will show you all the rooms.¡±
There were more?! Gabriela followed Chitra about in a haze as she gave a quick tour of the chambers. Indeed, there were more. Many more. The largest bathroom that Gabriela had ever seen. A ¡°study¡± filled with books, with a fireplace fully stocked with firewood. A balcony that overlooked the city, offering a much grander view than the small window in the storage closet. Gabriela had trouble coming to grips with this level of wealth. She felt like she was defiling it with her very presence.
¡°That is everything, Champion. If you need anything, please let me know immediately and I will take care of it.¡±
¡°T-thanks,¡± Gabriela stammered. Seeing Chitra turn towards the door, she herself turned back towards the bed on the other side of the room. Sitting down on the soft mattress, she stroked the smooth covering and wondered at the size of it all. The bed was so large that it was bigger than her entire bedroom at home!
Home.
For the past while, she¡¯d been so distracted by all the new sights and people that she¡¯d been able to forget, however momentarily, the tragedy that was her situation. But now there was nothing keeping those thoughts at bay, and they rushed back with a vengeance. Javier¡¯s smile when he laughed, so bright it could light up a room. Anahi¡¯s adorable face as she slept. She began to shake again as memories of her children flooded her mind.
They were still back in her apartment in Mexico City, with nobody to care for them, while here she was, surrounded by luxury. The thought made her retch. How would they survive, with nobody to care for them? Would anybody even find them, or would they starve to death, alone and unloved? She collapsed onto the bed and wailed into the soft pillows.
¡°What¡¯s wrong? Champion, are you alright?¡±
Gabriela jumped at the voice. Chitra stood beside her, staring down, concern radiating from her eyes.
¡°W-why are y-you here?¡± Gabriela stammered.
¡°You did not dismiss me, so I waited by the door, as is proper.¡±
¡°Then you¡¯re dismissed!¡± Gabriela sobbed. ¡°Go away!¡±
Chitra sat down next to her on the wide bed. ¡°Is that what you truly desire? Do you really want to be alone?¡± she asked softly.
¡°Yes! I- I- NO!¡± Gabriela choked out. ¡°I want to be back with my babies! I need to be back with my babies!¡±
Caring hands pulled Gabriela up into a soft, motherly embrace. ¡°Tell me what¡¯s wrong,¡± Chitra said, slowly stroking Gabriela¡¯s matted hair. ¡°Tell me everything.¡±
The dam burst. Gabriela cried and sobbed and wailed, and through it all she told her everything, about her children, her life, her love. Chitra held her lovingly and listened to it all, her hand still delicately caressing the weeping mother¡¯s head.
¡°I¡¯m all alone,¡± Gabriela whimpered, her tale finally finished, her tears still falling.
¡°You are not alone,¡± Chitra responded firmly. ¡°I am here. I am with you. I will always be with you, as long as you need me. So please, know that you are not alone.¡±
Gabriela began to bawl, clutching at her companion like a drowning sailor to a life preserver. Chitra kept hugging the smaller woman, still petting the miserable woman as she trembled against her shoulder.
¡°That¡¯s right. Let it out. Your fears, your pain, your sorrow. Let it all out. I will take it all for you, so that you may finally rest.¡±
And so she did. Gabriela cried and cried, emptying her soul until there was nothing left inside of her. Only then did she finally fall asleep, still in Chitra¡¯s gentle grasp.
Chapter 42
Soft, warm light filtering through her eyelids melded with the musical chirping of birds off in the distance to pull Gabriela Carreno back into wakefulness. She let out a relaxed, sleepy hum. She felt better than she¡¯d felt in as long as she could remember. A pleasant scent wafted into her nostrils. Some sort of flower. Lavender? No, it wasn¡¯t that. Where was the smell coming from? She shifted her head. Why did her pillow feel weird?
Memories came flooding back and Gabriela¡¯s eyes shot open. Pushing herself up in a panic, she turned back to find Chitra sitting on the bed beside her, a quiet smile on her immaculate face.
¡°Good morning, Champion,¡± the woman said.
¡°W-what are you doing here?¡± Gabriela stuttered.
¡°You fell asleep on my lap and I didn¡¯t want to wake you.¡±
¡°You stayed there all night?¡± asked a mortified Gabriela. ¡°Did you even sleep?¡±
Chitra giggled. ¡°Please do not worry. I had plenty of time to rest given how long you slumbered. It is already past midday. You must have been very tired.¡±
Gabriela hung her head, embarrassed, as she recalled the events of the previous night. ¡°Why... are you being so nice to me?¡± she asked timidly.
Chitra¡¯s head tilted to the side. ¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°Well... I¡¯m not used to people being...¡± she stammered, her gaze still pointed towards her own lap where her hands clutched her pants in anxiety, ¡°like... what you did... ummm... especially pretty people because I¡¯m not pretty... and you... I mean... you¡¯re... you¡¯re so beautiful and-¡±
¡°I am incredibly beautiful,¡± Chitra agreed, nodding matter-of-factly. ¡°That¡¯s to be expected.¡±
The rest of the Gabriela¡¯s bumbling explanation died in her throat and she just stared at the other woman. Chitra brought up her hand up to cover her mouth as if she¡¯d just committed a terrible faux pas. ¡°Oh, of course. How rude of me to forget your circumstances.¡±
The woman stood up beside the bed in a single smooth motion. There was a grace to every one of Chitra¡¯s movements, as if she breathed elegance. ¡°Let us start with the basics. My name is Chitra Batranala. I am a Batranala, one of thirty in the palace. Only the most beautiful women in the Empire are selected to be Batranala. So it would follow that I must also be beautiful, or I would not be here at all.¡±
¡°So being a ¡®Batranala¡¯ is your job? Do people here take their last name based on their job?¡±
¡°Not normally, no. We are a special case. The name ¡®Batranala¡¯ literally means ¡®claimed by Batra¡¯, which is the Emperor¡¯s lineage. When you are chosen to become a Batranala and serve the Emperor, your surname is replaced with ¡®Batranala¡¯ as a way of telling others that you are now no longer eligible for marriage or courtship.¡±
¡°So you¡¯re a bunch of... umm... trophy wives?¡±
¡°Trophy wives? I¡¯m not familiar with the term.¡±
¡°Beautiful women that men of power marry to show off as status symbols.¡±
¡°I see! What an interesting phrase. I like it,¡± Chitra said with a laugh. She shook her head. ¡°But no, we are not married to His Highness. In fact, Empress Nesta, during her reign seven centuries prior, created the tradition that the ruler of the Empire is forbidden to even covet us.¡± She giggled. ¡°I suspect it was to protect us from jealous Imperial spouses. I dare say it may be the only thing protecting us from Empress Shanti¡¯s ire today.¡±
¡°Then what do you do all day?¡±
¡°Oh, a Batranala has many responsibilities. We are in charge of most of the day-to-day operation of the palace, entertain guests when the Emperor is occupied, and many other important tasks. It takes years of training to be a Batranala.¡±
Gabriela didn¡¯t feel all too convinced about any of this. Thirty of the most gorgeous women in the country, forbidden from forming marital relationships? Even if the Emperor didn¡¯t have sex with them, they were still basically removed from normal society, dolls to be looked at but never touched. It felt like a massive power play by the Emperor, taking away these women just to make them into glorified servants, a reminder that what would be treasured by others was nothing special to somebody with his power.
¡°Are you okay with being a Batranala?¡± she asked the other woman hesitantly.
¡°Of course! Why wouldn¡¯t I be?¡± she answered with pride, holding her head high. ¡°To be a Batranala is one of the greatest honors in the world.¡±
Gabriela decided to drop the subject. Regardless of Chitra¡¯s thoughts, it still made her feel uncomfortable. She clambered off the bed just as a loud gurgle echoed off the walls.
¡°Oh my!¡± Chitra gasped. ¡°My apologies, Champion! You must be starving!¡±
Gabriela grimaced. ¡°Please stop calling me that.¡±
¡°But you¡¯re the Champion! It would not be proper!¡±
¡°My name is Gabriela Carreno. Please just call me Gabriela.¡±
¡°Oh my, such an exotic and interesting name! Gabareala... Gabreela?¡± Chitra frowned. ¡°It¡¯s surprisingly difficult to say.¡±
¡°Just Gabby then. That works too.¡±
¡°Are you sure?¡±
¡°Every time you call me ¡®Champion¡¯ it bothers me.¡±
¡°If you insist, Gabby.¡±
¡°Thank you.¡±
¡°Of course!¡± She smiled her pretty smile again. ¡°Bringing you comfort is why I¡¯m here, after all. Now how about we change your clothes and go for a meal?¡±
¡°Okay...¡±
Chitra grabbed her hand and led Gabby to a nearby dresser, opening it up to reveal a rainbow of color inside. ¡°I apologize, but I had little time after your arrival to arrange for everything and only a description of your general size, so your wardrobe may not fit perfectly.¡±
Turning back to Gabby, she grabbed the bottom of Gabby¡¯s cheap cotton shirt, rubbing her fingers along the fabric. ¡°This material... it¡¯s so nice! And down here as well!¡± She squatted down, eying Gabby¡¯s worn denim jeans with awe. ¡°What does this do?¡± she asked, grabbing hold of the zipper and pulling. ¡°Oh, how brilliant!¡±
Gabriela let out a squawk of protest as Chitra unzipped her fly, unbuttoned the top button, and pulled down her pants. ¡°Hey, stop! What are you doing?¡±
¡°Dressing you, of course.¡± Chitra replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
¡°I¡¯m not a child, I can do it myself!¡± came Gabby¡¯s indignant reply.
¡°Champi- Gabby, only commoners dress themselves.¡±
¡°I am a commoner!¡± She pulled her pants back up and held them in place with her hands.
¡°Don¡¯t be silly, you are the Champion. You have a title, given to you by His Imperial Majesty himself. Now hold still.¡± Without waiting for an answer, Chitra proceeded to strip a defeated Gabriela of her Earth clothes and dress her up in an ornate green outfit. Gabby wasn¡¯t a big fan of her new clothing. The pants were too baggy and loose and the tunic, or whatever it was, had too many extra bits of fabric hanging off that would flap and flutter as she moved. Chitra ignored her protests, simply telling her that the outfit was in fashion and that it looked great on her. Gabby didn¡¯t believe a word of it. She felt like an idiot.
Guiding her charge down the maze of hallways, Chitra deposited an uncomfortable Gabriela inside a lavishly appointed room featuring a large table in the center and told her to wait while she brought the food. The sudden quiet felt unnerving. Chitra had kept up a torrent of chatter even since Gabby had awoken, keeping Gabby¡¯s mind too busy and distracted to start pondering the horror of her circumstances again. But as she sat in an ornate chair and stared at her reflection in the polished wood of the table top, Gabby couldn¡¯t help but begin to spiral downward once more.
Everything was wrong. She shouldn¡¯t be here, surrounded by luxury, while her children suffered. Had they been found? Were they even alright? The ambiguity was the hardest part of all of this. It was so much worse to not know. Her emotions churned as hope and grief warred within her soul, neither able to overcome the other. She felt like she was going to fall apart at any moment. Tears began to stain the table.
Why her? Gabriela¡¯s mind kept coming back to the question. She¡¯d grown up being taught that God had a plan for everybody. That knowledge had helped her keep going after Juan¡¯s passing. But this... this was beyond her ability to understand. Did God want her children to suffer? Was that His plan? Or was her removal from their lives His way of saying that she wasn¡¯t good enough? That she didn¡¯t deserve them? She¡¯d always been a loving mother and a devout Catholic. What had she done to deserve this? What had her children done?
The thought crossed her mind that perhaps the answer to those last questions was ¡°nothing¡±. Did the Lord even exist in a different world? Surely He must; He was God. But still, this revelation had shaken her beliefs more than she wanted to admit. There was never any mention of other realms like this in the Bible, unless this were Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, and for some reason she was sure this place was none of those. Was the Bible wrong? Was everything she believed in a lie? She shied away from the question. The mere suggestion was already too much for her.
Before Gabby knew it she was having trouble breathing, her breaths coming quick and shallow. Her hands began to shake and her head pounded with every beat of her heart. A crippling nausea formed in her gut, doubling her over in her chair.
Chitra entered the room, arms burdened with a large tray covered by bowls and plates, to find Gabriela on the verge of another meltdown. Quickly placing the platter on the table, she rushed over to the downward-spiraling mother and hugged her close, whispering soothing words into her ear, telling her that everything was going to be alright. Gradually Gabriela¡¯s breathing slowed.
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Gabby mumbled.
¡°No, don¡¯t be ashamed. You¡¯re going through a lot of pain. It¡¯s only natural. That¡¯s why I said I would be here for you. You don¡¯t have to bear this on your own.¡±
¡°Thank you,¡± Gabby sniffed.
¡°Come now, let¡¯s eat. I¡¯m sure there¡¯s something here you will enjoy.¡±
Gabriela sat with Chitra and ate for the first time in what felt like a century. The selection was vast and everything tasted incredible, but she was far too deep in her own problems to really notice.
Three days later, Gabriela sat on the edge of her bed, drying off after a bath. The last three days had gone by in a flash, which was surely all according to Chitra¡¯s plan. The gorgeous servant dragged her all about the castle and beyond giving her tours of everything there was to see and keeping her mind off of her terrible situation at all possible times. Even that was not enough however, especially at night when the pain of her loss would threaten to overwhelm her. But Chitra kept her vow, staying with the tortured mother through thick and thin. Every night, Gabriela would cry herself to sleep on Chitra¡¯s lap and the servant never once complained.
¡°Chitra, can you explain something to me?¡± Gabriela asked as the servant ran a comb through her hair.
¡°Of course.¡±
¡°The way the Emperor described it, me coming here and becoming the Champion was a secret that only he and the other Emperors knew would happen. But you and everybody else I¡¯ve met act like you¡¯ve heard of it before.¡±
¡°Oh, there have been other Champions,¡± Chitra replied. ¡°There just haven¡¯t been any from other worlds. The Champion is named by the Emperor and there can only be one at any time. It is perhaps the most revered position in the Empire. Everybody knows of the Champion. In fact, we had a Champion as recently as about twelve years ago. He spearheaded the conquest of Ofrax.¡±
¡°Then what¡¯s so special about me?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure, but the Emperor believes you to be worthy for a reason so there must be something.¡±
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation. Chitra answered the door and had a short, soft conversation that Gabby couldn¡¯t make out before returning, a hint of concern in her eyes.
¡°Let us get you dressed,¡± she said. ¡°The Emperor has summoned you.¡±
Gabriela¡¯s heart skipped a beat. This was the first time that Emperor Haidar Batra had reached out to her since that first terrible day. Could he have found something?
The next few minutes were some of the most tense of Gabriela¡¯s life, so much so that Chitra had to scold her because her impatience was actually making it harder to get dressed. Chitra claimed that the request had not mentioned a reason, so all Gabby could do was twist in the wind as raw, unchecked speculation ran rampant through her mind. As much as she pushed Chitra to run as they walked through the palace, the servant refused to do anything so ¡°unrefined¡±.
¡°Should we have made a right back there?¡± Gabby asked as they walked. ¡°I thought that was the way to the throne room and Emperor¡¯s quarters.¡±
¡°The summons said to meet not there but down the Forbidden Stairwell.¡±
Gabriela gasped. ¡°Is that-¡±
¡°I assume it is where you arrived, yes. I¡¯ve never been inside, myself. After all, until just a few days ago it was forbidden to enter unless you were one of three people. This way.¡±
Soon they passed by four guards surrounding standing outside of an inconspicuous entrance in the back of the palace. Inside were stairs. Gabby recognized those stairs as the first ones she¡¯d sprinted up during her panicked ¡°escape¡±.
The room below was as she remembered it, strange metal doodads all around the outside of the room. She noticed that somebody had cleaned up the blood and felt a wave of guilt wash over her.
¡°You are here. Excellent.¡± A voice pulled her from her thoughts and she turned to find the Emperor entering the chamber, followed by his bodyguard and several other people she did not recognize. Some of the followers were carrying things, though she couldn¡¯t get a good look. ¡°I trust that Chitra has been to your satisfaction?¡±
¡°She has been wonderful,¡± Gabriela replied.
¡°Good to hear. Let¡¯s not waste any more time. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that my scholars believe that they have found a way to send you home.¡±
It took Gabriela everything she had to keep from crying upon hearing those words. She hadn¡¯t dared hope, for she would not have survived should those hopes prove false.
¡°Show them,¡± the Emperor commanded to the people behind him. Three of them stepped forward, and she saw now that they each carried strange crystals inside a complex grey metal frame. One by one, they placed the frames into slots in the machines on the left side of the room. Gabriela¡¯s eyes widened as each machine began to glow once its slot had been filled. Soon after, a pulsating light began to flow down the cables the machines were attached to, following the lines towards the stone platform where she¡¯d first appeared.
¡°Greetings, Champion. I am Ezika Qenot, Chief Scholar under the employment of his Imperial Majesty,¡± said another man. He bowed to Gabriela before walking towards the stone platform. ¡°While we still do not understand the vast majority of how these devices operate, we were able to discover that by rotating several of the crystal arrays we could effectively reverse the function of the entire system. That was the easy part. Observe.¡±
From his pocket, the scholar produced a coin and placed it on the stone. Backing away, he signaled to another man in the back, who did something to a panel behind the machines. Gabriela didn¡¯t pay too much attention to that. Her focus lied squarely on the coin sitting on the stone. The light from the machines began to shine brighter and the flow of the pulsing light down the cables increased dramatically. Then it happened ¡ª for a fraction of a second, reality seemed to bend around the coin... and then it was gone.
¡°Thankyouthankyouthankyou-¡± Gabby sobbed. She couldn¡¯t hold her tears back anymore. Relief flooded through her as she rocked back and forth. He knees felt weak, threatening to dump her on the floor. A strong hand gripped hers and kept her on her feet.
¡°What¡¯s the bad news?¡± Chitra asked, straight to business. Oh right, there was more, wasn¡¯t there? Gabby had been too overcome to remember.
The scholar sighed. ¡°That is the most that we are able to send.¡±
¡°W-what?¡± Gabby stammered as her spirit cratered. Now her knees felt weak for an entirely different reason.
¡°As you can see,¡± the man explained, ¡°there are twelve devices. We believe each one supplies the apparatus with energy drawn from these relics.¡±
¡°These are the Eyes of Pirath, relics created by people from a time before the Empire,¡± the Emperor chimed in.
¡°The more of the Eyes of Pirath we put in, the larger the object that we can send,¡± said Qenot. ¡°We believe, however, that it would take all twelve to allow us to send something as large as a person.¡±
¡°Then put the rest on! What are you waiting for?!¡±
¡°We do not have all of the Eyes,¡± Emperor Batra admitted, glumly. ¡°They were lost during a period of great turmoil just before the founding of the Empire and have since spread around the world. We only know the whereabouts of a few, the closest being one held by the Droajan Confederation to the south.¡±
The revelation rocked Gabriela to her core. She staggered back as if struck, and only Chitra¡¯s quick reactions kept her upright.
¡°Can we acquire it from them?¡± the Batranala asked.
¡°As one of the few surviving relics of the past, the Eyes are considered to be of immeasurable value,¡± the Emperor said, his face grim. ¡°No nation will willingly give one up. I should know, I¡¯ve been trying to buy the Droajan¡¯s Eye for the last fifteen years. There is only one way we would be able to get our hands on all the Eyes, and that it to take them by force.¡±
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
This time is was Chitra¡¯s turn to rock back. ¡°Your Eminence! Are you suggesting...¡±
The Emperor nodded and looked Gabriela in the eyes, his gaze gravely serious. ¡°I believe I understand the prophecy now, my Champion. When the wording said that you would be chosen by the spirits to bring salvation, I had always assumed that it meant for the Empire. But now I see that I was wrong. You were brought here to bring salvation to the world! Become my Champion in both word and deed, and in time we will be able to send you home!¡±
¡°Y-you... you want me to help you conquer the world?!¡± Gabriela asked, aghast.
¡°It is the only way to get all the Eyes. Some are likely hidden away for safekeeping. Without an army of people searching for them, we might never find a single one!¡±
¡°But you want me to... lead an army? To kill people? I can¡¯t do that. I¡¯m not that kind of person!¡±
¡°Think about it,¡± the Emperor suggested. ¡°I do not need an answer now. Just know that without these relics, there is likely no way to return you to your world. Not even I, the most powerful man in Scyria, can change that.¡±
Everything felt worse. The moonlight¡¯s glare stabbed harshly into her retinas. The air seemed to cling to her skin, stagnant and humid. Even Chitra¡¯s soft lap felt hard and uncomfortable. Nothing had really changed, she knew. But still, the world felt far less pleasant than it had that morning. It felt heavy ¡ª heavy with responsibility.
Gabriela stared off into nothingness, her mind consumed with the Emperor¡¯s offer. There were so many factors to consider that she felt paralyzed. She¡¯d spent the entire rest of the day pondering what to do, and now, in the deepest part of night, she remained completely lost.
On one hand, there was a way home. She¡¯d seen it. It worked. If she wanted, given time and effort, she could see her children again.
On the other hand, that way seemed downright impossible. She wasn¡¯t a killer. She didn¡¯t know how to fight. And even if those things weren¡¯t true, to conquer an entire world was an absurd proposition. Nobody could ever conquer the entire world. It was too vast. And that was if she even survived. No, an ice cube on a sidewalk in the Mexico City summer stood a better chance than she.
It was hopeless. This was worse, somehow. Before, she¡¯d felt helpless, a victim of circumstance, and that had been bad enough. But now she was forced to choose. That made everything from here on out her fault.
¡°I don¡¯t know what to do, Chitra,¡± she sighed.
¡°Hmmmm...¡± the Batranala responded. After a moment, she lifted Gabby¡¯s head off her lap and stood up, walking away from the bed. ¡°Come with me.¡±
Confused, Gabriela complied. Chitra led her towards the balcony, stopping just before doorway and reaching into the gap between a nearby bookcase and the wall. To Gabby¡¯s shock, the woman pulled out a long length of rope with a large hook on the end from the gap.
¡°Wha-? Where did that come from?¡±
¡°Mmmmhmmm... that¡¯s a secret,¡± Chitra hummed as she sauntered out onto the balcony. Gabby followed, emerging out into the glare of the three moons.
Gabriela looked around. Taking up a vast area, the palace grounds stretched off into the distance, the palace walls far enough away that individual people walking the wall were hard to make out. Nearly all of the palace laid dormant in the dead of night, with nobody awake save the random guard making the rounds.
With deft hands, Chitra hooked the rope to the side of the balcony and lowered the rest down, and Gabby¡¯s blood went cold. She could see where this was going, and she didn¡¯t like it one bit.
¡°You climb down first,¡± Chitra said.
¡°N-no thanks. I¡¯m good,¡± Gabby replied, taking several steps back.
¡°You can do this no problem. Don¡¯t worry.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t. I¡¯m afraid of heights.¡±
¡°What? But you¡¯re the Champion.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t do it, I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°Just come over here and look down. It¡¯s not very high at all.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t. I just can¡¯t.¡±
¡°Come on.¡±
Biting her lip, Gabby hesitantly approached the balcony¡¯s edge and looked over the side. Immediately her vision spun as vertigo assaulted her mind and she twisted away. Not very high?! The balcony was easily over twenty meters off the ground! ¡°Nope! Nope nope nope. Can¡¯t do it, sorry.¡±
¡°Gabby, this is the only way. What if you close your eyes?¡±
¡°How is this the only way? Why can¡¯t we just use the doors like normal people?¡±
Chitra stepped in close. ¡°Because if we leave that way, they¡¯ll know,¡± she said just loud enough for Gabriela to hear.
¡°Who?¡±
¡°Gabby, this is the palace. Everybody watches everybody in here. Even if you think you¡¯re alone ¡ª especially if you think you¡¯re alone ¡ª you have to assume that somebody is watching and listening to what you¡¯re doing.¡±
Gabriela paled. ¡°So they saw the-¡±
¡°You are a subject of prophecy, a being from a different world. Do you really think that the Emperor wouldn¡¯t keep track of your every word and action?¡±
Gabriela¡¯s head swam, mortified at the notion that everybody knew of her moments of weakness.
¡°This is the only way in and out where nobody can see us. This side of the balcony the view is blocked from whoever is watching over there.¡± Chitra pointed towards the building nearby. Looking around, Gabriela couldn¡¯t spot any nearby windows where somebody could be watching them at this very moment.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, Chitra, but even so, I can¡¯t. It¡¯s too much.¡±
Chitra put her head in her hands and groaned. ¡°What if I tie you up and lower you down? All you¡¯d have to do is close your eyes.¡±
¡°I... we could try, I guess. Can you even lift me?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry about that, I¡¯m a Feeler. Not the strongest, but strong enough for this at least.¡± She winked. ¡°Helps with the housework.¡±
¡°...okay I¡¯ll try.¡±
¡°Great, hold still.¡± Chitra retrieved the rope, taking the other end and tying it snugly around Gabriela¡¯s waist.
¡°Oof,¡± Chitra muttered as she lifted the smaller woman, ¡°how are you so heavy when you¡¯re so small?¡±
¡°Hey!¡±
¡°It will be over before you know it,¡± Chitra assured her as she began to lower her down. Gabriela closed her eyes and focused on keeping her breathing steady, trying to ignore what was happening like one tries to ignore a needle about to stick into a vein. Then suddenly the rope went slack and her butt touched the floor. Opening her eyes, Gabby found herself sitting in the courtyard, none the worse for wear. That hadn¡¯t been so bad after all.
Like a monkey, Chitra climbed down after, reaching the ground in under ten seconds. Gabby felt a twinge of jealousy at the sight, something she¡¯d been feeling about the other woman fairly regularly. Was there anything the Batranala couldn¡¯t do?
With a strong flick of her arm, Chitra sent a wave along the rope, dislodging the hook latched to the balcony railing and catching it cleanly with her free hand. Gabby grumbled. Now she was just showing off.
¡°This way,¡± Chitra said, wrapping the rope around her torso and pulling Gabriela into the shadows. Together they began to navigate the twisting hallways of the palace. They moved slowly and quietly, every so often stopping to hide as a guard came by. Chitra seemed to know when the guards were coming before there were any signs of them, almost as if she¡¯d memorized their routes and timings. Knowing her, that might have actually been the case.
Soon enough they were climbing what felt like an endless spiral of stairs, going up and up and up. Gabriela didn¡¯t recall taking this many stairs during any of the tours. Where were they headed? Just moments later, she had her answer as they emerged from the stairwell atop a large tower.
Gabby staggered backwards at the sight of the land far below, nearly tripping and falling down the stairs. Her fingers dug into the side of the stairwell as she clung to the rock for dear life. Her heart felt like it was going to jump out of her throat. They were so high up! Looking out, Gabby could see for kilometers in every direction. Even given the palace¡¯s massive size, how out of sorts she must have been the last few days to never notice such a structure?
It wasn¡¯t until Chitra walked up to the edge, the hooked-end of the rope spinning in her hand, that Gabriela realized that there were no railings here; four columns reaching up from the corners of the tower¡¯s square floor were the only structures higher than the floor itself. That didn¡¯t seem to bother Chitra as she eyed something above her, the rope spinning faster and faster. Following the other woman¡¯s gaze, Gabby brought her eyes skyward and her jaw dropped. It was shaped a bit differently than what she was used to, but Gabby could still recognize the massive metal object hanging above her for what it was: a gigantic bell, easily four meters in diameter.
A soft ¡°clack¡± brought her attention back to Chitra, who had somehow thrown the rope all the way up past the bell and hooked it to something above. ¡°Come a little closer and we¡¯ll tie you up again,¡± the Batranala said.
Gabriela grumbled and tried to walk towards the edge, but her body rebelled against the thought. She settled for crawling slowly instead. ¡°Won¡¯t somebody see us doing this?¡± she asked as Chitra wrapped the rope around her waist.
¡°You¡¯d be surprised how rarely people look up,¡± the woman replied before clambering up the rope.
Gabby closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she was anywhere else but the jerk of the rope as Chitra pulled her up didn¡¯t help. Neither did the way she swayed in the wind. Slowly but surely she felt herself going higher, until finally she felt Chitra¡¯s soft hand lifting her and depositing her on solid rock once more.
¡°What is it with you and high places?¡± Gabriela asked as she opened her eyes. She sat in the middle of a flat square the same size as the one below, though there was at least a small lip a quarter meter high around the outside of this one.
¡°I guess I just like looking down on people,¡± Chitra replied. ¡°Come on, lie down.¡±
Gabby gladly complied, watching her partner as Chitra yawned, stretched her arms up towards the stars, and then fell backwards onto her back with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. The action caught Gabby by surprise. It was the first awkward, unrefined thing she¡¯d seen the beautiful refined woman do since meeting her.
¡°This is my secret hiding spot,¡± Chitra said with a smile. She scratched her nose with her whole hand. ¡°This is where I go when I need to get away from all the bullshit in this place. The bell isn¡¯t used except for special occasions, so nobody comes up here, and even if they did they wouldn¡¯t know we were on the roof. Pretty fucking brilliant, don¡¯t you think?¡±
Gabriela just stared, not quite believing her eyes and ears.
¡°What?¡± Chitra asked, her grin widening. ¡°Did you think I was some sort of perfect model of female elegance?¡± She giggled. ¡°Nobody can keep that up forever. It¡¯s a lot of work, you know. You have to keep the mask on at all times when you¡¯re in the palace. That¡¯s why I started coming up here in the first place. Here I can be myself, if only for a little while.¡±
¡°Thank you,¡± Gabby said, her voice sincere.
¡°For what? Dragging you here against your will?¡±
¡°For showing me your true self.¡±
Chitra didn¡¯t say anything for a moment, seemingly at a loss for words ¡ª another first. After a beat, she turned back to stare at the sky, and Gabby thought she caught a hint of emotion in the servant¡¯s eyes.
¡°I, uh, wanted to give you an answer to your question. The one about why I was being so kind to you.¡±
¡°I thought you already did?¡±
¡°No, that... I mean, yes, it is my job to help you and support you as much as I can. But that¡¯s not...¡± She swallowed, her eyes staring straight up at the night sky but not seeing it. ¡°I never knew my father. He was killed before I was old enough to remember him. My mother, however, I do remember. I remember her well, how she fought furiously, never backing down even as they killed her and everybody else in my family. I¡¯ll never forget the fire in her eyes as she held back a dozen people, buying me time to escape. Even now, all these years later, the sight of her bloody corpse lying on the ground as her murderers laughed and cheered around her comes to me unbidden when I close my eyes.
¡°For a time after I lost everything, I lost myself as well. I was nothing but a bundle of anger and rage that threatened to explode at any moment. I truly believe that, if I had gone on that way even just a little longer, I would have torn myself apart. But I didn¡¯t, because my sister saved me.
¡°She¡¯s not my ¡®real¡¯ sister, not by blood, but she will always be family to me. She showed me how to deal with my fury and was there for me no matter what. Whenever I needed help, there she was, offering guidance or a hopeful word or even just a body to lean on. She made me what I am today, and I will always be grateful to her for everything.
¡°I know it¡¯s not the same, exactly, but when I saw you I saw myself, in a way. I saw somebody on the tipping point, and I had to do something about it, like what my sister did for me all those years ago. There just was no way that I could just stand by and watch you fall apart.¡±
Gabriela sniffed, her eyes welling up with tears at her friend¡¯s tale. Friend? Yes, she decided. Chitra was her friend. Her first real friend in a long time. ¡°Do you still feel it? The anger?¡± she asked.
¡°...all the time.¡±
For a good while they stared up at the star-filled sky, basking in the celestial glow of the two moons. Neither spoke, for there was nothing that needed to be said.
¡°It¡¯s here,¡± Chitra announced eventually.
¡°What is?¡±
¡°The thing I brought you here to see.¡± She pointed a finger off towards the horizon, where a third moon was rising into the sky.
Gabby hadn¡¯t even known there was a third moon, or even a second moon for that matter, given that she slept indoors surrounded by curtains to keep the light at bay. Looking closer, she inspected the moon, comparing it to the others. High in the sky hung a large moon, it¡¯s path beginning to take it back down towards the horizon. Following close behind it was a smaller moon about a tenth of its size. The new moon was perhaps two thirds the size of the largest moon and seemed a tad bit darker than the others, though that could be simply a product of its current position.
¡°You seemed to be really agonizing over the Emperor¡¯s offer, so I wanted to tell you a story,¡± Chitra said. ¡°A story my mother told me when I was young about the three moons ¡ª a legend from my people called Nartrill¡¯s Chase.¡±
She pointed up at the new moon. ¡°That¡¯s Nartrill. The story goes that Nartrill was a great and mighty huntress, known throughout the land for her beauty and her ferocious might. Many desired her but she refused to consider anyone who could not beat her in a battle or a hunt. Many tried, but none succeeded until one day a great warrior named Reyquar defeated her in a close fight. They fell in love, became a couple, and had a child, Chera.¡±
She pointed towards the smallest moon. ¡°That one, there. Sadly, Reyquar died in a battle soon after Chera entered their lives, but Nartrill raised the child on her own, showering her with love. Now that Nartrill was single again, however, more suitors appeared, each seeking her approval. One of them was Treuvax.¡±
She pointed towards the largest moon. ¡°Treuvax was another powerful warrior, somebody used to getting his way. But he lost to Nartrill, defeated soundly. Unable to bear the shame of losing, he turned his ire on the one who had defeated him, and so when she slept he stole away her child in an act of revenge. Ever since then, Nartrill gives chase in an effort to rescue her only child, the one remaining gift of the one she loved.
¡°Every night she rises, pursuing Treuvax with everything she has, and every morning Treuvax just barely escapes, eluding her clutches. Nobody has ever seen Nartrill catch Treuvax, or so the story goes. Yet the next night, Nartrill rises once more, flying across the sky after her child and the one that stole her away, refusing to give up. Refusing to falter. Because she knows that, while she has never once succeeded, in the future there is always hope. There is always a chance, no matter how small. And the only way that she will ever truly fail is if she stops trying.¡±
Gabriela felt shame burning at her soul. Chitra was right. Nartrill was right. To think that she¡¯d entertained doubts, that she¡¯d considered declining her one opportunity to see her children again. Hadn¡¯t she declared that she would do whatever it took to see them grow up healthy, happy, and loved? How could she abandon that vow as soon as it became difficult and still call herself a mother?
An ironclad determination filled her, powerful and resolute. She knew now what she had to do. If she had to kill, then so be it. If she had to conquer, then so be it. She would not rest until she had her children in her arms again. Because she loved them and they needed her, more and more with each passing day.
¡°Javier, Anahi, please don¡¯t worry,¡± she said to the stars. ¡°Mama¡¯s coming.¡±
Chapter 43
Haidar Batra reclined against the back of a plush sofa in his private chambers, enjoying his time in the company of his four young grandchildren. Shrieks and cries sprang up all around him as the little tykes ran about causing chaos wherever they went, but Haidar only smiled. It was nice to be around people who didn¡¯t want much more than love from him for a change. It was a shame the times when he could drop all the pretense of being the Emperor and just be a loving grandfather were so rare. That was why he¡¯d taken steps to protect these rare moments, issuing a decree to all who lived and worked in the palace that interrupting his time with his grandchildren was a crime with a penalty of death.
¡°Granpa! Up!¡± Callasta, his second-youngest grandchild at a mere three years old, stood by his feet, her adorable little arms raised up towards him as she implored him to lift her onto the empty cushion beside him. A precocious child who seemed a bit more developed than other three-year-olds, Callasta had formed a sort of fascination with her grandfather recently, and loved to be with him. It made the old man smile.
¡°No, Callasta, climb up yourself,¡± he said, patting the cushion with his hand. ¡°It is important to not become reliant on others. You will become weak.¡±
Callasta eyed the seat in front of her, unsure. As the sofa was a little higher than most, and the girl was rather short for a child her age, the top of the cushion came up to just around her shoulders. Hesitantly, she put her arms up onto the cushion, grabbing the fabric in her tiny fingers, and hopped. It wasn¡¯t enough. Teetering on the edge, the fabric slipped out from between her fingers and she fell back, landing heavily on her butt.
Haidar leaned forward as he saw tears begin to form on the corners of her eyes. He reached out a hand and lifted her back onto her feet. ¡°No crying over failure. Try again. You can do this.¡±
The tiny girl reached out to the sofa again.
¡°Ready? Jump!¡± Haidar cheered.
The girl gave another hop, this one a little higher than the last. This time it proved to be enough. She was able to get enough of her torso onto the cushion that she could bring a knee up, and then she was on. Callasta smiled a brilliant smile as Haidar patted her head.
¡°Well done!¡± he praised. ¡°A Batra never bows to a challenge, no matter how small!¡±
¡°Granpa, book?¡± the little imp asked, giving him a sweet little hug as she looked up imploringly. Haidar¡¯s heart melted at the sight. How could he resist such a cute face?
When Callasta said ¡°book¡±, she didn¡¯t mean just any book. She meant The Compass, the massive collection of knowledge, advice, and guidance written to keep each ruler of Ubrus from going astray. Each ruler¡¯s final act, before passing control of Ubrus to their eldest child, was to add their own words to the end of the book, each generation improving and enhancing the tome¡¯s greatness. Haidar¡¯s hand caressed the book¡¯s soft leather cover, generating a series of soft clinks from the chains that connected the book to his body. Ubran tradition and law required each new ruler, Emperor or Empress, to have the book chained to their body so that they would never be without its wisdom. The process of embedding the metal chains into the rib bone caused enormous pain, but temporary discomfort was a small price to pay for the power of an Emperor.
The Compass contained many of the Empire¡¯s greatest secrets, and so only the current ruler was allowed to read it. Any other person would be put to death for reading even a single sentence. Callasta, however, was too young to read; she just liked to look at the drawings. Haidar decided that meant he could overlook the transgression at least for a little while longer.
Reaching for the book, he lifted it from the side table standing to his right and placed it on his lap, opening it to a page written by a Empress Kitahun two-hundred and fifty years ago. Callasta oohed at the detailed drawing of a gorgeous woman in an exquisitely ornate dress surrounded by kneeling tribespeople, a depiction of the Empress¡¯s conquest of the tribes of the Trinta forests to the southwest. The child snuggled up against his side as he turned the page.
Suddenly a commotion caught his ears. Something was going on outside his chambers. He could hear voices and panicked shouting. A dark scowl came over his face. Even after his decree, somebody dared to interrupt his precious family time? A fool would die tonight.
Closing the book, he tucked it under his shoulder and stood up. ¡°I have to take care of something, sweetie. Go play with your brothers while I¡¯m gone.¡± Turning away from the unhappy grandchild, he left the room, a cloud of anger hanging over him.
In the adjacent room stood Taras, Haidar¡¯s most trusted bodyguard. Though blind, the man was arguably the mightiest warrior in the nation, a Weaver of incredible ability. His hearing was unmatched, to the point that he could use sound to ¡°see¡± his environment better than any man with working eyes. It was that hearing that allowed Haidar his moments of privacy with his children and grandchildren. Any assassin would be detected before they could even get within a hundred paces of his room.
Taras fell in behind his Emperor as Haidar marched across the room and flung open the doors on the other side. There he saw four guards wrestling with a seemingly crazed man who was trying his best to get through them. The man had the dress of a guard as well, though he saw no weapon on him. Something about the man seemed slightly familiar, but Haidar couldn¡¯t place it.
¡°Release him and let him through,¡± Haidar commanded. His guards obeyed without a word, letting the man go. The man rushed towards him and Haidar held out an arm to block Taras from interfering. This was something he wanted to do personally. As the guard approached, Haidar began to Observe. The guard staggered as a sudden force, oppressive and unrelenting, pressed down upon him.
¡°Kneel before your Emperor,¡± Haidar snarled as he increased the pressure. Unable to stay on his feet, the man obeyed whether he wanted to or not and fell onto his hands and knees. The Emperor smiled slightly as he watched the man struggle and pant from the exertion needed just to keep from being pressed prone to the floor. Anybody foolish or stupid enough to flaunt his rule would not just die, they would suffer first.
¡°You know the rules, do you not, guardsman?¡± he asked, his words dripping with scorn. ¡°You know that I am not to be disturbed. I was very clear.¡±
¡°The... ruins...¡± the man gasped out. ¡°The ruins... are alive!¡±
Haidar blinked, his mind thrown into disarray from the guard¡¯s words. He recognized the guard now. He was one of only two guards in the entire palace who knew of the existence of the ruins, though he did not know the significance of them. Many years ago, at the beginning of his rule, Haidar had given this man and his counterpart orders to check the ruins every few hours every day, day or night, and report to him no matter the circumstances in the case that something inside of the ruins changed.
The pressure on the man disappeared. ¡°Repeat yourself,¡± he commanded, his brain whirling a thousand rotations a second.
The man coughed, keeping on his hands and knees. Even though the weight bearing down on him was gone, the man smartly did not dare to look up. ¡°The ruins have come alive. As soon as I saw it I rushed to report to you as ordered.¡±
¡°You have done well. You are dismissed,¡± Haidar said. The man turned away, still on his hands and knees, before rising unsteadily to his feet and staggering off. Haidar ignored him, his mind too busy grappling with the meaning of the man¡¯s words.
To think that the promised time had come. The time for conquest, when the armies of Ubrus would sweep over the world, as unstoppable as the tide. Every Emperor, deep in their heart, hoped that the fated time, the time spoken of in the First Emperor¡¯s writings, would be during their reign. Haidar had been no exception, dreaming of glory and greatness, but the ruins had remained silent all these years. With his time as an emperor soon to come to an end, he had come to terms with the fact that his time was not the destined time. He¡¯d made peace with his disappointment. But it seemed that such thoughts were premature.
There was so much to do. So much to prepare. But first...
¡°Taras, come,¡± Haidar said as he strode down the hallway. ¡°Let us see what he spoke of with our own eyes.¡±
Still, as he marched through his palace, something was bothering him, poking at the back of his mind. What was it? Ah, yes.
¡°I want that man dead by sunrise,¡± he told Taras. His decrees were law, and if the law was not respected, then what stood between them and chaos?
Emperor Batra sat in a chair and stared deep into fire and thought. The study was silent, save for the crackling of the burning logs in the fireplace. Things were not exactly going according to plan.
A knock on the door broke his concentration. ¡°Enter,¡± he commanded. He didn¡¯t need to ask who it was. He¡¯d given the guards instructions to only allow one person through.
The door opened and through it walked Mohor D¡¯nar, Haidar¡¯s most trusted advisor and closest... acquaintance. Not friend, no matter how much he might wish it sometimes. Emperors could never have friends. A friend was an equal.
Mohor bowed to him, his normally smiling face stern. The man had been enjoying a well-earned respite from his duties, and he knew that the Emperor would not call him to the palace during his time off for no reason. Haidar gestured towards a nearby chair and Mohor sat, no instructions required. Their relationship went back decades, back to their childhoods. At this point, neither needed to vocalize such mundane thoughts to the other to be understood.
¡°It¡¯s quite warm in here,¡± Mohor observed as he took his seat. Normally a citizen would wait for the Emperor to speak before daring to open their own mouth, but the two had dropped most of the formalities years ago, at least when they were alone. It slowed things down too much otherwise.
¡°Watching the fire helps me think, as you well know,¡± Haidar replied.
¡°And what is His Imperial Majesty pondering tonight?¡± Mohor inquired. ¡°What is so important that it made you call me back from Ritalun as soon as I had arrived?¡±
Haidar filled his advisor in on all happenings of the day, as well as the immense portent of Gabriela¡¯s arrival. The man listened quietly through the whole explanation, his eyes closed the entire time as he was wont to do.
¡°You are putting a lot of faith in old words,¡± Mohor said once his Emperor had finished. ¡°You have complete confidence in the First¡¯s Prophecy?¡±
¡°I do. His other warnings and knowledge all proved true in some way over the years, and yet this was the one thing he made sure to stress as the most paramount of his words. If he says this is the time to strike, then there is no doubt.¡±
¡°And the woman. She sounds rather... unimpressive? Are you certain that she will be able to fulfill her part of the prophecy?¡±
¡°Her fingers went through his shoulders like he was made of dough, Mohor! And I would wager that she wasn¡¯t even using her full strength! You know that is above even the best Feelers that we have. She¡¯s raw, yes, and it looks like she¡¯d never swung a sword in her life, but with enough polish she can serve as the Champion that we need.¡±
¡°Yes, but I was not referring to her talents as much as her will. I, of course, have not actually met the woman, but by your description I cannot help but wonder if she will be able to perform her role properly given her differing priorities.¡±
¡°That is the reason you are here tonight. I have been puzzling over that very problem for hours now.¡±
¡°Hmmmm...¡± the advisor closed his eyes in thought for a moment. ¡°Have you considered just lying to her? Telling her that you know of a way to send her back?¡±
¡°Of course. But that would only serve to turn her against me, as she would likely see it as me holding her back from her family.¡±
¡°No, no... you¡¯re thinking about it wrong. It can¡¯t be a transaction, where you say ¡®help me conquer the lands and then I¡¯ll let you go home¡¯. You have to twist it so that her desire to leave melds with your desire for conquest.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve always been the better schemer,¡± Haidar admitted. ¡°What do you propose?¡±
¡°You need to do two things. First, you must demonstrate to her that you know how to send her back home. Then you must structure it in a way where you cannot do so unless the entire world is under your rule.¡± Mohor scratched his chin, deep in thought. ¡°I think I have an idea, but I need to see the ruins first before I can say for sure.¡±
¡°Very well, let us go,¡± the Emperor replied with a grin.
Quickly the two of them made their way down to the room deep in the bowels of the palace. Haidar couldn¡¯t help but notice that the room was lit, however dimly, by a series of crystals lining the tops of the walls. Those crystals had never glowed once in his entire life until yesterday. The sight just served to reinforce his belief in the magnitude of the prophecy.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
¡°What are these?¡± Mohor asked, pointing at three crystalline objects encased in metal, each sitting atop a metal device of some sort.
¡°We don¡¯t know. They¡¯ve always just been there, like all the rest of the things here.¡±
¡°May I touch them?¡±
¡°Go ahead.¡±
¡°Interesting,¡± Mohor mumbled as he picked one of the objects up and looked it over before placing it back onto the device. ¡°Yes, this I can work with. I will need a few days, most likely, as well as the greatest illusionist in the Empire and your best artisans, but this can most definitely work.¡±
¡°Not good enough!¡± Mohor¡¯s voice echoed up the stairwell. ¡°You can¡¯t just have the coin vanish. That makes it feel immaterial! There must be some sort of phenomenon, something to catch the eye so that she knows that something is happening. Perhaps a light? Yes, let us try that. Start again from the top!¡±
Emperor Haidar Batra finished descending the steps into the ruins and was greeted with the sight of an energetic Mohor D¡¯nar and several highly irritated other people, including Ezika Qenot, the best illusionist in the Imperial capital. The aggravation on Ezika¡¯s face vanished the moment that he spotted the Haidar, which is turn tipped off Mohor to Haidar¡¯s arrival.
¡°Ah, Your Eminence!¡± Mohor said with a smile and a large, formal bow, one mimicked by the others in the room. ¡°For what do we have the honor of your presence?¡±
¡°How is everything coming along?¡± Haidar inquired. He turned to the others. ¡°You are all dismissed for the time being. I wish to speak with advisor D¡¯nar alone.¡±
With another set of low bows, the rest of the people in the room made haste to remove themselves from the chamber.
¡°Pretty well,¡± the advisor replied once the room had emptied. ¡°The craftsmen are making great progress. Four of the copies are already finished and several more should be complete by tomorrow. As for the actual ¡®presentation¡¯, I am working out the final details, as you may have heard. It¡¯s the small things that can make or break something like this, after all. It must be perfect.¡±
¡°Do you really believe that she will fall for this?¡±
¡°I do. She is desperate and will likely latch onto any hope we give her of a way home, be it real or fake. The trick will be in maintaining the ruse until we¡¯ve gotten everything we need from her. After that, she can be disposed of before she becomes a danger. After all, no matter how strong she may be, a sword through the heart will kill anyone.¡±
¡°Excellent. How much longer do you need?¡±
¡°I think we will be ready for the demonstration some time tomorrow.¡±
¡°Well done, Mohor,¡± Emperor Batra said with a grin. ¡°You continue to impress me even after all these years.¡±
¡°Ah, actually, there is one thing I would like to discuss.¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°I believe that, for this to have its greatest chance of working, your participation is required.¡±
The large room bustled with activity as the brightest minds in the Empire worked to keep it all running smoothly. This room, a wide chamber with several desks lining each wall and a massive table in the center, was the brain of the country, the counterpart to the throne room, the country¡¯s beating heart. It was the throne room where the Emperor took audiences, made proclamations, and performed all the public-facing aspects of governance. It was this room, however, where people had to figure out how to make those proclamations into reality. Here was where the real act of governance occurred.
Haidar spent a good number of hours in this room nearly every day, usually through the early afternoon. There was always something that needed his approval or judgment. The last few days, however, had been different. He¡¯d spent his time with Mohor, working on the advisor¡¯s scheme, especially after the devious bastard had roped him into participating in the actual ruse itself. The actual show had gone down the day before, and now all Haidar could do was wait for his answer. Until then, he busied himself in the act of actually running the Empire.
The wait turned out to be remarkably short. As the sun approached the center of the sky, a request came from the otherworlder to speak with him. Instructing a page outside to guide her to a nearby conference room, he finished up his current business and went to meet her, Taras following silently behind as always.
¡°Champion Carreno, I must say that you look quite lively today,¡± Emperor Batra remarked as he entered the room to find the small woman and the Batranala he¡¯d assigned to assist her. His compliment held no falsehoods; he¡¯d been able to spot the difference in her eyes immediately. Before, she¡¯d constantly cast about despairing glances like a banchet cub trapped in a nest of venomous striped moutiars, desperately, endlessly searching for a way to escape a situation that threatened to swallow her whole. Now there was steel in her gaze, the kind only found in those who knew where they needed to go and were determined to do so at all costs. Haidar held back a smile, so as not to tip his hand. He¡¯d known as soon as he¡¯d seen her eyes that she¡¯d decided to accept his ¡°proposal¡±.
¡°Thank you,¡± Champion Carreno replied, giving him an awkward, clumsy bow. ¡°I¡¯ve come to give you my answer.¡±
¡°Most excellent,¡± Haidar replied. ¡°What have you decided?¡±
¡°I will help you, on one condition,¡± the woman said. ¡°You say that you know the location of the relic in the hands of the... uh... that other country?¡±
¡°The Droajan Confederation of States? I know that they have one. As for its exact location, we believe they are holding it in the treasure vault of the Istrouburn, the House that currently dominates their petty power struggles. This information came from a source that my people believe to be truthful, but I cannot guarantee that it is there.¡±
The woman bit her lip in worried thought. ¡°I want to see it. Conquer that country on your own. If you¡¯re as mighty as you claim to be, you should be able to do it without me, right?¡±
Haidar scoffed. ¡°Were we even a third of our current might, the Droajans would still stand no chance. They are too disorganized, too focused on undermining each other to ever put up a coherent defense. The only reason they are not already Ubran is that I felt it best to completely integrate Ofrax into the Empire before moving forward.¡±
This was, of course, a lie. While it was true that Ofrax''s integration was still an ongoing process, he had avoided taking over that sad collection of city-states only due to advice written in The Compass that Haidar had found to be sage. Emperor Perntir, perhaps the most accomplished military Emperor of the last thousand years, had written of his preference for keeping around weak states to serve as practice for his armies before the Empire invaded a tougher opponent. He argued that it allowed him to knock the rust off his veterans, give new soldiers a taste of true combat without exposing them to too much danger, and test new weapons and tactics.
During his invasion of Ofrax, Haidar had wished for a ¡°practice¡± state. While the country had folded soon enough, the price, both in lives and funds, had been far higher than it should have been given that the entirety of Ofrax¡¯s royal family and most of its military leadership had died just hours before the invasion. And so Haidar had decided to leave the Droajans to their own devices for a few decades at least, so that they could serve as a suitable training exercise for his military should the Champion ever arrive during his reign. He¡¯d never actually expected the decision to bear fruit, but life always seemed to surprise.
¡°I want to be there when you first open that vault. I want to see that the relic is where you say it is,¡± Gabriela stated. ¡°Show me that what you''re telling me is the truth and I will help you with everything I have.¡±
¡°A reasonable request,¡± Haidar responded. ¡°What you ask will be arranged. If I may suggest, there will be a period of time before the Droajans fall. I think your time during that span would be best spent training. If you would like, I can task our greatest sword instructor to teach you the art of combat so that you will be ready to fight when the time comes. The better you are, the sooner we will be able to return to your home.¡±
¡°Sure,¡± the woman agreed.
¡°Excellent. Chitra will be able to handle the arrangements. Is there anything else?¡±
¡°Uh, no, that¡¯s all I think.¡±
¡°Well then, I must be going. There is suddenly a lot of work to be done.¡±
¡°Ah-!¡± Gabriela called out just before he left the room. ¡°Um... thank you for helping me. I know you didn¡¯t need to care.¡±
Haidar turned around to face her, his face earnest. ¡°Do you know why the Empire makes it its mission to expand? Why we wish to conquer the world? It is because the people of my country live the best lives of any people in the realm. They have the most food, the least disease. They are happy and healthy because the Empire makes it so. Over the course of generations, Ubrus has consumed many nations, absorbed a myriad of tribes, and none of those peoples would want to leave our rule now because their lives are better than they were before they were a part of the Empire. Even Ofrax, which fell to my armies just some years ago, is better off now than it was under the thumb of its old royals. I would bet my life that, given the choice to stay in the Empire or gain their independence back, the people of Ofrax would choose to stay. Because we care. So of course I would care when presented with your dilemma. It¡¯s my job. It¡¯s what I do.¡± He gave her a reassuring smile and left the room.
Heading back, Haidar found Mohor waiting just around the corner. Without a word, he waived for his advisor to follow and proceeded into a nearby empty conference room, shutting the door once he, his advisor, and Taras were inside.
¡°She¡¯s smarter than you took her for,¡± Haidar said with a glare. ¡°She wants proof.¡±
¡°Oh?¡± his advisor asked, a sly smile on his face. ¡°Please explain, Your Eminence.¡±
Once explanation later, that grin was still on Mohor¡¯s face. ¡°This is wonderful to hear. Everything is proceeding as I had hoped.¡±
¡°You expected this from her?¡±
¡°Of course! What sort of person would just agree to something like that without some sort of test? This proves she is no idiot, at least.¡± His smile widened. ¡°Everything up to now has merely been to set the table for the main course. We¡¯ve already managed to set in her mind that these relics are what we claim them to be and that if there is a relic in that vault then everything else must be true. That¡¯s half the battle right there. Now all we have to do is get one of the fake relics into their vault, something that the Emperor¡¯s Shadow should be able to accomplish in a matter of days, and she¡¯s ours. She¡¯ll believe it all.¡±
¡°Sometimes I think you would make a better Emperor than I,¡± Haidar joked, his spirits lifted by his advisor¡¯s argument.
¡°You do yourself a disservice. I may be good at many things, but I would never be able to organize and manage this vast nation of ours like you do. That, and your robes would looks terrible on me. Purple looks just ghastly on my skin.¡±
Re-entering the large administrative chamber, Haidar pulled a nearby Batranala aside. ¡°I want you to find every general in the capital and have them report to me in the war room within three hours. If they question you, tell them that the invasion of the Droajan Confederation of States begins in twenty days.¡± The gorgeous woman bowed and set off, conscripting pages, servants, and anybody else beneath her station for the search as she left.
Emperor Haidar Batra smiled a fierce smile as he thought about the days ahead. As it often did, his eyes and thoughts went back to The Compass, the large and thick tome that could never leave his side. He hated that accursed book. Hated it with a fiery passion. Yes, there was some truth to the public reason for its existence, but Haidar knew the real purpose of the blasted thing. It was a giant dick-measuring contest, a tool to knock the current ruler down several pegs.
The First Emperor hadn¡¯t established the rule that succeeding rulers had to be bound to The Compass so that each Emperor or Empress would have access to his wisdom. He¡¯d created the rule so that each person to follow in his footsteps had to carry around with them a constant reminder of his greatness. And the rest had followed suit. Each and every entry, while their words and authors were different, all spoke the same message: ¡°You are nothing compared to me. You will never come close to the feats that I have accomplished. I am the greatest ruler Ubrus has ever known and will ever know. Despair, for you shall forever be in my shadow.¡±
Haidar could still remember the rage that had ignited inside of him when he¡¯d first read The Compass after his father¡¯s abdication. Growing up, he¡¯d believed the tales of the First Emperor¡¯s wisdom. He¡¯d bought in to the myth that the massive volume served to advise each Emperor, to steer them down the proper path. But as he¡¯d turned page after page, reading the writings of pompous fools blinded by their own egos, he¡¯d come to see it for what it really was. It was a challenge. And a Batra never bowed to a challenge, no matter how large.
Chapter 44
¡°Pathetic. I¡¯ve seen ten-year-olds hit harder than that.¡±
Gabriela kept her eyes on the training dummy lying toppled a good seven meters from her, trying not to let the insult upset her. She¡¯d hit the straw-stuffed mannequin with everything she had, driving her wooden sword into its torso with every ounce of strength that her body possessed, but even her all wasn¡¯t enough to impress her instructor. Swordmaster Yrijan Pareketh glared at her from across the large stone training room, his grey eyes filled with disdain as if having to teach her how to fight was the most insulting and demeaning thing he¡¯d ever had to do. It felt to her like he¡¯d decided she wasn¡¯t worth his time from the moment he¡¯d met her for the first time just an hour ago.
Though standing just a few centimeters taller than Gabriela, the broad-shouldered, grey-haired, battle-scarred old warrior¡¯s presence intimidated her. When she looked into his eyes, she felt like a tiny mouse huddling before a hungry cat, trapped with no way out but death. She had no doubt that the man could kill her in a hundred different ways should he so choose. How many people had he killed in battle before retiring a few years back? Gabby didn¡¯t know the answer, but she was sure it numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands.
¡°Is that really all that you can muster?¡± he growled in disgust. ¡°Any Feeler worth a damn can do that with one arm.¡±
¡°Swordmaster Pareketh,¡± Chitra chimed in from her spot by the doorway, ¡°Champion Carreno has been chosen by the Emperor himself to be the Champion in this coming conquest. I must insist that you use her proper title and give her the respect that she is entitled.¡±
The man spat on the floor. ¡°Bah! Don¡¯t talk to me about respect!¡± he ground out through clenched teeth, his ire now directed at the tall, beautiful Batranala. ¡°Champion Valentus was my best friend, and I¡¯ll go to my grave before I dishonor his memory by using that title on a nobody just because the Emperor says so!¡± He turned back to Gabriela. ¡°You want respect, girl?! Earn it! Show me you can hit with more force than a gentle breeze! Now pick the dummy up and do it again!¡±
Gabby rushed over to the straw mannequin and propped it upright again. Normally the dummy would be planted in the ground, but it seemed that the old man wanted to get a baseline for her striking power and was using the distance she knocked it as his way of measuring.
Taking a deep breath, Gabriela tightened her grip on the practice sword. The dense wooden weapon carried a serious weight that would have given the old Gabriela some difficulty, but that had changed since her arrival on Scyria. Now she could lift and swing the glorified stick with general ease. After a little testing on her own the day before, Gabby believed herself to be about three times stronger and faster than before, as well as having significantly increased endurance. It made her feel like an Olympic athlete, which had felt pretty darn great until Mr. Gruff had come along and stomped all over her vibes.
Setting her body into the only stance that Swordmaster Pareketh had taught her so far, Gabby swung her sword again, once more performing to the best of her ability the horizontal slash that her teacher had shown her. The wood plowed into the dummy¡¯s chest, throwing the straw and fabric object a good eight meters. Something told her that wasn¡¯t going to be good enough, and the old man¡¯s sigh only confirmed her suspicions.
¡°Disappointing,¡± he said as he walked over to a nearby barrel filled with wooden swords and pulled one out. ¡°Let¡¯s move on to other areas instead. Take your stance.¡± He began to approach her.
¡°Hey! What the-¡±
Before Gabriela could even finish her question, the instructor bent his knees, lowering himself into a half-crouch, and launched himself towards her faster than her mind could comprehend. Desperately, she brought her sword up in a vain attempt to protect herself, but it made no difference. His sword slammed into her gut, violently forcing the air from her lungs and throwing her back. She twisted in the air, doubling over from the pain, and landed on her side, rolling over several times before coming to a stop. Her body wracked with spasms, she vomited her breakfast all over herself and the floor.
What? Why? Why had he attacked her? How was he so fast?
¡°Get up.¡±
Gabriela hacked and wheezed, but managed to push herself to her feet. Her throat and nostrils burned as the last vestiges of her stomach¡¯s contents dripped from her nose. Her hands and arms shook, but she raised her sword in front of her as best she could.
¡°You have a little grit, I¡¯ll give you that. But that¡¯s not enough. Nowhere near enough.¡± He entered that half-crouch again, sending panic and fear arcing through her. ¡°Dodge, block, or counter. Again!¡±
This time she was expecting it, so her mind was able to just barely process the sight of him speeding towards her. She threw herself back, but her actions were not fast enough. The tip of his blunt wooden sword dug into her torso just beneath her ribs as it swept by, ripping a rough, bloody gash across her chest. Before she could even register the pain, he was in front of her again, his eye shining with malice. She hurriedly brought her sword up to block another strike, but it was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a bucket. His weapon seemed to flow around and through hers like it was made of water before impacting into her side. She cried out as she was tossed across the room again and landed heavily on her back. It hurt to breathe now. It felt like several of her ribs were cracked from the blow.
¡°Weak. Wholly unsuitable to be a Champion,¡± the man said, his voice cold. ¡°On the battlefield, you would not last a moment and everyone relying on you would soon share your fate. Better to end you here, where you can¡¯t hurt anyone else with your failure.¡±
As Gabriela struggled to one knee, panting as she tried to push through the pain, she looked up to find the swordmaster just a step away, his eyes filled with murderous intent. Try as she did, she could not find even a hint of mercy within his stare. He was serious, she realized. He didn¡¯t care for her life one bit.
A primordial fear filled her now, something far stronger and baser than what had been going through her since the training started. It was something instinctual, the deep buried terror of a cornered prey. That fear told her to run, to get away at any cost. Desperately she looked about for some way out, for somewhere to run, but there were none. Without her realizing it, he¡¯d backed her into a corner, trapped her with nowhere to go. Her terror intensified even more, but deep down, something else responded to that fear. A power, an energy... she wasn¡¯t sure what to call it. Whatever it was, it burst forth from somewhere deep inside her, flooding her body with a boundless strength. If the only way out was through this man, then that was what she¡¯d do.
He charged again, but this time, she rose from her knee to meet him, swinging her sword at her tormentor with the desperation of a cornered animal. Her form was atrocious, her action so easily readable that a blind man could see it coming from a mile away. With a snort, Swordmaster Pareketh took a step back, getting himself just centimeters out of her range. It didn¡¯t matter.
A thunderous boom echoed off the stone walls and Pareketh flew a good ten meters through air before tucking into a roll as he hit the ground, coming to rest in a crouch. Blood flowed from his body in multiple places where small shards of wood had penetrated his skin. Gabby gawked at the sight. Had she done that? She brought her sword up to her eyes, only to find that the two thirds farthest from the handle no longer existed, a jagged edge where the wood used to be.
The warrior rose to his feet, slowly pulling the splinters from his arms, chest, and face with one hand as if he didn¡¯t even feel them while sticking his other hand over his ear. His features had softened somewhat. No longer did she see the disdain that he''d displayed before. Now there was a hint of satisfaction, of acceptance. He still wasn''t smiling, though.
¡°There might be hope for you after all,¡± he said. His one hand went to his left ear and found blood on his fingers. ¡°Figure out how to access that strength at all times. Every swing, every strike, needs to be like that last one. I expect you to have it under control by tomorrow¡¯s session.¡± He began to head towards the door.
¡°Wait, but-!¡± Heedless of her protests, the instructor left the training hall and did not return. Gabriela let out a sigh. Now what was she supposed to do? Tossing the broken sword to the side, she grabbed another one from the barrel by the door. She might as well try to do what Swordmaster Pareketh instructed. She coughed, the pain in her ribs and elsewhere starting to gain purchase in her mind as the adrenaline began to wear off.
¡°That was an incredible swing, Gabby! I¡¯ve never seen anything like it!¡± Chitra said, a celebratory smile on her face. Even so, she said it while backing away with her hand pinching her nose. ¡°That being said, I think it would be best for a healer to look at you before you do anything else. Also you need a bath, immediately. We cannot have the Champion walking around covered in her own sick.¡±
¡°Not yet,¡± Gabriela replied.
Gabby¡¯s awareness of that feeling she¡¯d had before was quickly fading. Afraid that she¡¯d lose it for good, she¡¯d decided to power through the pain as much as she could while she still had a glimmer of that experience in her mind. Taking her stance, she swung at a nearby training dummy, her ribs crying out in protest, but the strength from before was nowhere to be found.
There had to be some sort of secret. Where had that strength come from? Had it been born from her desperate terror? Simply survival instinct and adrenaline?
But wait... there had been one other time when she¡¯d felt that power¡ªthe time she¡¯d gripped a man¡¯s shoulders so hard she''d basically torn his arms off. She¡¯d been highly worked up, yes, but she hadn¡¯t feared for her life at the time. Reluctantly, Gabby tried to recall just what had been going through her mind at the time of that regrettable incident. Back then she¡¯d felt an intense need to find her children. Since then she¡¯d tried her best to tamp down that urge, as it would only drive her crazy given how powerless she was to do anything about it, but maybe it was what she needed.
Closing her eyes, she thought of her babies, remembering their small, adorable smiles. She thought of their giggles and laughs when she played with them, of their serene faces as they slept soundly. Her heart was filled with longing and the aching desire to see her precious kids once more, but that was all. No power.
But she hadn¡¯t been thinking about how much she loved them back then. She¡¯d been thinking about how they were in peril¡ªa peril that was still all too real. Maybe they were in the hands of an uncaring orphanage, being neglected and abused. Maybe they¡¯d never been found at all, their starving bodies slowly beginning to rot in the hot apartment. No! She couldn¡¯t let that happen!
A fire burst into flame inside her and her body was infused with the power that she sought. She swung her sword with all her might and once more the sound of thunder reverberated throughout the room. Wooden splinters flew through the air, scattering about the nearby area. But to her dismay, the power began to ebb almost immediately. Quickly she imagined her babies trapped under the rubble of their apartment building after another terrible earthquake hit Mexico City. The thoughts fanned the flames within her and the portion of strength that had left came rushing back.
Several minutes and twenty broken swords later, Gabriela believed she¡¯d gotten the hang of it. Now the strength came when she called for it and receded only when she allowed. Controlling it was fairly simple, though by no means pleasant. To summon it initially, she had to think about all the horrible possible fates that her children faced. Then all she had to do was keep that maddening feeling of desperate despair locked deep in her heart, eating away at her soul, for as long as she needed that power.
When she¡¯d described it all to Chitra afterwards in the bath, the Batranala couldn''t help but remark between at how terrible she found the ordeal, but Gabriela had already agreed to the bargain. If she needed to torture herself each time with the thoughts of her loved ones dying, or worse, to summon the strength needed to get back to them, that was a price she was willing to pay any day of the week.
¡°How can I help you?¡± the elderly woman asked, her head not even looking up from the large book on her desk.
¡°This should answer your question,¡± Swordmaster Pareketh replied, handing the woman a sealed roll of parchment.
Inspecting the seal for a moment, the woman broke the wax and unrolled it. After a moment her eyebrows shot up and she seemed to suddenly be paying more attention to their conversation. Looking back down at the book she mumbled to herself as she flipped some more pages. Suddenly her fingers came to a stop and she peered at the lines of ink that seemed illegible to anybody but her.
¡°Vault Seven. Alcove two, item twelve,¡± she told a man standing at attention nearby. The man nodded and began to walk off, Swordmaster Pareketh and Gabriela close behind with two other guards taking up the rear.
¡°Shouldn''t we be training?¡± Gabby asked her instructor. She didn¡¯t like the idea of wasting their training time. The lessons, while brutal, at least left her with the feeling that she was getting closer to getting home, one small step at a time. It helped keep her going.
¡°After you destroyed that last masterwork sword, I asked the Emperor if he could commission a sword that you wouldn¡¯t be able to break," he responded. While the man remained mostly gruff and surly, he¡¯d warmed up to her a little since the first several days. "He told me to come here instead.¡±
"Here, as in Vault Seven? What''s so special about it?"
¡°That¡¯s where we keep all the most interesting items, the truly special ones, or so I hear. Never been inside myself.¡±
They walked in relative silence down the long, wide corridor, every so often passing by a number carved into the wall. One, two, three, four... eventually they stopped beside a seven the height of a man. Gabriela looked around, puzzled. All she could see, on either side, was more smooth stone. The only difference between the vaults and the rest of the palace was that the rock comprising the vault had a different pattern, indicating that it was a different type of rock.
¡°Where¡¯s the door?¡± she asked.
¡°Doors are far too insecure,¡± their guide replied, facing the wall himself. His eyes took on a look of concentration and the stone wall began to flow to the side, slowly, like half-melted wax. Gabby nearly fell on her rear in shock at the sight. Chitra had taught her about Observers, but she hadn¡¯t really understood until just then what Observers really were. They were wizards!
Gabby gaped at the sight of the laws of nature being twisted before her very eyes. The stone gradually pulled apart, forming an indentation wide and tall enough for a person to fit inside. Then it began to sink into the wall, slowly gaining depth¡ªtoo slowly for Gabby¡¯s sake. Several minutes later, the indentation had grown to be only a half meter deep, with no sign of the other side.
¡°How much longer is this going to take?¡± she complained, the wonder of magic having already worn off. ¡°I have things I need to do.¡±
¡°Granite requires far more energy to manipulate than other stone because of how dense it is,¡± the guide-turned-wizard explained, turning away from the wall for a moment. ¡°Opening a vault like this takes a lot of effort. Now please, no more interruptions or you will have to wait even longer.¡± He turned back and began concentrating again.
After what had to have been at least twenty minutes, a full passageway now existed into the vault, cutting all the way through the five-meter-thick wall. Immediately the guards tagging along took positions beside the tunnel, their eyes wary. The wizard motioned for them to follow as he strolled through the newly-created arch. ¡°Welcome to Vault Seven,¡± he said with a wry smile. ¡°Please stay with me and keep your hands to yourselves. I will be searching you when we leave.¡±
Upon passing through the tunnel, it was time for Gabby to gawk once more. A cornucopia of glittering wealth assaulted her eyes, hundreds of different items twinkling in the torchlight. She saw ornate golden crowns on pedestals beside gemstones the size of her fist. She saw a manner of things of all shapes and sizes, their nature and function unintelligible to her.
A clear path ran through the middle of the collection, and the trio walked down it slowly, the guide leading the way. Gabby kept looking about as they went, taking in the sights. A little ways in, she spotted, to her surprise, the three Eyes of Pirath that had been prominently featured in the Emperor¡¯s demonstration. After a moment of thought, however, it made sense; what better place for relics so valuable?
Beside the Eyes was something that made far less sense: a massive crystal, easily ten meters wide, just lying there on the floor. The crystal didn¡¯t look very special. It didn¡¯t have the translucent beauty of a gemstone. It didn¡¯t glow like the crystals in the ruins beneath the palace. It just sat there, being huge and nothing more.
¡°Here we are,¡± the guide said, pulling her attention forward. She heard her instructor let out a sharp gasp and turned following his and the guide¡¯s gaze to find the most absurd, amazing sword she¡¯d ever seen or imagined. The blade was comically large, literally taller than her full height and nearly half a meter wide. Made entirely out of a single piece of black crystal darker than the darkest night, from the tip to the handle, the massive two-handed sword seemed to draw her gaze into its inky blackness, pulling her in slowly. Only a dull sheen informed her that the sword was not, in fact, absorbing all the light that touched it.
¡°Do you understand the significance of this?¡± Swordmaster Pareketh asked, his face deadly serious. Uh-oh. Nothing good ever happened when he made that face.
¡°No. What is it?¡±
¡°This is no mere sword. This is the Sword of Eternity, the most legendary weapon in Ubran history. They say it¡¯s older than the country itself, and only a handful of the greatest sword fighters have ever been able to wield it. The last was Champion Estan, over two hundred years ago. The Emperor is placing an unheard-of amount of belief in you. Are you willing to accept his faith?¡±
¡°I am,¡± Gabby replied without a moment of hesitation. She strode over to the blade and hefted it into the air with ease. It was heavy, but nowhere near as heavy as she would have guessed. She smiled as her fingers curled around the long handle, its diameter just right for her hands.
¡°I am not,¡± her instructor responded, his face still grim. ¡°You are the rawest recruit I have ever taught, a newborn fawn barely able to stand on your own. Your form is nonexistent, your decision-making in combat simplistic and childish, your ability to adjust to your opponent nearly comical. The Sword of Eternity deserves a master as sublime as itself, and you are most definitely no such thing.¡±
¡°But isn''t this the only thing I can use?¡± Gabriela protested. ¡°You said it yourself, I break everything else!¡±
¡°Indeed. Which is why we must mold you into a warrior worthy of this blade. The real training begins now.¡±
Gabriela clung desperately to the vekkel¡¯s saddle, trying her best to stay atop it as it hurtled through the grasslands of southwest Droaja. Never in her life had she imagined she¡¯d one day find herself atop what was best described as a carnivorous reptilian ostrich as it sped through the plains at about a hundred kilometers an hour, but here she was on her way to the Droajan capital of Istrouburn, just hoping to not fall to her death.
It was still better than training. She spared a glance at her instructor, riding his vekkel ahead of her with a confident ease. He and Chitra had come along for the trip, each for different reasons¡ªChitra because she remained Gabby¡¯s caretaker, Swordmaster Pareketh because he apparently hated Gabby¡¯s very existence. That was the only possible explanation for the nightmare that was the last few weeks. Gabriela had barely left the training hall since receiving the Blade of Eternity. If she wasn¡¯t sleeping, eating, or going to the bathroom, then she could be found in that training hall, acquiring all manner of bumps, bruises, and lacerations while pushing herself to her limits and beyond. The man showed her no mercy, loading her up with a training regimen that would surely have killed anybody else. Only her enhanced physique and unwavering determination kept her going.
Eight days ago the trio had departed Ubra, the Empire¡¯s capital and largest city, heading south as quickly as possible in order to be present for the fall of Istrouburn. Normally the trip would have taken far longer thanks to the limited stamina of a vekkel; the beasts were meant far more for shorter bursts of speed than a full day of nonstop sprinting. However, they were able to overcome this limitation thanks to the Emperor pulling some strings. Every few hours they would come across a squad of soldiers waiting in the wilderness specifically for them with fresh vekkels, whereupon they would swap their steeds and continue on their way. The efficiency with which the Empire coordinated these groups greatly impressed Gabriela. They were always where they were supposed to be when the three arrived, allowing the trio to travel relatively uninterrupted even in what could be considered ¡°enemy territory¡±.
As they came to the top of a bluff, Gabby got her first long view of the terrain ahead in a while. They were nearly there. Off in the distance she could see a city in the mid-morning light, one far less impressive than Ubra. Surrounding it were tiny specks that she took to be a mass of people, encircling the city like a swarm ants around a dead rat. If the number of ants was anything to go by, the rat would be nothing but bones quite soon.
Soon they had closed the distance enough that the swarm of ants had become a sea of people. A patrol of vekkel riders pulled up alongside them, saluting the Swordmaster. ¡°Sir, General Moiras welcomes you and requests that you report to him immediately,¡± the soldier leading the group said.
Swordmaster Pareketh simply nodded and said ¡°Lead the way.¡± The patrol did just that, leading them into the camp. Gabriela couldn¡¯t help but notice all the stares that went their way as they passed. A few stared at her sword, fully encased in a custom sheath made from garoph leather and strapped to her back so as not to cause any trouble during the trip. Others stared at Chitra, taking in her beauty. But most of the stare went towards her teacher. There was an awe in those stares, like the look of a fan meeting their favorite athlete in person for the first time. The Emperor had said he would task his greatest sword fighting teacher, but was he more than that? She wondered about his possible past as they approached a series of larger tents and, after a quick conversation with the guards, were waved inside.
¡°Yrijan, you old bastard!¡± a happy voice boomed as they entered. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen you in ages! How¡¯s retirement treating you?¡± Gabby stepped back as a large, burly man, his face more beard than anything else, swept in front of her and smothered her teacher in an enthusiastic hug.
¡°Rutgar! It¡¯s been too long!¡± Yrijan Pareketh responded with a laugh, giving the larger man a series of hearty slaps on the back until the larger man let go. The swordsman turned back to Gabby, his face showing the first genuine smile she¡¯d ever seen from him. ¡°This is General Rutgar Moiras, an old friend of mine from back during the Ofrax campaign. Never drink with this man if you intend to accomplish anything the next day.¡± The general let out a loud guffaw. ¡°Rutgar, this is Gabriela Carreno, the woman chosen by the Emperor to be the next Champion, and Chitra Batranala.¡±
¡°It is an honor to meet you, Champion. If you need anything, please just ask. I live to serve,¡± the general stated, giving them both a respectful bow.
Gabriela nodded, surprised by the man¡¯s actions. In Ubran society, when two people met the person with lower status bowed to the other. She was used to Chitra bowing to her, as by being her ¡°servant¡± it made some amount of sense that she would have to be of lower status. Outside of that, she really only talked to the Emperor, who she obviously should bow to, and Swordmaster Pareketh, who was above her by virtue of being her teacher. She was used to bowing to others at this point. But here was a major figure in the country¡¯s military, bowing to her. Was she really of higher status than a general of an entire army?
¡°If I, um, may be so bold, Champion,¡± the bearded man asked, fidgeting nervously, ¡°I wanted to ask... is it true what they say? That a stone Observer needs to be nearby whenever you train, because you keep destroying the training rooms?¡±
Gabriela paled. People knew about that, even all the way out here? People knew about her at all?
¡°It¡¯s completely true,¡± her instructor snorted. ¡°She wrecks everything she gets her hands on. The day before we left, she cracked the floor just by jumping! She¡¯s the strongest brute I¡¯ve ever taught, by leaps and bounds. But that¡¯s about all she is. There¡¯s still an entire journey left to go before she¡¯s a capable warrior.¡±
¡°Ahahaha! Incredible!¡± the general chortled, clapping his hands together. ¡°I couldn¡¯t believe it, but if Yrijan says it¡¯s true, then who am I to argue? But we can talk more later. Let¡¯s move on to why you¡¯re here, yes? My soldiers grow more impatient with every day. They smell blood.¡±
¡°You¡¯re ready to strike so soon?¡± Gabby asked, surprised.
¡°So soon?¡± The man laughed again. ¡°My dear, the Houses were so preoccupied with each other that they were unprepared for our invasion. Their cities fell like saplings in a storm. We were so ahead of schedule that we arrived here almost three days ago! The only thing that kept us from taking Istrouburn was the Emperor¡¯s order to wait until you arrived.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry we took so long,¡± Gabby apologized. ¡°I¡¯m not very good at riding vekkels yet and my sword bouncing around the whole time didn''t help either.¡±
¡°You¡¯re here now, that¡¯s all that matters. Let¡¯s get this over with so we can go home. If you¡¯ll excuse me...¡± The general bowed and turned towards the tent flap, pushing it aside with a large, meaty hand. Gabby could hear him start to bark orders the moment he stepped outside.
¡°What if they took all their valuables and ran?¡± Gabriela asked as she walked into the fortress in the center of Istrouburn alongside Chitra, the Swordmaster, General Moiras, and what felt like twenty battalions of soldiers. The soldiers fanned out, moving through the castle and incapacitating anybody still unlucky enough to be in the building. Though they had not technically occupied the castle until this moment, the battle had already ended in every way that mattered. Nobody still in this place would be stupid enough to keep fighting.
¡°I doubt it. The ruling family is long gone, almost assuredly, though we¡¯ll hunt them down soon enough. But if they took anything of value, it would have to be small enough to hide on their bodies,¡± the general said. ¡°If they had tried to move their real wealth, they¡¯d need to take along a sizable number of troops just to protect their goods. That¡¯s nearly impossible to do without being noticed. Our spies would have spotted something like that.¡±
Several soldiers returned, a panicking boy in his late teens struggling in their grip. His outfit seemed well-made and a bit fancier than a standard commoner¡¯s clothes. A page, or a clerk-in-training most likely.
¡°Don¡¯ ¡®urt me! Please! I beg ya! I¡¯ll do wha¡¯ ya ask, jus¡¯ le¡¯ me live, please!¡± the young man pleaded. Gabby had to put her hand over her mouth to keep herself from laughing. What kind of sad excuse for an accent was that? She¡¯d never heard anybody sound so dumb. It was like the kid had forgotten to enunciate half of the syllables!
The others in the group were less amused. ¡°Do you know the way to the treasure vault?¡± General Moiras asked with a glower, his ample beard amplifying the effect.
¡°A-a-aye!¡± the shaken boy stuttered.
¡°Show us there,¡± the general commanded.
¡°O-o¡¯ course! R-righ¡¯ this way!¡±
The page led them to a massive set of double doors easily over six meters high. Made of solid hardwood, reinforced with bands of metal, and sporting a pair of large handles covered in carvings, the doors carried an imposing aura. General Moiras gave one of the handles a strong pull, but the door wouldn¡¯t budge.
"Locked up tight. Seems like it''s barred from the other side," he surmised. He pointed to a woman towards the back of the group. ¡°You! Come make a tunnel into the vault.¡±
¡°That will take too long,¡± Gabby said, impatient to get inside. The walls surrounding the vault looked to be the same sort of granite that the Ubran vaults had been made from. She didn¡¯t want to wait for it to slowly melt away, with the Eye possibly being just on the other side of these doors. ¡°Just leave this to me.¡±
The general¡¯s face split into a childish, eager grin. ¡°By all means, please! I¡¯m quite curious to see what you can do.¡±
¡°All of you back away. Get to the side.¡±
As soon as they were out of the area, Gabby pulled the Sword of Eternity off of her back and pulled it from the leather sheath. She heard General Moiras begin to mutter something but ignored it. Holding it level with the floor with the sharp edges aligned vertically, she concentrated, feeling the warmth of the fire within her spread to her extremities, and thrust her blade through the door, doing her best to avoid the metal bands. The wood around the impact point broke apart like it were balsa wood, leaving a jagged hole about half a meter wide going all the way through the thick door. Fastening the sword onto her back again, she then stretched one arm through the hole and grabbed the other side. As soon as she was sure she had a good grip, she began to tug.
The door groaned under the incredible stress, the wood bending and fighting against the metal bands. Small cracking sounds could be heard coming from where the door connected to the stone doorway, and it quickly became a question of which would break first, the door or the stone it was fastened to. The answer was the stone, likely due to the metal bands holding the door together. With a large ¡°CRACK¡±, the door came loose as she literally ripped it from the doorway. A small smile of satisfaction graced her lips. The oversized wood and metal slab had to weigh several kilotons, but she held it aloft with contemptible ease. It felt good to be mighty, she couldn¡¯t deny it. She tossed the door down the hallway away from the others and walked into the vault. After a moment, the others followed.
The chamber would have been impressive if she¡¯d never been inside Vault Seven. Gold lay strewn about, along with a collection of random gemstones and other similar valuables. There was a chaos here that hadn¡¯t been in the Ubran vault. Perhaps it had been ransacked after all?
Looking about, Gabby searched for any sign of an Eye of Pirath, but could not see one anywhere. Her heart sank as she swept aside piles of gold coins and other items, but continued to find nothing.
CLANK!
Turning about, Gabriela found General Moiras holding his ear to the vault wall as he hit it with a large metal mallet. Over and over he did it, working his way down the wall.
¡°What is he doing?¡± a confused Gabby whispered to a nearby Chitra. ¡°Where¡¯s the Eye?¡±
¡°The Droajans are weak, but they are not fools,¡± Chitra replied. ¡°They would not leave something like an Eye lying about with other objects. They¡¯d hide it away somewhere, even from the rest of their valuables. That¡¯s what he¡¯s looking for.¡±
Another soldier with a similar hammer began working her way down the other side of the vault, and the stereo clangs of metal on stone reverberated through the vault for several minutes as the two made their way away from the door. Suddenly, after a strike, the general stiffened. Closing his eyes, he hit the stone again, and then held up his free hand and snapped his fingers. The woman who had been about to make a tunnel around the vault doors rushed over to his side.
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¡°Right there,¡± he said, pointing to a spot on the wall. The woman concentrated on the area indicated and the wall began to melt away. At first there was nothing but more stone, but about thirty centimeters in the stone suddenly stopped, revealing a small recess. Inside the hole sat several incredibly ornate trinkets and one crystal enmeshed in shining metal¡ªan Eye.
Tears of relief began to fall from Gabriela¡¯s eyes. She wiped them away but the tears wouldn¡¯t stop coming. They¡¯d been telling the truth. There was a way home.
¡°W-what¡¯s this?¡± Gabriela stammered as she entered the training hall to find four other people besides the Swordmaster and the stone Observer there to repair the room. Three of them held weapons in their hands, and all four of them looked quite dangerous to her untrained eyes. Perhaps it was that they all carried the same look as her instructor and tormentor.
¡°We¡¯re going to do something different today,¡± Pareketh told her, his face serious and deadpan as usual. ¡°Today, instead of learning the sword, you will be learning combat. These are four soldiers I requested from the Emperor. You will be fighting them.¡± The four others bowed.
¡°Those weapons look sharp,¡± Gabby observed.
¡°They are.¡±
¡°What?! But what if I get hurt?!¡±
¡°That¡¯s what your armor is for.¡±
¡°This armor?!¡± she squawked incredulously. Gabby looked down at the custom leather armor she wore over her torso and limbs. While fairly thick, she couldn¡¯t imagine it holding a candle to some nice metal protection. ¡°I thought this was just for training!¡±
¡°Absolutely not. Training in one type of armor and battling in another would ruin your balance and lead to unforced mistakes when your life is on the line. This has always been what I believe to be the best type of armor for you.¡±
¡°Why not something strong and thick, like metal?¡±
¡°Because you¡¯re too short, for one. To get the type of protection you want, the metal would be so thick that you¡¯d lose flexibility and movement range, which is a death sentence on the battlefield. That, or you would just break your own armor trying to move in ways it couldn¡¯t handle. This armor is flexible and allows for your full range of motion, letting you utilize your speed as well as your power. It will also stop more than you think. If that¡¯s not enough for you... just don¡¯t get hit.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t get hit? That¡¯s absurd!¡±
¡°It¡¯s necessary. So far, you have been sheltered from the real challenges of combat. It won¡¯t be as easy and forgiving as our sparring sessions.¡± Gabby thought back to the hundreds of beatings she¡¯d received from him over the last few months, but decided against saying anything. ¡°It is important that you get used to the pressure and chaos of war, especially the feeling of fighting an opponent that wishes to kill you, before we place you in an actual battle. The first battle is always the most deadly one a soldier will ever face, because that is when the true nature of combat shows itself for the first time. People freeze or panic when they first experience it. They forget their training or make poor decisions. That is when death comes. We cannot allow that for you. You must be used to the danger before you even approach the battlefield.¡±
Gabriela swallowed. He made a compelling argument, but it didn¡¯t make her feel any less uneasy. Perhaps her feelings were just proof that he was correct. Looking closer at the four soldiers, she inspected each of them. From left to right, there was a woman of average height holding a large battleaxe, a man with a shaved head who was holding a normal-sized sword in each hand, a small and lanky man with what looked like curved daggers, and lastly a woman who didn¡¯t seem to have any weapons at all.
¡°Come, ready yourself,¡± her teacher said impatiently. ¡°The time remaining before the next campaign is shrinking. Your part in the invasion is vital and you must be ready for it when the time comes.¡±
Reluctantly, Gabriela walked towards the center of the chamber and pulled out her sword. The four soldiers spread out, and she realized with alarm that they were each readying themselves.
¡°Wait, I¡¯m fighting them all at once?!¡± she protested.
¡°Battle does not often allow for duels. Enough complaining. Begin!¡±
The axe lady and sword man rushed at her before she could begin to argue, immediately forcing her on the defensive. She blocked the axe coming from the left and launched herself backwards to avoid the two consecutive strikes coming from the right and above from the two-sworded man. The fire emerged, filling her with power, and she countered with a horizontal strike of her own. The two stepped back hurriedly. They¡¯d been told about her strength, it seemed. Still, it seemed that they did not fully comprehend just how strong she could be, as the surprise on their faces as the shock wave flung them away showed. She ventured a small smile.
That smile didn¡¯t last more than half a second as her ears almost immediately picked up the sound of somebody behind her. Spinning about, Gabby found to her shock that the man with the daggers had somehow gotten behind her during the melee. He rushed in, his body low and compact, as she tried to bring her sword around from her right side. Something hard slammed into her left shoulder, knocking her off balance just when the blade picked up momentum. Her sword swung wildly, curving up towards the ceiling thanks to her now-tilted frame. The weapon posed no danger to the small man as he ducked beneath it with ample room to spare. Gabriela threw herself to the side, but not before she felt a thin cold sharpness slice through her armor and leave a shallow but long cut across her side. She cried out as the pain struck.
¡°That¡¯s not going to get it done!" Swordmaster Pareketh scolded as the four soldiers backed up and began to circle around her. ¡°You''re lucky to still be alive!¡±
Her heart was pounding in her ears. Her hands shook as she began to pant, her eyes darting this way and that, searching for danger. Was this was a real fight felt like? It was terrible! Why had she thought she¡¯d be able to do this? She was just a woman, a regular woman with no real talent for any of this stuff. But... there was no other choice, was there?
A rock the size of her fist lying on the floor caught her eye. Where had that come from? Was that what had hit her in the back, knocking off her swing? Suddenly she noticed another stone seemingly growing between the outstretched palms of the fourth woman, the one without a weapon. An Observer. Was the woman just going to throw rocks at her? That was going to be incredibly annoying. She kicked the stone away and raised up her sword again, trying to ignore the burning pain in her side. Today was going to be the worst.
For hours Gabriela battled the four soldiers as they slowly and painfully taught her just how insufficient she was, one laceration at a time. They harried her like a murder of crows would harass a hawk, overwhelming her with coordinated attacks and superior numbers. While Gabby was stronger than every other person in the room put together, she discovered that she was still lacking in everything else. Her form, though much improved from where it had been just weeks prior, was still nowhere near good enough to allow her to fend off and attack a group of people who knew how to work together. Her poor decision making caused her to prioritize threats incorrectly annoyingly often, and her inability to read her opponents meant she fell for almost every feint they showed her. Were she not bleeding from two dozen cuts, she would likely have admitted that the experience was necessary. That is, until disaster struck.
Gabriela swung in frustration and anger, bowling the man with two swords back. A glint out of the corner of her eye told her that axe lady was coming, her axe swinging down towards Gabby¡¯s right side. Gabby began to pivot and raise her sword, but just then another large stone slammed into her lower leg, knocking her foot out from under her. Completely caught off guard by the sudden instability, Gabriela tumbled, her arms flailing about as she fell. The axe woman¡¯s eye went wide with fear and she pulled her weapon back as best she could, but it was too late. Time seemed to slow down as they watched the axe, now covered in nicks from the day¡¯s battle, slice into the tough leather bracer covering Gabriela¡¯s right arm and just keep going, carving all the way through her limb just above the wrist.
Gabriela let out a piercing scream as intense pain assaulted her mind. She fell to her knees as tears flooded her sight. Blood spurted from the wound, spraying out onto the nearby floor, painting the stone dark red.
¡°YOU FOOL! I TOLD YOU SUPERFICIAL WOUNDS ONLY!¡± roared Swordmaster Pareketh. He pulled out his weapon and advanced on the unfortunate perpetrator.
¡°I-I-I... I didn¡¯t...¡± the ashen woman stammered, stepping back as the enraged teacher drew near.
¡°I should kill you where you stand! The Emperor will do far worse for what you have done,¡± the old man growled.
¡°P-please! It was an accident!¡±
The woman¡¯s pleas barely registered in Gabriela¡¯s ears; nor did the words of Chitra, who was now kneeling down beside her and hurriedly pulling bandages out of a pack. She was too busy screaming while staring at the stump where her arm had once been, her left hand wrapped around the wound and squeezing tight to act as a makeshift tourniquet. Her mind didn¡¯t know how to handle what had just happened to her. Her hand, her wrist... gone. What was she going to do? She was fucked. There was no way she could fight like this, missing her dominant hand, right? How would she find the Eyes of Pirath now?
Her children. They¡¯d be all alone now, forever. She¡¯d failed them, and she hadn¡¯t even made it to the hard part. No! She couldn¡¯t let that happen! There had to be a way!
Perhaps spawned from her unflagging determination, something new burst out from her soul, something fierce and hot, but also cold. It felt like liquid fire was coursing through her blood, threatening to scorch everything inside of her, yet somehow cold enough to freeze anything it touched. The cold fire quickly collected around the stump of her right arm, as if obeying her will.
Gabriela let out a gasp in amazement, watching as her severed arm seemed to begin to burn, turning into crimson smoke and flowing back towards the stump as if drawn there by an invisible force. Chitra froze as well, her eyes bugging out as she watched Gabby¡¯s arm rebuild itself, the smoke reforming into her hand as if it had been attached all along. Gabby moved her fingers, wiggling each of them and squeezing them into a fist. Was she imagining things? She poked it with her other hand and felt the soft touch of her finger as she ran it along her palm. Bringing her arm up to her face, she searched for any sign of a wound and found none.
¡°Swordmaster!¡± Chitra cried out, pulling her to her feet.
The old man, who had backed the poor axe woman into a nearby corner, whirled around with a fury. ¡°What is it?!¡± he snarled. The Batranala just held up Gabriela¡¯s intact arm, pointing to it without comment.
¡°How did you do this?¡± he asked her.
¡°I- I don¡¯t know,¡± she replied.
¡°Can you do it again?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±
He scrutinized her form. ¡°You still have your other wounds. Can you heal those as well?¡±
The aches and pains of her other cuts and bruises reentered her awareness at his words. She¡¯d been so preoccupied with her missing hand that she¡¯d forgotten that there even were other wounds.
¡°Do it,¡± he commanded.
Gabriela focused on the myriad cuts all across her body, willing them to heal. Nothing happened. She went deeper, dredging up that feeling of urgent need that had been there last time, emulating the technique she¡¯d developed and honed over months of practice bringing out her strength. She didn¡¯t just want those cuts to heal, she needed them healed. Obeying her every beck and call, the potent cold burning returned and flowed quickly out to each and every wound left.
¡°By the Emperor¡¯s beard!¡± the old man muttered as red smoke filled in her wounds, rebuilding her flesh until it was as if the lacerations had never been even been there. The man straightened, processing what he''d just seen, before turning to the others. ¡°This changes everything. Everybody take your places. You no longer need to hold back. All strikes are allowed.¡±
A howling wind blasted Gabby¡¯s body, roaring in her ears. Snow whipped into her face, carrying with it small chunks of ice that left shallow cuts on her forehead and cheeks. She barely noticed, the cuts sealing themselves up and disappearing within moments.
That sort of pain didn¡¯t even register to her anymore, not after spending the last month losing limbs, getting impaled, being burned alive... as soon as it had become clear that she could come back from basically any punishment, Swordmaster Pareketh had shifted the way he trained her, focusing the majority of their time on getting her as accustomed to pain as he could.
¡°You¡¯re nowhere near ready for a real battle, and you won¡¯t be even when the time comes if we don¡¯t change course,¡± he¡¯d explained. ¡°Your swordsmanship just won¡¯t be good enough to cut it in the chaos. Yesterday showed that. But that¡¯s only if we keep treating you like a normal fighter. Sword fighting is not the art of swinging a sword around. It¡¯s the art of hitting without being hit, reading openings, taking advantage of mistakes, and keeping yourself alive long enough to be around when those mistakes appear.
¡°A man who no longer values his life is the most dangerous opponent, because he will be willing to make sacrifices that others won¡¯t. Somebody willing to throw away any pretense of defense and self-preservation is a terrifying enemy. That¡¯s what we¡¯re going to make you: a terror on the battlefield, constantly attacking with irresistible force, doing as much damage as possible no matter the cost. Except, unlike a doomed soul going out in a blaze of glory, you will never stop, powering through the blades in your chest, the arrow in your neck... you¡¯ll be the most feared warrior in the world, somebody worthy of being called ¡®Champion¡¯. We just have to get you used to the pain.¡±
What followed had been as terrible as one might imagine. For the sake of her goals¡ªfor the sake of her children¡ªGabriela willingly put herself through every type of torture and harm imaginable. Acid, fire, crushing, freezing, if it hurt, she had experienced it, healed herself, and gone back for more. To her relief, it had worked. While she still felt the pain, what at first would have incapacitated her she could now shunt away to a corner of her mind and keep moving while she healed, letting her power through damage that would cripple anybody else. She didn¡¯t fear pain anymore. She didn¡¯t fear much of anything, really, except losing her children for good... and heights. Which was the current problem.
In order for the Ubrans to invade their neighboring continent, they had to solve the problem of Redwater Castle, known throughout the world as the strongest, most impregnable fortress ever created. But even that wasn¡¯t the most pressing issue. Before they could even think of attacking the castle, they had to do something about the warning relay, the system of bonfires that would quickly pass word of an invasion through the mountains to Gustil, allowing the natives to gather reinforcements and get them to Redwater in only a matter of days.
The problem had always been that there was no way to stop the relay. Trying to cross The Divide in any way other than the single pass that lead to Redwater Castle was a ticket to certain death. Literally nobody in the known history of the world had made it across any other way, which meant that cutting off the relay was impossible¡ªuntil she¡¯d arrived. Gabriela had the strength and speed to cross the impassable chasms and the stamina to keep going without food or water. The heat of her strength kept her warm in the freezing cold, and she could heal the inevitable injury. Injuries were the primary reason nobody ever made it through The Divide, as even minor mistakes could lead to drastic consequences. That was the trick about this place. It didn¡¯t need to be a deadly fall from a cliff a hundred meters off the ground. All it took was one stumble, one slip on icy rock, or something else equally minor to cause a fall that would break your ankle or smash a shin. Then you were trapped, unable to make it far enough to get out before the cold and lack of food eventually did you in. At least, if you were somebody else. It wouldn¡¯t be a problem for Gabriela, which is what made her so perfect for the task.
And so Gabriela had embarked alone on a journey across The Divide, working her way along steep mountain slopes, along perilous cliffs, over treacherous canyons, and straight up icy, slippery rock walls. It was simple. All she had to do was never look down. Ever. She¡¯d lasted an hour.
The first tumble had come at that hour mark, when she¡¯d made the mistake of looking back to see how far she¡¯d gone. Her body had locked up and her vision had gone all topsy-turvy, and the next thing she knew she was a good forty meters lower than she¡¯d just been and both her legs were broken. But she¡¯d gotten back up, repeating her children''s¡¯ names to give herself the drive to face down the most primal of her fears, a habit she¡¯d developed over her month of ¡°pain tolerance training¡±.
Here, surrounded by icy cliffs and endless drops, their names were always on her lips, pushing her forward, keeping her going. She was nearly there, nearly to her goal. She just had to finish climbing up this last, massive cliff face and cross over to the other side of the mountain.
¡°Javier. Anahi. Javier. Anahi. Javier. Anahi.¡± Keeping her head looking always upward, she reached up and grabbed a handhold with her right hand, pulling herself up as she searched for another one higher still with her left. Soon her left hand found purchase and she continued her climb. ¡°Javier. Anahi. Javier. Anahi.¡±
Just keep going. Don¡¯t look down. Don¡¯t think about where you are or what you are doing. Just keep going.
With a soft crack, the rock she¡¯d been clinging to crumbled, sending Gabriela plummeting towards the ground below, the fierce winds blowing away her terrified shrieks. She landed on her back with a sickening crunch a hundred meters below. Most bones in her body were broken. A long shard of ice from the outcropping she¡¯d landed on had pierced straight through her chest, cutting straight through her lung and part of her heart.
Javier. Anahi. She refused to let this stop her. She¡¯d fallen many times during this journey, suffering a wide assortment of injuries from cracked skulls to broken backs to worse. This wasn¡¯t even the worst incident from the last few days.
Javier. Anahi. The now familiar cold burn burst into being, repairing her broken bones and ravaged organs. The spike of ice sticking out through her chest toppled over, the part that had still been in her body now gone. That was what happened when she healed herself with something still inside her. Her body ate it away, or absorbed it, or banished it to another dimension... she wasn¡¯t sure what happened to it, but it would disappear. The amount of times she¡¯d turned a spear into a stick and a spearhead were too many to count.
Pushing herself to her feet, Gabby looked back up at the cliff. She couldn¡¯t even see the top. She took a deep breath and grabbed a handhold above her head. Time to try again.
The relay station didn¡¯t look like much. Placed on the top of a ridge, all she could see was a small stone cabin and a large frame a good four meters high with huge stacks of firewood arranged inside it. Not a single soul could be seen outside. She didn¡¯t blame whoever was here for avoiding the chilly winds as best they could. Especially since that made her mission easier. Sprinting up the incline, Gabriela sped straight for the unlit stack of wood, swinging the Sword of Eternity at it with everything she had. The wood and its frame exploded, the thousands of wooden splinters flying about and down the slope on the other side of the ridge.
Without pausing to admire her handiwork, Gabby sprinted towards the building just as a man emerged, fire floating above his hand. Her sword carved through the man¡¯s body almost as if it weren¡¯t there, the sonic boom that followed spraying his insides through the air. His upper half, look of shocked disbelief and all, tumbled down the nearby slope. She had finally done it. She¡¯d killed somebody intentionally, somebody she didn¡¯t know and had no hatred for. While she knew that she was supposed to feel bad about this, for some reason she didn¡¯t, at least not in the heat of the moment. Maybe she¡¯d feel it later. Right now she was busy. Busy taking care of the two others still inside the cabin.
Redwater Castle was as imposing as the stories claimed. Gabriela hid behind a boulder on the Nocend side path to the fortress, staring at the massive walls in awe. They put even the battlements in Ubra to shame.
Since wiping out and destroying that relay post, Gabriela had continued to carry out her mission, traveling west for the last half day along the path to Redwater and destroying every other relay post on the way. There were still others to the east, but they didn¡¯t matter as they were too far away. No matter how high the signal fire in the castle burned, there was no way anybody in a relay post would be able to see it now.
It was time for the final part of her mission: the fall of the greatest fortress known to man. First, she had to make an entrance. Her legs began to blur as she accelerated up the path, her speed exceeding 200 kilometers an hour. As she closed in, she leapt, her explosive strength propelling her up over the massive walls. She saw men and women gawking as she sailed over their heads.
Spies had long documented the layout and function of the entire fortress, and Gabriela had spent a good amount of time memorizing her way around the place so that she could accomplish her next task. Landing unsteadily but on her feet, she sprinted towards a door to the south at full speed, barreling through the door without a care for who might be on the other side. Shouldering a surprised man out of the way, she jumped down the stairs, and took a right. A warning horn sounded outside, but she barely noticed as she drew her sword and swung it through the two guards standing by the nearby door. Blood and guts splattered the walls as her blade cleaved through both men and their armor with ease, the shock wave of her strike blowing the door between them open. Within sat her next targets¡ªthe Manys.
Gabriela didn¡¯t understand who or what a ¡°Many¡± was. She just knew that they were used to communicate across long distances instantaneously, allowing somebody to, for example, inform one of the countries of Nocend that the Ubrans were on their way. That couldn¡¯t be allowed to happen. The Sword of Eternity flashed through the air, over and over, until she was the only person in the room left breathing.
Her work was nearly complete now. By this point, the signal beacon had likely been lit. What the soldiers in Redwater Castle didn¡¯t realize was that their fire would never be seen by their comrades to the east. It would, however, be seen by the Ubrans to the west, the signal for them to begin their assault on the fortress. All that remained for her to do was to cause as much chaos and bloodshed as possible while the full brunt of the Ubran army was brought to bear on one of the few places that might otherwise be able to stand against it.
Heading back down the hallway and up the stairs, her blade striking out at anything that moved as she passed by, Gabriela emerged to find hundreds of soldiers waiting for her in the courtyard and hundreds more up on the walls with either bows drawn or projectiles materializing in front of them. Without even a word, a hail of arrows, rocks the size of her head, fireballs, and more rained down upon her. Gabby swung once at an upward angle, creating a shock wave that knocked most of the projectiles away. Still some kept coming. She didn¡¯t care.
Rushing forward, Gabriela felt the sting of arrows piercing her flesh, the sizzle of fire burning her skin, the crunch of stone breaking her bones. They would have stopped her, once upon a time. But that time was long past.
The cool fire of her regeneration going to work immediately and setting her body right, she waded into the mass of enemies coming to meet her. The pitch black blade lashed out with blinding speed, cutting through swathes of soldiers with every mighty swing, the crack of thunder that followed knocking even more off their feet. Some people turned and ran, but she was upon them before they could even take two steps. She was death, a reaper of souls in human form. She was unstoppable, inescapable. In just a few seconds, hundreds of people died by Gabriela¡¯s hands.
Still, Redwater Castle was not held by just a few hundred soldiers. No, many more thousands were stationed here, enough to hold off an army of hundreds of thousands with ease. There was much more work to be done. Gabby sprinted for the nearest stairs, taking them five steps at a time as she made her way up onto the walls. Warriors came at her from all sides, striking at her with all manner of weapons, but Gabby refused to fall. There was somewhere she needed to be, and no amount of pain or enemies would keep her from getting there as soon as possible.
Chitra had told Gabriela once that Redwater Castle had been named for the snow melt that flowed down from the fortress during the spring, its color stained red with rusted iron leached out from the mountains. Today Gabriela would give the name a whole new meaning.
¡°You did well. Better than I¡¯d hoped,¡± Swordmaster Pareketh said, placing a callused hand on Gabby¡¯s shoulder as she leaned against a wall. She had holed up in an empty room near the center of the fortress to rest for a bit as the Ubrans finished overrunning the last remnants of resistance. Not that she was tired, at least physically; her body felt just fine. It was just that there were only so many people she could slice in half before she needed a break, a respite to clear her mind of the gore that had filled her vision for the past while. To her disgust, blood and bits of flesh covered her from head to toe, leaving her sticky all over. It was on her face, in her hair, soaked into her clothes... she wouldn¡¯t be surprised if she found some inside her boots when she took them off later. She needed a bath in the worst way but didn¡¯t dare until she knew the job was over.
¡°I think a few got away,¡± she said. ¡°Fled east when the fight got bad.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. I saw them sending out teams to hunt down anybody still alive out there. You can relax in a moment. There¡¯s just one thing left to be done. Come with me.¡± He led her out of the room.
¡°I was wrong. I¡¯m sorry,¡± he said after a moment as they walked through the halls.
¡°About what?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think it will surprise you when I say that I did not have high hopes for you when we first started,¡± he replied. ¡°I saw a woman too old, too weak, too out of her depth. I thought that sending you to the battlefield would just end painfully for you and everybody relying on you. I was wrong. I pushed you, harder than I¡¯ve ever treated any of my other students. Part of it was how little time we had, but much of it was that I wanted you to break. The Emperor had chosen you, and nothing I could say would be able to override his whim. But if I got you to give up and quit on your own, then this would all be stopped before it went wrong. I told myself that it would be better for everyone that way.
¡°But you didn¡¯t break. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I pushed you, you didn¡¯t break. The first fight against the four soldiers was my last attempt to show you just how overmatched you were, if even well-trained but average soldiers could take you down in relative ease. But even then you kept getting up. All day you refused to back down. Then... well we both remember what happened then.¡± He chuckled. ¡°That¡¯s when I realized I¡¯d been looking at you the wrong way since the beginning. I¡¯d been so caught up in what I saw on the outside that I refused to see deep inside you was the most important quality of a warrior: the absolute refusal to lose.¡±
He stopped before the door that led out to the central courtyard. Gabby could hear dozens of voices on the other side of the closed door as soldiers hurried about, busy with the many tasks still left to be done.
¡°Listen to me, Gabriela. Your body is... well... it¡¯s absurd. You do things that shouldn¡¯t be possible, things that I have never seen or heard of before that make me question my own sanity. But in truth, your greatest strength is not your body. It is what¡¯s up here.¡± He pointed to her head. ¡°As long as you keep up that will to fight, that refusal to break under any circumstances, nothing will ever be able to stop you from achieving your goals. Remember that. I may have given directions, but you walked this path with your own two feet. You have every right to be proud of what you¡¯ve accomplished, Gabri¡ªno... Champion Carreno.¡±
He smiled, the first smile he¡¯d ever given to her since she¡¯d met him. For just a moment he didn¡¯t seem like the grumpy old teacher she¡¯d come to know, but rather like the proud grandfather she¡¯d never had. Then the smile disappeared and he returned to being the gruff and surly man she¡¯d spent so much time with.
¡°Now go, my student, and hold your head up high,¡± he said as he opened the door and pushed her through.
The fortress was alive with activity as countless people swarmed this way and that, an endlessly shifting ocean of bodies. Just after she stepped outside, however, a series of horns blared somewhere just above and behind her and everybody stopped in place, turning together to look in her general direction. The entire castle stilled.
¡°People of Ubrus!¡± a voice shouted from above her, a voice she recognized. Turning about to look above her, Gabby recognized the massive bushy beard of General Moiras. He stood on a balcony a story above her, hollering to the assembled soldiers for all to hear. ¡°Men and women of the Empire¡¯s legions! Brave warriors of the Emperor¡¯s Might! I give you...¡± He gestured down towards Gabby. ¡°The one who will lead us to victory! Champion Gabriela Carreno!¡±
Almost as one, the entire host of soldiers turned their eyes on her. Gabby didn¡¯t know what to do, so she just did the first thing that came to her head. Lifting her blood-covered sword up with her right hand, she thrust it with gusto towards the sky. The fortress exploded with the cheers of a hundred thousand voices.
Gabby stood before the Latino man, her sword held high above her head, and wavered. Many people had already died to her blade, so many that the act barely registered with her anymore. This felt different.
For some reason, the fact that this asshole, who¡¯d verbally abused her and had never even given her his name, was from Earth mattered to her¡ªso much so that she''d barely fought him at first, using nowhere near her full power in the hopes that he''d listen to reason. Only after he''d killed her had she put that hesitation aside. Even so, killing him still felt like crossing a line that could never be uncrossed. She knew it was an insult to every Scyrian in the world that killing this one douchebag as he writhed on the ground meant more to her than the deaths of all the Scyrians that had fallen to her blade so far. It was tantamount to saying that they weren¡¯t really people in her eyes. But she couldn¡¯t deny that it mattered to her. This was somebody with whom she shared a connection, a history, that she would never have with anybody from this world. If she killed this man, she would be a murderer no matter where she went, no matter what world she was in. If she swung her blade, her soul would be stained forever.
¡°Javier. Anahi,¡± she whispered to herself. It had never really been in doubt. She would accept that stain. She would accept everything. Any price was worth paying to see her children again. To keep them safe. The blade swung down.
Chapter 45
¡°How much longer do we have to wait?!¡± Wham! General Cloudburner-hono¡¯s fist slammed angrily onto a table. ¡°How much longer will you refuse to do what needs to be done?!¡±
¡°And what exactly do you believe needs to be done?!¡± an incensed General Fernfeather-hono shot back. ¡°What ludicrous, impossible idea do you have in mind?! You want to kill them all, like Stonefist-hono proposed last week? Or is it something equally stupid, like imprisoning more than a million people?¡±
¡°They betrayed us!¡± she shouted back. ¡°Death is what they deserve!¡±
¡°They¡¯re people! Our people! You can¡¯t just condemn a whole portion of the population to death because they want a better life!¡±
¡°What about my people then, huh? It used to be that my subjugation team would come back with one or two casualties each migration. Now it''s a third of every team! We¡¯re losing some of the best and brightest warriors in the country because they have to demean themselves with the tasks of Shells out there when they should be saving their strength for the beast packs! And you want to throw them away for a bunch of trash?!¡±
¡°And how would exterminating a whole swath of our people help that?! That would just make the problem permanent!¡±
¡°For the record,¡± General Stonefist-hono chimed in, ¡°I did not propose that we execute all the Shells. I¡¯m not a fool. I said we should execute the leadership who planned this... movement. Find them, arrest them, drag out who their foreign contacts are, and execute them publicly.¡±
¡°And just who are the people leading them?¡± asked an annoyed General Nightclaw-hono. ¡°I thought, as the man in charge of intelligence, that you¡¯d have some names for us by now.¡±
¡°The people leading the Shells are likely the same people who lead the Hidden Fang,¡± Stonefist-hono replied. ¡°That means the same problems that have made it so hard for us to track those bastards down all these years. The lower-level leaders that we can find all seem to have never actually met their superiors in person or seen their faces.¡±
¡°We know one leader,¡± Cloudburner-hono pointed out. ¡°The outsider. He is their beacon. We should have strung him up before his adoring Shells days ago!¡±
¡°No.¡± Akhustal Palebane¡¯s voice was stern and unyielding. ¡°We do not touch him.¡±
¡°How can you say that, Chos?!¡± Cloudburner-hono cried, rising to her feet with a fiery fury in her eyes. ¡°His presence is what started all of this!¡±
¡°He has made it clear to me that any action against him will result in his complete refusal to resurrect the Second Army or anybody else. I will not sacrifice the Second Army while there is still hope that we can get them back,¡± Akhustal stated, her voice hard and uncompromising.
¡°Then you will sacrifice the country in their stead,¡± Cloudburner-hono countered.
¡°I doubt that removing him will accomplish much,¡± said Nightclaw-hono. ¡°He couldn¡¯t have convinced a million people to put themselves at risk like this in only the small amount of time he¡¯s been here, especially when the people are cowards like the Shells. This has to have been something in the works for a long time. Years, maybe even decades.¡±
¡°I agree,¡± added Stonefist-hono. ¡°This reeks of a foreign plot.¡±
¡°And yet you somehow didn¡¯t catch wind of it before it was too late. What good are you as the head of intelligence if you can¡¯t stop threats like this?¡± Akhustal rebuked.
¡°My position has been the same since the day you gave me this position. Without greater powers of surveillance and an increased budget, there is a limit to what I can do. It has always been the biggest reason the Hidden Fang have never been captured.¡±
Akhustal grunted. General Stonefist-hono was actually the third person to command the country¡¯s intelligence force since she¡¯d become the Chos. She¡¯d become dissatisfied with both of his predecessors¡¯ failures to apprehend the rogue Shell organization that had popped up not long after her ascension, but nobody seemed to be able to crack that particular nut.
The man had a point. He¡¯d been beating that drum since the beginning, but Akhustal had been reluctant to break from tradition so readily, hoping that there was another solution that less able people had simply never thought of. That hesitancy had come home to roost, and now people bled on the street because of her poor judgment.
¡°Let us talk about such matters later tonight,¡± she told him. ¡°For now, we need to focus on the migration. What is the status of the preparations?¡±
¡°Things are worse than we¡¯d hoped,¡± conceded General Fernfeather-hono. ¡°We knew that conscripting Flegs to fill the gap left by the mutinous Shells would be messy, but I didn¡¯t think it would be this messy. We underestimated just how complex much of the disassembly would be.¡±
¡°We only have two days left before we have to leave,¡± she remarked. ¡°We¡¯re not going to be ready, are we?¡±
The general let out a tired sigh. ¡°No,¡± he admitted. He looked exhausted. Everyone in the room did. Weeks of trying to rescue Stragma from this crisis had worn them all down to shadows of their former selves.
¡°How much will we have to leave behind?¡± she asked, dreading the answer.
¡°Perhaps half. We are working throughout the day and night to save as much as we can but these people are novices. Everything takes longer than we want and they¡¯re making mistakes. There¡¯s already been accidents where we¡¯ve lost valuable supplies. This is an incredibly complex process. It¡¯s a testament to the Shells that they are able to accomplish it every time with so few problems.¡±
¡°Then by the sounds of it, we need to stop talking and get back to work,¡± she said, not missing the withering glare that General Cloudburner-hono sent General Fernfeather-hono¡¯s way from across the room. ¡°Dismissed.¡±
The others filed out of the room one by one until only she remained. Now alone, she slumped back against the nearby wall, her back complaining after hours of meetings. With a weary groan she stood up and stretched before heading out the door.
¡°I¡¯m going for a stroll,¡± she said to Tepin, who had been waiting outside the whole time. Tepin nodded, her eyes not leaving the reports she was working on. Akhustal would have preferred that Tepin be present in the meetings¡ªas a Shell, she would be able to provide perspectives that the others could not. But no, even though she trusted the Shell, some of the other generals did not. They were blind, unable to see that she was one of the good ones despite that fact that the small woman continued to work hard every day since the Shell strike.
The afternoon was winding down as she left the building. The meeting had gone on longer than intended, again. The Chos walked absentmindedly onto the elevator platform, so caught up with her problems that she barely noticed when it started to slowly lower down. The tension between the factions of generals had grown to the point of imminent calamity. The two worst offenders were Cloudburner-hono and Fernfeather-hono. At several points the two had nearly come to blows; at some point soon, not even her presence might be able to keep them from going at it.
The two had been at loggerheads since the beginning of the crisis, each representing the ideological ends of the spectrum while the other generals fell into various places between them. Though the youngest general to report directly to Akhustal, Cloudburner-hono was a strict and fervent traditionalist who believed wholeheartedly in the power of the Stragman way. In a lot of ways she reminded Akhustal of the Chos¡¯s husband. Were he here today, she had no doubt that he would be agreeing with most everything the young general said.
General Stonefist-hono was another hardliner, though he viewed the whole situation differently, seeing it as an attack on Stragma by another nation. That¡¯s how it always was with him¡ªeverything was always some sort of foreign scheme from the Drayhadans to destabilize the country. Perhaps this time he was right. Either way, while he didn¡¯t seem to harbor much hatred for the one and a half million Shells who refused to cooperate at this critical time, that anger was concentrated on the movement¡¯s leadership, whom he viewed as traitors conspiring with outside forces.
Akhustal judged the hardline anti-Shell faction to comprise perhaps a third of her generals. While their individual outlooks varied slightly one way or the other, they all seemed to agree that harsh, drastic measures needed to be taken, and that not a single concession could be given. She worried constantly that one or more of them would decide to take matters into their own hands.
On the other side stood the pro-Shell faction, comprised of only a few very vocal people. These generals wanted to negotiate with the malcontents and argued in their favor. Leading that small group was General Fernfeather-hono, which continually puzzled Akhustal. She¡¯d never taken him to be such a progressive before. He¡¯d always presented himself as fairly middle-of-the-road on philosophical matters until now, but here he was, using his status as the second-highest-ranked general to add weight to his position at every turn.
Last, but most certainly not least, were the centrists who made up the large majority, best typified by General Nightclaw-hono. That faction made up almost all of the generals not in the hardline faction. They seemed to be most concerned with the direct effects of the Shells¡¯ actions and just wanted the whole situation to be over with one way or another before the country suffered too much damage. Each of them seemed more troubled by how the strike affected them and their duties than what it meant on a more fundamental level. Case in point, Nightclaw-hono was deeply concerned about the state of his prisons, which grew more and more disgusting by the day.
The three factions had spent much of the time since the strike began arguing between themselves, hampering their overall ability to fix things. Akhustal knew that this was largely her fault. She needed to lead better, to steer her underlings towards more productive outcomes... but she found it hard to give guidance. As much as she didn¡¯t want to admit it, the tug-of-war that happened every day before her eyes reflected the one going on behind those eyes.
On one hand, the solution was simple. All she had to do was agree to Rudra¡¯s demands and the strike would cease to be. There were a number of appealing benefits to the idea. The nightmare that was their current situation would be largely resolved. The Shells would go back to work, meaning the migration would get mostly back on track. She wouldn¡¯t need to worry about the new city decaying into a stinking, putrid mess like Pholis had. To top it off, she¡¯d be able to send out a large force to aid the rest of Nocend in their battle against the Empire. Stragma was perhaps the one country that didn¡¯t need to worry about a large-scale invasion. The forest made such an idea laughable; it was the primary reason why Drayhadal had never really tried to strike at Stragma¡¯s cities in retaliation. But still, the idea that she could not fulfill her country¡¯s commitments shamed her. A nation that could not honor its agreements was a weak one.
But was all that worth the cost? Social stratification had been a mainstay of Stragman life since as far back as their histories went. It maintained order in the chaotic wilds. Everybody knew their role, knew where they stood. The system had worked for the last few thousand years; if she were to weaken this fundamental structure that so many of the country¡¯s systems and norms relied on for a short-term gain, what damage would she be inflicting on the nation five years down the road? Twenty years? What if, by acquiescing to their demands, she made the idea that Shells could reject the command of their betters into a new norm? Would Stragma even survive?
The thoughts spun around in her head, endlessly warring as she walked along the city floor. The city seemed in disarray, as if a strong storm has just passed through and blown much of it apart. Buildings and tents in various states of disassembly, men and women swarming about as they tried their best to prepare their lives and their property for the migration. She spotted the tattoos of a Fleg on many of those people, and even the expanded patterns of a Blou every so often, and frowned. These people had their own jobs and lives that they¡¯d been forced to put aside while they frantically tried to save everything they could before the city had to move. Those jobs were equally important, if not more so, and every day that they had to neglect their duties hurt Stragma in countless ways. Hunts went unbutchered. Weapons and armor went unrepaired. Goods spoiled, unsold.
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A rank odor, the conglomeration of a thousand different repulsive smells, hung over the city now; like everything these days, it only grew worse by the day. There weren¡¯t enough compliant Shells left to keep up with the cleaning work needed to keep the city from devolving into a disgusting mess, not unless she were to take them off of more important jobs like preparing for the migration. The Flegs, for their part, generally refused to debase themselves with such demeaning labor. It was a good thing that they would be leaving this place.
The smell was only a facet of the overall deterioration. As she turned down a nearby street, her eyes were drawn to the bloodstains splattered across the ground, left here from a riot that had occurred just two days after the strike began. Hundreds of incensed Flegs had set upon groups of Shells, caring little about if they were striking or not, killing and maiming with an aggrieved fury that had shocked her at the time. While she hated to admit it, the strike had revealed to her just how little she understood many of her own subjects and how disconnected she was from them.
When the strike had first started, she¡¯d thought that the most anger would have come from the Hono and perhaps some from the Blou, as it was their rule that was being defied. She¡¯d thought that the Flegs, more than any other group, would be the most supportive. They had the hardest lives, making due with the least wealth and privilege. She¡¯d been wrong. No group was more resentful of the Shells¡¯ actions than the Flegs.
Akhustal had not realized just how much it mattered to the Flegs that there were people worse off than them, people they could look down on. The idea that some lowlife Shells would dare to reach beyond their station and usurp the rights of their superiors was an affront to these Flegs¡¯ sense of self-worth, and so they¡¯d reacted with extreme violence. Hundred of Shells had died that day, and more were slain in other riots that followed. Only the introduction of squads of Hono and Blou to act as peacekeepers had stopped the massacres. Of course, having to remove those squads from their normal duties had only hurt Stragma more.
Ironically, the rioting had not only failed to destroy the Shells¡¯ resolve, it had strengthened it and driven more Shells to join the movement. What had begun as less than a third of all the Shells in Stragma was now up over half and growing larger every day. There was one single reason for this: Rudra. Once the violence had subsided, the striking Shells had quickly built a platform from the ground up to his hanging prison cell and he¡¯d restored every one of the murdered Shells back to life.
There had been a point, back in the beginning, where she might have been able to move him someplace else, somewhere further from public view where he wouldn¡¯t have been able to affect things more than he already had. Some, like General Cloudburner-hono in the last meeting, still pushed to remove him from the conversation. But Akhustal felt like their chance for that had disappeared once Rudra had revived all those Shells. The public act had easily pushed him from a respected icon into a legend. If she were to try something now, she had a bad feeling that the response would not go as General Cloudburner-hono believed. And that didn¡¯t even take into consideration what Rudra himself might do. For all she knew, that would be enough to make him refuse to bring her husband back to her. She couldn¡¯t afford to poke that sleeping beast as long as other safer options still existed.
Akhustal found herself before a massive tent. It seemed that while her mind was busy with her thoughts, her body had taken her down a now-familiar path and she¡¯d ended up here. The scent of death wafted out from beneath the heavy flaps, but she didn¡¯t mind. She was used to it by now, having been here so many times. Walking past the guards posted to either side, she entered the makeshift enclosure and paused to let her eyes adjust to the darkness.
Bodies filled the huge tent¡¯s insides, thousands of mummified corpses piled atop one another from end to end. Ten or so water Observers sat around the outside of the pile, constantly drawing the water from the humid rainforest air to keep the bodies from moistening and beginning to rot. All in all, it was a grotesque sight, one to unsettle the stomach of most anybody, but instead it gave Akhustal hope. There was still a chance that all these people would draw breath once more in the future.
One body was separate from the others, resting on a cot of sorts off in the corner¡ªher husband. His mummified body would be unrecognizable to most anyone else, but she could still see the man she loved. The Chos stared down at it and fought the urge to touch him, to stroke his face fondly. Physical contact would only speed up his decomposition, she knew.
¡°I¡¯m about to do something you¡¯d never forgive, my love,¡± she whispered softly to the corpse. ¡°I hope you will at least understand.¡±
He didn¡¯t respond. After another moment of fond inspection, she turned and left the tent.
Thousands of Shells covered the area around Rudra¡¯s hanging cell even as the day neared its end, most of them mimicking the prisoner¡¯s strange cross-legged pose. Akhustal thought that pose looked dumb. Somebody sitting that way appeared passive and weak, completely open to attack, without any way to immediately react. Still, each of them reacted as best they could when they saw her coming, scrambling out of her path like a vallut beneath a mertek¡¯s hungry gaze as murmurs rippled out through the mass of people. She snorted at the sight. They might have found a little courage, but these people were still Shells.
Though not a single striking Shell received any pay since the strike began, none of the people she passed by looked to be starving or in poor health. General Stonefist-hono reported that they were feeding themselves through a combination of rations stored away and a system of plant-specialized Observers, who had grown a series of fruit-bearing vines and were coaxing them to produce fruit constantly¡ªa familiar process known as ¡°fruit milking¡± that the nation as a whole relied on during certain times of the year to bolster their food stocks. The Shells¡¯ organization left Akhustal impressed. There was surprisingly little waste and the people cooperated efficiently to make the most of their limited resources. Looking at how smoothly everything ran, the fact that the Hidden Fang had never been caught by her forces suddenly seemed far more understandable. Only extremely competent people could run an operation this well.
She stopped before the rickety elevator platform that reached up to Rudra¡¯s dangling cell. The structure had been destroyed several times already by Flegs or her own forces, but the Shells rebuilt it time and time again, scrounging up whatever materials they could to do so. A small group of Shells stood beside the platform, ropes in their hands, ready to raise her up. It seemed like her arrival was expected. She stepped onto the platform without a word and the others went to work. Slowly she rose to the sound of pulleys squeaking and rattling.
Finally the elevator approached its destination and Akhustal spied the man she¡¯d come to see. Rudra Kapadia sat on the edge of his cell, a relaxed expression on his face as if he were just enjoying a refreshing moment of quiet contemplation. Akhustal hadn¡¯t seen Rudra in about nine days, and deep down it annoyed her to see how completely unbothered he looked by everything. Even his body looked to be in tip-top shape.
¡°Palebane-chos, it¡¯s been a while,¡± the man said, his serene tone somehow making her even more aggravated. ¡°Did you come to agree to our terms?¡±
Akhustal took a deep breath through her nostrils, forcing her anger down. ¡°No.¡±
He sat back and closed his eyes again. ¡°Then I don¡¯t see what there is to discuss.¡±
¡°Do you care about the people of Stragma?¡± she asked, genuinely curious. ¡°Or do you just want chaos and anarchy? How far are you willing to go? If the price of the Shells¡¯ freedom is that they have no country left once they get it, would you pay that price?¡±
¡°Those are unfair questions. I don¡¯t believe that it¡¯s such a drastic choice at all.¡±
¡°We have held back on the migration as long as we can. In two days, we will be forced to leave, and with it we will lose half of our city. Half of our wealth, our goods, everything that lets us live a decently comfortable life in the middle of this place will be gone. For good. We won¡¯t be able to retrieve it until a year from now, and almost everything will have been destroyed by then. This will cripple us. Millions will suffer. Every man, woman, and child will face hardships unlike anything they¡¯ve ever experienced before. This is what you have wrought, and if you continue, then it will all just get worse from there. Is that what you want?¡±
¡°Of course not. But this is on you as much as it is on us, if not more. Do you understand why we Shells decided to strike?¡±
¡°Because you don¡¯t have the courage to fight us in the open, so you abuse the fact that it would be dishonorable for us to kill our own harmless citizens.¡±
The infuriating man just shook his head and let out an exasperated groan. ¡°No, no, no! You don¡¯t get it at all! This is about respect. That¡¯s all it¡¯s ever been about.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°This is not a threat, this not an attack. This is a demonstration to show what would happen to Stragma if Shells didn¡¯t exist, to show just how important to this city Shells are. This is a statement. Shells make this city run just as much as anybody else, and they deserve the same level of respect and rights as everybody else. That¡¯s it.¡±
¡°A statement?! You call destroying society a statement?!¡±
¡°We haven¡¯t destroyed anything. That failure falls on you.¡±
¡°Did you not listen to what I just told you? Half!¡±
¡°Quadruple Shell pay and do away with how Shells need to get permission to leave and they will go back to work. I¡¯ll bring back your soldiers, too. All you have to do is say the words.¡±
¡°You think I don¡¯t know that?!¡± Akhustal hissed. ¡°It¡¯s not that simple! Even if I agreed with you about Shells¡ªand I don¡¯t¡ªthe people won¡¯t allow it! They won¡¯t accept what you¡¯re demanding! Some of my own generals would attempt a coup! You¡¯re asking the impossible!¡±
¡°I can¡¯t be held responsible for your people¡¯s prejudices. I¡¯m sorry, but we have gone too far to back down now.¡±
A tense silence hung between them for a few moments before Akhustal spoke again.
¡°What about a compromise?¡± she asked.
¡°Hmmmm,¡± the man hummed as he tilted his head in thought before going quiet for a moment. ¡°What do you have in mind?¡±
¡°A temporary truce, until the migration is over.¡±
¡°You''re asking a lot. What are you willing to offer in return?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll bump the pay up to one and a half what it is now if you will get them all to help with the migration.¡±
¡°Double or no deal.¡±
¡°...fine. Double the pay.¡±
¡°For good.¡±
¡°For good.¡±
¡°And the strike will likely begin again once the migration is over.¡±
¡°...I understand.¡±
¡°I have to discuss it, of course. This isn¡¯t my call to make.¡±
¡°Be fast. There¡¯s no time left.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll know by the morning,¡± Rudra said. He stood up and stretched. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind, it¡¯s time I retired for the night. All this sitting really wears you out.¡±
As Akhustal left the area and headed back to her quarters high above the city, she couldn¡¯t help but feel conflicted. The meeting with Rudra had gone about as well as she had hoped. With the help of the rest of the Shells, they would be able to salvage much of what would otherwise be lost to them. Not all of it¡ªthere was just too little time left¡ªbut enough that the people wouldn¡¯t have to suffer crippling shortages that would hamper the country for seasons, if not years to come.
But it had come with a cost. She¡¯d bent. Not by much, but enough. Enough to open the possibility for more concessions. Enough to enrage the hardliners. The old precedent was now broken and a new one now stood in its place, one that could have dramatically more impactful consequences in the future. Still, she didn¡¯t see any other way. What was the point of worrying about the state of Stragma ten years from now if the alternative was that it wouldn¡¯t survive the year?
Chapter 46
¡°Green, Black, three. House wins.¡±
A chorus of angry groans erupted from the assembled gamblers around the caretta table. Nobody¡¯s voice was louder than Tehlmar¡¯s. An aggrieved, drunken protest emerged from his lips as he slammed his fist onto the polished wooden tabletop.
¡°Bullshit!¡± he slurred, his long, pointed ears red from the potent combination of alcohol and rage. ¡°This game¡¯s rigged! This whole place¡¯s rigged!¡±
The other gamblers quickly backed away as Tehlmar staggered towards the house¡¯s roller, who stood at the other end of the table. The smoky air teamed up with the booze to make the room swim and shift in his vision. He kept his right hand on the table for balance while he fumbled beneath his shirt with his left, looking for the dagger he always kept hidden there.
Nothing. What? It had to be there! Where had it gone?
Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice tried to tell him that things were different now, but it could not pierce the inebriated din that thundered through his head. He continued to fumble as he neared the roller, the man¡¯s desperate waving towards somebody else making no impression on him. Tehlmar reached out and grabbed the man by arm. ¡°I know loaded dice when I see them. Give me back my money,¡± he demanded.
¡°Sir, it¡¯s time for you to leave,¡± said a voice behind him. A hand fell on his shoulder, grasping it firmly.
Tehlmar¡¯s body whirled into action, decades of training overriding conscious thought. Ducking down, he spun about with unexpected quickness, his leg extending out to sweep the person off their feet. Then he stumbled, his head spinning from the sudden explosive movements. This was far from Tehlmar¡¯s first drunken fight, but experience couldn¡¯t remove the penalty of alcohol. It could, however, minimize it. Instead of fighting the stumble, he went with it, turning it into a somewhat awkward tumble that placed him just beside the falling man as the man landed, flailing, chest-down on the ground.
Ignoring the panicked shouts coming from all around, Tehlmar rolled on top of his opponent and pinned him to the floor, using his weight to keep the man from getting up while he tried to grab one of the man¡¯s two left arms. After a moment he succeeded, whereupon he twisted the man¡¯s arm around behind him and began to pull, forcing the limb up at an angle that no shoulder was meant to handle. With a sickening pop, the shoulder dislocated and the man screamed in agony.
A body slammed into Tehlmar, knocking him prone. He struggled against his new assailant, but before he could maneuver properly a second body joined in. Then a third, and a fourth.
¡°You¡¯re all bloody cheaters!¡± he shouted. ¡°Dirty, rotten shitstains! I¡¯m gonna-¡±
Something hard hit the back of his head, and the lights went out.
Slowly, carefully, Tehlmar sliced, the sharp knife easily turning the large vegetables from whole entities into a pile of small thin pieces. He smoothly scooped them up and dropped them into a nearby bowl, the pieces eliciting soft tinks as they bounced off the fine white porcelain. Suddenly Tehlmar¡¯s ears picked up a low, mournful wail off in the distance, its volume slowly building and its pitch rising until it became an unearthly cry that sent waves of dread washing over him. Another wail joined the first, then another, and another, each closer than before, until the entire world seemed to be crying out in warning. Dropping the knife onto the counter, he rushed out of the kitchen and donned his straw sandals, then raced out of his small house to find a street already clogged with people. The wailing continued all around the city as thousands of others poured from their houses, all desperate to get out as quickly as possible.
Then his ears picked up a sound over the wailing, the sound of a million giant insects beating their wings in a massive swarm. Utter terror consumed him and he ran, following the tide of panicked people. He knew that sound. That was the sound of death.
Tehlmar screamed as he woke in a cold sweat. He¡¯d had that accursed dream again. He must not have been drunk enough last night. Stopping the nightmares wasn¡¯t the primary reason he drank, but it sure was a pleasant side effect. Tehlmar rubbed his head, trying to ease the headache that felt like it would split his head wide open any moment now. This was nothing new¡ªpretty much every morning began with a wicked hangover. It was just that this time there was an extra coat of pain layered atop the normal one. He rubbed his head, finding a large, sore bump on the back of his skull. What happened last night?
Tehlmar wracked his memory, but found it fuzzy. This was no surprise, as his memory of most anything that had happened since he¡¯d arrived here was hazy. It was hard to create memories when drunk off your ass, after all, and he¡¯d been almost perpetually in such a condition from the start. Booze was the easiest, surest way to cope.
He hated it here. Nothing felt right. He couldn¡¯t get used to the noises of the windmills that dotted the city, their creaks and groans the never ending soundtrack to his new life. He couldn¡¯t get used to the stares, especially the feeling he got whenever he entered a room and everybody else watched him while trying to hide it. He couldn¡¯t get used to the formality, or the luxury, or the way everybody talked about him behind his back. But most of all, he couldn¡¯t get used to the beds. After years of sleeping on the ground, in trees, or on hard, lumpy straw mattresses found in low-quality inns, his body couldn¡¯t handle these expensive beds that made it feel like you were sleeping on a cloud. It felt like he was being engulfed in the downy softness, and that if he weren¡¯t careful he would sink in so deep that he¡¯d never climb back out.
He groaned as he rolled his way towards the edge of his bed, his mind still trying to remember the previous day¡¯s events. He could recall hearing of a gambling den, a different one than the two others he¡¯d been kicked out of already. He¡¯d ditched his attendants, made his way there, had a few more drinks¡ªokay, more than just a few¡ªand... and... well something had happened, that was for sure, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn¡¯t recall what it was or how he¡¯d made it home afterward.
Now thankfully at the bed¡¯s edge, Tehlmar reached down and fished for one of his hidden bottles of liquor, only to find nothing. Strange. With a grunt he plopped himself down onto the soft throw rug placed by his bedside and got down on his hands and knees to look underneath the bed. He paled. There was nothing there.
Quickly making his way to a nearby wardrobe, he crouched down again and checked for the flask he¡¯d hidden beneath. Nothing. A chill ran down his spine. Panic rising, he opened the wardrobe and rooted around from the secret compartment hidden in the bottom. Nothing. All his booze was gone. That could only mean one thing: he was in serious trouble.
Somebody knocked on the door. Quickly, Tehlmar straightened up, shutting the wardrobe cinching his bed wear shut. ¡°Enter,¡± he called.
The door opened to reveal a well-dressed male servant, one of the stewards of the household, with two female servants behind him. The man bowed. ¡°Your father summons you to the tea room in an hour,¡± he said. The two women entered and the steward shut the door, leaving Tehlmar trapped with the women against his will.
What followed was something that could only be described as torture. The two servant women forced him into a bath, after which they proceeded to dress him, cake his face with a variety of makeups, and addressed his tangled hair. The entire time, neither woman dropped her polite, servantly smile, but that smile never went to their eyes. Those eyes bothered him. They gazed at him the same way all the women here did, like they were looking at an exquisitely prepared meal on a dish.
Nearly an hour later, Tehlmar emerged from his bedroom looking like a different man. His long green hair fell down onto his shoulders in a complex series of interlocking braids, the color almost blending in with the ornate emerald outfit he wore, complete with robe and cape. The bright, vibrant colors of his hair and clothing stood in stark contrast to his bleached-white face, which was covered in so much makeup that he felt like a doll. Just once, he¡¯d like to meet whatever moron had decided that people of his station had to dress up like idiots and cover themselves with powders and paints at all times, just so he could punch them in the throat.
His legs moved on their own, carrying him through the expansive manor. Though he hadn¡¯t been back in decades, the layout of the place had not changed since his childhood, and so he knew his way. Soon enough he stood outside the tea room, still weighing his options. He really didn¡¯t want to deal with his father right now, especially not with a hangover and a head injury. For a moment, Tehlmar considered running away for a few days and avoiding the whole situation, but quickly decided against it. He¡¯d burned enough bridges these last few seasons. No, as much as he didn¡¯t want to, he had to do this. Family, and all that junk.
Tehlmar knocked on the tea room door and waited until he heard the soft, faint voice of his father calling him in. Entering the luxurious room, he spied his father Fimnas sitting in a large armchair, a steaming cup of tea sitting on an small end table beside him. Every time Tehlmar saw his old man now, he couldn''t get over how frail he looked. Fimnas had been remarkably old compared to the average Drayhadan father even back when Tehlmar had been born, and the decades since had not treated him kindly. As a child, Tehlmar had always seen his father as a large, strong figure. Now, it was like his weight and majesty had evaporated, and what had once been an endless ocean was now only a small puddle by the side of the road. His long, white hair blended with his equally long white beard to practically envelop the thin, frail body. Unlike other species, elves never suffered wrinkles, liver spots, saggy skin, or other signs of old age. They just seemed to wither away until one day their body stopped and they were gone. Judging by his appearance and the way his hands shook when he lifted the teacup to his lips, Tehlmar estimated that he only had a few more years left in him. A decade at most.
¡°Sit,¡± the old man said, his voice somewhat weak but still firm and commanding as it was in Tehlmar¡¯s memories. Almost by reflex, Tehlmar obeyed, taking a seat in the chair opposite his father¡¯s. The man closed his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them, his gaze had become stern and harsh. Tehlmar returned his gaze defiantly, almost petulantly.
¡°My son,¡± he began, ¡°words could not describe how happy I was when you returned after all these years. When they took you away, I had never felt so powerless in my life. I thought we might never see you again, and if I ever did, you would not be the young boy that I knew and loved. That¡¯s why I¡¯ve done my best to give you space until you were ready.¡±
Tehlmar held his tongue and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. This felt the same as the lectures his father had given him back when he was just a young boy. Tehlmar just braced himself for the tirade that was surely coming after these mild attempts at sympathy.
¡°I can¡¯t imagine how hard it must be to transition from living with barbarians,¡± the elderly elf continued, ¡°but I never imagined you would defile yourself and our entire clan the way you have since you arrived. You have disappointed me at every juncture. You spend your days as a drunken lout, gambling your money away and associating with degenerates well below your station. After your puerile little brawl last night, it has become clear to me that I have been far too lenient on you.
¡°None of this behavior is becoming of a prince, and I will tolerate it no longer. I don¡¯t care who you were before. You are Tehlmar Esmae, heir to one of the four ruling clans of this land, and it¡¯s time that you started acting like it. Your sister has filled in during your absence, but it is well past time for her to dedicate herself to her virtues and accept a suitor. Primary rule will cycle in two decades from the Casm clan to ours, and you will reign supreme over all the land. Your preparations begin now. No more drunken escapades. No more dressing like a beggar. You will behave properly from now on. Is that clear?¡±
¡°Fuck no! Don''t tell me what to fucking do!¡± Tehlmar shot back, genuine anger in his voice.
¡°Tehlmar! Do not sully what is left of your reputation with such vulgarities!¡±
¡°Shut up! I¡¯m not a fucking child! I¡¯m a grown-ass man, and I get to decide what I do with my own life! I wouldn¡¯t even be any good at ruling the clan, anyway! Let somebody else do it!¡±
¡°There is no one else! Do you really think I would want to elevate a crass, boorish barbarian-tainted man-child to the highest position in the country if I had any other choice?¡±
¡°You seem to have been doing just fine without me.¡±
¡°The current state of affairs cannot continue. A woman has no place on the throne, you know that as well as I. Pyria should be fulfilling her womanly duties, not inspecting crop yields. That is why it is imperative that we prepare you so that she can take her proper place in society as soon as possible. Now, in order to get you on the right path, I-¡±
A knock came from the door.
¡°Ah, there he is now. Enter!¡±
The door opened and a man stepped in before bowing to Fimnas. He wore the clothes of a high-level servant on his body and an dour frown on his face. Slightly shorter than Tehlmar, his dark black hair was cut so that it fell just below his ears onto one side¡ªa standard haircut for men of his rank. His eyes inspected Tehlmar, obviously unimpressed with what he saw. Tehlmar didn¡¯t like him from the start. The man radiated the aura of a killjoy. What gave Tehlmar such a bad feeling, however, was the man¡¯s rather open disdain for him. No functionary would be able to get away with such a disrespectful look before the patriarch of a noble clan and his son, unless...
¡°This is Artiermius, one of our best young assistants. By my authority, he has control over your schedule for the indefinite future. You will go where he says you go. You will do what he tells you to do. It is his task to rehabilitate you and I am giving him whatever power he needs in order to accomplish that.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t be serious.¡±
¡°One must not hold back in the final hour, my son.¡±
¡°And why should I accept any of this bullshit?¡±
¡°What are you going to do? Run away? Go ahead, if you never want to see the sunlight again.¡±
¡°But how could I rule the clan from a dungeon cell, father?¡± Tehlmar replied, laying the sarcasm on thick.
"I wouldn''t be the one throwing you in a cell, fool. Tell me, my boy, did you never stop to wonder just why the Masked Battalion was so lenient on you?¡±
Tehlmar stiffened as a shiver flowed down his spine. In a way, the Masked Battalion was his family far more than his birth clan. The secretive order of undercover spies had raised him since the age of eight, teaching him the secret techniques that allowed one to take another form and hold it for decades, all the while still retaining the ability to use Feeler abilities. These techniques were vital for the members of the order to fulfill their important role: being the nation¡¯s hidden eyes and ears in the rest of the world, integrating themselves in all levels of barbarian society and keeping tabs on trends and movements.
Thanks to such an upbringing, Tehlmar knew better than anybody what the the Battalion could be like to those it viewed as enemies. The order was an independent organization created millennia ago. Only by being dogmatically secretive and paranoid at all times had it managed to maintain its independence in a country dominated by four ruling clans constantly looking for an edge against each other. They did not look kindly on such things as insubordination, of which he was most definitely guilty.
Tehlmar had no idea how his father had come to such information, but the old bastard was correct. Tehlmar¡¯s ¡°tour¡± had come to an end three years prior and the expected recall order had come. He¡¯d ignored it, for a variety of reasons. The fact that he¡¯d continued to send back reports had not fully cleared him of suspicion. If he were to fly the coop now, all he would accomplish would be to draw their full attention.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
¡°I¡¯m glad you understand your situation,¡± Fimnas said, Tehlmar¡¯s look of resignation all the answer that he needed. ¡°Now, off with you. Enough time has been wasted as it is. There¡¯s a lot of studying, working, and courting for you to catch up on.¡±
¡°-then fiscal policy lessons from twelve to fourteen, an hour for dinner and to clean up, and from fifteen to eighteen I will personally tutor you in- are you listening to me?¡± Artiermius snapped his fingers in front of Tehlmar¡¯s face.
¡°Etiquette, money, food, tutor, got it,¡± Tehlmar lied. The man¡¯s words had barely registered with him, his own head still coming to grips with everything his father had just dropped in his lap. More than anything, though, his mind was spiraling around just one word: courting.
The nature of romance and marriage in Drayhadal was a complex one. In some ways it began with the women, who spent a large portion of their time and effort working towards what was known as the ¡°Seven Virtues¡±: seven categories of femininity considered to make up the perfect woman, including things like beauty, music, poetry, and the like. The more desirable a woman made herself, the more she could demand from her suitors. That was where the men came in. In Drayhadan society, your man was your ultimate status symbol. The more great feats he¡¯d accomplished and the higher his status, the better you looked and the better you were treated. This stood true in every rung of society; even poor commoners spent what time they had when not working practicing the Virtues in the hopes of attracting the best man they could to improve their lives.
Once a woman performed the Dance of Awakening during the Festival of Rebirth, she was considered eligible and open for suitors. That was where the second step began. An eligible woman could be approached by suitors who wanted to court her. The contact had to be initiated by the man, never the woman. The man would carve an ertani, otherwise known as a ¡°spirit carving¡±, which was a small, hand-sized wooden token in the shape of the woman¡¯s spirit, or more accurately how the suitor imagined her spirit. These carvings were such a crucial part of the courtship process that in large Drayhadan cities there were entire stores devoted to nothing but ertani supplies. Once the carving was complete and presented to the woman, the onus fell on her once more.
This was the last part of the courtship process: the judgment. While men were the only ones who could initiate courtship, the woman had the final say. If she found the man appealing and his accomplishments worthy, she could accept. If she found promise in him, she could answer that he needed greater feats before she would accept him. Otherwise, she could simply reject him and that was the end of it.
This entire process exemplified everything that Tehlmar hated about Drayhadal¡¯s culture. Like all things Drayhadan, it was needlessly complicated, rigid in its structure, and a long, overdrawn waste of time. What really killed him, however, was that this wasn¡¯t even the process for marriage. All that work was just to start a relationship! Given the long lifespans of the elven race, a lot of importance was placed on finding the perfect partner, as a so-so relationship would never survive the many decades they would be together. If the couple decided they didn¡¯t like each other enough, they¡¯d split and it would be back to the start for both of them!
This was the bullshit Tehlmar had to look forward to now. As a prince, he was expected to marry and produce heirs sooner rather than later, which meant going through this whole rigmarole several times at the least. There was nothing in the world he wanted to avoid more.
Perhaps in another world, one where he¡¯d grown up here in the Esmae compound living the life of a normal young prince for the last eighty-five years, he would have found the idea of courting a delicate elven flower exciting. Unfortunately he didn¡¯t have that luxury. In this reality, these poem-spouting, petal-dancing girls with their perfect faces and dainty fingers held no appeal to him. Not even all of them combined could hold a candle to Arlette Demirt.
Arlette.
His heart ached for her constantly, the pain growing worse every day. He hoped to death that she was alright. Sure, he knew she¡¯d escaped the Kutrad dungeon, thanks to the news of the wild events in Xoginia. But since then word of her had run dry. Where was she? Was she still alive? He wanted to rush back north and go find her, to make sure she was okay and be with her again. He wanted it more than anything. But that was simply impossible. Jaquet the Quick was no more. He was a prince now. He wasn¡¯t allowed to live that kind of life ever again. But even if he could, it wouldn¡¯t matter. Arlette would never accept him. Not after what he¡¯d done. Just the thought made him yearn for a flagon of booze.
Tehlmar drank for many reasons. He drank to liven up his empty days. He drank to drive away annoying sycophants who wanted to kiss up to the new prince. He drank because it made him feel better. He drank because it sometimes kept the nightmares away. But more than anything else, Tehlmar drank to forget. He drank to forget all those lazy days with her, traveling down endless roads on overcrowded wagons. He drank to forget the annoyed smile on her face when he¡¯d tell a particularly bad joke, where she seemed equally ready to laugh and to punch him in the face. He drank to forget how she stood tall against any opponent, how not even an entire country hunting them was enough to break her.
Most of all, he drank to forget that day. He drank to forget the pain in her voice when she¡¯d realized the truth. He drank to forget her haunting laughter echoing down the hall as he left. He drank to forget the fact that he¡¯d never looked at her, not once the entire time, too afraid of the betrayal he would find in her eyes.
It never worked. Every morning he would wake up, the fog in his mind gone, and he¡¯d remember the truth all over again. He would remember that he was a coward.
¡°-which is why when Casm investment into the clothing industry upset the delicate balance, the end result was a cascade of inter-house alliances that nearly led to war between the clans. It was with this in mind that the Kechouyae Accords were established-¡±
Tehlmar fought to keep his head up as Artiermius droned on and on. He wanted to die. This entire day had been a parade of boredom, each exercise somehow worse than the last, but nothing had prepared him for this pedantic jerkoff¡¯s idea of ¡°history lessons¡±. The man had not made a good first impression, and by now Tehlmar was convinced that Artiermius was the sort of person who counted his bath soaps to make sure he had an even number or kept a journal of everything he ate, including all the mundane details like weight and coloring. To make matters worse, the functionary seemed to really relish the second-hand power he held over the prince. Tehlmar hated his very existence.
The bureaucrat¡¯s long-winded blathering came to a halt as Tehlmar stood up and stretched. ¡°What are you doing? Sit down,¡± Artiermius demanded. ¡°There are still two hours of lessons remaining.¡±
¡°I¡¯m done,¡± Tehlmar stated. ¡°I can¡¯t take any more of this today.¡±
¡°You will sit down this instant! I am in charge here, not you!¡±
Yeah, this guy was practically getting off on his authority. Tehlmar decided it was time for a slight attitude adjustment. Straightening up, he closed in on the smaller man until he was practically breathing down the other man¡¯s face. ¡°Look, pal. I¡¯m going to make this simple for you. I am going to walk out that door, and you can¡¯t stop me. You know where I came from. You know what I can do. And so you know that if you piss me off, nobody will ever find your body. Is that clear?¡±
To Tehlmar¡¯s shock, Artiermius didn¡¯t even flinch. Tehlmar begrudgingly raised his opinion of the man just slightly out of respect. ¡°You know I have to report this uncouth behavior,¡± the man said, staring Tehlmar right back in the eyes.
¡°Go right ahead. Tell that bitch everything, I don¡¯t care.¡±
¡°My authority comes from the clan head himself.¡±
¡°Come off it. We both know who has the real power here. Father just likes to feel important and pretend that he¡¯s still running the clan but we both know that she¡¯s the one really pulling the strings. I¡¯d bet money that she hand-picked you, didn¡¯t she?¡± This time Artiermius flinched ever so slightly. ¡°That¡¯s what I thought. I¡¯m done with this for today.¡±
Turning around, Tehlmar strode towards the door, leaving the stammering servant to blabber at his back. He didn¡¯t know where he was going, or what he would do; he just knew that if he didn¡¯t leave now he¡¯d go crazy. He¡¯d figure something out, he was sure. This was actually the first evening since his arrival where he wasn¡¯t completely sloshed. Surely there was something he¡¯d intended to do that he could busy himself with.
As he made his way towards the door, he passed by a window just as a large flock of birds flew by, their shadows peppering his eyes with darkness and light, and suddenly the world was in flames.
Flames roared in his ears. Everything burned. Everything. There was no escape from this inferno, this hellscape. He could feel the heat singeing his skin as he ran, but try as he might, he could not outrun the great flocks of metal birds soaring high above in the night sky, nor could he outrun the eggs they dropped that turned everything around into fire. He was going to die here. There was no escape, only death and despair. All around him, his city burned and his countrymen died. He would be joining them soon.
¡°-ince! Wake up! Prince Tehlmar!¡±
Tehlmar bolted to his feet, his heart racing, his breath quick and strained. It took him a moment to realize he was back in the palace room with Artiermius and not roasting alive in a foreign city that felt like home. He¡¯d had a flashback. Again. The terror of the vision gave way to a fierce anger. He hadn¡¯t had a flashback in more than twenty days. Why wasn¡¯t he over this?!
¡°FUCK!¡± he roared, lashing out with his foot and sending a small nearby table flying across the room.
¡°Calm yourself, Prince. This is no way for a noble to-.¡±
¡°You shut your fucking face, you pompous shitbag,¡± Tehlmar growled, spinning about and seizing the other man by the throat and slamming him against the nearby wall. ¡°Now you listen, and you listen well. I¡¯m going to ask you a simple question, and if I don¡¯t like your answer, I might do something we¡¯ll both regret. Understand? Good. During the last invasion, somebody took down the entire army by themselves. Who was it, Artiermius? Who fucked with my mind?¡±
Artiermius swallowed fearfully and looked away, avoiding his gaze. Tehlmar could see the indecision, the thoughts warring with each other inside the man¡¯s head. The servant took a long, deep breath. ¡°They call her the Mother of Nightmares,¡± he said, almost too softly for Tehlmar to hear.
Tehlmar released his grip on the man¡¯s throat and took a half-step back. The Mother of Nightmares. Tehlmar had never heard such a name before. Somehow it helped a little just to be able to put a name to it. And what a name. He¡¯d met a myriad soldiers and mercenaries with names and titles forged from feats in battle, but had never heard one so... chilling before. And yet... it was an incredibly accurate title. He¡¯d be one to know.
¡°Where is she? Take me to her.¡±
¡°I-I do not think it is wise for me to do that,¡± the servant said, hesitantly.
¡°Look, I¡¯ll start cooperating, alright? I¡¯ll pay attention to your stupid lessons, I¡¯ll practice the stupid dances, I¡¯ll eat with the right fucking fork, I¡¯ll do whatever you tell me if you will take me to her. I need to see her, Artiermius, or I will never be free of her curse. But this is the only time I will offer you this. This is your one chance.¡±
The servant frowned and let out a disapproving hum. ¡°Very well, if you will swear on your honor as Prince of the Esmae, I will do as you ask.¡±
¡°I swear.¡±
¡°Then let us depart at once,¡± Artiermius said, taking a glance out the window at the sun as it neared the horizon. ¡°I hear that she goes to sleep quite early.¡±
An hour of travel later, Tehlmar and Artiermius found themselves walking through a field southwest of Esmaeyae, approaching a large house standing atop a small hill off in the distance. For a long time, Tehlmar had been very confused and unsure that the servant knew where he was going, but seeing almost a hundred soldiers standing guard and patrolling the area around the hill was enough to convince him that they were at the right place. Not that he understood why this powerful person would be out in the middle of nowhere instead of enjoying a soft, pampered life inside the city.
¡°Halt! Who goes there?¡± came a shout as a squad of soldiers hustled over.
Tehlmar let his thoughts drift as he let Artiermius do the talking, his mind wondering about just who this person was. Every time he had the vision, it all felt so terribly real. He could hear the sound of the strange birds overhead, smell the smoke from the inferno and feel its searing heat. He would even taste his own blood in his mouth. Even beyond the senses, everything had felt like it made sense. The birds high up in the sky, for example. Whenever he saw them, he¡¯d feel like he knew what they were, and the fear was not the fear of the unknown. But whenever he thought back on it after he woke, he couldn¡¯t recall why he had felt that way. They were unknown to him, no doubt about it.
In a way, Tehlmar had to admit that part of him was simply reluctant to acknowledge that Sofie might have been right. That annoying girl had always claimed to be from another world, and he¡¯d always chalked it up to her being a poor delusional fool, but she¡¯d been the only person who seemed to understand their experiences. Maybe she¡¯d been right all along... not that he would ever admit such a thing to her face.
The guards waved them through after inspecting some sort of official document that Artiermius had pulled out. As they approached the house, Tehlmar took note of the building¡¯s condition. Everything, the stone, the wood, the curtains he could see in the windows, looked new, almost as if this building had been built for the Mother of Nightmares herself. The sun had set just a short time ago, and little light could be seen in the house except in one room, where he could see the telltale flicking light of a fire raging in a fireplace.
A servant emerged from the front door and bowed, then led them inside. ¡°Mistress,¡± he said, entering the room with the fireplace while the two of them waited at the door, ¡°there are two visitors here to see you.¡±
¡°Oh?¡± asked a raspy voice coming from an armchair facing away from them. ¡°Visitors at this hour? How interesting! Please come in!¡±
Tehlmar entered, marching by the exiting servant with a full head of steam. He felt the simmering anger from before bubble up from deep inside him, an anger that had been slowly building up ever since the battle with each nightmare and flashback. Until today, he¡¯d never thought that he¡¯d get the opportunity to actually let it out on the person responsible for the pain and anguish he¡¯d suffered. But here he was, and he was about to give this person everything he had.
¡°So you¡¯re the one who fucked with my mind?¡± he asked rounding the pair of chairs. ¡°I should... I...¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s voice trailed off into the nether, his mind locking up as he finally looked upon the being capable of stopping an entire army in its tracks. He couldn¡¯t process what his eyes were telling him. He¡¯d expected many possibilities, but this... this was far beyond anything he¡¯d imagined possible. Yet he could not deny what he saw. Smiling up at him with a puzzled look on her face sat the Mother of Nightmares, the oldest-looking person he¡¯d ever fucking seen.
Chapter 47
Soft chimes rang off in the distance as a gust of wind blew through the area, ruffling the curtains hanging on the nearby window and sending a sudden burst of late-morning sun directly into Yamanaka Mizuko¡¯s eyes. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, barely able to open. Eventually they parted, revealing the familiar wood of her bedroom ceiling.
A callused hand gently wrapped itself around her emaciated, wrinkled fingers. ¡°How do you feel, mother?¡± said the voice of her daughter, Keiko.
¡°Tired,¡± she rasped, barely able to speak. Tired was putting it lightly. Never in her one hundred and nine years of life had she ever felt so exhausted. Funny, she¡¯d thought the same thought the day before, and the day before that. There wasn¡¯t much time left. Another day or two at most.
She could hear other voices in the room besides that of her daughter. Grandchildren chatted with each other while great-grandchildren ran about outside, laughing as they played. The sounds of her family warmed her heart. It meant so much to her that they had all traveled to Kyoto to see her one last time before she went. All except one, perhaps. No matter how she tried, her old, worn ears couldn¡¯t pick up a trace of her son¡¯s voice anywhere.
¡°Eisuke?¡± she wheezed out. Keiko didn¡¯t say anything, but the way her grip on Mizuko¡¯s hand tightened told the dying woman all she needed to know. A tired sigh escaped her withered lips. Even now, all these year later, he had not forgiven her.
¡°I will try to call him again,¡± her daughter said, bitterness and anger in her voice. Keiko let go of Mizuko¡¯s hand and reached for her phone.
¡°No,¡± the ancient woman said. ¡°Leave him be. I-urk!¡±
The exertion of speaking a full sentence had been too much for Mizuko. Pain swept through her body as she felt something pull at her spirit, trying to rip it out of her. A series of coughs combined with groans wracked her wretched form. Her final thought before she passed was that she¡¯d never imagined that death would be so very painful.
Looking around the chamber, the low light of the glowing crystals combining with the bizarre sculptures lining the sides of the room lent the place a gloomy atmosphere. Mizuko wondered if this was Yomi. She found it strange that nobody else was around, but who was she to say what Yomi should be like?
The stone slab upon which she laid felt cool and refreshing, and so she decided to continue to lay atop it for a while. As somebody who had just died, she felt that it was important that she spend some time contemplating her life before anything else, and this was as good a spot for that as any. At least it was quiet here.
So Mizuko thought back on her life, reminiscing about everything from her childhood back in the 1910¡¯s, to her first love and marriage to her first husband, his death in World War II, her second husband and the birth of her first child Eisuke, her second husband¡¯s tragic death, the birth of Keiko... on and on her life paraded before her eyes. It was a life filled with pain, but one also filled with joy. There were, of course, numerous regrets both large and small, but in the end, she felt simple acceptance more than anything. Perhaps with death came freedom.
A loud gurgle rose from Mizuko¡¯s stomach, and she realized she felt hungry. A spirit could get hungry? How strange.
Satisfied with her ruminations on her past life, she figured it was probably time for her to get up. The question was if she even could; for the last fifteen years Mizuko had been confined to a wheelchair, her legs no longer strong enough to support her weight. She felt better now than she¡¯d felt in a long, long time, but she didn¡¯t know if that meant much. Looking at her arm, she found that her wrinkled, withered hand looked just as weak as it had upon her death.
Giving herself an experimental push, Mizuko found to her delight that she had the strength to sit up. Carefully, she lowered her feet to the ground one at a time and tested her legs. They felt good. Holding her breath, she slid herself off the slab. It had been so long since she¡¯d used her legs that she almost fell over just from lack of practice, but after a stumble she was able to right herself and stand on her own for the first time in over a decade. She couldn¡¯t help but smile at even this simple action. It felt wonderful to not need another person just to move about again.
Now that she was fully upright, she took a few tentative steps, finding herself fully mobile. As she continued to move, her attention turned to the nearby sculptures. Their strange abstract shapes confused her. Who would put a sculpture garden in a dank room without any windows? Especially one so devoid of traffic; it felt like she¡¯d been there for many hours, but not a single soul had come by the entire time.
At the other end of the chamber stood a short hallway with several other strange rooms filled with more objects she didn¡¯t recognize but not a single person. At the end of the hallway, Mizuko found the nemesis of the elderly everywhere: stairs. After a moment of hesitation, she decided to throw caution to the wind and see just how much her spirit body could take.
A surprising amount, it seemed. It took several minutes of climbing before she became winded and needed to stop for a rest, elated. Sure, she might not look it, but she felt as good as she had at a sprightly seventy years old! Oh, the joys of feeling young again!
At the summit of the stairwell, Mizuko found a large metal door with an oversized blinking blue button pulsing off to the side. Lacking anything else to do, she pressed it and watched as the door slowly and haltingly opened, the sound of machinery grinding against itself making her cringe. Blinding light suddenly poured in, forcing her to shield her eyes against the sudden brightness. Along with the light came a pleasant breeze, and the smell of grass, bringing forth nostalgic memories of running through fields as a child. She stepped into the light.
Once her eyes adjusted, any thoughts that she was in Yomi vanished for good. The idyllic scene before her couldn¡¯t be the Yomi that the legends of her childhood spoke of. Yomi was supposed to be gloomy and dark like the room below, not some picturesque countryside filled with wildflowers swaying in the gentle midday wind. Perhaps this was the Christian Heaven, instead? Though she¡¯d always thought that Christian Heaven was up in the sky, with clouds and whatnot.
As she looked out at the gorgeous vistas, Mizuko brought her left hand over to her right and pinched herself as hard as she could, eliciting a loud hiss of pain from her own lips. No, this didn¡¯t add up. Mizuko had little doubt that she had died. The agonizing pain, and how it seemed to latch onto a part of her beyond the physical, surely couldn¡¯t have been anything else. And yet, she could get hungry, get tired, feel pain... all signs pointed to the conclusion that she was currently alive. And more than just alive, she seemed to be renewed somewhat, strengthened physically enough that she didn¡¯t need to rely on others for her own basic survival anymore. If this were the afterlife, it wasn¡¯t like that of any legend she¡¯d ever heard.
After a moment of consideration, Mizuko decided that it didn¡¯t matter if this were the afterlife or just another world or dimension or whatever. She was here now, alive and kicking, and knowing the answers to these questions or not didn¡¯t change that. She could fill in those blanks later. What did matter was that she had a new lease on life, and she intended to make the most of it.
The plains called out to her, inviting her to explore their natural beauty. It had been decades since she¡¯d last been able to walk of her own volition. Now that she could walk again the urge to amble felt hard to ignore and the pleasant fields surrounding her seemed like the perfect area for a stroll. But first, she had to do something about the fact that she was barefoot. She stood on a shallow hill, looking down on a prairie covered in growing grass in a variety of colors. Carefully she made her way down to the field below and began to pluck out some of the longer grass stalks. Not many were long enough for her needs¡ªjudging by the length of the still-growing grasses, it seemed that this place¡¯s season was somewhere around the first third of spring. Once she had enough, she sat down and began weaving the stalks together, one by one like her mother had taught her many years ago. After a little while, Mizuko had herself a pair of woven grass sandals to fit on her small feet. The sandals would fall apart sooner rather than later, but they were enough for the moment. It was a shame that she couldn¡¯t do something about her bedwear while she was at it.
Humming a merry tune, Mizuko picked a random direction and started walking. As she went, she couldn¡¯t help but smile. The sunlight on her skin filled her with warmth while the chirps of birds and insects filled her with joy. She even found herself a nice walking stick from one of the isolated trees that pockmarked the otherwise-grassy landscape.
For a good while it was just her and the wilderness, but several hours later the land began to change. At first she thought it was just her imagination, but it seemed like the lay of the land itself was becoming less natural, taking on a sort of orderly appearance. Then she noticed signs of fields off in the distance. Finally, somebody to talk to! Maybe she¡¯d be able to meet somebody else who could clear up her confusion.
As she closed in on the fields in the distance, she came upon a brook. The water tasted clear and refreshing and she exhaled in satisfaction. She¡¯d needed a drink more than she¡¯d realized.
Just as she was about to continue onward, Mizuko thought she heard something nearby¡ªsomething just barely audible over the brook¡¯s babbling. Curious, she changed direction and followed her ears. As she came around an embankment, she found an impossibly beautiful young woman who looked to be about eighteen years old weeping by the creekside with a basket of laundry to her side.
Mizuko didn¡¯t know what this person was, but she did know that the girl wasn¡¯t human. Given how much of her life had become sitting since passing ninety, Mizuko had become quite a movie watcher in the last few decades, and her first thought when looking at this girl was of those gorgeous people from those long fantasy movies. What were the people in them called again? Oh yes, elves. This girl resembled some sort of elf. With long, glistening hair that glimmered in the sunlight, an enchanting face free of pock marks or imperfections, and long, pointed ears that gave her an aura of wispy, inhuman elegance, the woman looked so flawless that not even the tears flowing down her cheeks could mar her beauty. Mizuko wondered what could make someone so blessed become so sad.
The elf hadn¡¯t noticed Mizuko, as it seemed she was too busy holding her stomach and rocking back and forth in grief. Mizuko took a step forward, but her grass sandal caught on a small rock she hadn¡¯t noticed and she stumbled just a little before catching herself with her walking stick. The elf¡¯s head flashed up and she froze for a split second at the sight of Mizuko, an expression of shock and horror on her face. Then, before Mizuko could say a word, the other woman jumped to her feet and took off, sprinting quickly out of view.
Well that sure was unexpected. The girl had scampered away in such a hurry that she¡¯d forgotten her laundry. Was Mizuko really so ugly? She walked over to the creek¡¯s edge and studied her reflection in a calm spot. Staring back at her was the same Mizuko from the day of her death¡ªan ancient face covered with wrinkles and spots, white hair tied up behind her head in a top knot for simplicity¡¯s sake. She still stood less than one and a half meters tall, with her bent back making her appear even smaller. It seemed that while she felt better than she had in decades, she still appeared old as dirt. Perhaps her appearance could be considered ugly after all, especially when compared to the crying girl.
What now? Mizuko didn¡¯t know. The young woman¡¯s terrified reaction caused her to doubt her original plan of action. What should she do if other elves reacted to her the same way? Walking up a nearby knoll, Mizuko sat down against a pillar of rock jutting out of the knoll¡¯s summit to contemplate her next move. Off towards the horizon beyond the fields she could see something that looked like a settlement of some sort, perhaps a village or a small town. Should she still head towards it? What if she was not welcome there? But if not that way, where? More fields filled her view as she looked around. It seemed that if she wanted to avoid these elves, then the only way to do so would be to head back the way she came, and she didn¡¯t really want to do that. Not yet, at least. She needed some food, shelter, and preferably answers before the night fell.
Her eyes picked up movement in the distance. Perhaps her decision had been made for her. Several minutes later, a small group of figures crested a nearby hill and stopped, staring at her from a distance. It seemed to be a group of elves, each of them carrying an historical weapon of some sort. She saw a few swords, a spear, and what looked like several bows. The group stood well out of earshot, but she could tell that a few of them were arguing with each other. Finally one of them split off and sprinted back towards the town in the distance, while the others stayed and watched her.
Mizuko watched them back. One look at these people, even from such a long distance, made it clear that she needed to adjust her beauty scale. She had thought the crying woman impossibly beautiful, and she still was, but the group on the hill suggested that said woman might simply qualify for normal here. Each of the figures were as gorgeous as the woman before, with long, shining hair, perfect faces, and a general glamor that would have made her younger self jealous. Was this a society of supermodels? Even the men in the group had an attractive feminine quality to them and were no less beautiful.
The group remaining seemed content to simply study her from a distance and did not approach. Mizuko didn¡¯t think it wise to approach them either, instead deciding to treat this like how one treats a new cat¡ªjust stay back and let them approach her when they felt comfortable. She was the stranger here, she reminded herself. Plus, those weapons looked quite sharp. If she truly weren¡¯t dead, then throwing her life away on the first day of her new life would be a terrible waste. Plus, she knew now what death felt like, and had no desire to experience such overwhelming agony again anytime soon.
Soon, a two-wheeled carriage drawn by a large shaggy four-legged beast trundled up to the elves, and out stepped several people, including a person covered in a cloak with a veil concealing their face who rocked back and forth repeatedly. The veil was pulled aside and the cloaked person stiffened, looking in her direction for several minutes before the veil was put back in its place. Then the newcomers left the way they came, as if nothing had happened. Mizuko had no idea what to make of such a scene.
Perhaps an hour later, a commotion brought her from her thoughts. A large group pulled up by the others, and these people meant business. Perhaps two dozen soldiers clad in bright clothes ran up, followed by an incredibly ornate litter as large as a car, carried by eight elves. The litter was covered in gold engravings and studded with gleaming gemstones. One would have to be blind not to know that somebody very important had just arrived. The door opened and a man emerged wearing shining armor, a large sword by his side, and a serious look on his face. He surveyed the scene intently before stepping to the side. Then out stepped a woman, and Mizuko gasped.
Though of average height for the group, the new woman seemed to tower above the others with her gravitas alone¡ªstrong without being overbearing, proud without being haughty, and fully in control. Mizuko knew that this person stood atop the local food chain even before the rest of the elves all bowed to her in unison. The woman spoke to several members of the group, a no-nonsense expression on her face, looking back towards Mizuko every so often. Then she said something and the rest of the group seemed to panic. The serious man seemed to be arguing with her, but she crossed her arms and silenced him with just a look. Mizuko couldn¡¯t help but be impressed.
The next thing she knew the woman was headed her way, lifting her dress slightly to keep it from brushing up against every stalk, while several other elves walked in front and to her sides, their weapons at the ready. Mizuko groaned as she pushed herself to her feet using the rock and her walking stick as supports. As they approached, Mizuko studied the woman in charge, taking note of the elf¡¯s dark purple hair, her smooth, slightly tanned skin, the golden necklace covered in gemstones that she wore, and the elegant dark green dress that seemed to accentuate her figure without really showing much of it.
The elves stopped about ten paces from her, with the serious man approaching several steps closer, a scowl on his face. Mizuko gave as best a bow as she could, using the stick to help her back up. The man snorted.
¡°Pantomiming our customs will get you no favor here, human. What are you doing in the middle of Drayhadal?¡± the man demanded, his scowl deepening. ¡°You should know full well that your kind is unwelcome here. Answer quickly!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry for intruding. It¡¯s just that I died and woke up here, you see. I¡¯m not very sure what happened.¡±
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Several of the elves coughed. The man¡¯s eye twitched. ¡°You died? Do not mock me, human, or I will run you through! How did you slip past the border? How did you arrive here without being seen?¡±
All this questioning seemed to be accomplishing was making Mizuko confused and nervous. ¡°I don¡¯t know how to help you,¡± she replied. ¡°I was lying in my bed and then I died. Then when I opened my eyes I was here in another world, and I went for a walk. That¡¯s how I came to be here. I don¡¯t know anything else.¡±
¡°Another world?¡± he cried, incredulous. He put his hand on his sword. ¡°Preposterous! Enough of these bald-faced lies.¡±
¡°Votar, stop.¡± It took Mizuko a moment to realize that the elegant purple-haired woman had spoken.
¡°Milady, this human is clearly mocking all of us and has no intention of answering our questions.¡±
The princess stepped forward, ignoring Votar and turned to Mizuko, a thoughtful look on her face as she studied Mizuko in minute detail. ¡°I am Princess Pyria Esmae, leader of the Esmae clan and ruler of these lands. What is your name, human?¡±
A princess?! Mizuko had never thought she would ever meet a princess in her life. What was she supposed to do? Perhaps a bow would be best? ¡°My name is Yamanaka Mizuko,¡± she replied, giving the princess a deep bow. Ooof, new, stronger body or not, bending over still made her back sore.
¡°Yamanaka... Mizuko? A strange name. I have not heard one like it before. May I call you by your given name for the moment, Yamanaka?¡±
¡°Yamanaka is my family name, but you may call me whatever you wish, princess.¡±
¡°Your given name is the second one? How interesting. Is that normal where you are from?¡±
¡°Yes, that is how names work in Japan, though that is not true elsewhere.¡±
¡°Japan... You speak of many unusual things.¡± The elf princess paused in thought for a moment. ¡°Do all humans in Japan live to be as old as you?¡± she asked with an amused smile.
¡°Not many live to be one hundred and nine years old,¡± Mizuko replied with a small amount of pride, ¡°though others have lived longer.¡±
Gasps came from the assembled elves. The princess laughed, amused. ¡°Ohohoho! One hundred and nine? Incredible! I never thought I would have to refer to a human as my elder.¡±
¡°Milady, what she claims is impossible!¡± Votar huffed. ¡°No human has ever lived even close to that long! She must be lying to us.¡±
¡°Look at her, Votar. Can you not see the years in her?¡±
¡°But there is no way that a human so old could walk, let alone somehow sneak past our borders and make their way so deep into our lands! And where are her supplies? Her water, her food? Not even her clothes seem made for travel. She¡¯s wearing weeds for shoes!¡±
¡°Yes, quite a mystery, indeed," Princess Pyria replied. She turned back to Mizuko, her expression now sober. ¡°Listen well, Yamanaka Mizuko," the noble stated, her serious tone of voice filled with the commanding presence of one used to being obeyed. "Normally, a human in my lands would find herself in a cell as soon as she were found. In fact, only your extreme age and the fact that you are very, very far from where you should be kept you from such a fate, as my subjects were too perplexed and wary to approach you without contacting me first. But you intrigue me, so I shall give you a choice: you can come with me to the palace as my guest and allow me to study you until I am satisfied, or you can find out how very cold a dungeon¡¯s floor can be. What shall it be?¡±
¡°I thank you for your hospitality,¡± Mizuko replied. What kind of choice was that? ¡°I am in your care.¡±
¡°Good, then let us be off. This is hardly a place for a proper discussion. I¡¯m sure you would like some food as well.¡± The princess turned and strode back towards the carriage, the others following once she had passed. Mizuko hurried to keep up. This was all moving far too fast for her comfort, and she didn¡¯t much like the princess¡¯s use of the word ¡°study¡±, but she had to admit that whatever was happening sure beat lying in a bed and waiting to die.
The litter shook as the three of them traveled across the fields towards the city the princess called ¡°Esmaeyae¡±, though much less than Mizuko had expected, especially given the inhuman speed at which the men holding the poles on each side ran. Not much had been said during the trip so far. Princess Pyria had asked her a few questions about mundane topics like her family, while Votar simply maintained a distrustful glare on her at all times, waiting for her to pull something.
¡°Votar, stop making my guest uncomfortable,¡± Pyria admonished after a while.
¡°Would you mind if I asked you some questions myself, Princess Pyria?¡± Mizuko inquired, hoping to break the ice slightly.
¡°I guess so,¡± the princess replied. ¡°It only seems fair.¡±
"If I am as suspicious as you and Votar say, why are you helping me?"
The elf tilted her head to the side in thought for a moment. "Simple boredom, more than anything. You claim to be from a different reality, and your circumstances, combined with many details like your name and your facial features, lend just enough credence to such a ludicrous idea. You should serve as adequate entertainment for a day or two. Anything else?"
¡°You said that you never thought you would have to call a human ¡®elder¡¯. How old are you?¡±
¡°I am ninety two years old.¡±
¡°Oh my! But you look so young!¡±
¡°I am young, for an elf. One could say I¡¯m about twenty-seven in human years.¡±
¡°My, to think that you are ruling a whole clan at such a young age.¡± She chuckled. ¡°My great-granddaughter once told me she wanted to be an elf princess. I told her that she should try to be a doctor or a lawyer instead, but she insisted, saying she wanted to marry a prince and live happily ever after! I had thought that she was too young at the time to understand the opportunities in her future. She did not have an appreciation of just how free she was. Back in my day, you were a wife and that was that. We had no real choice in the matter. But now, looking at you, I think that perhaps she may have had the right idea after all!¡±
¡°Oh really?¡± the princess asked, leaning in, her thin, elegant eyebrows raised high. ¡°Your society changed so much in such a short time?¡±
¡°It wasn¡¯t until I was... let¡¯s see... thirty eight years old before women in Japan could own property, vote, marry or divorce as they wished... When I think about it now, it¡¯s amazing just how much the world changed over my lifetime.¡±
¡°...I see. How splendid.¡±
For a little while, the princess left Mizuko alone and seemed to just live in her own head. As they passed those moments in silence, the litter entered what the old woman assumed must be Esmaeyae and the world outside the litter became quite loud with the shouts of people as they went by. It almost seemed like...
¡°Are they...¡± Mizuko began.
¡°Cheering? Yes, they do that sometimes,¡± Pyria responded, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
¡°The princess is greatly admired,¡± her bodyguard stated defensively. ¡°The whole territory has greatly prospered under her benevolent rule.¡±
¡°Please, Votar! Such progress is the product of all our efforts, not just mine own.¡±
Several minutes later the litter stopped and the door opened, revealing an opulent stone palace. Mizuko gaped for a moment, before the princess grabbed her hand and led her into a nearby hall. What followed felt like a bizarre dream. She was treated to the finest meal she¡¯d ever eaten while the princess asked her question after question about her life and her culture, seemingly growing more interested with each answer. They talked about many things, from architecture to religion, from food to music and entertainment. But Mizuko noticed that for some reason, the flow of Pyria¡¯s questions always led back to how different Japan had become during her life, and the way her life had changed along with the country.
Once their meal was complete, Mizuko was given a soothing bath at the hands of several servants while her pajamas were washed and dried. After that, the princess had treated her to a cup of exquisite tea, the elf noble¡¯s curiosity still not sated. Princess Pyria seemed to have an endless list of questions, but she made sure to take Mizuko¡¯s feelings and energy into account, backing off or changing the subject whenever the older woman seemed too uncomfortable. Mizuko found that the more she got to know the princess, the more she enjoyed the elf¡¯s company. The woman maintained a detached and distant atmosphere about her when the two were in public, but when they were alone she let that fall to the side somewhat, revealing an inquisitive, witty, and caring person beneath. Mizuko continued to be grateful that Princess Pyria was such a kind and gentle person. She shuddered to imagine what would have happened if she¡¯d met somebody more cruel.
The rest of the evening went by in a blur as Pyria became a whirlwind of hospitality, until suddenly Mizuko found herself lying in a soft bed, dressed in her pajamas again, and staring at the stone ceiling wondering what had happened. Just a day or so ago, she¡¯d been waiting for her life to come to a close. Now it seemed that instead whole new chapters were about to be written.
Mizuko stumbled towards the nearby doorway, tripping over herself as the ground trembled and shook. Their small house groaned and squealed, threatening to fall to pieces at any moment. The sounds just increased her panic, causing her to almost run right by her youngest brother without thinking. Luckily she came to her senses just in time to grab the five-year-old as she passed, pulling him along with her as hard as her fourteen-year-old muscles could manage, the pounding footsteps of her mother, father, and middle brother coming behind her.
Screams filled the street outside as people flooded out of their homes, stumbling and falling as the ground continued to writhe beneath their feet. With a groan, the first of the nearby houses collapsed, followed by another, and then a third. The chilling sound of snapping wood sounded from right behind her, and Mizuko turned about just in time to bear witness to her home falling in like the others while her family frantically emerged. First came her father, then her brother. Her mother came last, her steps faltering on the trembling floor. She tripped forward just as she approached the doorway, her head smacking against the door frame. She fell forward, unconscious, and most of her body made it out. But only most.
¡°Mother!¡± Mizuko cried out as a large piece of wood fell directly on her mother¡¯s ankles. Mizuko rushed forward as best she could, her father by her side, and they desperately pulled her mother from the debris. Mizuko let out a gasp at the sight of her mother¡¯s ankles and feet; the bones had been crushed greatly by the falling house. There was no way her mother could walk on her own in such a condition.
¡°We need to run, now!¡± her father shouted over the din as he picked his wife up and slung her over his shoulder as best he could. ¡°This way!¡±
Together they made their way up the street as best they could, the quaking earth and the crowds limiting their speed to a slow walk. To Mizuko, it was as if Tokyo was coming apart at the seams. Few buildings remained intact. The smoke of fires could be seen in all directions, and the volume of smoke was only getting larger by the second. The quake had struck right when most families had been preparing their midday meal, and that meant lots of wooden houses falling in onto unquenched fires. Already she thought she could feel the heat of flames somewhere nearby, off to her right.
Still the ground shuddered. It felt to Mizuko like the ground had been shaking for hours at this point, though it had surely been only a scant few minutes. When would it end?
The older of her two brothers called out in warning, and she looked back to see cracks forming in the road, large ones as wide as her arm was wide, running up the street towards them and forking out like lightning. Quickly she stepped to the side, avoiding the rupturing earth as it approached them. But then there came a sudden metallic screech from below the surface, and suddenly water began to gush up from underground, overflowing onto the street and making her slip.
Earth, water, fire... it was as if the elements themselves were rebelling against humanity. The world itself wanted their lives. As if to confirm her fear, Mizuko heard a sound behind her, and she turned to find a storefront falling. It was coming right at her.
Mizuko awoke with a scream, her ancient heart beating desperately in her chest. Then, like always, she realized it had all been just a dream. Such dreams had plagued her every night since she could remember. They were strong, vivid dreams, each so powerful that every morning she would wake up still caught up in it, except they weren¡¯t dreams at all¡ªthey were memories. Moments from her life that her mind would force her to relive¡ªsome good, but most bad. Why her subconscious put her through this, she didn¡¯t know. Perhaps it was just a way of coping with the burdens of her life.
This memory had been of one of the worst experiences she¡¯d ever been through: the Great Kanto Earthquake, the most deadly earthquake in Japan¡¯s history. The quake had killed many by collapsing buildings on top of them, but the real damage had come from the fires that spread quickly afterward. All in all, nearly one hundred and forty three thousand people had died that day, trapped while their city burned around them. Mizuko was grateful that her family had made it out alive, but the experience of running for her life while the world around her tried to kill her had scarred deeply. The terror of the raging flames, the panicked crowds, the rumbling earth, and more had filled her teenaged self to the breaking point. Back then she¡¯d been sure that it would be the worst experience of her life. She¡¯d been wrong, but that was a story for a different time.
Finally her surroundings caught her attention and she remembered where she was and all the strange events of her first day post-death. It still didn¡¯t feel real, somehow. A folded set of clothes sat on a small table beside her bed, and so she changed into them before heading out to see about breakfast and a bath. The fabric seemed to be some sort of wool, rougher than cotton but still comfortable enough. While her pajamas were much smoother, it felt good to wear something clean again. Now all she had to do was get herself as clean as her clothes and everything would be wonderful.
After a few steps, Mizuko began to wonder about the lack of noise. The hallway stood still, and try as she might, she heard no sign of activity nearby. She needed to find somebody to give her directions to a bath, but strangely this wing of the palace seemed to be a ghost town.
Two hallways later, Mizuko came upon a man lying face down in a doorway, an upturned basket of sheets and towels littering the hallway floor. Chest tight with worry, she rushed over as best she could and with a groan and some effort rolled the man over. Even with her new-found energy, bodies were heavy.
The thumping in her chest settled somewhat when Mizuko discovered that the man still breathed and was merely unconscious. Very, very unconscious. No matter how much she slapped his face, opened his eyes, or yelled in his ear, he wouldn¡¯t wake up.
"Help!" she cried as loud as she could. "Somebody is hurt over here!"
Nothing but silence answered her call. Not sure what else to do, she decided to keep moving and try to find somebody else. That was how she found a second person, lying half-draped over a table and just as unconscious as the first. Then a third and fourth, lying in uncomfortable positions at the bottom of some stairs.
The stillness pervading the palace left Mizuko highly disturbed. This was not a normal occurrence. The positions the elves she¡¯d found were those of people caught by surprise. Something big had happened while she slept. Something potentially dangerous. Shaking her head, she pushed that thought into the back of her mind for now. She needed to concentrate and find somebody conscious to figure out what was going on.
A few minutes later she stood in another wing of the palace, somewhat lost, when a soft groan came from a nearby room. Mizuko hustled over as quickly as her aged body would allow to find a female servant on her hands and knees. The woman¡¯s body trembled slightly, and she kept lifting up her one hand and flexing it in front of her face, staring at the moving fingers as if she wasn¡¯t sure they were hers.
¡°Are you hurt, dear?¡± Mizuko asked, worried by the elf¡¯s behavior. The woman flailed at the sound of her voice, her head whipping around at the sound as if Mizuko had set off a firecracker. The servant let out a high pitched shriek of terror and crawled desperately away from Mizuko, pushing herself into a corner and crying. Mizuko just stood there, her urge to comfort warring with the idea that this woman was not just scared but scared of her specifically.
The sound of many footsteps approaching cut off the arguments raging inside her mind. She turned around as over a dozen guards stormed in, weapons drawn, and surrounded her.
¡°You!¡± came Pyria¡¯s voice, strong and angry, from behind the soldiers. She stood in the doorway through which they had all entered, leaning against the frame for support. Mizuko couldn¡¯t help but notice the large blotches of ink that marked the right side of her face. She also didn¡¯t miss the terror in the princess¡¯s eyes. It was the same terror found in the eyes of the soldiers that stood all around her, blades drawn and ready. ¡°What have you done?!¡±
Chapter 48
Though the same men that carried the litter into the city carried it back out, the ride felt bumpier this time. Perhaps it was all in Mizuko¡¯s head, a byproduct of the guilt currently roiling inside of her. One could argue that her guilt was not justified, or at least blown out of proportion when compared to her actions. After all, it wasn¡¯t like she¡¯d known what would happen, and she sure hadn¡¯t chosen to hurt all those people. But she had hurt them all the same.
It seemed that every being within a large radius, one that stretched far beyond the castle where she¡¯d slept and into the city proper, had shared her nightmare along with her. Those out on the fringe of the area of effect had simply experienced a powerful nightmare, but nothing more; the only real damage they had to worry about was whatever happened to their body if they had been standing during the event. But everybody unlucky enough to be closer had experienced more than just a scary nightmare. Those poor souls had gone through something far more potent, as if all the emotions within the dream were dialed up to eleven or beyond. It seemed that the closer the person was to Mizuko during the dream, the stronger the experience happened to be, the longer it took them to wake up, and the more damage their psyche sustained.
She kept coming back to their eyes, especially the eyes of the servant who she¡¯d found just waking up. The terror in those eyes seemed nearly unhinged, as if they were looking at a horrible abomination instead of a frail elderly woman. She¡¯d seen that same terror in the eyes of the soldiers surrounding her and even in the eyes of the princess herself. Those same noble eyes stared at her now from across the litter¡¯s cabin, a confusing mix of emotions visible within.
What the princess was doing sitting in this litter alone with Mizuko, instead of being a hundred kilometers away, the old woman could not fathom. She¡¯d expected to be carted off in chains and thrown in a dungeon or maybe just killed on the spot, but neither of those things had happened, despite Votar¡¯s vociferous advocation. Why, she could not say. She wanted to ask, but words would not come out, stifled by her shame. She did not deserve to demand answers to anything right now.
¡°Tell me, Yamanaka,¡± the princess said after about thirty minutes of awkward silence, ¡°what should I do with you? You attacked my people after I took you in. You repaid my kindness with violence.¡±
¡°Words cannot describe my shame,¡± Mizuko replied. ¡°I can only beg for your forgiveness.¡± She felt the need to perform a dogeza even though she¡¯d already done so back at the palace. Only the lack of space in the litter kept her from doing so again.
¡°But do you deserve it?¡± Pyria asked. ¡°Everybody in the palace is worse off now than they were before, myself included. I jump at sudden noises, my heart races for no reason, I feel terrified in my own study... you even marked my face when I collapsed on the writing desk and knocked over my inkwell. But that is nothing compared to those unlucky enough to be the closest to you. Nobody in the guest wing has woken yet, Mizuko. For all we know, they may never wake. Even if I believe you that this was all an accident, what do I tell their families? I do believe that you feel true remorse over this disaster, but remorse will not help my people recover from the damage you inflicted.¡±
Mizuko let out a sigh. ¡°I want to make things right, but I don¡¯t know how.¡±
¡°Do you truly seek redemption for your crime?¡±
¡°You... are you offering me a chance? Even after what I did to you?¡±
¡°A good ruler must be able to see past personal problems and grudges in order to find all possible means of advantage,¡± the princess said as she rested her chin on steepled fingers. ¡°Yamanaka, you might be the most powerful person in the world. Nobody else has an ability that can affect so large an area. Not even close. Drayhadal needs you. I need you.¡±
¡°I... I don¡¯t think I can do that again. No good can come from such an evil thing.¡±
¡°Nonsense,¡± Pyria scoffed. ¡°Powers have no inherent morality. What matters is how you use them. I, for example, am an Air Observer. I could use that power to create a soothing breeze inside this cabin, or I could use it to break the cabin window and throw shards of glass at you. The power is not at fault¡ªI am. It is just a tool. Use your tool to help us, and you can find the redemption you seek.¡±
¡°How?¡±
¡°There is a neighboring country to the east named Stragma. At least once a decade the Stragmans invade, swarming over the walls of our fortresses and laying waste to everything they can. Thankfully, they only attack during the fall when their migration puts them closest to our borders, but they outnumber us greatly and thousands upon thousands of good men die every time. The Stragmans have not invaded in nearly a decade, leading me to believe that they will soon, either this year or the next. And when they do, all of Drayhadal will suffer. The price to stop the Stragman armies will be tens of thousands of good men, husbands and fathers all. Wives will become widows. Families will be destroyed. Every invasion scars this country deeply. But you could change that. You could stop an entire army in its tracks and save our people. You would get more than just redemption. You would be a hero to us all.¡±
Yamanaka Mizuko, national hero? Mizuko had never been one to crave the spotlight, but she couldn¡¯t deny that the idea held some appeal. ¡°If you think that would let me atone, I can try,¡± she said.
The princess smiled knowingly, the first warm look Mizuko had seen all day. ¡°You are a kind person,¡± she said. ¡°Do not worry, I will not lead you wrong.¡±
¡°But are you sure I could even help? I don¡¯t think I could fall asleep in the middle of a battle.¡±
The princess laughed. ¡°I¡¯m sure you don¡¯t need to be asleep. That¡¯s not how powers work. You¡¯ll figure it out after a little experimentation and practice. Just... please don¡¯t practice when I¡¯m nearby.¡±
¡°We have arrived,¡± the princess declared as the litter came to a halt.
¡°Arrived where?¡± Mizuko inquired.
¡°Your new home.¡± Without another word, she opened the door and stepped out.
Mizuko followed right behind, stepping out into the bright sunlight and halting in shock. The elderly woman stared in awe at the large house standing on the top of the hill¡ªthe same hill where they¡¯d first met. The hill had been empty just yesterday, save for the large rock that she¡¯d rested against jutting out near the top. Now an entire home, seemingly made entirely from stone, stood beside the rock, welcoming her in the orange light of the setting sun. Several servants stood near the entrance while soldiers ringed the area. ¡°What? How?¡± she asked, hardly able to believe her eyes.
¡°Nobody can shape the world like Drayhadans. It¡¯s more than just how we survive in this unforgiving world. It¡¯s a way of life,¡± the elf replied with evident pride. ¡°Muiqir, god of the elves, bade us to tame the lands and make it our own, and so we have. Come, let me show you the inside. It¡¯s best that we determine if changes are required now while the builders are still here.¡±
What followed was a short tour of the house, from the kitchen to the bedroom to the living room with a fireplace and more. There was even a stone patio outside, where she could sit and watch the plains that stretched out to the horizon. Most of the abode still lacked furnishings, though in the bedroom stood a comfy-looking bed.
¡°The way this place will work is fairly simple,¡± the princess explained. ¡°During the day, my soldiers will protect you and the house. Should you want to leave, they will accompany you to make sure that you stay safe. When night falls and you wish to sleep, the soldiers will spread out and form a perimeter around the house out beyond the range of your abilities. Then once you are safely asleep, they will leave, since you can protect yourself with your dreams far more effectively than some soldiers could.¡±
Mizuko listened to Pyria¡¯s explanations with half her mind, but the other half was busy thinking about everything that had just happened. This whole situation didn¡¯t add up.
¡°Princess, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?¡± she asked.
¡°Is something the matter?¡±
¡°I just agreed to help you on the way here.¡±
¡°Yes?¡±
¡°When did you start the construction of this house?¡±
¡°I ordered the creation of this place this morning.¡±
¡°So you started it before you made your offer? But what if I had refused?¡±
Pyria flashed that knowing grin again. ¡°You weren¡¯t going to refuse.¡±
¡°Ah?¡±
"You''re a nice person. Predictably so. I knew you would want a chance to rectify things."
"You say that like it''s a bad thing."
"It can be if you''re not careful."
¡°I see... Then that leads to another question. If you knew that I would agree before we left, why are you here? I¡¯m sure you have many things to do that are more important than showing off a house to an old woman. You could have sent an assistant of some sort to handle this.¡±
¡°Ah, but that is where you are wrong,¡± the princess replied. ¡°You could single-handedly tip the balance of power in this country, perhaps even in this entire continent, and you expect me to leave you with some functionary while I go read economic reports? That would be a terrible way to handle my responsibilities. But more importantly, this is my gift to you, and so I wanted to be the one to give it. It is only right, since you have already given me the greatest gift I could have ever asked for, that I should return the favor.¡±
¡°I gave you a gift?¡± Mizuko repeated back in puzzlement. ¡°What was it?¡±
Pyria¡¯s smile seemed to take on a tint of sadness. ¡°Hope,¡± she answered.
Miuzko didn''t know what to make of the vague answer. The way the elf spoke implied that she wasn''t talking about the possible upcoming invasion. ¡°Hope for what? I don¡¯t understand.¡±
¡°It¡¯s better that you don¡¯t. Trust me.¡±
No matter how Mizuko asked, Pyria refused to elaborate.
The unidentified man stared down at her in apparent disbelief, slack-jawed. The anger on his face seemed to have disappeared for the moment, but that didn¡¯t improve Mizuko¡¯s suddenly foul mood. Who did this buffoon think he was, swearing at her like that? In all the months since she¡¯d first arrived, nobody had ever treated her so disrespectfully, not even Votar.
¡°Sit down,¡± she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. As a mother and grandmother, she¡¯d had plenty of practice using such a tone. As always, it worked. The man plopped down onto the other chair. ¡°Didn¡¯t your parents teach you to be respectful when entering another person¡¯s home? Now who are you, and why have you come to see me just before my bedtime?¡±
¡°Are you really the Mother of Nightmares?¡± the man asked in disbelief.
Mizuko¡¯s scowl deepened at the sound of that name. Apparently it had been coined by one of the servants in the castle after her original incident and had spread like wildfire since. She hated it. The last thing she wanted was to be known by a title like that.
¡°Please excuse this ruffian, madam,¡± said a second man who¡¯d entered behind the first. ¡°He is profoundly lacking in all manners of social propriety. I am Artiermius, third-ranked steward, and this is Prince Tehlmar Esmae. I apologize for the intrusion, but the prince insisted upon seeing you.¡±
The steward¡¯s words puzzled the old woman. Prince? Princess Pyria had a brother? In all of her visits, Pyria had never once mentioned having siblings. ¡°Why did you want to see me, Prince Tehlmar?¡±
The prince grunted. ¡°I wanted to finally see who fucked me up and maybe kill them, but you¡¯re too fucking old,¡± he stated, displeased. ¡°You look like you''re going to die tomorrow. It''s not worth it.¡±
Mizuko gasped. ¡°You hooligan! Were you raised by wolves?!¡± she asked, appalled and angry. ¡°How dare you come into my home and act in such a vile manner!¡±
¡°How dare I?!¡± The prince exclaimed indignantly. ¡°You¡¯re the one who messed with my fucking mind! I have that fucking nightmare every night! Every fucking night! I can¡¯t get a decent night¡¯s sleep without drinking myself into oblivion! And all it takes is a fucking flock of birds flying overhead or a small fire and suddenly I¡¯m running for my life in a city I don¡¯t recognize while everything burns! You broke me.¡±
Oh. Upon hearing the belligerent man¡¯s words, Mizuko¡¯s indignation receded somewhat and the guilt she¡¯d thought banished came bubbling back up from the deepest parts of her soul. Even when she was using her power for good, people were still getting hurt. ¡°I can only apologize for your suffering,¡± she said. ¡°I did what I did to protect the people.¡±
¡°And that¡¯s supposed to make it all okay?¡± Mizuko¡¯s answer did satisfy the seething man, but he didn¡¯t do anything more than stare angrily at her. A tense silence settled between them, punctuated only by the crackling of the fire off to the side.
¡°Tell me you can make it stop,¡± Prince Tehlmar said after a while.
¡°If there is a way, I do not know it,¡± she admitted. ¡°All I can say is that the others eventually recovered. Given time, you should as well.¡±
¡°Figures,¡± Tehlmar spat. ¡°I should have known you would be a fucking waste of time.¡± He stood up to leave.
¡°Are you truly Princess Pyria¡¯s sibling?¡±
His eyes narrowed. ¡°What, you have a problem with that?¡±
¡°I cannot imagine how such a wonderful, kind woman could have a brother so boorish. It think it would be best for both of us if you never return here.¡±
¡°Oh yes, Pyria, such a pure flower! So righteous and wholesome! Oh, that¡¯s rich!¡± He laughed a deprecating laugh, a different sort of anger suddenly burning in his eyes. ¡°Let me give you some advice, you old crone. Ask her about the people who disappear off the streets. Ask her about the bodies that show up in alleys across Drayhadal with their throats slit. Ask her what happened to all the Stragmans you helped capture. You have no idea the things that she¡¯s done, the things she¡¯s capable of. And you have absolutely no clue about the things that bitch did to me. Do you really think that she¡¯s been nice to you because she¡¯s a good and nice person? Don¡¯t make me laugh. She only cares about the power she gains by controlling you. So go ahead, tell me I¡¯m an uncouth bastard and that I¡¯m a rude asshole and that I¡¯m nothing like my sister. Go right ahead. It¡¯s the greatest compliment you could ever give me. And don¡¯t worry, I won¡¯t be coming back.¡±
Without another word, he stormed out of the room.
¡°I heard that my brother paid you a visit last night,¡± Pyria said, taking a sip of her tea. ¡°I hope that he was not too uncivil.¡±
The two women sat outside the back of the house on two wooden chairs, staring out at the fields and the wilderness beyond. The fields had expanded during her time here, slowly pushing back the untamed grasslands as the days went on. That activity had halted recently, however. The weather had gotten too cold as winter approached. Thankfully Mizuko now had a wide array of warm winter outfits from which to choose every day. Today¡¯s included a fluffy hood that kept her ears nice and toasty.
¡°You never told me you had a brother, Princess.¡±
¡°Tehlmar is a... complicated case. I try not to talk about him if I can avoid it.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever met anybody so rude in my life.¡±
¡°It¡¯s to be expected, really. He¡¯s lived most of his life outside of Drayhadal, amongst the barbarians, and just returned a few days ago. Judging from the way he¡¯s behaved since, it seems that any civility he had was thrown away long ago out there.¡±
¡°Princess, I have a question for you. Please be honest with me.¡±
¡°Of course, Yamanaka. What is it?¡±
¡°What happened to the invaders that I helped capture?¡± Mizuko stared at Pyria¡¯s face, watching her face intently.
¡°We put them in a camp for a while, and then they were exchanged for prisoners the Stragmans had taken from us. A positive outcome for us in the end.¡±
¡°Am I your friend, Princess Pyria?¡±
The princess took a sip of tea, a complicated look on her face. ¡°Rulers aren¡¯t allowed friends, no matter what they might want them. You are very important to me, of course.¡±
¡°Not important enough to be truthful with me, apparently.¡±
¡°I did not lie to you.¡±
¡°But you didn¡¯t tell me everything, which can be just as bad. You had all the prisoners executed. I found out from the guards.¡±
¡°That-¡±
¡°There is no honor in killing defenseless people, Princess. I¡¯m extremely disappointed in you. I¡¯m also saddened that you thought to keep it from me. I put those people in your hands, so I share some of the blame for their fate.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t act like you understand the situation!¡± Pyria shot back. ¡°They were hostages, and when demands aren¡¯t met, hostages die! If I had let them live, those savages would only have viewed it as weakness! They would have done the same!¡±
¡°That sounds like a poor justification for genocide.¡±
¡°What do you know about genocide? You, living your life in that happy little world of yours?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t confuse comfort for happiness. The people of my world have done things so terrible that you would never believe the stories. That is why I know. Even my own people have committed their share of atrocities. I don¡¯t want you making the same mistakes my people made. Even all these years later, I still must bear some of the shame for their actions.¡±
¡°I do what I must to protect my people! You have no idea what I¡¯m up against! You have no idea how tenuous everything I have accomplished is!¡±
Mizuko shook her head. ¡°In all my years of life, I have yet to meet somebody who didn¡¯t believe their actions were justified. If you want my respect, you will need to give me more than words.¡±
Pyria glared at her for a moment, then turned and stared off into the distance. Neither of them spoke for several awkward minutes before the princess suddenly spoke up. ¡°I wanted to let you live out your remaining years here in peace and happiness,¡± she explained. ¡°I didn¡¯t want you to have to face the ugliness hiding beneath the surface of this place.¡±
¡°Happiness based on lies is no happiness at all.¡±
Pyria stood up. ¡°It¡¯s going to be dark soon. Go inside and have a fire started. I¡¯ll be back soon. If you want to understand what my world is like, there¡¯s somebody you need to meet.¡±
Mizuko looked at the princess¡¯s receding back, unsure what to think, so she decided to listen to the elf¡¯s words and went back inside. After requesting a servant start a fire, she sat down in her favorite chair to ponder what she¡¯d just learned. Pyria had always been so nice. She seemed to be a fair and just ruler, and most of the people seemed to adore her. She seemed to be great at it, too¡ªseveral of the older servants and guards had told Mizuko before that life these last decades was far better than under her father, and that the Esmae clan¡¯s resurgence was entirely thanks to her efforts.
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It seemed, however, that something far more ruthless hid beneath that veneer. Which person was the real Pyria? Was one the person she wanted to be, and the other the person she had to be? Or was Mizuko giving the woman too much leeway with such a lenient question? Was it even fair for Mizuko herself to judge? What right did she have to appear here in a different place with different rules and judge everything by her culture¡¯s morality? In fact, all she and her powers had ever done since arriving here was hurt people.
Perhaps an hour later, Pyria returned, another young woman in tow.
¡°It¡¯s you!¡± Mizuko gasped. Even though she kept her head downcast and her face was no longer lined with tears, Mizuko immediately recognized her as the young woman from the stream, the first person she¡¯d met since coming to this world.
¡°This young lady is Vura. She walked all the way to Esmaeyae to petition me for permission to speak with you,¡± Pyria explained. ¡°I had told her no, for security reasons, but you changed my mind.¡±
¡°Please forgive my disrespect, elder,¡± the girl said meekly. ¡°I didn¡¯t know what you were and got scared.¡±
¡°It¡¯s okay, young one, don¡¯t worry, I understand,¡± Mizuko replied, standing up and grabbing the girl¡¯s hand. ¡°You looked so sad at the time, I was very worried about you. How can I help you, my dear?¡±
¡°I-I...¡± Vura gulped. ¡°C-could you please... I want t-to know what it f-feels like to... raise a... a child.¡±
¡°You want me to show you what it¡¯s like to be a mother?¡± Mizuko asked, confused. ¡°I could do that, but why?¡±
Vura began to tremble and weep at the question, and suddenly Mizuko had a terrible feeling of why the girl had seemed so distraught the last time they¡¯d met. Pyria embraced the sobbing young woman, stroking her head gently. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± the princess said to Vura, ¡°but please show her. She needs to see it.¡±
Hesitantly, Vura pulled up the bottom of her shirt to reveal a series of large, ugly scars that started above her groin and went up before turning left and right. With horror, Mizuko realized that if elfin physiology was similar to that of humans, all of the scars ran almost entirely through where Vura¡¯s womb would be.
¡°Please!¡± the grief-filled girl pleaded, ¡°I will never have a child, so please, let me know what it is like just once.¡±
¡°Yes, yes of course,¡± Mizuko replied. ¡°Please sit down, both of you. I don¡¯t want you getting hurt.¡±
As soon as they were both seated, she began to concentrate, drawing on the power she¡¯d discovered inside of herself. After days of practice and experimentation, she¡¯d learned to harness her power while awake, letting her control things like the area of effect and the strength of the experience. Unfortunately, her powers were still set to full blast every night while she slept.
Limiting the effect to just the room, she began with a simple memory, but perhaps the most important, the memory of holding her daughter Keiko in her arms just after her birth. She wallowed in the feelings of happiness, joy, and most of all love. Then she moved on to another memory, the one of Keiko¡¯s first words. Then to her first steps. Birthdays, holidays, plays, festivals, graduations... the scenes went on and on, all the way up to the arrival of Keiko¡¯s own children, and the happy days when Keiko¡¯s whole family would come to visit her and she¡¯d nearly drown in their combined affection. Those had been wonderful days.
Mizuko opened her eyes to find Vura leaned back against the back of her chair, eyes unfocused, a soft smile on her beautiful face. Tears streaming down her cheeks once more, but this time Mizuko knew that they were not tears of sorrow. Nobody moved or said a word for what felt like an eternity, especially not Mizuko, who felt that the slightest noise would break the spell that the young woman seemed to be in.
Eventually Vura blinked and sat up, her mind fully back in the present. Blushing beet red, she gave Mizuko a deep bow. ¡°I will never forget your kindness,¡± she said. Mizuko replied with a warm smile, and the young woman left the room, her posture that of a different person than the one who had entered.
Mizuko realized now that she¡¯d been thinking about her powers the wrong way this whole time. Pyria had been right, it wasn¡¯t her powers that hurt people. It was her memories themselves, and the emotions contained within them that mattered¡ªthe pain, the sorrow, the anguish, the fear, that was what did the damage. But there were so many feelings outside of those terrible ones, and so many memories where they could be found. She could help people like this, like she¡¯d helped Vura.
¡°Thank you,¡± Pyria said as she stood up. Mizuko notice a slight puffiness around the princess¡¯s eyes. Had she been crying as well? ¡°You helped her immensely. I could see it. But you must understand that Vura¡¯s life is still ruined.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°You wanted to understand, did you not? About the truth about this place? I brought her here to show it to you.¡±
She leaned forward, intertwining her fingers and resting her chin atop them. Mizuko reached over and grabbed her teacup and took a sip.
¡°It¡¯s a long story, one that goes back to the start of recorded history. Long ago, it is said that there came a disaster. A calamity. What it was, why it happened... those details have been lost to time. But one thing that we do know is that elvenkind almost died out. Drayhadal was created nearly three millennia ago to save our race from extinction. This is a country that exists for one purpose: to repopulate the elves.¡±
¡°Oh, so that¡¯s why there are only elves here.¡±
¡°Exactly. Now, there¡¯s some things you need to know about us. While we live longer than the other races, we are far less fertile than they are. While elven women outside of Drayhadal live about three hundred years and are able to conceive until they are about two hundred, most will have one or two children, perhaps three if they''re lucky. On top of that, more males are born than females.
¡°This created a problem for the founders of Drayhadal. Effective repopulation requires producing a large number of children, and elves are biologically disinclined towards such endeavors. To succeed, they would have to create a society centered around overcoming this issue. And so they did. Men took over all the responsibilities of all occupations. They farmed, they ran shops, they manufactured goods, they built homes... they ruled. Women helped around the home and did light chores, but that was all, because their job was simply to make babies. As many as possible. Ten, twelve children from a single mother was not uncommon.
¡°Female children spent their time, outside of helping their mother, learning how to make make themselves desirable to the opposite sex. Once they became of marriageable age, their only task was to put that knowledge into practice and find a suitable mate. As soon as they became married, every ounce of their effort then went into getting pregnant and bringing as many children into the world as possible. Once they were too old to have more children, women helped raise their grandchildren while passing on their knowledge to the younger generations. This became not only the way society functioned, it became the way society viewed right and wrong, moral and immoral.¡±
¡°It seems like it worked,¡± Mizuko observed.
¡°Yes,¡± Pyria replied. ¡°While their measures were without a doubt extreme, it cannot be denied that they succeeded. Therein lies the problem.¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°I mean it worked! Elves are no longer in danger of extinction. Far from it. We are a healthy race with a large population. Any concerns of us dying off disappeared a thousand years ago. And yet, Drayhadan society is little different than it was back in the time of the country¡¯s beginnings. Those scars on Vura¡¯s torso... did you see how precise they were? How they were executed intentionally to damage the womb while leaving the victim otherwise alive? That is a crime known as the Barren Cut. It is done with a special serrated knife to ensure as much scarring inside the womb as possible and ensure that the victim will never be able to have children. And it is the worst thing that can happen to a woman in this place.
¡°Even though our country has plenty of citizens, even though elves outside of the country are also growing at a steady, healthy rate, even though there is no more need for these values and this way of thinking, Vura¡¯s life is effectively over. As a barren woman, she is worthless in everyone else¡¯s eyes. She will never have a husband. Other women refuse to associate with her. Though she can¡¯t have children, she is still female and so is barred from taking a productive occupation to support herself. Her family has already disowned her. She will die alone and unloved, all because some spurned suitor or jealous rival hired some hitman to ruin her. Death would be better than what she has to look forward to for the next two hundred and sixty years, if she even manages to live that long. That is the truth of this country.¡±
As the elf spoke, an awful feeling of familiarity formed in the pit of Mizuko¡¯s stomach. She could empathize with Pyria¡¯s anger towards what she felt was a backwards society. She could still the remember the rage that had flared up inside her back when she was just eleven and her father had drunkenly beaten her mother for the first of what would be many times. He¡¯d justified his actions by saying that Mizuko¡¯s mother had not been properly subordinate to him as Japanese culture and tradition mandated. Ever since that day, Mizuko had never believed the idea that tradition alone was a valid justification for anything. Just because something had long been a certain way, she thought, didn¡¯t mean it had to stay that way forever. Such progressive attitudes had led to friction with her husband later in life and caused her great pain, but she had never let those feelings go, no matter what.
When she thought back now, the signs had all been there but she¡¯d never noticed them. The only women, outside of Pyria, that she¡¯d come across had been servants doing tasks like laundry and cleaning or Vura. Everybody else¡ªthe soldiers, Pyria¡¯s bodyguard, the litter bearers, and all the rest¡ªwere men. Even most of the servants that tended to her were male.
¡°Do you know how many women have a say in the way Drayhadal works?¡± Pyria continued. ¡°Do you know how many women have even an iota of power to change this insanity? Me. That¡¯s all, because our society still runs on the belief that it is not a woman¡¯s place to govern. The men took over all the way at the beginning, and they don¡¯t want to give up their power now that the justification of their rule is obsolete. The only reason I¡¯m able to rule the Esmae is because there is literally nobody else. My father¡¯s first two wives had problems conceiving and had many miscarriages. My mother, his third and last wife, managed to have two children before she grew too old¡ªme and Tehlmar. Then Tehlmar was conscripted as a child, leaving only me. I have the power I have through a series of coincidences and luck. That¡¯s it. And the powers that be try to take it from me every single day.
¡°What I want you to understand is that what I have to deal with is what makes me do what I do. The four ruling clans of Drayhadal do not play nice. The other three are constantly doing everything they can to undermine me just because I¡¯m the ruler of the Esmae, and if I want to survive I have to respond in kind. They¡¯re not above spreading terrible rumors, sabotage, or a well-place dagger to the back. In fact, I wouldn¡¯t be shocked if they had a hand in the miscarriages my father¡¯s first two wives kept having. That¡¯s life as the head of the Esmae.
¡°But I have far more than that to deal with. After all, I¡¯m a woman who dares to want a say, and that means I¡¯ve had a target on my back since the day I took the throne. Everybody with an iota of power sees me as a threat to the natural order and tries to set me up to fail. They all want to discredit me and show the country that a woman needs to know her place, to the point where various clans that would never cooperate have at times worked together to try to destroy what I have made. You talked about honor? I don¡¯t have the luxury of honor. It¡¯s me against the world.¡±
¡°But surely your people support you, don¡¯t they? The way they cheered as you passed, I can¡¯t imagine that was fake.¡±
¡°These days, perhaps. But back when I started, even the women were against the idea. Even now, after all I¡¯ve accomplished, if you asked the men in private what their true thoughts were, you¡¯d find that many still think it problematic at best. My own fucking father plans to replace me with Tehlmar, now that he¡¯s returned. Can you imagine what would happen to my clan with him in charge?¡±
¡°I cannot imagine a worse person,¡± Mizuko agreed.
¡°It¡¯s a never-ending battle. One where a single mistake on my part could doom everything I¡¯ve worked for. And sometimes there are only mistakes no matter what I do. Killing the prisoners was a mistake, but not killing them would have been an even worse mistake. There is not always a path to victory.¡±
Pyria slumped back in her chair and, for the first time since they¡¯d met, Mizuko felt like she saw the true Pyria¡ªtired, worn-out, exhausted, but resolute.
¡°I understand now,¡± Mizuko said. ¡°I don¡¯t entirely agree with all your methods, but I understand. Thank you.¡±
¡°Remember back when we first came to this house, and I said it was a gift?¡± Pyria asked, a wistful look in her eyes.
¡°Yes, you wouldn¡¯t explain what you meant by ¡®hope¡¯.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t want to explain, because I was afraid. I thought if you knew the things I¡¯d done that you¡¯d hate me and I didn¡¯t want to risk losing your respect. I can see now that I was wrong to hide everything from you.¡±
¡°I¡¯m glad that you have finally come to realize that.¡±
¡°So many times over the years, I¡¯ve wanted to give up. Do you know how hard it is to try to change the world on your own? Always showing strength is incredibly tiring. I can¡¯t ever show even a hint of weakness. I have to be as perfect as possible, and even then I have to do many things that even I hate myself for. It¡¯s that or oblivion. Often it feels like I¡¯m just shouting into an empty void, and that the void will just swallow me up in the end and nothing will have mattered. But then you came and now I know that it can happen. You are living proof that it¡¯s not impossible. Right? My fight is not a forlorn cause.¡±
Mizuko nodded. ¡°Looking back on it, I would never have thought that the possibilities for my granddaughters would be so much greater than they were for my mother or me. Other societies in my world have gone even further. It can be done.¡±
Pyria was crying again. ¡°And I will always be grateful to you for teaching me that. Mizuko, like Vura, I will almost definitely never have a child of my own. To take a husband would mean that he would assume my role, so I have to walk this path alone. But I can walk this path with steady legs now, because I know it¡¯s possible. You¡¯ve given me the strength to do what has to be done, so that I can see what you have seen. Even if you or I don¡¯t like it. Even it means I have to slit my own brother¡¯s throat. You¡¯ve given me the greatest gift I could have asked for, and for that you will always be precious to me, Yamanaka.¡±
The princess stood up, wiping her eyes and sniffling, before bending over and wrapping the old woman in a hug. The old woman returned it.
Mizuko couldn¡¯t help but wonder how to feel about all of this. It was hard to imagine that the Pyria beside her at this moment was the same one who¡¯d ordered the death of thousands of people. Part of Mizuko felt honored that she was a beacon of hope and strength for somebody again. It brought her back to her days of being a mother, back when she¡¯d been able to support others instead of requiring that support. Another part applauded the princess¡¯s one-person crusade to strike a blow against the entrenched powers that were. But no matter how much she tried, there was no denying the fact that Pyria had gone horribly astray.
Once again, Mizuko¡¯s mind circled back to the question that had been bothering her all this time: was it fair for her to apply her own moral standards to a world with its own unique history? If her life had taught her anything, it was that history shaped everything, whether it was a nation¡¯s wars, disasters, and triumphs, or a single person¡¯s memories and experiences. All things were reflections of their past.
No, she decided finally, she couldn¡¯t judge these people by her own ethics. This was their home, not hers, and different rules applied here. But that didn¡¯t mean that those rules couldn¡¯t be changed. Maybe Mizuko couldn¡¯t snap her fingers and realign societal mores on a global scale, but she could still use what influence she had to give everything a little shove in the desired direction. And if she wanted to make a difference, her best chance stood with this isolated, paranoid, ruthless elven princess. But change wouldn¡¯t come quickly or easily; she knew from experience how long the arc of societal change could be, so she¡¯d start with something small but significant. She¡¯d start by making it so Pyria didn¡¯t feel so alone.
¡°Please, dear, call me Mizuko. Friends call each other by their given names.¡±
¡°I told you, I don¡¯t get to have friends,¡± Pyria sniffed.
¡°You can make an exception just this once, Pyria.¡±
¡°If you insist... Mizuko.¡±
¡°That being said, if you ever commit another dishonorable act like that again, I will never associate with you ever again.¡±
Mizuko felt the arms around her stiffen.
¡°You know I can¡¯t promise that.¡±
¡°Yes, you can. You have me now. My support should be of more use than anything you could gain by sullying yourself in such a way again.¡±
Pyria went silent for a few seconds. ¡°I will try.¡±
¡°Good.¡±
The princess let go and stood there for a moment, collecting herself. ¡°Well, thank you for listening,¡± she said as she headed for the door. ¡°I¡¯ll be back when I have time, maybe in a few days. I have many more questions to ask you about female life in your world, so be ready.¡±
¡°Pyria,¡± Mizuko called out just before the elf passed through the doorway.
Pyria paused and looked back. ¡°Yes?¡±
¡°I think I have room here for one more helper, if you know what I mean.¡±
The princess smiled. ¡°Of course. Leave it to me.¡±
Chapter 49
¡°And so Otharo said ¡®No longer need you fear the darkness, for the fires of Prometheus shall light your way.¡¯ And, lo, did the flames of the gods appear, so that the people would not fear the shadows along their path...¡±
Blake puttered about as Samanta read from the Writ of Otharo, listening with half his mind while he inspected a series of high overhead views of the border between Otharia and Eterium. A series of gray dots scurried over the terrain below. Each dot was a scout skitter patrolling the border, its path and timing coordinated to cover the maximum area while being as unpredictable as possible.
These skitters were just one facet of the border security system Blake had created after his latest near-death experience. The ultimate goal was as simple as it was ambitious: to close off the border from foreigners absolutely, allowing not a single soul to enter Otharia without his knowledge and permission. The people who¡¯d nearly killed him this last time had surely come from outside Otharia. If they had been Otharians they would have struck sooner to save their country, when he was weaker and less established. This felt like the actions of an outside power, one that had decided he''d become more than just a silly curiosity. Specifically, it sounded like Eterium.
The Republic of Eterium just made sense. They were the largest power on the continent. They were the only country to share a border with Otharia and the only one that really had anything to fear from Otharia growing in power. They¡¯d stolen chimirin during the fall of the old Otharia, which the assassins had used. And the poison on the one assassin¡¯s knife was an obscure poison that only Eterium had access to. There were just too many coincidences for Blake to come to any other conclusion.
He wasn¡¯t about to give them, or anybody else, a second chance. Dozens of flitter drones hovered high above the border, keeping a tireless watch over every inch of the border with a combination of sensors that covered both the visible light and infrared spectrum. The skitters down below were the muscle, investigating anything the flitters picked up as well as searching with their own sensors just in case. Between the two groups, nobody stood a chance of crossing the border unseen. At least, nobody above ground.
In a world where people had super strength or could just will rock to melt away like wax, Blake knew he could not ignore the likelihood that some group would try to tunnel their way past his blockade. That was why he¡¯d also installed a series of ¡°listening nodes¡±, as he liked to call them, designed to sense even the slightest of tremors below the ground. These nodes could sense somebody as deep as one hundred and fifty feet below the surface. That depth was more than enough; in his paranoia, Blake had drilled down into the earth and found that the water table for the border area was about one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet below ground.
Otharia was surrounded by water on eighty-five percent of the country, with that last fifteen percent being a relatively thin connection with Eterium to the north-northwest, similar in Blake¡¯s mind to how Spain stuck out from the bottom of France back on Earth. That meant he only had to concentrate on guarding fifteen percent of his borders, making the task far more feasible.
Still, the main reason any of this was possible was that Blake knew he didn¡¯t have to worry one bit about guarding Otharia¡¯s coasts. The oceans of Scyria were so deadly that nobody would ever make it to his shores. Massive leviathans lurked beneath the waves, large enough to swallow a cargo plane whole. Schools of smaller, ravenous fish capable of chewing their through wooden hulls made the coastal waters their home. The ocean here was so inhospitable that, as far as Blake understood, not a single culture had ever built up any sort of naval technology. There were no fishermen, no trading ships... not even fishing from land worked well because even when a fish was caught, the others in the school would almost always chew through the line. With all of that said, it made sense that one of the locals¡¯ favorite expressions to tell somebody to fuck off and die was ¡°go jump in the sea¡±.
Only thanks to those two facts was Blake able to create his border security system. Even just that much had required some repurposing and reassignment of existing robots, meaning his ability to monitor Otharia itself was now somewhat hampered. Regardless, Blake felt that the price was more than worth it and that it would pay for itself soon enough.
¡°Thank you, Sam. It¡¯s time for bed.¡±
¡°But I want to keep reading,¡± the girl protested. Samanta enjoyed reading the Writ of Otharo and other old religious books for Blake more than almost anything else. Blake found this fact to be incredibly depressing. She likely felt the somewhat familiar passages to be comforting amidst the sweeping changes this past half-year that had swept her life away. He wished she enjoyed her studies as much as she enjoyed reading that trash. Still, she¡¯d started actually trying to learn a while back, so he couldn¡¯t ask for much more from her.
¡°And you can do it more tomorrow,¡± Blake replied. ¡°But for now, it¡¯s sleep time. Leave the book here. It¡¯s old and delicate.¡±
Disappointed, the child put the book down on a nearby table and left, with Alpha, her metallic companion, clicking and clacking just behind her. Blake closed the door after they left, unconcerned with Samanta¡¯s activities. He¡¯d already sealed the fortress¡¯s core for the night, and all that was in here was his rooms, her bedroom, and the lesson room, so there was nowhere else for her to go. If she wanted to walk up and down the hallway instead of sleeping, he didn¡¯t care.
At least, not tonight. Tonight he was too tired to care, even more so than usual. Making his way to his bedroom, Blake lay down on his bed. His metal casing melted away and he fell into slumber in mere seconds.
Pain stormed through Blake¡¯s body, roughly dragging him quite literally screaming back to consciousness. His body trembled and shook as he clenched his teeth. These fits were the hardest to deal with because unlike when he was awake, he didn¡¯t have any warning that an episode was about to strike. He was never mentally prepared for the agony coursing through his veins. Still, he knew that just like any other, this wave would pass soon enough.
Less than a minute later it did. Blake opened his eyes to check the time and a curse escaped his lips. Only two hours since he¡¯d fallen asleep? With an angry sigh, he closed his eyes again, willing himself to relax, but relaxation would not come. Blake rubbed his face and fought against the frustration building inside of him. He was getting stuck in a vicious cycle that had plagued him since college, where he¡¯d try so hard to sleep that he¡¯d keep himself awake, which fueled his frustration as he watched the time he had left for rest dwindle away, which only kept him awake longer. He knew what was happening, but even the knowledge didn¡¯t make it easy to stop. An hour and two bathroom breaks later, Blake finally fell back asleep.
¡°You guys have something for headaches, right Leo? Please say yes.¡± Blake sat in the Council room the next morning, wishing he could take his helmet off to rub his head. But no, Leo was here, and the rest of his ministers were filing in as he spoke.
Last night had not been fun for Blake. After hours of falling asleep and waking and falling asleep again, he wasn¡¯t sure exactly just how much sleep he¡¯d gotten, only that it was nowhere near enough. Now not only did he feel tired, his head felt like it was going to crack open any second now.
¡°There are some teas that might help,¡± Leo said. ¡°Should I have some prepared?¡±
¡°Yeah, after the meeting. Can¡¯t hurt I guess,¡± Blake replied. He tapped his fingers against the metal table. ¡°Let¡¯s get this over with. There¡¯s some important stuff to talk about so let¡¯s get all the rest of it out of the way first.¡±
Quickly the group went through a variety of topics, from finances to agriculture to food storage. Little had changed on those fronts since the last meeting, which was good news as far as Blake was concerned.
¡°Leo, how much longer until we have toilets in every home in the city? This is taking far longer than I hoped.¡±
¡°My apologies, Lord Ferros. The task turned out to be far more chaotic than I initially assumed. I¡¯ve doubled the men working on the property surveys.¡±
¡°Good, hurry it up. There¡¯s no point in a sewer if the people can¡¯t use it... actually, that gives me an idea. Porta potties!¡±
¡°Porta...?¡±
¡°Public toilets! I want you to find areas in public, well-trafficked places where we can put some stalls. Each will likely be about, I don¡¯t know, five feet long and wide and perhaps seven feet tall? Something like that. We¡¯re going to place them around the city and have people use them. That should get them comfortable with the toilets by the time they¡¯re installed in their homes too. Hmmmmm, I guess that means we need to hire some people to clean them too...¡±
¡°That will, of course, add more expenses to the budget,¡± Finance Minister Zigmars Vietnieks chimed in. ¡°At this rate, we will have to raise taxes by next spring.¡±
¡°Eh,¡± Blake said, brushing Zigmars¡¯s concerns aside, ¡°we¡¯ll deal with that when we come to it. For now, we have something much more important to talk about. I¡¯m sure you all know what I mean.¡±
A series of serious faces gave him his answer. He nodded to Simona Jumala, his overenthusiastic Minister of State. Even she seemed a little subdued today, for reasons that were quite understandable.
¡°According to the Eterians, Vlesa fell yesterday,¡± she said. ¡°They have re-upped their pleas for our aid.¡±
Blake understood why they were begging for his help. According to the reports that had been filtering in the last few weeks, the Ubran Empire¡¯s invasion was not going well for the home team. Rul had fallen almost immediately, with Nefin falling shortly thereafter, followed by the capital city of Lita.
¡°Now that Vlesa is no more, Gustil has been completely taken by the Ubrans,¡± Simona explained. ¡°Now all that stops their armies from sweeping across the entire Republic of Eterium is Begale. They are desperate, my Lord. We could get much out of them in exchange for joining the fight.¡±
¡°Not happening,¡± Blake immediately stated, shooting the idea down immediately. ¡°But it does leave us with an important set of decisions. The way I see it, the Empire has three main options once they take Begale, which at this rate will happen in just a few days. Either they will head straight for Crirada in the hopes that taking the Eterians¡¯ capital will cut off the rest of the country for easy pickings, or they¡¯ll hit the other cities first so they can concentrate on Crirada without needing to watch their backs, or they¡¯ll just sweep across the country in a wave, hitting everything as they come to it. Two of those three options means trouble for us sooner than later, and with how well the Ubrans are rolling, even if they focus just on Crirada that will probably just delay things a week or two at most. Either way, we¡¯re about to have a lot of people heading our way.¡±
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¡°If you are concerned about the Ubran armies, why not help stop them now?¡± asked Justice Minister Gunta Izkapts.
¡°I¡¯m not worried about their armies,¡± Blake answered. ¡°I have full confidence that they will never take Otharia while I¡¯m alive. But I¡¯m not talking about the Ubrans. I¡¯m talking about the Eterians. Does anybody know how many people live in Obosall?¡±
Eterium had a city close to its border near each of the other countries except Stragma. They apparently referred to these cities as ¡°gatekeeper cities¡± and used them to control the flow of goods between nations. Surprisingly, there was one even for Otharia: Obosall.
¡°It¡¯s small for an Eterian city,¡± Simona replied. ¡°But still a couple hundred thousand at least. And that isn¡¯t counting smaller towns and villages in the area.¡±
¡°When the Ubrans close in, the vast majority of Obosall are heading our way,¡± Blake predicted. ¡°The question is what we are going to do about it.¡±
¡°Hundreds of thousands of Elselings heading into this country?!¡± Minister Izkapts gasped in horror, before realizing her error. ¡°I-I meant no offense, L-Lord Ferros-¡±
¡°I¡¯m sure you didn¡¯t,¡± Blake said darkly, fixing her with as withering a glare as he could manage with a mask over his face. ¡°Don¡¯t let me hear that word coming from your mouth again, or there will be consequences. That goes for all of you.¡± He leaned back in his chair. ¡°That said, the public will likely react like you just did, except worse. Does anybody here believe that if the Eterians were let in, the people of this country would be able to handle it without panic, chaos, and violence?¡±
The silence around the table told him all he needed to know.
¡°Alright then, what if we were to let them camp near the border on the Eterian side?¡±
¡°They¡¯d need food,¡± Fricis Upeslacis, Minister of Agriculture, said with a dismissive shake of his head. ¡°We have enough food stored from the harvest to last us through the winter, but not enough to share with an entire extra city of people. There¡¯s just not enough.¡±
¡°Do we have to help them at all?¡± Simona asked. ¡°Why not just let them pet the beast they raised? They brought this on themselves, let them suffer for it.¡±
Right, Blake remembered, Simona had no love for the Eterians. Likely much if not all of the country harbored ill will towards their neighbors to the north. Centuries of being mocked and pushed around would do that.
¡°While I share your feelings, I don¡¯t want hundreds of thousands of people dying on my doorstep,¡± Blake replied. ¡°When those people get desperate, they¡¯ll try something stupid like rushing the border en masse and I¡¯ll have no choice but to shoot them. Then suddenly I¡¯m the bad guy. Now does anybody have any suggestions that don¡¯t involve the likely death of more than two hundred thousand people?¡±
The ministers looked at each other, but nobody spoke up. Blake sighed.
¡°Well, one way or another, they¡¯re coming and I plan to be ready for them. I want a list of possible solutions ready for me within the next five days. And I want each of you to have gone over that list and prepare possible issues each solution might have with your area of expertise. Understood? Good. Meeting adjourned.¡± Blake stood up, fighting back a tired groan as he did so. ¡°Leo, I¡¯ll be in my quarters. Bring me some of that tea you were talking about.¡±
Walking back towards the fortress¡¯s center, Blake couldn¡¯t help but feel disappointed in the results of the meeting. He¡¯d been hoping for somebody to provide a suggestion that would show him the way, but nothing had come. He was still stuck on square one.
The problem that Blake faced was that he didn¡¯t know what, if anything, he should do about the whole situation¡ªnot just the refugees but the war as well. On the one hand, when Blake had said ¡°I will enjoy watching you burn¡±, he¡¯d meant every word. He felt no obligation whatsoever towards helping the same people who¡¯d tried to kill him. That being said, he¡¯d expected them to put up more of a fight. The ideal outcome, in his mind, had been the nation-equivalent of two drunk assholes beating the shit out of each other in an alley out behind a bar, and him standing off to the side enjoying the show. Once the two had taken enough damage, he could step in and end the fight whichever way he so desired.
That plan seemed out the window at this point. Now Blake had a host of new questions to deal with instead. Should he just sit back and watch Eterium fall to is doom, with Kutrad, Drayhadal, and maybe even Stragma to follow? If not, when should he step in? Did he even have the ability to stop the Ubrans with his current resources? What if he could, but it would require sending everything he had and opening up Otharia to attack? He didn¡¯t have answers for any of these questions just yet, even though he¡¯d been pondering them for a while now.
Blake couldn¡¯t deny that being able to protect those people when the Eterians couldn¡¯t do so would be a glorious middle finger to those asswipes, especially that stuck-up condescending Amatza Motrico. Yet he didn¡¯t dare allow the refugees into Otharia, not only for the reasons expressed during the meeting but also for his own more paranoid ones. If he were in the Ubrans¡¯ shoes, he would absolutely try to sneak as many undercover agents as possible within that group of people fleeing for their lives. Letting the refugees in would undermine the border security system into which he¡¯d invested so much time, effort, and resources, and it would destroy the sense of security that he needed to function as a sane human being.
Ugh, his head wouldn¡¯t stop aching. Leo couldn¡¯t get here with that tea soon enough.
¡°Alright Sam, here¡¯s the deal,¡± Blake said to his ward as they began their daily lesson. ¡°I¡¯m not feeling so hot right now and your country¡¯s tea is nothing but snake oil and placebo, so we¡¯re going to do something a bit different than normal. Today I want you to talk about the books you¡¯ve been reading.¡±
¡°Ummmm...¡± Sam replied, uncertainty plainly visible on her face.
¡°Specifically, I want you to discuss with me everything about them that seems wrong or off to you. Things that struck you as weird as you read them. Things that made you have questions. This should help develop your critical thinking skills.¡±
Her face soured immediately. ¡°You just want me to say that Othar isn¡¯t a god or something, like you always do.¡±
¡°Not today,¡± he said assuringly. ¡°The point of this today is for you to come to your own conclusions. So tell me, what parts of those books made you think something was strange?¡±
¡°Um, in the Word of Othar it says that Othar slew a dragon with his mighty sword, but in the Writ of Otharo it said that he used a spear-¡±
¡°No no no, not like that. The details between those two are going to differ all over the place. It¡¯s like if you told me a story and I told Leo and he told Simona and so forth, eventually the small bits are going to change. But what about things that seemed to disagree with the world itself? Did anything make you say ¡®huh, that¡¯s strange¡¯?¡±
Samanta didn''t reply at first, instead staring straight ahead, lost in thought. ¡°Well,¡± she said after a while, ¡°I did think it was a little weird that they talked about Othar¡¯s fire so much last night.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure what you mean.¡±
¡°I mean, um... everybody can make fire, right? At least a little bit. But it said here that... uhh...¡± The girl picked up the Writ of Otharo, which sat on a small desk to the side. Blake had brought the books in with him just in case they would be needed. ¡°Here!¡±
¡°And so Otharo said ¡®No longer need you fear the darkness, for the fires of Prometheus shall light your way.¡¯ And, lo, did the flames of the gods appear, so that the people would not fear the shadows along their path,¡± Samanta intoned. ¡°I remember thinking that it was weird that they talked about how he made fire when everybody can do it.¡±
¡°So then let¡¯s think about this. What could explain that?¡±
¡°I dunno.¡±
¡°Start by asking yourself some questions. For example, are they remarking upon the fact that he¡¯s making fire, or something else about it?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡±
¡°Well, sure, anybody can make a little fire, but this isn¡¯t claiming that he just made any old fire, did it?¡±
¡°No, he made the ¡®flames of the gods¡¯.¡±
¡°And that did what?¡±
¡°Chased away the darkness.¡±
¡°Indeed. But for whom did it chase away the darkness? Just a person or two?¡±
¡°No, it was for the people of Otharia.¡±
¡°So...?¡±
¡°It must have been a super strong flame!¡±
¡°Or he made flames everywhere, all over the country, or both. Could anybody else do that?¡±
¡°No!¡± The child smiled, proudly. ¡°I get it now. It wasn¡¯t so weird after all.¡±
¡°And now we know that Othar¡¯s power was to be able to make super strong flames or something to that effect, like how I can control metal. So he must have been from my world and not a god.¡±
Sam scowled. ¡°You said you weren¡¯t going to do that today.¡±
¡°I guess I was wrong,¡± Blake chuckled. ¡°Anything else catch your interest?¡±
¡°Well, in this passage...¡±
The pounding in Blake¡¯s head refused his silent pleas for respite as he shuffled into his private area. As much as he needed sleep, it was still too early in the evening for him to sleep just yet, even if he went to bed extra early today. That left him wondering how best to use the hour or two remaining before he conked out for the night.
At first, Blake considered heading out to his facility outside the city where he kept his current pet project, but he didn¡¯t have it in him this night. His brain hurt too much to have to wrestle with precise weight ratios and the limits of tucrenyx¡¯s tensile strength. It was coming along nicely enough that he could leave it for a day or two. Perhaps in a few weeks, it would be ready for a test run.
Instead, he decided to spend a little time on his next big project post-sewers: trains. It was time that he opened up the country to its people. How much better would Otharia be if somebody could just hop on a free passenger train and go from Wroetin to Nont in just a few hours? And they would be free trains¡ªBlake wanted as many people as possible to use the trains and get used to them.
Already he had most of the periphery worked out. He had routes drawn up between the cities. He had Samanta¡¯s voice reading messages about stations and instructions. He had cabin designs and several different ideas for propulsion that he¡¯d get around to testing shortly. But for now, his concerns were with something more basic. How was he going to build the tracks, and with what metal?
There was only so much tucrenyx available to Blake, and he didn¡¯t think it wise to waste any of it on railroad tracks. And then there was the foundation beneath. Blake didn¡¯t know too much about railroads, but he knew enough to realize that the tracks needed to be on something far more solid than just dirt. Rubbing his face, he decided to talk to Leo the next morning about just how many blacksmiths and stone Observers lived in Otharia these days.
Lying down once more on his bed, Blake stared up at the gray ceiling as the rest of his armor melted away. He hoped he¡¯d be able to sleep alright for once, and not just because he was tired. With the war going on, something told him that he¡¯d be sleeping even fewer hours every night soon enough. The sweet bliss of emptiness took him, if only for a little while.
Chapter 50
Gabriela Carreno stared out of the spacious carriage as it bounced its way towards Eterium, her gaze ignoring the hundreds of thousands of soldiers all around and instead focusing in on the wilderness she could see off in the distance. Even though raw nature was a common feature in this world, after all these months she still hadn¡¯t gotten completely used to it. The city had always been the backdrop of her life, and she¡¯d never really found the urge nor the money to go out and explore the less-urban areas of Mexico; there¡¯d always been something far more important to deal with.
A light dusting of snow covered the land. According to Chitra, that meant winter was in full swing, or at least whatever went for winter in this place. From what the Batranala told her, the climate in this world seemed to be much less extreme than Earth¡¯s. The winters were warmer and the summers cooler, something demonstrated rather bluntly by the fact that not a single tree within her sight had shed its leaves even as they entered the coldest part of the year. Instead of a mass of brown empty branches, Gabby¡¯s eyes were treated to a beautiful cornucopia of colors from all corners of the rainbow.
The alien foliage, with its radiant hues ranging from deep reds to bright violets, really drove home to Gabby just how different her life had become. She¡¯d been too swept up in emotion at first to really ponder the realities of her situation, and then her life had turned into a nonstop parade of training, training, and more training. It wasn¡¯t until Redwater Castle had fallen and the subsequent battle had been won that she¡¯d finally gotten the chance to really take a step back and think. Travel in Scyria meant something different than what she was used to; here, it meant days of inactivity, hours upon hours of uninterrupted time to just... reflect. She hated every minute of it.
Quiet time meant time where she had to confront the screaming anxiety in the back of her mind. It meant that she had little to do other than think about her children, their unknown fates, and how little she could do to help them. It also meant that she had little to do other than think about what she had done to help them. She¡¯d willingly become a butcher of men to achieve her goals, embracing sin with open arms just to achieve her own selfish desires. Now, whenever the noise of life died down for a few days, she found that, should she let her thoughts wander, her mind would start to dredge up memories of those she¡¯d killed, their agonized faces flashing in front of her mind¡¯s eye just for a moment when she least expected. It was for these reasons that Gabriela tried to keep herself as busy as possible, even when there was nothing to do but sit in an oversized carriage for days on end.
Chitra proved indispensable for such endeavors, providing a ready source of stories, information, or simple gossip. Gabby couldn¡¯t be any more grateful for the glamorous servant¡¯s constant presence. While she¡¯d gotten to know quite a few people since her arrival in this world, Chitra was the only person she felt truly close to.
A series of horn blasts sounded from up ahead. ¡°Looks like we¡¯re stopping for the night,¡± Chitra observed.
As if to confirm her statement, the carriage quickly slowed to a halt. Chitra stepped outside, and Gabby grabbed her sword and followed close behind. All around, soldiers were making camp, setting up tents and the like. Gabriela and Chitra didn¡¯t have to bother with putting up their own tent, as a group of servants did it for them. Gabby felt grateful for that; it seemed like a lot of work to do every morning and night.
They¡¯d stopped on a grassy plain sporadically dotted with small clumps of trees. The trees cast long shadows across the rolling hills as the sun crept beneath the horizon. Gabby couldn¡¯t help but inspect the vibrant colors of the nearest copse as the leaves became tinted with red from sun¡¯s fading light.
¡°Oh, a snowfruit tree? How unusual!¡± Chitra chirped from beside her.
¡°Wha?¡± Gabby replied, confused.
¡°See that tree over there?¡± the Ubran asked, pointing at one of the smaller trees in the copse. Gabby¡¯s eyes were drawn to its round leaves that gleamed a beautiful turquoise in the evening light. ¡°That¡¯s a snowfruit tree. They¡¯re pretty rare, or so I¡¯ve heard. How nice to find one right here!¡±
¡°That¡¯s a strange name for a tree,¡± Gabby said.
¡°How so?¡±
¡°Does it make fruit that feel cold or something?¡±
¡°Close. Come, I¡¯ll show you,¡± came the reply as Chitra headed towards the nearby trees, Gabriela right behind. They stopped beneath the tree and Chitra pointed up at several branches a few meters above their heads. Hanging from the branches were several dull yellow fruits. ¡°See? The snowfruit tree is so named because it grows fruit during the winter, far after all the other plants have shed their own.¡±
¡°Why?¡±
The Batranala shrugged. ¡°Nobody really knows. They just do. Life can be strange sometimes.¡±
¡°Can you eat them?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve heard they can be quite tasty. Would you like to try one?¡±
¡°Sure!¡±
Chitra produced a knife from somewhere within her layers of clothes and lazily flicked it up towards the nearest branch in a high arc. The spinning blade neatly sliced through the closest fruit¡¯s stem, sending the snowfruit plummeting towards the ground. With casual ease, the woman held out her hand let the fruit drop right into her upturned, awaiting palm while she smoothly snagged the knife with her other hand. With a bow, she presented the prize to Gabriela.
¡°Showoff,¡± Gabby snorted, taking the fruit. ¡°Why are you so good at that, anyway?¡±
¡°What, knife throwing?¡±
¡°Yes, knife throwing!¡± Gabriela laughed. ¡°And riding, and cooking, and manners, and everything! No matter what you do, it¡¯s graceful and flawless and perfect. I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever seen you make a mistake. I mean, even that time with the hook and the rope, every time you threw it the hook would land right where you wanted on the first try. Is there anything you¡¯re bad at? I swear, just being near you is giving me bad self-esteem.¡±
Chitra chuckled knowingly. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I know it drives others crazy, but I just can¡¯t help it. No matter what I do, no matter how big or small, once I start learning something I don¡¯t stop practicing until I am flawless at it. Knife throwing, archery, cleaning, it doesn¡¯t matter. I can¡¯t stop until I¡¯ve mastered it. It¡¯s a compulsion, you might say.¡±
¡°That sounds almost... bad? I¡¯ve heard of perfectionists before but that sounds ridiculous. You must have lost so many hours of your life to it.¡±
¡°Oh, you have no idea.¡±
Gabby rolled her eyes. ¡°Great, now I¡¯m somehow feeling jealous and sorry for you at the same time.¡± She took a bite and moaned as her mouth flooded with sweet juice that reminded her of a cross between a grapefruit and an orange. ¡°This is great! You want a bite?¡±
¡°Thank you for offering, but I must decline,¡± the Batranala replied. ¡°I¡¯m not much a fruit person. Too sweet.¡±
¡°Haha, yeah,¡± Gabby agreed. ¡°You¡¯re a meat lover, aren¡¯t you. It¡¯s almost all I ever see you eat.¡±
¡°I know what I like. Speaking of which, supper should be almost ready by now. What say you to a true meal, oh Champion?¡± She held out her hand, a mocking grin on her face.
Gabriela giggled and placed her hand delicately inside the proffered one. ¡°I would say it sounds wonderful.¡±
¡°Then let us tarry no longer.¡± Grasping Gabby¡¯s hand lightly but firmly, Chitra led her back towards her newly-constructed tent.
Begale¡¯s thick metal gate buckled inward and fell inward from the force of her blow, the power of her fist ripping the large ten-meter-high sliding door from its slot in the stone. Ignoring the eight arrows sticking out through her armor, Gabriela rushed through the gap she¡¯d just created, swinging her massive sword from side to side to clear her way while the cold fire of her regeneration ate away at the arrowheads and shafts buried in her flesh. The Eterian troops before her didn¡¯t matter. They weren¡¯t her responsibility. The Ubran soldiers that were currently storming through the breach behind her would deal with them. Her targets hid elsewhere, deep within the city.
Every city followed the same overall strategy: she¡¯d create an opening or two as she entered the city, allowing the Ubrans to pierce through the city¡¯s defenses as she made a beeline for the defenders¡¯ headquarters and took out the local leadership. Quickly the defense would become uncoordinated and fall to pieces, after which the city would be taken within a few hours. It was a simple strategy, but an effective one that avoided being too complicated. It relied entirely on her, sure, but she didn¡¯t mind. There had yet to be a single opponent that had presented a chance of failure on her end. The only person who had ever presented a challenge in any way had been that man, the other Earthling, but she preferred to avoid thinking about that piece of trash.
As she entered Begale itself, Gabby realized that their opponents had actually tried something different for once. As far as she understood siege warfare in this world, it seemed that the vast majority of the defending forces would be found on the wall, but not all. It was not inconceivable that a particularly strong Feeler, for example, might be able to break through and make it down the other side, where he or she would then be able to incite chaos or hide away. No defending commander liked the idea of enemy soldiers hiding behind their lines and causing trouble. To combat this, normally the defending army would hold a few of its better fighters back, posting them near the wall but in the city to intercept any would-be infiltrators. It was these people that Gabriela usually had to fight her way through on the way to the headquarters.
The commander this time had not kept a few choice units back this time. Instead, what looked to be an army stood between her and her goal. Literally thousands of people had been held in reserve to try to stop her this time. They¡¯d finally learned, it seemed, and had finally taken measures to try and thwart her mission. Gabby didn¡¯t care. If they could truly learn, then she would teach them that not even an entire army could keep her from her goals.
Her speed picked up and she waded into the sea of blades, lashing out with the Sword of Eternity over and over with incredible force. Each blow sliced through six people and blew back a dozen more, but regardless of their certain doom, the Eterians kept desperately pushing back. The icy fire of healing flowed throughout her veins nonstop, her powers working without rest to erase the damage left by the countless sword slashes, arrow hits, fireballs, and more.
Fifteen minutes later, Gabby had had enough. She¡¯d made it halfway into the horde of enemies and left naught but destruction and death in her wake, and she knew that if she wanted to she could wipe out every single person who stood in her way. But while this army didn¡¯t post a threat to her life, it was slowing her down. These people didn¡¯t matter, she reminded herself. Her targets were elsewhere, and fighting these people was just slowing her down and wasting her time for no gain.
Changing course, Gabriela fought her way to her right slicing and bulldozing her way through the crowd and into a nearby alleyway. Then she was off, racing through the twisting passages largely unimpeded. She hacked her way past a small group of soldiers here, impaled some more there, split open a woman who tried to sneak attack her from a doorway near the end of the alleyway maze, and then she was through the maze and out into a new, more open and empty street. Perfect.
Civilians ran from her in panic as she sped towards the city center. At first, Gabby had been shocked and appalled at how many non-soldiers remained in each city as the Ubrans conquered them, but she¡¯d come to the conclusion that they must simply have had nowhere else to go. All the non-combatants in every city seemed to be the poorest of the poor, with gaunt bodies and tattered clothes. She surmised that perhaps, in a way, she was assisting these people. The Ubrans seemed to take care of their citizens far better and she could use her position to pressure the Emperor to help them now that they would live under his rule. With that happy thought, she increased her speed towards her goal, her powerful legs propelling her through the streets at inhuman speeds.
Something was off. According to the Ubran spies, the defense of Begale was being run from a large building that had served as the local military¡¯s command center for decades. Yet the place seemed completely empty. Where were the commanders? Had they run away? Had they sacrificed thousands of people to buy enough time to save their own lives? The idea sent a shot of anger through Gabriela¡¯s soul.
Bracing her sword over her head, she hurled herself upwards with tremendous force, crashing violently through the second and third floors and up through the roof. So powerful was her leap that she kept ascending meter after meter above the building until she began to slow perhaps a hundred meters above the ground. It was then that she spotted the Eterians nearly at the eastern gate. To her surprise, it wasn¡¯t just the leaders, but a large portion of the city¡¯s defenses as well, thousands of soldiers making a break for freedom before the Ubrans could properly encircle the entire city. Well, not if she had anything to say about it.
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A drop of water landed on her head as she began to descend. Then another, and a third. As she crashed down onto the roof below, suddenly a heavy downpour followed. Gabriela didn¡¯t know what to make of the sudden rainstorm. The sky had been clear just moments ago, hadn¡¯t it? She looked up to find a dark rumbling cloud overhead, with flashes of lightning lighting up its inside. It took her a moment, but suddenly she realized just what was bothering her so much: it was the only cloud in the sky, and it hovered right over that particular building.
Right over her.
Gabby had a very bad feeling about this.
With a powerful kick, Gabby leapt for the nearby street just as a bolt of lightning struck where she¡¯d been just a moment before. The world seemed to explode, the blast knocking her to the side and into the walls of a nearby building with a thunderous CRACK! Shaking her head to clear it while her regeneration patched up her ruptured eardrums, Gabby peered through the now pouring rain and noticed that she was no longer alone. Two people, a man and a woman, stood in the street about fifteen meters from her, their golden, glowing eyes shining through the downpour.
Gabby used the Sword of Eternity to push herself to her feet and stared back at the pair. Who were these people, what were they doing here, and why did their eyes literally shine? Something told her that the sudden thunderstorm was their doing somehow. The unnatural glow of their eyes unnerved her, setting her on edge in a way that she¡¯d never felt since the discovery of her abilities.
The woman drew a normal-looking sword from its scabbard, holding it off to her right as if she were about to strike a blow against some invisible target. Then suddenly, she blurred. Gabriela instinctively threw herself to the side as thunder crashed once more. Strong, sharp pain lanced through Gabby¡¯s right shoulder as she dove, and she tumbled off-balance into the middle of the street.
Her right arm was missing, Gabriela realized. It was lying off to the side of the street, the Sword of Eternity still firmly grasped in its hand. How? While her arm turned to smoke and reformed on her shoulder, she looked back at the pair only to find that the woman was gone. She turned about and saw that somehow the woman was behind her now, her sword drawn back like before. Gabby sprinted for her sword as the woman blurred again and another thunderclap sounded in her ears.
This time Gabby saw her move, but only barely. Despite pushing her body¡¯s speed and reflexes to absurd levels as she raced for her weapon, the other woman still appeared as a blur as she rocketed past Gabriela faster than anything she¡¯d ever seen. The woman¡¯s sword arced out towards Gabby¡¯s neck, slicing through with undodgeable speed. Gabby¡¯s head and body each tumbled up against the street-side wall.
Those hadn¡¯t been thunderclaps, she realized. Those were sonic booms. Just how fast could that woman move? It was insane! Gabby willed her body to reconstruct, pushing her healing faster than she¡¯d ever done before. She realized now that this fight would be no joke and would take everything she had to win. Her powers responded to her urgent plea, and a tendril of smoke reached out and connected the two pieces, pulling her head back onto her body and reconnecting it. She reached out and grabbed her sword, standing back up with the fire of determination raging in her heart.
¡°Did I get her?¡± the woman asked the man, panting from the exertion and still facing the other direction. ¡°Is she dead?¡±
¡°No, it seems the rumors are true.¡±
¡°Fuck!¡±
¡°Calm yourself and focus. Remember the mission. As long as she does not pass until our time is up, our sacrifices will not be in vain.¡±
The woman took a deep breath. ¡°Right.¡±
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning reached down from the sky and struck the man, but against Gabriela¡¯s expectations, he did not get hurt! A second bolt followed a moment later. The man smiled menacingly at the now upright Gabriela as large bolts of electricity arced across his body. ¡°Now then, let¡¯s see just how unkillable the Revenant of Rul really is.¡±
Gabby wasted no time, sprinting as fast as her inhuman legs would carry her straight at the woman. She¡¯d judged that, of the two of them, the woman was the larger threat because she could behead Gabby if given the opportunity, and Gabby wanted to avoid that at all costs. It seemed like the speedster couldn¡¯t move supersonically constantly, but instead had to load up and burst forward. As long as Gabby could keep her from loading up-
The man raised his arm and a bolt of lightning shot out from his hand to strike the speeding Gabriela directly in her chest. Pain roared through her torso and legs, her muscles spasming wildly as she tripped and tumbled forward. The cold fire sprouted throughout her body as her powers went to work on her newly-fried organs and she pushed herself up again, only this time for a second bolt to strike her right in the head. The world went white.
Gabriela didn¡¯t know what was happening. She couldn¡¯t see, or hear, or even feel, but she could still think somehow, someway. Still, her thoughts felt sluggish, like they were moving through drying cement. She didn¡¯t know what to do, and so she just willed herself to heal, as hard as she could. She could feel something flow out of her, an incredibly minute amount of whatever it was, but something nonetheless. And then suddenly the world rushed back.
¡°Incredible,¡± the man muttered as she stood back up. He raised his hands to the sky and another bolt crashed down, but Gabby was already moving towards him, sword out and ready to slice him in two.
¡°No!¡± the woman cried out as she blurred. More pain shot through Gabby as another shock wave knocked her back and both her arms went flying this time, her hands both still grasping the Sword of Eternity as it spun through the air. She sprang back up and shot towards her weapon just as another bolt of lightning leapt out from the man¡¯s hands and struck her in the chest once more.
How many times had this been now, Gabby wondered as she willed her brain to heal. Nine? Ten? She¡¯d lost count, as it was hard to do things like counting when your brain was fried mush inside your skull.
The world flashed back into existence and she spotted her two opponents through the raindrops just ten meters from her. They each looked heavily winded now, but the defiance in their glowing eyes remained. They¡¯d been fighting for a good while now, perhaps thirty minutes or more, and Gabby had made little progress. Were she fighting either of them alone the battle would have been over in just a few minutes, but the two worked too well together. The lightning man kept her at bay with long-range attacks, each one capable of putting her out of commission for at least a moment. The speedy swordswoman, in the meantime, could hang back and load up, waiting for a time when Gabby made a mistake or was about to hurt her partner, and then burst forth to lop off some limbs or her head. Gabby could process the woman¡¯s movement better now. While she wasn¡¯t sure if she was getting faster or the woman was getting slower, it didn¡¯t make much of a difference either way just yet; the speed gap was still too great.
¡°Curse you!¡± the woman exclaimed between pants. ¡°Just... stay down!¡±
¡°Never!¡± Gabriela replied. Unyielding, she launched herself forward once more, ready to swerve at the last moment and try to dodge the incoming electricity. While she hadn¡¯t fully dodged one yet, she was getting better at it, to the point where if she timed it right only a single leg would get hit. The man raised his hands... and suddenly went stiff, a look of agony on his face. Confused, Gabriela quickly skidded to a stop.
¡°Shit! This is all the time we get?¡± the woman swore. She pulled her sword back and blurred, while Gabby raised her own up to block the incoming attack. For once, Gabby managed to protect herself and the woman came to a halt several meters behind Gabby. Her body was reacting now the same way as her partner¡¯s.
Gabby took a step back, watching with horror as their eyes changed, the glowing gold suddenly shifting to a dark black that seemed to suck in all the light around it. They screamed as the blackness grew, expanding out from their eyes through their veins until it looked like their bodies were covered with pitch black ivy growing beneath their skin.
Then they exploded.
Gabriela let out a yelp of surprise as gore flew all across the area, splattering across the ground and nearby walls and everything in between. Pieces of blackened flesh and blood showered her body, covering her face, her hair, and what remained of her clothes and armor. Almost immediately, the remains scattered across the ground began to melt and bubble away, a noxious mist wafting off into the air as the flesh began to evaporate into nothingness. Gabby bent over and began to hurl.
What in the world had just happened?
Gabriela spat out the leftover vomit from her mouth and fought back a curse. While her opponents were dead, their mission had to be considered a success. They¡¯d kept Gabby from chasing down the rest of the Eterian leadership long enough that the remaining Eterians were likely long gone by now. Either way, she needed to head back. Her job was done and she needed to think about some things.
The biggest item on her list was just what had happened with her body during the fight. During previous battles, she¡¯d taken plenty of arrows to the head but even with an arrow lodged through her skull, she¡¯d been able to heal immediately. During the fight with the other Earthling, she¡¯d had part of her brain mashed in and had been able to heal relatively immediately as well. She¡¯d figured that since most of her brain had been intact, she¡¯d still retained the ability to activate her regenerative powers. This time, however, multiple lightning bolts had hit her in the head, each one strong enough to cook her brain completely. With her entire brain literally fried, how had she been able to think? How had she remained conscious and aware, even without any senses or a working brain? It didn¡¯t make any sense. Maybe Chitra would be able to explain it? She always seemed to know everything.
Ugh, she needed a bath in the worst way. She increased her speed as she ran back towards the western side of the city. Along the way she passed by multiple squads of Ubran soldiers, all of whom saluted as she passed. She could hear scattered fighting was still going down throughout the city, but in control of Begale seemed to already be largely in the Ubrans¡¯ hands.
As she continued down the street towards the western wall, Gabby¡¯s ears picked up a sound, one with which she had ample familiarity. It was the cries of a young child in distress, something she hadn¡¯t heard in a long time. Unused maternal instincts kicked in and her steps quickened and she followed the sound to a nearby alley. Rounding the corner, her head filled with worry, Gabriela froze as she took in the scene.
A young girl, perhaps four years old, sat beside the body of a woman in the middle of the alley. The woman¡¯s corpse was splayed out, chest down, on the ground beside a doorway, her torso nearly cut in half vertically by a massive gash that began in the torso¡¯s center and heading upwards through her right shoulder. A long kitchen knife laid beside the woman¡¯s right hand. A boy, perhaps twelve, sat against the nearby wall, his face stained with tears and his eyes lifeless.
The size of the wound, the alley, the doorway... this scene was Gabriela¡¯s creation. The woman who¡¯d tried to attack her from the doorway... that had been this woman. A mother, by the looks of it, trying to protect her children with little more than a kitchen knife. And Gabriela had just slaughtered her without thinking and moved on.
The bawling little girl looked up and locked eyes with Gabby for the first time, and Gabby fell into that tortured gaze. The rest of the world fell away as, for the first time, Gabriela Carreno came face to face with the consequences of her actions. All this time, Gabriela had been running from the truth, a painful truth that she knew deep down inside. But she couldn¡¯t run from those eyes, nor from the truth she saw in them.
She was a killer. A butcher. A monster. A demon. She¡¯d thrown away her soul to chase after her own selfish desires, and in doing so she¡¯d forfeited her right to be a mother. She didn¡¯t deserve to return to her children after all the agony she¡¯d delivered, after all the orphans she¡¯d created and families she¡¯d destroyed. Her babies wouldn¡¯t even recognize her beneath all the blood and death. The truth was too much for her spirit to bear and Gabriela¡¯s spirit crumbled into dust.
The young man looked up and a spark of recognition quickly became an inferno of fury. Tears streaming down his face, he picked up the knife and charged at Gabby, but she didn¡¯t react. She barely noticed the knife stabbing into her torso again and again, nor the boy¡¯s screams, nor the panicked shouts of soldiers nearby as she fell. All she could see was that young girl¡¯s anguish. All she could hear was the sorrow of her wails. All she could feel was her own damnation. Her soul gave out and the world went black.
Chapter 51
¡°So from what I hear, Begale is lost.¡±
¡°Where did you hear that? Same friend as last time?¡±
¡°No, it was my sister-in-law. She was stationed at the north gate last night. Apparently, the Motrico and Lazani families have been quietly moving everything of value that they can out of the city the last few days. They¡¯re running, but trying to make it look like they¡¯re loyal and staying around.¡±
¡°Shit... yeah, if the Families are running, there¡¯s not much time left, is there?¡±
¡°Things are about to get even more hectic. They won¡¯t be able to keep that news bottled up for much longer.¡±
Arlette Faredin focused on the on-break guards¡¯ nearby conversation while she inspected the goods on the incoming wagon. Like many wagons she¡¯d seen these last few days, this one was piled high with what looked to be everything the merchant owned. The flow of people to and from Crirada, the capital of the Republic of Eterium and the city where Arlette found herself, told a depressing tale of the current state of affairs¡ªa steady stream of terrified people coming from the west, fleeing tales of Ubran hordes and desperately seeking the protection of the capital¡¯s mighty walls, versus the quiet flight of those with the access to know that the protection of the capital¡¯s mighty walls might amount to little.
The possibility existed that Crirada could hold against the Ubrans. Being the capital city of the most powerful nation on the continent, it made sense that Crirada would have defenses that only Redwater Castle could beat. Arlette couldn¡¯t even imagine how much money had gone into completely encompassing the city with such intimidating walls. They towered over the surrounding plains, reaching hundreds of paces into the sky. Not only that, but they were so thick that you could stick an entire house on the walkway on top and you wouldn¡¯t even cover half of it. Each of the four massive gates housed an equally gigantic set of solid metal doors known as the Doors of Prosperity for their golden, money-like sheen. These doors were as thick as a man was tall, strong enough to withstand a team of Feelers pounding on them for hours. Nobody stood a chance of battering their way through the gates and into the city. They¡¯d have to go the hard way and scale the walls, or risk trying to tunnel beneath, an incredibly dangerous gamble that would end in the death of everybody involved if just one defending earth Observer noticed them.
And yet, while the walls of Rul and Begale and the other cities couldn¡¯t compare to Crirada¡¯s, their defenses were still plenty formidable and the Empire had plowed through them like they weren¡¯t even there. Rul should have been able to hold for at least ten days, Begale perhaps thirty or more... but instead, every city had folded quicker than grass in a windstorm. Reliable word about events far away was always hard to come by if you didn¡¯t have money or the right connections, and the chaos of war only made things worse, but she¡¯d heard stories of cities falling in just a few hours, of walls smashed into oblivion and gates rent asunder as an endless tide of Ubrans poured in. And above all, there was talk of an immortal monster leading them, stronger and faster than even the most powerful Feeler and able to shrug off any wound. If this monster really existed, it might not matter how tall or thick Crirada¡¯s defenses were.
Less than a year ago, Arlette would have found such stories to be laughable at best. But a lot had changed in her life since then. Almost everybody she¡¯d cared about had died, a city had been destroyed before her eyes by an impossible creature, she¡¯d been hunted across a continent, and come face to face with a nightmare from her past. Oh, and she¡¯d also come upon a strange young woman from another world, met a bizarre young beastgirl mad alchemist, experienced a terrifying vision of a different reality, and repeatedly punched a king in the face. To say that her perspective on what was possible had expanded greatly recently would be putting it lightly.
And now here she was, a nondescript guard in the Eterian capital, awaiting the incoming wave. Sofie¡¯s predictions about the nature of King Morgan turned out to be spot on. Faced with the fact that their upcoming execution had already been announced throughout the country, the king chose to publicly kill some lookalikes and claim that justice had been done rather than try to hunt them down. The bounties were gone. As long as they kept their head down and kept their true identities to themselves, Arlette had a feeling that the three of them didn¡¯t have to worry about being hunted any longer. Bounty hunters didn¡¯t hunt for free, after all.
With little left to live for, Arlette decided to devote her every effort to thwarting whatever evil Sebastian was up to. She¡¯d seen what the man was capable of, and if she could do something to stop it from happening a second time, she would. Sofie and Pari, the fools, had insisted on helping her instead of going off and having a happy life somewhere safe. She¡¯d given in eventually, seeing that they were as set in their decision as she was in hers, not that she particularly minded the company anyway.
The plan at the time had been simple. They would make their way out of Kutrad, through Eterium, and into Gustil, where Arlette would hope to get a post at Redwater Castle as a member of the Gustilian army. That was where Sebastian would be, she¡¯d been sure. Infiltrating the heart of the opposition¡¯s defense, slicing their throats, and opening the doors was how he worked. Getting in there herself to stop him would be tough, but between her performance during the last election war five years ago and her familial connections with her second father¡¯s family, she¡¯d thought she had a decent shot.
Then, just four days after their arrival in Crirada, the supposedly invincible fortress had fallen. Arlette had been despondent for days. She¡¯d missed her chance to stop Sebastian and get her revenge. But then cities had started to fall left and right as quickly as Redwater Castle, and she¡¯d realized that Sebastian very likely hadn¡¯t been there at all, and this was all the work of the rumored monster. Sebastian was frighteningly capable, but not so capable that he could undermine every metropolis simultaneously. No, he¡¯d focus on where the power was, here in Crirada. In a strange, perverse way, everything had all worked out according to Arlette¡¯s hopes.
Using what remained of the gold and valuables they¡¯d pilfered from King Morgan¡¯s chambers, Arlette had purchased a small house in the working quarter and, under the name ¡°Lucana Domatin¡±, joined the city¡¯s guard force that was eager to fill holes created by all the people sent off to fight. The job gave her an excuse to move all around the city while learning its hidden quirks and secrets. It also let her monitor the people and come up with possible suspects. Finally, it was her turn to be the hunter.
That evening, Arlette ambled her way through the city towards her new home in the worker¡¯s quarter, her sword bouncing gently against her hip. The worker¡¯s quarter, where the majority of the lower class people lived, was quite literally what it sounded like: a quarter of the city bound by two large walls which ran from the city center to the great walls circling the city. All of Crirada was like that actually. Unlike most cities, which featured a large wall around the entire metropolis and then another wall around the citadel in the center, Crirada also had four walls that connected the inner ring and the outer ring like a set of spokes, dividing the city into four mostly-equal-sized units. The walls served as expressways for city guards and various VIPs and allowed the Eterians, should they even fall under attack, to limit the damage when one part of the wall fell, bottling the incoming enemies into only a portion of the city and perhaps even allowing reinforcements to arrive quickly enough to push them back. It also served the purpose of marking out territories for the various social groups in the city.
Unlike Stragma¡¯s castes or Kutrad¡¯s nobility, commoners and slaves, Eterian society had no strict class structure. Here, all that mattered was the size of your purse. The more money to your name, the more power you could wield. That was how an entire quarter of the city was owned and controlled by just a few massive wealthy families like the Motrico¡¯s and the Lazani¡¯s, while half the city squeezed into just a fourth of the total real estate. That wasn¡¯t to say that the walls completely divided the city¡ªlarge archways could be found in several spots along the walls, allowing for movement between the zones¡ªbut they did make it easy for cross traffic to be controlled, should those in power so desire. You¡¯d be hard-pressed to find many poor people in the wealthiest quarter of the city, for example. The arches also came equipped with thick metal gates that could be deployed to close off an area should the need arise.
Arlette cut through a back street to get to the nearest arch that connected the commerce quarter and the worker¡¯s quarter, holding her breath instinctively as she passed by a Sweeper busy cleaning up nearby refuse. She could hear the Sweeper''s raspy breath coming from behind their large, reptilian mask. Like everybody in the city, she tried to pretend that those disgusting, disease-ridden people didn¡¯t exist, but they were unfortunately necessary to keep the city livable and would be even more important in the near future¡ªthey would be the ones tasked with cleaning up the aftermath of the upcoming battles.
The sun was below the horizon when Arlette entered the small but comfortable two-story home that she shared with the two other members of her ¡°family¡±. The house could have used another room, but it had what they needed and had been more than cheap enough for their price without being run down. Almost immediately upon entering, a mix of pungent scents wafted through her nostrils and gave her a headache. She thought she smelled something vaguely resembling stew, but the aroma fused with a combination of other smells that could only mean Pari was experimenting again. In other words, a sadly normal evening in the house.
¡°I¡¯m home!¡± she called as she entered the living area. The room didn¡¯t have much light, with the only light coming from a few candles and a small fire flickering in the hearth beneath the stew pot. Suddenly, a dark blur dashed through the gloom and glommed onto Arlette¡¯s hip, affectionately rubbing its dirty face against her side.
¡°Arly-sis is back!¡± the little lump cried, purring up a storm. Arlette¡¯s hands reached out almost by habit and began scratching the tiny beastgirl behind her ears with a relaxed smile. There had been a long time when she¡¯d thought that Pari would never forgive her for the events of their first meeting, and it had bothered Arlette more than she¡¯d admit in public. Pari had this strange, naive innocence about her that made the hateful, distrusting glares hurt far more than they would from somebody else. To her relief, the adorable kid now considered Arlette part of her ¡°family¡± and liberally imparted all the hugs and affection that came with such status. Still, Arlette couldn¡¯t help but find the way Pari thought about family to be highly unusual. She always got the feeling that the girl¡¯s idea of a family was almost less a group of relatives and more a collection you accrued as you went along.
¡°Hey there, Pari, did you behave today?¡±
¡°Uh-huh! Pari behaved a lot!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sure you did,¡± Arlette chuckled. For such a precocious young girl, she sure seemed unable to properly grasp what it meant to behave like a proper little girl should. Likely that damned mysterious ¡°grandfather¡± of hers was responsible. ¡°Come, let¡¯s eat.¡±
¡°Pari isn¡¯t very hungry.¡±
¡°Pari, you¡¯re a growing girl,¡± Arlette chided as she scooped some of the simmering stew into a wooden bowl. ¡°You need to eat lots of food so you grow up big and strong, like your ¡®grandfather¡¯ or whoever. It¡¯s important.¡±
¡°Pari knows,¡± the little girl conceded, looking sheepishly at the floor, ¡°but Sofie-sis makes the food taste yucky.¡±
Arlette threw her head back and let out a laugh. Sofie wasn¡¯t exactly a bad cook, per se; the level her technique seemed fairly high, she just had strange tastes and kept trying to use Scyrian ingredients for recipes from her world. It rarely worked out for the best. Still, with Arlette busy with her duties and her personal mission, that left only Sofie or Pari to cook, and nobody wanted to even think about eating food made by the mischievous brat beside her. A single spoonful of soup cooked by Pari would probably be enough to grow a third arm or something.
¡°Speaking of Sofie, is she upstairs again?¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± Pari glumly replied.
¡°Alright. I¡¯ll go talk to her. I want you to eat at least one bowl of stew now before I come back down, alright?¡±
¡°But-¡±
¡°No buts. All the vegetables, too. You¡¯re too thin.¡±
Pari grumbled something under her breath and went to get herself a bowl while Arlette took the stairs up to the second story, a smile on her face. No matter how different or weird, kids would still be kids. The wooden steps creaked as she slowly ascended, walked past the door to her own bedroom and stopped in the open doorway to Sofie and Pari¡¯s room. There, sitting by a small desk with her head in a book, surrounded by brightly-shining candles and parchment covered in scribbles, sat Sofie. The young woman was so caught up in her work that none of the noise from down below, nor the sound of creaking wood and thumping steps slowly approaching, had dragged her from her trance-like focus.
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Now that they weren¡¯t running up and down the continent, Sofie had begun to finally get her bearings and right her life. Now that she actually had a stable routine and could find the time to study regularly, she¡¯d picked up Eterian Common with shocking ease. Using her newfound language skills along with her number skills, she¡¯d gotten a small job at a nearby tailor shop where she took care of their bookkeeping while also helping with sewing when they needed it. All the money she earned, minus what she contributed to the group¡¯s living expenses, went towards ink and parchment to fuel the obsession that had taken over her life.
Much to Arlette¡¯s dismay, Sofie had looted a book from that horrible dead place in the Valley of the Mist and somehow kept it hidden from her until just a few days ago. Stealing from the dead was one of the worst things somebody could do, but it wasn¡¯t like they could go return the item at this point. This large book had stolen away all of the young woman¡¯s free time. She would spend hours poring over its pages, mumbling to herself and writing indecipherable things on parchment as she did. Perhaps, given time, she would be able to accomplish her goal and translate the tome, but it didn¡¯t seem like she was making too much progress at the moment.
Arlette let out a short cough and Sofie¡¯s head shot up. ¡°Oh! Hey, you¡¯re back!¡± the younger woman greeted. ¡°How long were you standing there?¡±
¡°Long enough. You need to get your head out of that book every so often before you fall in for good. It¡¯s consuming you.¡±
Sofie sighed. ¡°I know, I know. I just feel like I¡¯m close to making my first breakthrough, you know? I¡¯ve already figured out a lot of words, or I think I have them figured out, at least, but the grammar is complex, and then there¡¯s these extra-complex words that I can¡¯t make heads-nor-tails of... if I can just figure out a bit more on one of these areas, this whole thing will open up to me. Don¡¯t you want to know about the people who made that place?¡±
¡°Not particularly,¡± Arlette admitted. ¡°I didn¡¯t like it there. It didn¡¯t feel... natural. Anyway, you should really think about limiting how much time you¡¯re spending on it. Pari¡¯s starting to feel neglected.¡±
¡°You¡¯re right, I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t want Pari to be sad.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want Pari to blow up the house trying to earn your attention.¡±
¡°That too.¡±
Arlette spooned some stew into her mouth and chewed. The taste wasn¡¯t really that bad, once you got used to it. ¡°So we need to talk,¡± she said after swallowing.
¡°Yeah?¡±
¡°Begale appears to have fallen. There isn¡¯t any more time. You both need to leave here while you still can.¡±
¡°Arlette, how many times are we going to discuss this before you stop trying to chase us away? Pari and I are not going anywhere, and that¡¯s final.¡±
¡°You¡¯re placing yourselves in harm¡¯s way for no benefit. It¡¯s stupid!¡±
¡°Where are we supposed to go? Gustil¡¯s gone, so we can¡¯t go there. I crushed the king of Kutrad¡¯s balls with my foot, so that shitty place is out, if I would even ever want to go back. Stragma will think we¡¯re spies since we somehow escaped when the rest of their army was imprisoned. We¡¯re not elves, so Drayhadal won¡¯t let us in. And according to you, Otharia is some extremist religious hellscape where I¡¯ll be murdered just because I¡¯m not from there. Where else is there? Another Eterian town that will just be swallowed up like the rest within a month or two? There. is. no. place. left.¡±
¡°I just want you to value your lives more. There¡¯s no reason you should have to die when you can avoid it.¡±
¡°And what about you? Why are you so willing to throw your life away?¡±
Arlette scowled. ¡°You know why. I have something I have to accomplish, no matter what.¡±
¡°Is revenge worth it, even if it costs you your life?¡±
¡°Yes. Absolutely.¡±
"Why are you so sure he''s even here?"
"Because I know him. Infiltrating the enemy''s stronghold, undermining from the inside, it''s what he does."
"But they have something else now, don''t they? Why even bother?"
"He''s too proud for that. That bastard probably took the fact that Redwater Castle fell without him as an insult. I''d bet my life that he''s here, even if only to make a point."
¡°You are betting your life on it. Why do you even know so much about this guy?¡±
¡°He...¡± Arlette paused, gritting her teeth as a wealth of memories can rushing back even as she tried to keep them away. ¡°He ruined my life. That¡¯s all I really want to say about it. Now that I know he¡¯s here in Nocend, I won¡¯t be able to rest until I know he¡¯s dead.¡±
Sofie sighed. ¡°Well, it looks like we¡¯re all stubborn and stupid then. So let¡¯s be stubborn and stupid together and support each other. You¡¯re not alone, Arlette. We can help.¡±
¡°Thank you, but it¡¯s better if I handle this one on my own.¡± She slurped up the last of the stew. ¡°You¡¯re cooking¡¯s getting better.¡±
¡°Thanks. It¡¯s a shame Pari doesn¡¯t agree.¡± She stood up from the desk and stretched. ¡°I should go play with her for a bit. You sticking around tonight?¡±
¡°Nah, I have some things I want to check out.¡±
¡°Alright. Let me know if I can help with anything.¡±
That said, Sofie passed Arlette and headed downstairs. Arlette, meanwhile, entered her own room and took off her guard¡¯s uniform, replacing it with a dark cloak that would help her blend in with the city at night. She had a lot of skulking to do, and the last thing she needed was to get caught sneaking about like an Ubran agent just before a siege.
Four figures moved quietly under the evening moonlight, keeping to the shadows as they entered a back alley. Not a single one of them noticed the figure that followed them, its shape shifting and blending in with the darkness to avoid detection. Arlette had been following this group for about fifteen minutes now as they made their roundabout way through the city towards their destination, whatever it was. The four were members of a mercenary band that had arrived several days ago, a mercenary band that had come into existence just a few years ago. That newness had caught her eye¡ªif Sebastian wanted to infiltrate the city and sabotage the defenses, his best shot would be as the leader of a mercenary band. He and his likely-complicit subordinates would be able to stab their allies in the back at the worst possible moment and seize control of one of the gate mechanisms that controlled the massive Doors of Prosperity. Then they could just open the doors and the Ubrans would march right on in with ease.
With that in mind, Arlette had decided to inspect and surveil as many mercenary bands as she could manage, focusing first and foremost on the newer ones. The older the group the less likely Sebastian was involved. He likely hadn¡¯t been in Nocend until the last few years at the earliest anyway. This particular group seemed more promising than the last few. They were definitely up to something sketchy; she just wasn¡¯t sure if it was something she needed to concern herself with yet.
The four stopped by a nondescript door and knocked lightly, looking around for any possible watchers. They didn¡¯t see her, of course, as by that point she had hidden herself inside an illusory hay bale beside a stable on the other side of the nearby street. One of the men exchanged soft words with somebody on the other side of the door and the group entered.
Quick as a whip, Arlette sprinted across the street before slowing down approaching the door as quickly and quietly as she could manage. There weren¡¯t any windows that she could see, so she softly pressed her ear to the door, hoping that she would be able to make out some of the voices through the wood. She had to close her eyes and strain her hearing for everything it was worth, but luckily, she found that she could just barely make out a conversation going down on the other side.
¡°-might not get here before the Ubrans arrive. It will be close,¡± said a gruff male voice.
¡°The inspections will be even more vigorous than now. Are you sure we can even get it inside without being found?¡± asked a softer, feminine voice.
¡°Leave that to me,¡± said a third, younger male voice. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter what it is, I can get it through. This isn¡¯t going to be the first time I smuggle a Many past inspections, you know.¡±
A Many? These people were planning to smuggle a Many into the city undetected? They were trying to set up secret communication channels before the city came under siege! Arlette tensed up at the realization. These people were almost surely not allies. Still, they talked of the Ubrans as if they were also the enemy. If they weren¡¯t Ubrans, Arlette didn¡¯t see the need to do anything about them just yet. She had to make absolutely sure that Sebastian didn¡¯t know of her presence in the city. In fact, it was possible that he still thought her dead, and if so she wanted to keep it that way as long as possible. The Eterians had people who could track these people down if it came down to it. She kept listening.
¡°Alright, well let¡¯s hope they get here in time or things are going to get dicey,¡± the female voice stated, concern in her voice. She coughed lightly. ¡°On to smaller matters, then. Has anybody managed to locate the woman?¡±
Several other voices all answered in the negative.
¡°Do you want us to give that higher priority?¡± asked the gruff man.
¡°No, securing our position is most important,¡± replied the woman. ¡°But do try to dedicate whatever extra time you can to it. This is, after all, a direct request from the prince of the Esmae clan himself. He will be most grateful for whatever information we can find.¡±
Arlette¡¯s eye opened wide. The Esmae clan? That meant these people worked for Drayhadal, and only one group of Drayhadans operated outside of their own country. She¡¯d stumbled upon members of the Masked Battalion. Her blood ran cold.
¡°I still can¡¯t believe that asshole is a prince,¡± the younger male voice laughed.
¡°Watch your tongue when you talk about royalty, Krotar,¡± the woman warned.
¡°I would never speak ill of a member of the Battalion, I assure you,¡± he snickered. ¡°I¡¯m just saying, you ever met the man? I did once, up in Lita nine years back, and he¡¯s nothing like any prince I ever imagined, that¡¯s for sure.¡±
Arlette¡¯s hands were shaking. She kept seeing that moment, as it played over and over in her mind. The way he had shrunken in on himself, revealing the lie of his identity, and extracted himself from shackles designed for a much larger man. The way he had walked towards the cell door without a look, revealing the lie of their friendship. The way he¡¯d left her there, abandoning her after years of standing by her side with little more than a few words that even now echoed through her head.
Live well, Arlette.
The conversation inside the building halted in its tracks at the sound of footsteps in the alley. The door flew open and the members of the Masked Battalion charged out, but they found nothing. Arlette was already gone.
Three days later, the remnants of the Eterian armies at Begale arrived, and the city descended into panic. Arlette had been stationed at the west gate at the time, earning her the right to stand at attention and watch as the beaten-down soldiers dragged themselves through the city gates. She didn¡¯t like what she saw. She could only see defeat in the eyes of the people passing by, as if they¡¯d given up hope already. Were the Ubrans really that fearsome?
At the tail end of the procession, Arlette found herself looking at a face she hadn¡¯t seen in years. While it had been more than two decades and some of the hairs had turned gray, she would never fail to recognize the neatly trimmed beard that ran down the man¡¯s long, dour face and ended in a point several fingers below the chin. That beard belonged to the strongest earth Observer in the world, Supreme General Erizio Astalaria. He¡¯d been her second father¡¯s commander¡¯s commander back when she¡¯d first arrived on this side of the Divide, and she could still remember the distrusting glares he would send her way back then. Instinctively, she covered her face with an illusion of another as he passed, his stern gaze sweeping across the assembled guards as if he were memorizing each and every one of them.
With the arrival of the remains of the Eterian army, there was no more room to run. Soon she knew that an order would go out declaring that anybody of able body and mind attempting to leave the city would be considered a deserter and executed. All that was left now was the wait for the Ubrans to show themselves.
Crirada Map
So I ended up making a map of Crirada for myself so I don''t make stupid dumb mistakes when I''m writing the next chapters. It''s overly-simplistic and MSPaintastic, but I figured I''d post it here too so you all can use it as a reference if you want. There''s going to be a lot of chapters taking place there coming up. Let me know if you have questions about the map I guess. Apparently the chapter must be five hundred characters long so this is some extra characters so I can post it.
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Chapter 52
¡°Here you go, Mister Salvide,¡± Sofie said, handing the parchment to her boss as he finished packing the last of his family¡¯s possessions. ¡°The completed inventory you asked for. I hope it helps you when you get... wherever you end up.¡±
¡°Thank you, child, you¡¯ve been a treasure,¡± the old tailor replied with a smile. ¡°You know, there¡¯s one last empty seat, should you want it...¡±
¡°That¡¯s very kind of you, sir, but here is where I need to be right now. This is where I¡¯m needed.¡±
¡°I knew you would say something like that. Truly a shame.¡±
¡°Thanks for not giving me a hard time about it. I get enough of that at home.¡±
¡°We have to leave a few things behind. They are yours if you want them.¡±
She gave the old man a hug. ¡°Good luck! Stay safe, now.¡±
¡°That¡¯s what I should be saying, not you.¡±
Sofie waved enthusiastically at the retreating wagon as it made its way down the street and towards the closest gate. With her boss and his family fleeing from the upcoming battle, it looked like she was unemployed once more. Not that she blamed them for hightailing it out of there; anybody with the means to get away would have to be insane to stay with an army bearing down on the city.
The thought made her sigh. She couldn¡¯t deny that what she was doing was objectively absurd, but she¡¯d made a promise to stick by Arlette and support her no matter what, and she intended to keep that promise, even if nobody, not even Arlette, thought she was making the right choice. She just wished that her decision didn¡¯t mean putting Pari in harm¡¯s way as well. The adorable child would never agree to separating. She seemed to fear being alone more than any actual physical danger. In fact, Pari seemed strangely fearless about most anything that might kill her. Bounty hunters? Nothing to be afraid of. A conquering army poised to slaughter all resistance? No big deal. A giant toad monster that spit acid strong enough to eat through nearly anything? Yawn! She¡¯d been so unafraid of that ranutepo that she¡¯d even crawled into the dead beast¡¯s maw and, after covering herself in the creature¡¯s disgustingly viscous mucus, harvested its acid sac for future candle experiments. Then, covered from head to toe in the toad beast¡¯s vile secretions and giggling like she hadn¡¯t just been toying with deadly corrosive substances, she¡¯d chased Sofie through the tunnels, threatening to wipe the horrid snot dripping from her hands and arms all over Sofie¡¯s delightfully un-snotted body like the evil little demon that she was. Robotic vacuum cleaners, on the other hand, were a terrifying menace that needed to be eradicated posthaste.
Speaking of Pari, it was time to go round the little beastgirl up. When Arlette was on duty and Sofie had to work, she took Pari along with her, letting her go out and amuse herself in the neighborhood around the shop. It helped give the girl some stimulation and let her expand her horizons a bit and hopefully even make some friends with the other children in the area. Perhaps more importantly, it also meant that Sofie and Arlette didn¡¯t have to worry about coming back to find their home burnt to the ground.
¡°Pari!¡± Sofie called as she stood outside the shop. ¡°Pari, it¡¯s time to go!¡±
Nothing. Strange, normally she¡¯d come shooting out from some alley or something within a few seconds.
¡°Pari?! Pari, come out!¡±
Still nothing. Sofie felt a pang of worry shoot through her. She gave it another minute, but still the child did not materialize.
Now somewhat trepidatious, Sofie made her way into the nearby alleyways. Several tense minutes later, to her relief, she found the beastgirl sitting against a wall, hugging her legs to her chest. The girl seemed lost in thought.
¡°There you are!¡±
¡°Nya!?¡± the girl yelped, looking up in surprise. Recognizing her sister, Pari leapt up and sprinted into Sofie¡¯s waiting embrace, burying her head into Sofie¡¯s stomach. She¡¯d only had a split second to look, but Sofie thought she saw tear streaks beneath the child¡¯s eyes.
¡°Sweetie, what¡¯s wrong?¡± she asked as she stroked Pari¡¯s sleek midnight-black hair. The girl mumbled something inaudible into Sofie¡¯s torso. ¡°What was that?¡±
¡°Does... Pari smell weird?¡±
¡°What? No, of course not,¡± Sofie lied. Pari spent a good deal of time every day messing with substances of dubious origin and burning things. Of course she smelled like chemicals. ¡°Were the other kids being mean to you?¡±
¡°Kids said that Pari smells weird. Kids said that kids don¡¯t want to be around Pari because Pari smells weird.¡±
¡°Awwwwww, sweetie... it''s okay. They¡¯re just a bunch of jerks. If they don¡¯t want to be your friend, that¡¯s their loss.¡±
¡°Pari doesn¡¯t want to smell weird.¡±
¡°Well, we can fix that. Maybe we could make some nice-smelling candles. Or, we could take a bath.¡±
Pari squirmed at the word ¡°bath¡±, but Sofie grabbed her arm tightly and started heading home.
¡°Hmmmm, yeah a bath sounds good right about now. No getting out of it. Let¡¯s go. After the bath, I¡¯ll make us some food.¡±
For some reason, the last sentence made Pari squirm even more.
¡°Probably something about the leaves... it¡¯s always about the leaves,¡± Sofie mumbled as she jotted down more notes on the parchment beside the tome using the quill. It had taken her some time to get used to writing with a quill instead of a pen, but after days of working at it, the act had become second nature. Now instead, the problem was that she wrote too much. Her supplies of ink and parchment were running low, and with her sudden unemployment, not to mention the upcoming battle, getting more from this point on was likely to be highly difficult.
Page after page of notes covered the desk and spilled onto the floor, the sum total of now weeks of work deciphering the massive journal. That¡¯s what it was, she believed: a massive journal spanning years. The large majority of the book was nothing but page after page of the ancient people¡¯s flowing, arcane script. Given her studies on the foundations of language as a linguistics major, she felt she could have translated at least some of the writing eventually but it would be highly incomplete and take a massive amount of time and effort. Luckily, the journal came with a bit of a cheat sheet. Perhaps two-thirds of the way through the book, the style of the journal changed, and the entries became interspersed with pages upon pages of detailed drawings and notes of one specific plant. What reason there was for the sudden shift she had no clue, but she was impossibly grateful for it regardless. The notes, with their labels and small amount of words, had already provided her with numerous breakthroughs, from helping her narrow down the meaning for the more basic words to showing her their ancient number system. From there, she¡¯d been able to expand to sentence structure and grammar.
In her head, Sofie broke the writing down into two different categories: the simple words and the complex words. The simple words were patterns of loops and curves and angles, always a contiguous line that flowed unbroken from one word pattern to another. As far as she could tell, simple words corresponded to simple ideas. Most of the notes contained simple words. The complex words, however, were a whole different story. Lines broke, they overlapped and became thicker, they moved in strange ways. Sofie believed that they meant much more specific ideas, though that was only because the simple words seemed to handle the rest. The journal entries, unlike the notes, contained thousands of complex words.
At this point, she believed that she had at least a quarter of the simple words worked out. She¡¯d even translated several complete sentences, though without context they didn¡¯t really make any sense. The problem was that she was running out of simple words that could be translated just by using the notes. There were many more simple words that she¡¯d have to figure out just through context, and she didn¡¯t have enough context yet.
As for complex words, she hadn¡¯t managed to translate even a single one. They mocked her, popping up in otherwise easy sentences to deny her any meaning. For example, she¡¯d stumbled across one sentence fairly early on that she believed went ¡°The [complex word A] killed all the [complex word B]¡±, or, to be more accurate to the original sentence, ¡°The [complex word B] are all dead, slain by the [complex word A].¡± Try as she might, she couldn¡¯t make heads nor tails of either complex word, and as such the sentence itself told her little.
Sofie leaned back from the desk and rubbed her eyes. She wasn¡¯t getting anywhere with this, so it was time for a break. Time to check on Pari.
The soft winter light of the mid-afternoon shone through the windows as she headed downstairs. Normally she got done with her work at the tailor¡¯s about now, but they¡¯d left the city before midday, giving her plenty of extra time to bathe and study. That also meant that Pari had extra time to mess around, which could be dangerous. Sitting in her sack of supplies, encased in inert wax, was a large volume of that ranutepo¡¯s acid. Arlette and Sofie had forbidden Pari from using it unless they gave her their express permission and were there to supervise, but Pari was still a child and children were prone to bouts of youthful disobedience. It was only smart that Sofie made sure Pari didn¡¯t get bored enough to have any truly bad ideas.
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A bouquet of powerful scents washed over her as she descended to the first floor. She fought back a cough and opened the front door to let some fresh air in, taking a deep breath from the cold air outside before diving back into the cloud of fragrances. Pari sat on the floor in front of her candlemaking equipment, surrounded by dozens of candles organized into small groups. Many of the candles were lit, a fine haze emerging from them.
¡°Pari, what are you doing now?¡±
¡°Nya? Sofie-sis said to make smelly candles so Pari is making them. Pari will find the best smells!¡±
¡°Awwwww, Pari! You¡¯re such a good sister!¡± She wrapped the small girl up in her arms and tousled her hair affectionately. ¡°So what are all of these then?¡±
¡°Tests.¡±
Sofie noticed that the candles were all arranged in small triangular groups, with two candles closer to Pari and a third between and behind them. Focusing on a group by the edge of the table, Sofie picked up the left candle and cautiously sniffed the light smoke emitted by the flame. A rich, nutty scent that reminded her of cashews filled her nostrils.
¡°This smells kind of nice,¡± she said. ¡°What is it?¡±
¡°Antola root juice,¡± the girl replied.
Sofie exchanged the candle for its counterpart on the right and gave that one a sniff. This time, she found a cloying, fruity smell that reminded her of a pear just on the edge of going bad.
¡°What about this one?¡±
¡°Pamot seed oil.¡±
Sofie figured she might as well complete the trifecta, so she grabbed the final candle behind and between the other two and gave it a sniff. A soothing, pleasant fragrance filled her, the smell of a field of flowers on a warm summer day. It felt wonderful. She inhaled again, feeling her stress fall away as the nostalgic scent wafted into her nostrils.
¡°This one is amazing! What is it?¡±
¡°Antola root juice and pamot seed oil.¡±
¡°What? But they didn¡¯t smell anything like this!¡±
Pari gave Sofie a look like she was the dumbest person on the planet. ¡°Smells together makes parts of smells stronger and parts of smells weaker,¡± she said. ¡°Smells on top of smells make more complicated smells.¡±
Sofie wasn¡¯t quite sure that was how it worked. She could understand two smells having an additive effect, boosting each other, but the idea that one smell with a second layered on top could result in one canceling out certain aspects of the smells seemed...
A light went off in Sofie¡¯s head, brighter than the midday sun.
¡°Pari, you¡¯re a genius! Great job!¡± she cried as she planted a big, loving kiss on the girl¡¯s forehead.
¡°Nya?!?¡± Pari sputtered, but Sofie was already sprinting back up the stairs.
Of course, how had she not seen it before? The complex words were just simple words, combined! But there was more to it than that. Instead of just having two or more words written on top of each other, the words interacted like smells, reinforcing some parts but canceling out others. If two lines flowing in the same direction merged, it would be reinforced. If they flowed against each other, they would cancel out. It explained everything, especially the gaps and broken lines!
In a way, nuance was simply the combination of a variety of simple concepts set against each other. That was what complex words were, she believed: the words they used for nuanced meaning, for specifics, for more complicated descriptions. With this breakthrough, she¡¯d be able to translate so much more! And with the added context and better understanding of the sentences she¡¯d gain, she¡¯d be able to puzzle out more of the simple words as well, which would open up more complex words, which would open up even more simple words...
Sofie took the last sentence she¡¯d been studying, ¡°The [complex word B] are all dead, slain by the [complex word A]¡±, and decided to start there with complex word B. Scooping up her notes, she began to rifle through the pages, searching for a combination of simple words that combined would result in complex word B. The answer did not come immediately. She¡¯d identified over a thousand simple words already so finding the proper combination of them took her several hours, but in the end she had it. One of the words was something she believed to mean ¡°little¡± or ¡°small¡±. The other she was certain meant ¡°people¡±. ¡°Little-people¡±? ¡°Small-people¡±? Interesting. A race of some sort? A species, like the elves or the beastkin or humans? Was there another race that people didn¡¯t talk about? She looked at the sentence again.
¡°The little-people are all dead, slain by the _________.¡±
Hmmm. Well, if this was to be believed, whoever the ¡°little-people¡± were, they weren¡¯t around anymore. Something, or somebody, or somebodies, had wiped them out. Sofie wished there was more she could glean, but that was all there was. She didn¡¯t have the sentences that came before or after worked out much at all. But no matter! This was just the first step, after all. The first of many. Sofie lit some candles, put her head down, and got to work.
¡°Pari! What is this?!¡±
Sofie¡¯s head shot up at the half-cough, half-shout. That voice could only be Arlette. She looked about, finding the room dark save the light from the candles on her desk. Hours had passed in the blink of an eye, it seemed. Remembering her friend¡¯s words from a few days before, she decided to take a break and go see what was going on downstairs.
She¡¯d thought the first floor had been bad before, but this took the cake. Dozens of candles covered the floor, sending a cornucopia of varied scents into the air, enough to make anybody wheeze after a single breath. Anybody but Pari, apparently. Sofie wondered just how out of it she¡¯d been to not notice the smells from just a single story away.
Over by the front door, her body bent over as she hacked and coughed, stood Arlette, dressed in her red guard uniform. Most countries that Sofie had been to didn¡¯t dress their guards in a uniform, but Eterium did. Sofie liked it; she thought that the uniform gave Arlette a handsome, commanding appearance... when she wasn¡¯t doubled over and wheezing, at least.
¡°Welcome back,¡± she called to Arlette as she bent over and picked up several of the candles, blowing them out. ¡°Pari, that¡¯s enough. You did a really good job but it¡¯s time to stop now. Let¡¯s blow all these things out so we can breathe again.¡±
¡°Okay,¡± Pari responded. Together, the two put out the multitude of candles scattered about the room while Arlette recovered.
¡°What in the name of the spirits are you doing?¡± Arlette asked, mystified. ¡°Some sort of chemical weapon?¡±
¡°Scented candles, dummy!¡± Sofie responded.
¡°Scented candles? To sell?¡±
¡°Well, not originally, but sure, why not? I bet we could make a good amount of money selling these to rich people.¡±
Arlette rubbed her nose. ¡°Some of them, perhaps. I would recommend weakening the strength though. But yes, that¡¯s a good idea. It would be a good source of income for you when this is all over.¡±
¡°As long as Pari and I have the ingredients, I guess. That reminds me, Pari, where did you get all the wax you use for your candles?¡±
Ever since they¡¯d met, Pari had been toting around a large ball of wax in her sack, which she used to make all her candles. At first the ball had been about half a meter in diameter, but after all the candles she¡¯d been making, the remaining wax was down to the size of a volleyball.
¡°Grandfather,¡± the child replied.
Sofie rolled her eyes. Of course that was the answer. She didn¡¯t even know why she¡¯d bothered to ask in the first place.
Arlette let out one last heavy cough and pounded her chest with her fist. ¡°Well, let¡¯s open the windows and get the smell out of here. I¡¯m hungry and I¡¯d like to be able to taste my food tonight.¡±
¡°Busy day?¡±
¡°You have no idea. Everybody¡¯s in an uproar, trying to get out while they still can... if we let them.¡±
¡°If you let them?¡±
¡°Erizio Astalaria is now in command of the city. He¡¯s a great commander, maybe the best one we could have right now, but he¡¯s desperate. He knows that Crirada is likely the last hope of Eterium, and by extension the rest of the continent, so he¡¯s not holding back at all. Yesterday he ordered us to block any people of fighting age from leaving the city, probably because he¡¯s going to press every single person he can into defending the walls. It¡¯s gotten... messy.¡±
¡°Oh no! But Mister Salvide-¡±
¡°He¡¯s fine, don¡¯t worry about it. He and his wife are way too old, they would have been let free. They don¡¯t want people who can¡¯t fight staying here and eating up the food and whatnot. That¡¯s why you need to worry more about yourself. I wouldn¡¯t be shocked if troops come by tomorrow or the next day checking every house to find any eligible people that might be hiding.¡±
¡°B-but I can¡¯t fight!¡±
¡°I know that, but they don¡¯t. You¡¯re of the proper age, so they¡¯re probably going to make you fight if you don¡¯t hide when they show up. We need to come up with a plan in case they-¡±
A massive horn blast echoed through the city, followed by a second, and then a third.
¡°Shit!¡± Arlette swore.
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°The Ubrans. They¡¯re here.¡±
Chapter 53
¡°You army types need to calm your tits. There¡¯s no way walls this strong will fall, and we have enough food stored up to last us a whole season. I don¡¯t see what you¡¯re all shaking in your boots over.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t talk about things you don¡¯t understand, you idiot. You better not get assigned to my squad.¡±
Orders had been sent out that morning for all the guards in the city to meet at the four city gates the next day and get placed in various squads in the army to fill holes left by killed soldiers. Arlette believed that Supreme General Erizio Astalaria also wanted to establish tighter control over the guards by integrating them into the Army''s existing power structure. Along with those orders had come the caveat that, should the Ubrans arrive that day, they were to meet up the moment that the Ubrans were spotted. And so, Arlette found herself at the north gate of the city, standing in a crowd of guards and soldiers, waiting to be assigned to her squad while trying to ignore the fact that she hadn¡¯t been able to eat dinner before the horns blew. To help keep her mind off her empty tummy, she focused on the ongoing nearby conversation between a guard and a soldier.
¡°I¡¯m just saying,¡± the guard replied, ¡°that whatever happened in Begale won¡¯t be happening here. I would know, I used to live there. These walls are far higher.¡±
¡°The walls weren¡¯t the problem, you fool. They just came through the gate, busted it down like it was made of string and fluff. We didn¡¯t stand a chance.¡±
¡°And I¡¯m telling you, the gates and the traps we have installed here are leaps and bounds better than anything Begale had. See those slits all along the walls and ceiling of the arch?¡±
Arlette glanced towards the nearby gate. The four gates were the only ways into and out of Crirada, each one connected to the inside by a massive arched passageway through the wall wide enough that six full-sized wagons could drive through side by side without problems. All along the tunnel, Arlette could see slits and small holes in the stone, as well as a large slit in the ceiling by the nearby tunnel entrance.
¡°Let¡¯s say that they somehow bust the gate open,¡± the guard continued. ¡°If that happens, then we lower portcullises down on either end of the passage, trapping the Ubrans inside the tunnel. All those holes connect to rooms all around the passageway, where our people can wipe them out using arrows and fireballs and whatever. It¡¯s a death trap. Doesn¡¯t matter how many get in, we¡¯ll kill them all.
¡°And that¡¯s assuming that they even get through the gate in the first place, which they won¡¯t. Do you have any idea how many Feelers it takes to open and close the gates here? It takes eight of us working the pulleys as hard as we can to move them. They¡¯re thicker than I am tall and solid metal to the core, and the metal beams bracing them are each wider in diameter than a well-grown tree! You could give twenty Feelers a whole day with a battering ram and they wouldn¡¯t make more than a dent. Meanwhile, we¡¯ll be raining all sorts of doom down on them from up above. There¡¯s nothing to worry about.¡±
The soldier let out a soft, scornful laugh. ¡°You have no idea what we¡¯re up against. Do you think we just sat there and let them walk into the city? No! They have a monster on their side, something stronger than any person could ever be. She ran up to the western gate and knocked it clean off its hinges in a single blow. We didn¡¯t stand a chance.¡±
¡°Oh come on, the gates and walls are three times thicker here than in Begale,¡± the guard protested.
¡°All that means is that she¡¯ll need three blows instead of one.¡±
¡°Then what, though? She¡¯ll still get slaughtered in the passageway. I know Begale didn¡¯t have any traps like what we have here.¡±
¡°Won¡¯t matter. The monster can¡¯t be killed.¡±
¡°Bullshit.¡±
¡°It¡¯s true. I saw her take a spear to the throat while at the same time getting disemboweled, and she took it like it was nothing. They say that death itself has no hold on her and that she¡¯s taken a thousand killing blows but never fallen.¡±
¡°Come on, there¡¯s no way one person could be so strong,¡± the guard said, laughing in disbelief. ¡°You¡¯re just messing with me.¡±
¡°If only that were so. You¡¯ll see. If we hold a full day it will be a miracle.¡±
¡°Then... why even try?¡±
¡°What else is there to do but fight? If all running does is buy you another day of running in fear, is it not better to face your enemies with your head held high?¡±
¡°I just-¡±
¡°Attention!¡±
Suddenly the conversation cut off as all the soldiers stood up straight while a man in a fancy uniform strode out in front of the gathered crowd. He glared at the guards in the way that an annoyed father would glare at his misbehaving children until everybody was quiet. Then he spoke, loudly enough that all could hear.
¡°All right everybody, listen up! I am Major Berriaga, and I¡¯m in charge of you sorry lot! We don¡¯t have much time, so I¡¯ll leave it up to your squad sergeants to explain the details to you. Once you are assigned a squad, that will be your new unit for the duration of the battle here. Your squads will be assigned a shift. While you are off duty, should you hear three horns, you are to report to your designated area immediately to fight off the incoming attack. Now I want you all to listen for your names. The orderly who calls for you will send you where you need to go. That is all.¡±
Without another word, the major strode off and his subordinates began to call out names. Arlette listened for hers, and it wasn¡¯t long before a man called out ¡°Lucana Domatin¡± and sent her off to the twenty-ninth squad. She approached the group of four and presented herself to the leader.
¡°Lucana Domatin, reporting for duty, sir,¡± Arlette said, snapping a crisp guard¡¯s salute.
¡°Hmmm, welcome to Squad Twenty-Nine, guardsman,¡± the man replied, his eyes inspecting her from top to bottom. ¡°I am Sergeant Vero Muga, but you can just call me Sarge. Pay attention and follow my orders to the letter, and you¡¯ll fit in just fine here.¡±
¡°Yes, sir.¡±
¡°So this is what we get to replace Askoa?¡± asked a scornful voice off to the left. ¡°What a bunch of crock.¡±
Arlette looked over to find a somewhat well-built man in his mid-twenties with long, red hair glaring at her derisively. A large two-headed axe leaned against his right shoulder. Arlette felt her ire rise just by looking at him.
¡°We going to have a problem?¡± she asked, keeping her voice calm and cold.
¡°What¡¯s this? Fresh meat¡¯s got a mouth!¡± His grip tightened on his axe.
Raw anger began to build inside Arlette but she tamped it down as best she could. People like this, the small timers who acted like they were hot stuff, had always driven her crazy. Back in her Ivory Tears days, she would have told this loser to crawl back into whatever hole he spawned from, and when that inevitably led to a fight, she would have gleefully laid him out. But she couldn¡¯t risk that anymore, not while she had bigger fish to fry. So, as hard as it was, she held her tongue.
¡°Knock it off, Lezo,¡± a short woman nearby snarled. ¡°She¡¯s here now and you¡¯re just going to need to fucking get used to it.¡±
¡°Fuck off, Kima. You know I¡¯m right. Look at her. She¡¯ll never hold a candle to Askoa.¡±
¡°This asshole is Lezo Zambudio,¡± the sergeant said, completely ignoring his subordinate¡¯s attitude as if it were the norm. ¡°And the lady is Kima Escarain. They¡¯re our two Feelers, and they handle the front line along with me.¡± The man patted the large shield strapped to his back.
Arlette studied the woman briefly, and the first word to come to her mind was ¡°short¡±. She stood even shorter than Arlette, to the point that the spear she was currently leaning on was nearly one and a half times her size. Her black hair was cut to be little more than the width of two fingers. Yet the shortest thing about her seemed to be her temper, given the look she was currently giving Lezo.
¡°And that bundle of energy over there is Danel Ipizu, our Observer,¡± he continued, pointing towards a small, thin man with long, blond braids of hair falling down past his shoulders. The man was currently leaning against a nearby barrel, not even looking at anybody. Danel gave a slight wave with one hand, still not making eye contact with anything but the ground. ¡°He doesn¡¯t talk much. You¡¯ll get used to it.¡±
¡°It¡¯s nice to meet you,¡± she deadpanned. All in all, the squad seemed like a motley collection of weirdos and misfits, hardly the most impressive bunch. Then again, this was simply a normal squad in the Eterian Army, not some elite division or something. It made sense that these people would be mediocre soldiers.
¡°How about you?¡± Sarge asked. ¡°You¡¯re a Feeler too, I assume, since we¡¯re down one Feeler.¡±
¡°I fight melee, single longsword, but I work best with hit and run attacks. Space is good. The more I can move, the better I can be.¡±
¡°Hmmmm, we can work with that,¡± he said with a satisfied nod. ¡°So, our shift is the day shift for now, from three to thirteen.¡±
¡°Got it. Do you need me to stay with the squad or can I sleep in my house?¡±
¡°Well, we don¡¯t exactly have a barracks here, you understand,¡± the man chuckled. ¡°As long as you are where we need you when we need you, I don¡¯t think there¡¯s a problem.¡± He leaned in closer, his voice dropping low. ¡°I mean, let¡¯s be honest. The city won¡¯t hold out for more than a day or two at most anyway.¡±
Arlette repressed a sigh. This was something she¡¯d been worrying about since the Eterian troops had come marching through the gates, their heads drooping like wilted flowers. She¡¯d put herself, and by extension Sofie and Pari, in harm¡¯s way for one reason, and one reason alone: vengeance upon perhaps the one man who¡¯d hurt her more than any other in her life. She¡¯d stayed in this city to find him, stop his plans, kill him, and grasp revenge in the palms of her hands for perhaps the first time in her life. Only then would she no longer feel afraid for no reason in the middle of the night. But one thing she¡¯d never considered was a world where Sebastian wasn¡¯t needed. If the city fell tomorrow, she¡¯d have endangered her life and the lives of people she cared about for nothing but a fanciful delusion.
¡°Then if you don¡¯t mind, sir, I would like to head home and get some rest before tomorrow morning.¡±
¡°Very well, dismissed.¡±
Arlette snapped a salute and turned to leave.
¡°What, running away already?¡± Lezo quipped as she passed. Arlette clenched her teeth and kept her lips sealed. ¡°Figures you¡¯d be a coward. You¡¯re a guard, after all.¡±
¡°Big words, coming from somebody who ran back here looking like his daddy spanked him.¡±
Shit. The words had escaped Arlette¡¯s lips almost by reflex, and before she realized what she was doing it was too late and the damage was done.
¡°What was that?¡± the axeman growled.
¡°You heard me.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t think you can act tough with me. You might like to pretend you got guts, but if you had any real courage you would be in the army fighting for the country. Instead, you decided to spend your days inspecting wagons and all that other sissy shit while the real heroes fight on the front line. You¡¯re trash, and you know it.¡±
¡°You wanna go?¡± Arlette¡¯s hand went to the pommel of her sword almost automatically as she looked up at the taller man, a glint of violence in her eyes. She¡¯d had a feeling that it was always going to come to this. Maybe if she just put the loser in his place, she could put this shit to bed now.
¡°That¡¯s enough, both of you,¡± the sergeant butted in, his large shield blocking Lezo¡¯s way while a sword blocked hers. ¡°Nobody is fighting anybody, especially now that the Ubrans are here. If you both somehow live through this, you can settle your stupid bullshit then. Understood?¡±
¡°...yes, sir,¡± they both reluctantly replied.
¡°Good. If I hear that either of you is getting after the other, I''ll throw you both over the wall myself. Now get out of here, all of you. Get some rest and report to the top of the north gate tomorrow at three. Dismissed!¡±
¡°Back already?¡± Sofie asked as Arlette entered the house for the second time that evening.
¡°Food,¡± Arlette replied. Sofie handed Arlette one of her culinary creations, two pieces of bread with some meat and vegetables in between. Out of all the strange food ideas the younger girl had, this ¡°sandwich¡± was perhaps Arlette¡¯s favorite. Her stomach growling even as she sat down, Arlette began to wolf the meal down. ¡°Where¡¯s Pari?¡±
¡°She¡¯s worn out from the day so I put her to bed early. But seriously, I thought you weren¡¯t going to be back until the morning or something.¡±
¡°I got lucky,¡± she said between bites. ¡°I¡¯m on day shift, so I don¡¯t need to go back until the morning.¡±
¡°So the Ubrans aren¡¯t attacking? I thought it was a little too quiet.¡±
¡°Nah, they just got here, and probably were marching all day. You never want to attack when your soldiers are more exhausted than the enemy.¡±
¡°So... if they aren¡¯t attacking now, they¡¯ll attack tomorrow when you¡¯re there.¡±
¡°Yep!¡± Arlette swallowed. ¡°Though that doesn¡¯t matter. Everybody who can fight needs to be on the wall when an attack comes. That reminds me. We need to talk about what you should do when there¡¯s an attack. Whenever you hear three horns in a row, that means the Ubrans are coming. When that happens, you need to be ready to hide somewhere that they won¡¯t find you, and you don¡¯t come out until I come back. If the city falls and I don¡¯t come back, I want you to stay hidden for at least two days. The Ubrans shouldn¡¯t want to kill civilians, they want to conquer them, so as long as you are hidden during the conquest, you should be fine.¡±
Sofie frowned. ¡°Don¡¯t talk like that. You¡¯re going to come back.¡±
¡°There are no assurances in the world, Sofie. Nobody¡¯s invincible.¡±
A glum silence settled over the room.
¡°So what are your teammates like?¡± Sofie finally said. ¡°Nice people?¡±
¡°They¡¯re a bunch of assholes. One guy is a loudmouthed idiot, then there¡¯s a woman who looks like she¡¯ll bite your face off if you even breathe wrong around her, the support¡¯s so busy looking at his own two feet that I doubt he even knows what his squadmates look like, and the sergeant seems like a bit of a pushover for somebody who¡¯s supposed to whip the rest of them into shape.¡±
¡°Sounds like a pain.¡±
Arlette let out an amused snort. ¡°Actually, it¡¯s kind of nice. Reminds me of the good old days, dealing with all the idiots in the Ivory Tears. Anyway...¡± She got up and stretched. ¡°I think it¡¯s time I went to bed. I¡¯m probably going to be out before you wake up, so remember what I said.¡±
¡°I will. Sleep well.¡±
¡°This isn¡¯t right.¡±
¡°Hmmmm?¡± Arlette said to Sergeant Muga as she stared out at the massive sea of tents encompassing the city. The Ubrans had spread out over the night, setting up camps on all sides of Crirada so that the capital was entirely encircled.
¡°This isn¡¯t what they did last time. Last time they didn¡¯t surround Begale. They just set up camp to the west of the city, then attacked only the west gate. This is... different.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t this basically standard siege tactics?¡±
¡°Yes. But they didn¡¯t use standard tactics before. They didn¡¯t need to. You play by the book when you don¡¯t have anything better, and they do.¡±
¡°The monster?¡±
¡°Right. Something¡¯s off.¡±
Arlette considered his words as she stared out at the thousands of Imperial soldiers camped out to the north of the city. By her best estimate, the Eterians had perhaps two hundred thousand able bodies with which to defend the city, a strong, impressive force by almost any measure. But judging by just how many Ubrans Arlette could see, it was possible that the Eterians faced a force of perhaps a million troops, five times their number. Even with the defensive advantages of the wall, holding out against such overwhelming odds would be a daunting task.
That wasn¡¯t to say that the defensive fortifications wouldn¡¯t help immensely¡ªthey would. Large ballista emplacements all along the wall were poised to send large bolts of death hurtling down on the invaders, while metal containers filled something known as ¡°Ocasta¡¯s rain¡± were placed all down the wall for the defender¡¯s use. Named after the first commander to use it in defense of a fortress, Ocasta¡¯s rain was nasty stuff. It consisted of clumps of rags dipped in a special sticky, flammable liquid made out of who-knew-what. Once lit, the rag clump would stick to whatever it landed on and the flames were notoriously difficult to extinguish. When dropped from a wall down upon unsuspecting enemies below, it looked from afar like flaming raindrops plummeting towards the earth. As long as the walls and gates held, the defenders would be able to do tremendous damage to the Imperial attackers. But only as long as the walls and gates held.
¡°They¡¯re getting ready,¡± Kima muttered, standing up on her tiptoes to see over the protective stone barrier that lined the outside of the wall¡¯s walkway all around the city. The barrier stood up to Arlette¡¯s shoulders, with slits every few paces for archers and whatnot to use for cover while attacking.
Kima was right, the camp was stirring, troops forming up into large orderly groups. Arlette¡¯s grip on the barrier tightened as she realized just how many archers she could see. As somebody without a shield, it looked like she¡¯d be relying on the stone to protect her. Other than archers, Arlette noticed a large number of soldiers holding long ladders, as well as an assortment of siege weapons she¡¯d never seen before that looked like large wooden logs attached to a sling.
Suddenly, the sound of three long horn blasts from far off reached her ears. The Ubrans were making a move on the southern gate?! Then, only moments later Arlette heard the same signal from the eastern gate, and then the western one, and then a loud series of three blows from the horn nearby. Turning back around, she saw that the columns of Imperial soldiers were now heading her way. It seemed that they were going to be attacking on all fronts after all.
The battle began rather slowly, as the columns approached, their shields held high to block the rain of arrows launched from the wall. Soon the Ubrans were close enough to return fire, and Arlette had to duck against the barrier to avoid the sudden barrage. Others protected themselves with shields, though not entirely successfully¡ªshe heard several screams and saw a few people fall to the ground clutching their legs. Strangely, she found herself wishing for Ubrans climbing over the wall. At least then, she¡¯d be able to do something, rather than focus on her helpless uselessness. The attackers would also likely stop shooting their arrows, as they¡¯d be just as likely to hit their own.
The area was beginning to get noisy as soldiers shouted orders, fireballs flew overhead, and the screams of thousands of Ubrans signaled the start of the first escalade attempt. A loud clanking sound signaled the firing of a nearby ballista.
¡°Incoming!¡± a nearby soldier cried. Arlette peeked up over the barrier for a quick second and swore, scrambling to her right as a large, flaming boulder bigger than her body sailed right towards her previous position. With a loud ¡°CRACK!¡± it collided with the top half of the barrier, shattering both the barrier and itself and scattering balls of fire around the nearby area. A series of screams could be heard as dozens of similar projectiles collided with the barrier and the walkway.
Arlette peeked above the wall again, this time to take a better look at the siege weapons that had launched such dangerous projectiles, and swore again. How were they so far away? They were beyond even ballista range!
As she watched, a metal ladder swung up to rest against the barrier about twenty paces to her right. Then a second one popped up ten paces to her left. Quickly, Arlette ran to the nearest container of Ocasta¡¯s rain and grabbed two handfuls before returning to her spot. Arlette put them down beside the barrier and grabbed one. She pulled a bit of cloth out so it was hanging down below the rest of the clump, peeked down at the frothing sea of Ubrans below to search for a target, lit the hanging piece of cloth, and then tossed the whole clump over just as the larger mass caught fire. Timing was important when dealing with Ocasta¡¯s rain. If you dropped it too early, you were just throwing a sticky bunch of rags. If you threw it too late, the residue on your hands would light as well, and then your hands would be burning with no good way for you to extinguish them without a water Observer nearby.
¡°Incoming!¡±
Arlette looked up again just in time to see the siege weapons activate, their central pole rotating towards the walls like a person¡¯s arm, the sling whipping up and around like a wrist and flinging another volley of flaming rock her way. She had a bad feeling about them; their range was absurd! Luckily, this time none of the rocks were headed directly for her position.
All around her, soldiers worked their hardest to fight off the incoming Ubrans. Some, like her, threw Ocasta¡¯s rain, while others simply shot arrows or flung their own created fireballs, rocks, icicles, and the like. The Feelers clustered around the many ladders that now rested against the wall, using their might to try to push the ladders off the side, while Feelers down below fought back. Her side had the advantage in terms of leverage, but the Ubrans could concentrate more people around the ladders down below than the Eterians could up top. Over the din of the battle, Arlette could make out the ¡°wham!¡± of a battering ram beating against the north gate off to the north, reminding her that this was a multi-front battle.
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All around the city, the same fighting was going down as the attacking Ubrans would try to push for weak points in the Eterian defense and create a breach wherever they could. Arlette hoped that Supreme General Astalaria was as good as people claimed, because holding off a tide of soldiers from all sides simultaneously was no simple task. It would take somebody of superlative skill to manage such a feat against such overwhelming odds.
¡°Incoming arrows!¡±
Arlette ducked down behind the barrier again as another wave of pointed death crashed against the walkway. More screams came this time than the last. She looked about for her squad but found that they were all crouching together like she was about forty paces away. She should probably join them, she figured. Ubrans would be atop the wall pretty soon, and they were supposed to be together so-
¡°Incoming!¡±
The shout interrupted Arlette¡¯s thoughts and she glanced back towards the siege weapons as half of them swung about again. Their payloads arced through the air towards the wall, but they weren¡¯t flaming boulders this time. She squinted at the projectiles for a moment as they came closer, trying to figure out what they were, before nearly rearing back in shock.
What in the world?! People! They were throwing literal people at the wall! Were these people insane? Who would willingly sign up for such a thing?!
As the incoming live projectiles sailed near, they opened up some sort of cloth sheet which billowed out behind them, catching the air and slowing them down just enough for most of them to land on the walkway without killing themselves, though Arlette did spot one who overshot and tumbled screaming down the inside of the wall, the crazy fool. Within a moment, they had their weapons drawn and an all-out melee began around each of the Ubrans.
¡°Squads, form up!¡± somebody called, and the cry spread along the wall. Arlette hopped out of her spot and sprinted towards her squad, which, along with another squad, had engaged one of the Ubrans. This Ubran wielded two large swords, one in each hand, and it immediately became clear that he was quite strong. His movement speed and power easily outclassed his opponents¡¯ and while he was losing the fight, he wasn¡¯t losing anywhere nearly as quickly as a single person should when up against nine opponents.
The two squads were working well together, using teamwork to make up for their large individual power deficit. Sergeant Muga used his large shield and his sword to fence in the Ubran on one side, while Lezo did the same beside him. Kima twisted and ducked her way around the two of them, harassing the Ubran with spear pokes from odd angles, while Danel slicked the ground with ice, making it harder for the Ubran to maneuver. The other squad stood on the opposite side, using their own tactics to achieve the same goal. Still, the man would not go down easily, using the reach of his long, large swords to fend off the attacks and strike back when he could.
Arlette threw out three illusory throwing knives as she approached, sending them whizzing through the small gap between Muga and the other squad. Normally, she would have thrown at least one actual knife in amongst the fake ones, but she was afraid that if the Ubran dodged then she would end up hitting her own ally on the other side. Either way, she didn¡¯t need the knives to connect, she just needed the Ubran to see them and react. He did, twisting himself to the side while bringing a sword about to deflect the one headed towards his side.
The action led to his doom, as in his panic to avoid the incoming projectiles, the man opened himself up to Lezo¡¯s axe, which buried itself deep into his side, just below his armpit. A sword stabbed into his back moments later as the other squad struck as well. Just as Arlette was about to congratulate them, a loud series of ¡°fwump¡± sounds off to her left caught her attention.
Turning towards the sounds, she found a second wave of thrown Ubrans landing on the top of the wall. These ones, however, had no weapons in hand. Almost by reflex, Arlette shifted towards the closest new Ubran, her right hand pulling out a real knife this time and whipping it towards the woman. The woman ignored the incoming weapon as she concentrated, the knife burying into her hip. Arlette was right behind the knife and nearly upon her when suddenly a large volume of strange liquid shot out from in front of the woman, spraying the entire area, especially Arlette, who took a large amount of it square in the face and chest.
Arlette gritted her teeth and swung her sword with her eyes closed, feeling the blade sink deep into flesh. The torrent of liquid lessened but did not stop, so Arlette yanked her sword out and swung again. This time she felt her opponent crumble and the spray stopped.
Arlette opened her eyes, feeling fortunate that she¡¯d managed to close them just before getting blasted in the face. She¡¯d gotten lucky. Normally, the pain of being stabbed with a knife was more than enough to stop an Observer from manifesting. However, it seemed that this person had been drugged or something to ignore pain, as she hadn¡¯t cried out or even made a noise during any of Arlette¡¯s three attacks. Instead, she¡¯d continued to spray this liquid as much as she could. If the woman had been able to make fire or something else deadly, Arlette would have been dead. But instead, she was just coated in this slick, viscous... oil?
Arlette took a sniff. Yes, this was oil. Oil observers were rare, especially since there wasn¡¯t much use for them. What few there were usually made a living creating lamp oil for those rich enough to own oil lamps. What was one doing on the battlefield?
Arlette looked about and saw squads cutting down the other Ubran Feelers and Observers. Strangely, it seemed that the other enemy Observers she could spot were also oil observers, each spraying as much area as they could with as much oil as possible before being taken down. Strange. This entire tactic had been a suicide mission from the start. The Feelers, while strong, were nowhere near powerful enough to break so many Eterians on their own. It was as if they had been sent to do nothing more than buy the Observers time, as if the whole point of it all was the cover as much of wall in oil as possible, even at the cost of their lives...
Oh no. Arlette turned back towards her squad and began to run, peeking back for just a moment to see exactly what she¡¯d feared was coming: another massive volley of arrows, but this time the arrows were on fire.
¡°Get behind me!¡± Sergeant Muga cried, holding his large shield aloft. Arlette obeyed, sprinting as fast as she could towards her only chance at safety. Perhaps her top half getting blasted with oil actually ended up saving her life, as it had blocked the oil from covering the ground behind her. In fact, that was the only area around not covered in the slippery liquid. She dove the last few paces, rolling behind her commander¡¯s wide metal shield just as the wave of arrows landed.
All across the city the wall burned, flames shooting high into the air. Smoke poured out, filling the sky, enough that Arlette could see that fires raged all the way across Crirada¡¯s walls. The Eterians were in chaos as entire groups of defenders were cut off from each other by burning ponds of oil. That was when the first Ubrans crested the walls.
¡°Forward!¡± Sergeant Muga shouted. ¡°We must hold as many off as we can!¡±
Together, the squad ran towards the outer edge, Arlette right with them, though making sure to avoid the flames so she wouldn¡¯t become a human torch. Other squads made their way towards the outside barrier as well, but nowhere near enough to stop the Ubrans from getting safely onto the walkway.
Arlette split off from the others slightly and charged a man wielding a spear, a second Arlette splitting off to the left. The man didn¡¯t know which one to focus on, and Arlette was able to slide beneath the spearhead as he swung awkwardly at both of them. Her sword flashed out, severing his arm. With a quick twirl, she spun about and embedded a knife into his throat. One down, but even so, in the time it took for her to kill the man, two more Ubrans had crested the wall.
Rolling to the side as a hammer slammed down where she¡¯d been just a moment before, Arlette hopped back and threw three knives at the newcomer, one real and two fake. The man flinched back as he saw the blades flying towards him, Arlette coming in right behind them. He swiped his hammer in an arc that swept through the path of all three knives, knocking the real one away, only to find one sword arcing towards his throat while the other went for his knee. Human instinct overrode training and he brought his hammer up to block the blade approaching his neck, only for it to pass through the hammer¡¯s shaft as if it wasn¡¯t real. It wasn¡¯t. The man fell over as a sword sliced through his left knee, severing the tendons and ligaments. Arlette brought her sword, the real one this time, down into the prone man¡¯s throat.
Arlette tugged at the sword, trying to pull it from the now-dead soldier¡¯s neck, but it was jammed in there pretty deep and wouldn¡¯t come out. Putting her foot on his skull, she tugged for a moment before releasing the blade and throwing herself to the ground as a ball of fire sailed through her last position. Shit. With the upper half of her body soaked in oil, just a single speck of flame would be enough to put her in mortal danger. She was fortunate that the oil burning along the wall was largely concentrated to the inner two-thirds of the wall in order to give the oncoming Ubrans room to gather on the wall, or there would have been no place for her to fight.
Pushing herself into a crouch, Arlette spied the fire Observer as she hopped down from the outer edge of the wall. The woman already had another ball of flame forming. From her crouch, Arlette hurled one of her four remaining knives at the Ubran woman, along with three illusionary blades this time, but the woman seemed ready for it and easily stepped aside. Perhaps she had seen Arlette¡¯s tactic when she¡¯d used it a moment ago against the hammer-wielder. The Ubran woman sent her new flame hurtling towards Arlette, who once again dove out of the way, but this time the flame burst into a multitude of smaller flames just a few paces in front of Arlette. Just one of the smaller flames caught Arlette right by her lower left side, but one was all that was needed. The oil began to burn.
In a panic, Arlette rolled along the ground, but the flames continued to grow. She could feel the feel her skin begin to sizzle. Quickly she pried her cuirass off and then ripped off her oil-soaked shirt and her undershirt as well. Another fireball sailed her way. Summoning all her strength, she threw herself clear, rolling and patting herself to put out the flames as best she could. To her relief, most of the oil had been on the clothes and armor, which were now blazing piles a few paces away. It seemed that she¡¯d managed to put out the fire on her own body before it reached her face and hair, meaning she¡¯d escaped sure death with only a severe burn to her side.
There was only one problem: she was sitting on the ground on her rear, in no position to evade, and the Ubran had another fireball about to head her way. Arlette began to twist, trying to roll to the side and avoid it, but she knew that there was no way she¡¯d be able to get completely out of the blast radius. But just before the woman released her flames, she rocked back and the fire sputtered out. A large icicle as long as Arlette¡¯s forearm and just as thick, protruded from the woman¡¯s chest, piercing her heart. She fell over, dead.
Arlette traced the angle of the icicle back to its source and found Danel looking back at her. He nodded and turned back to helping the other squad members.
Of course. Arlette had gotten so used to fighting on her own the last few seasons that she¡¯d forgotten how to fight as part of a team and had overextended herself to nearly deadly results. Quickly she got to her feet and ran to the corpse of the hammer-wielding Ubran, successfully pried her sword from his neck, and went to join her squad.
Together they fought, the five of them, along with the other valiant defenders, now as a team. The three Feelers engaged the enemy while Danel provided support, shooting out icicles when he had an opening. Arlette alternated between the two roles, sometimes engaging an enemy in melee combat when needed and other times stalking about the group, waiting for the right moment to throw a knife or charge in and strike.
They made a good team, all things considered, but as time went on, Arlette couldn¡¯t help but come to the conclusion that their fight was a hopeless one. The numbers were just too great. She and everybody else on the Eterian side were about to run out of energy, while the Ubrans kept coming and coming with no end in sight. The defenders were slowly being pushed back, trapped between an ever-increasing number of Ubrans on the wall in front of them and the still flaming lake of oil behind them. Arlette could already see how this was going to end. It was going to take a miracle to keep Crirada from falling before the day was done.
But then, over the din of the battle, over the battle cries and the screams of the injured and the still-constant ¡°wham!¡± of the battering ram against the north gate, Arlette heard a roar off in the distance. The roar was answered by a chorus of other roars, all off to the north. Arlette paused. She knew that roar; she¡¯d heard it once before. There was no way she would ever forget the low, growling, furious howl of a jaglioth.
¡°It can¡¯t be!¡± Sergeant Muga exclaimed. ¡°Kutrad comes!¡±
Arlette couldn¡¯t believe her eyes. Charging south towards the northern Ubran camp came a wave of jaglioths, dozens and dozens of them. On each of the ferocious, gigantic man-eating beasts rode two people. Surging southward was the pride and joy of Kutrad¡¯s military, the Jaglioth Cavalry.
Jaglioths, with the mass of ten or more men each, were not made for long journeys and were normally quite slow, but when one got up to its impressive top speed, little could stand its way. The oversized predators swept through the Ubran camp, tearing through tents like they weren¡¯t there as Ubrans scattered like leaves in the wind. Within moments they made it through the camp and washed over the siege weapons, the soldiers atop the terrifying beasts launching fireball after fireball to turn the weapons into little more than glorified bonfires. Then finally, they crashed into the sea of Ubrans closer to the wall, bowling them over like insignificant twigs.
Faced with this sudden onslaught from the rear, the Ubrans broke and ran retreating towards the east and west as the Eterians fought and rooted them on. Suddenly, the Ubrans atop the wall found themselves without reinforcements.
¡°They¡¯re trapped up here now!¡± somebody shouted. ¡°Let¡¯s wipe them out and see another sunrise!¡± A deafening cheer followed, and the Eterians surged forward with renewed vigor.
Arlette slowly made her way home as the sun set, her body aching. Now that the battle was over and the adrenaline had worn off, the pain she''d been ignoring for the past hours could no longer be ignored. She hurt all over, from the burn on her side to several long cuts on her arms and legs. Still, all things considered, not too bad a result for a battle that long and heavy. Within a few days, she¡¯d be fully healed.
As they had fought against the remaining Ubrans on the wall, the Jaglioth Cavalry¡¯s charge had eventually petered out; jaglioths couldn¡¯t keep that sort of momentum up for long. Still, by breaking the attack on the north wall, the Kutrad forces had freed up the Eterians in that area, allowing them to send large-scale reinforcements from that area to the other three-quarters of the city. Soon after, two long horn notes sounded from the west Ubran camp and the rest of the Ubran attackers had pulled back. The battle, at least for the day, was over.
Arlette shivered. Kima had been kind enough to loan Arlette her coat to cover up her naked top half, though not before a few choice comments from Lezo. The smaller woman¡¯s coat, while helpful, was still not enough to ward off the winter evening¡¯s chill.
As she walked, Arlette pondered the day¡¯s events. The battle had been very straightforward, with the Ubrans relying on numbers and some interesting tactics but little else. No knives in the back, no sabotage, no Sebastian. Was he truly here? No! He was here. He had to be.
There had been no sign of the unkillable ¡°monster¡± either, for some reason. It made no sense. Why, after she had apparently brought every other city to its knees in just a few hours, would the monster not appear now, for the most important battle? Were the Ubrans holding back? Or was there another reason?
Arlette mentally shrugged. Such matters were of little concern to her. Either the monster would show up or she wouldn¡¯t, and there was little Arlette could do about it either way. Arlette was more concerned with her own goals, anyway.
¡°Are you really a guard?¡± an unfamiliar voice asked off to her side. Arlette froze, her head whipping about to find Danel leaning against a wall in a nearby alleyway, his violet eyes staring unsettlingly into her own.
¡°What are you talking about?¡± Arlette asked, playing the clueless guard role as best she could.
¡°It¡¯s fine, I¡¯m just curious is all,¡± he said looking about. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, we¡¯re alone.¡±
¡°No really, I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about,¡± Arlette protested.
¡°Let¡¯s be real, Lucana, if that is your real name,¡± the blond-haired man replied. ¡°No guard has that many battle scars. No guard has even a fifth as many battle scars. You aren¡¯t really a guard. Or at least, that wasn¡¯t what you did until recently.¡±
Arlette¡¯s hand slowly inched towards the handle of her sword at her side. ¡°And what do you think I used to do?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, fight battles, destroy a city, run from bounty hunt-¡±
Arlette¡¯s sword flashed forward, coming to rest against Danel¡¯s throat. ¡°Who sent you?¡± she growled.
Danel backed up against the wall, his hands up in a pleading position. ¡°Woah, woah, hold on. I didn¡¯t mean anything-¡±
¡°Who. Sent. You.¡±
¡°Nobody sent me. I¡¯m just a guy, that¡¯s all. Just a soldier in the army.¡±
¡°Bullshit!¡± Arlette¡¯s foot lashed out, catching the man square in the gut. He gasped as he bent over in pain.
¡°It¡¯s true!¡± he wheezed. ¡°I¡¯m just a guy who likes puzzles, and you...¡±
¡°I¡¯m what? A puzzle?¡±
¡°Yeah. You didn¡¯t make any sense. You¡¯re way too competent for a guard, and the way you fight, I¡¯ve only ever seen one person fight the way you do, four years ago when my old squad was helping round up some bandits with a few mercenary bands. But that person is supposed to be dead, so I got curious. You¡¯re a mystery.¡±
¡°You were watching me during the battle?¡±
¡°I¡¯m the squad Observer. Keeping an eye on all my squadmates is part of the job. Look, if I had anything against you, wouldn¡¯t I have just let you burn to death instead of saving you?¡±
The man had a point, though Arlette was loath to admit it. Still, she kept the point of her sword to his neck. ¡°What do you want?¡±
¡°Like I said, I was just curious. Now that I know that you¡¯re... you, I just want to know how you¡¯re still alive. I need to fill in the pieces, is all, or it will bother me for the rest of my life.¡±
¡°Sorry, but I¡¯m not going to tell you anything.¡±
¡°Please?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Oh, come on. Maybe I can find a way to help you or something? What are you even doing here, anyway? The bounties said you were Gustilian.¡±
¡°I¡¯m hunting.¡±
¡°Hunting what?¡±
¡°That¡¯s none of your business. What¡¯s with you, anyway? Aren¡¯t you supposed to be the one that barely talks to anybody in the squad?¡±
¡°Well, you¡¯re not like them. You¡¯re... interesting.¡±
¡°Look, I¡¯m going to say this once, and that¡¯s it. Stay out of my way. And if you tell anybody about this, I will end you and everybody connected to you. So back off.¡±
¡°Alright, alright. I get it. Just tell me this: is what you¡¯re doing going to hurt our side?¡± He stared again into her eyes as he asked the question.
¡°No.¡±
¡°Alright, I believe you. I¡¯ll keep my mouth shut around the others. But maybe when this is all over, you¡¯ll let me know how you survived your own execution, yeah?¡±
Arlette lowered her sword. She knew that it would be safest for her to kill anybody who knew her true identity, but she couldn¡¯t bring herself to kill somebody who¡¯d done nothing against her just for the crime of figuring out who she was. ¡°...I¡¯ll think about it.¡±
Danel smiled a warm smile. ¡°I look forward to it. Well then,¡± he said as he stepped away, ¡°I¡¯ll see you on the wall.¡± Then he turned the corner, leaving her alone again.
Arlette resumed her walk back to her house, now feeling far more paranoid than before. If a random person could figure out who she was, then Sebastian would figure it out eventually. She needed to find him and finish this, and soon.
Chapter 54
¡°...really, you must try it some time. It is absolutely delightful! Kokovan is a master of his craft whose ability to express the true nature of Astrontic Enlightenment is unparalleled. The choreography alone is a work of genius.¡±
¡°I see,¡± Tehlmar replied, trying to seem as interested as he could¡ªa task far harder than it seemed. He willed himself to smile and nod as the petite woman gabbed on and on about Petruvian dance recitals, his spirit shriveling up more and more with each passing moment.
¡°My family will be hosting the Nema Song Troupe for a performance at our villa six days from now. They¡¯re one of the best in all the lands, you know, and I¡¯ve personally requested that they perform Kokovan¡¯s ¡®The Lament of the Drali Clan Across Three Generations¡¯. I would be ever so delighted if you were to attend. I can¡¯t think of a better way for you to experience such art for the first time.¡±
¡°It sounds quite entertaining, but I am not sure of my availability just yet. I¡¯ll have to speak with my attendants and get back to you soon. It was lovely meeting you.¡±
¡°Likewise,¡± the dainty woman replied, executing a flawless curtsy, a subtle excuse for her to provide him with a better view of her assets down her low-cut bodice. Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but feel respect for her boldness, but he felt little else at the sight. ¡°I hope to see you again soon, my prince.¡±
Tehlmar replied only with a smile, one that vanished the moment she was out the door and out of earshot. As soon as he felt safe to do so, he flumped down onto a nearby sofa in the least elegant manner possible and leaned back against the soft cushions with exhaustion.
¡°What do you think?¡± Artiermius asked, standing in the doorway. ¡°A marriage with the young lady of the Remesa Clan would tie the Esmae and the Remesa clans together, giving your family access to their entire manufacturing enterprise while allowing them greater opportunity in our lands. An advantageous arrangement for all sides. Not to mention that she is one of the fairest, most desired women in all the land.¡±
¡°She was better than the last few,¡± Tehlmar lied. He felt no interest towards the woman, nor with any of the other eligible potential courtship targets he¡¯d met over the last few days. He just couldn¡¯t connect with them in any meaningful way. Their values, worldview, and tastes seemed foreign and inscrutable, as if they were from a completely different world than him. Actually, he mused, that wasn¡¯t the case¡ªhe felt he understood Sofie, a girl literally from a different world, more than he did noble girls his age in his own country.
Now that he was a prince again, everybody wanted him to participate in high society, regardless of his actual inclinations; in fact, his father directly demanded that he do so. Tehlmar hated every moment of it. As far as he was concerned, ¡°high society¡± was a disease wealthy nobles contracted from a combination of too much money and too much free time.
¡°Your father expects you to begin courtship by the turn of the season,¡± Artiermius reminded him. ¡°You are running out of time.¡±
¡°What if I don¡¯t want any of them?¡±
¡°That is not an option. Your father was quite clear, you may recall.¡±
¡°I know, I know,¡± Tehlmar grumbled. He yawned and stretched out his arms. ¡°Well, all this conversation has left me worn out. I think I will go to bed early today.¡±
¡°If you insist, my Prince. I will see you tomorrow morning.¡±
Tehlmar retired to his bedchambers in a grave mood. In a strange way, he felt something similar to how he¡¯d felt while on the run from the bounty, where a constant sense of oppressive, foreboding doom weighed down his spirit. But now, he somehow felt even more hopeless than he¡¯d felt then. Back then, he¡¯d been surrounded by enemies that he could fight, kill, and escape. Now, instead of people, he was penned in by societal expectation and the burden of a prince¡¯s reputation. No amount of blades could slay the fact that he was expected by everybody to take a wife within the next few years. He could feel the trap that was Drayhadan high society slowly closing in around him, and he didn¡¯t know what to do about it.
A series of taps in a specific pattern against his bedroom window broke him from his thoughts. He knew that pattern, was intimately familiar with it in fact. Rushing to the window, he opened it in a hurry and a small, lithe man slipped through the opening.
¡°Did you find-¡±
¡°Yes. We have located the woman you asked for.¡±
¡°Where is she?¡±
¡°She is in Crirada, fighting on the wall against the Ubrans.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s blood went cold at the man¡¯s words.
¡°I see,¡± he managed to say after a moment. ¡°I am indebted to the Battalion for your assistance.¡±
¡°Once a Mask, always a Mask,¡± the man replied. ¡°Having one of the four ruling clans be supportive of the Battalion will greatly benefit the organization. Just remember, you are still guilty of your crimes. Should you become unable to provide us the support we seek, our leniency and support will end and you will have to pay for ignoring Command¡¯s orders all those years.¡±
¡°I am well aware of that, thank you. You should leave before you are discovered.¡±
¡°If you need us again, you know how to find us.¡±
The man slipped back out the window and disappeared into the night.
Tehlmar laid down on his bed, his mind numb. Crirada. Why did it have to be Crirada? He had just wanted to know that she''d survived and that she was okay. That¡¯s all. He¡¯d wanted to know that so he could feel some sort of closure and close the book on that period of his life. He needed to move on, and he¡¯d believed that as long as he knew that she was out of trouble he¡¯d be able to do that.
But she wasn¡¯t out of trouble. Of course she wasn¡¯t. This was Arlette, the foolish woman who, while always talking about staying out of trouble, always somehow seemed to get herself into sticky situations anyway. Maybe it was her sense of justice, or her empathy for the weak and suffering. But that didn¡¯t explain why she¡¯d be in Crirada of all places. What was she thinking, walking into that place?!
He sighed. In the end, it didn¡¯t really matter why she was there. What mattered was that she was in danger, but for the first time in years, he wasn¡¯t there to help get her out of it. The thought made him sick. Even though Crirada had heartier defenses than other cities, it wouldn¡¯t hold for long against the Ubran juggernaut. They¡¯d sweep over the city, cutting down any and all resistance... including her.
He wasn¡¯t going to get any sleep this night, he could already tell. The worry was enough to make his gut roil and his chest seize up. What a fool he¡¯d been reaching out to the Masked Battalion to check on her. He¡¯d wanted to finally put her away, but now instead Arlette Demirt was all he could think about.
The vekkel bucked slightly as Tehlmar brought it to a halt on the grassy hill. Escaping from the palace undetected in the pre-dawn morning posed little trouble for somebody with his training. He¡¯d done it multiple times already, sometimes to contact the Masked Battalion but mostly just when he felt the urge to get out of that place for a little while.
His father had deployed extra guards at night ever since Tehlmar¡¯s return to Drayhadal with the justification that he needed to be protected from enemies of the clan that might try to take him out. This was bullshit, of course. The guards were there to keep him in, not to keep others out. They didn¡¯t work. His father and the others didn¡¯t fully understand that the Battalion did more than train in the ability to body shift, and the Battalion liked it that way. They taught their members many things, with sneaking being particularly emphasized.
Today, Tehlmar was not in a gambling hall, or in a hidden back room talking to another Mask, or decompressing on a secluded rooftop. Today, he had traveled south and east of the city to talk to one specific person whom he¡¯d never thought he¡¯d ever want to talk to again. That was, of course, assuming she would talk to him either after the last time.
The rising sun lit up the hills ahead in a beautiful orange. Far ahead, he could make out a group of guards a few hills over heading towards a nearby town, the night-shift soldiers on their way towards a well-deserved rest. Good, that would make this less complicated.
Dismounting from the ¡°borrowed¡± vekkel, Tehlmar lowered himself to the ground and slowly made his way towards where he knew the house to be. The first rule of breaking in somewhere was to know where the guards were. Two hills later, he discretely peeked around a rock and surveyed the day-shift guard placements and rotations. What he saw dismayed him. There had to be at least a dozen guards, likely strong and good ones, surrounding the house in very close proximity. Sneaking into the place undetected seemed incredibly unlikely at this point. Time for Plan B.
Tehlmar scurried back to the vekkel and did his best to clean off the dirt and grass he¡¯d gotten on his outfit. He¡¯d wanted to get inside without any of the guards finding out, as while he figured he could convince the Earth woman to keep the fact of their conversation private, he knew that the guards would report to his sister and father about his arrival immediately. That seemed no longer possible, so instead, it was time to take the opposite tack and lean on the privilege of power and status. Remounting his vekkel, Tehlmar approached the house a second time.
The nearest guards stiffened as he approached; if they didn¡¯t recognize his face, they surely recognized his outfit. Doing his best to project a haughty attitude, Tehlmar dismounted and faced the nearby guards, all five of them having converged into a small group in front of him. ¡°I have come to visit the Mother of Nightmares,¡± he declared.
Several of the guards swallowed, while others looked towards one of the men. That man took a deep breath. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Your Greatness, but we cannot allow you to pass.¡±
¡°Oh really, now?¡± Tehlmar asked. He¡¯d expected as much but decided to play it up as a surprise. ¡°You dare to block your prince?¡±
¡°O-our orders are very clear that you in particular are not allowed to enter, sir.¡±
Tehlmar frowned. ¡°Well, it seems that you have a problem on your hands. I am going to speak with the woman inside, and I am not going to take no for an answer. If you let me through, you will be violating your orders, a serious offense. However, if you do follow your orders, you will make me very angry, and I can assure you that you do not want that.¡± Seeing the assembled guards blanch, he smiled reassuringly. ¡°Fortunately, I have a solution that will work for the both of us. I¡¯m going to beat you up.¡±
The guards all stared at him, puzzled. ¡°...Your Greatness?¡± the leader asked.
¡°You followed your orders to the letter and tried your best to stop me, really, but I was just too strong! It really wasn¡¯t your fault that I met the Mother of Nightmares at all. It was Pyria¡¯s, for not stationing enough guards to stop me properly.¡±
¡°My Prince! We could never attack a member of the royal family!¡±
¡°Oh, don''t worry, it was all self-defense! I attacked first, you see, and, being the barbarian-tainted cur that I am, it was impossible to get me to listen to reason, though you tried as much as you could." Tehlmar pulled a small knife from beneath his clothes and quickly and casually made a small but deep cut on both of this palms. He smiled again as blood welled up in each hand. "Do try to make it look convincing, won''t you?¡±
Without waiting for a response, Tehlmar burst forward, dashing up to the leader in a fraction of a moment. He held out his left hand as blood flowed from his palm like a river, forming in just a fraction of a moment into a sphere the size of his fist. The sphere shot forward with astounding speed, driven by a thin column of blood connecting the sphere to his hand. The blood ball, now suddenly solid as a rock, slammed into the unsuspecting guard¡¯s torso just below the ribs. The man crumpled over in pain from the powerful blow. Meanwhile, a red, liquid whip shot out of his right hand, wrapping around another guard¡¯s neck and jerking him into the guard next to him, slamming their heads together. Both of them went limp as they knocked each other out.
The primary technique taught in the Masked Battalion was a secret technique called ¡°body shifting¡±. Once mastered, it allowed the user to alter not just the appearance but the very makeup of their bodies and maintain it for an indefinite amount of time, even years or decades. However, there were limits. One was that, while in the new form, the user could only wield Feeler-type abilities and any Observer-type abilities were lost. The other was that if one held a transformation for years at a time, as most every Mask had to do, they would be unable to body shift significantly once the transformation was undone. It was as if their body seemed to resist the change.
There was, however, one part of the body that those who had returned to their original form could still command, likely because of its amorphous, liquid nature: the blood. The use of one¡¯s blood for combat was taught to all Masks who assumed another identity. By controlling their blood outside of their own body, using it to form weapons and anything else they needed at the moment, a Mask could become a deadly force. Today, however, the only blood Tehlmar desired to spill was his own.
Only two of the five guards remained, both on the left. The pair reacted simultaneously, raising their weapons and stepping forward. Tehlmar turned towards them, the tip of the whip in his right hand solidifying into a thin, sharp spike and skewering through the man on the right¡¯s foot and implanting into the ground below. The man tripped and fell on his face, his ankle twisting unnaturally. Meanwhile, Tehlmar brought his left hand up, the ball shifting into a rod and blocking the other woman¡¯s oncoming sword. Suddenly his rod came alive, wrapping around her sword and pulling her closer, where he delivered a vicious kick to her abdomen, followed by a quick blow to the head. He followed up with another quick blow to the prone guard¡¯s head as well.
The whistling sound approaching made him look up and see an arrow streaking in his general direction... though it struck the ground a good eight paces from him. It seemed the other seven guards were on their way towards him. Tehlmar dashed towards the archer, shaping his right-hand blood into the shape of a paddle and smacking aside a notably-weak ball of ice. He smirked. If only all his opponents were as afraid to hurt him as these guards.
Blood shaping had many strengths¡ªspeed, adaptability, strength, surprise¡ªbut there were two large weaknesses as well. One was that his blood had to maintain a connection to the inside of his body at all times. He couldn¡¯t shoot it out like a projectile, spray it onto people and control it, or anything like that. If any of the blood was separated from him, he would lose his ability to control that blood permanently. Blood shifting was a Feeler ability, after all. It relied on one¡¯s ability to control their own body. In a way, it was like his blood was an extra arm, and a Feeler couldn¡¯t control an arm that had been severed. This sadly meant that while Tehlmar was a force to be reckoned with close up, he was limited at range to blocking and deflecting incoming attacks. He needed to close the distance if he wanted to finish this.
As the distance between them swiftly shrank, the archer let loose a second arrow, one much more on the mark than the last. A crimson shield formed in front of Tehlmar and the arrow struck it instead, sinking about a quarter of its length into the pseudo-solid barrier. Tehlmar lashed out with both hands this time, his left-hand blood wrapping around the archer¡¯s torso like a rope and pulling her in while his right-hand blood hooked her head and neck and pulled it toward his rising right palm. The base of his palm rammed upward into the archer¡¯s jaw and she dropped like a rock.
Another ball of ice whipped toward him along with a fireball. Tehlmar quickly rolled to the side and looked around, surveying the scene. Six more to go, with three of them charging across the hill at him from different directions while the other three hurled projectiles at him from... all the way over there.
It was times like this when he wished he was still Jaquet. He''d earned the nickname "Jaquet the Quick" for a reason. His powerful legs would have gotten him over to those Observers faster than one could say "I don''t have time for this shit". But he wasn''t Jaquet anymore, and would never be again. Those days were over and he had to accept that he was regular old Tehlmar now. Although he still could enhance his speed and strength in his original form, he could only do so to a diminished degree. He sighed and took off towards the Observers, moving as quickly as his non-Jaquet legs could carry him.
¡°Thank you for your cooperation,¡± Tehlmar said to the unconscious bodies littering the hill. The latter half of the guards hadn¡¯t posed any more challenge than the first. Not that any of them were bad, per se, but they¡¯d been forced to fight with one hand behind their back, or perhaps two hands honestly. Still, it was good that they¡¯d been unable to put up a real fight. His head pounded and his vision was getting fuzzy.
That was the second of blood shaping¡¯s two big weaknesses: the blood had to come from somewhere. The longer he used his powers, the harder it was on his body. Eventually, the lack of blood available would start to impact his brain and he¡¯d pass out. It was a technique more meant for quick skirmishes in dark alleys or a surprise to escape from a dire predicament, not long pitched battles.
This long pitched ¡°battle¡± had come to an end, and wooziness aside, Tehlmar felt a bit refreshed. It felt good to let out some of the frustration and stress that had been building constantly inside him since his return to his family. He rolled his shoulders and headed up to the house, pushing the front door open.
Tehlmar heard a young female voice squeak as the door opened and he caught a quick glimpse of somebody ducking around a corner. Curious, he rounded the corner himself and saw a fairly young elf maiden, a quite attractive one by normal elven standards, cowering behind a cupboard down the hall. Strange, he didn¡¯t remember seeing her the other time he was here.
¡°I do believe I was quite clear that you were not welcome here,¡± a stern voice said from a nearby room. ¡°Vura, please go make sure everybody outside is alright, would you dear?¡±
¡°Y-yes madam,¡± the young woman said. Eager to be away from him, she turned and ran the other direction. He heard a door to the outside open and quickly close again.
¡°Why are you here?¡± the Mother of Nightmares asked icily.
Tehlmar approached the nearby room and stood in the doorway. The old lady sat in the same chair she¡¯d been in the last time beside a crackling fire. ¡°I need advice,¡± he said.
There was a pause, followed by a series of dry, raspy laughs. ¡°Advice from me? Did you not say you would never be coming back here?¡±
¡°You¡¯re the only person I can talk to who isn¡¯t a subject of my family. I need a more... unbiased perspective, from somebody who has experienced life.¡±
¡°I am in no mood to do you any favors. Leave.¡±
¡°I did not come here to ask for favors. I will pay. And before you say that you don¡¯t need money, I mean to pay with information.¡±
The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
¡°What sort of information?¡±
¡°I know things that Pyria does not. Things that are relevant to you.¡±
There was a pause. ¡°Come in before I change my mind.¡±
Tehlmar entered the room, closing the door behind him and taking a seat in the chair across from the old woman. The Mother of Nightmares glared back at him, displeasure in her eyes.
¡°Tell me your information, and I will decide if it is enough,¡± she said.
Tehlmar frowned. This wasn¡¯t how he wanted things to go, but he wasn¡¯t sure what other options he had anymore. After a moment, he spoke. ¡°You aren¡¯t alone. There are others from Earth here in Scyria.¡±
The old woman¡¯s eyebrows raised. ¡°Oh, really?¡±
¡°Yes. I traveled with one for a period, a young woman named Sofie who claimed to be from a place called ¡®Belgium¡¯. It¡¯s very likely that there are others as well.¡±
¡°My, I never thought I would hear somebody say something like ¡®Belgium¡¯ ever again. So I¡¯m not alone. That¡¯s very interesting... but not enough.¡±
¡°What?! But-¡±
¡°What am I supposed to do with this new knowledge? Go out and find these people myself? I¡¯m far too old for an adventure. If anything, this is something that you should be telling your sister, not me. Now leave.¡±
¡°W-what, uh, what if I told you something else?¡± Tehlmar pleaded. ¡°Please, is there nothing I can tell you that would change your mind?¡±
¡°Hmmmmmm...¡± the dastardly old bat hummed, ¡°there is one thing. Tell me why you hate your sister so greatly.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s gaze went hard. ¡°That is not for outsiders to know.¡±
¡°Well, that is my price.¡±
¡°Hmph,¡± he snorted derisively, ¡°you put on an act, but deep down you¡¯re no better than the old crones who gossip by the well.¡±
The Mother of Nightmares chuckled. ¡°You¡¯re right. Gossip is better than food for an ¡®old crone¡¯ like myself. It¡¯s all we old people have left to do, after all. Now will you share your secret with me or will you leave?¡±
¡°...if I tell you, it is not to leave this room.¡±
¡°I will tell no one. You have my word on my honor.¡±
Tehlmar took a deep breath. ¡°Do you know much about Drayhadal?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Drayhadal as a country is incredibly insular. With the Stragma Forest to the west and the mountains to the north, it would be very hard for an outside power to mount an invasion from elsewhere in the world. This is both a blessing and a curse. There is a massive invasion going on beyond the mountains just north of us at this very moment and I am certain that almost no one in Drayhadal outside of the ruling clans knows it is even happening.¡±
¡°I have not heard about such a thing, no.¡±
¡°The Ubran Empire broke through Redwater Castle, a feat long thought impossible. The castle and the hellish mountains that surround it were the only thing keeping The Ubran Empire from invading this side of the continent. They have already swept through and consumed the nation of Gustil. Eterium is next, and then possibly Otharia and surely ourselves. The Ubrans will stop at nothing short of complete world domination. And yet, if you were to ask any of your guards about this, I doubt a single one would have even heard about it. The events of ¡®savages¡¯ and ¡®barbarians¡¯ are not important to them, you see.
¡°But there exists one group whose responsibility it is to monitor the rest of the world. They are called the Masked Battalion. The Battalion is an order that resides technically within the government but largely operates outside of it. They infiltrate the other countries, keeping watch on their activities and reporting back so that the rest of the country can continue their navel-gazing ways. I am a member of the Masked Battalion.¡±
¡°Oh? You are a spy?¡±
¡°I was. But not by choice. You see, only elves with a very specific talent can be a part of the Battalion. That talent is very, very rare, perhaps one in hundreds of thousands. In order to ensure that the organization has enough people to function, any person who shows the desired trait is conscripted into the Battalion for life. The laws are clear: it doesn¡¯t matter who you are or how powerful your family may be. If you have the talent, you must join.¡±
¡°And you had that talent.¡±
¡°I did. I first discovered it when I was eight years old. It manifested one night while I was in the company of my sister and a long-time servant named Bargos. Bargos was a very loyal servant. My father had taken him in as an orphan when he was young; in a way, the Esmae clan was his family. He reported the event to my father immediately. Understandably, my father nearly lost his mind at the news. I am the sole male heir to the Esmae clan. It was my destiny to succeed him and lead the clan to further greatness, or so he would always tell me.
¡°My father paid Bargos off to keep his silence¡ªa large sum of money every season for the rest of his life, enough to ensure he, his wife, and children lived in luxury for the rest of their lives. The Masked Battalion is a powerful organization, but they are not all-knowing. As long as I made sure never to reveal my talent ever again, I could continue to live a happy life as the prince of the Esmae clan, surrounded by people who loved me.
¡°Twelve days later, the Masked Battalion arrived at the palace and took me away.¡±
¡°Oh my!¡±
¡°The rest I was not there to witness, but according to people who were there, my father had Bargos tortured for days. They say he maintained his innocence for a lengthy period, but eventually broke and admitted to telling the Battalion about me in exchange for the government granting his line merchant nobility. He and his entire family were put to death.
¡°I hated Bargos for decades; his betrayal stung me deep inside. He¡¯d been like a second father to me, or perhaps an uncle, and I swore that I¡¯d never forgive him. But as time wore on, I¡¯ve come to believe that he did not actually betray my clan. He was loved there and he loved us. In all my time with him as a child, he never gave me reason to believe that he didn¡¯t care about me greatly. And with the money he would receive, his entire family would be secure for generations.¡±
¡°But he admitted to the deed, didn¡¯t he?¡±
¡°So I believed. But I¡¯ve learned many things since then, and one of them is that torture does not get you the truth. It gets you what you want to hear. If you gave me enough time to torture a man, I could get him to admit to flying to the three moons. In fact, the fact that he held out so long lends weight to his assertion that he never betrayed us.¡±
¡°Then who did? If only you, he, and your sister knew ab-¡± She paused mid-sentence, a frown appearing on her wrinkled face. ¡°I see.¡±
¡°Even young, my sister was always smart and ambitious. She must have seen the perfect opportunity to gain the power that she''d always wanted and she took it. There was just the two of us, after all, and my father was too old to have more children; with me gone, there would be no one left to lead the clan other than her.¡±
¡°And your father, does he agree with you?¡±
¡°I have not discussed this with him, or anybody else for that matter. It¡¯s likely that he believed Bargos¡¯s confession, or that he is blinded by his love for her and would never think her capable of such a thing. Even if he came to the same conclusion as I, he still handed Pyria power for decades, so perhaps he concluded that the damage was done and he had to work with what he had left. Either way, it doesn¡¯t matter. Pyria won. She got what she wanted. And I...¡±
He stared deep into the fire, his eyes not seeing the present any longer.
¡°The Masked Battalion is not gentle. They take in children and turn them into spies and killers. They never care about who you are before you arrive. They will break you, melt you down, and mold you into something more to their liking. I was no exception. I can still remember how they beat me within an inch of my life on the very first day to show me that they were in control and that they didn¡¯t care about who my family was. It is no exaggeration to say that I would be a completely different man if this had never happened to me. The original Tehlmar Esmae died the moment that Pyria turned me in.
¡°Beyond that, the life of a Mask is not pleasant. The training is beyond harsh, and then you must go live a false life for decades. The work is dangerous and many die during their tour of duty. I, especially, lived my second life on the battlefield. It is a miracle that I returned at all.¡±
¡°Yet you did return.¡±
¡°And every day I wished I hadn¡¯t. This place holds nothing for me. It desires a prince, but now I am only a prince in title and nothing more.¡±
¡°Then why come back?¡±
¡°I...¡± Tehlmar hesitated.
¡°This is what you needed to talk to me about.¡±
Tehlmar sighed. ¡°I don¡¯t know what to do. I spent decades living a fake life and somehow I feel faker now than I did then.¡±
¡°I ask again, then why come back?¡±
¡°There¡¯s nowhere else for me to go.¡±
¡°Nowhere? No place that would welcome you?¡±
¡°I never stayed in one place very long. The mercenary bands I worked for moved from contract to contract, as most do.¡±
¡°Why not join one of them again, then?¡±
¡°They wouldn¡¯t want me. I¡¯m a Drayhadan who can¡¯t fight the way they need. They want the man I used to be.¡±
The old woman pinched the bridge of her nose. ¡°Perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way. If you could be anywhere and doing anything, what would it be?¡±
The answer was obvious. ¡°I¡¯d be with Arlette.¡±
¡°Arlette?¡±
¡°The only woman I¡¯ve ever loved,¡± he said with a sigh. ¡°But she hates me now, I¡¯m sure of it.¡±
Her brows furrowed. She leaned forward. ¡°You¡¯re sure of it?¡±
¡°She would never love me, after what I did to her.¡±
¡°Go on.¡±
¡°When I first met Arlette, I helped her form her band and helped her lead it because it was a simple, effective way to get what I needed. I needed a way to move around the continent and observe the people there so I could report back home, and she was the solution. A means to an end. But as I got to know her, I began to see her as a friend. It was unexpected; I¡¯d never bonded with any of the other mercenaries in all my years. I was caught off guard, but I told myself it didn¡¯t matter much. But then, the more I spent time with her, the more I liked her, until one day I realized it was more than that. I loved her, truly loved her, but I didn¡¯t know what to do anymore, because I¡¯d committed an unforgivable crime in her eyes. She just didn¡¯t know it.
¡°If there is one thing that Arlette loathes more than anything in the world, it¡¯s being used. I don¡¯t know why it matters so much to her; I could tell that she¡¯d been through something that had changed her in the past but she would never talk about it. Nothing makes her hate you more than to make her into a tool for your own benefit, and I¡¯d been doing that for years. I tried to cover it up, but eventually I couldn¡¯t. Our whole relationship was a lie. No, she would never accept me.¡±
¡°But you don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°I can still hear the betrayal in her voice when I was forced to reveal my true form and abandon her. I know she only saw me as a friend, but whatever she felt for me broke that day.¡±
¡°But you don¡¯t know.¡±
¡°I know all I need to know!¡±
¡°No, you do not.¡± The Mother of Nightmares sighed and closed her eyes.
Tehlmar gazed at her as she sat there, unsure about what to do about the man in bed beside him. No, not just any man, Hideo was his husband now. After his first husband had died in the war, Tehlmar had thought that no man would ever desire a childless widow pushing forty with a somewhat balky leg and shoulder, and yet here they were, just married. Tehlmar just laid and watched Hideo as he read a book, taking in his head of short, dark black hair and his kind eyes.
¡°What are you thinking about?¡± Hideo asked, putting his book down for a moment and turning to Tehlmar.
Tehlmar blushed. ¡°I was just thinking about how lucky I am.¡±
A sly grin grew on Hideo¡¯s handsome face. ¡°That should be my line.¡± He leaned in and Tehlmar¡¯s heart surged as their lips met.
¡°I love you,¡± Tehlmar said.
¡°I love you, too.¡±
¡°How did it go?¡± Tehlmar asked as Hideo closed the front door.
Hideo frowned, running his hand through his black hair speckled with one or two gray hairs. ¡°Tanaka-san got the promotion.¡±
Tehlmar cupped his husband¡¯s cheek in his hand and gave a reassuring smile. ¡°Don¡¯t feel bad, you¡¯ll get the next one. You¡¯re such a hard worker.¡±
¡°You¡¯re right.¡±
¡°WAAAHHHH!¡± A high-pitched cry rang out from another room.
¡°Oh my, looks like Eisuke¡¯s hungry,¡± Tehlmar said. ¡°Go relax, honey. Dinner will be ready in half an hour.¡±
¡°Where have you been? You¡¯re three hours late for dinner!¡± Tehlmar asked as Hideo stumbled into the house, his face flush with alcohol.
¡°Went out drinking with some coworkers,¡± his husband replied, his words slurring slightly. He hung his coat and hat up on a nearby hook, revealing a head of black hair mixed with some grey. ¡°Yashiro-san got promoted and wanted to celebrate.¡±
¡°You should have called at least!¡± Tehlmar scolded.
¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± He looked around. ¡°Where are the kids?¡±
¡°I put them to bed, what did you expect!? They missed you, Hideo! Eisuke drew a picture at school that he really wanted to show you, and Keiko is talking more. You¡¯re coming home late nearly every day now and missing so many precious memories!¡±
Hideo sighed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m trying to shine at the office so that I can finally get that promotion. This place is getting too small for us.¡±
Tehlmar embraced his husband. ¡°I¡¯m glad that you¡¯re trying so hard, but don¡¯t forget that there¡¯s more to being a father than working for your family. Even if this place gets too small, we¡¯d rather have a small place with you in it than a larger place without you.¡±
¡°Mother, I¡¯m worried about father.¡±
Tehlmar stopped mid-sweep and turned around. ¡°Again, Eisuke? What is it this time?¡±
¡°He just seems different, like he¡¯s really sad inside or something.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry, honey. I know he hasn¡¯t been spending a lot of time with you recently but he¡¯s just very tired from working so hard every day. You just wait, one of these days now he¡¯ll come home with a big smile on his face and take us all out for dinner. Now, have you finished your homework yet?¡±
¡°No...¡±
¡°Then you¡¯d better get started, it¡¯s getting late. Tell your sister to do her homework as well.¡±
¡°Okay.¡±
Several minutes later the front door opened and Hideo stepped inside, removing his coat and hat before stretching his back with a weary groan.
¡°Are you alright?¡± Tehlmar asked as he came to greet his husband.
¡°I¡¯m getting old, is all,¡± was the answer. ¡°Even my hair is entirely gray now.¡±
¡°Well,¡± Tehlmar stated as he ran his fingers through Hideo¡¯s hair, ¡°personally I think the color suits you. It makes you more handsome. Now go rest on the sofa. I¡¯ll make you some tea.¡±
Hideo chuckled. ¡°I don¡¯t deserve you.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t,¡± Tehlmar smiled back.
Tehlmar emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray with two cups of steaming-hot tea several minutes later and set it down on the small table in front of the sofa. He sat down beside his husband and took the man¡¯s hand in his.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Hideo asked immediately. They knew each other so well at this point that they could not hide anything from each other anymore.
¡°Eisuke keeps asking about you. He¡¯s been worried about you recently. He says you seem sad.¡±
Hideo flashed him a charming smile, the same one that Tehlmar had fallen in love with so long ago. ¡°I¡¯m fine, just exhausted. The new boss has been working us to the bone these days. Don¡¯t worry about me. How could I be sad with a family like this?¡±
¡°I love you, darling.¡±
¡°I love you too.¡±
The knock on the front door startled Tehlmar, nearly causing him to slip and cut his own finger instead of the carrot on the cutting board. Who could be knocking on the door in the middle of the day on a workday? He walked over to the door and opened it to find a policeman standing there with a grim expression on his face. Something about his expression made her heart clench before he even spoke.
¡°I¡¯m sorry to have to inform you of this,¡± the policeman said, ¡°but your husband took his own life today around 1pm. He jumped off the roof of the office building where he worked.¡±
Tehlmar couldn¡¯t believe what he was hearing. No! This couldn¡¯t be true! He¡¯d said he was fine just a few days ago! He¡¯d smiled and looked Tehlmar in the eyes and said he was just tired! He couldn¡¯t- But- He would never- The room spun and Tehlmar fell to his knees and began to wail.
Tehlmar was suddenly back in the house with the Mother of Nightmares, his vision clouded by tears. What was this grief? Why did it hurt so much? He rubbed the tears from his eyes and looked over to see that the old woman was crying as well as she stared deep into the flames of the nearby fire.
¡°When I was taken to identify the body, they showed me the note that he¡¯d put in his pocket,¡± she said. ¡°All that was on it was the words ¡®I will never be good enough. I¡¯m sorry.¡¯ For more than fifteen years, I lived beside that man. I knew his every quirk, his likes and dislikes, and more. He was a loving and kind husband and father, and a happy man. But there was sadness inside of him that he hid from all of us. Nobody could see it, except Eisuke. Nobody wanted to see it.
¡°Even as I was on my deathbed, my son refused to come see me. He still blames me for his father¡¯s death. He believes that had I listened to him back at that time, my husband could have been saved. He¡¯s right. I made a lot of mistakes over the course of my life, but there is nothing I regret more than assuming that I had any idea what was happening inside the head of the one person I knew better than anybody else.¡±
She turned and stared him in the eyes, the intensity of her gaze boring into him.
¡°Listen well, Prince Tehlmar, for this is the most important advice I could ever give. The mind is a strange thing. It is a swirling mess of contradictions, lies, irrationality, and emotion, much of which is hidden from the outside world. Never assume that you understand what goes on inside another¡¯s mind. You do not.
¡°If you truly love this woman, then go to her. Show her how you feel. Let her see the depth of your devotion. You may believe that she could never love you, but you are wrong. And if she really does hate you with everything she has, then you are no worse off than you are today.
¡°Do not make the mistake I made. Every day I ask myself, ¡®What if I had done something differently?¡¯. That question haunts me, even decades later. So act, before it is too late, or you will spend the rest of your life wondering what could have been.¡±
¡°Prince Tehlmar, where have you been?¡± Artiermius demanded to know. ¡°It¡¯s nearly midday!¡±
¡°I just went to have a chat with somebody, that¡¯s all.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll have you know that your father is furious with you. Expect him to summon you after your afternoon class is complete.¡±
¡°Sorry, Artie, but I don¡¯t have time for classes anymore. I¡¯m headed out for the capital in just a moment, and I likely won¡¯t be coming back for a little while. For the first time since coming back, I know what I have to do.¡±
¡°What nonsense is this? You have to prepare to take your place at the head of the clan! What am I going to tell your father?¡±
¡°Tell him I''ve chosen the woman I''m going to court. Oh, and that I''m going to start a war.¡±
Chapter 55
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers hustled about the savanna like tiny insects, carrying out their various functions for their queen, or emperor in this case. Emperor Haidar Batra paid them no mind. He didn¡¯t need to supervise such low-level subjects; he had people to do that for him, and people to supervise those people, and so forth. They might as well be insects, given how little he pondered their lives on a day-to-day basis. He had bigger things to think about, especially right now.
Surrounded by opulence, Emperor Haidar sat on his portable throne in full view of both his subjects and the Eterians far up atop the wall in the distance. Haidar knew that in many ways image was everything. He wanted his people to see him ruling confidently where the action was; legends were written about courageous commanders on the front lines, not about delegators who sent out others and stayed thousands of leagues away from danger. He also wanted his enemies to fall into despair, looking out from their pathetic hiding hole and watching as he moved about in comfort and freedom, just out of their reach. Not that they would be able to touch him even if they could get to him; Taras, his powerful bodyguard who almost never left his side, would easily be able to protect him.
Every day his army grew larger as reinforcements made their way from Ubrus, down the pass from Redwater Castle, and through the newly-conquered lands of Gustil before arriving here at Crirada. Even with the arrival of Kutrad¡¯s forces eleven days ago, Haidar¡¯s numerical advantage was overwhelming and only getting more lopsided. So why did he feel so sour?
¡°Summon my generals,¡± he instructed a nearby page. ¡°Tell them it¡¯s time for another war council.¡±
The man bowed and ran off. Haidar took a sip of wine as he waited for his underlings to arrive. The first two to arrive were naturally the two closest generals, though they took longer than he would have liked. Rutgar Moiras was in charge of the western camp, where Haidar currently resided. Along with him came General Gala Inagorri, the woman who ran the Imperial Army¡¯s more clandestine operations. Haidar¡¯s other three subordinates, Peru Barcos, Luki Arrino, and Auriola Maldi, would take longer to arrive, as they were each in the eastern, southern, and northern camps, respectively. The two generals knelt down before him, waiting for permission to stand and look his way. He didn¡¯t give it.
¡°You¡¯re late,¡± Haidar stated with a frown.
The two generals shared a glance. Rutgar coughed, before speaking. ¡°Our apologies, Your Eminence. Word did not reach us immediately, as we were both visiting the Champion.¡±
Haidar¡¯s frown deepened. ¡°Any change?¡±
The man shook his head. ¡°No. If her Batranala had not told me that she still lived, I would have taken her for a corpse.¡±
¡°Yes, not even the greatest healer in the Empire has been able to help her. It seems that we are on our own from this point onward. Speaking of which, General Inagorri, I read your report earlier this morning. Do you stand by its findings? I find it hard to believe that, after everything that couldn¡¯t stop her, she would be felled by a child with an ordinary knife.¡±
¡°As did I,¡± the woman replied. ¡°I double checked their findings myself. There was no poison the blade, nor in her wounds, and the blade itself was actually cheap and poorly made. The boy claimed to not know who he was attacking and even maintained the claim for a while under duress. In my judgment, were this a planned operation, it would require an unheard-of level of organization, resources, and capability that would have been better utilized killing somebody such as yourself.¡±
As Haidar stroked his beard, pondering General Inagorri¡¯s answer, his other generals arrived. They kneeled beside the first two. Haidar sat there without speaking for a few moments, letting them sweat a bit and making his displeasure felt.
¡°Do you know why I called you all here?¡± he asked after a tense and lengthy silence. Nobody answered. ¡°Go ahead, anyone. No? General Arrino, how about you?¡±
Luki Arrino swallowed. ¡°Because Crirada still stands, Your Greatness.¡±
¡°Incorrect. Given the level of defenses, I did not expect the city to fall so quickly even with our superior numbers and firepower. However, I cannot help but be disappointed by the lack of progress I am seeing. They should be close to breaking by now, and yet they are not. I expect better from all of you. The Champion is gone. You can no longer rely on her to single-handedly turn every battle in your favor. Now is the time to show me why you are the highest-ranking officers in the Empire.¡±
¡°Our victory is assured, Your Highness,¡± General Peru Barcos replied confidently. ¡°Given time, even walls as great as theirs will fall before your might.¡±
¡°Given time?¡± Haidar repeated. ¡°General Inagorri, what is the status of Stragma these days?¡±
¡°My agents report that Stragma has settled into their winter home of Hoxoni,¡± she replied. ¡°In normal times, they would likely pose a threat by the turn of the season when they migrate to Kukego. However, given the work of our agents, the social fabric of their society is pulling apart and the chaos prevents them from coming to the aid of the other countries. Crirada will have fallen long before they can restore proper order to their nation.¡±
¡°Yet the chaos was created not by our people but by another party, was it not? The flow of events in Stragma is no longer under our control. Can you say with complete certainty that Stragma will not pose a threat to us by the turn of the season?¡±
¡°I...¡± The woman hesitated. ¡°No, I cannot.¡±
¡°So you see, General Barcos, we have no choice but to operate under the assumption that our time is limited. Crirada is the single locus of meaningful resistance left outside of Stragma. We must destroy it before the thaws, or we may find hordes of Stragman warriors moving north and cutting off our supply line from Obura. I will not risk being stranded in another continent, warring on two fronts. Crirada must fall so what we can hold off the Stragmans while we clean up the rest of the world. Do you understand now, General?¡±
¡°Yes, Your Grace. Thank you for enlightening me.¡±
Haidar paid the flattery no mind and continued. ¡°I want our soldiers hammering the walls every day, as much as possible. Wear them down. Grind them to dust until there is nothing left. Every day more Imperial legions arrive, while Eterium and Kutrad have nobody left to send. If I have to pay three of our soldiers for one of theirs, I will. Understood?¡±
The generals chorused their assent.
¡°Excellent. Now, rise.¡±
The generals gratefully stood up, a hint of relief on their faces. Doubtless, they expected Haidar to lay down a severe punishment for their lack of results, but he felt it was better to just give them a warning this time. Only a fool would go mess about with his army¡¯s command structure in the middle of battle. Such methods, while perhaps providing immediate returns, would only hamper progress in the long run, and Haidar always made sure to keep the long run in mind.
¡°I want an update on all the other strategies you each are working on,¡± Haidar said. ¡°General Maldi, have you made any progress tunneling?¡±
¡°No, Your Imperial Majesty,¡± General Maldi replied. ¡°As you know, Supreme General Erizio Astalaria is the greatest earth Observer in the entire world. Try as we might, we have not been able to make a single tunnel beneath the walls without him detecting us and collapsing the tunnel. As long as he remains in the city, I do not expect much success in that endeavor. I would recommend reassigning the earth-moving teams to other tasks.¡±
¡°No, keep them working. Astalaria is the best commander they have. Anything that distracts him and takes him away from the job of command is worth doing.¡± He turned to the next person. ¡°General Arrino, when do you believe that your pet project will arrive?¡±
¡°Not for at least another thirty days, Your Grandness,¡± the man replied reluctantly.
Haidar¡¯s eyebrows shot up at the number. ¡°Thirty days?! Preposterous! You assured me that they would be a mighty force to be reckoned with, but a force that never shows up for battle isn¡¯t worth anything, general.¡±
¡°My apologies. I assure you that you will be delighted by their strength, Your Eminence, but you know how hard even one of them can be to transport. Taking dozens of them through The Divide has proven to be a considerable challenge.¡±
Haidar snorted. ¡°Don¡¯t talk to me about challenges. You have twenty-five days to get them here, or else. Don¡¯t disappoint me more than you already have.¡±
¡°Y-yes, of course, Your Highness. I wouldn¡¯t dare. They will be here, I swear on my family and my name.¡±
¡°Good.¡± Lastly, he turned back to General Inagorri. ¡°General Inagorri, what is the latest from Agent Agharia?¡±
¡°Agent Agharia reports that he still needs more time,¡± responded his commander of clandestine operations.
¡°Still more?! Can anybody get anything done around here without taking a season to do it?!¡± Haidar could feel his ire growing.
The woman coughed. ¡°If I could remind you, Your Greatness, Agent Agharia is a perfectionist who strives to find the optimal solution at all times. That is how he was able to hand us Ofrax on a silver platter. Because we¡¯d tasked him with delivering us Redwater Castle until just last season, he has not had much time to properly prepare Crirada for us. He claims, however, that he is getting closer and that their gates will open for us soon. Given the result of his last operation, I would advise letting him work the way he desires so that we do not hamper his genius.¡±
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
¡°Hmmmmmm...¡± Haidar muttered. ¡°Very well. You are correct, his work in Ofrax was a feat of sheer brilliance. However, make sure to impress upon him the limits of our time window. We can¡¯t have him taking years like he did last time.¡±
¡°Of course.¡±
¡°Excellent. You are all dismissed.¡± The generals bowed as Haidar stood up and walked over towards his tent. The chill air was making his joints ache, but that was nothing a warm bath couldn¡¯t fix.
The tent was one befitting an emperor such as himself, twenty paces high and hundreds of paces in diameter, and contained multiple rooms filled with luxury within. An Emperor had to have standards, no matter where he went. Ordering a hot bath drawn for himself, he sat down on a cushioned chair while Taras left the room to give Haidar some much-needed privacy. He ate a small snack as the bath water was prepared.
A pleased sigh escaped Haidar¡¯s lips as he lowered himself into the tub. The hot water did wonders to soothe his joints and loosen tense muscles. Being Emperor of the great Ubran Empire, he couldn¡¯t show his stress. But that didn¡¯t mean he didn¡¯t suffer it all the same. To say that this conquest was the culmination of generations of planning and work was putting it lightly. If he were to botch the final phase, he would not only go down as the man who failed, but he¡¯d also tarnish the centuries of planning that had gone into this endeavor.
Much work had gone into preparing Nocend for Ubrus¡¯s invasion, with the goal of dividing the nations and preventing them from properly mounting a unified defense. The oldest case was that of Drayhadal. The isolationist elven idiots had agreed to a secret peace treaty centuries ago, with the promise of support in their war with Stragma being all that was needed. Other countries had been much tougher, and Haidar had been forced to modify or even abandon plans as the situation throughout the continent had changed over the years.
One such example was Stragma. He¡¯d sent in his undercover agents over twenty years ago with the goal of fomenting a slave rebellion that would at the least paralyze the country for seasons and at best bring the entire society down around it. However, plans had changed dramatically in the last few seasons, and what was supposed to be a bloody class war had turned into something else, something much harder to predict. Still, the unrest in Stragma had managed to achieve the desired outcome, at least for now, and his people could still make moves to ensure that it continued in the near future.
Otharia had been another example, a gamble that he¡¯d had to arrange quickly. The consensus across the world had been that Otharia was a backwater nation that posed no threat. So little of a threat, in fact, that originally Haidar had not even factored them into his prospective plans. But then something had happened and a strange man of unknown origin had appeared and conquered the country all on his own with an army of terrifying metal beasts. The way he¡¯d appeared out of nowhere and his might suggested to Haidar that this man was somebody like Gabriela, a being from another world entirely.
As soon as word had come of this ¡°Lord Ferros¡± and his ascension to ruler of Otharia, Haidar had thanked his ancestors for their foresight. Specifically, he was grateful for the schemes of Emperor Rakorin, who two hundred years ago had managed to embed several Ubrans inside the xenophobic nation in the hopes of stealing the only thing Otharia had worth stealing: chimirin, and the plant and recipe that made it possible. Such a feat had proved impossible at the time, as Otharia guarded their chimirin with a fierce paranoia. However, that protection had failed during Lord Ferros¡¯s takeover and descendants of the original agents, still loyal to the throne, had managed to steal both a large amount of the drug and some plants and get them out of the country.
While the drug would prove useful in the upcoming days, it had perhaps already provided its greatest boon already: helping convince Lord Ferros to turn against Eterium, and by extension the rest of the continent. The Ubran descendants had reported that a good amount of the drug and plants had already been taken when they¡¯d stolen their own, and it hadn¡¯t taken Haidar long to deduce where the missing goods had gone. Eterium was not only the most powerful nation in Nocend, but it was also the only nation to share a border with Otharia. They had likely coveted the fabled liquid for centuries.
Haidar had ordered three of his best agents in Nocend to assassinate the otherworlder using chimirin and a deadly poison stolen from Eterium four hundred years ago to give the illusion that they were Eterian assassins. If they¡¯d succeeded, then the threat would be removed, but if they¡¯d failed, with luck Lord Ferros would believe the attack to be Eterian in nature. While the man had shown himself to be stronger than even Haidar had thought possible, he¡¯d also shown himself to be a fool and bought Haidar¡¯s ruse entirely. By the time the man realized the truth, it would be too late, and Haidar would be able to bear down upon Otharia with the full brunt of his forces. No matter how terrifying Lord Ferros¡¯s metal beasts were, there was no way they could stand against the might of all of the Empire.
Pulling himself out of the now-lukewarm water, Haidar dried himself with a towel before getting dressed. Normally there would be other people around to dry him and dress him, but even Emperors had to make sacrifices when on the road. Emerging from his tent and calling for a page, he issued one last summons before heading back inside to wait.
Not long after, Chitra Batranala arrived and was announced. The Batranala knelt before him perfectly, as was her way. In many ways, Chitra would have been the perfect wife for him, had he been thirty years younger. Flawless in beauty and action, with a sharp mind and a sharper wit. It was a shame that her status as an orphan prevented her from marrying into the Batra line. Haidar had done the next best thing and made her a Batranala instead, as her talents were far too good to let waste anywhere else.
¡°Rise,¡± he said to the kneeling woman. ¡°I wish to congratulate you on a job well done. I knew that you were the perfect person to manage the Champion, and I must say that you exceeded even my wildest hopes.¡±
¡°I thank you, Your Imperial Majesty,¡± Chitra said with a graceful bow, ¡°but anybody could have done what I did. Gabriela was desperate and we simply provided her a solution to her woes.¡±
¡°Nonsense. You had her wrapped around your finger with your charm. Now rejoice! Your task is over and you will return to the comfort of the palace, away from all of this bloodshed.¡±
The woman frowned slightly. ¡°Then who will care for Gabriela?¡±
¡°Come now, my dear. As much as I wish it were not so, she is dead. If it makes you feel better, I will give her a funeral grander than any Champion has ever had to honor her contributions to the empire.¡±
Chitra immediately knelt down before him. ¡°Your Grace, she is still alive! I know it! Please do not give up on her just yet!¡±
¡°Every healer that has looked at her has been unable to fix her. At this point, it seems obvious that even if she is not dead, as you claim, she is still broken beyond repair and can no longer heal herself the way she used to. She has no use to us any longer.¡±
¡°The healers are wrong! Please, I beg of you! If you give me a chance, I believe I may know how to save her!¡±
Haidar scowled. ¡°Explain.¡±
¡°It¡¯s taken me days of thought, but I believe that I have figured out the problem. It¡¯s not that she can¡¯t heal herself, it¡¯s that she doesn¡¯t want to. Her body may be broken, but it is her spirit where the true damage resides. If I can just reach her, I know I can fix her. I¡¯m sure of it.¡±
"And how would you reach a woman who has not even moved a finger since they found her blood-covered body in Begale?"
¡°There... is a potion, one I found in the Imperial Library several years ago, called the Deadman¡¯s Draught. It is said that it has the capability to bring even the most injured person back for a short time. If I can create this potion, I may be able to bring her back long enough to heal her spirit and then she can do the rest herself.
Haidar scoffed. ¡°If such a miracle potion exists, why have I never heard of it?¡±
¡°Because it only works for a short time and once that time is up the person will die, no matter how healthy they were before taking it. It had little use and so was labeled a curiosity and forgotten. Please, Your Greatness, just give me a chance!¡±
¡°How long will it take to create the potion?¡±
¡°The ingredients are rare and must be prepared in a specific way. It will take time to gather all the required materials. Perhaps twenty days?¡±
Haidar knew that he should squash the whole idea right then and there, but he found himself unable to say so when he stared into the woman¡¯s gorgeous, pleading eyes. What would it hurt to keep the Champion¡¯s body for a little while longer, anyway? It was just one tent in a sea of them, guarded by a few soldiers. He had more soldiers than he knew what to do with.
¡°I will give you this one chance.¡±
¡°Thank you, Your Majesty! I promise you, you won¡¯t regret this.¡±
¡°I¡¯d better not. Now leave before I come back to my senses.¡±
Chitra exited the tent and Haidar leaned back in his chair and chuckled. It wasn¡¯t going to happen, he knew, but if somehow his Champion returned to the fray... Crirada wouldn¡¯t stand a chance.
Chapter 56
As Blake sat in the comfort of his quarters deep inside the belly of his fortress, watching thousands of people try to kill each other, he couldn¡¯t help but feel a twinge of guilt that the first thought to cross his mind was that it was a shame that Scyria didn¡¯t have popcorn. Though the view reminded him of the real-time strategy games he¡¯d played as a younger man, Blake tried to keep in mind that these were real people fighting and dying thousands of feet below his flitter. Still, no matter how much he told himself this, he couldn¡¯t feel the same emotions and weight from a distance that he¡¯d felt witnessing death up close. Perhaps Stalin had been right when he¡¯d said that a single death was a tragedy, while a million deaths was a statistic.
A new haul of small cantacrenyx crystals had arrived from the mines, many of them just the right size to put in new flitters. This meant that he could finally create enough flitters to stretch a chain of them all the way to Crirada without having to sacrifice coverage of Otharia. As long as the flitters in the chain stayed within communication range of each other, Blake could now watch the goings-on in the Eterian capital with just a few second delay as the video feed made its way back down the chain to Otharia. He found said goings-on to be enthralling and set aside important work to watch whenever a battle started, like now.
What must have been several hundred thousand men and women assaulted the city of Crirada from all sides. At first, he¡¯d likened the scene to a colony of ants swarming over the carcass of a dead rat, but that was actually not accurate. It better fit those videos of sperm surrounding an egg, each of them pushing as best they could against the egg¡¯s outer boundary, trying their best to be the first to make it through. So far, in the two days since Blake had started watching, no Ubran troops had been able to effectively pierce the Eterians¡¯ perimeter atop the wall. There had been many close calls, but every time the defenders would rally, sending what he believed to be some of their elite soldiers to stifle the Ubrans¡¯ progress. That, or they would sweep through with their giant death bears.
Blake had never seen anything like these creatures before. It was as if somebody had combined a bear and bit of tiger and enlarged it to be almost twice the size of a rhinoceros. He had no idea where they¡¯d come from, how the insane people riding atop them kept them under control, or how the Eterians had managed to coax them to the top of a gigantic wall. All he could think about was how glad he was that they weren¡¯t native to Otharia. If he¡¯d run into one of them while out in the wild after just arriving here...
Putting aside questions like how the defenders managed to feed such massive animals while under siege, Blake couldn¡¯t deny that these beasts were currently the MVPs of what he¡¯d seen. The Eterians placed them in small groups of two or three around the wall and would hold them back in reserve when the fighting began. When a section of the defense was close to breaking, they¡¯d mobilize the nearest unit of death bears and send them hurtling along the wall, their massive weight and armor allowing them to crash through the enemy marauders like a bowling ball through a mass of pins.
But no matter how powerful these monstrosities were, they couldn¡¯t change the fact that the Eterians were going to lose. After every skirmish, a group of hooded figures in animal masks would appear and take away the corpses of those who had lost their lives. While the ¡°battlefield janitors¡± had been carting away more dead Ubrans than Eterians since Blake¡¯s recon drone had arrived two days ago, each dead Eterian was one less man or woman to hold the wall. Meanwhile, enough Ubran reinforcements to replace their casualties arrived each day. The end result was clear, the question was just how long it would take to the inevitable conclusion.
Unless he stepped in. And he wasn¡¯t gonna.
Blake knew it wasn¡¯t fair that so many people were dying while he just watched. He knew this full well. He just wasn¡¯t in the mood these days to care. Lots of things in the world were unfair, like the fact that the leaders of the Republic of Eterium, who¡¯d sent assassins to kill him, would likely never directly pay for their crime. Well, somebody was going to fucking pay. While he didn¡¯t have the time or resources to hunt down a bunch of cowardly rich fucks he¡¯d never met, who¡¯d likely abandoned everybody else in Crirada and hidden themselves away elsewhere in Eterium, he didn¡¯t have to do so to make them rue the day they¡¯d crossed him. All he had to do was sit and watch as they gnashed their teeth in anguish while the Ubrans stripped them of all their power and glory, knowing that he would have stopped this if only they¡¯d never tried to kill him.
Revenge: often messy, but ever-so-satisfying.
Seeing that this latest skirmish was nearly over, Blake stood up and stretched his stiff shoulders, eliciting a small pop from each of them, before sitting right back down. Time to get back to work.
With just a few clicks, Blake brought up a map of Otharia overlaid with his planned train routes. Finding optimal routes that stayed on ground solid enough to support a train car¡¯s weight while also not cutting directly through a bunch of people¡¯s farmland had proven difficult, but he¡¯d eventually found some routes that he could be happy with. Currently, several teams consisting of robots and Otharians were clearing out the routes and preparing the ground for track-laying.
Blake took pleasure in the existence of these new teams. They were the first major case of Otharians working in concert with his creations, rather than simply doing their best to stay out of the way of his skitters. Of course, he still had to pay those Otharians an exorbitant wage just to get anybody to sign on. He didn¡¯t mind, as they were making a good amount of progress. He could see an overlay showing how much of each route was prepped for the rails. At the moment, most of the routes were somewhere between a third and halfway prepped, with the installation of rails to begin soon.
The Otharians were almost entirely stone Observers whose job was to feed quality stone into a crusher as fast as they could. The resulting gravel would become the ballast upon which the railroad ties and track would rest. The ties themselves were also being created by stone Observers back in Wroetin. Blake had created some molds which they would fill with solid stone, in order to make sure they all conformed to the same size and specifications. Once the blacksmiths were finished with the rails and spikes, and once Blake had gone over all of the rails to fix any problems with their dimensions, they¡¯d be able to start laying the track itself.
The overall design was cruder than Blake wanted to admit, but a bevy of problems had forced him to make a whole slew of compromises just to get the project going. Originally he¡¯d wanted to go all-out and create a series of pseudo-maglev trains running on tracks raised up above the ground. But Otharia, as it currently stood, was unable to provide enough metal for such a system¡ªin fact, just scrounging up enough ore for the rails alone had been a challenge¡ªso he¡¯d scrapped the elevated tracks idea.
Then, after some experimentation, he¡¯d come to the conclusion that while levitating a train car was possible using the techniques he used in his robots, it would require an infeasible quantity of large cantacrenyx crystals to make work. Levitation took a large amount of constant power and only crystals of a certain size would do, but those crystals were uncommon and would be better used in almost any other project. So any dreams of maglev trains were over, and boring old normal rails became the plan.
While Blake didn¡¯t want to admit it, much of what he knew about railroad tracks came from a bunch of Wikipedia articles he¡¯d read one day while bored and curious. Still, he believed he knew enough to figure most of the important details out and work from there. One thing he remembered was that there were two different ways to construct the tracks, the old way that used ballast, or the newer way without ballast that resembled how concrete highways were created. On Earth, the old way was cheaper up front but required significantly more maintenance to keep in working order, while the newer ballast-free method required a steep initial investment to lay the foundation.
Here in Otharia, the situation was a bit different. Theoretically, Observers could lay down a solid foundation of thick contiguous stone from city to city, providing a wonderful foundation on which to lay the tracks. The problem was that the stone would have to be very strong and thick to handle the kind of weight Blake planned for, and creating stone of that sort took too long. He could still remember how long it had taken for the stone he¡¯d been encased in to recede once he¡¯d arrived at the coliseum. Just to make sure, Blake had recently run a test with a few Observers to see how fast they could work and had come to the conclusion that it would take at least several years of non-stop work to complete all of his planned routes. The older ballast method, on the other hand, required much less stone by volume and so would be completed much faster. While Blake knew that this would come back to haunt him later, he wasn¡¯t inclined to wait years just to do it right.
Beyond that, he knew that there were much more sophisticated ways of securing the rails than the old railroad spike, but the blacksmiths here were not sophisticated enough to create anything beyond a spike quickly and repeatedly enough for his liking, so spikes it was. All of these compromises combined to put a massive damper of Blake¡¯s dreams of three-hundred mile per hour bullet trains zipping across Otharia. Maybe one day he¡¯d see his initial ideas come to fruition, but for now, he was stuck in the land of mediocrity and disappointment.
There was another way that could have resolved many of these issues and helped put him closer to his original goals, which was to build using concrete. But he had no intention of using concrete for one simple, highly-embarrassing reason: he didn¡¯t know how to make it. Blake¡¯s ineptitude in the realm of chemistry was his secret shame, one that he¡¯d never cared to rectify while back on Earth. Sure, he remembered some of the basics¡ªnot to mix acids and bases, what salt was, the composition of water, and other elementary knowledge¡ªbut anything more advanced he¡¯d either forgotten from lack of use or never bothered to learn in the first place. Back home, his philosophy had always been that he didn¡¯t need to know what hydraulic fluid was made of or how it was made; all that mattered was that it worked as it was supposed to and that he could get more when he needed it.
But now here he was, stuck in a different world, and all that lack of knowledge was coming back to bite him in the ass. How to make concrete? He knew it was stone mixed with something, but what? What about how to create gunpowder? He remembered that the recipe involved saltpeter... but he didn¡¯t have any idea what saltpeter was. And what about making a bomb? That sure would be useful these days, but the only way he knew to make an explosion right now was to overload a cantacrenyx crystal, a criminal waste of resources. Even the basic elements like helium were out of his reach.
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More than anything, however, Blake wished he knew how to refine oil. Every machine he made had to be designed to compensate for the fact that he didn¡¯t have a reliable source of oil to lubricate his parts. Joints and rotors were the main culprits, requiring convoluted designs that used the pseudo-magnetic properties of his circuitry to create a buffer between the various parts whenever they had to move. While this allowed him to largely eliminate friction even better than with oil, it came at the cost of power. Oil would change that. He believed his skitters, for example, would be able to function identically with only about sixty percent of the cantacrenyx crystals each one currently required if he could just use oil instead. But there was no real way for him to get his hands on the oil he desired.
He was sure that, given time and enough drills, he¡¯d be able to find a pocket of crude oil somewhere beneath Otharia. But then what? He had no idea how to refine it, and nobody else in Otharia knew either. Not for the first time, Blake considered just ordering a search for underground oil deposits and having somebody else figure out what to do with whatever came out later. Actually...
Blake stood up again and put on his armor. By now the flowing metal formed over him almost by instinct, some part in the back of his mind forming the complex circuitry without his full concentration, which was nice. There were times when he felt more at home inside his suit than with it off.
The clanking of his boots against the metal floor echoed through the hallways as he made his way out of his personal quarters and into the public area of the fortress. As usual, the place was a ghost town. A large number of people worked in the fortress now, as he¡¯d long ago given Leo and his ministers license to hire as many subordinates as they deemed necessary to fill out their departments and effectively carry out their respective duties, and yet for some reason he almost never ran across anybody as he walked through the halls. It was as if they could somehow tell he was coming. Idly, he wondered if he should invest in some sort of carpeting.
Leo¡¯s assistants did their best to look busy and avoid his gaze as he entered the room. He ignored them and strode past, opening Leo¡¯s door without knocking¡ªrude, he knew, but he couldn¡¯t help abusing his boss privileges just a little every so often. Not that he expected to catch Leo in the middle of some untoward activity; the man was far too upright for such a thing. As usual, the man was seated in a chair, reading over several books-worth of reports.
¡°Leo,¡± Blake sighed as he took in the sight of his most trusted subordinate, ¡°how many people work under you now?¡±
¡°That depends on how you define working under me,¡± the administrator replied as he looked up from his reading. ¡°Seven directly, with more beneath them, my Lord.¡±
¡°You see, the thing is that I¡¯d thought that the point of getting help was to lessen the burden being placed on you. So why is it that every time I see you, you look even shittier than the time before?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what you mean, Lord Ferros.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t give me that, Leo. You¡¯re thinner than ever and the bags under your eyes are as dark as I¡¯ve ever seen them. When¡¯s the last time you took a day off?¡±
¡°I took two days off just last season,¡± Leo replied after thinking for a moment.
¡°Not good enough. You look like you¡¯re going to fall apart at any moment.¡± Blake clapped his hands together with decisive finality, generating a loud clang that rang through the room. ¡°Alright! I¡¯ve decided. You¡¯re going to take a full week off. Oh right, you guys don¡¯t have weeks here. That means seven days. Seven full days of no work. Just you and a bunch of free time to relax and recover.¡±
¡°My Lord, I assure you that such measures are not necessary-¡±
¡°This is an order, Leo.¡±
¡°...yes, Lord Ferros,¡± the man answered with resignation.
¡°I don¡¯t care if you go on a trip, find a hobby, or just do nothing but eat and sleep, but no work! You¡¯re working yourself into an early grave and I would be a shitty boss if I let that happen. You have people now. They can carry your load for a few days. If they have any questions, they can just ask me for help.¡±
Leo looked like he was about to say something but then thought better of it.
¡°Now why did I come in here? It wasn¡¯t to tell you to take a break...¡± Blake muttered to himself before straightening up in realization. ¡°Oh right! Oil!¡±
¡°Oil?¡±
¡°Yes, oil! I want to start doing some exploratory drilling for underground oil. I¡¯ll build some drilling robots but we¡¯re probably going to need people as well.¡±
¡°Oil, like what comes from animals? How would it be beneath the ground?¡±
¡°Something about decayed plants or something from long ago or something, I forget. The point is, we might have some, and I might be able to use it. If there¡¯s any area where a black substance bubbles up from the ground, that would be the best place to look I think. That or the Beverly Hillbillies lied to me.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve never heard of anything like that myself, but perhaps Minister Tievais would know better than I,¡± Leo replied, rubbing his chin in thought. ¡°I¡¯ll get on it right away, my Lord.¡±
¡°You do that. And then as soon as that¡¯s finished, vacation time. Understood?¡±
¡°As you command,¡± Leo acquiesced.
¡°About time somebody around here listened to me. Anything I might want to know about before I go?¡±
¡°Minister Tievais did report that another shipment of cantacrenyx should be arriving...¡± He glanced out of a nearby window to check the sun. ¡°...any time now. He thought you might want to see these ones. I was going to tell you once they¡¯d arrived.¡±
¡°Another shipment so soon? Awesome! Why did he think I would want to see these ones, though?¡±
¡°He didn¡¯t say.¡±
¡°Alright then, I¡¯m out. Enjoy yourself for once, Leo. Get some rest. It¡¯s not normal to work all day every day.¡±
Leo just sighed even louder as Blake walked out.
Unable to ignore his curiosity, Blake ambled his way down to the fortress¡¯s loading dock, or at least did as close to an approximation of ambling as a paraplegic in a suit of full armor could manage. Today he felt pretty good. His body hadn¡¯t been acting out as much as it had the last few days, he¡¯d managed to catch a bit more rest, and he¡¯d even gotten Leo to finally take a few days off. Things were looking up.
His lucky streak kept going, as he discovered upon arriving at the loading dock that the aforementioned shipment of cantacrenyx crystals had just arrived. As he entered the room, his ears caught the sound of a disagreement going down and he spotted the people he assumed to be the dock workers huddled up, arguing about something. Hearing the clanks of metal on metal as he entered, they turned to look and froze as they saw him. Blake froze as well, but for a different reason: he¡¯d just spotted the shipment.
¡°L-Lord F-Ferros, our apologies,¡± one of the dock workers said. ¡°We were just discussing how to properly unload these-¡±
¡°Leave,¡± Blake said, his mind barely registering the man¡¯s words. ¡°I got this.¡±
The people meekly filed past him, afraid to incur his fabled wrath, but they hadn¡¯t needed to worry. They could have spat in his face and he wouldn¡¯t have even noticed. All he could see were the three enormous crystals that sat amongst the twenty or so normal ones that he¡¯d expected. The sight was enough to nearly bring him to tears.
One of them was the biggest crystal he¡¯d ever seen up to this point. Standing at about four feet tall and seven feet wide, it seemed to thrum with energy, begging for him to fit it a purpose. He knew exactly what to do with it¡ªthe crystal would be perfect for his secret project. He¡¯d been struggling for weeks now to find a way to properly balance the energy flow from the dozens of large crystals already installed in the design. The shifting nature of their workload emptied out some crystals faster than others, both a problem in his design and a simple consequence of the device¡¯s nature. This baby would be able to serve as the regulatory battery, sending extra energy wherever it was needed to maintain stability and relieve the burden of overstressed crystals. It was beautiful.
And yet, the crystal beside it was even more beautiful. Nearly twice the size of the last one, it was taller than he and easily twelve feet wide. As he stared at the massive rock, his mind overflowed with ideas. Could he use it to power a ship or a submarine, and explore the seas? Or why stop there? Maybe he could use it to send things into orbit and start a space program of sorts! Or, if he wanted to be conservative, he could perhaps use it to power an entire city. There was so much he could do with this wondrous thing, he didn¡¯t even know where to start!
But neither of these two wondrous stones could compare to the behemoth that sat behind them. Sitting on a series of wagons that had been halfway disassembled and recombined to properly contain this monster was officially the largest crystal he¡¯d ever imagined. Standing at over twelve feet tall and nearly twenty-six feet long, the enormous, gigantic, monstrous beast of a thing dwarfed the other two massive rocks like a husky dwarfed a chihuahua. Whereas when looking at the second crystal Blake¡¯s mind became swamped with ideas, when he looked at this regal rock his mind went blank. No matter what he thought of, no matter how ambitious the idea, it seemed like an insult to the stone, the equivalent of asking an All-Star baseball player to join your six-year-old child¡¯s tee-ball team. Blake didn¡¯t know what to do with it. He just knew that he was in love.
With just a thought, the tucrenyx floor beside the crystals flowed upwards, absorbing several of the smaller crystals and forming several large heavy-duty skitters specially modified to carry the giant ones. Blake smiled as the one struggled to lift the largest stone. He was going to have to carve a massive wide pathway through the fortress in order to get these beauties into the deepest recesses of his abode, but it was worth it. He¡¯d store the larger two crystals there, deep down under his home where they would be safe until he figured out a use for them. The smile grew wider. He didn¡¯t know what he¡¯d do with them just yet, but he did know that, whatever it ended up being, it would be absolutely glorious.
Chapter 57
A chilling wind atop the wall whipped through Arlette¡¯s hair and made her eyes water. Blinking repeatedly to clear her vision, she sidestepped the swing of an incoming warhammer and rushed forward. The massive weapon continued on its arc towards Kima Escarain, who bent backwards to the point that her body looked like an arch as the hammer¡¯s head sailed over her. Twisting about unnaturally, the small spearwoman thrust up at her opponent from below at an equally awkward, unexpected angle, forcing the hammer-wielder to quickly hop back.
Arlette slipped past the pair. Kima could handle this on her own, Arlette was sure. The small woman wasn¡¯t much on power, but she made up for it by being nearly impossible to hit. It seemed her Feeler ability allowed her to contort herself in ways that no person should be capable of as if her entire body was double-jointed, avoiding hits in ways others couldn¡¯t and striking from strange, unusual directions. Against a slower melee opponent, Arlette didn¡¯t have to worry about her. Kima would handle it just fine. Meanwhile, Arlette would focus on something she herself was good at and take out the Observer in the back.
The Observer, a man of average height and build with short green hair and a scar over one of his eyes, spotted her as she approached, her real body ducking to the right while her illusory clone mirrored her to the left. The man froze for a split second before sending a small blast of flame towards the fake Arlette. The real Arlette smiled. They fell for it so often.
The gout of flame blasted through the fake Arlette¡¯s space as real Arlette flashed forward, a deadly thrust aiming for the Observer¡¯s side, but unexpectedly, she did not feel the telltale resistance of blade on flesh. Instead, the man swayed back, avoiding the incoming sword, and in one smooth motion grabbed her outreached arm on the wrist and pulled her forward. A foot caught her leg and she tumbled to the ground as the sword was wrenched from her hands. The next thing she knew, the man was on top of her as he drew a dagger from beneath his tunic.
What.
Arlette didn¡¯t have time to pull out a knife of her own. She could only reach out with her hand and grab the man¡¯s wrist as best she could, trying with all her strength to stave off a quick and sudden death. Unfortunately, the man was stronger than her and had gravity and leverage on his side. Try as she might, the blade slowly descended towards her chest. Realizing that she couldn¡¯t stop the blade, she quickly shifted tactics and tried to redirect it, desperately she twisted her shoulders while pushing the knife to the side.
Given the sudden lack of resistance, the man drove the dagger deep into Arlette¡¯s left shoulder, sending waves of pain roaring through her body. A furious pained growl escaped her lips as she continued to wrestle with the Observer, using her good right arm to keep the knife buried in her shoulder instead of somewhere much worse. The man snarled and a ball of flame flashed into existence just above her. Muttering several choice expletives, Arlette released her grip on the man¡¯s wrist to backhand him across the face as hard as she could. His head rocked back and the flame disappeared just before it could plummet down and roast her face into cinders.
Arlette hadn¡¯t even been sure that her panicked tactic would even work. Observers needed focus and concentration to manifest their abilities. Break their concentration, be it through pain or some other method, and any phenomenon they¡¯d created that wasn¡¯t fully manifested would disappear. However, a few talented and highly trained Observers were able to maintain their focus through all sorts of situations. Given this man¡¯s reactions to her attack and the scar across his face, she¡¯d thought it possible that he was one of these formidable veterans of battle. It seemed, however, that he was not.
Unfortunately for her, by releasing his hands to strike his head, Arlette had also forfeited her ability to hold off his knife. Another wave of pain washed over her as the knife was pulled from her wound, and the man brought the dagger up for another strike towards her heart. She was out of ideas.
Right as the grimacing Observer was about to send the knife downward once more and plunge it deep into her chest, the blade of a sword erupted from his neck. Blood spurted out onto her face and shoulders and the suddenly dead Observer flopped limply on top of her. She blinked, becoming aware of her surroundings beyond her opponent again. Sergeant Vero Muga stood over her and the body, his face grim. He offered her a hand to pull her up. She took it.
¡°You over-extended yourself again,¡± he chided with a scowl as he helped her to her feet.
¡°Sorry, I- behind you!¡± she cried, frantically pulling out a throwing knife with her good arm. Three Ubrans had managed to take advantage of Sergeant Muga¡¯s distraction to attack his exposed back. Arlette whipped her knife past her commander as he brought his shield around. Her knife struck true, slicing into the throat of the Ubran on the right, while Sergeant Muga¡¯s large shield blocked the spear of the one in the center. That still left the one coming in from the left side, however. Arlette cursed the fact that her left arm had just been injured.
An icicle embedded itself in the remaining Ubran¡¯s side. She glanced in the icicle¡¯s direction, though she knew who she would find before she even looked: Danel Ipizu, the squad¡¯s ice Observer. He didn¡¯t even return her glance, his gaze already sweeping the area for more threats to the squad as Lezo Zambudio and his axe kept him safe.
Like most armies, the Eterians divided their soldiers up into a series of progressively smaller units, with the smallest being a five-person squad. That was because when it came to battles like this where large-scale strategy quickly fell apart and became a chaotic scrum of death, the best method for success was to stick with your squad and utilize teamwork and mismatches to survive and fight towards victory. Usually following the direction of the squad captain, the squad was supposed to balance two somewhat conflicting goals: to work as a cohesive whole, covering each other¡¯s weaknesses and preventing the enemy from isolating and picking off any one member of the squad, while also setting up individual squad members against opponents who they could handle with ease. Finding a balance between the two was not easy, and only squads that could manage it would last.
Arlette was still getting the hang of fighting in a squad like this. She was used to shouldering more of a burden and taking initiative whenever possible. Even now, after so many days of fighting, she still sometimes tried to do too much, which would often lead to her getting separated from the others. She still thought and fought like a mercenary.
The ability of the defenders to fight as organized squads was one of the reasons that they had been able to hold the wall for so long. The Ubrans surely had squads and other organization as well, but they couldn¡¯t maintain such order when trying to summit the wall. Instead, it was just an endless tide of soldiers cresting the walls while the Eterians tried to hold them back, be it by knocking over the ladders, shooting them with projectiles, or dropping nasty surprises on top of the climbing Ubran warriors.
A pair of low, rumbling roars made Arlette¡¯s hair stand on end and she quickly retreated towards the wall¡¯s inner edge to join up with her squad and the other defenders. Together, the Eterians did their best to set up a wall of blades and shields along the inner half of the wall¡¯s walkway as the Ubrans frantically tried to be anywhere but where they were. There was one other large reason that Crirada still held, and that reason was fast approaching.
A jaglioth was a massive bundle of muscle, claws, teeth, and fur that weighed more than twenty men. It wanted to rend your flesh from your bones with claws as long as swords, tear your head off with a single chomp of his massive mouth lined with dagger-like teeth, and then swallow the rest of you with just a few large bites... and that was when it was having a good day. Arlette shuddered reflexively as she remembered the raw fury of that jaglioth mother they¡¯d accidentally angered when escaping Kutrad. If that ravine hadn¡¯t been there, she¡¯d be dead already. That monster of rage incarnate had wanted nothing less than to reduce each and every one of them into bloody smears on the forest floor.
Two of these murder machines were barreling along the outer edge of the wall, doing what they did best. Even after so many days of seeing the Jaglioth Cavalry in action, Arlette couldn¡¯t fathom how the Kutradians had managed to tame them. She kept waiting for one of the jaglioths to buck its riders and chow down on them, but it never happened. Perhaps they were simply content with the wide selection of Ubrans with which to eat and vent their frustrations.
The situation presented the Ubrans on the wall with four options, none of them good. Some of the Ubrans tried to punch a gap into the wall of Eterian soldiers and create a pocket of safety out of the way of the jaglioths¡¯ path. Some ran away from the charging behemoths, while others tried to climb back up atop the outer edge of the wall or even onto ladders still filled with more Ubrans making their way up. The final few, the bold, the brave, the suicidal, tried to fight the beasts head-on.
No matter their choice, things did not go well for the poor trapped Ubrans. Those that threw themselves upon the wall of shields and blades were largely beaten back, while the few with the power and numbers to hollow out a space out of the jaglioth¡¯s way were now surrounded by enemies instead. Those that ran were simply trampled to death, the jaglioths¡¯ long, powerful strides letting them overtake all but the swiftest Feelers. Those that summited the outer edge to avoid the beasts instead had to deal with their riders. Each jaglioth carried between two and three people armed with bows and spears, and they put their weaponry to good use knocking as many Ubrans as they could from the wall as they passed by. Still, some of the Ubrans who took these three options survived. Not many, but a few. The same could not be said for those who chose to stand their ground.
With a panicked scream, an Ubran woman unleashed a fireball twice the size of her head at the oncoming creature¡¯s armored muzzle. Such a blast would have been more than enough to kill a normal soldier, but as the flames exploded against the beast¡¯s metal-clad head, all that she got for her efforts was an enraged bellow. The jaglioth emerged from the blast even madder than before as the flames heated the armor to the point that it was burning through its fur and skin¡ªnothing permanently damaging for an animal that size, but definitely painful enough to piss it off even more. In just a few strides the jaglioth was upon her, picking her up in its mouth by her head and shoulders and whipping her around like a rag doll as it continued its way down the wall, before finally biting through the poor woman¡¯s body and flinging the lower half over the wall.
All in all, it was an effective defensive system. Arlette could not help but be impressed by the tactical brilliance of Supreme General Astalaria¡¯s mind. He and his staff seemed able to get the most out of their limited resources. Unfortunately, brilliance or no, those resources were starting to run a little thin. In the short pause in the fighting as the pair of jaglioths swept by, Arlette glanced around and frowned. There were noticeably fewer defenders around than there had been during the first attack forty-three days ago. Meanwhile, the Ubrans seemed to attack with as many, if not more, people every time. The Eterians could hold out for now, but how much longer would they be able to resist the weight of the enemy bearing down on them?
Arlette¡¯s thoughts went to the wound on her shoulder. Blood was dripping out of it at a steady rate and she couldn¡¯t use her left arm without a spike in pain, but she didn¡¯t have time to properly take care of it. Already more faces were cresting the wall¡¯s outer lip. The defenders surged forward with a battle cry, and Arlette went with them holding her sword just in her right hand.
¡°You actually got hit, huh?¡± remarked Lezo with a sarcastic smirk as the squad descended down the stairs leading to the city. ¡°This is what, just your second wound so far or something?¡±
¡°Not everybody is dumb enough to get stabbed every day like you, Lezo,¡± Kima responded before Arlette could. She twisted back to stare the axe-wielder in the eye. ¡°We do this thing called ¡®dodging¡¯.¡±
¡°Is that what you call it? Because I thought it was called ¡®being scared and weak¡¯.¡± He casually flexed a scar-covered bicep, causing Arlette to groan and roll her eyes. Men.
¡°It¡¯s been a while since our last duel,¡± Kima replied with disdainful amusement. ¡°You seem to have forgotten how much I whipped your ass the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that too.¡±
¡°That was then, this is now,¡± he shot back. ¡°I¡¯ll beat you this time, no problem.¡±
¡°Bring it, meathead.¡±
¡°Both of you knock it off,¡± Sergeant Muga called from up ahead. ¡°I¡¯m too tired for your shit today.¡±
¡°Yes, sir,¡± they both replied, giving each another a glare.
Arlette tried her best not to giggle at the bickering pair. It was plain to see that the two didn¡¯t get along one bit and that their dislike for each other was real. And yet, Arlette was absolutely certain that the two of them fucked. Often. She didn¡¯t have actual proof, but everything she saw pointed to the idea that these two mismatched soldiers were in some sort of physical relationship.
While on one hand she found the idea highly amusing, on the other she couldn¡¯t really understand it. Was it possible to be attracted to somebody you hated? Was it possible to love someone while simultaneously despising them? Arlette had never really had the time to explore the complicated world of romance. She¡¯d been too busy leading a mercenary band through this harsh reality, and before that she¡¯d never been popular. Everybody in town knew that even though her second father and mother had bestowed their family name upon her, she wasn¡¯t really a Demirt. No, she was the weird girl, the one who¡¯d showed up out of nowhere, jumped at sudden noises, and rarely talked to anybody but her second father and mother. Even as she grew up and became a woman, few people had shown interest in her. And then she¡¯d gone off into the world and never looked back.
Arlette shifted herself to the side as she approached the end of the seemingly-endless flights of stairs, making room for the group of Sweepers heading up towards the top of the wall, the sound of their breath echoing inside their animal masks. She didn¡¯t envy their task one bit. There was a lot of blood, gore, and corpses up there. Still, somebody had to clean it up. She was simply glad it wasn¡¯t her.
As the squad reached solid ground once more, Arlette turned to head home, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her.
¡°Going somewhere so soon?¡± Kima asked.
¡°Yeah, I was going to head home.¡±
The smaller woman shook her head. ¡°Not until we¡¯ve wrapped your wound.¡±
¡°I can do it myself,¡± Arlette protested.
¡°With one hand? I don¡¯t think so. Come on, let¡¯s not fall behind.¡±
Arlette frowned as small woman dragged her towards an abandoned tavern a little ways away from the wall. The squad, along with several other units, had taken to unwinding there after battles. Arlette tried to avoid joining them. While she had nothing against most of her squadmates, she didn¡¯t want to get too attached to any of them. Nothing good would come of that. Then, of course, there was Danel. The man had stayed true to his word thus far and told nobody about her true identity. Still, she didn¡¯t trust him one bit. Even if he was just a ¡°normal¡± man who¡¯d figured out who she was all on his own, nobody that smart should be easily trusted.
Kima sat Arlette down on a bench inside the tavern and pulled out some bandages they¡¯d stored there. Meanwhile, the others plopped down elsewhere in the large room and began chatting with another squad that was already present.
¡°So I heard that illusions take lots of focus to get right,¡± Kima said as she began wrapping a layer of bandages around Arlette¡¯s arm. ¡°My ma said that¡¯s why Manys are the way they are, because they¡¯re busy focusing on the illusion. So how come you can do the stuff you do, running around with a fake copy and stuff while fighting? I¡¯ve never seen anything like it before.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not that special,¡± Arlette answered. She shrugged nonchalantly, a mistake which sent a stab of pain through her shoulder.
¡°Sure it is. Illusion Observers are very rare, and they almost never see an actual battlefield. But you¡¯re dancing through the chaos like it¡¯s as easy as breathing. What makes you so different?¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t respond. She hated thinking about that time in her life.
¡°Come on, don¡¯t be like that,¡± Kima prodded. ¡°I¡¯m curious. We all are.¡±
¡°Luck. Luck and training. Lots, and lots, and lots of training.¡±
¡°That¡¯s all? Just training and good luck, huh?¡±
¡°No, not good luck. The opposite. Look, I don¡¯t want to talk about it. There¡¯s... not a lot of happy memories.¡±
¡°Alright, alright. Sorry, I don¡¯t mean to pry and all. It¡¯s just that I think it¡¯s really neat, what you do. Even Lezo was impressed, though he only says so when you¡¯re not around.¡±
¡°Thanks, I guess.¡±
Kima finished wrapping up the wound and Arlette stood up. ¡°I think I¡¯m going to head home now. Thanks for the help.¡±
¡°You sure you don¡¯t want to stick around a bit, get to know everybody a little better?¡±
¡°Sorry, I have... things to do.¡± She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. It was obvious that Kima wanted her to bond with everybody a bit, but as awkward as what she¡¯d just said sounded, it was actually true. She needed to get home and eat before it got too late, because her night was going to be very, very busy.
The first thing Arlette heard when she entered her home was a horrified gasp, followed by an ¡°OHMYGODAREYOUALRIGHT?!¡± as Sofie rushed over to her side. The Earthling hovered around her wound, staring at it with grave concern but afraid to touch it.
¡°It¡¯s fine, it¡¯s fine,¡± Arlette grumpily said as she pushed her way into the house and made her way towards the hearth. Vegetable stew, along with a bit of rock-hard bread. Again. Not that she was shocked; the city was practically out of meat now, to the point where getting some for themselves was impossible.
¡°What happened?¡±
¡°I underestimated an opponent. I¡¯m lucky, really. I should have died.¡±
¡°He must have been strong to stab right through your armor like that.¡±
¡°What? Didn¡¯t you know my armor was destroyed on the first day? You haven¡¯t seen me wear it since.¡±
¡°Oh, I thought you were just keeping it somewhere by the wall because it was easier or something. I guess that sounds dumb when I say it out loud,¡± Sofie admitted sheepishly. "Why not scavenge a replacement from somebody else who... isn''t... alive anymore?"
"I''ve tried a bit, just haven''t found anything worth taking that also fit me. I haven''t had the time to really look harder with all the searching I''ve been doing at night."
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¡°Ugh... I get so anxious whenever you¡¯re fighting. I get so worried that one of these days you¡¯re not going to come back, and now that I know you don¡¯t have your armor that makes it even worse.¡±
¡°That¡¯s life,¡± Arlette said. ¡°Get used to it.¡±
Sofie grumbled but didn¡¯t say anything more for a little while.
¡°Where¡¯s Pari?¡± Arlette asked after a bit.
¡°She was getting grumpy so I had her take a nap. She¡¯s been feeling really confined recently and it¡¯s coming out in bad ways.¡±
Arlette chuckled. ¡°Are you sure that¡¯s not just her growing up? I mean she has to be what, ten years old by now? Or at least nine, right? She¡¯s starting to grow.¡±
¡°I know, and it bothers me that she isn¡¯t eating enough. It¡¯s going to stunt her growth.¡±
¡°Well at least that means we don¡¯t need to find her new clothes very soon,¡± Arlette said with a wry grin.
Sofie shot her a glare before looking away with a resigned look on her face. ¡°I guess you¡¯re right.¡±
¡°Speaking of which, does that arm sleeve she won¡¯t ever take off still fit? It was pretty tight when we first found her. You¡¯d think that by now it would be too constricting for her.¡±
The arm sleeve in question was a thin sheath that covered the beastgirl¡¯s left forearm. Made of some sort of red organic material with a single dark stone in the center, the band had always been just one more mystery concerning the precocious child.
¡°Yeah, it¡¯s weird,¡± Sofie agreed. ¡°It seems to stretch so that it always fits her arm snugly but not too tight. It would be nice if all clothes were like that.¡±
¡°Did you ever get her to tell you where she got that thing? I¡¯ve never seen anything like it.¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes. ¡°Guess.¡±
¡°Good ol¡¯ granddad?¡±
¡°Yyyyyup.¡±
¡°Of course. I don¡¯t know what I expected.¡±
¡°Mmm!¡± Sofie hummed, straightening up suddenly. ¡°That reminds me! When Pari and I went to get food this morning, Pari ran off into an alley again and we stumbled on these people who were acting all fishy, like they didn¡¯t want us seeing what they were up to.¡±
¡°Were they building something?¡±
¡°Yeah! They chased us off before we could see what, though. I checked back later and I couldn¡¯t find anything out of the ordinary. How¡¯d you know?¡±
Arlette¡¯s mouth widened into a fierce, predatory grin. ¡°Because I¡¯ve been spying on them the last few nights. It¡¯s him. I¡¯m sure of it.¡±
¡°Woah, woah, hold up. You think they¡¯re part of Sebastian¡¯s group?¡±
¡°Yes. Be sure to stay away from them.¡±
Sofie leaned back, arms crossed and a skeptical look in her eyes. ¡°You said the same thing last time. And the time before that.¡±
¡°No, no, I said that I thought it was them before. This time I¡¯m sure of it. It¡¯s Sebastian. It has to be.¡± She leaned forward, Sofie¡¯s unconvinced look pushing her onward. ¡°Listen. There have been several groups of mercenaries building hidden compartments all across the working quarter. I¡¯ve been looking into them since I found them a few days ago. Now you have to admit that what they¡¯re doing is suspicious no matter how you look at it.¡±
¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll give you that. Doesn¡¯t mean that it¡¯s him, though.¡±
¡°But what about this? The mercenaries belong to a band called the Band of the Silent Tower. They¡¯ve only existed for three years, but even in so little time they¡¯ve built up a reputation of stunning victories and brilliant schemes. Not only that, the man leading them, Haci Guven, is the same height and build as Sebastian. But most of all, he never takes off his armor or helmet.¡±
Sofie arched an eyebrow but didn¡¯t say anything.
¡°Oh come on! A group that comes out of nowhere to sudden unnatural success, committing suspicious clandestine acts! A leader with Sebastian¡¯s body who never shows his face! It¡¯s him! It has to be!¡±
¡°Alright, let¡¯s say you¡¯re actually on to something here and it¡¯s him. What are you going to do about it?¡±
¡°It¡¯s simple. I¡¯m going to kill him.¡±
¡°Th-that¡¯s it? You¡¯re not going to report him to the Eterians or something?¡±
¡°Why would they believe me? I¡¯m a nobody. And even more, they might tip him off. No, the best, most sure way to stop him is just to kill him. I can explain it all to the authorities afterwards.¡±
¡°It still seems like a bit much. Why not find something a little more definite? All you have right now is circumstantial evidence.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want to risk the chance that he¡¯ll act before I can find absolute proof. If he can execute his plan, there will be no hope for this city. I have to strike now.¡±
¡°Even with a hurt arm? Can you even win against him like that?¡±
Arlette held up her left arm and flexed it a bit, trying to keep the pain that shot through her shoulder from reaching her face. Though the wound would be all better within just a few days, it still had just begun to heal. ¡°It¡¯s already a bit better, see? I¡¯ll be striking from the shadows so it will be fine.¡±
¡°You¡¯re making a mistake. You don¡¯t even know that he¡¯s here.¡±
¡°Yes, I do!¡± Arlette stood up in a huff. ¡°You saw him! That rat bastard is alive and there¡¯s nowhere else he¡¯d be but here! I¡¯m not going to sit around and let him do to this place what he did to my home! Do you hear me?! I don¡¯t care if it doesn¡¯t meet your lofty standards! Why should I listen to you, anyway?! You, who¡¯s never fought for anything in your blasted life! You going to try and stop me?¡±
A painful silence settled over the two of them as Arlette realized what she¡¯d just said. Sofie slowly stood up and turned towards the stairs. ¡°I¡¯m going to go check on Pari,¡± she said softly.
¡°Sofie, look, I¡¯m-¡±
¡°You¡¯re going to do whatever it is you do, and you¡¯re right. I can¡¯t stop you. I just hope you¡¯re not about to do something you can¡¯t take back.¡± She ascended the stairs, leaving Arlette alone to stew in her anger and regret.
Arlette crouched outside the repurposed inn that served as the Band of the Silent Tower¡¯s headquarters, making herself as small as possible to keep her body within the confines of the illusory barrel she¡¯d created a few paces from their front door. Getting close to where they were staying hadn¡¯t been much of a challenge, which she¡¯d found odd at first. Sebastian was always meticulous and always made sure to cover all the details, so she¡¯d been expecting a tight perimeter around the place. But on second thought, if he and his minions were posing as a normal mercenary group then they¡¯d be acting the part as well, which meant no real guards and lots of drunken noise from within. This was, after all, friendly territory. Now all she had to do was wait.
As much as she didn¡¯t want to admit it, Arlette couldn¡¯t deny that Sofie had a point. Arlette had only seen the leader of the mercenary band from afar. So she¡¯d decided to gather a little bit more information by getting near and inspecting him up close before making any rash decisions. It wouldn¡¯t cost her anything, and as soon as she was sure, she would strike. Straining her hearing, she tried to make out some of the conversations inside.
¡°-tell ya, she¡¯s into me. I could see how she was-¡±
¡°-saying that I¡¯m getting tired of it. I want meat! I can¡¯t wait until we¡¯re back in-¡±
¡°-the preparations are nearly done. They¡¯re never going to see it coming. It¡¯ll be perfect, I assure you.¡±
Arlette¡¯s blood ran cold as the significance of that last conversation hit her. She¡¯d been right! There was something going on! He had to be in that building!
Just as she was about to creep closer, a group of ten or so mercenaries exited the inn. Arlette froze, her eyes locked on to one specific man. He stood tall, with broad shoulders and a full, strong body, all of which was covered in armor, including his head. His helmet was the same one that she¡¯d seen from afar, complete with a face mask that looked like it could be rotated upwards to reveal the face if needed. Now that she could see him up close, she knew it was him. This wasn¡¯t like those other two mercenaries. The way he walked, the way he stood, it was just like she remembered. She grinned. Even under all that metal, Sebastian couldn¡¯t hide from her. Now she just had to wait for the right time to act.
The group walked towards her as several members talked about something involving somebody she didn¡¯t know, laughing as if drunk. Arlette wasn¡¯t going to be fooled. Not this time. Then they stopped right beside her. She could hardly believe her luck. The man who embodied all her hatred, her fear, and her pain stood just a pace away from her. Slowly and silently she drew out a dagger and started looking about his armor for the best place to strike. Now crouching on the balls of her feet, her body ready to pounce, she readied herself to avenge her home, her family, her country, her everything.
Then, without warning, Sebastian leaned against the barrel... and fell right through.
Arlette was nearly as caught off guard as Sebastian was. Quickly she sprang up as the man fell on top of her, barely managing to avoid being pinned underneath him. Instead, all she managed to do was catch him wrapping her free left arm around his neck, ignoring the screaming agony coming from her shoulder as she leveraged it to keep him off balance but still upright. A moment ago she¡¯d been planning on stabbing him in the armpit where there was a seam in his armor, but with their new positions that was no longer possible, so she went for Plan B: stab him in the face. A lot.
¡°You should have killed me when you had the chance!¡± she hissed as she flipped up the face mask. The sight beneath made her pause. Burn scars¡ªlots of them, all over the man¡¯s face¡ªand a lock of curly pink hair.
Sebastian didn¡¯t have pink hair.
Arlette¡¯s mind slowed to a crawl when presented this new information, her dagger hovering just a finger¡¯s width from the man¡¯s face. She¡¯d been so sure this time, so certain in her conclusions, but she¡¯d been wrong. Horribly, terribly wrong. What if she was wrong about all of it? What if Sebastian wasn¡¯t even here? What if she¡¯d been-
A metal elbow struck her in the side of her head, and everything went dark.
Cold water smacked her in the face, dragging her from the darkness with a gasp. Reflexively she tried to move and found that she could not. Her shoulder hurt, and her head hurt even more. What was going on?
Just as she asked herself that question, the memory of her last waking moments came back to her and she groaned. She¡¯d been a fool. A complete and total fool. And now she was about to pay the price.
She sat in a solid wooden chair, her hands bound by tucrenyx manacles to the back of the chair while more shackles locked her legs and ankles to the chair¡¯s legs. The light of day lit room, the sun¡¯s morning rays flooding in through a nearby window. She must have been out all night. She could see the wall far off in the distance, meaning that she was almost definitely somewhere in the citadel, the heart of the city.
Some part of her in the back of her mind remarked that she¡¯d missed the start of her shift.
¡°Finally back with us, Demirt?¡± A voice drew Arlette¡¯s attention back to the room, and to the people in it. Arlette looked up and saw that there were multiple other people there, including two that she recognized. One was the man she¡¯d almost killed, his visor back down over his face. The other was the speaker, Supreme General Erizio Astalaria himself.
Arlette groaned inside her head when she realized he was there. Erizio Astalaria was the last person in Crirada she''d wanted to meet¡ªbrilliant and powerful, but as past experience had made clear to her, also a total asshole. The general stepped forward and stood directly in front of her, looking down at her with his trademark scowl and what seemed to be... triumph? ¡°I must admit, it feels good to be proven right, even all these years later.¡±
¡°I¡¯m still not an Ubran, dipshit,¡± Arlette spat back. ¡°Twenty years and you still won¡¯t admit you were wrong.¡±
With one swift, fluid motion, Erizio Astalaria brought his hand around from behind his back and smacked her hard across the face. ¡°That¡¯s Supreme General Dipshit to you.¡±
¡°Do you two know each other or something?¡± the masked mercenary leader asked. Arlette winced at his voice. It was low, even lower than Sebastian¡¯s and lacked his smoothness. If he¡¯d only spoken in front of her last night, she would never have made such a mistake. But he hadn¡¯t, and now here she was.
¡°Arlette and I have a small bit of history together, you might say,¡± the general replied, his voice taking on an almost professorial quality as he began to recite. ¡°Years ago, during the Ubran¡¯s conquest of Ofrax, I was serving as a commander at Redwater Castle. Needless to say, the news of the Ubran invasion had the entire fortress on maximum alert. Then, just a few days later, a single solitary girl appeared, climbing the mountain path to the fortress while wearing a gown, of all things. Hardly the proper attire in which to climb through the snow that surrounds the fortress. I happened to be in command of the wall at that time. Though the outfit was filthy and tattered, I recognized it as the colors of Ofrax¡¯s royal family.¡±
¡°Your men shot arrows at me,¡± Arlette interjected, sourly.
¡°The child had long blond hair, and a delicate face,¡± Erizio continued, ignoring Arlette¡¯s comment. ¡°To anybody familiar with the Kingdom of Ofrax, such as I, it was obvious from first glance that this was their nation¡¯s princess, the most well-loved and admired member of the entire royal family. Somehow, I surmised, she must have escaped the invasion and made her way here. The lack of attendants and the state of her clothes said much about the hardships of her flight. Of course, I immediately ordered that the princess be let in. But before my men could exit the gates and escort her the last few paces, she collapsed. It was then that I saw a very curious thing. The color of her hair, the shade of her skin, the shape of her face, all of it changed. That was when I realized that this was no princess. This was an Ubran trick.¡±
Arlette sighed. ¡°Here we go again,¡± she mumbled.
¡°As you surely know by now, the Ubrans are a duplicitous bunch. During the time I was stationed at the fortress, they tried to sneak agents by us on many occasions, usually posing as merchants from Ofrax or the Droajan Confederation. They wanted nothing more than to worm their way into Nocend and undermine our great nations. This time, it was plain as day that they had spotted an opportunity to sneak in a false princess. As perhaps the last living member of the Ofrax royal line, this fake would have access to far more influence and power than a mere merchant. Of course, things had obviously not gone entirely to plan. Likely the Ubrans had underestimated the toll climbing the path to Redwater Castle takes on everybody, and so their initial plot failed.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not what happened.¡±
¡°When the girl woke up, she barely spoke and acted terrified of everybody. All anybody could manage to get out of her was a claim that she was being chased by somebody. She refused to say why she was wearing the princess¡¯s clothes or how she had acquired them. This was obviously a ploy to save herself. By playing the weak, frightened little child, she could engender sympathy and acceptance.¡±
¡°I was eight!¡±
¡°I recommended that the girl be executed as an Ubran spy, but my superiors lacked my insight. They did not have it in them to kill a child. Instead, a soldier offered to take the girl in. He and his wife had been trying to have a child for over a decade with no success and he was desperate.¡±
¡°You told him not to adopt me.¡±
¡°The others mocked me, said I was paranoid. But time, as always, has shown me to be correct. My suspicions were confirmed the moment you destroyed Zrukhora and-¡±
¡°Oh, shut the fuck up!¡± Arlette hollered, finally cutting off the insufferable man¡¯s gloating. ¡°You¡¯ve been clinging to this shit for years! I¡¯m not an Ubran! I didn¡¯t destroy Zrukhora! I¡¯m on your side, jackass! Get it through your fucking head!¡±
The general struck her across the face a second time. Her mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. ¡°It seems you haven¡¯t realized your situation. You do not get to make demands, only answer my questions. If I am satisfied, you may even keep your life.¡±
Arlette spat the blood in her mouth onto the floor and glared furiously at the man in front of her. As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She had no leverage here. Even if she were to lie, it would likely not accomplish anything other than shortening what little remained of her life. Not that she expected the man to change his mind, but at least she wouldn¡¯t die a liar and a fraud. ¡°Ask then,¡± she said reluctantly.
¡°What the are Ubrans¡¯ plans to sabotage us?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, I¡¯m not an Ubran.¡±
A third strike across the mouth. Arlette felt one of her canines become loose and grimaced.
¡°Lies. If you are not Ubran, then why are you even here? You have no obligation towards us, and yet you were posing as a guard by a different name even before the Ubran invasion began.¡±
¡°I¡¯m here to kill somebody. His name is Sebastian Cunningham.¡±
Erizio chuckled derisively. ¡°Sebastian? The same man you claimed was chasing you as a child?¡±
¡°Yes! He¡¯s the one you should be concerned about. He is everything that you believe me to be. I need to kill him no matter what.¡±
¡°And what makes you so sure that he¡¯s here?¡±
¡°Because as much as you¡¯re wrong about me, you¡¯re right about the Ubrans. They¡¯re schemers. They always have a backup plan. They¡¯ve had so much time to plan for this, after all. Let me ask you this: what happened to the ¡®monster¡¯ that so easily conquered all of Gustil?¡±
¡°My best two generals sacrificed their lives to slay her so that we might stand a chance here,¡± Erizio said with a frown. ¡°It seems that they succeeded.¡±
¡°So that person was their first plan, but the Ubrans are not stupid. They would never put all of their hopes on a single person. So they would obviously have a backup plan. That plan is Sebastian. He¡¯s the man who brought down all of Ofrax in a single day, and he¡¯ll do it again if you don¡¯t stop him. I was there. I saw it firsthand.¡±
¡°As the princess?¡± came the mocking jab.
¡°Yes.¡±
The general paused for a second, her answer putting him off balance. ¡°So you now claim to be the princess after all? Surely you can¡¯t expect me to believe that you are of royal blood. You don¡¯t have the right features to even pretend to be their child.¡±
¡°I am not saying that I am the daughter of the King and Queen of Ofrax. What I am saying is that I was the princess of Ofrax. There is a difference.¡± Seeing the utter incomprehension on his face, she sighed. It looked like she¡¯d have to explain everything from the beginning. ¡°Sit down. What I am about to tell you I have never told anybody before, and it¡¯s going to take a little while.¡±
Arlette leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes. Slowly, almost hesitantly, she thought back to a period of her life that she¡¯d always tried to forget, the part of her life she always tried to pretend had never happened.
¡°What I¡¯m about to tell you was the greatest secret of Ofrax¡¯s royal family¡ªno, the greatest secret in the entire nation..."
Chapter 58
¡°Oh, hello Marcus! Are you here for your treat?¡± Mrs. Araun asked as Arlette walked into the baker¡¯s tiny store. Every year, the old woman would celebrate the Festival of the Seven Saviors by making honey buds¡ªa special sweet roll shaped like a flower bud just starting to bloom and covered in honey¡ªand giving one for free to every child in the village.
¡°Yes please!¡± Arlette said, her voice coming out sounding like that of a young boy instead of a young girl. She did her best to tamp down her giddiness, her mouth watering at the thought of two honey buds in a single day. She wanted to cackle at her own brilliance.
Honey buds were without a doubt the most delicious food the children ever got to eat, and every child in Nordhom wished that they weren¡¯t limited to only one. Well now Arlette had a way to get more. She¡¯d already picked up her own honey bud a little while ago and scarfed it down. Now, under the guise of ¡°Marcus¡±, she was about to get her second.
Marcus was a boy who, like her, was five years of age. He lived in a small house near the center of the village, as opposed to her family¡¯s cottage on the outskirts, and had a similar size as she did. That meant that he was the perfect person to be the subject of her new technique, the illusion disguise! Mwahaha! Her disguise was perfect! The honey bud would be hers!
Even though she¡¯d been able to make illusions for almost a year now, it had taken her this long to realize that she could be inside the illusions she created. That meant that she could cloak herself in an illusion to hide or pretend to be somebody else! Hiding inside a fake rock or something was easy because it never moved. A disguise, however, was a different story. It wasn¡¯t as simple as just realizing she could do it; actually creating the disguise, making it look and sound real, and keeping it in sync with her real body turned out to be incredibly difficult. Even after days of practicing with Peko out in the woods, she had to maintain her focus on it at all times while avoiding any overly-complex movements and she could only keep it up for a little while before exhausting herself. Just long enough to, say, pretend to be another kid and get another of these wondrous treats.
¡°Here you go, dearie,¡± the elderly woman said, handing her the precious dessert. ¡°Be careful, it¡¯s hot.¡±
Arlette eagerly grasped the honey bud, wincing slightly at its heat and redoubling her focus so as not to drop the disguise from the slight pain coming from her fingertips. A little pain was worth it for a second honey bud. ¡°Thank you very m-¡±
¡°Missus Araun, could I have a honey... huh?¡± a familiar voice said behind her. Arlette turned around and froze in fear. Standing behind her was the real Marcus, looking very confused to find that he was already here. The two stood stiff and stared at each other for a moment as Arlette desperately tried to think of a way out of this predicament.
¡°Arlette Faredin, is that you?¡± Mrs. Araun asked accusingly.
¡°Eep!¡± Arlette jumped at the sound of scorn and displeasure in the old woman¡¯s voice. Time to get out of there! Quickly Arlette sprinted past the still-confused Marcus and out the door, her disguise falling away as she ran.
¡°Arlette, get back here right now, you little scoundrel!¡± the old woman hollered from the bakery doorway.
Arlette ignored her and kept running. She ducked into a nearby alley where her friend was hiding.
¡°You got a honey bud, so it looks like your plan worked,¡± Peko observed as he quickly caught up with her fleeing form. ¡°So why is she yelling at you?¡±
¡°Because Marcus is a dumb idiot!¡± Arlette replied between huffs.
Together, the pair ran into the woods outside the town until the small clump of buildings vanished behind the tree line and Arlette felt safe enough to stop. Quickly she began stuffing pieces of the treat into her mouth like a rodent, warily glancing back towards the village in search of pursuers.
¡°Relax,¡± Peko said as he leaned against a tree, calm as could be. His dark brown hair blended in with the tree bark. ¡°She¡¯s not going to chase after you. She¡¯s way too old for that.¡±
¡°Really?¡± Arlette brightened up considerably at the news.
¡°After all, it would be much easier for her to just go tell your mother.¡±
Arlette nearly choked on her prize. ¡°Y-you really think she¡¯d do that?¡± she asked once her windpipe was clear of chewed honey bud.
¡°Probably. She didn¡¯t sound happy at all.¡±
This was getting worse and worse. Arlette had no problem running away from somebody like Mrs. Araun, but her mother was a Feeler and a very fast one at that. Arlette could never outrun her, no matter how hard she tried, and she''d tried plenty.
¡°Do you want any?¡± she asked the boy beside her, holding up the half-eaten treat.
¡°Come on, Arlette, you know I¡¯m not real. How would I even eat it?¡± To demonstrate, he waved his hand through the dessert. It passed through both Arlette¡¯s hand and the honey bud, completely immaterial. The boy rolled his eyes. ¡°You just want me to be guilty too because your mom goes easier on you if she thinks it¡¯s my fault.¡±
Arlette flinched. ¡°How¡¯d you know?!¡±
¡°I¡¯m part of you! How wouldn¡¯t I know?!¡± her imaginary friend replied with an annoyed huff.
¡°You¡¯re just jealous you can¡¯t eat a honey bud,¡± Arlette replied.
¡°Is it so good that it¡¯s worth getting in trouble for?¡±
Arlette thought about it for a moment, before taking another bite. The sweet glaze mixed in her mouth with the crispy crust and the delectably soft center to create a pure sugary joy that danced across her tongue. ¡°Uh huh!¡± she replied.
Arlette crept towards the cottage with her heart pounding in her chest, her eyes darting back and forth in search of angry adults. Strangely, none could be found. As she closed in on the cabin, she picked up the sound of somebody inside humming a jaunty tune. She recognized the voice as that of her mother and her spirits brightened. Her mother couldn¡¯t be too mad if she was singing like that.
¡°Oh, hello you two,¡± her mother said with a smile as Arlette and Peko entered the small house. ¡°Sit down, it¡¯s time for dinner.¡±
Arlette and Peko exchanged curious glances before sitting down around the small table. Arlette¡¯s mother had been very off-put by Peko¡¯s presence back when he¡¯d first started to appear, but more recently she¡¯d started to simply treat him as a member of the family. As such, he had to sit with the others at the table even though he couldn¡¯t eat and didn¡¯t need to.
Something was strange about this. Try as she might, Arlette couldn¡¯t smell anything coming from the kitchen, nor could she hear the sizzling of meat or the banging of pots. Instead, her mother simply came out of the kitchen carrying two large baskets full of something wrapped in cloth, set them on the table, and unwrapped one.
Arlette gasped. Honey buds! More than a dozen of them! They were having these for dinner? It was a dream come true!
¡°I thought it would be nice to eat something special for once. I know I¡¯m not the best cook,¡± her mother said, sitting down across the table and taking one from the basket. She bit down and Arlette could hear the crunch as she bit through the hard, crispy exterior. ¡°Mmmmm! So good! Go on, dig in!¡±
¡°Is this really what you''re having for dinner?¡± Peko asked, his voice filled with doubt.
¡°Peko you stay out of this. These are for Arlette,¡± her mom replied.
Well, even if Peko was jealous, there was no way she was going to turn down more honey buds! Taking one from the basket, she tucked in, enjoying her fortuitous third piece of nirvana in a single year.
Ten honey buds later, Arlette was stuffed. She¡¯d never had such a delicious meal before and hadn¡¯t been able to stop stuffing the desserts down her throat. She leaned back with a groan and a smile of contentment on her face.
¡°Did you like them?¡± her mother asked. Arlette nodded vigorously. Her mother smiled and unwrapped the second basket, revealing another basket of honey buds. ¡°Well, good, because we have so many more to finish.¡±
Arlette stared at the mound of large pastries, each one bigger than an adult¡¯s fist, and frowned as she felt her stomach bloating. ¡°I¡¯m full.¡±
¡°What have I told you about wasting food?¡± Arlette¡¯s mother replied. ¡°Eat it.¡±
¡°But I can¡¯t eat anymore!¡± Arlette whined.
¡°But I thought these were your favorite food?¡± her mother asked. ¡°They must be if you¡¯re willing to steal them.¡±
¡°Urk!¡± It had all been a trap! Arlette had never known adults could be so tricky! She turned to Peko for assistance, but he''d vanished. Traitor!
¡°Keep. Eating.¡± Her mother¡¯s tone held no room for compromise. Arlette grumbled as she picked up one of the many remaining honey buds and slowly bit into it. The sweetness didn¡¯t hold quite the same appeal as it had just a few rolls ago...
Half an hour later, Arlette was vomiting profusely outside the cottage¡¯s front door, tears falling from her face. This was the worst. She never wanted to see another honey bud again!
¡°Only six more to go,¡± her mother stated from behind her. Still her voice held no sympathy for Arlette and her poor stomach.
¡°I can¡¯t!¡± Arlette cried out. She couldn¡¯t take this anymore. ¡°Please, I¡¯m sorry! I won¡¯t do it again, I promise!¡±
¡°You promise? Like how you promised your father that you would be a good girl? Like how you promised him that you¡¯d care for the people of this village and treat them well? Why should your promises mean anything to me, when you¡¯re willing to break your word and spit on your own father¡¯s spirit just for a measly little treat? He sacrificed everything for you and this is how you remember him?!¡±
¡°WAAAAHHHHHHH!¡± The floodgates opened and Arlette began to bawl. Her mother was right, she¡¯d broken her final promise to her father. She¡¯d been so stupid! ¡°I¡¯m sorry! I¡¯m sorry! I¡¯m sorry!¡± she wailed.
To Arlette¡¯s surprise, her mother bent down and hugged Arlette tight. They were both crying now. Arlette buried her face into her mother¡¯s embrace, covering the woman¡¯s chest with mucus and tears.
Eventually the crying settled down into intermittent sobs and sniffles as the mother and daughter continued holding each other. Even a year later, the pain still ripped at them both.
¡°I miss Daddy,¡± Arlette choked out.
¡°Me too, dear, me too,¡± her mother replied. ¡°But don¡¯t worry, he will always be here in spirit, protecting us from evil. He¡¯s never truly gone.¡±
¡°But he¡¯s not going to love me now, because I broke my promise!¡± Arlette sobbed.
¡°Oh, baby, he will always love you,¡± came the reply.
¡°Really? He¡¯s not angry at me?¡±
¡°He¡¯s not angry, he¡¯s just very disappointed in you. So am I. You made us both very sad and disappointed today.¡±
Arlette had been afraid that her mother would be angry and yell at her for her trick. For some reason, this felt much worse. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said for the twentieth time. This time, however, she truly meant it in every way. ¡°I¡¯ll be a good girl. I promise.¡±
¡°Hey, Arlette!¡± Arlette looked up from the lizards she was poking with a stick to see one of the village kids running toward her. The kid pulled up wheezing and glanced at Peko for a moment before gasping out, ¡°Your mom said to come get you right away. She said it¡¯s very important.¡±
Arlette ran back towards her house, dodging roots and branches as she went. As she exited the tree line, she swerved right to avoid running into the fence that was built around the blighted land. Nothing grew in that area even now. She¡¯d heard a grown-up say that it might be another three or four years before that place had recovered and they¡¯d be able to rebuild the part of the village that had vanished that day.
Continuing on through the rest of Nordhom, Peko right behind her, she ran all the way to her home without stopping. Arlette almost couldn¡¯t contain her excitement. Her mother didn¡¯t use words like ¡°important¡± often, so this had to be something special.
Instead, she found her mother speaking with a man who looked to be about twenty years old. With a chiseled face, blond hair, blue eyes, and a fancy regal uniform, Arlette knew as soon as she saw him what he was: a knight. The Royal Order of Knights were Ofrax¡¯s greatest heroes, valiant warriors and great people all. Arlette¡¯s eyes lit up at the sight. She¡¯d never seen a knight in the flesh before, only on a Many¡¯s broadcast.
Arlette¡¯s mother turned to her with a strangely sad smile on her face. ¡°Arlette, this is Knight Maniston,¡± she said.
¡°Hello, Arlette,¡± Knight Maniston said. He turned to Peko. ¡°And you must be...¡±
Without warning, the man put his hand atop Peko''s head. It entered into the false boy''s skull without resistance. Peko hopped back with a ¡°Hey!¡±, a scowl on his face. He didn¡¯t like it when people tried to touch him.
¡°Wonderful,¡± the knight exclaimed. ¡°How old are you, Arlette?¡±
¡°I¡¯m six!¡± Arlette proudly proclaimed, puffing out her chest.
¡°Tell me, is it true that you can disguise yourself as somebody else?¡±
Arlette glanced at her mom and drooped her head. She could still remember the horrors of that day a bit more than three seasons ago, when her mother had ruined her favorite treat for her forever. ¡°...I¡¯m not supposed to do that anymore.¡±
¡°It¡¯s okay, show him,¡± her mother urged. Well, if her mother said it was okay this time...
Arlette concentrated and suddenly her appearance changed to that of Marcus again. It was her best disguise, after all. Nothing changed from her perspective¡ªwhen inside her own illusions, they were invisible¡ªbut the smile on the man¡¯s face instantly widened.
¡°Marvelous!¡± he exclaimed. ¡°Can you move about? What about your voice?¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± Arlette replied in Marcus¡¯s voice while walking and moving about. She found it easier to hold the illusion these days even when moving about and doing other things, though it still was rather tough.
¡°Coming here was worthwhile after all,¡± he said. ¡°Very well... Arlette, how would you like to go to the capital?¡±
¡°Whaaa~! C-could I really?¡±
¡°Of course!¡±
¡°Knight Maniston is here to take you to the capital to go to school to be a knight,¡± her mother chimed in.
Arlette couldn¡¯t believe her ears. Her? A knight? It was every child¡¯s dream to be a knight!
¡°It¡¯s getting late, so I will return tomorrow morning,¡± Knight Maniston said. ¡°We leave at first light.¡±
¡°Of course, sir,¡± her mother replied. ¡°Thank you, again.¡±
¡°I do what I do in service to the crown; think nothing of it. Goodbye for now.¡±
Arlette¡¯s mother handed her a small canvas bag once the knight was out the door. ¡°Here, go pack your things while I finish our meal.¡±
¡°Okay!¡± Arlette sprinted into the bedroom she shared with her mother and hurriedly gathered what she could and placed everything she could fit into the small sack. Her three best outfits, the doll her mother had made her several years ago, and a few other miscellaneous items. There wasn¡¯t much to choose from; while it would be a lie to say that they¡¯d lived a life of destitution since her father¡¯s death, she and her mother lived in a tiny cabin near the outside of the village for a reason.
Soon dinner was ready, and the two of them sat down to eat. Peko had disappeared around when the knight had left and hadn¡¯t reappeared yet. He did that sometimes, and Arlette didn¡¯t question it.
The meal was fancier than normal, surely in celebration of the big news. Yet for some reason, her mother didn¡¯t seem very happy. Maybe she wasn¡¯t looking forward to packing up all her stuff before the morning?
¡°Mommy, it¡¯s okay, I¡¯ll help you pack for the trip,¡± Arlette said reassuringly.
¡°What? Oh...¡± Her mother sniffed and wiped something from her eye. ¡°Mommy¡¯s not going to be coming with you, sweetie. The school is only for children.¡±
What?!
¡°B-b-but I don¡¯t want to go without you!¡± Arlette protested, the thought of losing her only remaining parent bringing tears to her eyes. ¡°Can¡¯t I just stay here then?¡±
Arlette¡¯s mother got up and walked around the table to wrap her daughter in a tight embrace. Arlette could feel her mother trembling as she held her in her arms while Arlette began to sniffle.
¡°Arlette, there¡¯s nothing I want more than to be with you forever, but I¡¯m just a poor widow in a small village. I can¡¯t give you the life that I wish I could. That¡¯s why you need to go to the capital even though I want you to stay here with me forever. If you stay here, you¡¯ll grow up here, marry here, and die here, just like my grandmother, and my mother, and likely me. But if you go, you could be a real knight when you grow up! You could be somebody special! You¡¯re going to get to learn so many things and eat the best foods and make so many friends that you would never meet if you stayed here your whole life. And don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll still be here for when you come back, and you can tell me all the amazing things you saw and all the incredible food you ate that made honey buds taste like dirt.¡±
¡°I h-hate honey b-buds,¡± Arlette grumbled. She sniffed loudly while rubbing her nose on her sleeve. Snot was starting to drip liberally from her nose.
¡°I know you do,¡± her mother chuckled. ¡°No more crying, now. Big girls don¡¯t cry, especially big girls who are going to be knights when they grow up.¡±
¡°I¡¯m n-not a big g-girl,¡± Arlette stammered.
¡°Yes you are. Keep eating your dinner, I have to go find something for you.¡±
As her mother walked out of the room, Arlette tried to eat some more of her meal, but the food didn¡¯t taste good anymore. She was going to be alone again. The feeling twisted her insides into knots.
¡°Here we are,¡± her mother said after a while. She entered the room holding a small box that Arlette had never seen before. She opened the box and pulled out a necklace and held it up for Arlette to see. Hanging from the necklace was a small stone carving of a leaf. ¡°Your father made this for you, as a present for when you became a big girl, okay?¡±
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¡°Really?¡±
¡°That¡¯s right. I want you to take this with you, and if you¡¯re ever feeling down, look at this and remember that he loves you and I love you and we always will love you. As long as you remember that, sweetheart, you will never be truly alone.¡± She wrapped Arlette in another smothering embrace and held her for a long moment before releasing her. ¡°Make me proud, my child.¡±
¡°Okay mommy,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°I will.¡±
¡°Have you ever ridden a vekkel before?¡± Knight Maniston asked after a few hours of riding.
¡°No,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Daddy showed me how to ride a garoph once...¡±
¡°Well, you¡¯re doing a very good job of it for your first time,¡± the man replied. ¡°Remember to keep yourself balanced, and don¡¯t lean forward too much or you will tire out quickly. It will be several days of hard riding before we get to Brenridge, so you need to save your strength as much as you can. Feel free to lean back on me if you¡¯re tired. I¡¯m strong enough for us both, I should think.¡±
¡°Okay...¡±
They rode together on the same beast with Arlette sitting in front of the large man. She hadn¡¯t said much since leaving Nordhom. Now that the rush of emotions was over and everything had quieted down, she couldn¡¯t help but feel rather subdued. Anxiety and homesickness were already starting to creep in. Everything felt so surreal. Just the day before, she¡¯d spent an hour having a mud fight with other kids in the village and then run home with a smile on her face, covered in grime and dirt. Now she was on her way to the capital, a mythical place where dreams came true, to become something she¡¯d never thought she could actually be. It was too much to handle sometimes.
At least Knight Maniston seemed nice and reliable. He held the reins to the large lizard mount on which they rode with a practiced hand, his bearing confident. He really was the perfect image of a knight¡ªhandsome, strong, and steady in a way that his mere presence brought a feeling of calm and safety to those around him.
They rode much of the first day in silence, the vekkel¡¯s long powerful strides propelling them across the Kingdom of Ofrax far faster than Arlette had ever moved in her life. Forests and fields seemed to flash by faster than she could process. Only when they stopped to let the beast rest or to eat or relieve themselves, did she get to truly take in the flower-filled fields, the dense forests, and the freshly-worked farmlands of her country.
¡°How long do we have to go?¡± Arlette asked a bit after midday. ¡°Is Ofrax really big?¡±
¡°That depends on how you look at it,¡± the knight answered. ¡°What do you know about the kingdom? Did you learn anything in school?¡±
¡°We don¡¯t have much school in Nordhom,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Elder Codswell taught us to read and write but that was about it.¡±
¡°Oh, well that¡¯s a good start at least. Should make things easier down the road. Alright, let me tell you about Ofrax...¡±
And so for the next hour the man talked to her about Ofrax and the many things there were to know about it, until she never wanted to hear about it ever again. The Kingdom of Ofrax stood sandwiched between the Ubran Empire to the west and the Divide to the east, with the Droajan Confederation of States to their south and the sea to the north. While technically the smallest country in the world, it wasn¡¯t much smaller than the Federation of Gustil, and it more than made up for its size through a robust economy. The lands of Ofrax were rich and produced wonderful crops, while their blacksmiths created the greatest tools and weapons using metal mined from the Divide itself. Even more, Ofrax was the only country in Obura with access to Nocend, through the pass to Redwater Castle. That meant that they controlled the entire flow of goods from Obura to Nocend. Or so the knight said; all she got out of his explanation was that Ofrax was small but not poor and that it was a good thing.
That night they stopped to rest at a small inn in a town called Quickrun. Arlette sat across from Knight Maniston as she scarfed down a meal of ground meat and roasted vegetables. Normally she didn¡¯t like roasted vegetables, but she¡¯d gotten very hungry during the journey and it made everything taste better. The knight kept some cured meat for eating but he hadn¡¯t let her have any while they rode, saying she could bite her tongue off.
¡°What¡¯s it like being a knight?¡± she asked eventually.
The man shrugged. ¡°Same as any other job, I guess. We train, we patrol, we protect. Most of us spend a lot of our time guarding the border between us and Ubrus. The Ubrans have been eying us for years now. We must always be vigilant.¡±
¡°Oh! Is it true that the Ubrans were going to invade last year but Princess Rosalyn scared them into changing their minds?¡± Arlette asked, nearly jumping out of her seat when the opportunity arose to talk about one of her favorite subjects. ¡°I heard that the princess is so strong that she could take out a thousand Ubrans without even trying!¡±
The knight chuckled. ¡°There are some who believe that, yes. It sounds like you like the Princess a whole lot.¡±
¡°Are you serious?¡± Arlette scoffed. ¡°Everybody loves the Princess, even Granny Everston! Princess Rosalyn is the greatest! She¡¯s strong and pretty and she has the best smile! One day I want to meet her. We could even be friends, because my mommy says that the Princess is only five days older than me!¡±
¡°Yes, that¡¯s quite interesting,¡± Knight Maniston said, trying to head off the sudden rambling of an overenthusiastic child. ¡°I¡¯m su-¡±
¡°Did you ever get to meet the princess? What about the king and queen?¡± she interrupted.
The knight coughed. ¡°I have met them, yes. You have to be knighted to be a knight, after all.¡±
¡°I¡¯m gonna be a knight too so I can meet Princess Rosalyn one day!¡± Arlette proclaimed. ¡°I¡¯ll protect her from everybody who wants to hurt her!¡±
The man simply smiled a small, soft smile. ¡°I¡¯m sure you will,¡± he said.
¡°Woaaahhh! Is that Brenridge over there?¡± Arlette exclaimed as she spied a massive town off in the distance. Having never been to a city before, she had never imagined that they would be so big!
¡°Welcome to the capital,¡± Knight Maniston replied, ¡°the most wonderful city in all of Ofrax.¡±
¡°There¡¯s so many people!" Arlette exclaimed, looked about as cart after cart trundled towards the city. "I¡¯ve never seen so many people together before.¡±
The knight laughed. ¡°Wait until you get inside. Over two and a half million people live in Brenridge.¡±
Arlette¡¯s head swam, as she was literally unable to conceive of a number that high. How many Nordhoms was that? It had to be more than a hundred!
Given his lofty status, Knight Maniston was able to bypass the long lines to get into the city proper. Once they were inside, Arlette was simultaneously assaulted across three of her five senses. A kaleidoscope of shifting colors popped out at her no matter where she looked, blindingly bright yellows and whites contrasting with deep, dark greens, blues, and blacks. The cacophony of thousands of people doing thousands of things all around her made her countryside ears hurt. The less said about the smells the better. A bouquet of aromas found her nostrils, and the great majority of them landed on the unsavory side of the spectrum.
Knight Maniston rode forward as if nothing was wrong and this was completely normal. The people all around them parted as he urged their vekkel forward. Perhaps to take her mind off of her sensory overload, he began to point out various landmarks as they went.
¡°...and then when Lord Eon slew the evil King Daaved, he freed the land from tyranny and became the first true King of Ofrax,¡± he continued, pointing at a stone statue of an armored man impaling another on a massive spear. They were much deeper in the city now. His pointing moved to a new target, a large series of buildings that towered over the smaller nearby homes and stores. ¡°And that is where the best, most talented children in Ofrax learn to be knights.¡±
¡°Ohhhh!¡± Arlette was excited as she studied the buildings. More statues of brave soldiers decorated the school¡¯s exterior, along with banners hanging from nearly every wall. She could see other children, just a few years older than her, training outside with swords, spears, and other weapons. There was just one problem. ¡°Why did we go right past the school?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not taking you to the school,¡± the knight replied.
¡°But you said that I was going to school!¡± Arlette began to fret. Had a knight lied? They weren¡¯t supposed to do that!
¡°I never said that, your mother did,¡± Knight Maniston replied, placing a strong hand on her shoulder, perhaps to calm her down, but more likely to keep her from doing something like running away. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, we¡¯re going someplace even better.¡±
¡°Greetings, child,¡± a man said as he entered the lavishly appointed room where Arlette and Knight Maniston had waited. ¡°I hope your journey here was not too unpleasant.¡±
Most six-year-olds were far too young and carefree to have a panic attack, but Arlette was an unfortunate exception. King Ramad Kallenvale, wearing the same purple outfit and golden crown that she only saw in the broadcasts, was talking to her.
The King, the most powerful man in the nation, was talking.
To her.
Arlette felt like she was going to throw up. What was she supposed to do? Curtsy? Salute? Bow? She didn¡¯t know what you were supposed to do when the King appears and talks to you. But there he was, just paces away, talking. To her!
Quickly she glanced over toward Knight Maniston and found him bowing from his waist up towards his king. Quickly she copied him. King Ramad chuckled at the sight.
¡°Calm yourself, child. You are welcome here. Sit down.¡± He indicated one of three large chairs.
Arlette willed herself to walk to the nearest chair and climbed up onto it. Built for an adult, it was far too large for a child of her age and size. The pressure of her situation led her to shrink back all the way to the chair¡¯s backrest so that her legs barely reached the front of the seat. At least the high sides of the chair and the curvature of the back helped her feel more enclosed and lessened the pressure bearing down on her reeling mind. Still, she couldn¡¯t stop fidgeting nervously.
¡°The rumors must have been true, if you brought her back,¡± the King said to Knight Maniston.
¡°Indeed, they were quite accurate. We were lucky to find somebody so perfect for the task. Give me two seasons to prepare her and the plan will work.¡±
¡°We do not have two seasons. We can only keep the rumors from spreading for a bit more than another season at most. Do you believe her to be trustworthy?¡±
¡°I do.¡±
¡°Good.¡±
As the two talked, the door opened again and a woman entered, causing Arlette to nearly have a heart attack. Queen Terassi Kallenvale, the most beautiful and elegant woman in the land was now standing next to her husband. Even though she¡¯d only seen the woman in the holiday ceremonies that were broadcast across the country each year, Arlette would have recognized her anywhere. The two most important people Arlette could ever imagine each took a seat across from her, holding each other¡¯s hand.
The king turned to Arlette, his face suddenly serious. ¡°Arlette Faredin, thank you for coming. We brought you here because we need your help.¡±
They needed her help? What would they need a six-year-old¡¯s help for? Unless... An idea spawned inside her mind and she perked up. ¡°Do you need me to be Princess Rosalyn¡¯s friend?¡± she asked excitedly.
The King and Queen reacted to her question as if struck. Queen Terassi let out a sob and began to weep into her husband¡¯s shoulder, while the King squeezed her hand far tighter than before. Their reaction confused Arlette greatly. She knew she¡¯d done something wrong, but what?
¡°Child, what I am about to tell you must not leave this room,¡± the King said just before she could open her mouth again to apologize. ¡°Only a few people know this secret, and if it were to spread it would spell disaster for the entire country. Do you swear upon your honor, your family, and your very spirit that you will tell nobody of this until your dying day?¡±
Arlette was even more confused, but if the King wanted her to swear to keep his secret, she didn¡¯t have to think hard about it. ¡°Okay, I swear,¡± she replied.
¡°Our beloved daughter Rosalyn died twenty-six days ago. She is no more.¡± Tears began to roll down King Ramad¡¯s face as he spoke and as soon as he finished he turned and embraced his wife, who was sobbing even harder now.
Arlette was stunned. ¡°Y-you¡¯re lying,¡± she stammered. ¡°Princess R-Rosalyn can¡¯t die! That c-can¡¯t be t-true! T-there¡¯s no way! We were going t-to be f-f-friends!¡±
A flood of grief welled up inside her and exploded outward in a fountain of sorrow and tears as she curled up into a ball and began to wail. She didn¡¯t want it to be true. The very thought that her idol, the girl beloved by all, was gone was too much for her to handle and she wanted desperately for it to be a lie. But no matter how much she didn¡¯t want to believe it, Arlette couldn¡¯t deny the pain on the King and Queen¡¯s faces. They were telling the truth. The horrible, terrible, soul-crushing truth.
It took a good while for the three grieving people to calm down again, but finally their tears ran dry and the King resumed the conversation.
¡°You may have heard stories that the princess was the reason that the Ubrans decided not to invade last year,¡± he said, his voice still somewhat unsteady but growing firmer as he went on. ¡°Those stories are true. She was unique and frighteningly powerful¡ªpowerful enough to dissuade the Ubrans from the latest plans. The truth of the matter is, if the Ubran Empire wants to invade and conquer Ofrax, Ofrax will lose.¡±
¡°What?! But won¡¯t the knights and the army stop them?¡± a shocked Arlette interrupted.
¡°Even if our soldiers are better than theirs, they are just too many. As long as they are willing to take the pain, the Ubrans will win through sheer numbers alone.¡±
¡°But why did they stop then?¡±
¡°Because we have simply shown them that the pain of attacking us would be too much for what they would get in return, much like how some lizards use bright colors to warn predators that they are poisonous and would make the predator sick if eaten. As long as the cost of conquering Ofrax is higher than the benefit of ruling Ofrax, then our nation is safe. This strategy has worked for nearly a hundred years now.
¡°There are many ways for us to show strength, but Rosalyn was the greatest reason that the Ubrans decided not to invade. Without her, Ofrax will look too weak. That is why we need you. The Princess¡¯s death is a secret known to only a tiny handful of people. As long as the Ubrans believe that she is still alive, they will continue to stay their hand. That is why we need you, Arlette Faredin. We need you to impersonate Rosalyn. We need you to be our Princess.¡±
Queen Terassi let out another sob and wiped her tear-streaked face.
¡°You want me to pretend to be Princess Rosalyn?¡± Arlette repeated, aghast. ¡°I-I can¡¯t do that! It¡¯s...¡± She trailed off as the magnitude of the King¡¯s request continued to sink into her mind.
¡°You can,¡± King Ramad assured her. ¡°If the rumors I heard are to be believed, what you can do is amazing, not just for somebody you age, but for any illusionist, and you have never even been taught how to use your powers, correct? With the proper training and tutoring, we believe that you can do more. Much, much more.¡±
He leaned forward.
¡°I¡¯m told that your dream is to be a knight and protect people, yes? By doing this, you would become far more important than just any knight. You would be protecting the entire kingdom. You would be protecting your family, your friends, everybody important to you. This is something that only you can do. The Princess cannot be simply an illusion made by somebody else. She must be able to touch and be touched. She has to interact with others so that there can be no doubt that she still lives on. Anybody else would be unable to do this, but you can. You¡¯re the same age, the same size, the same gender, and you have the power. Only you can do what needs to be done to save us all.¡±
¡°Would it be for a long time?¡±
¡°I will not lie to you, Arlette. It could take a very long time. Perhaps seasons, perhaps years. However long it takes before we can find another solution to hold off the Ubran legions. But we must have your help. The fate of the entire kingdom depends on you.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t respond for a good while. Her head was still spinning. This was all too much for her. But... she¡¯d promised to make her mother proud. How could she keep that promise if she ran away when her entire country needed her? ¡°I... I can try,¡± she finally said.
¡°We thank you from the bottom of our hearts,¡± the King replied solemnly. He pointed to Knight Maniston. ¡°Head Knight Cunningham here will be your bodyguard, as he was for the original Rosalyn. He will help you adjust to your new role and train you in much of what you will need to know.¡±
Arlette looked at the knight with a puzzled expression. ¡°But you said your name was-¡±
¡°Ah, yes,¡± the King interrupted. ¡°My apologies. I instructed Head Knight Cunningham to use a false name to better hide what we are doing. It is the same reason why he was instructed to lie to your mother. Unfortunately, your mother cannot know of this secret.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll take great care of you, don¡¯t you worry,¡± the knight said.
¡°Thank you, H-Head Knight...¡±
¡°Oh, please, don¡¯t bother saying such a long title as that all the time. It¡¯s far too cumbersome. Here¡¯s your first lesson: refer to me like Princess Rosalyn always did.¡±
He smiled a warm smile that lit up his handsome, flawless face.
¡°Just call me Sebastian.¡±
Chapter 59
Arlette didn¡¯t know what to do, to say, or even to think. She was so far out of her depth that it was comical. They¡¯d put her in a part of the palace reserved for the royal family, where no servants were allowed. This was where the princess was supposed to be recovering, safely away from any prying eyes. No servants, just the King, the Queen, and Sebastian. Apparently, three other people, the trio of generals who commanded the nation¡¯s armed forces, knew of the princess¡¯s death. Nobody else knew of this tragedy, and so here Arlette would stay until she could emulate Princess Rosalyn well enough that it would stay that way.
She was going to be the Princess. So much of this terrified her¡ªthe complexity of the task, the thought of interacting with the King and Queen every day... even the palace itself intimidated her. Just a few days ago she¡¯d been sleeping on a hard bed filled with straw in a small wooden cottage. Now she laid in an impossibly soft down-filled bed, surrounded by luxurious items crafted by masters out of rare and expensive materials, in a bedroom that was larger than her entire home. Any one of the items in the room was likely valuable enough to buy the entirety of her old village at once, and yet here they were treated as if they were as common as leaves in a forest. She was afraid to touch anything lest she break it and fall into debt for the rest of her life. How was she supposed to imitate a girl who lived in a place like this and found it normal?
Yet as scared as all that made her, nothing terrified her more than the thought of what would happen if she failed. Images of unwashed Ubran monsters sweeping across the country sprang unbidden and unwanted from her imagination. She shivered.
The bed felt cold and empty. She missed sleeping with her mother. Really, she just missed her mother entirely. Arlette missed her smile, her hugs, and especially the warm feeling she got when she went to sleep in her mother¡¯s arms that told her that everything was going to alright. That was all gone now. When would she even be able to see her again?
She sniffed, feeling the tears begin to well up as homesickness reared its ugly head. Quickly she crammed a soft pillow over her face and willed herself to hold it in. Big girls didn¡¯t cry.
¡°Wow, this place sure is a lot to get used to,¡± a voice said from beside her. Arlette jumped so high that she nearly fell out of the bed.
¡°Peko, don¡¯t do that! I almost screamed!¡± Arlette hissed, furious at her friend¡¯s ill-timed and unwarned appearance. ¡°Where have you been this whole time? I haven¡¯t seen you since we left the village!¡±
Peko stood beside the bed, still dressed in the peasant¡¯s clothes that he always wore. He shrugged as if scaring her half-to-death wasn¡¯t anything worth getting worked up over. ¡°I don¡¯t really like it here, so I haven¡¯t shown up.¡±
¡°You left me all alone!¡± Arlette accused.
¡°Stop being so dramatic,¡± Peko replied. ¡°Even if I¡¯m not out, I¡¯m always with you. You know that. How can I leave you when I am you?¡±
Arlette tucked herself up into a ball and hugged her legs to her chest. ¡°Still...¡±
¡°I know everything¡¯s all weird and different and it¡¯s all kinda scary, but you¡¯re not alone. I¡¯m always going to be there for you as long as you need me. Okay?¡±
¡°Okay...¡±
¡°Good, now let¡¯s get some sleep. I¡¯m tired.¡± The illusory boy yawned. ¡°It¡¯s not fair that I can¡¯t sleep unless you sleep. It¡¯s like I¡¯m your slave or something.¡±
Arlette closed her eyes. She must have been much more tired than she¡¯d thought because she was out before she knew it.
¡°Tuck in your elbow more. Yes, that¡¯s better. Now make sure you hold it at that angle the entire time. Now step... and step... good, just like that.¡±
When Arlette had agreed, albeit somewhat hesitantly, to the King¡¯s plan, she hadn¡¯t realized that it would mean so much... learning. She, in her foolish, childish naivete, had thought she¡¯d need to learn how to look like the princess and sound like the princess. That was in fact a focus, but what she hadn¡¯t expected was that she¡¯d need to learn history, or mathematics, or etiquette, or any of the seemingly endless subjects which Sebastian crammed into her skull every day until it felt like it would explode.
To make everything a hundred times harder, she had to do it while maintaining her illusion as the princess as much as possible. The effort exhausted her, and she couldn¡¯t keep it up all day, but already the time she could manage the feat, and the ease by which she did it, was improving dramatically. Sebastian said that pushing her soulforce to its limits at her age would greatly increase her strength and stamina as she grew older. The teaching she got from the books about Illusion Observing from the library did wonders as well. Still, she could only hold the disguise for about a quarter of a day¡ªa massive improvement over where she¡¯d been a season ago when she¡¯d first arrived, but still far from where it needed to be.
Right now, she was learning how to dance. Her teacher, like always, was Sebastian. The gorgeous bodyguard and soldier taught her nearly everything, since the other people who were aware of her existence were far too busy and important to spend more than a few moments with her. The King and Queen checked in on her when they could, but never stayed long. Sebastian said that this would change once she had her imitation closer to perfect. They had to learn to be a family in front of the servants, after all.
That was something that Sebastian stressed¡ªwhile everything she was learning was important, the most important thing she needed to learn was how to act. Contrary to her belief, imitation turned out to be far more complicated than just looking and sounding like somebody. You had to copy the way they spoke, the way they moved, even the way they thought. You had to be more than just a copy of them, you had to become them. That, it seemed, was what true acting was all about. Of course, learning the mannerisms and thought patterns of somebody you¡¯d never met was an impossible task, but luckily she had a tutor.
¡°Now, when dancing with a man, be sure to keep your eyes on the floor when you can,¡± Sebastian instructed. ¡°Proper manners are to face your partner and look them in the eyes, but Rosalyn still had trouble bringing herself to do it. While she acted confident and outgoing in public, she was still quite shy with others in private, especially boys.¡±
¡°Okay,¡± Arlette said, committed another note to memory.
¡°Don¡¯t lean forward so much. Balance is key.¡±
Arlette did as instructed.
¡°Excellent. Your agility is quite high, Rosalyn, I¡¯m impressed,¡± Sebastian remarked. He addressed her as Rosalyn at all times, saying that she needed to learn to respond to it reflexively. ¡°Now practice your steps and stances for the next two hours and we will be done for the day.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t it be one hour? My feet hurt, and practicing dancing alone is boring without music,¡± Arlette groaned.
¡°Two hours. Any less and your dancing will not be a perfect reflection of Princess Rosalyn¡¯s,¡± Sebastian replied with a stern shake of the head.
¡°Why does it have to be perfect? Can¡¯t it just be really close? Nobody¡¯s going to be able to tell the difference, anyway.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t underestimate the court, Princess. People are more observant than you give them credit for. Now get to practicing, until your steps are as perfect as hers once were.¡±
¡°Aaargh!¡± Arlette growled, a full season of ceaseless work wearing her patience thin. Every day, nay, every hour of her waking life had been devoted to learning, preparing, or practicing. There was no joy in these activities, and she hadn¡¯t gotten a single hour to play or relax since coming here a season ago. To make matters worse, she couldn¡¯t even leave the secluded wing of the castle where she currently lived. She was a prisoner here, and it made her ready to explode. ¡°Perfect, perfect, perfect! That¡¯s all you ever say! What¡¯s so great about being perfect anyway?!¡±
¡°Why, everything,¡± Sebastian replied. ¡°Perfection is the ideal, the ultimate goal of all things. Would you scale only half of a mountain? Would you stop climbing in the middle of a ladder? Would you send a letter half-written? Of course not. Until something is perfect, there is always more that can be done.
¡°Imperfection is weakness. It is the domain of lesser beings. You must never allow yourself to wallow in that the murky swamp of mediocrity, Princess, for without perfection comes mistakes, and only a single mistake is all it takes to undo everything you¡¯ve ever worked for. Always climb ever higher.¡±
Arlette had no idea what in the world her protector was blathering about. ¡°My mother said that nobody¡¯s perfect.¡±
¡°You mother is wrong, Princess.¡± He squatted down and looked her in the eyes. ¡°Let me tell you a story about what happens when you are not perfect. I know you¡¯ve always wanted to know how Princess Rosalyn died.¡±
¡°Wha-! I didn¡¯t say that!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t try and hide it. You¡¯ve wanted to ask for a long time now, but you were afraid it would make me upset, weren¡¯t you?¡±
Arlette hung her head. ¡°Yeah...¡± she admitted.
Sebastian took a breath and his eyes refocused on something off in the distance, something that did not exist here in this room. ¡°We were traveling to Renham, the Princess and I, to make an appearance before the soldiers there. As you know, Renham is the closest to the Ubran border and thus where much of the army is stationed, and the troops adored Princess Rosalyn even more than the general public. But the Ubrans had different plans...
¡°Halfway to the city, our procession was ambushed by a small army of Ubrans. How they made it past the patrols I will never know, but there they were nonetheless. Within just a moment, the guards outside the carriage were slaughtered, caught by such surprise that they barely got out a sound before they died beneath fire and arrows. I pulled out my sword to defend the Princess immediately, of course, just as an explosion slammed into the side of the carriage and shattered it apart. I shielded my charge from the debris with my body and we tumbled to the side of the road, covered in wreckage. When I stood up, I found that of the Ofrax only the Princess and myself remained, and around us stood forty-three Ubran warriors.
¡°Forty-three?!¡± Arlette repeated, aghast. ¡°But the Princess would be able to stop them, right?¡±
¡°Princess Rosalyn¡¯s ability was extraordinary, that is true, but there was one weakness: it took a lot of time to start up, time that we did not have. It would be up to me to stand between her and the Ubran mongrels.¡±
¡°How did you survive?¡±
¡°I was given this position for a reason, Princess. Do not doubt my prowess, for I slew all forty-three Ubrans single-handedly. Filled with rage and desperation, I weaved untouched between their blades, slicing throats and stabbing hearts. They were strong, but I was stronger, and one by one they fell before me until there were none left. But it was not enough, you see, because I had not been perfect.
¡°Of the forty-three Ubrans who attacked us, eighteen I stabbed in the chest. Seventeen of them died instantly, my blade stopping their heart. But, alas, on one I missed. It was just a little tiny bit, perhaps the width of a finger at most, but it was enough. Like the others, he collapsed on the ground, but he did not die immediately. Instead, as I fought on, he managed to summon one last ounce of strength and throw a small metal needle at Princess Rosalyn and scratch her. With that, her fate was sealed.¡±
¡°From a scratch?¡±
¡°The needle was covered in a poison known as trascalan, a poison used widely by assassins across the continent. While it cannot be absorbed through the skin, it can enter the body through a cut or an opening like the mouth, and once it does, the person dies. Even the smallest amount is fatal. By scratching the Princess¡¯s leg, the trascalan poison entered her blood and there was nothing anybody could do.
¡°I knew something was wrong just a little after the battle was over when she began to cough. Then the coughing grew harder and she began to wheeze as if she couldn¡¯t breathe. I will never forget the sight of her as her face turned blue just before she collapsed. After all I had done to save her, all of it was for naught simply because I was not perfect. If I had simply stabbed that man in the heart as I¡¯d intended, the Princess would still be alive today, but she is not and I will carry that failure with me until I die.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t know what to say. Just hearing the story filled her with emotions; she couldn¡¯t imagine what it must have been like to actually experience it in person.
Sebastian reached out and ruffled her hair slightly, a sad smile on his face. ¡°Do you understand now why it¡¯s important to always strive for perfection?¡±
¡°Yes, I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t be sorry, be certain. The country is relying on you, so it¡¯s important that you give your absolute best possible effort. Right?¡±
¡°Right!¡± Arlette responded, a reborn commitment burning in her eyes.
¡°Good! Then let¡¯s not waste time. Two hours, starting now!¡±
Arlette began to work through her dance forms slowly and carefully, making sure that each and every movement and posture was as flawless and perfect as she could make it as Sebastian stood back and watched. She wasn¡¯t going to let her country and her mother down, and if that meant that she had to be perfect, then perfect she would be.
This was it, the first big test. Just around the corner were the King and Queen, waiting for her to show herself as Princess Rosalyn. Arlette¡¯s nerves were nearly fried from the pressure.
What if it all didn¡¯t work out? What if they didn¡¯t find her convincing? Sebastian said that they were all running out of time and that their excuses for why nobody had seen the Princess in well over a season would fall apart soon.
¡°It¡¯s time, child,¡± the King called. ¡°Please show us the results of your hard work.¡±
Taking a deep breath, Arlette stepped forward and proceeded around the bend. Her footsteps were light and graceful, rather than the crude, flatfooted walk she¡¯d used before. Her back was straight and her head was held high, quite unlike the child of Nordhom who¡¯d constantly slouched and kept her eyes to the ground. She sported a different face now, one created based on paintings, Many broadcasts she¡¯d seen, and Sebastian¡¯s descriptions and honed over hundreds of hours in front of the first real mirror she¡¯d ever seen. Her eyes shined with intelligence and her cheeks glowed with happiness. Dressed in an elegant child¡¯s gown made from the finest silks she¡¯d ever felt, she stepped forward. She was not Arlette anymore, she told herself. She was Princess Rosalyn, the shining idol of the country.
¡°Greetings, mother! Greetings, father!¡± she said, her voice sounding like another¡¯s, one with a joyous, musical tone like the ringing of chimes. She smiled a glowing smile bright enough to outshine the sun itself. ¡°It is so wonderful to see you again!¡±
She looked up at the King and Queen, looking for a sign of validation, but found none. They simply stared back at her, their faces unreadable to her. It was as if they were both frozen in time to the point where they were not even breathing. Then the spell broke as the Queen went weak at the knees, fell to the ground, and began to wail.
Arlette froze. This wasn¡¯t how things were supposed to happen. Had she done a poor job after all?
The King bent down and embraced his wife, glancing back at Arlette with eyes that held no happiness in them. No, she saw only a hint of accusation in his glare.
That look told Arlette all she needed to know, and she felt absolutely mortified. She¡¯d failed. All that effort, all that time, for nothing. She¡¯d let her country down. She¡¯d let her mother down. Unable to bear the weight of the moment, Arlette did what any child would do: she ran away.
Given the lack of rooms in her wing of the palace, her bedroom was the only place she could go without passing by the King and Queen. So there she ended up, huddling against the wall beside the door and trying not to cry too loudly. Outside, she could hear the voices of the three as they began to argue; though she couldn¡¯t make out the words, the tones of their voices said enough.
The Queen was the most adamant, her voice loud and harsh. The King, meanwhile, seemed to be trying to calm the Queen down, his voice pleading. Last, there was Sebastian, his voice level and full of conviction. Was he making the case for more time? Perhaps he made his case well, because soon it seemed that the argument turned to the two men against the Queen.
Eventually, the argument came to a halt and the place grew quiet. Beside her, the door slowly opened and in stepped Sebastian. Arlette gazed up at his smiling face through tear-blurred vision, confused.
¡°Don¡¯t feel sad, you fared splendidly,¡± her teacher and bodyguard said. ¡°A rousing success.¡±
¡°But they hated it!¡± Arlette sobbed.
¡°Exactly.¡± He squatted down beside her and wiped her face with a silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his knight uniform. ¡°They knew what was coming and they steeled their hearts against it, but you were so convincing that you shattered them. It was as if their child had come back from the dead, and even though they¡¯d thought they were as ready as they could possibly be, they still couldn¡¯t handle it. You passed the test with flying colors.¡±
¡°Really?¡± she sniffed.
¡°Yes. Don¡¯t worry about their reactions. His Majesty agrees that you are ready for the next step. And look, you kept your illusion even while upset. Wonderful!¡±
Arlette looked up and saw her reflection in the mirror across the room. Staring back from the mirror, eyes red and puffy and cheeks glistening with tears, was not her but the Princess. It had become so normal now that Arlette hadn¡¯t even realized she was still maintaining the disguise.
¡°I wanted to tell you that I¡¯m very proud of you. You have worked so hard and so long, and as your partner in this endeavor I want you to know that I am delighted that you are here with me.¡±
¡°T-thanks...¡± Arlette offered a hesitant smile.
¡°That¡¯s better.¡± He affectionately patted her on the head. ¡°Now, Princess Rosalyn¡¯s birthday would have been just a few days ago, which means that you are seven years old now as well, yes? What do you say we celebrate your birthday and this success with a little feast?¡±
Now that really got Arlette¡¯s spirits up.
Arlette smiled broadly and waved at the massive crowd lining the avenue, trying her best not to cringe at the sheer volume of the cheers as they beat against her eardrums. So many people from all about Brenridge were here just to see her. Thousands of men, women, and children had taken time out of their days for no other reason than to cheer her on as she passed by. It was an experience unlike anything she¡¯d ever felt before, her spirit soaring triumphantly above the clouds. It was working. The masses were buying it, nay, downright eating it up.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
At first, she¡¯d dreaded the upcoming parade designed to demonstrate her good health and wellbeing. She¡¯d fallen into the same questions and doubts that had plagued her before the first demonstration with the King and Queen a dozen days ago. What if they could tell she was a fake? What if something happened that she wasn¡¯t ready for?
Those concerns turned out to be unfounded. As she rode down the avenue from the palace towards the city wall, sitting confidently atop her personal vekkel while wearing a resplendent outfit of furs and silks befit for royalty, Arlette appeared every bit the part of the seven-year-old princess and nobody was the wiser. She soaked in the looks of adoration from the citizens as her procession slowly made its way further from the castle. Even the prospective knights of the knight school were lined up waiting for her to pass, their faces lit with excitement and their bodies snapping the Ofrax army¡¯s traditional one-handed salute. Arlette returned the salute, the proper form drilled into her many days ago.
One of the servants trailing her ran up beside her and handed her a large, loose handful of long-stemmed flowers. Arlette took a quick sniff, enjoying the pleasant aroma of the multicolored bouquet before tossing the flowers into the crowd. The scattering flowers rained down atop the adoring citizens, causing a series of scuffles as hundreds of people scrambled to get their hands on a flower that had been touched by their beloved princess.
In a world where illusion Observers existed, it was vital to show that she was more than just a conjured image masquerading as a real person. That was why she was throwing out flowers to the masses throughout the parade. By handling solid objects, she was proving without a doubt that she was the one and only Princess Rosalyn, who had fallen gravely ill and needed several seasons alone to recover. Illnesses were a rarity in Scyria, but when they hit, they were very dangerous and potentially deadly. It was the best excuse they had to explain why the princess had disappeared for so long.
Suddenly, Sebastian slid in front of her, blocking her view of the right side of the street with his armored back. He smoothly reached out into the air with both hands and grabbed something. It wasn¡¯t until they were already within his grasp that Arlette could see what they were: arrows!
Arlette was too stunned to even react. Instead, she just watched as Sebastian stood in front of her and proceeded to pluck more arrows from the air by their shafts as if they were moving in slow motion. Every movement was deliberate and efficient, with absolutely zero wasted motion, as if he knew where the arrows were headed before they even got there. Arlette couldn¡¯t believe what she was seeing. Was this the power of a knight? Or was Sebastian even greater? After witnessing the ease at which he protected her, she now understood why somebody who was supposedly a fighter didn¡¯t seem to have any scars like the other knights... he was just that good.
Soldiers surged into the crowd as the citizens scattered in panic. Meanwhile, Sebastian hopped onto Arlette¡¯s vekkel, landing just behind her on the saddle, and steered it about, sending them hurtling back towards the palace as fast as the large lizard could manage. Within a moment, they were hundreds of paces from the scene of the attack.
And so ended the Princess¡¯s first public appearance since her illness. While the public thought it ended in disaster, for the plan it was nothing less than an unqualified success.
Arlette counted to a thousand before she dared to move. By now, the guards outside her door would assume her to be asleep. Slowly and quietly, she crept out of bed, a smile on her face. It was time for her favorite part of the day.
Crouching down beside the wall near the far corner, Arlette pushed and a small portion slowly pushed in, revealing a secret passage inside the wall. She¡¯d discovered the entrance by accident, having one day sat down against that spot on the wall and leaned back against it just enough to move it slightly. The passage was constricting enough that a full-grown man would be forced to crawl on his hands and knees, but somebody her size could move about far more easily. She crawled inside, an impish grin on her face.
It wasn¡¯t until she¡¯d fully ¡°become¡± the princess, able to leave the secluded wing where she¡¯d trained so hard, that Arlette had realized just how terrible being a princess could be. She¡¯d thought that, having completed the initial training, she¡¯d be more free to have fun, but no. It seemed that a princess¡¯s life was managed down to the moment. There were people who she had to greet as a member of the royal family, there were all the times when she had to spend time with the King and Queen in front of servants in order to maintain the illusion that they were still a whole and happy family, and then there were, of course, lessons. Not only did she have more lessons with Sebastian to fully master her new role as Princess Rosalyn, but she also had to take all the lessons that the real Princess Rosalyn would have had to take were she still alive.
The end result of this was that Arlette had absolutely no spare time for herself, no freedom whatsoever. Sebastian was with her every waking moment, not only protecting her from threats but also making sure, like a nanny, that she didn¡¯t misbehave. The only time she could be alone was when she was going to sleep. She hated it.
The real princess had apparently felt the same way. On the inside wall of the tunnel, scratched into the stone in the messy, amateurish letters of a child, was just the words ¡°Rosalyn was here¡±. While Arlette had spent day after day, hour after hour, slowly learning everything about the real Rosalyn Kallenvale, nothing had made her feel as connected with that girl as this. Arlette was sure now that they would have been great friends.
The passageway was just a part of a much larger network, one that, as far as she knew, nobody else seemed to know existed. It forked its way all about the palace, so much so that Arlette still didn¡¯t know where everything went even after exploring it for several hours every night for the last eleven nights. Tonight, the twelfth night, she would continue in her effort to map out the entire tunnel maze.
There wasn¡¯t much the tunnels allowed her to actually do other than move about the palace. Several times she¡¯d risked being spotted and snuck into the kitchen pantry and stolen a snack or two, but that was about it. Arlette didn¡¯t mind too much. What this secret provided her was freedom, and that was enough for now. When she was in the tunnels she could relax. Here there were no expectations, and she could just be the child she wished she could be.
Half an hour of crawling later, using just a tiny Observed flame to light the way, Arlette came upon another entrance. Ever so slowly, she began to push it out, a fraction of a finger¡¯s width at a time. She¡¯d discovered fairly early that once the stone was moved a little and a minuscule gap was opened, it became possible to hear conversations going on inside the room. This had proved invaluable in preventing her from accidentally emerging into a room with people inside, something that would have happened otherwise multiple times already. As she did so this time, her ears picked up the sound to two people who she knew very well and decided to listen in.
¡°-think you¡¯re not helping,¡± a male voice said.
¡°You said this was going to be a short-term solution,¡± a female hissed back. ¡°Just until we found something stronger to hold off the Ubrans. You didn¡¯t say this would be for the rest of our lives!¡±
¡°I can¡¯t help it that nothing else is getting results, Terassi! Until we have something better, we have no choice but to keep this up. We should feel lucky that the plan worked at all! They¡¯ve tried to kill her three times already, so we know the Ubrans think Rosalyn¡¯s still alive.¡±
¡°What I know, Ramad, is that every time I have to look at my child¡¯s smile and know that it¡¯s not real, that it¡¯s not her but that... thing, I die a little more inside. I can¡¯t keep doing this. I won¡¯t.¡±
¡°Stop it.¡±
¡°She¡¯s unnatural! You know it¡¯s true, you just don¡¯t want to admit it. There is no way that anybody should be able to do what she does. Did you know I ordered our best illusion Observer, one of the best on the continent mind you, to attempt to do what she does? After half a full season of practice, he couldn¡¯t keep it up for more than a quarter of an hour and it required his full concentration! Tell me, how some seven-year-old child can keep that up as easy as breathing nonstop for an entire day? She shouldn¡¯t even have half of her full-grown soulforce yet! She¡¯s wrong, Ramad, and you know it as well as I!¡±
¡°Couldn¡¯t you say the same things about our daughter?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you compare that creature to Rosalyn!¡± the Queen hollered. ¡°They are nothing alike!¡±
¡°Look, what she is doesn¡¯t matter. What matters is that without her the Ubrans would already be pouring into our lands. You should be as thankful as the rest of us that we have her at all.¡±
¡°I should be thankful?¡± the Queen laughed. ¡°Like you? What¡¯s her name?¡±
A silence filled the room, one that became ever more painful for Arlette with each passing moment.
¡°Her name is Rosalyn now,¡± the King replied eventually. ¡°That¡¯s what matters.¡±
¡°How dare you give her that name!¡±
Arlette couldn¡¯t stand to hear any more. Pulling the stone back in place, she retreated quickly to her room, curled up into a ball beside her bed, and cried.
A knock came at the door, but Arlette didn¡¯t say anything.
¡°Princess, you are late for breakfast,¡± she heard Sebastian call from the other side of the door, but still she didn¡¯t feel like answering. She didn¡¯t feel like much of anything at the moment. He called out to her again, knocking harder.
¡°I¡¯m coming in,¡± he announced after several moments of silence.
Arlette heard the sound of a key unlocking the door. It opened slightly and Sebastian stuck his head in. Immediately he noticed that she was not in her bed and scanned the room, finding her huddled up by the side of the bed where she¡¯d sat since the night before. His eyes opened in shock and he quickly slipped into the room and shut and locked the door behind him.
¡°You¡¯re not in your disguise,¡± he observed with concern. ¡°You¡¯re not even dressed. Princess, you¡¯re supposed to be having breakfast with your parents at this very moment.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want to go,¡± Arlette replied glumly.
¡°But you must.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want to.¡±
Sebastian crouched down beside her, a look of concern on his face. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± he asked.
¡°I don¡¯t want to be here anymore. The Queen hates me and the King doesn¡¯t even know my name. I don¡¯t have any friends and I¡¯m all alone. I miss my mommy and I want to go home.¡±
¡°Now how would you know something like that?¡± Sebastian wondered.
¡°I just do, okay? Leave me alone.¡±
¡°You know I can¡¯t do that. And besides, you¡¯re wrong.¡±
¡°No I¡¯m not.¡±
¡°Well, I can¡¯t speak to everything you said,¡± Sebastian mused, ¡°but I know you¡¯re wrong about not having any friends. Or am I not your friend?¡± He smiled warmly and patted her on the head in that way he always did. Strangely, she¡¯d come around to enjoying it.
¡°What¡¯s my name?¡± Arlette asked.
¡°You¡¯re Arlette Faredin of the village of Nordhom, of course, and my friend. Come here...¡± He pulled her to her feet and gave her a big, almost brotherly hug. ¡°I don¡¯t want you to ever think that you¡¯re alone here. No matter what, you can count on me being by your side, alright?¡±
He was right, she realized. He¡¯d always been there, supporting her, teaching her, helping her. She¡¯d had a friend this whole time and just never realized it. After a moment, Arlette found herself returning the embrace.
¡°I think I have an idea for a way to fix your problem with the Queen,¡± Sebastian said after a moment.
¡°Really?¡±
¡°Queen Terassi is a woman of high society. She grew up in a noble household and she respects the opinions of others like her. Your birthday is in the next season. You should have a giant birthday party to celebrate your eighth birthday and invite all the important people from around Ofrax to come. The generals, the ministers, the wealthiest merchants, everybody who matters in this country. Then when the Queen sees how much everybody loves you, she¡¯ll realize how wrong she is and then she won¡¯t hate you anymore.¡±
¡°Really? You think that will work?¡± Arlette asked, a seed of hope germinating inside of her.
¡°Absolutely. I¡¯ve known her for years, I guarantee it will work.¡±
¡°But what if they don¡¯t want to come? Would Father even be alright with inviting so many people?¡±
¡°Nobody would even dream about missing Princess Rosalyn¡¯s birthday,¡± he assured her. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about such things. As for His Majesty, don''t worry about that either. I can make the case to him that it will help further the plan. Just leave it to me.¡±
She smiled for the first time since the night before, a weak, unsteady smile but a smile nonetheless. ¡°Alright. Let¡¯s do that.¡±
¡°Is something wrong?¡± Sebastian asked as Arlette fretted about. They were in her bedroom once again as she prepared for her appearance at her birthday party. All the invitees had already arrived and were waiting in one of the larger reception halls along with the King and Queen. Arlette, on the other hand, had yet to make an appearance. Tradition called for her to arrive last.
¡°I can¡¯t find my ring! I haven¡¯t seen it all day!¡± Arlette cried, near tears with worry. Princess Rosalyn usually wore a special royal ring with several beautiful gemstones embedded in it. While not wearing the ring would normally be very bad, in this case it would be downright disastrous. Once she made her appearance before at the party, it was customary for every invitee to be introduced to her and for them to kiss the ring. If she didn¡¯t have the ring, then...
¡°Oh, right! This?¡± Sebastian pulled out a ring from his pocket. The gemstones glistened brightly, almost as bright as her eyes when she recognized it. ¡°I found it on the floor outside last night and polished it up for you. Almost forgot about it, sorry.¡±
¡°Thank you!¡± she breathed with relief as she put the ring onto her finger. ¡°You saved me!¡±
¡°Glad I could help. Anything else you need to do before you make your appearance?¡±
¡°No, I¡¯m ready.¡±
¡°Well then, after you, Princess.¡±
Arlette strode out of her room down the hallway. As she made her way towards the reception hall, she passed a number of servants, all of whom bowed to her and greeted her happily. Normally she would have paid them more attention, but today she was in a hurry. Soon enough she stood before a set of large, closed double doors. She took a deep breath. Just on the other side of those doors stood every single person who made the Kingdom or Ofrax tick, and they were all there to see her.
¡°Are you ready?¡± Sebastian asked.
¡°...I am,¡± she replied after a moment.
Without another word, he opened the doors and she entered. Suddenly dozens of eyes turned on her and she forced herself to give her best smile.
¡°Presenting Princess Rosalyn Kallenvale!¡± the palace crier loudly announced.
Arlette gracefully curtsied towards the gathered crowd and they all politely but loudly clapped their approval. She turned toward the King and Queen and bowed. ¡°Mother, Father, I thank you on this day for bringing me into this world, nurturing me through the years, and loving me with all your heart,¡± she intoned. ¡°I humbly ask for your blessing for the following year as well.¡±
¡°You may have every blessing that we can give and more,¡± the King replied. ¡°Now let the introductions begin.¡±
Everybody except her ¡°parents¡± lined up single file before her.
¡°Countess Lendana Estburry!¡± the crier called, less forcefully than before but still louder than Arlette thought necessary.
The older woman bowed to her. ¡°It is a joy to see you again, Princess,¡± she said. ¡°I am honored that you saw fit to invite me to this celebration.¡±
¡°You are too kind,¡± Arlette replied as she raised up her hand and the woman kissed her ring. ¡°Please enjoy the party.¡±
¡°Of course!¡± the woman replied before stepping aside for the next person.
¡°General Wallen Reddinton!¡± the crier hollered.
¡°Princess, I hope that this year goes as well for you as your last,¡± the man said, a twinkle of humor in his eyes.
¡°Why thank you, General,¡± Arlette replied, trying not to react to his inside joke. General Reddinton was one of the three highest military officers in the country, and all three of them were aware of her true nature. In fact, she realized absentmindedly, every person who was aware that she was fraud¡ªSebastian, the King and Queen, and the top generals¡ªstood in this very room.
The procession of guests continued for several more minutes until finally they had each given her their personal greeting, whereupon the gathering became slightly less formal. Guests mingled about the room, chatting with one another about various things, while various invitees surrounded her to talk to her about various things or perhaps curry favor with her.
¡°I must say,¡± Countess Estburry said to her, ¡°it truly is wonderful to see you grow up to be such a delightful and strong young woman. Why I remember when you were born! You were so tiny, even for a baby, but now you¡¯re a wonderful young lady. It really warms this old woman¡¯s spirit to know that Ofrax will be in good hands after I¡¯m gone.¡±
¡°Thank you, Countess,¡± Arlette replied with a cheery smile. That smile was getting harder and harder as time went on.
¡°If you ever have the chance, you should come south to Ariwood,¡± the woman continued. ¡°We have some of the best riding lands in the kingdom, and I¡¯m sure you¡¯d have a great time-¡±
The woman¡¯s blathering was interrupted by a heavy cough. Then another. Then another still.
¡°Countess Estburry, are you alright?¡± Arlette asked, her concern growing as the old woman¡¯s coughing increased in intensity.
Arlette looked about for somebody to help as another person across the room began to cough, then a third and a fourth.
¡°Something is wrong with the Countess!¡± Arlette called out, but already her voice was hard to hear over the noise as more and more people around her began to cough loudly. The Countess was beyond coughing now, her breaths coming in wheezing gasps as she sank weakly to the floor.
Arlette didn¡¯t know what to do as terror began to grow in the back of her mind. What was wrong with everybody? She bent down to the old Countess, her hands starting to shake with panic, and paled. The woman¡¯s face was taking on a shade of blue.
Suddenly something inside her mind clicked and she recalled something Sebastian had told her a long time ago. First they begin to cough, then they start to wheeze, then their face turns blue... poison!
¡°Sebastian!¡± she cried, turning towards the King and Queen. ¡°Everybody¡¯s been poi-¡±
The words caught in her throat and her mind went blank from what she saw. This was a dream, she told herself. A nightmare. That was the only thing that made sense. Yes, that was the only to explain why Sebastian stood there as if nothing was wrong, a calm smile on his face and his sword protruding from the King¡¯s chest.
Chapter 60
Dozens of bodies covered the polished stone floor, each of them coughing, hacking, dying. Some grabbed their throats as if choking, while others just writhed about in agony. A few managed to make it to one of the two doors connecting the hall to the rest of the palace and clawed desperately at them but both were locked tight. In the middle of it all stood one confused, terrified, and despairing child who barely noticed any of this; she was too busy staring at the blade of the only person she¡¯d come to trust in the last year as it dripped with the blood of her king.
A shrill, high-pitched shriek of terror pierced through the cacophony. ¡°Ramad, no! Guards! Guards!¡± the Queen cried, backing away from Sebastian as he used his foot to shove her husband¡¯s lifeless corpse off his sword and onto the ground.
¡°Your guards are dead, woman. I killed them myself when you were busy gossiping about who had the best hair,¡± the towering knight sneered. ¡°Screech all you want, nobody¡¯s going to show up.¡±
¡°Sebastian, you traitor! After all that we did for you, this is how you repay us?¡±
¡°And what, exactly, did you two do for me? Give me the honor of being a glorified nanny? That¡¯s what I always hated so much about you, you pathetic woman. To you, serving the nobility is the greatest height any commoner like me could ever hope to achieve. I regret to inform you that I humbly disagree.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll have you strung up by your own entrails!¡±
Sebastian just laughed. ¡°A little bit late for that, wouldn¡¯t you say? It¡¯s already over. The Ubran Legions will begin their assault on the border at any moment, and anybody who had even the remotest chance of organizing a resistance is now dead. The death blow has been struck. Ofrax will end.¡±
¡°You...! Die!¡± Queen Terassi howled, pulling a decorative sword from a nearby wall and she exploding towards the now-former bodyguard. She moved so quickly that her body practically blurred in Arlette¡¯s vision, but Sebastian seemed entirely undaunted. The royal mother¡¯s strikes came at him in a flurry as she unleashed her full fury towards him, but not a single one struck. While the Queen¡¯s body was moving so fast that Arlette could barely keep up with her countless blows, Sebastian¡¯s movements were steady, deliberate, almost slow. His sword floated about lazily yet was always just where it needed to be to parry the woman¡¯s blade.
¡°Such power is wasted on you,¡± Sebastian groused as he easily ducked beneath a sword slash. Suddenly the fist of his empty hand slammed into the Queen¡¯s gut just under her ribs, dropping her like a rock. He casually kicked her sword from her hand and across the room. ¡°If you¡¯d bothered to train yourself, well... you still wouldn¡¯t have touched me, but you would have at least made this a little entertaining.¡±
His foot shot forward and delivered a brutal kick to her stomach, causing the woman to vomit up her last meal all over her face and dress.
¡°You bastard!¡± she coughed. ¡°You will rue the day you-¡±
¡°Give it up,¡± Sebastian interrupted. ¡°You¡¯ve already lost.¡± With casual ease, his sword flicked out and sliced the tendons in her left knee. The Queen screamed, then screamed again as he did the same to her right knee. She tried in vain to get up, but no longer could move her lower legs. He smiled and sliced her arms at the elbows as well.
¡°Kill me and get it over with then, traitor, so I can finally join the daughter you took from me,¡± she hissed, an unending hatred burning in her eyes.
¡°Oh no, I couldn¡¯t do that,¡± he replied, grabbing her by the back collar of her outfit and dragging her roughly across the room like a sack of grain. He stopped right in front of Arlette and dropped the Queen¡¯s crippled form in front of her. ¡°That¡¯s a task for little Arlette here.¡±
Surrounded by the dead and dying, with nowhere to run and no idea what to do, Arlette¡¯s mind had in some ways shut down from the horror it was witnessing. Unable to fully process or act upon the death of King Ramad or Queen Terassi¡¯s fight with Sebastian, she¡¯d just stood still and stared with vacant eyes until the use of her name roused her from her stunned stupor.
¡°Ah?¡± she managed to squeak out, still not able to fully comprehend what was going on.
¡°This is a gift, a thank you for everything you did. I could never have succeeded in my plan without your help, Arlette; you were the perfect tool. Which reminds me...¡± He sheathed his sword and bent down on one knee beside her, grabbed her hand and pulled the princess¡¯s ring off of her finger and flicked it across the room. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t want you accidentally killing yourself now, would we?¡±
Arlette¡¯s mind finally was able to put two and two together, at least for one thing. The ring! It had disappeared the night before, and then he¡¯d been the one to ¡°find¡± it just in time for the party. He must have swiped it from her and coated it with that poison he¡¯d talked about. What had he said about it? Right, that it couldn¡¯t be absorbed through the skin but a cut or an opening like the mouth meant certain death, and everybody had kissed it! She¡¯d helped him by bringing all these important people together, and then helped murder them all!
The weight of this sudden revelation threatened to crush the poor girl¡¯s soul. But even as her spirit was swamped with guilt, she still found that she wanted, nay, needed, to understand.
¡°W-why?¡± was all she was able to ask, but it was enough.
Sebastian seemed to understand her need and smiled. ¡°Because this country cannot serve my needs, that¡¯s why. Ofrax is a cage willingly built by its own captives. Prized farmland, overflowing treasuries, an abundance of people and a strong military. And what have the rulers of this place done with such a boon? Nothing. They just sat here and did nothing for centuries. Ofrax could have conquered the Droajan clans any time in the last two hundred years with ease, but did they even think about it? No, they were too content with the way things were. It¡¯s pathetic. A waste.
¡°The Ubrans, on the other hand, they understand ambition. They realize that those who are superior deserve to stand atop the rest. Delivering Ofrax was merely my way of showing my worth and entering their ranks. Ranks which I will climb to the very, very top, until none in all of Scyria can stand above me!¡±
He rested his palm on her shoulder, sending a shiver down her spine. She didn¡¯t dare move, though her body likely wouldn¡¯t even if she¡¯d wanted it to.
¡°I want you to join me, Arlette. We could do amazing things together, you and I. Only I understand the incredible things you will be capable of. Haven¡¯t I always been there for you? Haven¡¯t I treated you well when nobody else would? Come and work for me, and together we can accomplish things that would astound the world!¡± He gestured towards the Queen laying on the floor and struggling unsuccessfully to get up. ¡°Look, I even saved her as a present for you. You know what she thinks of you. You remember how she treated you. She says you¡¯re not even a person.¡±
Arlette felt him press something into her shaking hands and looked down to find herself holding a dagger. The cold silver of the blade gleamed with a terrifying lethality.
¡°Go ahead, take your revenge,¡± Sebastian continued, gently encouraging her. ¡°There¡¯s nothing left for you here. This place is done for, so take some small satisfaction now while you have the chance. Embrace it. If she thinks you¡¯re a monster, then show her what a monster can really do.¡±
He wanted her to kill the Queen, she realized. The woman, still struggling to get up even with her limbs unable to support any weight, glared at her in a way that Arlette had never seen before. It was a loathing so strong, so encompassing that it threatened to swallow Arlette whole.
Sebastian was right, she realized, about a lot of things. It was true, the Queen really did hate her down to her core. It was true, Sebastian really had been the only person to treat her nicely since she¡¯d arrived in this place, always being there for her with a kind word, friendly advice, or a helping hand. And it was true that she was profoundly guilty of deeds which could never be undone, horrible deeds that would follow her for the rest of her life.
But this was wrong.
¡°N-no!¡± she replied with what little courage she could muster as she shook herself free of his hand. ¡°I promised to be a good girl! I won¡¯t!¡± She turned to point the quivering knife toward her former trusted friend.
¡°A shame...¡± he said with a disappointed frown. Quickly his hands grabbed the nearby Queen¡¯s head and twisted until a gruesome pop came from her neck and she fell still. He stood back up with a reluctant sigh and looked at her with cold, hard eyes. ¡°It pains me to waste such potential, but if you will not follow me, then you must follow them. I¡¯ve already killed one princess, what¡¯s one more?¡± He reached out towards her.
Arlette had learned many things since arriving at the palace. She¡¯d learned history and language, etiquette and the arts, dancing and riding, and many other things. But one thing she¡¯d never been taught was how to fight. The poor girl had no idea what to do with her little blade as the scary man bore down at her, and so she did something stupid: she threw the knife up at his face as hard as she could.
As a young girl just turning eight years of age who wasn¡¯t a Feeler, ¡°as hard as she could¡± didn¡¯t amount to much. The knife sailed upwards almost lazily, slowly spinning as it traveled the distance between her hands and Sebastian¡¯s face. The knight was already leaning back just slightly as if he¡¯d known she would throw it before she¡¯d even thought to do so, his chin not even a fraction of a finger¡¯s width from the blade¡¯s tip as it spun by.
But then something unexpected happened. With a start, Sebastian rocked forward as if pushed in the back. The push lacked power, almost as if it were barely there, but it was enough to move his face forward just a little¡ªjust enough for the tip of her knife to slice into his jaw.
Sebastian froze, and a terrifying stillness fell over the scene, with the clattering of the knife against the floor the only sound to be heard. The man¡¯s eyes were wide and unfocused in shock as his hand rose to touch the wound on his handsome, clean-shaven face. Slowly he pulled it away and stared almost uncomprehendingly at the blood that oozed over his fingers. ¡°You...¡± he muttered, his hands beginning to tremble.
¡°Arlette!¡± a familiar voice called as somebody she hadn¡¯t seen in seasons ran around the stunned man from the other side. ¡°We have to run!¡±
¡°Peko?¡± she asked, confused. Why was he here suddenly? What was he doing on the other side of Sebastian?
Shouts could be heard coming from outside the room behind her. Somebody banged on the door. Sebastian seemed to pay the commotion no mind. He was far too consumed by whatever was going on inside his head, muttering to himself.
¡°My face... my perfect face!¡± she heard him say. Sebastian¡¯s breath came hard and fast now. His face was growing redder by the moment and his eyes had taken on a wild quality that Arlette had never seen in him before as he stared into the middle distance, seeing something only he could see. Then, suddenly, his eyes, still filled with a wild rage, regained their focus and clarity. They were pointed right at her.
¡°You little BITCH!¡± he howled. ¡°You ruined EVERYTHING!¡±
Arlette turned away from Sebastian and ran towards the nearest door as quickly as her little legs could move her. She could hear her ex-bodyguard¡¯s demented breathing closing quickly behind her, and knew that even if she made it to the door, she would never have time to open it before he caught her.
But then the voices coming from the other side of the door all grew louder and the door burst open. A dozen guards poured through the doorway and halted, aghast at the scene before their eyes.
¡°Stop her!¡± Sebastian shouted, but the guards were too slow to react as Arlette desperately slid and crawled her way through their legs and out into the hallway. She heard a roar of pure fury, followed by the sound of a blade slicing into flesh, but she didn¡¯t dare look back. Instead, she ran as fast as she could, heading for the closest entrance to the secret tunnels with Peko just behind her.
The nearest entrance was in fact only a few rooms away, in a room that contained a small library and some tables and chairs. She¡¯d always assumed it was some sort of room where the King could spend time with guests, perhaps play a game or have a conversation in relative privacy. Now, however, it was blessedly empty. Quickly she pushed in the stone entrance and crawled inside, with Peko following her.
Suddenly a large hand pierced through her friend¡¯s body and reached for her, coming up just a few finger¡¯s widths short of her foot. In the dim light coming from the outside room, she could make out the crimson shade of fresh blood covering the hand and arm. Arlette screamed and pushed herself hurriedly away from the seeking appendage.
¡°Hear me, you little worm!¡± Sebastian shouted after her as she manically crawled her way down the passage. ¡°I will not forget this! No matter where you run, no matter where you hide, I will hunt you down and I will show you suffering the likes you cannot even imagine! You will pay for what you have done! I will never forget, and I will never forgive! Mark my words, Arlette Faredin! Mark my words! When I am done with you, you will know the true meaning of despair!¡±
Arlette scrambled as fast as she could through the maze of passageways, wringing her memory for every bit of the layout that she could remember as she frantically searched for a way out. But no matter how far away she got, she could still hear his voice, as what once echoed through the passageways now echoed instead inside her mind.
Somehow, the city had received word of the invasion. Brenridge roiled in chaos, as what seemed like everybody in the city simultaneously rushed about. Arlette rode atop her favorite vekkel, who she¡¯d affectionately named ¡°Sir Growly¡±, with Peko¡¯s insubstantial form sitting behind her, surrounded by a swarm of terrified citizens that were flooding every street and slowing her down drastically.
Sneaking out to the stables and stealing Sir Growly, along with a saddlebag filled with vekkel food, had proved much easier than expected. There had been almost no guards outside to notice the two children or stop them from leaving. As they made their way out, she could hear many shouts coming from the palace proper, which explained where everybody had gone. The prospect that they were related to Sebastian¡¯s rampage had spurred her onward and she¡¯d ridden Sir Growly through the sparsely-manned gate before they¡¯d even realized what was happening.
This mass of people, however, was a much larger problem. Every few moments, Arlette couldn¡¯t help but twist about to check behind her, fearful that Sebastian would be right on her tail. She could feel his presence in her mind, a non-specific but incredibly disconcerting feeling of threat that wouldn¡¯t go away no matter how much she tried to banish it. She needed to be away from him¡ªfar away, like back in Nordhom¡ªand she needed it as soon as possible, but the teeming crowd was far too thick and frenzied for easy passage.
¡°Arlette, tell them to move out of the way,¡± Peko urged. ¡°You¡¯re the princess, they¡¯ll listen to you.¡±
¡°But then everybody will see me,¡± Arlette replied. She still maintained her disguise, largely out of simple habit after doing so non-stop for over a year. Still, that didn¡¯t mean she wanted everybody¡¯s attention. Right now, thanks in part to the panic that had fallen over the populace and the fact that she was alone when normally Princess Rosalyn would be accompanied by a large procession of dozens, few people had seemed to realize that she was more than just a girl on a vekkel, an admittedly unusual sight on its own.
This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
¡°We¡¯re dead if we don¡¯t go faster,¡± Peko insisted.
¡°But-¡±
With an annoyed grunt, Peko stood up on the saddle with his hands on her shoulders for balance. ¡°MAKE WAY FOR THE PRINCESS!¡± he shouted as loudly as he could manage. ¡°MAKE WAY!¡±
A commotion spread amongst the nearby crowd as suddenly hundreds of people took notice of her for the first time. Cries rang out to her, calling out to her, asking her to save them. Dozens of gazes bored into her, their eyes filled with a pleading hope that she would be their promised savior. Arlette shrank in her seat as those eyes weighing down on her very spirit. She would be saving nobody but herself this day. She was a lie, a cheat, a fraud. Avoiding those desperate stares as best she could, Arlette urged her mount forward.
Peko¡¯s cries did the trick and the pair made much swifter progress from then on. Soon they made it to the very gate where Arlette had first entered Brenridge. Order around the gate had broken down entirely, with wagons and beasts of burden clogging the area as far too many people tried to leave than the gate could manage. Luckily for her, vekkels were mounts meant for one or two people and thus were much smaller and thinner than the large garophs and wagons all around. It took a little time, but she was able to work her way through the shifting maze and find a way to the gate itself. The guards there gasped when they realized her identity, but she sent Sir Growly rushing through them before they could utter more than a few words, causing those in her path to throw themselves out of her way or be trampled.
They were out. Quickly they gained tremendous speed, rocketing across the land outside the city as only a vekkel could. As the distance from the city walls grew, Arlette spared one last look back at the city which had been her home for the last year and her blood ran cold. He was there, she was sure of it, standing atop the wall and watching as she left. The distance between them was so great that she could barely make out the speck of a person, but she knew it was him. She could feel it in her bones. She urged Sir Growly to run even faster.
¡°We need to stop, Arlette.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t reply, too busy looking about the darkness.
¡°Arlette. Arlette!¡±
¡°We can¡¯t stop yet,¡± Arlette insisted. ¡°Sebastian is coming.¡±
¡°Arlette, listen to reason,¡± Peko sighed. ¡°You¡¯re about to run our vekkel to death. You remember the teachings, you need to let them rest or they¡¯ll run until they fall over dead. Look, he¡¯s panting and everything. If we have no mount then we¡¯ll be caught for sure!¡±
¡°Alright...¡± she replied, pulling Sir Growly off the road and into the nearby forest. Once she could no longer see the road, she stopped and dismounted. Stumbling on the uneven forest floor in her fancy shoes, she sat down and rested her back weakly against a tree. As she did so, she couldn¡¯t help but think about all the dirt she was getting on her already filthy dress. She was thankful that it was summer so she wasn¡¯t freezing in her clothes late at night. Still, the mental image of a little child in a lavish, delicate, ornate outfit covered in dust and dirt struck her as strangely hilarious. The Queen would have had an absolute fit if she could see...
Tears were pouring down Arlette¡¯s face before she even realized it, the lifetime¡¯s worth of trauma she¡¯d accrued that day finally bursting forth now that her young mind didn¡¯t have anything to keep itself away from thinking about it. The gaze of the kind old woman as she¡¯d gasped her last breath, the desperate clawing of some of the victims against the hall doors, the rage and bitterness, the shocked expression of the King as his life ebbed away, the raw hatred of the Queen... she saw them over and over again as she rocked back and forth, trying her best not to cry too loud so as not to attract attention.
¡°Shhhh...¡± Peko said, sitting down beside her. After a few more moments of watching her weep, he cleared his throat. ¡°Hey... I need you to do something for me. Do you remember the place we first met?¡±
¡°Y-yeah...¡±
¡°Good... I need you to close your eyes, alright?¡±
Arlette stared at him through tear-filled eyes, not sure what he was talking about, but decided to do what he asked and closed her eyes.
¡°Okay, now keep your eyes closed and imagine that place. Imagine how it was when we first met. Imagine that you¡¯re there on that hill, just like that time.¡±
Arlette dragged the memory of that day four years ago to the front of her mind, recalling all the little details of that time and place. She imagined herself on the lone hilltop near her village, sitting against the large, gnarled tree that sat all alone atop the hill. She imagined the whole world being engulfed in fog, the grey-white mist that blocked off her vision beyond more than a few paces making it feel like the entire world was just this hill and its tree. She imagined the stillness of that day and the way it had matched the emptiness in her heart...
Arlette opened her eyes and gasped, looking about in confusion. She and Peko were suddenly on that hill! ¡°What¡¯s going on? Where are we?¡± she asked.
¡°We¡¯re inside your mind,¡± Peko said from beside her, looking about with a small smile of satisfaction on his face.
¡°Inside my mind?¡± she repeated, still confused. ¡°How? Why?¡±
¡°Because you brought us here, and because if you¡¯re in your mind, I can do this,¡± Peko replied. He turned to her and gave her a strong hug.
Arlette nearly jumped. She could feel him! For the first time, Peko was actually touching her! Quickly her arms shot out and wrapped the boy in a reciprocal embrace. ¡°Peko... I...¡± She sniffed and felt the tears return, but tried to force them back inside.
¡°It¡¯s okay, cry,¡± Peko whispered soothingly.
¡°But I¡¯m a big girl now and big girls don¡¯t...¡±
¡°Shhhhh... Everybody cries, even big girls. Don¡¯t hold it back, empty all your sadness out until you feel better. That¡¯s why we¡¯re here.¡± He patted her on the head softly.
Arlette couldn¡¯t hold back any longer. She cried for herself. She cried for the Princess. She cried for the King. She cried for the Queen. She cried for her kingdom and for everybody inside it. She cried for what felt like days until she had nothing left inside of her.
¡°Feeling better?¡± Peko inquired. He¡¯d held her the entire time, never once letting her go, for which she was grateful.
She sniffed. ¡°No... a little...¡±
He let go of her and took a step back. ¡°That¡¯s good, because it¡¯s time for you to wake up.¡±
Arlette¡¯s eyes flew open and she sat up in a panic. She¡¯d fallen asleep? How? When? Looking about, she let out a relieved sigh. The glow of daybreak filtered through the trees, so she hadn¡¯t slept for too long. It seemed that nobody had found them during the night, either.
Taking a piece of food for Sir Growly from the vekkel¡¯s saddlebag, she fed him and gave him some affectionate pets along his neck, getting soft trilling growls of happiness in return. The growls of her mount mixed with those of her stomach as her body reminded her just how little she¡¯d eaten. She looked at the vekkel food but remembered the warnings she¡¯d been told about how eating it would make you sick. In her rush to leave, she hadn¡¯t had time to pack provisions for herself, so it looked like she¡¯d have to see if she could forage a breakfast quickly before heading out.
¡°Hey Arlette,¡± Peko said, appearing out of thin air beside her as she walked a little further into the forest, ¡°I need to talk to you about something I¡¯ve been thinking about.¡±
¡°Yeah?¡± she asked as she spotted some mushrooms growing beside a nearby tree. She remembered her mother telling her that these ones with the bright blue caps were safe to eat.
¡°Where were you planning on running? Back to Nordhom?¡±
¡°Well, yeah, of course,¡± she replied as she bent down and began picking the mushrooms, scraping the dirt off the bottoms, and biting into them. They didn¡¯t taste very good at all, but they were much better than nothing.
Peko frowned. ¡°We can¡¯t go back there. That¡¯s the first place that Sebastian would guess you¡¯d go. We have to go somewhere else.¡±
¡°What?!¡± she gasped, nearly choking on a mouthful of mushroom. ¡°But what about Mother?¡±
¡°If we go home, we will put your mother in danger. Do you want Sebastian to kill her too?¡±
¡°No!¡± she cried. ¡°But... I want to go home so much!¡±
¡°I know! I want to go back too, but we can¡¯t. You know I¡¯m right.¡±
Maybe it was because she¡¯d used up all her tears, but as upset as Arlette was, she didn¡¯t cry. She only shook her head, forlorn. ¡°Then where do we go? Droaja?¡±
¡°No, if the Ubrans can conquer Ofrax, they can just invade Droaja next and we¡¯ll just have to run again. And Sebastian would probably be able to find us there.¡±
¡°Then where?¡±
¡°We have to head for the Divide. We need to make for Redwater Castle and get through to the other continent.¡±
¡°But won¡¯t the soldiers at Redwater Castle attack anybody who approaches? They surely know about the invasion by now.¡±
¡°If you can keep up your disguise as Princess Rosalyn, they might let you inside. I know it¡¯s a long shot and it¡¯s dangerous, but it¡¯s our only hope of being safe.¡±
Arlette gulped. She didn¡¯t want to admit it, but Peko was right.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Slowly, laboriously, Arlette took one step after another through the freezing snow, slowly climbing what she hoped to be the last leg of her trip to Redwater Castle. She was close now, she believed, because she¡¯d finally reached a high enough altitude that the land was covered in snow even though it was the hot summer season. At least, she hoped she was close. She didn¡¯t know how much longer she could keep going.
Sir Growly had refused to enter the snow when they¡¯d first come across it, so she¡¯d been forced to leave him behind. Vekkels were very weak in the cold snow, which normally wasn¡¯t a problem since snow was rare in most of the world, including Ofrax. The most snow she¡¯d ever seen in her life had been after a big snowstorm when she was five, when the ground had been coated in snow as deep as an adult¡¯s hand. At the time, she¡¯d thought snow was fun and wonderful.
Her opinion on the white menace had changed drastically now. Everything here was covered in snow deep enough to go up to her knees or higher. Every step stole more and more of her warmth. She¡¯d ripped off some of the more tattered parts of her gown and used the strips of cloth to wrap her feet and legs, but that could only do so much. She shivered uncontrollably now, and she couldn¡¯t feel her feet.
She was so tired. She knew that she needed to push forward, that if she were to stop now she would never be able to start again, but her exhaustion threatened to drown her from within. She couldn¡¯t breathe. No matter how much she gasped for air now, it never seemed to be enough.
To make matters worse, she had to keep up her disguise constantly. For the first time in seasons, she¡¯d gone full days without using her disguise. The idea had been that while two kids on a vekkel were definitely noteworthy, if one of them was the princess then it would far more worth remembering. Anything that would help hide their escape was worth doing. But now she had to use it again, since she didn¡¯t know when she¡¯d encounter the fortress and she needed to look like the Princess from the first moment they saw her if she wanted a chance to be let in. Peko had vanished for that same reason.
It was strange how empty the pass was. Her tutor had taught her that the way trade worked with Nocend was that merchants from Obura would bring their goods to the fortress but were never allowed inside. She¡¯d said that they would have to set up shop outside the fortress, where Nocend merchants would emerge and buy whatever it was they felt was worth buying. Afterwards, the goods would be meticulously inspected for hidden compartments and the like to make sure that only people from Nocend re-entered the fortress. The Nocenders were very wary of spies trying to sneak into their continent, it seemed.
While the journey was harsh, it was possible to make a decent amount of money trading Obura-specific goods with the Nocenders, enough at least that a few merchants specialized in it. Not many, but a few. Strangely, Arlette hadn¡¯t run across anybody whatsoever on the way up. She could understand not meeting anyone headed her way, but she¡¯d expected to run across at least one merchant heading back down to Obura by now. Where was everybody? Were the Nocend soldiers capturing the merchants over fear of some sort of trick from the Ubrans? What if they¡¯d all just been killed instead?
The snow was getting deeper every step she took now, and a freezing wind whipped about, sapping away every last hint of warmth that the snow hadn¡¯t already stolen. Cupping her hands together, she tried to Observe a flame between them to warm her just a little, but the tiny drop of fire fizzled out immediately. She couldn¡¯t manage a flame under these conditions. She was just too tired. Her body pleaded with her for rest, but Arlette shook her head weakly. She had to keep going. She could barely keep her eyes open, but she had to. Only death would come of stopping.
She looked up the path, desperately hoping to see something other than mountain cliffs and snow, and noticed something else far off in the distance. She squinted towards the thing. Could it be? It was! There, high above, stood the great walls of Redwater Castle, the strongest fortress ever built.
Desperately she summoned up every little bit of strength she still had. It wasn¡¯t much¡ªshe hadn¡¯t eaten in well over a day and had barely slept the last two nights¡ªbut she took what she had and continued to climb. Her tiny hands struggled against the omnipresent snow as she pushed herself to keep going. She was so close.
Thump!
What was that? Arlette¡¯s cold-addled mind couldn¡¯t immediately figure out the source of the sound that had come from off to her left. Was somebody there, hidden in the snow? She took another few halting steps.
Thump!
Another one, this time off to the right and farther away. What was going on? She continued, afraid that if she stopped she could never be able to take another step again.
THUMP!
She saw it clearly this time and despaired. An arrow had come streaking from the castle and embedded itself into the snow just paces in front of her. The people in the fortress were using her for target practice. She could see it now, they were each taking turns to try to shoot her through the wind as she approached.
Arlette''s foot caught on something beneath the snow and she fell forward into the powder. Cold. So very cold. She tried to push herself back up but failed. Her limbs were moving slower than molasses and no matter how hard she pushed herself to get up, she couldn''t find the strength to push herself all the way to her feet. There was simply nothing left. She collapsed back into the snow and her mind slowly faded away, accompanied by nothing but the howl of the wind and the muffled thumps of arrows embedding themselves nearby.
Chapter 61
As Tehlmar Esmae studied the view outside the window, he found himself pondering religion, something he rarely thought about. There were only a few large religions in Scyria. Outside of the Ubrans, who worshiped their Emperor as a living god, most of the rest of the humans followed a spiritualistic form of religion known as Iacism. Iacism had no organized structure and was instead mainly based on respecting and revering the spirits of dead family and friends with the belief that they would watch over and protect the living. Tehlmar had always found these beliefs strange. If the spirits of the dead were truly protecting the living, they were doing a remarkably bad job at it.
Stragma and Otharia, on the other hand, followed a much more centralized structure with their religions, each society worshiping a single named entity. The Stragmans, of course, worshiped a giant tree they called ¡°Ruresni¡±, and by extension the entire forest. Now that he¡¯d seen the impossibly-large thing with his own eyes, he had to admit it was quite an impressive tree, one that made you reconsider your own significance in relation to the rest of the world.
Tehlmar was unclear on if the Otharians still worshiped their god Othar or not after the whole coup thing. He¡¯d been too busy with other matters to really bother to find out and the prince training he¡¯d undergone had, like so many things in Drayhadan society, focused entirely on matters within the nation while ignoring everything happening on the outside. For now he assumed that, officially or unofficially, they still believed in their savior god Othar.
Drayhadans liked to use Stragma and Otharia as a prime example of the folly of non-elves, pointing to their icons of worship with ridicule. After all, they said, what sort of fools would worship a tree or a simple human who just happened to be more powerful than usual?
Perhaps it was because he¡¯d lived for so long outside of the Drayhadan bubble, but Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but find this attitude to be hypocritical. Drayhadan couldn¡¯t say much better about Drayhadal¡¯s deity Muiqir, God of the Elves. Nobody alive had ever seen Muiqir. In fact, nobody save Drakannon, the founder of Drayhadal himself, had ever even claimed to have seen or spoken with him. Drayhadans simply accepted the word of their founder as gospel.
According to Drakannon, Muiqir had commanded him to save the elven race by gathering every elf together and forming a haven for them away from all the evils of the barbarians. That, perhaps, was all the elves needed to justify their worship. Even though Drakannon had died thousands of years ago and Muiqir had never been seen again, the God¡¯s teachings were still fundamental to Drayhadan society.
Perhaps no teaching of Muiqir¡¯s had a more profound impact on Drayhadan society than ¡°Yours is the world to make as you see fit. Claim it, tame it, mold it.¡± The elves of Drayhadal had taken those instructions to the extreme. Whereas Stragman society stressed working in harmony with nature, Drayhadans believed in making nature their bitch.
One of the best examples of this philosophy was Casmyae, the current capital of Drayhadal and his current location. Most of the city was built on Lake Remna, the largest lake in the country. Where other people would have built their city on the lake shore, the Casm had instead built the city literally on top of the water.
Casmyae stood as a monumental feat of both engineering and overindulgence, a tribute to what could be accomplished when given centuries. In various areas, over thousands of years, the lake bed had been raised up until the water was no deeper than halfway up a man¡¯s shin. There entire ¡°fields¡± of aquatic plants grew, some providing nutritious crops while others were cultivated simply for their beauty. The Casm family¡¯s aquatic flower gardens were said to be the most beautiful places in the country during the spring and summer seasons.
Elsewhere, the lake had been deepened to hold all the extra displaced water. Here, thousands of fish swam about in great schools, serving as an important source of protein in the local cuisine. There were even elaborate dam systems created to maintain the water level at the exact desired level regardless of season and rainfall. Large, thick stone pillars rose from the shallow water, joining together in large arches to support the multi-layered stone houses and walkways that made up the city.
There was a hubris to all this that, after decades elsewhere, Tehlmar was unable to overlook. Was this behavior a result of Muiqir¡¯s commandments, he wondered, or were Muiqir¡¯s commandments a creation to justify this behavior? He wasn¡¯t sure anymore. The funny thing was that if he¡¯d been thinking such thoughts even just a year ago he would have fallen squarely on the side that the teachings were a justification. He¡¯d always been a skeptic since childhood and the Masked Battalion had trained him to be even more distrustful. Exposure to other belief systems had only solidified his already-existing disbelief. Then Zrukhora had happened.
There was one other ¡°religion¡± that had so far gone unmentioned because it wasn¡¯t really a religion as much as it was folklore and legend, fairy tales passed down from generation to generation to scare children into behaving. They told of a race of beings referred to in these stories only as the ¡°old gods¡±, giant, powerful, wicked things that brought only chaos and death from the skies to all. He¡¯d never believed the tales, of course, even after finding out that other societies had surprisingly similar fables of their own.
Zrukhora had changed that. Arlette had scoffed at him when he¡¯d told her his conclusion, but that hadn¡¯t altered his conviction. There was little doubt in his mind that the thing that had killed so many of his friends and wiped out an entire city in its rage could only be one of these ¡°gods¡±. And if those old tales could be real... why couldn¡¯t Muiqir?
Tehlmar shook his head. This was why he hated sitting around: it left him time to think, and nothing good ever came of that. Right now, he sat in a room overlooking a courtyard garden in the Casm¡¯s widespread palace. He¡¯d been waiting for a while¡ªjudging by the passage of the sun, three hours at least¡ªwhich was a bad sign. The four ruling clans of Drayhadal had never liked each other, but treating a high-ranking member of a rival clan so disrespectfully was absolutely unheard of. It was a slap to the face of the entire clan. Small-scale wars had been started for less.
The fact that the Casm thought that they could disrespect the future head of a competing clan worried him. He¡¯d been working on the assumption that his position, combined with his unique experience, would allow him to open the eyes of his more cloistered peers. Perhaps he¡¯d been naive.
The door to the waiting room opened, a portly male servant standing in the doorway. ¡°Prince Fatoro Casm will see you now,¡± he said.
Tehlmar¡¯s face hardened but he said nothing as he followed the servant deeper into the palace. Things were looking worse and worse by the moment. A prince¡¯s power and influence were largely determined by seniority. Prince Fatoro was the seventh prince of the Casm clan, a position of middling standing. By having the Seventh Prince meet him instead of the Clan Head or one of the six princes above Fatoro, the Casm were disrespecting him even further.
Prince Fatoro was waiting for him in an ornate chamber about twenty paces wide and long, a gallery of some sort. There were no chairs or tables in this room, only a series of paintings and sculptures arranged along the walls. The man stood on the shorter side, about half a head shorter than Tehlmar, with long, aqua hair that fell all the way down to his waist, where Tehlmar could see a rather pronounced paunch.
Beside the prince stood another man dressed in an advisor¡¯s robe somewhat similar to the one Artiermius would wear, but more ostentatious with golden tassels hanging from various parts of the outfit. Four large guards stood at attention in the four corners of the room. He noticed that they were watching him warily like he was some sort of wild beast in their midst who might pounce without warning. Tehlmar didn¡¯t know why they thought that of him. His reputation back in Esmaeyae wasn¡¯t that bad, was it?
¡°Ah Prince Tehlmar Esmae, in the flesh!¡± the middle-aged Casm said with a wide, welcoming smile as the servant and Tehlmar entered the room. ¡°I must apologize for the delay, some very serious matters came up that required the clan¡¯s full attention.¡±
Tehlmar held back a snort. Serious matters? What crap. They¡¯d just wanted to make him wait. He knew better than to say that out loud, of course. Instead, he gave a slight bow and said, ¡°I thank you for seeing me. I have need to discuss some urgent business with your clan.¡±
¡°Of course, of course. Anything which would prompt an unannounced visit from the future head of the Esmae clan must be very important. What matter concerns you? Tariffs? This year¡¯s upcoming planting season?¡±
¡°We must talk about the Ubrans.¡±
Prince Fatoro¡¯s smile faded. ¡°The Ubrans? You came all the way here to talk about barbarians?¡±
¡°They are dangerous and need to be stopped now before Crirada falls.¡±
The Casm prince glanced at his advisor, who responded, ¡°Crirada is the capital of the Republic of Eterium, my Prince.¡±
¡°And why do we care about what happens there?¡± the prince asked.
¡°Once Crirada falls, the Ubran Empire will sweep across the rest of the continent,¡± Tehlmar replied, a mixture of alarm and anger growing in his chest. He couldn¡¯t fathom how somebody in the ruling clan could be so unconcerned with what was happening just north of them. ¡°Once they have taken the rest, they will come for us.¡±
¡°Pish posh,¡± Fatoro replied, waving Tehlmar¡¯s concerns away like a bad smell. ¡°Perhaps you are unaware due to your long absence, but the Ubrans signed a non-aggression pact with us. We won¡¯t have to worry about them.¡±
¡°That treaty means nothing to them. They will break it as soon as it becomes convenient for them. We must ally with the other remaining nations while we still can and push the Ubrans back to Obura.¡±
¡°Ally with a bunch of mudeaters?¡± the prince scoffed. ¡°Are you out of your mind?¡±
¡°We cannot defeat the Ubran Empire without aid.¡±
¡°We have held off the savages while outnumbered ten-to-one through countless invasions. Between the martial superiority of the Drayhadan people and the mountains on our northern border, the Ubrans will pose no problem for us.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s hands balled into fists, his ire rising fast. Just how stupid could this man be? Perhaps if he tried another tack... ¡°Prince Fatoro, thousands of lives are being lost every day! We can stop this madness now and save hundreds of thousands of people!¡±
¡°Hmph!¡± he snorted derisively. ¡°I see that the rumors are true, your years away have twisted you from the truth. The barbarians are nothing more than garoph-fucking, cave-dwelling trash. We will let them fight, because the more they wipe themselves out, the better this world will be. That is-¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s fist shot out before he even knew what was happening, catching the Casm prince squarely in the mouth and dropping him to the floor mid-sentence. The entire room just stood still for a moment, as everybody, including Tehlmar, was stunned at what had just happened.
¡°AAAAHHH!¡± Prince Fatoro cried from his seat on the floor, holding his hand over his blood-covered mouth. Tehlmar thought he saw several teeth missing in the short glimpses he got through the gaps in the Casm prince¡¯s fingers. ¡°Guards! Get him!¡±
The four guards were already in motion, flying at top speed towards him. Tehlmar ducked one, then another, but the third guard managed to get him with a shoulder and knock him off balance, and the fourth was then able to drag him to the ground. Things only got worse for him after that.
Hours later, Tehlmar dragged himself onto the shore of Lake Remna and laid still as the water gently lapped up around him and receded over and over. He¡¯d fucked up royally this time. Striking a fellow prince? A member of the ruling clan, at that, in his own home? Only an idiot would do such a thing.
Well, he was officially an idiot, it seemed. Tehlmar had met a lot of different people during his time away from Drayhadal, some bad, but many decent people. Some, he¡¯d even deigned to call friends. The way Prince Fatoro had spoken about them like they were animals had sparked something inside of him and he¡¯d lashed out almost out of reflex, his body obeying his heart over his head.
The end result had not been pretty for Tehlmar. Prince Fatoro had been absolutely incensed and had had him soundly beaten for several hours by the guards, with the Casm prince throwing in few kicks to the head of his own. Tehlmar¡¯s face was severely swollen and bruised, with black eyes on both sides making it hard to see. He was fairly sure he had several broken ribs as well. Finally, the guards had thrown him out of the palace, but not onto dry land. No, they¡¯d dumped him in the lake and left him to fend for himself.
The bodily damage would heal soon enough, he knew¡ªby the time he returned to Esmaeyae he¡¯d be as good as new¡ªbut the real damage had been dealt to his mission. Prince Fatoro had declared with great pleasure that he would personally make sure that the Drayhadans would never join in the war. The rest of the Casm, who had the most power in this matter for the next few decades, would definitely side with their Seventh Prince now even if they hadn¡¯t already agreed. To add insult to injury, the Casm were surely going to press the matter in court in order to extract a large series of concessions from the Esmae.
He¡¯d fucked up.
Tehlmar let out a defeated sigh. It was time for him to face the fact that he just wasn¡¯t cut out for this political crap. He didn¡¯t have the skills nor the temperament to accomplish his goals. But knew somebody who did. Somebody who knew how to play the intrigue game at its finest. Unfortunately, it was the same somebody he¡¯d been avoiding at all costs.
¡°Brother, it¡¯s so delightful to see you,¡± Pyria purred. ¡°I was beginning to think you¡¯d been avoiding me.¡±
¡°That¡¯s because every time I see you it takes everything I have not to kill you where you stand, dear sister,¡± Tehlmar shot back.
The elven princess sat on a plush sofa inside her private chambers, a cup of dark blue liquid in her hand. Tehlmar stood behind her, a cloud of animosity emanating from him. Yet his anger appeared to have little effect on Pyria, who seemed unbothered by her brother¡¯s unannounced presence. As he stared at her, the urge to just grab her neck with both hands and squeeze until Pyria had breathed her last grew stronger with every passing moment. It would be so easy.
No. He hadn¡¯t snuck into Esmaeyae, past the guards in the palace, and all the way into her rooms undetected to kill her... this time at least. That didn¡¯t make staying his hand easy. One look at her smug, unconcerned face was enough to almost send him up the wall.
¡°Oh come now, brother, surely you¡¯re not still angry about that matter?¡± she asked, swirling the drink about in the cup without a care in the world. ¡°It was so very long ago now! Besides, it was necessary to save the clan.¡±
Tehlmar''s breath caught in his chest as Pyria''s words brought a new swell of anger rushing up inside of him. ¡°Is that how you justify it to yourself? To save the clan? Is that what lets you sleep at night?¡±
¡°Oh please, Tehlmar, look at yourself. You¡¯re a drunken, violent fool who gambles away everything he has at the earliest opportunity. If I hadn¡¯t stepped in, the clan would be in ruins by now.¡±
Tehlmar couldn¡¯t believe his ears as his already roaring hate doubled inside him. His nails dug into his palms so hard that they drew blood, and a moment later Pyria found herself staring at a crimson blade hovering just a finger¡¯s width from her forehead and pointing directly at her skull.
¡°Everything I am is because of what you did to me,¡± he hissed.
¡°Is it?¡± Pyria asked, glancing at the red knife with more annoyance than fear. ¡°You were a terrible child. All you ever did was run about and play and misbehave. You refused to take your lessons seriously and fought with all your instructors constantly. Anyone with half a brain would have been able to see what you would turn into. I simply was the only one with the determination to do what had to be done.¡±
¡°Bullshit! You just wanted power!¡±
¡°Both can be true. Now if you simply came to complain about events decades old, I suggest you be on your way before I alert the guards and have you thrown in the dungeon. I have no more time to deal with you. Do you have any idea how much trouble you¡¯ve caused with the Casm? My days have been long and messy thanks to your foolishness.¡± She took a sip of the beverage and let out a small satisfied sigh. ¡°Rennelberry wine truly is the best way to wind down a long day...¡±
Tehlmar laughed scornfully. This bitch thought she could just talk her way out of this? ¡°I¡¯m not going anywhere. After all this time apart, we have so much more to catch up on besides old grudges. Like new grudges.¡±
¡°I have no idea what you¡¯re talking about,¡± Pyria scoffed, then winced slightly as the vermilion blade fell down to her soft, unprotected neck and jabbed itself just deep enough for his solidified blood to draw hers, but her face reverted to that infuriating calmness an instant later.
¡°Don¡¯t lie. After all you¡¯d done to me, I still risked my cover and my safety to warn you about the invasion. Without me, the Stragmans would have burned this entire territory to the ground. And yet you still locked me in your little prison and after I pulled every favor I had here to get myself out and away from this country, suddenly I was captured by bounty hunters after crossing into Eterium. Nobody should have known where I was going to be, especially not anyone outside of Drayhadal, yet it was like they were prepared and waiting for me. It was almost like somebody had tipped them off. Tell me, Pyria, how did they know where I was? Hmmm? How did they know?¡±
¡°Surely you can¡¯t believe that I would be able to take notice of such trivial things.¡± She took another sip of wine.
¡°You would take notice of somebody outside of the family requisitioning a royal transport, especially with that kind of route. You¡¯re vile, Pyria, but you¡¯re not stupid. You knew immediately what was going on. After everything you put me through, I still saved your ass and instead of thanking me, you tried to have me killed. Getting me out of the picture once wasn¡¯t enough. You wanted to make it permanent.¡±
¡°Oh... I see...¡± Pyria muttered. She turned her head slowly so as not to deepen the wound from the knife still poking into her neck and met his furious glare with a look of wry amusement and self-satisfaction. ¡°This all makes sense now. Father and Artiermius have been perplexed for days about your sudden change in behavior. I must admit, even I wasn¡¯t sure to make of it, declaring that you¡¯d decided on a suitable partner after refusing every possibility presented to you and then gallivanting off to Casmyae on your fool¡¯s errand. But I can¡¯t help but notice how you keep referring to only yourself, as if you purposely didn¡¯t want to mention the man, two women, and child you took with you from the prison. It¡¯s like you¡¯re afraid I would learn of them.¡±
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
She was trying to get to him, he knew, poking and prodding at him for a reaction. Yet for some reason, he felt himself losing control. Keeping control of your body and reactions was one of the most important and fundamental parts of being a spy. He¡¯d been in crises hundreds of times before and always managed to keep his cool, but for some reason now his body wouldn¡¯t listen to him. His heart was pounding in his ears, his breath heavy, his hands trembling. Pyria¡¯s smile widened as she saw this.
¡°Declaring you¡¯d chosen who to court. A sudden drive to rescue the rest of Nocend from the Ubrans...¡± She chuckled knowingly. ¡°To think that my dear brother is actually in love with a barbarian. Oh, this is rich. Was that why you struck Prince Fatoro? What did he say? Did he call them savages? Mudeaters? Pests?¡±
¡°Enough!¡± Tehlmar growled.
¡°It¡¯s the older one, isn¡¯t it? Oh, if only I had known of her before, I would have-¡±
Tehlmar was upon her before she could even finish her sentence. The blade of solid blood poking her throat morphed into a thick band that wrapped around her neck and squeezed, cutting off her air. He yanked the tendril of blood that connected the band to his hand, pulling her roughly onto her back. She grabbed at her throat, trying to free herself. Another knife formed in his other hand, and he immediately stabbed it deep into his sister¡¯s right thigh. Her mouth opened in a silent shriek and she writhed as he twisted the blade inside her.
¡°When I was young, I lived for revenge,¡± he said softly, the tinge of insanity in his voice matching the wildness in his eyes. ¡°It was the only thing that got me through the days when I was a child, the only reason I got back up whenever they left me bleeding on the floor, the only thing that kept me from killing myself. I would lie in bed, just imagining Bargos¡¯s face as he bled out on the carpet in front of my feet. When I graduated from training and found out that he¡¯d been dead for years, I didn¡¯t know what to do with myself. All that hatred and rage that had built up inside me didn¡¯t just go away. It¡¯s just burned away at my insides, decade after decade. But now, suddenly I can have my revenge again. Finally, I can make you pay for your crimes.¡±
Pyria gasped as he suddenly loosened the band around her neck, her lungs working overtime as she panted and coughed. A moment later the panic in her eyes had faded somewhat and she looked back up at him to find herself surrounded by enough blade to arm a legion, each pointed her way.
¡°Seventy-seven years I have waited for this moment. Go ahead, sister. Plead for your life. Beg for it. Tell me why I should spare your miserable existence.¡±
¡°Fuck! You!¡± she spat. ¡°You¡¯re not going to kill me and we both know it!¡±
¡°Wrong answer.¡± Tehlmar ripped the blade out of her right thigh and plunged it into her left one while the band constricted again to silence her screams. She trembled and shook as tears streamed down the sides of her face. But for some reason, her face didn¡¯t have the same agony as before. After a moment, he realized that the woman was doing more than screaming in pain. She was laughing, as best one could at least when unable to breathe. His scowl deepened and he relaxed the band. ¡°Something funny?¡± he snarled.
¡°Go ahead,¡± she hissed out between an assorted combination of laughs and coughs. ¡°Kill me. Take my life and get your revenge, and then watch as your ¡®precious one¡¯ dies in Crirada as you¡¯re powerless to stop it! What are you waiting for? Kill the one person who can help you save her! Do it, coward! Do it!¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s reached out with both hands and lifted her roughly up towards his face, staring deeply into her defiant eyes.
¡°Listen to me, and listen well, Pyria,¡± he said, his voice suddenly disturbingly calm, yet carrying an underlying fury that threatened to explode out at any moment. ¡°I swear on my life that if she dies I will not just kill you, I will fucking erase you. I won¡¯t stop at your death, I¡¯ll undo every single thing you¡¯ve ever prided yourself on. Every accomplishment, every relationship, your beloved clan, all of it will go up in flames!¡±
¡°So scary!¡± she taunted back, her cocky eyes mocking him. ¡°Threaten me all you want, Tehlmar. We both know that the real reason you¡¯re here is that you need my help. You can¡¯t save the woman you love without me, after all. No, you need me.¡±
Tehlmar grit his teeth in silence. He didn¡¯t know what to do. Everything was falling apart. She was right¡ªinfuriatingly so.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, brother? Why so quiet all of a sudden? Is it my turn to make you beg?¡± She smiled a sickeningly sweet smile. ¡°No, an Esmae should never beg, and I am magnanimous in victory. I will give you my assistance.¡±
Tehlmar was so stunned that he accidentally released his grip on her, sending her falling back onto the couch with a small cry.
¡°Believe it or not, I actually agree with you, and because the fact that you love a human changes everything about our little relationship," she continued. "If you had simply the manners to ask, I would have gladly offered my help. Now back off.¡±
¡°You... what?!¡±
¡°Off!¡±
Tehlmar backed away and pulled his blood back into his body. Pyria leveraged herself up onto her elbows and winced as she pushed herself up to lean against the sofa¡¯s cushioned side.
¡°Get me three handkerchiefs from the third drawer,¡± she said, nodding towards a dresser across the room because her hands were busy applying pressure to her wounded legs. Tehlmar hesitated, thrown off by how quickly she¡¯d taken charge of the dynamic between them, and she sent a harsh glare his way. ¡°Do you want my help or not?¡±
Tehlmar fetched the large handkerchiefs from the drawer and handed them to her.
¡°This is why you¡¯ll never make it here on your own. You only know how to negotiate with a knife, you troglodyte,¡± she grumbled as she tied one around each of her legs and her neck, using them as makeshift bandages to contain the bleeding. ¡°Alright. First things first, if you ever even point a blade in my direction again, all cooperation is off. Got it? You got your little satisfaction, your petty revenge. No more.¡±
¡°What did you mean when you said you agreed with me?¡± Tehlmar asked, returning to the previous subject rather than acknowledge what she¡¯d just said.
¡°I meant that the Ubrans need to be stopped now, before they turn their eyes on Drayhadal. I am not a simpleton, Tehlmar. While the others might be too blinded by their own little worlds, I can see the inevitable conclusion we are heading towards. Maybe the Empire will head for Kutrad first, or Otharia, but their gaze will turn on us eventually and we alone will not be strong enough to stop them. Our only hope lies with working alongside the other Nocend powers while there are any left to work with.¡±
¡°Then why didn¡¯t you do anything?¡±
¡°You think I didn¡¯t try? Those old bastards cling to their centuries-old treaty as if it protects us better than the finest armor in the world. It¡¯s ¡®tradition¡¯ they say, like they say for everything. Let us face facts, Tehlmar: though I may be one of the most powerful people in Drayhadal, my arguments fall on deaf ears because I am a woman. Meanwhile, your arguments fall flat because you carry the stigma of your time elsewhere. Neither of us is enough to change the course of the country. At least, neither of us individually. Together, however, with our combined resources, we can save this land, and save that person in the process.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s eyes narrowed in suspicion. She¡¯d agreed to help him far too easily for his comfort. ¡°After all that you¡¯ve put me through, why should I trust you now?¡±
¡°Because I will need your help just as much as you need mine if we want to succeed in this endeavor, and because I think you¡¯ll find that we will, in fact, each get what we desire through this arrangement. Believe it or not, I don¡¯t always just try to solve every one of my problems by killing people. In fact, I jumped at the chance to send you to the Masked Battalion precisely because it meant I wouldn¡¯t have to kill you to get the power I needed to accomplish my goals. As much as it pains me to say it, you are my only brother. I may not like you, Tehlmar, or even have much respect for you, but that does not mean that I hate you and it does not mean that I want you dead if there is an acceptable alternative. If you truly care enough about that woman to try to send an entire country to war, and if you¡¯re willing to follow through on it, then you are no longer a threat to me.¡±
Her words didn¡¯t convince Tehlmar, but then again, nothing she could say would truly change the roiling loathing and distrust for her that resided deep inside his heart. Still, he needed her, so he shoved his suspicion down inside tried to act like she¡¯d convinced him. ¡°So how can we convince the elders to take us to war?¡±
¡°There is no way for us to convince them with our clout and resources,¡± Pyria stated. ¡°Since they cannot be swayed, they must be replaced.¡±
¡°A coup?¡± Tehlmar hissed in alarm, his eyes going wide and a trace of fear entering his voice for a moment as he looked about in panic for anybody who might have heard. ¡°Don¡¯t say that out loud, you¡¯ll get us executed! Are you insane?! We wouldn¡¯t stand a chance!¡±
¡°I am quite sane, thank you, and I believe that our chances are far greater than you might imagine. With your connections to a certain order, the impossible becomes possible.¡±
Tehlmar blanched. ¡°You don¡¯t know what you¡¯re saying! The Battalion lives and dies by its founding rules, and staying out of internal affairs is the most important one! Just suggesting that might get me killed!¡±
¡°They might be more susceptible to persuasion than you believe, brother. Nobody in the country understands the peril that we face like they do. I receive their reports, and it is impossible to miss how the urgency of their warnings has escalated exponentially since the Ubrans invaded. I believe that somebody like you, both a noble and a Mask, would be able to make them see reason. We aren¡¯t talking about wiping out the clans, after all. All we need is a few untimely deaths and a few people in the right spots replaced, just enough to turn the wheel towards war. With their talents and my planning, success would be possible, nay, likely.¡±
¡°And you¡¯d, of course, be in prime position to capitalize on these untimely deaths and people being replaced.¡±
¡°Of course. You¡¯d benefit as well. With a pull of the proper strings, I¡¯d be able to get you appointed as the leader of the expedition, allowing you to personally swoop in and save the day. I¡¯m sure your beloved would find such a dashing figure hard to resist. Ubrus is defeated, Drayhadal remains safe, you get the girl of your dreams.¡±
¡°Treason. You want to commit treason.¡±
¡°I prefer to think of it as a form of extreme but necessary patriotism. If there were a less-radical solution I would have suggested it.¡±
Tehlmar put his head in his hands, a headache coming on hard. This wasn¡¯t what he¡¯d expected going into this. What she was proposing sounded insane, but... it could work. Between his sister¡¯s political skills and the Masked Battalion¡¯s capabilities, there was a chance that it could work. He wasn¡¯t fond of the idea, but he couldn¡¯t deny that she¡¯d laid out the only path to success he¡¯d found so far, and he didn¡¯t have much time left to keep looking.
¡°And what about me? What would I be doing during this time? Or do you just need me to convince the Masked Battalion?¡±
Pyria¡¯s lips drew into an amused half-smile. ¡°There¡¯s one other crucial matter that would need to be dealt with or mobilizing our full strength won¡¯t be possible, and you¡¯re the perfect man for the task. You¡¯re just not going to like it.¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
She told him, and Tehlmar¡¯s headache instantly became three times worse.
Tehlmar threw himself to the right to avoid a crimson spear that threatened to skewer him while blocking the swing of a spiked whip with a hurriedly-constructed shield. The spear slammed deep into the tree that had been behind him, embedding itself with a loud ¡°THOCK!¡± before losing its cohesion and becoming a large ball of blood.
¡°To think that you would fall so far as to advocate the abandonment of the Founding Charter,¡± the leader of the Masked Battalion, Prime Mask Gemenar, snarled as he drew the blood back towards him and shaped it into what a large hammer. ¡°First you ignore the recall order, and now this? You have fallen far, Mask Tehlmar. Far enough that I cannot overlook your transgression regardless of your lineage.¡±
This was going about as well as Tehlmar had expected. That was why when he¡¯d contacted the Battalion and arranged his meeting with the Prime Mask, he¡¯d insisted that they meet in a small wood a good distance from any towns and that the Prime Mask come alone. As far as Tehlmar could tell, the Prime Mask had honored his conditions, leaving the two of them to battle it out in privacy.
¡°It¡¯s the only way we have left!¡± Tehlmar shot back, forming a sword and slashing at his former mentor¡¯s face. ¡°What do your people tell you, Gemenar? How much longer until Crirada falls and we lose our window for victory?¡±
¡°They hold better than expected, but their numbers dwindle. They will fall in less than a season unless something unforeseen happens.¡± The blood formed into a mace and bashed against Tehlmar¡¯s shield, buckling it slightly and pushing him back a step.
¡°That¡¯s why we have to move now! You know as well as I that we cannot defeat the Ubrans on our own. If we fail to act now there is no going back!¡±
¡°That is not for us to decide. We must stick to our duty as the eyes and hands of the nation. To overstep our bounds would invalidate what we are! To abandon our duty is to leave the clans blind!¡± Prime Mask Gemenar swung the spiked whip again, but this time the whip split into over a dozen smaller strands that snaked their way around Tehlmar¡¯s shield and dove in towards his flesh. Tehlmar cursed inside his mind. Gemenar was more than double his age and had over a century more experience with blood shaping than he did. The man was able to create more simultaneous objects than Tehlmar could counter, leaving Tehlmar at a large disadvantage.
Tehlmar rolled to his right, barely avoiding all but two of the deadly spikes. Those two pierced into the muscle of this lower leg, and his sword flashed out, severing the other man¡¯s blood. The two spikes and the tendrils that connected them lost their form and splashed down onto the ground. ¡°You are as blind to what goes on inside our borders as they are to events outside them! The clans and their elders that you revere so greatly don¡¯t care what¡¯s happening in the outside world. All they care about are their own petty squabbles and their tiny grievances! Your reports go disregarded, your pleas for action sit unread! Nobody is paying attention, Gemenar, and it will be our doom!¡±
¡°Lies!¡± the other man growled as he blocked Tehlmar¡¯s sword thrust. ¡°The Masked Battalion has always been an honored and respected institution!¡±
¡°Really? Do people scoff at honored institutions? I watched Prince Fatoro Casm burn an unread report right before my very eyes to demonstrate to me just how little the ruling family cares about the threat!¡± Tehlmar lied, swiping his sword towards the Prime Mask¡¯s face to distract him while he did so. ¡°I tried to stand up for us and they beat me nearly senseless! Your words mean nothing to them! You mean nothing to them!¡±
¡°Even if what you say is true, we must never cross that line! To do so would undermine the very foundation of this country! The nation would be in chaos! There would be no going back for us!¡±
Tehlmar pulled more blood out of his body and into his right hand, forming it around the sword into his hand to create a large lance. He leapt forward and thrust it at his old teacher, who remolded his mace into a wide, thin shield to block the attack. ¡°You¡¯re right!¡± Tehlmar replied as suddenly the lance grew a long, thin ridge that spiraled up and around the lance.
¡°What?!¡± Prime Mask Gemenar cried as the lance began to spin and dig into at the older man¡¯s shield.
¡°You¡¯re right! There will be no going back,¡± Tehlmar said as he pressed the lance forward as hard as he could. The lance ground against the shield, chipping away bits of blood from both of them and slowly digging itself deeper. ¡°But if we do not, Drayhadal falls and there will be nothing left to go back to!¡±
With a resounding snap, the shield snapped and the Prime Mask stumbled back. Tehlmar quickly kicked his leg forward, sending a shower of dead and rotting leaves and sticks into the air between them. With the debris blocked the view between them, Tehlmar went as low as he could and charged forward, shaping his blood into a sheet above him for protection. While his opponent had more experience in blood shaping, Tehlmar had far more experience in actual battle. The old man hadn¡¯t been expecting the move, his weapons held high, and Tehlmar was able to bring him to the ground. A moment of tussling later, Tehlmar was atop his former teacher, a blade to the elder¡¯s throat.
¡°It¡¯s time to make a choice, Gemenar,¡± Tehlmar panted. The two of them were already exhausted from the fight, the lack of blood in their body wearing them down quickly. ¡°Join us and the Masked Battalion likely dies. Don¡¯t, and Drayhadal itself assuredly does.¡±
The old man stared at the blade, then up at Tehlmar for a long moment as the winter wind rustled the forest around them. ¡°We truly have fallen, if we must cut off our own arm to save the rest of us...¡± he lamented.
Tehlmar held back a sigh of relief and stood up, pulling Gemenar up afterwards. ¡°I¡¯m glad that you made the right decision,¡± he said. ¡°Now, what about the other Masks? How will you get them to fall in line?¡±
¡°I won¡¯t. There are only a few Masks that I trust enough to follow me into this travesty. Less than twenty. I¡¯ll need a few days to convince them.¡± He glared at Tehlmar. ¡°You¡¯re forcing me to kill my own subordinates if they don¡¯t agree, you realize.¡±
¡°Then choose well,¡± Tehlmar replied. ¡°We don¡¯t need an army, just enough people to tip the balance in the pro-war faction¡¯s favor.¡±
¡°Very well. I will contact you later once I have organized this little treasonous debacle.¡±
¡°Liaise with Princess Pyria from this point onward. She¡¯s the one who can tell you who to target and help with all the detailed planning. I won¡¯t be here after tomorrow anyway, and likely won¡¯t be back for a good while.¡±
¡°Where would you need to go that would be more important than here?¡±
Tehlmar sighed a deep, forlorn sigh.
¡°Stragma.¡±
Chapter 62
Over the past few seasons, Arlette Faredin had been inside so many different dungeons and cells that she felt she could write a guide book about them. As far as dungeons went, Crirada¡¯s was by far the best she¡¯d seen. Instead of being chained to a wall, unable to move about, she had an entire cell to herself. The cell, one of the ¡°three solid walls and one made out of metal bars¡± variety, was surprisingly spacious given what she was used to and even had a straw mattress in the corner. It was still a dungeon, though. The presence of a bed didn¡¯t alter the fact that she¡¯d been locked up beneath the citadel in Crirada for the last day and a half, trying not to lose her mind.
The story of Arlette¡¯s childhood had, as expected, fallen entirely on deaf ears. Erizio Astalaria was, for all his insufferable flaws, an incredibly respected leader and warrior. The most powerful earth Observer known, he single-handedly forestalled any Ubran attempts at tunneling beneath the great wall surrounding the city. Not only that, he and his staff had expertly managed the defenses of the city so that Crirada still stood in defiance of the Ubran armies, something that few would be able to accomplish. But that brilliance came with a level of arrogance and high self-regard that meant Arlette would never be able to convince him he was wrong. Supreme General Erizio Astalaria wasn¡¯t one to let the truth get between him and his conclusions, and sadly enough for her, he¡¯d concluded decades ago that she was some secret Ubran agent.
It looked like Arlette¡¯s role in the Siege of Crirada was over. She¡¯d likely remain here in this cell for the remainder of the battle and be taken by the Ubrans, or Erizio would kill her. She wasn¡¯t sure which was a worse fate.
With a depressed sigh, Arlette fell back onto the straw mattress and stared at the ceiling. It felt absolutely wretched to be so powerless. Here she was, stuck in a cell while Sebastian lurked in the city, free to enact his diabolical plan.
Or was he? Arlette had been so sure this time that she¡¯d found him, so sure that she¡¯d basically bet somebody else¡¯s life on it. Her failure had thrown everything she¡¯d believed since starting this entire debacle into doubt. The siege of Crirada had in many ways been an accident. The disappearance of the so-called ¡°monster¡± who had rampaged through Nocend was likely the only reason that Crirada hadn¡¯t fallen as quickly as the cities that had come before it. Had the Ubrans planned this? Had there been a limit to how much this monster woman could take before she was out of commission, and the Ubrans had known that meant they wouldn¡¯t be able to use her at Crirada? Because if they hadn¡¯t known, there would be no reason to send Sebastian here as they wouldn¡¯t have thought they¡¯d need him.
Everything that she¡¯d bet her life on, and by extension Sofie¡¯s and Pari¡¯s lives, was based on assumptions, feelings, and guesswork. At the time it hadn¡¯t felt that way, but now, in the cold dampness of the dungeon, she saw her decisions in a different light. She¡¯d become so swept up in her hatred of the Empire and Sebastian for what they¡¯d done to her homeland that she¡¯d made choices based on pain and past trauma rather than cold logic. The very idea that she¡¯d be able to have any effect on the outcome was patently laughable now. She felt adrift like she was falling through an empty void, unable to do anything but spin wildly in turmoil.
¡°That¡¯s quite a face you¡¯re making, you know.¡±
Arlette flailed about in surprise so hard that she fell off the mattress. After coming back to her senses, she looked up to find a man in his twenties with long, dark brown hair lying on the straw just beside where she¡¯d been, his hands reaching up to cup behind his head in a relaxed, nonchalant manner.
¡°Peko, if I could strangle you right now...¡±
¡°Hey, Arlette, how¡¯s it going?¡± the man replied with a cheeky grin. ¡°You really got yourself in a mess now, didn¡¯t you?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t need to hear that from you, asshole,¡± Arlette retorted as she crawled back onto the straw before collapsing onto her back and staring back up at the ceiling again. ¡°What are you doing here, anyway?¡±
Peko shrugged. ¡°I saw a rare opportunity to come out and I took advantage of it. Figured I might as well come to you for once instead of waiting for you to come inside to see me.¡±
¡°Mmmm,¡± Arlette hummed noncommittally.
The two didn¡¯t say anything for a while, instead soaking in the silence of the dungeon. All the other prisoners were gone. The ones who had committed more minor crimes were likely helping with the defenses in exchange for their temporary freedom, while the worst criminals had likely been executed at the start of the siege to save food and resources. Now not even the scurrying of a rodent or a lizard could be heard through the stillness. This was a dead place. A fitting place for her, she surmised.
¡°Hey Arlette, why did you lock me away after we made it to Redwater Castle?¡± Peko asked suddenly.
¡°What? That¡¯s what you want to talk about?¡±
¡°Well I haven¡¯t had the chance to talk about it until now! We barely see each other anymore and whenever we do we¡¯re either interrupted or everybody you care about has suddenly died. I went to sleep for a bit when you collapsed in front of the fortress, and then when I woke up I found you¡¯d locked me inside and I couldn¡¯t get out.¡±
¡°Well then maybe you should have said something before you disappeared instead of just vanishing without a word. You weren¡¯t around for years, Peko, and guess what? I grew up. Imaginary friends are for little children. When you never came back, I figured that meant that I didn¡¯t really need you anymore and I moved on.¡±
¡°I guess you didn¡¯t until recently,¡± he sighed.
The two grew quiet again for a little while until Arlette finally broke the silence.
¡°Thanks for not being a jerk, Peko.¡±
¡°What, about the whole imprisonment thing?¡±
¡°Yeah...¡± she replied. ¡°When I think about it now from your perspective, I kept you away for years and years and then dragged you out again after Zrukhora happened, and you would have been fully in the right to be angry at me, but you weren¡¯t. You really helped me then when you didn¡¯t have to and you¡¯ve kept helping me since even though I haven¡¯t done anything to deserve it.¡±
¡°Arlette, what do you think I am?¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°I had a lot of time to think about that kind of thing. Why do I exist, all that kind of stuff. Eventually, I decided that I must exist because you needed help. You were afraid and lonely and full of all these confusing feelings and so, without realizing it, you created somebody to help you with those things. So why would I be upset over being used for my purpose? It¡¯s what I was made for. I¡¯m just happy that you came back to me. Besides, it wasn¡¯t that bad; it¡¯s not like I was stuck in a dark room like this for two decades. I got to watch you grow up and root for you along the way, even if you couldn¡¯t hear me. You did pretty well even without me, if I may say so.¡±
¡°Peko...¡± Arlette felt a surge of gratitude towards her strange companion and rolled over onto him while reaching out to give him a hug, only to fall right through.
Peko snickered. ¡°Nope! Still not real. I appreciate the sentiment regardless.¡±
Arlette rolled back onto her side of the mattress. ¡°So now that you¡¯re back, what next? Are you going to start manifesting outside all the time like you used to?¡±
¡°Nah, I think I¡¯m going to keep hidden most of the time from now on. You¡¯re right, imaginary friends are for little children. If I just started hanging around you again everybody would think you¡¯re strange, and people think that enough about you as it is.¡± Arlette shot him a nasty look, only to be met with that trademark cheeky grin. ¡°I¡¯ll come out when we¡¯re alone and when there¡¯s need for it. If you want to see me, you can come inside and see me any time you want.¡±
Arlette thought about it. ¡°I guess that¡¯s best. People would probably get the wrong idea about you. I mean, can you imagine what Astalaria would think if he heard me talking to somebody else down here? It would just be more confirmation that I¡¯m some Ubran spy or some shit. Fuck that asshole.¡±
Peko nodded. ¡°Right. I¡¯ll just have to be your secret for the near future at least. It¡¯s for the-¡±
A sudden low, muffled boom cut him off as the cell and the entire dungeon trembled beneath Arlette for a short moment before falling still once more.
¡°What was that?¡± Arlette asked aloud to nobody. Peko just looked towards the dungeon entrance with a look of concern on his face before saying ¡°I should go¡± and vanishing without another word, leaving Arlette to stew in confusion alone.
Time was hard to track while underground, so when Arlette first heard the sound of footsteps echoing through the hall outside she wasn¡¯t sure if it had been half an hour or four hours since the strange tremor. Though she¡¯d strained her ears to the maximum, she¡¯d been unable to detect a single sound until now. The cluttered sounds of a group of people walking over well-worn stone suddenly ceased, transforming into the much more ominous rhythmic gait of a single person. Arlette held back a tired sigh. The identity of these footsteps was obvious to her long before they arrived at her cell.
¡°Don¡¯t you have better things to do than come down here and bother me?¡± she asked sourly as Supreme General Erizio Astalaria finally came into view.
The man scowled, his long face and neat, pointed beard accentuating his displeasure. ¡°If you had a lick of sense you¡¯d know to shut your trap when speaking with your superior.¡±
Arlette rolled her eyes. ¡°What are you going to do? Kill me earlier than before? Or is there some secret dungeon even deeper than this one you can stick me in?¡±
¡°Silence.¡± Arlette¡¯s next retort caught in her throat. ¡°I will ask you some questions. You will answer them truthfully, or else.¡±
Arlette swallowed nervously. The Erizio standing before her today was much different than the one from the interrogation. Gone was the haughty arrogance, the self-congratulatory preening. Arlette could see in the commander¡¯s eyes that today he meant business.
¡°You attacked a man under my employ. Why?¡±
¡°I told you last time, it was an accident. I thought he was Sebastian. Same height, same build, never takes off his helmet. They even have the same walk and carry themselves in the same way. New mercenary band, but a disproportionate amount of success for a group so recently formed.¡±
¡°Do you take me for a fool?¡± he replied with a withering glare. ¡°The odds that you would find one man amongst the tens of thousands of people in this city are preposterous.¡±
Arlette massaged her temples with her hands. Just being around this prick was enough to give her a headache. ¡°That¡¯s not how it happened,¡± she insisted. ¡°The only reason I started looking into him was because I was searching for Sebastian and I ran across his group acting suspiciously.¡±
The general¡¯s eyes went thin and his scowl deepened.
¡°Look, I know I made a mistake,¡± Arlette pressed on, ¡°but they¡¯re definitely involved with something that can¡¯t be good. They¡¯re building hidden compartments in buildings all around the Worker¡¯s Quarter. I don¡¯t know what they¡¯re up to but-¡±
¡°Enough,¡± he snarled, his presence beginning to exude an intimidating aura that made Arlette flinch. ¡°You will make no more mention of them to anyone and cease your investigations into their activities. Is that understood?¡±
¡°What?¡± Was he involved with this whole thing somehow? After failing to kill the leader, she had woken up in the Citadel, and the two of them had been there together. Had she completely misunderstood what was going on?
¡°I asked you a question. Is that clear?¡±
Arlette looked about at the smooth stone that surrounded her. ¡°What the fuck do you think I¡¯m going to do? I¡¯m locked in a fucking cell, you creep!¡±
¡°I had been considering releasing you, but if you cannot follow simple instructions and know your place, then I will have no choice but to let you rot down here.¡±
¡°Hold on, after all that before about me being an Ubran, you¡¯re offering to just let me go?¡± Arlette was getting more and more confused by the second. She couldn¡¯t help but be suspicious by such a bizarre turn from somebody who had considered her an enemy.
¡°Several respected members of the army have come forward to vouch not just for your skill in battle but also your... enthusiasm. I am willing to release you, should I come to believe that it is a wise decision.¡±
¡°...what¡¯s the catch?¡±
¡°There is no ¡®catch¡¯, merely a simple condition. I will return your freedom only if you drop this silly crusade of yours. Your value to me, marginal as it may be, is as a soldier and only as a soldier.¡±
¡°What? No!¡± Arlette objected.
¡°This Sebastian, if he even does exist, would not be here in Crirada. I will not tolerate the disruption your activities would generate. Give it up. You are on a fool¡¯s errand.¡±
Arlette and Erizio glared at each other for a tense moment before she sat back down on the nearby straw.
¡°I refuse,¡± she stated with finality. ¡°I cannot rest until I know that that bastard is dead and buried. I will make him pay for what he did, even if it takes me years. If that¡¯s your price, then you can shove it.¡±
The general shrugged and turned to leave. ¡°A shame. To think that your friends sold themselves to me for your freedom, only for you to refuse to be released.¡± He walked out of her view. ¡°I will be making use of them regardless. Farewell, Demirt.¡±
¡°Wait!¡± she cried, springing up to her feet and practically throwing herself at the bars to her cell. ¡°What are you talking about?!¡±
¡°Oh, did I forget to mention?¡± he replied with a snide sneer. ¡°Your little companions came to us begging for us to let you out. They demonstrated some very impressive creations, which they will be creating for us from now on to pay for your freedom. You¡¯re lucky what they showed me put me in a good mood, as I have half a mind to execute you just for hiding them from me this whole time.¡±
Arlette¡¯s legs grew weak and she slowly sank down to her knees as she suddenly connected the dots. That tremor... it must have been one of Pari¡¯s bombs. Those fools! They¡¯d put themselves in danger to try to save her. Now that Supreme General Astalaria knew of what Pari could do, there was no way he¡¯d leave them alone. A veritable geyser of guilt erupted inside her. She¡¯d put her friends in danger...
¡°Fine. You win. I¡¯ll do it.¡±
¡°Swear to me on your life¡ªno, on the lives of your little ¡®family¡¯¡ªthat you will obey my conditions to the letter.¡±
¡°I swear.¡±
The man¡¯s sneer widened into a grin of victory. ¡°I¡¯m glad we could have this little discussion,¡± he said as he walked off, leaving Arlette feeling empty inside.
The night was in full swing as Arlette finally stepped out of the citadel. After the general had left, the others who¡¯d come with him had released her and escorted her from the dungeon before returning her weapons and armor and practically shoving her out the front gate. As she exited the fortress, a sudden impact slammed into her waist, staggering her slightly.
¡°Arly-sis!¡± her attacker scolded as she buried her head into Arlette¡¯s hip. ¡°Arly-sis didn¡¯t tell Pari that Arly-sis was leaving and Pari got really worried! Arly-sis is a big mean poopy-head!¡±
A Sofie-sized figure appeared in the gloom on the other side of her and wrapped her up in a tight embrace. Arlette could hear the young woman sniffling and holding back tears against her shoulder.
¡°A big mean poopy-head? Sofie, you¡¯re corrupting Pari with your vulgar language,¡± Arlette joked, trying to lighten the mood. She could see the red puffiness around her friend¡¯s eyes that told her all she needed to know.
¡°Shut up, stupid!¡± Sofie retorted with another long sniff. ¡°I was so worried that something was going to happen to you!¡±
¡°I¡¯m alright, I¡¯m alright, don¡¯t worry,¡± Arlette replied.
¡°Hey, there she is!¡± called a familiar voice a bit of a way off. Arlette looked towards the sound to find her squadmates approaching with smiles on their faces.
¡°What are you all doing here?¡± she wondered.
¡°Your sister came around looking for you, asking if we knew where you were,¡± Sergeant Muga answered.
¡°We¡¯d all figured you¡¯d had too much to drink and passed out or something,¡± Kima added with a laugh.
¡°You moron!¡± Lezo said with a wide smile on his face as he slapped her hard on the back several times. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just tell us who you were all along so I didn¡¯t think you were some sorry guardsman this whole time?¡±
¡°You told them?¡± Arlette asked, sending an accusatory glare Danel¡¯s way.
¡°It was me,¡± Sofie admitted. ¡°I needed their help so I decided to tell them a bit. I didn¡¯t know that he already knew.¡±
Danel shrugged. ¡°I figured that it didn¡¯t matter once the secret was already out. Better than keeping silent and having you stay locked up when we could really use you.¡±
¡°Is it really true that you punched a king in the face and got away with it?¡± Lezo inquired with a starry-eyed look of admiration.
¡°Haaaaaaahhh...¡± Arlette sighed. It looked like her life here was about to change. Whether it was for the better, she wasn¡¯t so sure.
Arlette sat in her small living room sipping on a meal and enjoying her regained freedom. The meal was soup again, which, while a bit of a bummer, was to be expected at this point. Soups and stews were about the only things the defenders had enough food for anymore. Though today it tasted weak and watery, to Arlette it was one of the best meals she could remember.
¡°Hey, Sofie,¡± she said after a while, ¡°thanks for coming to my rescue like that-¡±
¡°Of course!¡± Sofie chirped with a smile as she sat across the table with her own bowl of diluted soup.
¡°-but you shouldn¡¯t have done that,¡± Arlette finished.
¡°Arlette, if you try to tell me that you¡¯re not worth rescuing, I¡¯m going to scream,¡± Sofie warned. ¡°The price we paid was nothing compared to getting you back.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think you understand just how serious it is that the Eterians know about what you two can do. You¡¯re now persons of interest to them. If we survive this siege, there¡¯s no guarantee that they¡¯ll even let you go. They might keep you around and make you make bombs and whatnot as long as the war keeps going... maybe even after that.¡±
¡°I thought that Eterium doesn¡¯t have slaves,¡± Sofie objected.
¡°They don¡¯t, but desperate people do desperate things. They could just lock you away somewhere and pretend to themselves that it¡¯s not the same. You¡¯re just two people. The only person who would notice if you disappeared would be me. Honestly, I¡¯m shocked they didn¡¯t stuff you in a room in the citadel already for ¡®protection¡¯ or something.¡±
¡°They tried, but we demanded that we stay here with you or we wouldn¡¯t cooperate. I can drive a decent bargain when I want to, you know,¡± came the smug reply.
¡°You can¡¯t just assume that they¡¯ll honor that bargain though. This isn¡¯t like your world, Sofie. You can¡¯t trust people here. I mean, he demanded that I stop looking for Sebastian if I wanted to be freed, even after you sold out to him, and he even threatened to kill you both if I disobeyed! That¡¯s the kind of man that you¡¯re dealing with here!¡±
Sofie put her bowl down, a somber look on her face that Arlette hadn¡¯t seen in a long time. ¡°Look, Arlette... I get that I don¡¯t exactly understand everything about this world. I know you want to protect us and that you want what¡¯s best for us. I get all that. But at some point, you have to start giving me and Pari a little bit more respect. I¡¯m not a child, I¡¯m an adult¡ªI can vote and everything. I¡¯m old enough and informed enough at this point that I can make my own god damned decisions about my life. Pari and I helped you because we decided it was what we wanted to do, just like how we decided that accompanying you here was what we wanted to do. We knew that there is risk involved going in. We did it anyway. It¡¯s time you acknowledged that.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t respond, instead just staring into her soup. What Sofie said was true, but that didn¡¯t make Arlette feel any better about it.
¡°Besides,¡± continued the Earthling with a sudden bright smile, ¡°you promised that you¡¯d help me find a way home, so there¡¯s no way I¡¯m letting you die in a cell somewhere if I can help it. It¡¯s going to take a lot more than the Eterians to split us apart.¡±
¡°Heh,¡± Arlette chuckled. ¡°I did promise that, didn¡¯t I?¡± Arlette had been so wrapped up in her own problems that she¡¯d totally forgotten about that. The thought brought a fresh wave of guilt. She was somebody who believed in honoring promises as best as she could, but she¡¯d done absolutely nothing to help Sofie towards the other woman¡¯s end goal.
¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Sofie stated with a wry grin. ¡°Don¡¯t think you can get out of it now. You¡¯re stuck with me for the long haul.¡±
There were worse things than that, Arlette decided.
Things weren¡¯t going well up on the wall this morning. It was her first day back after her imprisonment so perhaps something had changed while she¡¯d been away, but it seemed like there were far fewer defenders guarding the northwest side of the wall than there used to be. The number of Ubrans, however, remained the same.
Arlette threw herself backwards as a large mace swung through her former position. Unfortunately for her, she wasn¡¯t entirely fast enough, and the edge of the weapon clipped her side and sent her tumbling. She grimaced as she staggered back to her feet, her hand feeling the large dent in her new armor. She¡¯d just replaced her last chest piece too!
Her opponent, a stocky woman clad in thick armor from head to toe, was proving to be a tough match. Thick armor was one of Arlette¡¯s weaknesses since she couldn¡¯t overpower the defense like some others. Instead, she had to aim for the weak spots like the seams between the pieces, which made her attacks predictable and easy to defend. That meant that Arlette¡¯s best chance was to fight defensively, avoiding attacks and waiting for her opponent to make a mistake.
The problem was that this woman wasn¡¯t making mistakes. Her form was composed under pressure and she absolutely refused to over-commit. Instead, she had methodically worked Arlette into a corner with smart attacks and positioning until Arlette couldn¡¯t effectively run anymore. Arlette didn¡¯t have the strength to block this Feeler¡¯s blows, which meant she was in real trouble.
Ideally, this was where she¡¯d switch with somebody like Lezo; his greater strength and large axe would give him the advantage against this woman. Unfortunately, all of her squadmates were in fights for their lives as well, their normal squad tactics broken by the overwhelming numbers of the Ubrans. Lezo himself was currently busy with not one but two opponents, and just her voice might be enough to distract him and cost him his life.
Speaking of which, Arlette suddenly had an idea for a trick to get her out of this mess. It was a trick that she¡¯d used many times before with varying success. She could only hope that this time it worked, as she would have to bet everything on it.
Just as her opponent¡¯s weapon reared back, a voice shouted ¡°Behind you!¡± in Ubran from behind her. The woman flinched and twisted back, trying to see what threat was coming her way. There was nothing. The voice had been an illusion, created by Arlette using her experience with the Ubran dialect.
The moment Arlette saw the woman begin to turn, she launched herself forward, stabbing her sword as hard as she could towards the small crease on her opponent¡¯s neck between the helmet chest armor. The woman spotted Arlette coming for her and tried to twist out of the way. For once the Ubran¡¯s armor worked against her instead of in her favor as it limited her available movement and slowed her down. It was just enough that Arlette was still able to land her blow, tossing aside any pretence of defense and using everything she had to push her blade through the resistance of the leather between the metal. With a victorious ¡°shuck!¡±, the metal ripped into the woman¡¯s flesh, ending her life and preserving Arlette¡¯s own.
Arlette stepped back with a breath of relief... and immediately dove to the side as a blast of flame came flying through. With a series of curses, she pushed herself to her feet as a series of three horn blasts rang out from the gatehouse nearby. It was something she¡¯d hoped to never hear: the order to retreat.
¡°Fall back!¡± Sergeant Muga shouted from somewhere nearby.
Arlette wasted no time, rushing for the nearest staircase as the rout began, confused and angry at what had just occurred. Where had the rest of the defenders been? Why hadn¡¯t any jaglioths come through when they¡¯d been in trouble? She didn¡¯t have much time to think about it, however, as she descended the stairs taking the steps two and three at a time while avoiding a variety of projectiles falling all around her. Defenders were dropping left and right under the onslaught, sometimes tripping others as they fell and causing a small cascade that left soldiers tumbling down the steps or trampled to death under the feet of their own fleeing brethren.
Somehow, she made it to the bottom alive, though she¡¯d had several close calls. The rest of her squad, amazingly, had survived the descent as well, though not entirely intact. Danel had an arrow sticking out of his shoulder, while Lezo and Kima each had severe-looking burn wounds on their back and front, respectively.
¡°Head for the citadel!¡± Sergeant Muga cried over the din, and together they ran through the Worker¡¯s Quarter towards the city center. Their first priority was to regroup at the citadel for a possible counterattack. Though the northwest portion of the wall had fallen, that did not mean the city had to fall. The passages between the quarter and the rest of the city would be sealed, with forces being sent over to reinforce the walls and barriers that marked the quarter¡¯s boundaries. With luck, they could keep the Ubrans contained within the Worker¡¯s Quarter long enough to mount a counterattack and perhaps push them back out of the city. The odds were slim, but thanks to the compartmentalized layout of Crirada there was still a chance for survival.
That chance wasn¡¯t looking so good at the moment, however. Arlette glanced behind to catch a glimpse of Ubran soldiers streaming down the multiple staircases that led up and down the wall, slicing through anybody foolish enough to still stand in their way. In just a few moments, they¡¯d take the nearby gatehouse and open the North Gate, releasing a flood of bloodthirsty Imperials into the Worker¡¯s Quarter. Those hundred thousand or more people would sweep through the area, killing anybody dumb or unlucky enough to be caught in this part of the city after the retreat horns were sounded.
A bad idea, unbidden, entered Arlette¡¯s mind. What if...
¡°I have to split up,¡± she called to the sergeant up ahead. ¡°I need to check that they got out.¡±
¡°You taught them the codes, right?¡± he replied, understanding immediately who ¡®they¡¯ were. ¡°They surely left as soon as they heard the horn, if they weren¡¯t already gone.¡±
¡°But I don¡¯t know. I have to make sure!¡±
¡°Then go! But be quick! The Ubrans will be upon us all soon!¡±
Arlette nodded and swerved towards an upcoming cross street and worked her way towards her home. The streets of the city had never been busy since the start of the siege, but now they were absolutely empty, speeding up her progress. Shortly, huffing from the prolonged exertion, Arlette threw open the front door to her small home.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
¡°Sofie! Pari!¡± she called, but she heard no reply. Quickly, just to make sure, she ran up the stairs and checked the room where Sofie did her translation work. The books that the other woman kept were all missing. They¡¯d run like they were supposed to.
Relief filled Arlette and she ran back outside, her steps now just a little bit lighter. Turning towards the citadel, she ran off.
Arlette¡¯s primary worry had been that the pair would have instead hidden in their house instead of leaving. Back at the start of the siege, she herself had told Sofie to hide for at least two days if the city fell. At the time she¡¯d thought that, as ¡°civilians¡±, they wouldn¡¯t be killed once discovered. That notion had changed over time, as she¡¯d fought the Ubrans more and more. Now, she wasn¡¯t sure that they would survive being discovered at all. There was an edge to her opponents that had worn away at her earlier belief. Plus, now that Pari was helping the Eterians by building bombs, they weren¡¯t noncombatants anymore. With that in mind, she¡¯d recently changed her instructions from ¡°hide¡± to ¡°get the fuck out¡±.
It was good that the rambunctious pair could follow instructions these days. If this had been the Sofie and Pari from back when she¡¯d first met them both, she would have put at least even money on the odds that she would have found them still in the house. But over time they¡¯d both matured, though admittedly Sofie far more than Pari, and she felt like she could trust them with-
¡°Arlette!¡±
Okay, maybe not.
Arlette skidded to a halt and turned around as Sofie rushed out of a nearby alley, her one arm filled with her precious tomes. ¡°What are you doing here?!¡± she hollered at her idiotic companion. ¡°You were supposed to get out, you moron!¡±
¡°We were, but we found somebody on the way! We gotta help him!¡±
¡°What, are you crazy?!¡±
¡°He¡¯s stuck inside one of those hidden compartments you were talking about!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t care where he¡ªwait, what?¡±
Sofie grabbed Arlette¡¯s hand and pulled her into the alleyway and around a bend, where they found a confused looking Pari standing beside her massive sack of things and a compartment that had been built into the back of a building. The building¡¯s back had been extended out with a false wall so that the compartment seemed like just a part of the building if you weren¡¯t looking and the compartment¡¯s sides were fully shut.
The one side of this one, however, was open, revealing to Arlette a thin, haggard man contorting in pain against the compartment walls. A strange incense burned inside the small space, filling it with a noxious purple haze. Opened shackles rested at the man¡¯s feet alongside charred rope.
None of this really registered with Arlette; she was too busy staring at the man¡¯s eyes. Everything in the man¡¯s eye sockets was gone, replaced instead with a black emptiness that seemed to absorb the light around it. Arlette¡¯s breath caught in her throat, and her body began to subconsciously tremble. She knew what this was. This was a Severed.
¡°Run.¡±
A wisp of black smoke began to leak from the voids that were the man¡¯s eye sockets.
¡°Wait!¡± Sofie objected. ¡°What about-¡±
¡°RUN!¡± Arlette screamed, sprinting for the alley opening.
¡°But what about him?¡± Sofie called as she and Pari ran after Arlette.
¡°JUST GO!¡± Arlette¡¯s mind was falling to pieces. A Severed. There was a severed in that compartment. There¡¯d been compartments all around the Worker¡¯s Quarter. If, stars forbid, there was a Severed in each compartment, that far along...
There was no way they were going to make it to the citadel in time. Quickly Arlette wracked her mind for the closest way out of the quarter using the mental map she¡¯d developed by skulking about the entire city this last season.
¡°This way!¡± she shouted, turning down a nearby street. ¡°We have to make it to the wall between the quarters or we¡¯re dead!¡±
¡°Arlette, what¡¯s going on?¡± Sofie cried.
Arlette glanced back to find that Sofie was close behind her but Pari was falling behind, her short legs combining with her heavy load to slow her down. Cursing her own softness, Arlette stopped and ran back, grabbing the sack from Pari and swinging it over her shoulder before taking off once more. ¡°There¡¯s no time! Just run! Faster than you¡¯ve ever run before!¡±
Arlette¡¯s lungs ached and her legs screamed in agony but she pushed herself anyway, powering through the pain with adrenaline and fear. It would be happening any moment now. If they weren¡¯t fully out of range...
The wall that separated the Commerce Quarter and the Worker¡¯s Quarter was just up ahead now. One of the four walls inside the city, it ran from the citadel all the way to the larger outer wall. With the gates between the two sections closed off to stop the Ubrans who were currently pouring through the North Gate, there was only one other way out: six flights of stairs that, like those on the outer wall, periodically ran up the side of the wall from the surface all the way to the top. Arlette¡¯s goal, the closest stairs from where they¡¯d started, was finally in sight.
A frenzied sprint later, the three arrived at the stairs. Arlette didn¡¯t stop for an instant, ignoring the protests of her entire body at this point as she forced herself to climb the stairs as fast as she could. The other two, thankfully, were not far behind, their own fear stoked by the panic they saw in her. She could feel her body giving out, all the fighting and running having exhausted her beyond her limits, but she knew she could not stop. Not yet.
Just as they neared the top of the stairs, Arlette felt it: a spike of wrongness blooming within her, twisting and roiling her insides. Then the rest of the senses followed. Low, inhuman wails echoed all across the Worker¡¯s Quarter, the sounds sending vicious waves of panic and fear through her body. She threw herself up the final steps with everything she had left inside her, Pari¡¯s sack of things falling from her hands as she fell unceremoniously on the stone as a panting Sofie and Pari collapsed right beside her.
And then the whole world below them became a nightmare.
Translucent dark hemispheres exploded out from all around the quarter, consuming the entire Worker¡¯s Quarter with giant domes of void. Within those pitch black bubbles, Arlette could see a bizarre, distorted version of what had been there just moments before. It was as if something had sucked away all the colors, leaving only various shades of white against the inky emptiness. Everything inside seemed to bend and stretch, undulating much like how the world seemed to shimmer when looking through hot air rising from a stone road on a warm summer day. It was as if reality itself was being violently warped almost to the breaking point on the other side of the black film just below her. Her body reflexively shivered at the sight.
From her high vantage point, Arlette could see thousands upon thousands of people, primarily the Ubrans who had been pouring in through the open gate, inside the otherworldly fields. They ran about in a frenzy, trying to escape, but there would be no escape for the vast majority of them, she knew. Almost nothing survived a Severed event.
Already she could see the tentacles emerging from the epicenter of each of the bubbles, where the Severeds had been hidden. Thousands, no, tens of thousands of things that the human mind refused to even fully process undulated outward faster than any person could run. When Arlette stared at them, it felt like she was only seeing a fraction of their true form, like they broke the rules of reality in ways that she could not even comprehend. It was like they weren¡¯t made up of solid matter, but almost rather the absence of it.
Arlette could feel Sofie¡¯s hand trembling as together they watched the multitude of impossible appendages quickly overwhelm the terrified Ubrans. Some people had the presence of mind to fight back, chopping at the tentacles with their blades or blasting away at them with fireballs and the like. Their efforts were effective on the micro scale, as the appendages could be cut or burned, but they mattered little on the macro level. There were always a hundred more tentacles to replace the single one that fell, smashing, grabbing, stabbing, killing.
The wall they stood upon shook as tremors wracked the Worker¡¯s Quarter. Unnatural roars and screeches emanated from the black zones, the sounds making Arlette¡¯s skin crawl. She wanted nothing more than for this whole event to be over, but there was nothing she could do but watch, wait, and hope that the Severeds burned out soon.
¡°What is this?¡± Sofie whispered in horror. The woman¡¯s face had gone whiter than the purest salt as she stared, aghast, at the carnage before her.
¡°A Severed attack,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Observers, on a fundamental level, are altering the world. You see the flame, but you also see the world and how the two come together. Your flame is not manifesting in nothing, and so you must paint your fire upon the canvas that is reality itself. But there is a risk, however. A few people with strong soulforce and ill minds, often old people losing themselves in the final years, run the risk of losing their grip on what is real. They become... severed from reality. This is what happens.¡±
¡°It¡¯s so terrible! Just that one man caused all of this?¡±
¡°No. Each of those bubbles is a person. This is...¡± She grit her teeth in outrage. ¡°Anybody that is about to become Severed must be killed immediately. That rule is maybe the only rule in the world that every single nation follows. Eterium is no different. These people should have been killed a long time ago, but instead it looks like the Eterians were keeping them alive using tucrenyx and drugs to hold them for some reason. This is a crime. A horrible crime. It goes against everything that living beings stand for.¡±
The tentacles continued to writhe as they reached out further, wrapping around the buildings and the surrounding environment. The tremors increased in intensity and the unearthly howling increased in volume once more as the entire Worker¡¯s Quarter was overtaken by writhing blackness. Then suddenly existence itself seemed to break. The world inside the bubbles broke, fracturing into smaller and smaller shards. These fragments of reality began to fly towards the middle of their bubbles like leaves circling a drain, more and more of them every moment getting sucked into the gaping, insatiable vortex that now stood where the Severed had each been hidden. Then there was an audible ¡°pop!¡± and the bubbles vanished just as suddenly as they¡¯d appeared.
¡°Oh my god...¡± Sofie breathed, staring out at the aftermath. Almost nothing remained of the Worker¡¯s Quarter. Nearly the entire quarter had been covered in those terrible domes, and all that remained now was nothing but a barren, empty crater where each dome had stood. The buildings, the people, none of it was left except dirt and the aura of death.
¡°This was the Supreme General¡¯s plan from the start!¡± Arlette realized suddenly. As if to confirm her conclusions, she saw a wave of jaglioths crashing down the wall from both sides towards the breached section. Suddenly a series of massive explosions erupted from around the open gate, severing the flow of Ubran troops that had already come to a halt from the Severed attacks. Eterian troops were already pushing the Ubrans from the gatehouse and retaking the entire area. The gate would be closed and sealed soon. Arlette¡¯s hands balled into fists. ¡°That crazy bastard! What the fuck was he thinking!?¡±
¡°Our house!¡± Sofie gasped. ¡°Our house is gone! All our stuff! It¡¯s all gone! What are we going to do?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Arlette seethed. All they had with them were Arlette¡¯s weapons, Sofie¡¯s book, and Pari¡¯s candlemaking equipment. Everything else, from their clothes to their food, had literally vanished into thin air. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡±
That night, the three of them sat in a small room in an inn in the Commerce Quarter in relative silence. Sofie seemed completely miserable by the loss of their house and everything inside it. Pari, on the other hand, was busy making some boomcandles at Arlette¡¯s request. The beastgirl seemed far less affected by their shared experience than Sofie or Arlette. Not that she hadn¡¯t been scared, but the level of fear Arlette had seen in her eyes was far less than normal, especially for somebody so young. Then again, Pari never seemed to be scared of threats to her life. Arlette wasn¡¯t sure if the girl was incredibly courageous or just too stupid to realize how close to death she kept coming.
¡°So, uh...¡± Arlette finally said, breaking the silence. After hours of equivocating, she had finally made a decision. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I¡¯m going to put you both in danger. I¡¯m going to go back to hunting for Sebastian.¡±
¡°But what about the Supreme General¡¯s conditions?¡± Sofie replied with concern. ¡°You promise that you¡¯d stop.¡±
¡°Fuck that bastard and fuck his fucking conditions,¡± Arlette growled. ¡°I don¡¯t care how desperate he is. Nobody who would commit such a terrible act is worth respecting.¡±
Sofie grunted approvingly. ¡°You¡¯re right. Fuck him. He ruined our house just to kill a bunch of people. But still... even after last time you still think he¡¯s out there?¡±
¡°I do, and I¡¯m going to find him. I already found one secret plot, it just was the wrong one. I think I¡¯m going to head out now, actually. Get a little done tonight.¡±
¡°Not tonight,¡± Sofie stated firmly.
¡°But I want to get-¡±
¡°I said no,¡± Sofie replied with finality, grabbing Arlette¡¯s arm and dragging her towards a nearby bed. ¡°You have no idea how tired and frazzled you look. It¡¯s been a long day and we¡¯ve all been through a lot. It¡¯s time we all got some sleep. You too, Pari. Time for bed.¡±
¡°Awwww,¡± Pari whined. Arlette echoed the child¡¯s sentiment in her head but decided it wasn¡¯t worth the fight tonight. Sofie didn¡¯t look like she was going to accept any arguments right now anyway.
Lying down on the bed, she closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind. She¡¯d been through a lot today, and it had dredged up memories that she didn¡¯t want to deal with. Sofie must have been right because sleep came quicker for Arlette than she¡¯d expected. With it came dreams.
¡°Arlette, come here please!¡±
Arlette perked up at the call. It was her mother¡¯s voice coming from the kitchen. Quickly dropping the blocks she¡¯d been playing with, Arlette ran from her room, down the stairs, through the living room, and into the kitchen as fast as her tiny legs could carry her.
¡°There you are!¡± her mother said with a warm smile as Arlette entered the room. She handed her a small coin. ¡°I miscounted my ingredients and I need some more eggs. Go over to Mister Adar¡¯s house and ask for three eggs and give him the coin, alright?¡±
Arlette paled. ¡°But he¡¯s scary!¡± she protested. Mister Adar was an old man down the road who raised a flock of docile egg-laying birds known as ¡°parins¡±. Arlette thought that the parins were cute, especially the baby ones she¡¯d seen this last spring, but Mister Adar himself was a different story. He was old and mean and she didn¡¯t like the way he would glare at her.
¡°Come now, you¡¯re four years old, that¡¯s old enough to handle this,¡± her mother replied, rubbing her head affectionately. ¡°Now hurry, I need them now if I want to finish dinner before your father gets home.¡±
Forlorn, Arlette slowly made her way out of her family¡¯s house and onto the main road in the village. The house was one of the larger ones around, with two floors and a large backyard where her mother grew all sorts of vegetables that Arlette hated but her mother made her eat anyway. Reluctantly, she turned towards the outskirts of the village, where Mister Adar lived.
¡°Hey there, dumpling! What¡¯s wrong?¡±
Arlette looked up in delight to find her father walking in the opposite direction, his spear in his hand and an amused grin on his face.
¡°Can you go with me to Mister Adar¡¯s house?¡± Arlette begged, tugging on his pant leg. ¡°I have to get three eggs but he¡¯s scary and I don¡¯t want to go alone.¡±
¡°Sorry, I have to make one more round before I¡¯m done. But you¡¯re a brave girl, right? I know you can do it!¡±
¡°B-but-¡±
¡°Now now, Arlette, remember what you said last night? Remember you said that you wanted to be a knight when you grew up so you could protect everybody like me?¡±
¡°You¡¯re not a knight!¡± Arlette objected.
¡°That¡¯s right, I¡¯m just a lowly sheriff,¡± he chuckled. ¡°But you¡¯re going to be better than me, right? You¡¯re going to need to be very brave if you want to be a knight. Knights aren¡¯t afraid of harmless old men.¡±
¡°I...¡± Arlette¡¯s face scrunched up as she thought over her father¡¯s words. She really didn¡¯t want to go but... ¡°Okay, I¡¯ll go.¡±
¡°That¡¯s my girl!¡± He gave her a loving pat on the back and resumed his patrol. ¡°See you at dinner!¡±
Arlette continued down the street towards Mister Adar¡¯s house, her steps now filled with purpose. Mister Adar wasn¡¯t really that scary, she told herself. Besides, his house was far, sure, but it was still within sight of her house. If he was mean, she could just run back home and her mom would go punch him or something. The thought made her giggle.
Soon enough she arrived at her destination. The area was fairly quiet, save for the rustling of leaves in the early autumn breeze and the clucks and calls of the parins coming from behind the house. Taking a deep breath, Arlette knocked on the door.
Nothing.
She knocked again, as loud as she could manage. ¡°Mister Adar?¡± she called.
Nothing.
Strange. Not sure what to do, Arlette rounded the home to check the parins. Perhaps he was busy feeding them and didn¡¯t hear her? He was old, after all.
Indeed, the old man was in the backyard, though not exactly how she¡¯d anticipated. Instead of standing with a basket of parin food, surrounded by hungry flightless birds, she found him collapsed on the ground, twitching and spasming, while the parins were nowhere to be found. She couldn¡¯t see his face, but it looked to her like he was in a lot of pain. As she approached, she could hear grunts coming from him, as well as some gibberish every so often, making her even more uneasy.
As soon as she got close enough to see his face, her body instinctively stepped back. Something was definitely wrong with Mister Adar! Specks of foam flecked his mouth, which was stuck in a perpetual grimace. His whole face, really, was contorted in agony. But what set off her alarms were his eyes. The entirety of his eyes was a black so dark that they seemed to absorb the light around them. Staring into those unnatural eyes, Arlette felt a chill of danger down her spine. A moment later, an equally dark smoke began to slowly seep out from the dark wells in his eye sockets. Arlette couldn''t take any more of the danger signals her instincts were screaming at her. She turned around and sprinted back towards her home. Something was terribly wrong with Mister Adar. She didn¡¯t know what it was, but her mother would surely know.
Then suddenly everything changed.
A terrible low-pitched howl came from the yard behind her and shook her to her core, just as the world itself turned black and white. Arlette cried out in fear, tears of terror already streaming down her face, but she kept running. She felt the ground tremble and staggered but quickly recovered and kept going.
Horrified, panicked screams rang out from the other nearby houses, but their voices were quickly overwhelmed by the horrifying noises of hundreds of somethings moving behind her. She was too afraid to look back to find out what the source of the sounds was, but she knew one thing: the noises were getting closer and fast.
She could see her own home just up ahead, it also shaded in black and white. An impact slammed into the back of Arlette¡¯s right shoulder and something pierced through and out the front. With a shriek of agony, she found herself lifted up from the ground by some horrid tentacle that was sticking out from her shoulder.
¡°Daddy! Mommy! Help!¡± she cried at the top of her lungs, her body twisting in pain. She could feel the thing worming inside of her, an abominable sensation that made her hair stand on end and her skin crawl.
¡°Arlette! No!¡± a voice yelled out not too far away. All of a sudden there was the sound of metal cutting into flesh and she tumbled back down towards the ground, only to land in her father¡¯s strong arms.
Before she could say anything, her father had turned and was sprinting towards their house as quickly as his Feeler-enhanced strength would allow. It wasn¡¯t enough. First, a tentacle wrapped itself around one of his legs, causing him to stumble. Then another snagged his left arm, which was what was holding his spear. Arlette heard her father grunt and strain against the terrible things, but his strength alone was not enough to drag them both free.
That was when she felt him pick her up with his right hand, and, with a mighty holler, he threw her with every ounce of his strength as far away as he could. Confused and terrified, she sailed through the blackness, and then suddenly she was out and the world had color and light once more. The ground came rushing up to meet her, but as she came closer her mother appeared, using her body to awkwardly catch Arlette and knocking the wind out of them both.
¡°Darnol! Get out of there!¡± her mother shouted, but it was too late. A tentacle stabbed into his thigh, dragging him to the ground. More wrapped around him and began dragging him forcefully back, and then a second tentacle pierced into his gut.
¡°Nooooo!¡± her mother screamed as he coughed up blood.
His time running out, Arlette¡¯s father opened his mouth one last time. She could see him trying to say something, but his voice was drowned out by the sound of the abomination overwhelming him. He smiled a bloody smile, and then he was gone.
The woods felt barren and empty in the autumn gloom, an appropriate match for the contents of Arlette¡¯s heart. Even days after the disaster, neither Arlette nor her mother had come close to recovering from the massive blow to their lives. Their house, and all their belongings as well, had vanished into the void along with her father. They, like all the survivors of the disaster, had been relocated to hurriedly constructed cabins built around the outside of the village proper. Arlette hated living in hers. Though it was tiny compared to her old house, the cabin felt empty without her father there with them.
All her mother seemed to do now was weep. It made Arlette feel horrible, partly because it made her want to cry too, but mostly because nothing Arlette tried seemed to help her mother feel better. After a few days, Arlette had started to go back outside again just to be somewhere where she wasn¡¯t always reminded of her father. Unfortunately, all that had happened was she¡¯d ended up feeling even more alone.
First, there was the area where her old home had been, a constant reminder of events of which she didn¡¯t want to be reminded. All that remained of the disaster site, where once eight homes had stood proudly, was a large shallow crater and an ominous, foreboding aura. Quickly a fence had been constructed around it, the adults saying that the area was now ¡°blighted¡±, whatever that meant, and that nobody could go in for a long time. Arlette didn¡¯t know what would happen specifically, and she didn¡¯t care. Nothing would ever make her want to go back to that place.
Second was the way the rest of the townsfolk had started treating her. The other kids in the village avoided her. She¡¯d tried to seek them out, but they¡¯d often disperse when they saw her approaching. The adults, meanwhile, seemed to look at her with some strange mix of concern and judgment that she couldn¡¯t understand. The whole village felt foreign to her now, which meant that she no longer had a place that felt like home.
That feeling of isolation had led her here, to a large, gnarled, seemingly-dead tree atop a hill in the forest outside the village. Her mother was likely very worried about her, she knew. She wasn¡¯t supposed to be this far into the forest. Honestly, as a four-year-old she wasn¡¯t supposed to be in the forest at all, at least not alone. But right now she couldn¡¯t take the stares and the whispers and tears. Up here on the hill, surrounded by the evening fog, it felt like she was in her own little world, cut off from the rest. Nobody would bother her here.
Arlette tucked her legs up against her chest and hugged them tight, burying her head between her knees, and just welcomed the silence. She didn¡¯t know how to deal with this grief. She was too young and inexperienced for it. She¡¯d cried for days, just like her mother, but eventually those tears had stopped. She still felt devastated, of course, but for some reason she couldn¡¯t seem to process it like her mother. It made her feel like there was something wrong with her. She was supposed to cry, but she couldn¡¯t anymore. It made her feel guilty.
Absentmindedly, Arlette scratched at her wound. It itched almost constantly now that it was nearly healed. A normal wound of this sort would have fully healed already, but the progress was slowed for some reason. It was like the lingering essence of the horrid tentacle was still fighting her even now, long after it had been banished from this realm. Arlette smacked her forehead into her knees and tried to think of anything else. The last thing she wanted to think about was-
¡°Ah? Who are you?¡±
Arlette jumped to her feet at the unexpected voice just a few paces to her right and let out a small shriek. Standing there was a boy about her age with short, dark brown hair and a vacant stare. Though he was dressed in a normal village child¡¯s outfit, Arlette had never seen the kid before.
¡°Who are you?¡± Arlette asked back, staring into his blank eyes, his irises a shade of grey so light that they almost blended into the white sclera.
The boy didn¡¯t answer. A moment passed as he stared at her with unfocused eyes, and then another moment, and then another. Finally, just as Arlette opened her mouth to yell at him, he spoke.
¡°I... don¡¯t know?¡± he replied, seemingly as confused as she was.
¡°Why are you here?¡± she inquired.
¡°I don¡¯t... know...¡± he mumbled, his head drooping to stare at the ground in front of him
¡°Well, what do you know?¡±
¡°I... I don¡¯t...¡± The boy¡¯s lips began to tremble.
¡°It¡¯s okay! Don¡¯t cry!¡± she exclaimed with a surge of panic. The last thing she needed now was one more crying person. ¡°Uh... I¡¯m Arlette!¡±
The boy looked up again, his eyes focusing on her for the first time. ¡°Oh! Okay!¡± he replied, nodding his head in understanding. He looked around the area, the general aura of confusion around him returned. ¡°Where is this place?¡±
¡°The woods,¡± Arlette answered.
¡°Where¡¯s that?¡±
¡°Outside my village.¡± Arlette pointed off in the distance.
¡°Oh,¡± he replied, as if that answered everything. ¡°Why are you out here alone instead of in your village? Won¡¯t you get in trouble?¡±
This time Arlette hung her head. ¡°Yeah... but I don¡¯t want to be there. I feel all alone back there. All the grown-ups treat me weird and I don¡¯t have any friends anymore.¡±
¡°I could be your friend,¡± the boy offered.
Arlette perked up immediately. ¡°Really?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°Okay! But... what should I call you if you can¡¯t remember your name?¡±
¡°I...¡± the boy went silent for another moment. ¡°I don¡¯t think I have a name.¡±
¡°Well I have to call you something,¡± Arlette insisted. ¡°What about Pernasalo?¡±
¡°No, that¡¯s dumb,¡± the boy immediately replied.
¡°Okay, Koppamaratta!¡±
¡°That¡¯s also dumb!¡±
Arlette scowled, her eyes furrowing as the wheels in her head turned faster and faster. ¡°Pe... Ko...?¡±
¡°Peko...¡± The boy¡¯s face brightened up tremendously and he smiled a wide, innocent smile. ¡°Yeah! Peko! That¡¯s a great name!¡±
Chapter 63
If pressed to describe where she was, Gabriela Carreno would have found it quite difficult. Descriptions generally rely on sensations, you see, and wherever Gabby was lacked them almost entirely. She couldn¡¯t see, hear, feel, or pretty much anything else. Only the rare thought meandering through her dormant consciousness reminded her that she even existed at all.
Said thoughts were immediately pushed out of her mind as quickly as they entered. Gabriela didn¡¯t want to think anymore¡ªnot now, not ever. She preferred to just... be. It was better this way.
No more killing. No more blood. No more orphans. No more pain. No more.
Gabriela wasn¡¯t sure how long she¡¯d been in this formless space, wherever it was. She wasn¡¯t even sure if she was alive or dead. Perhaps this was some sort of purgatory? She couldn¡¯t say. She didn¡¯t really care. If she was dead, then this was where she deserved to be. If she were alive, then this was the closest to death she could get. Either way, this was where she belonged.
Strange lightning ran through her suddenly, the first real sensation she¡¯d felt since the pain of the boy¡¯s knife stabbing deep into her chest. The jolt coursed throughout her entire being, filling her with an electric fire that she had never felt before. The energy coursing through her felt strong and mighty, but even though it was pervading every part of her, she could tell that this energy was not hers. No, this was a foreign power within her, and it was forcing her to do the one thing she didn¡¯t want to do: wake up.
Her first breath in over a month was a sudden, shuddering, gasp that rocked her entire body before turning into a series of weak raspy coughs. Something was off. Her body felt strange like it wasn¡¯t her own. Everything felt far more difficult than she remembered, especially breathing. It was like her diaphragm was barely functioning, though she didn¡¯t feel any pain coming from that area. Well, that wasn¡¯t entirely true; she felt pain from her torso, just the same pain she felt throughout the rest of her body. Her whole body burned with the same electric blaze that had first infused into her spirit and dragged her unwillingly back to wakefulness, causing her whole body to scream in pain. That said, the pain didn¡¯t really bother her too greatly. She¡¯d felt far worse agony than this many a time in the last year.
Her entire body felt sluggish and weak. She tried to open her eyes, but couldn¡¯t seem to find the strength to break the crust that had built up over her eyelids. As if reading her mind, a soft, wet cloth gently wiped her eyes, clearing away the dried gunk that had sealed her sight.
Gabby¡¯s gaze was first greeted by the beige blandness of a tent cover, its soft color tinted red by the flickering of flames somewhere nearby. Then a familiar figure came into view.
¡°How do you feel?¡± Chitra asked, concern painted on her face.
¡°Wrong...¡± Gabriela wheezed out, her voice a whisper. ¡°What... happened?¡±
¡°Many things have occurred since we lost you, but we can discuss them in a moment. First, you must heal yourself.¡±
Gabby blinked slowly in incomprehension. ¡°Why?¡± she rasped.
¡°You are-¡± Chitra¡¯s words caught in her throat. She reached down beside her, pulling up a polished bronze mirror about the diameter of her head. ¡°Look for yourself,¡± she instructed, holding it up over Gabby and slowly tilting it to give the prone woman a good look at her entire body.
The state of her body told Gabby everything. She looked like a corpse. Her skin was pallid and nearly translucent with dark blood vessels running through her body just visible beneath the skin.
That alone would have been enough for her to believe she was looking at a dead body, but her torso was what really did the job. The area from her ribs down to her belly button was covered in stab wounds, revealing torn organs and sliced muscles deep within. Well... that explained why it was so hard to breathe, at least. What it didn¡¯t explain was how she could breathe in the first place. She hadn¡¯t healed herself, so how was she even functioning at all?
¡°What did you... do to me?¡± she rasped.
Chitra gently scooped up Gabriela¡¯s hand and held it with gentle affection between her own. ¡°Please, Gabby, heal yourself first. I¡¯ll explain everything-¡±
¡°What... did you... do?¡±
Chitra squeezed Gabby¡¯s hand a bit harder, a slight twinge of guilt crossing her facade for a moment. ¡°I gave you a special drink to wake you from your slumber. It is a secret recipe passed down within my family for generations that can bring back even the most injured person from death¡¯s door for a few moments.¡±
Anger and outrage spiked inside of Gabriela. ¡°You... had no right...¡±
¡°I had no choice!¡± Chitra replied with some distress. ¡°We need you! We need our Champion! Please... everything is falling apart...¡±
Gabriela had never seen her companion worked up like this. Chitra was a woman trained in composure. The sight of her losing her cool caused a small amount of concern to bubble up inside her. ¡°What happened...?¡±
¡°It¡¯s a bloodbath. Without your strength to pierce through the defenses, our warriors have been throwing themselves at the enemy¡¯s walls over and over. Tens of thousands of people are dead. Every day, there are so many bodies that we have to pile them up into giant mounds and burn them. Everybody on both sides have become so desperate that they¡¯ve started to cross lines that should never be crossed no matter what. Yesterday... yesterday the Eterians... they let our troops take the northern gate and push into that section of the city, and...¡±
She shuddered. ¡°I could hear the unnatural wails even all the way over here. Our people never stood a chance. An entire seventh of our army vanished yesterday. Not even their bodies remain to be mourned by their loved ones. His Exalted Highness was so enraged that he executed General Maldi for falling for their trap. He¡¯s becoming more and more...¡± She nervously looked around the empty tent. ¡°...unhinged as the siege drags on. Please, Gabby! I fear for what will happen if you don¡¯t come back! We need you more than ever!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± Gabriela felt deep sorrow for the senseless loss of life, but what right did she have to do anything about it? Arguably, this was all her fault! All this pain, all this misery, did she not bear the blame for it? The faces of those children emerged from the briny depths of her memories, their vacant, traumatized eyes drilling deep into her.
¡°What?!¡± Chitra blurted out, shocked. ¡°But what about Javier? What about Anahi? They need you!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t... deserve... to be their... mother...¡± she replied. ¡°I am just... a monst-¡±
Gabby''s body seized mid-sentence and she let out a pained cough. Something was happening inside her. The electric fire within was starting to die down, while the pain was suddenly getting worse.
¡°Already? No!¡± Chitra gasped. ¡°Please, Gabby, please! Heal! Once the potion runs out, there is no going back! You will die forever!¡±
Gabby closed her eyes and felt the energy continue to ebb. ¡°Good.¡±
¡°...that¡¯s it? You¡¯re just... giving up?¡± Chitra asked, stunned. ¡°After all you¡¯ve been through, after all that you put yourself through, you¡¯re just giving up?! What happened to giving everything for your children?! What happened to doing whatever it took to save your family?! I thought you were like my mother, but you¡¯re nothing like her, you... you... liar! You LIAR!¡±
Stolen novel; please report.
Gabriela weathered the Batranala¡¯s tirade with grim determination, ignoring the woman¡¯s sobs and focusing on her own steadily-increasing weakness. It was time for her to leave this world for good. This was her penance for the sins she''d committed and the suffering she''d caused. This was what had to happen. Soon it would all be over for the last time.
A drop of warm wetness landed on her forehead, then another on her cheek.
¡°Why, Gabby? I... I believed in you...¡±
She couldn¡¯t do it. Gabriela knew that she deserved to die. She had thought she was ready for that one final journey. But she couldn¡¯t do it. Not like this. Not to only the second person in her life who had ever truly cared about her.
A cold fire bloomed.
¡°You¡¯re not fair, you know that?¡± Gabby said with a sad smile, giving her friend¡¯s hands an affectionate squeeze back. Plumes of red smoke materialized around her body and rushed into her wounds as if sucked in by some unknown force.
Chitra let out a squeal of surprise and delight that was without a doubt the most unrefined noise Gabby had ever heard her make. In a flash, Gabby found her upper body pulled from the small bed she¡¯d laid upon and wrapped in the most smothering embrace she¡¯d ever experienced.
¡°You stupid...¡± the attendant sniffed. ¡°Don¡¯t you ever do something like that ever again.¡±
Gabriela didn¡¯t reciprocate as her newly-repaired diaphragm heaved and she let out a resigned sigh. In a very real way, this felt like more of a defeat than a victory.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Chitra inquired, sensing Gabby¡¯s reluctance. ¡°Are you not happy to be alive?¡±
¡°Being alive means more killing and death,¡± Gabby replied.
¡°That¡¯s what a soldier does. Don¡¯t you want to go home? Don¡¯t you want to see your children again?¡±
¡°I thought I did. Everything I did was so I could go back and save them. But now...¡± Her head drooped and her body seemed to sink down under the burden of her sins. ¡°If I went home, they wouldn¡¯t even recognize me. After all that I¡¯ve done, after all the blood that I¡¯ve spilled, they wouldn¡¯t see me. They¡¯d see a monster with their mother¡¯s face, dripping with the blood of a thousand victims. I told myself that I¡¯d do anything to see them one more time, but I didn¡¯t realize what that really meant until it was too late. I tried to run from it. I tried to hide and pretend that it wasn¡¯t true, but eventually I couldn¡¯t. I¡¯m not their mother anymore. I can¡¯t be... not after all that I¡¯ve done.¡±
¡°Nonsense. It doesn¡¯t matter what you¡¯ve done. They would embrace you in a heartbeat.¡±
¡°How do you know?¡±
¡°Because they and I are the same. Gabby, listen. Let me tell you about my mother.¡± Chitra¡¯s eyes stared off into the middle distance as she dove into memories of a time long ago. ¡°You know, I grew up much like your children. My father died when I was too young to even remember his face. My mother raised me on her own. She was incredibly strict and fierce with me, to the point that I sometimes even hated her. But when the attack on my home came, my mother gave everything to keep me safe. She held the attackers off all on her own and bought enough time for the last rescuer to escape with me. Every breath I take I do with the knowledge that it was bought with my mother¡¯s life.
¡°After I lost her, it was like there was a gaping hole inside me that could never be filled. It hurt so much for so long and no matter what I did it never seemed to heal. Even now I still feel it every day. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to burn the whole world down to the ground for taking my mother from me. If she were to come back, I wouldn¡¯t care what she¡¯d done, or who she¡¯d killed, or anything. All that would matter is that I would be able to see her again. You are fighting for your children just like my mother fought for me. They will understand that, Gabby. All they want is to have their mother back.¡±
Gabriela didn¡¯t respond as guilt and love warred inside of her. Would they really welcome her back? Would they blame her for leaving? Would they even know who she was?
¡°Sometimes,¡± Chitra mused, ¡°I wonder if it would have been better to be like you and never have had parents instead of having mine torn from me. Maybe it wouldn¡¯t feel so horrible.¡±
¡°No. Absolutely not.¡± Her friend¡¯s words broke the stalemate inside of Gabriela. Her head shot up and she turned to stare the Batranala straight in the eyes, a sudden fire inside them. ¡°You have no idea what it¡¯s like to grow up an orphan. Nobody knows who my parents are or why they abandoned me at the orphanage. I grew up asking myself why I was left behind. I wondered if I was simply an unwanted accident. I questioned if there was something wrong with me. ¡®Why,¡¯ I would say to myself, ¡®why wasn¡¯t I good enough?¡¯ That doubt, that blame... it cripples you. It destroys everything you are from the inside out until you¡¯re just a shell of a person.
¡°You might not have anybody anymore, but your parents made sure that you knew that you were loved. Yes, it hurts that they¡¯re gone, but for the rest of your life you will always know that they loved you. Nobody will ever be able to take that away from you. You had a place. You belonged. You were wanted. You have no idea what I would give up to be able to say that.¡±
Chitra stared back at her, momentarily speechless. ¡°I apologize,¡± she finally said, clearing her throat. ¡°It was incredibly rude of me to speculate so brazenly.¡±
¡°No, it helped, actually. I remember again why I have to push forward no matter what. No matter what I become, I can¡¯t allow my babies to grow up thinking that I never loved them.¡± She let out an embarrassed sigh. ¡°I¡¯m such a fool. I got so caught up in all the death and misery of my actions that I convinced myself that my own babies would hate me for what I¡¯d done.¡±
¡°They would never do that,¡± Chitra assured her. ¡°No matter what you do, you will always be their one and only precious mother.¡±
¡°Yes, I realize that now, thanks to you.¡±
A series of horns called out nearby, their sound quickly joined by the shouts of tens of thousands of people.
Chitra perked up. "Oh! It looks like the attack has already begun."
Gabby stood up for the first time in a long time, her legs wobbling unsteadily for a moment before finding strength. "I guess it¡¯s time for me to go," she said.
"Not yet. We need to get you cleaned up first," Chitra replied, shepherding her towards a cloth flap that led to another ¡®room¡¯ of the tent. "You just came back and you''re obviously not at full strength yet, and you haven''t bathed in half a season. Let''s get you washed and ready, and you''ll be able to join the battle in just a few hours."
Back at the start of her journey, she''d sworn to pay any price to save her children, and she still would. Now, however, she knew just how steep the price would be for everyone.
Gabriela Carreno let out a sigh.
Chapter 64
¡°Incoming!¡± the lookout called out loud enough for everybody nearby to hear. Almost absentmindedly, Arlette bent down under cover as a wave of projectiles of all sorts flew over her head, the volley of flying death barely registering in her mind.
Arlette knew that spacing out while under attack was generally a poor idea, but today she just couldn¡¯t help it. It wasn¡¯t like she was in any real danger anyway. Today seemed to be one of those days where the Ubrans had decided to rest, which meant they usually just pelted the top of the wall with barrages of arrows until they felt like they¡¯d put on a decent enough show, and then fell back. Much of warfare was a battle of attrition. The relentless daily assaults on the walls were an attack on more than just the obvious vector. Sure, the most obvious goal was to overwhelm the defenders, open the closest gate, and wash over the rest of the city. But even if that failed, these attacks wore the Eterians thin¡ªnot just in numbers, but in stamina and strength as well. Eventually, they would be too tired, too weak, or too few to hold back the Ubran legions any longer.
Arlette felt like they were getting closer to that point than she wanted to admit. Just earlier that day, she¡¯d overheard nearby troops gossiping about rumors that the higher-ups were going to start a new all-hands-on-deck strategy to replace the current shift-based system.
Arlette had never been in a siege herself before, but she was educated enough to understand that they were rarely quick affairs. It paid to prioritize the long-term over the short-term whenever possible, especially if you were the defenders. With that in mind, until now the army had been split into two rotating groups¡ªthe day shift and the night shift¡ªin an effort to prevent wear-out for as long as possible. Since the great majority of attacks came while the sun watched over them, most of the defenders stood on the wall then, while a smaller group manned the defenses under the moonlight.
¡°Incoming!¡±
Of course, in the case of a real emergency, the night shift would be called upon to reinforce their daytime counterparts, and in the rare occurrence of a night attack, the day shift would be on standby, ready to assist. Assignments between night and day rotated frequently, as the generally less-demanding night served as a bit of a rest for the weary. Arlette and her squad had already been on night shift twice.
Now, however, it seemed that those in charge felt there weren¡¯t enough people remaining to split up. If true, that was a bad sign for her. It would mean she¡¯d be even busier than before, spending nearly all her waking day atop the wall, and that meant almost no time to continue her search. That was if the city even held much longer.
The argument could be made that the Ubrans didn¡¯t even need Sebastian as long as they had patience. After all, she and the rest were essentially trapped with a limited, dwindling food supply and no way of replenishing it. There was no hope of victory for the Eterians if it remained just them versus the Ubrans. Everybody in Crirada was slowly withering away from the lack of food combined with the constant exertion. Eventually, they would just hit their limit.
That was the crux of the matter. Sieges, by nature, were what happened when the defending side couldn¡¯t defeat the attacking side on the battlefield, leaving their only option for victory to hold out long enough for something to change and flip the balance in their favor. In this case, that meant lasting long enough for one or more other Nocend nations to send reinforcements to combat the Ubrans. The problem was, some other army appearing out of nowhere to save the day seemed impossible at this point. It was Arlette¡¯s opinion that if the other nations were going to get involved then they would have shown up already.
The great majority of her ire was directed at Drayhadal and Stragma. She didn¡¯t know what was wrong with them, but she did know that their armies were strong enough to possibly turn the tide of this entire war. Especially the Stragmans¡ªif they were to send the vast majority of their forces, they might have enough people to rival the Ubrans in numbers. But no, they¡¯d stayed in their forest, content in the knowledge that it would make invading their nation profoundly difficult. She found it strange, as it seemed to go against the aggressive nature of their society as she understood it from her short time there.
The Drayhadans, meanwhile, were notoriously insular and likely considered the actions of others to be below them. She had thought they¡¯d be able to understand the threat that the Empire represented but it seemed that she was wrong. Did they really think the mountains that marked the border between them and Eterium were enough to dissuade the enemy? The Ubrans had crossed The Divide! Some measly normal mountains would barely be a bump in the road.
Gustil was gone, its armies ravaged and its people now under the invaders¡¯ boots. There would be no more troops from her adopted home country. The thought that she¡¯d lost both nations she¡¯d called home made her want to despair.
Kutrad and Eterium had already lost nearly all of their troops. The Battle of Rul had cost the Eterians greatly, and their successive failures to stop the Ubrans¡¯ march through Gustil and Eterium meant that the only remaining portion of their army already occupied these walls. Kutrad had rushed as much of their forces towards the front lines as well, their troops joining up with the Eterians and the Gustilians to assist in defending the few Gustilian cities that had still stood free at the time, only for them to be lost just like the rest. All they had left to send were their jaglioth cavalry, a slow unit which hadn¡¯t been able to make it to the previous battles in time and had therefore survived. Both the countries still had plenty of civilians, so there was always the possibility that somewhere an army of barely-trained peasants could be formed. Arlette wasn¡¯t counting on that, however. Unless the army outnumbered the Ubrans twenty to one, she didn¡¯t foresee it making a difference.
That left only Otharia, the one country so up its own ass that it made Drayhadal seem sociable and welcoming in comparison. Arlette doubted they cared one bit about the outcome of this invasion, if they even were aware of the war at all. Sure, there¡¯d been talk of somebody new taking over, but their actions, as far as she could tell, had been no different than the old regime so far.
¡°Incoming!¡±
She couldn¡¯t control the actions of nations, but she could control her own; which was why she was busy contemplating how best to use her possibly-limited time remaining. She spared a glance backward, taking a peek at the wasteland that had been Crirada¡¯s Worker¡¯s Quarter just the day before. Assuming that he hadn¡¯t died in the terrible events of yesterday, Sebastian had fewer places to hide, but even three-quarters of a city was still too much ground for her to cover in just a short amount of time. She needed to figure out a way to search more places at once, or perhaps some other way to look for clues that didn¡¯t involve skulking around an entire metropolis.
¡°What about you, Arlette?¡± Lezo asked suddenly, pulling her roughly from her thoughts.
Arlette twitched slightly at the use of her name in public. She¡¯d been going by Lucana Domatin this whole time in an effort to hide herself and not tip Sebastian off to her presence. While any hope of that working had likely died after her imprisonment, that didn¡¯t mean she wanted the attention her name would bring. Lezo wasn¡¯t helping. Ever since finding out her true identity, he¡¯d dropped calling her ¡°Lucana¡± altogether and she hadn¡¯t been able to get him to stop.
¡°Huh?¡± she replied, having missed most of the earlier conversation.
¡°Do you think they¡¯ll try tonight?¡±
Arlette thought about it for a moment. ¡°I hope not. They¡¯ve hit us eleven times in the last eight days, so they have to give their own a rest too, right?¡±
¡°That makes it four against one, idiot,¡± Kima chimed in. ¡°Stop making claims based on nothing.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not nothing! It¡¯s my gut!¡±
¡°As I said,¡± Kima snorted, ¡°nothing.¡±
¡°Bah! A gut is all you need!¡± Lezo harrumphed. ¡°They¡¯re gonna try something tonight, I can feel it.¡±
¡°Sure they are, oh great Oracle of the Northern Wall,¡± scoffed Kima.
¡°Incoming!¡± As she did all the other times, Arlette slumped behind the nearby crenelation along with the rest of her squad. A massive volley of arrows, fireballs, and other projectiles came crashing down a moment later, scattering across the now empty stone.
¡°I don¡¯t know why they bother with this,¡± Danel wondered, a weary look on his face. ¡°It¡¯s not like they¡¯re accomplishing anything besides giving us more arrows.¡±
¡°It¡¯s for show,¡± Sergeant Muga chimed in, a hand lazily scratching his beard. ¡°They want a rest as much as we do, but they have to at least look like they¡¯re trying because you-know-who is watching.¡±
At the mention of the Ubran leader, Arlette glanced towards the west. Every day, Emperor Haidar Batra sat on his throne out in the open while holding court, as if daring the Eterians to try to take his life. It was quite the power move, and as much as she didn¡¯t want to admit it, the sight had an effect on the defenders¡¯ morale. Knowing that the man who had caused all this sat just beyond their reach really stung.
¡°Who cares why they do it? It¡¯s so boooooriiinnngg,¡± Lezo whined. ¡°Let¡¯s talk about something else.¡±
¡°Like what?¡± Kima replied.
¡°I dunno... how about what we¡¯re going to do when this is over? What are you going to do when we get out of this?¡± he asked, turning to Arlette.
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she replied, noting his use of the word ¡®when¡¯ rather than ¡®if¡¯ but refraining to comment. ¡°I mean, even if we win this battle, the war won¡¯t be over just like that. Things are still going to be messy for a long time.¡±
¡°What about after that?¡±
Arlette shrugged. ¡°I haven¡¯t really thought that far ahead. None of that matters if I can¡¯t accomplish what I came here for. What about you guys?¡±
¡°Well, my parents are tailors and they¡¯re going to need somebody to take over for them at some point, soooo...¡± Lezo replied.
¡°A tailor? You?¡± Arlette and the others cackled.
¡°Can¡¯t you just see him sewing with those giant sausage fingers of his?¡± chortled Kima.
¡°I could do it if I tried!¡± Lezo protested. ¡°I did it all the time when I was a kid.¡±
¡°That¡¯s because your hands were tiny back then, dumbass!¡±
¡°Well what about you then, shorty?¡± Lezo shot back.
¡°Ah, well, I¡¯ve been fighting all my life,¡± the spearwoman replied. ¡°Don¡¯t really know what else to do with myself at this point. If I don¡¯t rejoin the army, I¡¯ll probably go register as a mercenary.¡±
¡°You have to register somewhere to be a mercenary?¡± Lezo asked.
¡°Of course, you dunce! How did you think you become a mercenary?¡± Kima retorted, giving the large man a not-so-playful shove. Not for the first time, Arlette wondered what in the world attracted her to him.
¡°I thought you just, you know, went out and did it...¡± the axeman admitted sheepishly while the others began to laugh at him even harder.
¡°No, you idiot! You gotta sign up and get put on a list! You think they¡¯re just gonna let people just wander around with swords and shit and not even know who they are?¡±
The laughter inside Arlette came to a sudden halt, stifled by Kima¡¯s words and a sudden realization. She was just as dumb as her rock-headed squadmate. The list! Why hadn¡¯t she thought of it before? Every government with any sense had a copy of the Mercenary Guild¡¯s list of mercenaries operating in their nation at the time. All she had to do was get her hands on that list, and she¡¯d know the names of every mercenary in the city. Sure, none of them were going to say ¡°Sebastian Cunningham¡± on them, but there had to be something she could use. It was a far better plan than just sneaking around the city hoping to run across something.
There was just one problem: that list would be in the citadel, and she wouldn¡¯t be welcomed there any time soon. She could try sneaking inside on her own, but getting into a place like that, where the entry points were limited and well-guarded would be tricky. But with help...
Arlette cleared her throat.
The night was much darker than usual, the light of the three moons muted somewhat by a thick sheet of clouds blanketing the entire sky. The clouds were much lower than usual, too, so low that they sometimes enveloped the top of the wall itself.
With the clouds came mist and fog thick enough that, when at its thickest, made it so she couldn¡¯t see more than fifty paces ahead of her. The spirits were looking out for her tonight, it seemed. Arlette couldn¡¯t have asked for a better situation. Not only would any guard¡¯s vision be impaired, but the mist would also muffle the sound a little bit as a bonus.
¡°These clouds sure are something, huh?¡± Sergeant Muga asked as she stared up at the sky through the window of their small hotel room.
¡°Yeah...¡±
¡°This is the sign that winter is slowly beginning to fade,¡± he continued. ¡°Apparently it¡¯s like this here towards the end of winter every year. My father grew up here before he moved out and met my mother. He used to say that you could set your calendar to it. I always thought he was leading me on but maybe I was wrong. Either way, good luck for us, eh?¡±
She returned his lopsided grin with a small smile of her own. After their squad¡¯s shift was over, she¡¯d gotten them to a more private place and pleaded for their assistance in sneaking her into the citadel. She¡¯d come up with a whole fake rationale for why she¡¯d need to break into her own side¡¯s headquarters, but surprisingly it hadn¡¯t been needed; her assurance that it would help in the fight against the Ubrans was all it had taken to get them to agree.
While Supreme General Astalaria¡¯s gambit the day before had succeeded greatly in killing a whole lot of enemy soldiers, it seemed that it had also royally pissed them all off. Not only had they all found the deed abhorrent, as any person in their right mind would, they¡¯d also lost nearly all of their possessions thanks to the event, as they¡¯d been housed in that quarter. Lezo had been the loudest voice of protest, not shutting up for a quarter of an hour about how he¡¯d lost his ¡°secret stash¡± of alcohol. Arlette wondered just how much backlash the general had created with his own troops if these veterans had so readily volunteered for insubordination. Had the blow to the Ubrans been worth the cost?
Having nowhere to go with their old housing now gone, the whole squad now occupied the various rooms in the same empty inn as her. They¡¯d all met up in her chamber before heading to the citadel. With the five of them plus Sofie, Pari, Pari¡¯s equipment, and two beds all squeezed into the chamber, there was barely enough space for her to move about. Danel was engaged in conversation with Sofie about something while Lezo and Kima were clustered around Pari. Lezo seemed interested in the beastgirl¡¯s handiwork, while Kima just seemed dazzled by the girl herself. That left just her to talk with the squad leader.
¡°Are you sure this plan will work?¡± he asked. ¡°It seems too...¡±
¡°Simple?¡± Arlette offered. He nodded. ¡°You¡¯re soldiers, you¡¯re not used to this kind of thing. And now with the fog, the more complicated we make everything the more likely something will go wrong.¡±
¡°I guess you¡¯re right,¡± the older man allowed. ¡°You¡¯d know better than me anyway.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not like I¡¯m some spymaster or something,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°I¡¯ve done most of my work on the battlefield just like you.¡±
¡°But you have done this before.¡±
¡°A few times. Only when the enemy is distracted and not expecting it. That''s why I need everybody''s help. You and Kima distract the guards, Danel is the lookout and gives us the signal, and Lezo gets me onto the wall.¡±
¡°Why not just go in through the gate?¡±
¡°Well, I can¡¯t turn invisible so the guards would see me.¡±
¡°No, I mean just walk in like a normal person. You¡¯re part of the same side. Just talk to the guards and go inside.¡±
¡°The General just threw me in the dungeon like three days ago. I don¡¯t want him aware I¡¯m anywhere nearby. There¡¯s no knowing what he¡¯ll do.¡±
¡°If you say so.¡± He didn¡¯t sound totally convinced, but Arlette didn¡¯t feel like elaborating any further.
¡°We should head out,¡± she declared to everybody.
¡°Here, take these just in case,¡± Sofie said, handing her a small bag.
Arlette peeked inside to find two pairs of candles each half the size of her fist, one pair a light blue with specks of black and the other a pair of mottled yellow¡ªboomcandles and stinkcandles respectively. ¡°Isn¡¯t Pari out of the ingredients to make these?¡± she asked. ¡°We should save these. It¡¯s not like I¡¯m going anywhere too dangerous, anyway. I¡¯m not even taking my armor.¡±
¡°It¡¯s just in case. It will make me feel better knowing you have them,¡± the other woman replied with a look of concern. ¡°Be careful.¡±
¡°I will.¡± She turned to the rest of the group. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±
As the squad approached the citadel, they heard a series of horns from behind them and froze. The Ubrans were gearing up to attack.
¡°Ha! Told you,¡± Lezo crowed.
¡°Shut up, asshole,¡± Kima responded, giving him a rough shove. She turned to Sergeant Muga. ¡°What do we do?¡±
The older man had his eyes closed as he thought. ¡°I don¡¯t hear the other three,¡± he noted after a moment. ¡°It seems they¡¯re only forming up to hit the west side.¡±
¡°Weird, they always try to hit everywhere to spread out the defenders as much as possible,¡± Danel noted.
¡°Let¡¯s continue with Arlette¡¯s plan. The call for reinforcements hasn¡¯t gone out, so it doesn¡¯t sound too serious,¡± the sergeant decided. ¡°But, if they do call for help or the Ubrans scale up their attack to the other sides of the city, we must abandon this and head to the battle.¡±
¡°Agreed,¡± Arlette nodded.
They continued on through the deepening fog, stopping just as the citadel wall came into view and ducking into a nearby alley.
¡°Here should be good,¡± Arlette said softly. ¡°The gate¡¯s about four hundred paces to the left. Be loud, loud enough that we can hear you even over here. If we can hear you, the guards on the wall will hear you too. Don¡¯t try too hard and push it for too long. We only need to attract attention long enough to get me onto the wall without their noticing. It might take me a while before I¡¯m done, so don¡¯t bother waiting for me either. Go back to the inn and relax or something. I¡¯ll meet you all there later.¡±
Kima and Sergeant Muga nodded. Lezo handed them two small bottles of liquor while grumbling about wasting their last reserves, but it was important for the plan that their breath reeked of alcohol. They each took several gulps.
Meanwhile, Lezo and Danel made their way up a nearby external staircase, whereupon the Feeler boosted the Observer up onto the roof of the two-story building they hid behind. Danel¡¯s eyesight was the best of the group; that, and the idea that he could use his Observation to create pieces of ice to silently signal to the others made him best suited to be their lookout and coordinator.
Once Danel was ready, Sergeant Muga and Kima left while taking some more swigs of alcohol. Meanwhile, Lezo and Arlette stayed out of sight by the entrance to the alley, waiting for the signal to move. A few moments later, they heard the sergeant guffawing boisterously at high volume. Arlette cracked a small smile. The man sure knew how to be loud. It reminded her of another man who¡¯d been about the same-
Arlette cut that line of thought off before it could go any farther. That man was dead to her. He hadn¡¯t even been real in the first place.
A large, empty road encircled the citadel, creating a large gap of at least a hundred paces between the wall and the closest buildings. The citadel wall itself stood at about twenty-five paces high, a small shadow of the massive wall that ringed the city itself. Still, it was more than adequate. Very few Feelers were strong enough to be able to leap that height, and the gap between the wall and any nearby buildings kept people from leaping from a nearby roof.
A small spike of ice about the length of her hand formed on the ground in front of them¡ªDanel¡¯s signal to move. Lezo and Arlette ran as fast and quietly as they could, covering the open ground as quickly as possible while keeping an eye out for figures on the wall. Arlette trusted that Danel would not have sent them had he not witnessed any nearby guards moving in the direction of the racket happening at the gate to her left.
As soon as they got to the wall, Lezo squatted with his hands together and she stepped up onto them. He gave her a look asking for confirmation and she nodded. With a small grunt, he heaved her skyward.
About two-thirds of the way up, Arlette realized it wasn¡¯t going to be enough. She could feel her upward momentum petering out as she approached the top of the wall. Desperately, she stretched her arms up and just barely was able to catch her fingers on the top. The momentum then immediately slammed her face first into the side of the wall.
Slowly and carefully, so as not to ruin her hands¡¯ fragile grip, Arlette pulled herself up and over the crenelation. As soon as she was atop the wall, she threw on a disguise and looked around. Nobody seemed to have noticed her little endeavor. Letting out a breath of relief, she turned away from the gate and began walking confidently along the wall, making sure to keep her gaze mostly outward as a guard should.
She¡¯d ¡°dodged a bullet¡±, as Sofie sometimes said, whatever kind of animal that was. Just a little weaker on the throw and she¡¯d have fallen back down with only Lezo to break her fall. Not to besmirch the man, but she didn¡¯t feel like that would end too well for her. Also, her choice to leave her armor at home for better stealth had turned out to be unexpectedly wise. The amount of noise the metal would have made when she hit the wall would have been clearly audible to anybody nearby.
It wasn¡¯t Lezo¡¯s fault, really. There hadn¡¯t been any chances to practice so this had been his first time. If he¡¯d had as much experience as Jaquet, he would have been able to throw her up properly. Jaquet had had the art of Arlette-throwing down pa-
Arlette stopped for a moment, closed her eyes, and shook her head to clear her mind of these terrible thoughts. What was going on with her today? She needed to keep her focus. The hardest part was over, but the real work was about to begin.
Finding the proper ministry was a simple task, as she¡¯d been there multiple times before when dealing with the administration of the Ivory Tears. Part of an area she¡¯d long ago dubbed ¡°Bureaucracy Row¡±, the entrance to the offices could be found along a lengthy hallway with doors that led to offices for all sorts of mundane governance-related things: farming, masonry, bookkeeping... you name it, there was probably an office for it somewhere down that hall.
This time, however, the offices looked very different than what she remembered. Gone was the hustle and bustle, the noise of ruffling paper and quiet conversation, the clerks and scribes that acted like they had too much on their plate to deal with you. Instead, there was dust and silence. All the better for her.
She slipped into the office where she¡¯d signed up the Ivory Tears years ago, back when they¡¯d stayed in Crirada for half a year. Judging by the thickness of the layers of dust on the desks and floors, nobody had been inside this room in days. Making sure the doors and windows were shut to block the noise and light, Arlette Observed a small candle flame and began to rummage through drawers, looking for what she desired.
There were budget documents, whole books on mercenary law, and a myriad of random notes and other things she could make neither heads nor tails of... but no mercenary list. After minutes of searching, she still couldn¡¯t find the list she needed. Suddenly the folly of her plan became clear to her. Supreme General Astalaria¡¯s command would surely need the list she was looking for. They must have taken it way back when he¡¯d first arrived and likely kept it in his command headquarters, well out of her reach.
Arlette sank down to the floor and covered her face in her hands. She¡¯d placed so much hope in this effort. She¡¯d even enlisted her squad and put them at risk. For what?
Desperately she wracked her mind, trying to think of something she could get out of this now. When she¡¯d first visited this office, she¡¯d signed up her band and what had the man said? Right, this had been their first service in Eterium and she¡¯d asked how the country would handle payouts. He¡¯d replied that their info would be shared with the Ministry of Payroll office and that she should direct her questions to them instead before proceeding to dismiss and ignore her.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The payroll office! Perhaps they had a copy of the list!
Quickly she went back to the hall and proceeded to the payroll office at the far end of the hall. She¡¯d been here before too in her past quest for answers to simple questions. Much like the other rooms, dust caked the desks and tables. Unlike the other rooms, cabinets and shelves lined the walls, all filled with records going back decades. Summoning another flame, she began to look once more.
Half an hour of worried searching later, she found what she was looking for: a large book resting on top of some papers inside a cabinet drawer with words ¡°Mercenary Records¡± written in elegant handwriting on the spine. Eagerly she opened the tome, flipping through the pages expectantly, only for her excited smile to falter.
This wasn¡¯t the list she wanted. Instead, it was a compilation of all the mercenary bands in Eterium, each page listing a specific band¡¯s details, including the name, the number of people, the details of their contract and how much money was owed, and the band¡¯s leader. Other than the leader¡¯s identity, no other names were listed. Frantically, she paged through the book, hoping to find more names later on, but alas, there were none. All she found was the same sort of information on every page, with various numbers and names and whatnot crossed out and replaced with more recent information, sometimes multiple times.
With a sinking feeling, Arlette realized she hadn¡¯t thought this through. ¡°Sharing information¡± didn¡¯t have to mean the Mercenary Ministry just copied a humongous list of people and gave it to the Ministry of Payroll. That would be a lot of work and they¡¯d have to do it frequently to keep up with people joining, leaving, or dying. Why would they bother to do all that when the payroll office wouldn¡¯t even need all the names? It wasn¡¯t like they paid each mercenary individually. They just gave the whole amount to the band¡¯s leader and let them handle it.
She quickly went through various sections of the book, checking for anything that struck her as wrong. There were the Crescent Executors, a well-known group led by Volkan Basturk; the Shadows of Sacrifice, a lesser known band that she¡¯d worked with once before, led by a woman named Angharad Camm; the Shields of the Valiant Order, a newer group led by Gabon Veleza...
Most of the mercenary bands she found she¡¯d at least heard of before, and she couldn¡¯t find anything out of the ordinary with the ones she didn¡¯t know. Arlette was of half a mind to just give up and leave. The longer this went on, the more of a waste of time it seemed and the guiltier she felt about it. No, she decided. She¡¯d already cashed in this favor and involved her own squad in this foolish idea. She owed it to both herself and to them to at least finish looking through this place in the faint hope that she¡¯d find something, anything, that could put her closer to finding Sebastian.
With that in mind, she renewed her search, checking the next drawer of that cabinet, and then the one after that before moving to the next cabinet. A while later, she¡¯d run out of cabinets. This was the last one. This was it. She¡¯d already checked the desks and the bookshelves. If there was nothing worthwhile inside this, then tonight would be labeled an unmitigated disaster.
The top drawer contained a series of large books containing payment records for various low-level government officials. The second drawer contained neat piles of loose parchment that looked like contracts signed with various businesses. The bottom drawer, the third and final one, just contained more records. Arlette leaned back and sighed hopelessly. What a letdown this had become.
Just as she was about to close the bottom drawer, she stopped and looked at it in greater detail. She¡¯d just spent the last half hour looking at cabinet drawers, and something was subtly off about this one. On a hunch, she removed all the records from it and put her one hand on the inside bottom of the drawer and the other hand on the underside. Her findings only made her grow more interested: the height of this drawer didn¡¯t match up on the inside with the outside! Taking out a dagger, she began feeling around for a way to remove the false bottom before finally just jamming the knife into the crease between the side and bottom and wedging the bottom off.
There was a small book inside without any marking on the cover. Curiosity combining with desperation, she flipped it open and paged through until she hit the first blank page. The book was just another list of names, none of which meant anything to her. She read through the few names on the last page.
Txarles Azcona, Santzo Burgubure, Orfeo Vara, Zeres Zalbidea, Talia Araucua, Karmen Beriain, Jakob Barabe, Gendule Velez, Eako Mendieta.
What did those names mean? It couldn¡¯t be the mercenary list she¡¯d coveted; the book itself was far too small to hold even a quarter of all the names in such a list. Flipping back to the front, she noticed something written on the upper corner of the inside of the cover: ¡°Sweepers¡±. Her spirit fell. All the secrecy made sense now, in the most disappointing way. This was a list of the people who made up the much-maligned social class of street cleaners. They were looked down upon by all, including her, as harbingers of disease and filth. In order to protect their identities from a public that would shame them greatly, as well as to help block the toxic smell of the refuse they dealt with, Sweepers wore masks and concealing cloaks. But of course somebody had to know who worked behind those masks because somebody had to pay their wages like any other government employee.
Nothing could have summed up this entire endeavor better than this last discovery: a cart-load of potential and expectation that in the end amounted to absolutely nothing. Enough was enough. This entire night had been a monumental waste of time. With a sigh, she stood up and left the offices behind.
Getting out of the citadel was comically easy compared with getting in. All she had to do, clad in her illusory disguise, was walk out like anybody else, and so that was what she did. What reason would guards have to keep her inside?
Another series of horns echoed across the city as she made her way back home, a different and more fortuitous pattern than the last one. The attack on the West Gate had ended, and the walls still held against the Ubran menace. At least one good thing had happened this night.
Arlette arrived at the inn where they¡¯d taken their rooms shortly thereafter¡ª¡°taken¡± being somewhat literal in this case, as like most places in the city the building had been abandoned by its owners before the siege. She found everybody inside her room again.
¡°-so I pretended I recognized him as an old comrade from back in the day. I kept calling up old war stories and going on and on and he didn¡¯t know how to deal with it at all,¡± she could hear Sergeant Muga explaining with laughter. ¡°And get this: the thing that made them really mad, more angry even than how we were bothering them, was that we still had alcohol and they¡¯d run out!¡±
A chorus of laughter went up. Arlette allowed a minute smile to emerge on her face. At least they seemed to have had a pretty good time. Everybody''s head turned her way as she opened the door, and immediately inquiries barraged her from every direction. She worked her way through the curious throng and plopped down on her bed, setting her sword against the nearby wall.
¡°That bad, huh?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°A total bust,¡± Arlette reluctantly admitted. ¡°I couldn¡¯t find anything. I¡¯m sorry, everybody.¡±
¡°They didn¡¯t have what you were looking for?¡± Kima asked with a frown.
¡°Yeah... I think the Supreme General himself has what I need. All I could find were a bunch of records too abstract to tell me anything useful.¡±
¡°That¡¯s all? What a letdown,¡± Lezo replied. ¡°You had me all excited, thinking we were going to be saving the day and all that.¡±
¡°Yeah, I¡¯m sorry. It didn¡¯t work out. I did find something you might find amusing, at least. I found a list of the names of the Sweepers who worked in the city.¡±
¡°Whoa, really?! Those freaks?!¡± Kima exclaimed. ¡°Do they have weird-sounding names and shit?¡±
¡°Nah, they¡¯re the same as the rest of us. Orfeo Vara, Jakob Barabe, Karmen Beriain, normal Eterian names.¡±
¡°Nya? Basilli?¡± a high-pitched voice chimed in.
¡°What?¡± a confused Arlette replied.
¡°Arly-sis said Basilli!¡± Pari declared.
¡°Oh yeah, I remember that now,¡± Sofie added. ¡°That was Basilli¡¯s other name, remember? Jakob Barabe. I told you back when we were being taken back to Kutrad. That¡¯s so weird. What are the odds that we¡¯d find another Jakob Barabe? Is that a common name here?¡±
¡°No, Barabe¡¯s a pretty rare family name,¡± Danel replied.
¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve never met a Barabe before,¡± agreed Sergeant Muga. ¡°Is this somebody you know? The name Basilli rings a bell for some reason.¡±
¡°Basilli Inciar is one of the people who had a bounty on his head,¡± Danel reminded the older man.
¡°Oh, right. I guess he went his own way after the bounty was dropped?¡±
¡°No, he¡¯s... not here anymore,¡± Sofie explained remorsefully. ¡°He was a total jerk a lot of the time but funnily enough I miss him. Especially Arlette, she worked with him for years. Right, Arlette? Arlette?¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t respond, the conversation¡¯s words going inside her one ear and straight out the other. Her mind was too busy spinning with sudden thoughts, a series of what-ifs and crazy conjectures mixing inside her to fill her with a cold foreboding dread. There was no way the sudden thought that had popped in her head could be real. It had to be just another creation of years of paranoia. But...
There was only one way she could extinguish the ball of panic that was building slowly but surely in her soul. Arlette quickly got to her feet and grabbed her cuirass. The armor was something she¡¯d picked up ¡°secondhand¡±, so it didn¡¯t exactly fit perfectly and it took a bit of effort to squirm into it even when rushing like she was now. Once it was properly encasing her torso, she grabbed her sword and headed towards the door.
¡°Arlette, what the hell are you doing?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°I have to go check something,¡± she replied as she slipped out of the room.
She could hear her squadmates heading down the stairs after her as she left the inn. She ignored the calls for her to wait, instead kicking into a fast run as she turned towards the West Gate. She was just going to check, just going to make sure that everything was normal, and then she¡¯d come back.
Some strange occurrences today had been bugging Arlette since earlier. The most notable had been the strange attack that had happened while she was in the citadel. Why had the Ubrans launched a night assault tonight, and why only on one side when doing so meant they likely wouldn¡¯t accomplish anything? At the time, she¡¯d dismissed the oddity as merely just that, one of the many strange occurrences that happened during war through a combination of bad communication, bad planning, and plain bad luck. But as much as she hated the Ubrans, she couldn¡¯t say they were stupid. Was it truly a display of incompetence?
Arlette had been around the gates and gatehouses of Crirada enough to understand the strengths and weaknesses of its design. Getting into a gatehouse from outside was nigh impossible unless you had enough people to completely overwhelm the entire area. You had to make it up to the top of the wall and then descend the many flights of stairs without getting roasted or impaled or turned into a pincushion just to get to the ground again. But even then your battle wasn¡¯t over. The Eterians always kept a reserve of fighters down at the bottom to take care of anybody fast, strong, or lucky enough to make it that far, and even if you made it through them, you¡¯d still have to take the gatehouse itself¡ªanother daunting task given how it only had two entrances, one on each side of the gate, which served as natural bottlenecks. If you somehow managed to survive such a gauntlet of death, then unless you were a strong Feeler accompanied by another seven or so Feelers, you wouldn¡¯t have the strength to open the gate anyway!
Yet, much like how she¡¯d been able to stroll leisurely out of the citadel without issue earlier, all of this assumed that the enemy would be coming from outside the wall. If the reserves at ground level were taken by surprise and the gatehouse fell, suddenly the design of the defenses would be working against the Eterians instead of for them. A smaller group would be able to hold off the defenders more easily while they opened the gate. The thin width of the stairways down the wall would limit the speed at which the soldiers on the wall would be able to descend to take back the gatehouse. And all that only mattered if they even knew something was wrong downstairs!
Was it a coincidence that tonight was the first night with fog so heavy and clouds so low that the clouds engulfed the top of the wall, meaning that nobody above would even be able to see if something happened down below? Was it a coincidence that the fog would muffle the sound of any fighting if it were to occur? Was it a coincidence that this sort of weather happened every year reliably enough that you could plan on it? If she could think to use it to her advantage, why couldn¡¯t somebody else?
All this time, Arlette had been focused on the mercenaries and soldiers in the city in her hunt for Sebastian. They were, after all, the only groups who remained in Crirada to fight. But that was actually incorrect¡ªthere was one other smaller group of people who had also remained, a group who didn¡¯t fight but instead played another crucial role. They appeared after every battle, collecting the fallen weapons and armor, removing the gore and viscera, and taking away the bodies of the fallen.
The Sweepers. The one group of people that everybody else did everything in their power to pretend didn¡¯t exist. Arlette was no exception. In an entire season, she¡¯d never thought to investigate the Sweepers even once. In fact, like the rest of the defenders, she tried to avoid looking at them altogether. Only now, after Sofie and Pari had made this connection between Basilli and the Sweepers, had Arlette realized her folly.
It was possible, nay, likely, that this was all just a coincidence and there was another man named Jakob Barabe who happened to be a Sweeper in Crirada. But there was another possibility. What if Sebastian was posing as a Sweeper and had used Basilli¡¯s name as his alias? Maybe he¡¯d found out her dead cohort¡¯s other name while looking into them, and, convinced nobody would ever know, decided to use that name for kicks? Taking the very identity of a man he¡¯d killed with his own two hands was the sort of thing Sebastian would find amusing. After all, who would know? The names of Sweepers were kept secret! Either way, that name was one of the last to be entered into the book, meaning he¡¯d been a recent addition, and his name hadn¡¯t been crossed out, meaning he¡¯d still been alive before the siege had started.
Which led her back to the strange attack. What if the attack had been simply a pretense? What if the result of the battle itself hadn¡¯t been the point? What it the reason had simply to create some corpses and provide the Sweepers with a justification to appear and mingle with non-suspecting soldiers, and then strike when it was least expected? The soldiers wouldn¡¯t see it coming until it was too late!
Arlette knew that she was grasping at straws, but once she¡¯d connected all the disparate pieces together in her mind, she¡¯d been unable to pull them apart on faith alone. She needed to know for sure. She needed to see the reserves by the stairs. She needed to see the guards outside the gatehouse entrances. She needed to witness with her own eyes that her wild imaginings were just that. Because if her fears were true...
It would be ludicrous. It would be insane. It would be the kind of thing that not even a madman would consider. It would be just the sort of thing that Sebastian would do.
The wet air whipped through her hair as she ran. She was getting close now, she believed, so she slowed down to recover her strength a little and move more quietly. Several moments later, the others caught up to her.
¡°What are you rushing off for?!¡± Lezo whined as soon as he pulled up beside her, his lungs puffing laboriously as he tried to regain his stamina. A man so large wasn¡¯t good at running long distances.
¡°Not so loud!¡± she hissed. ¡°I just need to verify something. That¡¯s all. You didn¡¯t have to follow me.¡±
¡°Your friend asked us to make sure you didn¡¯t do anything regrettable,¡± Kima chimed in. ¡°She said you had a look in your eye that meant you were going to do something stupid.¡±
Arlette sighed.
¡°Something doesn¡¯t feel right,¡± Sergeant Muga said after a moment. ¡°It¡¯s too quiet.¡±
¡°Are you sure it¡¯s not just the mist?¡± Arlette asked, fishing for confirmation that her paranoid conclusions might have some basis in reality. They passed by the final buildings and came upon the wide gap between the edge of the city and the wall. The fog here was thick, limiting her sight to perhaps seventy paces at best.
¡°Yeah... where is everybody?¡± Lezo asked.
The feeling of dread in Arlette¡¯s gut doubled. Her squadmates were right, this place was too empty even for this time of night.
¡°Look,¡± Danel spoke up, as he squatted down by a dark stain on a stone-covered street. He ran a finger over the blotch and brought it back up for all to see. His fingertip was dyed red. ¡°It¡¯s fresh. Something happened here not too long ago.¡±
¡°Probably just some fighting with Ubrans who made it over the wall,¡± Kima offered up.
¡°Maybe,¡± Danel replied. ¡°But they¡¯re right, where are the reserves? The shift still has a few hours to go.¡±
¡°The gatehouse.¡± Sergeant Muga was already striding through the fog, a grim expression on his face. Arlette and the others quickly followed.
A few moments later, Arlette spotted the outlines of four figures in the fog. As they grew closer, those hazy silhouettes sharpened into four soldiers guarding the left side¡¯s gatehouse entrance. The right entrance stood on the other side of the archway, barely visible in the distance as a dark blotch in the fog. She couldn¡¯t see well enough to tell if there was anybody there.
The guards¡¯ alert levels spiked as they noticed them approaching. Arlette let out a breath she hadn¡¯t been aware she¡¯d been holding. They were just guards. Normal soldiers. No animal masks, no all-concealing cloaks. Just guards, their armor crusted with blood. It seemed that they¡¯d been fighting not too long ago.
¡°Have you seen the reserves?¡± Sergeant Muga asked them. ¡°We have a message for them but we haven¡¯t been able to find where they went.¡±
Arlette was astounded at the older man¡¯s ability to just spew bullshit with ease. He sounded exactly like a bored soldier carrying out a routine order.
¡°They went up the wall,¡± one of the guards replied.
¡°Really? What for?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t know. Just overheard them get orders.¡± The man shrugged.
¡°Well then, while we¡¯re here we need to speak to the Gatemaster,¡± the sergeant continued.
The guard shook his head. ¡°The Gatemaster is busy at the moment. She gave orders to not be disturbed.¡±
¡°I see...¡± Sergeant Muga said, stroking his beard.
¡°Question,¡± Danel interjected, ¡°where did the blood on your armor come from? It looks recent.¡±
¡°What, did you miss the attack, you idiot?¡± the guard replied, annoyed. ¡°Ubrans did something weird this time. Don¡¯t know what happened upstairs but a whole bunch of them got down here and we had to fight them off. A real pain in the ass, it was.¡±
¡°Then if your armor is so dirty,¡± Danel followed up, ¡°why isn¡¯t there any blood on your body?¡±
Everybody froze as Arlette noticed what Danel was saying: while the armor they were wearing was wet with blood and dirty like they¡¯d just been in an intense battle recently, there wasn¡¯t a single spot of blood or dirt on their exposed skin. It would be practically impossible to remain clean after such a fight... unless they¡¯d been wearing cloaks and masks that would have caught all the blood, and then put on some pilfered armor afterwards.
Everybody moved at the same time. The talkative guard quickly drew his sword and struck at Sergeant Muga, who blocked the blow with his own sword while pulling out his shield. Arlette stepped backward, out of the range of the nearest guard¡¯s mace as it flew through her former position. Then Lezo was between them, his large axe embedding itself in the guard¡¯s shield.
Suddenly a low rumble began to emanate from the wall, the sound of gears beginning to turn and chains beginning to retract. Though she couldn''t see the gate itself through the fog, a scraping sound coming from that direction told her everything she needed. The three huge metal beams that braced the gate were being retracted into the archway''s side. She''d heard this sound many times before¡ªit was the first step in opening the gate.
One more sound caught her ears: the sound of more ¡°guards¡± approaching from the direction of the other gatehouse entrance.
¡°Arlette, get inside! We¡¯ll hold these guys off! Stop them before they open the gate!¡± Sergeant Muga ordered. With the coordination that only a squad that had fought side-by-side could pull off, the other four squad members each sent a blade or an icicle towards the middle of the enemy¡¯s formation, forcing their opponents away from the doorway for just a moment.
Arlette dived through the gap and ran into the gatehouse, sword gripped tightly in her right hand. Though the lighting inside was dim, with only a few small torches providing any illumination, she didn¡¯t need much. As somebody who¡¯d guarded these gates before the siege, she¡¯d been inside plenty of times, and she knew exactly where to go.
The layout of the gatehouses was fairly simple. First, there was a long corridor about ten paces wide with an array of slits in the right wall going all the way from one end to the other. Ideally, this was where Eterian soldiers would unleash a variety of death into the invading Ubrans if the gate was breached. One look told her that wouldn''t be happening. Bodies covered the floor in great pools of sticky, half-dried blood. Most of the corpses wore armor, but she spotted several wearing dark cloaks and animal masks among the dead. This had been a massacre.
Arlette ran over the mess of bloody remains as quickly as she could without tripping on the uneven footing. Her goal was deeper inside. At the end of the corridor was a short hallway, perhaps twenty or thirty paces long that terminated into a stairwell with side hallway going left. Those stairs led to higher floors with more slits, and if you went high enough you¡¯d be able to cross over the gate passage and descend to the right side of the gatehouse, which in most ways mirrored the left side she was currently in.
The one difference in the sides was the hallway to the left near the stairs, which was not reflected on the right side. That short hallway was her destination. At its end was the most important room in the gatehouse: the gear room. It was there that the actual process of opening the gate happened. Skidding around the corner, Arlette caught a glimpse of exactly what she feared¡ªa collection of people wearing disturbing masks over their heads, their bodies covered by large cloaks, all of which were stained red with blood¡ªbefore the view was cut off by a large blast of flame going off just in front of her.
Arlette threw herself backward, hoping to get around the corner before the flames hit, but she¡¯d been moving so fast in the opposite direction that reversing course took time¡ªtoo much time. The flames washed over her left arm and torso as she fell backward, the intense heat searing her flesh all the way to the bone. She screamed in agony as she felt her left side begin to cook. Quickly she rolled about as best she could to put out the flames, but great damage had already been done.
Her left arm was out of commission. If she made it through this it would heal eventually, perhaps after twenty days or so, but for now she was down to just one arm. Her torso had fared a bit better thanks to the armor, but just barely. Doing anything, from moving to breathing, sent spikes of agony straight from her side to her brain. Her fighting ability was now a shadow of what it was just moments ago. She coughed, then let out a hearty ¡°FUCK!¡± as she leaned against the hallway side.
Then she heard a voice over the din of grinding gears and rattling chains, one that sent her mind reeling and spiraling into confusion and disbelief. It wasn''t the deep, strong voice of Sebastian Cunningham. No, it was a different voice, but one still horribly familiar. It was the voice of a man that she''d watched die before her very eyes, now calling out to her with a simple, mocking greeting.
¡°Oh, hey Boss! Fancy meeting you here!¡±
Chapter 65
Arlette felt like she was in freefall, the ground having been suddenly pulled out from beneath her. Nothing made sense anymore. A cocktail of confusion with hints of happiness, betrayal, and rage churned through her soul, leaving her breathless.
¡°B-Basilli?¡± she hesitantly called out while she pushed her aching body back to her feet, still not able to fully believe the voice¡¯s existence and everything that it meant. ¡°Basilli! How-¡±
She stepped around the corner, only to quickly duck back behind it as another blast of flame forced her to reverse course.
¡°The name¡¯s Jakob, Boss,¡± Basilli called back. ¡°Always has been.¡±
¡°How are you alive?!¡± she cried out. ¡°I watched you die! There¡¯s-¡±
Her former comrade¡¯s short, barking laugh cut her off. ¡°You of all people should know that you can¡¯t believe everything you see. Did you think you were the only illusionist in the world? They had to get me out. There was no reason I needed to die with the rest of you, Boss. Or should I say Arlette now? Wouldn¡¯t do to have the real Boss hear me call you that.¡±
Arlette¡¯s pain-addled brain finally began to piece together the obvious. She felt her legs go weak and leaned against the wall for support as past events began rushing back in a new light. ¡°The trap with the Hidden Shadow all those years ago and your tip off... that was all a ruse to get you into the Ivory Tears.¡±
¡°Finally figuring it out? Boss¡¯s been watching you for years. Only natural he¡¯d have somebody on the inside.¡±
¡°All those years you were reporting to him behind my back. All those ¡®contacts¡¯ you¡¯d go visit in the criminal underworld whenever we arrived at a city...¡±
¡°Oh, I did more than just report. Remember when that contract with Drogan fell through right before you were going to take it and you had no idea why? That was us. Or the time we lost half our commission because most of the hostages we¡¯d rescued somehow died before they could be delivered? I mean, they were weak, but they weren¡¯t on their death beds, you know what I¡¯m saying?¡± He laughed, amused at his own duplicity. ¡°And you ever wonder why so many bounty hunters were able to track us all the way through Kutrad?¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t!¡±
¡°You all tried so hard to hide your tracks, but all it took was broken branch here, an extra scuff mark or two there...¡±
¡°And the bounty hunters who attacked the caravan near Stragma?¡± Arlette asked, her rage growing with every sentence Basilli¡ªno, Jakob¡ªuttered.
¡°Oh, that was an easy one,¡± he chuckled. ¡°Just had to tip off the right people before we left. Didn¡¯t even take an hour!¡±
¡°You...! But why? You were only putting yourself in danger!¡±
¡°There¡¯s no reward without a little risk, and believe me, Boss gave me quite a reward. He didn¡¯t want you to escape too easily, see. The harder you had to work for it, the more it would hurt in the end when you failed.¡±
¡°You fucking traitorous bastard! To think that I mourned your death for days! You scum! Even Sofie cried for you!¡±
¡°Sofie?!¡± Jakob cackled. ¡°You¡¯re still with that useless baggage? Stars above, I¡¯m amazed she¡¯s even still alive!¡±
¡°She crushed King Morgan¡¯s balls into paste with her foot, jackass, and that¡¯s the least I¡¯m gonna do to you!¡±
¡°Oh yeah? Says the woman cowering around a corner? I¡¯m right here, you pathetic excuse for a mercenary! Come on out! Or are you worthless now that Jaquet¡¯s not around to do all the work?¡±
As much as Arlette wanted to wring the jeering double-crosser¡¯s neck, Arlette kept herself planted behind the stone corner. Going into that hallway was what he wanted her to do. He had her pinned down. There was no realistic way that she¡¯d be able to traverse that entire hallway before being cooked alive, especially after taking that first blast.
A horn blared from far up above her, up atop the wall, quickly echoed by horns from the three other gates. The Ubrans, they were attacking again! Of course, it made sense. The sound of the gate¡¯s opening process would be noticed by those up above eventually. The Ubrans needed to attack to hold as many Eterian troops up on the wall as possible and distract them until it was too late.
That meant that she had to get into that room somehow. The low rumble of the gears grinding against each other served as a constant reminder that she had a more important task than revenge. Time was at a premium. She needed to get past her former subordinate and stop the gate¡¯s opening process as quickly as possible. But how?
As always, she had several throwing knives on hand, but Jakob wasn¡¯t standing out in the open any more than she was. Hitting him would require a lot of luck and stupidity on his part. This wasn¡¯t some stranger on the other end of this hallway. This was somebody who¡¯d fought beside her for years and was well aware of her techniques and capabilities. He knew she had knives on her because she always had knives on her.
Illusions weren¡¯t going to do much for her either. First, she would have to expose at least part of her head in order to see and Observe any illusions in the hallway. The same was true for Jakob, but while hitting his head with a knife would be difficult for her, hitting her with a flame blast would be sadly easy for him. Accuracy had always been his strongest point, and he could just hit the whole area if he wanted to.
But what else could she do? Could she wait for the others and storm the room together? No, the sound of metal ringing against metal off in the distance told her that they still had their own problems to deal with. She couldn¡¯t rely on others at this moment.
Or could she?
With a start, Arlette realized that she had one more option: a small bag that she¡¯d forgotten to untie after returning from the citadel. After hanging her sword on her waist by the bag as best she could manage with just one fully-functional hand, she loosened the drawstring, reached in with her good hand, pulled out a boomcandle, and temporarily held it lightly between her teeth so she could rummage in the bag again for a stinkcandle.
She turned about and faced the stone wall she¡¯d been leaning against, putting the staircase behind her and the hallway leading outside to her left. This set her right arm in the proper orientation to fling candle-based death down the hallway. Then she concentrated, summoning a small flame and lighting the wick of the stinkcandle before counting to three. Then she threw.
¡°Is that all you got?¡± Jakob called out as a blast of fire sprang into being, shooting out to intercept the candle as it sailed down the hallway. The heat burned through the wax in a flash and the candle went off prematurely only two-thirds of the way down the hall, filling the hallway with acrid smoke.
Another shot of flame ripped down the hallway. ¡°Nice try, but that shit won¡¯t bother us with these masks,¡± he taunted.
Arlette smiled. The caustic, debilitating smell of the stinkcandle hadn¡¯t been the point. Bending down, she counted to three once more and whipped the boomcandle down the hallway along the ground as hard as she could. The small candle bounced beneath another gout of flame and into the room.
¡°Shit! Get away from-¡±
With a bang loud enough to make her ears ring, the candle erupted. Though the candle was much smaller than the normal boomcandles due to Pari¡¯s dwindling ingredients, the tiny wax cylinder half the size of Arlette''s fist still packed quite the punch.
The grin on Arlette¡¯s face widened as she heard the screams of multiple people, accompanied by the sound of chains snapping and machinery falling apart. The rumble of the gears ground to a sudden, rapturous silence as she reveled in the elation of victory. Then again, with the smoke from the stinkcandle blocking her view, she couldn''t see just how bad the damage was. It was better to make sure. She fished her hand back into the bag hanging on her side, looking for the last boomcandle.
¡°You¡¯re persistent, Princess, I¡¯ll give you that.¡±
Arlette twisted about at the deep voice, just as a hard boot drove itself into her gut and sent her flying down the hallway towards the entrance. She tumbled across the floor and out into the corridor filled with corpses, her sword flying from her hip and scattering across the stone along with the two remaining candles. A small string of vomit fell from her lips as she tried to keep the rest of her last meal still inside her stomach. It wasn¡¯t easy; she could count on her hands the number of times she¡¯d taken such a heavy direct blow.
Arlette spat out the remnants of vomit still in her mouth as she pushed herself to her hands and knees. Sebastian stood at the intersection of hallways, just staring at her with an amused smirk on his face. He hadn¡¯t moved a step since kicking her. He must have snuck up on her while her ears were ringing.
¡°Jakob, I want that gate open immediately!¡± he ordered, still not taking his eyes off of her.
¡°That bitch broke some of the equipment,¡± came the reply of the regrettably-still-breathing Jakob Barabe.
¡°We¡¯re still within our window. Use the replacement parts,¡± Sebastian instructed as he drew a large sword from his back. ¡°I¡¯ll take care of our little annoyance.¡±
Arlette scrambled to pick up her sword and the candles as fast as she could. The boomcandle had rolled to a stop just a few paces away from her, with the sword not too far from that, but try as she did, she couldn¡¯t spot the stinkcandle anywhere. Seeing Sebastian take a stride forward, she gave up on finding it and quickly put the boomcandle back in the bag before readying her sword.
It was time, she reminded herself. All those hours of training with her second father, all those days of working on her body and practicing until every muscle in her body ached, all those years of experience fighting with her life on the line... sure, she¡¯d had many reasons for all of that, but deep down hadn¡¯t it all been to prepare for this moment? Hadn¡¯t this been what she¡¯d fantasized about growing up? Him, her, and a chance to end everything? A chance to finally free herself of the terrifying shadow that had been stalking her in the back of her own mind since that fateful day?
The situation could have been far better. Her legs were still unsteady, her left currently weaker than her right. Her scorched arm limited her to single-handed swings, meaning her swordsmanship would be more predictable and her blows weaker.
But still, she had something nobody else did: her ability to fight with illusions. As long as she played her cards right, she could overcome any opponent. She could win this.
Backing up a little to give herself room to maneuver, Arlette waited until Sebastian stepped into the wider corridor and then immediately split herself, her doppelganger circling around to the left while she went right. Given her obviously damaged left side, anyone would expect her to be the one going left in order to keep her sword between her and her opponent, something she was counting on.
Both she and her illusory self charged in, only for a shiver of warning to travel down her spine and send her skidding to a halt just as Sebastian¡¯s blade swept through the air where she would have been. Her illusion vanished as she backed away while he stepped forward, her blood running cold as she watched his eyes. Making another copy, she tried again, this time going left while the illusion went right, only to immediately dismiss her copy and try once more, this time going left a second time in a row to throw him off. Just like last time she stopped just out of his reach, and just like last time a blade flashed through where she was going to be.
An ominous dread filled her: Sebastian hadn¡¯t looked away from the real her a single time. No, he¡¯d followed the real Arlette perfectly no matter what, a bored expression on his face the entire time. Could he see through her illusions? The very prospect of the idea shook Arlette¡¯s confidence to the core.
¡°Truly, what a tremendous disappointment you¡¯ve become,¡± her former teacher commented as he continued to slowly advance, pushing Arlette back towards the bodies that littered the rest of the chamber between her and the outside.
Suddenly he launched himself forward, so fast that Arlette could barely bring her sword up in time to block. The impact threatened to knock the sword from her grip and sent her reeling backward. Her foot stepped on a corpse¡¯s arm and she stumbled, almost losing her balance. Sebastian didn¡¯t give her a chance to steady herself, pressing his attack and forcing her to throw herself awkwardly back and to the side to avoid certain death. Pain lanced through her as she tumbled over blood-covered torsos and severed heads.
None of this was working out the way she¡¯d hoped. Even the environment seemed against her, the bodies littering the ground threatening to trip her with every step yet somehow not bothering Sebastian one bit.
Arlette circled to her right, trying to get between Sebastian and the doorway that led back outside, only for her foot to catch on an upturned Sweeper mask. She faltered for just a brief moment, unsteady, and brought her sword up in an attempt to block the incoming killing blow. It was a vain attempt, as the opening she¡¯d inadvertently created in her own defense was something somebody with Sebastian¡¯s skill would never miss. But the blow did not come.
He was toying with her. By all rights, she should be impaled on a blade right now, but he¡¯d let the opportunity pass. She wasn¡¯t foolish enough to think he¡¯d missed it. No, he was enjoying himself, choosing to take pleasure in watching her sweat and confident in his inevitable victory.
She kept backing away, closing in on the nearby exit to the outside. She still had one more realistic shot at victory. If she could get outside to her squad, then the five of them together stood a chance to defeat him. This was her last chance. She turned and sprinted towards the doorway.
¡°Hmph!¡± Sebastian sneered. He lunged forward, faster than she¡¯d ever seen him move, and stabbed his large blade directly towards her head.
Desperately Arlette twisted about and brought her weapon up to block. She just barely succeeded, pushing the blade up and to the left, but immediately she felt a foot slam into her torso. The powerful kick sent her flying through the doorway and knocked the blade from her hand. She gasped as she flew through the air and landed flat on her back, winded and in pain. Meanwhile, her sword sailed off to the right, landing a good thirty paces from her.
She looked up to find her squadmates all still alive and seemingly victorious, given how Kima was in the middle of pulling her spear from the chest of what appeared to be the last enemy. Battling against an opposing force twice their number had taken a harsh toll, however. Blood dripped steadily from cuts all across their bodies, especially Lezo and Sergeant Muga. Fighting for their lives had left them each exhausted.
¡°Arlette!¡± Sergeant Muga cried as they watched her fly past them and land awkwardly. ¡°Did you stop-¡±
¡°Pathetic!¡± Sebastian growled as he stepped out of the gatehouse with eyes filled with boredom, causing Arlette¡¯s four companions to swivel around simultaneously. ¡°It seems you brought along some pests for extermination. How nice.¡±
¡°No!¡± Arlette screamed. She tried to stand up but found the world spinning wildly when she did, forcing her to stay on all fours as she crawled her way towards her weapon. She needed to join the battle and give her friends the best chance they had, but her body responded sluggishly to her desperate pleas.
Sebastian, however, seemed in no mood to wait. With a wicked grin, he fell upon Kima, who happened to be the closest and still wrenching her spear from her last enemy. As his sword swept down on a diagonal arc, she quickly used her ability, bending and twisting her upper body in a bizarre manner that made it look like her spine had been snapped in half, putting her under and out of sword¡¯s path.
For most any enemy, that would have been enough, but Sebastian was a different story. The world seemed to slow down for Arlette as she watched the blade turn as if it had a will of its own, easily following the diminutive woman as she moved and slicing well into her gut. With a disgusting squelch, Sebastian ripped his sword from Kima¡¯s belly, his evil grin still on his face as her intestines spilled through her desperately-clutching hands.
¡°KIMA!¡± Lezo cried out, his face contorting in fury. He roared out his fury as he rushed at his lover¡¯s killer, his large axe carving down through the air with murder on its mind.
Sebastian only scoffed and casually stepped forward, catching the heavy weapon by the top of the shaft and halting its momentum with only his free hand. ¡°Weak,¡± he laughed in the grief-stricken man¡¯s face.
¡°AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!¡± Lezo howled, straining his body to its limits and beyond, but the axe wouldn¡¯t budge.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Muga charged at Sebastian¡¯s exposed left flank while Danel sent an icicle the length of Sebastian¡¯s forearm hurtling at Sebastian from the right. With a snort, he tossed the sword in his right hand upward and reached out with perfect timing to nudge the streaking icicle to the side. The icicle continued on its now adjusted path, missing his head by the width of a hair and continuing onward at blinding speed straight into the center of a charging Sergeant Muga¡¯s unprotected forehead.
Then, with one smooth motion, Sebastian caught his falling sword by the handle and swept it across and through Lezo¡¯s neck, dropping the Feeler¡¯s body to the ground like a rock. The newly-deceased man¡¯s axe still in his hand, Sebastian hefted it easily and sent it twirling towards a stunned Danel, who could not react in time. The large axe head buried itself deep into his chest cavity and knocked him to the ground.
Arlette could not believe her eyes. Four warriors, slaughtered one by one in a matter of breaths¡ªso quickly, in fact, that she had only just now reached her sword. Her companions¡ªno, her friends¡ªdead before she could even blink.
Sebastian turned towards her, disgust on his face. ¡°I offered you everything, Arlette. I would have made you something to be feared. Something more than just a warrior¡ªa legend. Instead, you chose to associate with worthless trash.¡±
The world had stopped swimming enough for Arlette to get to her feet, but her body shook all the while, both out of exhaustion and out of terror. Was it over? Had she lost?
The fog had cleared out a lot by now, giving Arlette a much better view of the area around the gatehouse, though the clouds still smothered the top of the wall. She looked about, hoping to see Eterian troops making their way down to the ground. To her delight, she did, in fact, find them about halfway down the nearest stairway. If she could just delay Sebastian and his crew somehow until the reinforcements arrived...
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Just as she had that thought, a series of explosions blossomed on the staircase, followed by another somewhere behind her. Their loud booms echoed through the city, piercing the quiet. Pieces of stone half as long as Arlette was tall fell from above as parts of the stairways collapsed, temporarily halting the Eterians¡¯ descent. The sight destroyed what little hope remained in Arlette¡¯s heart, leaving her empty. She began to back away.
¡°Did you think that I would just let reinforcements arrive so easily? Surely you don¡¯t think so little of me. By the time they make it here, it will be too late. The Ubrans will already be pouring in,¡± Sebastian taunted as he began to stride powerfully towards the backpedaling Arlette, cutting towards her left to circle around her. ¡°The fools should have protected their bombs better if they didn¡¯t want me to use a few. Speaking of which, that child of yours shows interesting promise. Perhaps I should take her under my wing once you¡¯re out of her life.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you dare touch her!¡± she growled, putting up a front that convinced not even herself, especially since she was still backing away. Looking about, she realized that she¡¯d been so focused on Sebastian that she hadn¡¯t noticed that he¡¯d steered her into the tunnel leading to the gate itself. She was cornered!
Behind her, the sound of grinding movement resumed. The beams bracing the gate were once more slowly withdrawing into the wall itself. All she could feel was hopelessness. She¡¯d lost. A complete and utter defeat.
¡°I¡¯ve been looking forward to this day ever since you escaped Kutrad the second time,¡± Sebastian said, triumph written all over his face. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be enough to kill you outright. It is important that you understand just how futile your struggles are.¡±
¡°You evil son of a bitch! All this just because I rejected you back then?!¡± She charged forward, sword at the ready. She¡¯d given up all hope of surviving any longer. Now, she¡¯d settle for taking the man that had haunted her throughout her whole life down with her.
A second Arlette sprang out of the first and joined her by her side, the two identical figures raced towards their hated enemy. This time, she didn¡¯t bother having one go high and one go low, or to try to attack from both sides. She simply went for the head, both swords arcing up to converge on Sebastian¡¯s neck like a giant set of shears.
With a look of fury that she¡¯d only seen once before, Sebastian knocked her real sword away, sending the weapon spinning well out of reach, and grabbed her by the throat with his free hand. He stared bloody murder into her eyes as he lifted her off the ground.
¡°You think I care so much about the decisions of a child? No, your crime is far greater than mere stupidity,¡± he growled as Arlette spasmed in agony and clawed at the hand squeezing away her air. With his sword hand, he traced over a spot on his chin almost absentmindedly. ¡°You stole my perfection.¡±
With a snarl, he threw her away, sending her crashing into the left wall of the tunnel with a sickening crunch. Arlette¡¯s chest heaved as she clutched her throat, gasping for air.
A ¡°clack!¡± reverberated through the tunnel. Arlette knew that sound: it was the sound of the beams locking into place. Now free of its restraints, the massive gate could begin to open. A moment later, she heard the telltale sound of massive chains working on equally-massive pulleys and the gate began to rise.
¡°You failed, you pathetic girl. All your efforts, it was all futile. Watch and let the truth sink in.¡±
The cheering of the Ubrans intensified as the gargantuan metal impediment lifted up a hand¡¯s width, then two hand¡¯s widths. She could see hundreds of soldiers on the other side, champing at the bit as they waited for the gate to get high enough to squeeze under. Then, unexpectedly, Arlette heard the sound of gears slipping and chains coming loose, and the gate fell back down with a deafening crash.
Confused, Arlette looked back towards the other end of the tunnel, but couldn¡¯t see any Eterians coming to stop the gate from opening. Then... what?
The clanking of machinery resumed, and the gate rose again. First and hand¡¯s width, then two, then... the gate fell once more.
¡°Heh... heh heh heh... hahahahaha!¡± Arlette began to chuckle at the sight, her amusement turning into outright howls of relief and elation as the ¡®truth¡¯ truly sunk in. She grinned triumphantly up at Sebastian as blood leaked from her mouth and dribbled down onto her tunic.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, asshole? Not enough replacement parts?¡± she cackled, her whole body quaking. ¡°They can¡¯t do it! AHAHAHAHA! I win, you fucker! I WIN! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!¡±
The gate rose a third time and crashed back down once again, eliciting even greater guffaws than before. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she took in her tormentor¡¯s furious facade. She¡¯d succeeded. Against all odds, she¡¯d done it. She¡¯d won.
A roar went up on the other side of the gate as the cold sharpness of a blade came to rest against her throat. ¡°Somebody about to die has nothing to gloat about,¡± he snarled. ¡°You think a lucky happenstance means anything? It means nothing! I will simply bide my time and strike anew in the future, but next time you, who couldn¡¯t even lay a hand on me, will not be around to meddle in my affairs.¡±
¡°Sorry, Sebastian, I won! You will never be able to take that away from me even if you kill me right now,¡± Arlette replied as her cackles fell away, replaced with little more than a serene smile. ¡°And I don¡¯t need to touch you to take you with me. It¡¯s over.¡±
Calmly, she lifted up her hand. Resting on her palm was a candle, the specks of black amidst the blue wax easily visible in the light of the flame burning above it.
Arlette closed her eyes, content with the way things had ended up. She¡¯d lived a short life, but it had been a notable one, all things considered. Her only regret was that she would never be able to help Sofie find her way home...
WHAM!!
A heavy impact struck Arlette and forced her eyes open again, but it wasn¡¯t from her boomcandle. No, strangely, it had hit her on her left side, the blow strong enough to push her over. The impact hadn¡¯t come from a weapon, either; it had struck her equally all along the left side of her body and left her head spinning. A sharp pain was emanating from the left side of her head. She couldn¡¯t hear from that ear anymore! What in the stars had just-
Wait! The candle! Panicking, Arlette realized that the blast of whatever it was had knocked the candle from her hand. Meanwhile, Sebastian¡¯s blade had fallen to the ground as he clutched his ears and staggered about, screaming in agony.
What in the stars had just happened? Arlette looked towards the gate, the direction the blast had come from, and froze in disbelief.
The gate, a solid piece of metal so thick and sturdy that not even a season of punishment by the entirety of the Ubran legions had been able to damage it, was dented in the center, about twenty paces off the ground.
WHAM!!!
A second shock wave pounded into her even harder than the first, throwing her forcefully onto her back. As she flew, she caught a glimpse of the gate buckling in even more like cheap armor smashed by a sledgehammer. Her head swam from the impact, leaving her woozy and confused. Her right ear was ringing like crazy but fortunately it seemed to have survived perhaps because she was facing this gate this time. Unfortunately, that meant the rest of her face had suffered instead. She was pretty sure that her nose was broken, and she could feel something that was likely blood as it welled up and began to drip from her eye sockets.
Battered and beaten, Arlette thought to run, but she couldn¡¯t get her body to respond. All she could manage was to clutch at her head as she curled up on the ground while Sebastian fell to his knees about twenty paces closer to the tunnel¡¯s center.
WHAM!!!!
The third blast was the strongest. She felt it wash over her prone form with tremendous power, closely followed by the screeching sound of the gate being ripped from its moorings and tumbling down the tunnel towards her like the world¡¯s largest crumpled piece of paper¡ªexcept this piece of paper weighed more than five hundred men. Arlette felt a strong breeze as the gargantuan projectile passed just a pace over her.
Sebastian, however, had not been so lucky. Still strangely stunned and stranded out towards the middle of the tunnel, there¡¯d been nowhere for him to go as the malformed metal sheet bore down and slammed directly into him with all of its terrifying force as it crashed its way through and out of the tunnel.
That was when Arlette saw the woman. Landing a few paces inside the tunnel, her eyes glowing a crimson light in the dark passage like cinders inside a brazier, the woman strode forward with a look of steadfast determination on her face as she pulled an absurdly large sword made of some kind of pitch black crystal from off her back.
The monster.
Arlette knew who she was in an instant, even though she¡¯d only ever heard stories. The sight of her filled Arlette with a primal terror, something far more base and instinctual than the fear that Sebastian instilled in her, and it told her that this woman was death incarnate. She had to get away. She had to run no matter what.
A cheer loud enough to be heard even with her one partially-working ear rose from a hundred-thousand throats as the Ubran Army poured into the tunnel. Arlette picked up her boomcandle and ran, summoning one last terror-fueled burst of strength from her battered body. As she exited the tunnel, the Ubrans only steps behind, she spotted masses of Eterians reinforcements swarming towards the area from the city. They were too late. With the gate destroyed, the question wasn¡¯t if Crirada would fall but rather how many hours more until it did.
Arlette swerved right, doing her best to stay away from both sides. In her current condition and without any weapons, trying to fight anybody would just be a death sentence. Instead, she just ran as best she could manage, alternating between running and hobbling until she found herself at the interior wall that separated the Worker¡¯s Quarter with the Commerce Quarter. Her heart felt like it was going to explode and her limbs felt like they were made of stone, but she pushed herself up the steps with everything she had left, trying to avoid the defenders sprinting down the stairs all around her. Luckily none of them thought her an enemy.
It was strange, but, just moments after being willing to die, now she suddenly wanted to live again. She wanted to see Sofie¡¯s and Pari¡¯s smiling faces, and watch the sun rise over the eastern wall, and generally just live even one day in a Sebastian-free world, just one day where she¡¯d be free of fear again. It would be such a waste for her to die right after him. Such a waste...
Arlette fell to her hands and knees at the top of the wall, panting and exhausted, trying to regain enough strength to get moving again. After a few moments, she got back to her feet and began limping towards the citadel. She could only pray that Sofie and Pari had enough sense to get themselves to the citadel on their own. Unlike last time, she didn¡¯t have it in her to come to their rescue. They must have, she told herself. The sound of the gate being beaten in had surely been loud enough to be heard leagues away.
More Eterians streamed past her as she hobbled her way slowly towards the city center. Suddenly a cold chill went up her spine as she heard the sound of battle behind her. Turning about, she saw with mind-numbing dread that the monster had made her way away from the main battle and climbed the wall a good two hundred paces behind Arlette. Arlette paled. What was that woman doing up here?! Why wasn¡¯t she in the middle of the battle, killing scores of Eterians?
Pushing herself to move faster, Arlette tried to put as much distance between her and the monster as possible. Just in case, she cradled her last boomcandle in her right hand, a last resort of pure desperation and insanity but the only one she had left.
She could hear the air crack with every one of the monster¡¯s swings, the woman¡¯s sword moving with force enough to break the air itself. Even with only one mostly-working ear, she could hear the thunderclaps of her blows getting closer and closer just over the low rumble of her blood pounding in her remaining ear. Turning back, she saw that the monster was now only forty paces away and closing astoundingly fast. The woman¡¯s blade moved so fast that it could barely be seen as it carved easily through her fellow soldiers as she passed by them.
It was clear to Arlette as she took in the trail of carnage the monster left behind her that no begging, cowering, or hiding would save her life now. So she did the only other thing she could think of: with last of her strength, she manifested a flame between her and the monster and threw her boomcandle through it.
BOOM!
The candle erupted with great force about twenty paces away from her... and just two paces in front of the streaking monster.
The blast threw Arlette violently into the side of the walkway, more pain sprouting up inside her as she felt several bones snap, including a rib that, judging by the sudden wet rattling in her breaths, had just punctured her right lung. She begged and pleaded with her body to move, to get away before it was too late, but she found that there was truly nothing left this time. All she could do now was lie on her back, her neck propped up against the walkway side, and wait for it to be over.
At least she would go with the knowledge that she¡¯d taken out Ubrus¡¯s greatest weapon along the way. The candle had exploded just in front of the Ubran at about shin height, the blast wave pulverizing everything below her ribcage, including her lower arms, into mush. The rest of her, from the ribcage up, had tumbled through the air with a look of shock and surprise before landing face-first on the stone floor about ten paces past Arlette. She¡¯d heard rumors of the mythical woman¡¯s ability to heal even the nastiest of wounds, but nothing could come back from that, right?
Wrong. Under Arlette¡¯s appalled and dismayed watch, a crimson smoke quickly filled the air as the destroyed portion of the woman¡¯s body seemed to evaporate into mist and condense back onto her body, reforming into whole, undamaged flesh. Arlette would never have believed it if she hadn¡¯t seen it for herself. It was not just impossible, it was straight up unfair.
The monster stood up, a look of anger replacing her previous determined expression. She took one look at Arlette before marching over to pick up her massive black blade, which had skidded to a stop another fifteen paces away. Arlette gazed into her crimson eyes and let out a sigh as the other woman began walking swiftly towards her, stopping just a few paces to her right.
This was it. Arlette literally had nothing left. As the monster stood over her and hefted her gleaming, pitch-black sword high up over her head like it was nothing heavier than a stick, Arlette stared up into the looming clouds for a short moment and then closed her eyes, letting the low hum of her blood coursing through her be the last thing she would ever hear.
A thunderous ¡°CRACK!¡± echoed off the walls and Arlette found herself covered in wet, sticky warmth. Befuddled that she still breathed, Arlette opened her eyes.
The monster¡¯s head was just... gone. Everything from her collarbone up was nowhere to be seen, with the area connecting the shoulders to the neck replaced by a jagged, blood-spurting mess of flesh and bone. Arlette waited a breath for the mist to appear and reform the head, but that did not occur. Instead, the sword, still held high over the monster''s now-missing head, teetered for a moment, swaying left and right slightly before tipping fully to the right. The body followed, its grip still locked tight on the sword¡¯s handle, and the ensemble tumbled over the side of the walkway, off the wall, and out of view.
What.
What?!
Who?!
How?!
Nothing that had just happened made any sense. One moment she¡¯d been about to die, and the next moment the unkillable monster had died instead? And where had that thunderclap come from if not from the woman¡¯s sword?
A second "CRACK" caught her good ear, though it was much softer than the one before. Turning her head toward the sound, she noticed something strange. Far off in the distance, on the tallest tower of the citadel itself, was some sort of gigantic insect. The dull metallic grey of its body made it hard to see in the cloud-dampened moonlight, but from what she could tell, it had four legs connected to a somewhat ovoid, round body. A long pole protruded out horizontally from the top of the insect¡¯s body, swiveling about on its own without the main body having to move.
Suddenly the insect bucked back, pushed backwards by some invisible force, and Arlette heard another ¡°CRACK¡± a moment later. Arlette didn¡¯t know how to process the thing. It moved like it was alive, but judging by how much of the tower¡¯s roof it occupied as it gripped the slanted top with its legs, the insect had to be at least ten paces long, possibly more. No insect could ever be so big, right?
Distracted by the uncanny insect, Arlette suddenly realized something equally disconcerting: the low drone of the blood pounding in her ear had been increasing in volume, now to the point where it almost seemed to vibrate her entire skull. This was something else, and judging from the direction of the vibrations, it was something from somewhere above.
Arlette¡¯s mouth fell open, unable to believe her eyes as a massive, grey, oblong shape descended through the clouds in the murky night, its gargantuan frame casting an ominous shadow over the city. Long and cylindrical, with each end tapering off to a point, the huge thing hung in the air in complete defiance of the very laws of nature. How, Arlette could not understand; no matter where she looked she could find no wings, only a series of motionless fins on the far end. And yet there it stayed, as if held aloft by some giant, invisible hand.
Protruding from the bottom was a strange boxy structure running along most of the colossal object''s length starting near the front. Suddenly a large hatch opened on the structure¡¯s bottom and more insects appeared¡ªfive, ten, fifteen. They were smaller than the first, and lacked the massive pole that the other sported, but Arlette found them equally unnerving as she watched them dangle from the ends of ropes running back up into the hatch. They hung in the air, motionless for a heartbeat, then two. Then, as one, they straightened their legs and began to lower to the ground.
Chapter 66
With the click of a mouse, Blake Myers designated another target for his sniper skitter and shifted his view elsewhere, tracking the actions of his units as they spread out through the Eterian capital. A small smile grew on his face as he witnessed his robots doing exactly what he¡¯d designed them to do: slaughter. Fascinated, he watched as three of his creations waded into the large, desperate mess by the city¡¯s west gate, where the Eterians were engaged in a valiant but laughably futile effort to hold back the oncoming tide of Ubran soldiers. Neither side was prepared as the four bots swept in from the north and began carving through the Ubran troops while another four converged from the south.
To call the result ¡°gruesome¡± was putting it lightly. The robots announced their presence with a furious salvo, the tucrenyx slugs tearing through the Ubrans almost as if they were made of cloth. Medieval-quality leather, cloth, and metal armor just weren¡¯t made to stand up against bullets moving at supersonic speed. Nor, it quickly became apparent as the skitters charged into the fray, did it hold up against weaponized five-foot-long chainsaws.
It didn¡¯t take long for panic to set in on both sides. At about ten feet tall, the Battle Skitter Mk Ones were hard to miss even in the chaos. They towered over the humanoids battling between them, their large, bloodstained chainsaws flashing out to bisect anybody foolish enough to get within range. Even if somehow one were to be unable to see them, the sharp cracks of the bullets breaking the sound barrier would be enough to catch your attention. That and the screams.
Not that Blake could hear those screams himself. He wasn¡¯t anywhere near the battle; he sat back in his chambers in Wroetin where it was safe instead, watching from above through a video feed like a sensible person. In his opinion, there was no real reason he needed to put himself within even a hundred miles of possible danger when he could just have robots do it instead. He had the technology, after all. Even at this distance, he could still give orders through the same chain of flitters stretching from Otharia to Crirada that supplied the view he was watching. The delay wasn¡¯t even too bad, perhaps ten seconds at its worst¡ªmore than fast enough to coordinate his units and let their rudimentary AI handle the details. He only hoped that the Eterians wouldn¡¯t be stupid enough to attack the skitters, as the skitters would no doubt return fire without mercy¡ªa behavior that Blake had programmed into them from the start to deal with any Otharians who might decide to start attacking his units in some sort of guerrilla campaign against him.
Quickly Blake switched through an array of video feeds coming through the link, checking the state of the rest of the city. While most of the Ubrans had been entering the city from the west, some had taken advantage of the nearly-unoccupied wall around the rest of the city to enter that way, and they couldn¡¯t be left to do as they pleased.
Two of his units scrambled through the large nondescript buildings in the northeast quarter, while another two worked their way through the large empty villas in the southeast quarter. The final three skitters were reserved to guard the gate of the wasteland that had once been the northwest quarter. Outside of pushing back the Ubrans in the west, keeping the north gate closed and the northwest quarter unoccupied was his top priority. After all, it was the reason he¡¯d bothered to throw his hat in the ring.
Blake hadn¡¯t cared for the fate of the Eterians until yesterday¡ªif he were to be honest, he still didn¡¯t care now¡ªbut the phenomenon he¡¯d witnessed that day had turned his thoughts upside down. He¡¯d never before heard of a ¡°Severed¡± attack, as he¡¯d later learned they were called, but eldritch tentacles emerging from portals meant other dimensions, and that made this highly relevant to his interests.
At first, Blake had thought to recreate the phenomenon in Otharia for better study, but one conversation with Leo had squashed that idea. Apparently, people at risk of becoming Severed didn¡¯t just grow on trees, and any that did pop up were usually taken out before they could endanger everybody around them. How the Eterians had acquired such a number of Severed people was a mystery, but that didn¡¯t matter in the end. What mattered was that there hadn¡¯t been a Severed attack in Otharia in twelve years and finding somebody was just about impossible as well as highly unwise. The news had left Blake momentarily crushed.
There was one other thing he¡¯d learned, however, that had restored some of his hope. It seemed that the area affected by such an incident would be afflicted with some sort of aura or radiation or something that left it ¡°blighted¡±. Nothing would grow in that area and people who stayed inside it for more than a few moments would grow ill. The ¡°blight¡± would slowly weaken until the land eventually became safe and usable again. This meant two things: there was still something for him to study in the hopes of finding a clue to a way home, and he needed to get to the site as soon as possible and get every bit of data he could while things were still as fresh as possible.
With that in mind, he¡¯d quickly assembled several underlings, loaded them up into his zeppelin along with as many skitters as his newest creation could lift, and sent them off to Crirada as quickly as he could. It was good that he hadn¡¯t wasted any time; if he¡¯d delayed even another half hour, it was likely that there would be nobody left in the city to oppose the Ubrans but him. His skitters were a force to be reckoned with, but fifteen of them couldn¡¯t take on the entire Ubran army. The numerical advantage would be just too great to overcome.
Glancing at the readout for his units, he noted that the ones covering the west side were already running low on ammo. He¡¯d have loved to bring more ammunition, but when given the choice between more units and more bullets, he¡¯d gone with the former. It would have been nice to have both, but such an option wasn¡¯t possible as long as he relied on his airship to transport everything.
The simple fact of the matter was that sending troops by land wasn¡¯t a realistic option. His skitters weren¡¯t able to move as quickly as his zeppelin, nor would they be able to take as direct a route. On top of that, they¡¯d have to fight through an army just to get into the city, assuming they didn¡¯t get ambushed along the way¡ªBlake didn¡¯t want to have to babysit them all the way there just to make sure they arrived safely. That meant the best option was the first of what he hoped would someday be just one of many Ferros Floating Ships: the newly completed FFS Flying Toaster.
The Flying Toaster was named as such for more than simply his nostalgia for the days of his youth. The first of its kind, it felt little better to him than a flying appliance¡ªkludgey, unsophisticated, and somewhat unwieldy. Still, he had to admit that it was a minor miracle he¡¯d been able to create something like this at all, given his limited experience and knowledge outside the realm of mechanics and electronics.
The largest hurdle had come, as usual, from his lack of chemistry expertise. Once he¡¯d determined that a lighter-than-air design was needed to fulfill all his design goals, the question had turned to just how to make it lighter than air. Ideally, he would have used helium like on Earth, but he had no idea how to actually acquire the gas. All he knew was that it was mined from the ground somehow. What form was it found in? Did it need to be processed and refined before it could be used? How could it be located? Since he couldn¡¯t answer those questions, he¡¯d moved on to other options.
The second option was, of course, hydrogen. One of the few things he could still remember from high school Chemistry class was doing electrolysis to show how water was made up of hydrogen and oxygen. It wouldn¡¯t have been too hard to throw together an electric generator and make some hydrogen. Still, Blake hadn¡¯t given the idea more than a second of thought before scrapping that as well. History had made well clear just what could happen if you used hydrogen. He didn¡¯t want his precious creation turning into a fireball after one errant lightning strike.
Hot air was also out. While he hadn¡¯t bothered to test it, he felt that the lift gained just wasn¡¯t enough to be viable. More so, one of the few things that tucrenyx technology was unable to do that electronics could was produce heat, meaning he¡¯d have to burn fuel to keep the air hot. Hot air was out.
That left Blake with only one option, an idea that even he had to admit was rather crazy: nothing. The only thing lighter than hydrogen was a vacuum. It didn¡¯t require him to know anything about ions or covalent bonds or any of that shit. All he needed to do was figure out how to create tanks with the air pushed out of them that were light enough to float but still strong enough to not be crushed beneath the weight of the atmosphere.
It hadn¡¯t been easy. After only a few tests, it became clear that there was no perfect thinness of ordinary tucrenyx, or any other metal he had on hand for that matter, that would be able to be both light enough and strong enough to do the job. That meant getting down and dirty and messing with the metal on a smaller scale.
There were times when Blake became so used to messing with tucrenyx that he forgot that his powers worked with all metals. Once he remembered that fact, Blake began searching for possible alloys to improve tucrenyx¡¯s strength and luckily found a good one that incorporated silver and iron, two of the other metals he had in relative abundance. The alloy, when arranged properly on a molecular level, was easily three times stronger than normal tucrenyx, though far more rigid and inflexible. That didn¡¯t matter for this use case, but still, even such an improvement was not enough on its own.
Eventually, nature came to the rescue. Specifically, Blake¡¯s most-hated insect, bees. He was so grateful he was even willing to forgive them for years of getting stung for no goddamned reason as he built the walls of his tanks in a hexagonal, beehive-esque pattern on a microscopic level. The structure proved strong and allowed him to cut the weight even more, to the point where he finally had enough lift for what he wanted.
From starting the research to the painstaking process of actually building them, constructing the tanks took Blake weeks. After that, he¡¯d thought his problems were over, but that had once again proved incorrect. Constructing a body around the four massive vacuum balloons ended up taking almost as long as making the tanks. If he hadn¡¯t received that one shipment with the three massive cantacrenyx crystals, he wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d have ever found a design that provided enough mobility and functionality to satisfy his needs.
But what mattered was that, in the end, he¡¯d managed to hack together something that worked. The Flying Toaster could move at up to ninety miles per hour while carrying tons of weight. Its acceleration made the Titanic look like a speedboat in comparison, and it steered like a curling stone, but it did what he wanted and it did it well. He kind of wished he could be in Crirada right now, just to see the looks on their faces when his creation first made its presence known.
Speaking of which, it seemed that his sudden arrival had done its job. He could see the Ubrans in full retreat on all sides of the city. Blake ordered the skitters on the west side to protect the entrance to the city instead of chasing after the fleeing soldiers. He didn¡¯t want to risk that they¡¯d be surrounded and overwhelmed from all sides once they used up their few remaining bullets. Besides, he¡¯d accomplished his goal; the city was safe for the moment and he didn¡¯t have to worry about losing access to the blighted area. That meant it was time for Phase Two: introductions.
Ignoring the protests of his aching body, Blake stood up and tromped out of his chambers and over to the House of Manys. There he found Bernards Bergmanis, his clammy Many handler, ready and waiting with a Many beside him. With a nod from Blake, Bernards began rousing the Many from her trance.
¡°My Lord!¡± a peppy voice chirped as soon as an image appeared before him.
¡°Prepare to descend, Simona,¡± Blake instructed his Secretary of State. Given that somebody needed to be present to negotiate with the Eterians and he hadn¡¯t wanted to go himself, the chipper woman had been the natural choice for a replacement. Along for the ride was the counterpart to the Many before him and Agrits, his other top Many handler. He¡¯d chosen the laconic man to ride in the zeppelin over Bernards because Blake was convinced that the overanxious man would die of a heart attack from one look out the windows. Bernards seemed perpetually on the edge of a sweaty nervous breakdown while on solid ground; Blake didn¡¯t want to see what would happen if heights became involved.
¡°Yes, Lord Ferros! I can¡¯t wait to rub this into those Eterian bastards!¡± the spunky woman replied with relish. ¡°We shall return as soon as I have an audience, my Lord.¡±
¡°Hold on,¡± Blake said quickly. ¡°I won¡¯t be able to speak to you in private when that happens, so before that, what are the three rules I told you?¡±
Simona¡¯s mouth widened into a feral, toothy smile. ¡°Don¡¯t back down, squeeze them for everything you can, and nobody gets to ride on the airship.¡±
Blake grinned behind his mask. ¡°Excellent.¡±
The illusion disappeared as a dark hood was placed over the face of the Many aboard the Flying Toaster so she could be moved without issue. The act of handling a Many was an involved process, more art than science. Blake found the very existence of Manys both troubling and fascinating. What he¡¯d discovered after investigating them had shocked him and changed the way he looked at this world, but that was a topic for a different day.
Minutes later, when the hood was removed and the illusion returned, the view had completely changed. Now he saw stone walls lit by torches, the flickering light illuminating not just the room but the group of people inside it. Judging by the gauntness of their bodies and the haggard look in their eyes, the men and women in his vision had suffered heavily these past months. Still, he couldn¡¯t help but commend them for the way they held themselves as they stood tall and proud, unwilling to shrink before his transmitted presence.
¡°Greetings, Lord Ferros,¡± one of the men began, giving him a low bow. Blake caught a particularly aristocratic vibe from this one, something that made Blake immediately dislike the man. ¡°I am Supreme General Erizio Astalaria. I thank y-¡±
¡°Shut up.¡±
¡°Wha-! I-¡± the ¡®Supreme General¡¯ sputtered.
¡°I said shut your trap,¡± Blake repeated. ¡°I don¡¯t care who you are. I don¡¯t care what you have to say. You don¡¯t matter to me. Get that in your head now. I have decided to help you this time because it was convenient for me and nothing more. I will be studying the results of your... activities in the northern section of this place. It is of interest to me. As long as your presence here aids my goals, I will assist in the protection of this city for a price. But cross me, and the next day the Ubrans will find only corpses inside these walls.¡±
The assembled Eterians each sported an expression ranging from shock to anger and everywhere in between. The sight brought a smile to Blake¡¯s face. It felt good to be able to throw his weight around and be an asshole for once¡ªsomething for which even Blake¡¯s own friends told him he had a talent.
¡°I have neither the time nor the desire to deal with you any longer,¡± he continued. ¡°Simona here will serve as my representative for any negotiations henceforth. If you have a problem with any of this, you can thank your esteemed Minister Amatza Motrico. She knows why. That is all.¡±
With a short wave of his hand, he signaled for Bernards to cut off the transmission. The illusion disappeared, leaving just the three of them in the room. Blake nodded at the shorter, chubbier man.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
¡°That will be all for today,¡± he said. ¡°Oh, and if that bitch Motrico calls, tell her I¡¯m busy.¡±
With that, Blake left the room and headed back towards his chambers. All that was left was to send down the last remaining passenger in the Flying Toaster, a small skitter sporting specialized modules designed to collect as much data as possible about the blighted area, and set his craft on a course back to Otharia. It would take a while for all the data to be collected and processed, and even longer for him to study it; after all, he didn¡¯t even know what he was looking for. But that didn¡¯t matter at the moment. What mattered was that everything had gone smoothly, and he could go to sleep in a few minutes with his head held high. He was going to reward himself and sleep in the next morning, he decided. He deserved it.
A soft melody emerged from his helmet as he hummed a happy tune. Today had been a fantastic day.
Blake¡¯s eyes cracked open to the repeated high-pitched trilling of an alarm. Muddle-headed, he stretched his upper body and yawned. Glancing at the clock, Blake saw that it was closing in on midday. This last night had been the best he¡¯d slept in a long time. He couldn¡¯t remember the last time he¡¯d felt this refreshed. One thing he could remember, however, was that he hadn¡¯t set any alarms before going to sleep.
A light was pulsing from across the room atop the console he used to control his robots. Suddenly, adrenaline swept away the fog that still lingered in his mind. It had been so long since he¡¯d last heard it that he¡¯d momentarily forgotten, but he knew what that sound meant now. It meant that he¡¯d lost a robot.
Quickly assembling the suit around his useless legs, Blake worked his way to his feet and stumbled over to the console. The console activated as soon as he sat down, the screen lighting up to show the same view he¡¯d seen the night before: an overhead view of Crirada. Once more, the city was under attack.
Blake found this honestly surprising. He¡¯d thought that the presence of his robots would have been enough to dissuade the Ubrans for at least a day, but it seemed he¡¯d underestimated their courage... or their stupidity. Either way, he had to commend them. Taking out one of his Battle Skitters was an accomplishment. During the conquest of Otharia, the Otharian army had only managed to take out two themselves, and those skitters had been far weaker than the ones he¡¯d sent to Crirada. It really spoke to the difference between the ¡°Holy Empire of Otharia¡± and a real empire that the Ubrans had been able to take down one of-
Four?!
Blake did a double-take and stared at the number again. Fifteen minus eleven?! He¡¯d lost four Battle Skitters?! The first alarm had only gone off a minute or two ago!
Quickly checking on his units¡¯ locations, Blake discovered that all four of his lost robots had been in the group of six he¡¯d ordered to guard the open west gate. Quickly he sent the flitter from which he was watching speeding over to the outside of the west gate to get a look at what was going on. As the small drone traveled, he sent orders to the other Battle Skitters to converge on that location.
The flitter arrived just as he finished sending the orders, and just in time for him to catch a black-haired woman with a massive, pitch black sword impaling one of the two remaining robots on hand through its center. Then, to his utter amazement, she easily hefted the still-skewered robot, which weighed several tons, up into the air and smashed it against the outside of the wall. The skitter, whose body was comprised almost entirely of solid tucrenyx, crumpled like aluminum foil as it crashed into the massive stone facade. The stone nearly exploded from the force of the blow as a crater formed in the wall¡¯s side and large pieces rock collapsed atop the destroyed skitter, half-burying it beneath the rubble.
All around the gate, pandemonium reigned. A tide of Ubrans pushed against a desperate Eterian defensive line. Fireballs, rocks, arrows, and a variety of other projectiles fell upon the Ubrans from the wall above, while an equal amount poured down upon the Eterians from the Ubran back lines. In the middle of it all stood one lone remaining skitter, its chainsaws chewing through Ubran flesh without end, sending blood and gore splattering all around.
Due to the distributed and redundant nature of Blake¡¯s skitter design, the five destroyed robots still had the power and circuitry needed to interface with the flitters above and by extension the control server back home in Wroetin, making finding them a simple matter even in the scrum. Three of them had been smashed into inoperability, one had been sliced and stabbed until it could no longer move, and the last one looked to have had its legs and chainsaw arms literally ripped from its body. All five of them looked like the work of the black-haired woman.
Blake had seen Feelers before, of course, but he¡¯d never seen one this mighty. Still, mighty or not, he couldn¡¯t understand how she¡¯d managed to destroy all five robots without getting killed. As if to prove his point, the lone remaining skitter stepped back as the woman leapt at it, avoiding her strike, and neatly sawed off her legs its closest chainsaw as she flew by.
But something strange happened as the robot turned about, looking for its next victim. Instead of landing in an uncoordinated heap, the woman rolled about a gracefully as a legless person could as the legs seemed to evaporate into a crimson mist and reform on her body, good as new. Blake couldn¡¯t believe what he was seeing. Such a thing was possible? Why couldn¡¯t he do that?!
His skitter had its back turned to her as she rose back to her feet, massive oversized blade still clutched in her hand. While all his skitters had ¡°eyes¡± on all sides of their bodies, both the chainsaws hung from only one side like the blades of a praying mantis, meaning that while the robot could see its incoming doom, it couldn¡¯t do much to stop it. The woman rocketed towards his creation faster than he¡¯d ever seen any person move before, slamming into the skitter¡¯s side as it tried in vain to turn and face its opponent. The force of the collision knocked the skitter onto its back, and a series of sword swings left it limbless in seconds.
Blake couldn¡¯t believe his eyes. In just moments, he¡¯d lost almost half his force! The Eterians couldn¡¯t hold out for much longer, especially now that the black-haired woman was freed up. He needed some way of stopping not just her, but all of the Ubrans. All he had left was eight Battle Skitters and his Sniper Skitter, which was still perched atop a tower in the center of the city. Blake regretted not moving it the night before. While useful at the time, the long-range robot¡¯s position now actively worked against it, as the wall blocked practically every possible target. There was no point in moving it now; by the time it was in a more advantageous position, the Ubrans would already be running amok in the city.
Actually, he realized, there was one more weapon he had at his disposal¡ªthat is, if he could keep the Ubrans out of Crirada for just a little longer. He sent out the appropriate commands just as two more skitters rumbled down the tunnel and careened into the fray. Quickly, Blake set the black-haired woman as their target, locking it in so that even when she was ¡°taken out¡± they wouldn¡¯t move on to another target.
The pair of skitters responded to their new orders a few seconds later, just as the woman charged at them, her powerful legs driving her forward at inhuman speeds. No human would have been able to react to something approaching so quickly, but robots were a different story¡ªand these ones still had ammo.
The first round ripped through her right shoulder and severed her arm from the rest of her, sending her spinning from the impact. The second round slammed into her gut and knocked her onto her back, leaving a large hole where most of her intestines should be. The impact was so forceful that her sword slipped from her hand and skidded to a stop a good ten feet away.
¡°No, you idiots! Keep firing! Shit!¡± Blake cursed as the two skitters closed the distance to engage with their downed target. It was times like these that he wished he¡¯d put in better, more detailed control functionality into the current system. Were he there in person, he¡¯d be able to control their behavior to the tiniest detail, but from afar his options were more limited. He could set the woman as their target and keep them from reassigning, but if that meant they wanted to save bullets and engage with chainsaws, then there wasn¡¯t much he could do to stop them.
The woman was already nearly whole when the first of the two reached her. It swung its left chainsaw, an ovoid plane of whirring death the size of the woman¡¯s entire body, down upon her smoothly and efficiently, aiming to bisect her from head to toe with mechanical precision. The woman¡¯s arms shot out in a blur and the saw stopped a foot from her head.
Blake zoomed his view in to get a better view. The woman¡¯s face was twisted into a snarl, her eyes glowing a furious, demonic red. She had clamped her hands together on the massive guide bar around which the teeth, each as big as a fist, whirled, as was holding the saw up away from her body. A moment later, she shifted her left hand up along the bar a few inches and snapped the saw in two so easily it might as well have been made of plastic. The sight made Blake want to cry.
The heavy chain, now unbound, fell towards her, but she was already rolling toward the skitter¡¯s leg. The robot tried to back up, but the woman was too fast. She ducked beneath the skitter¡¯s body as the skitter¡¯s remaining chainsaw swept through her last position. The second skitter had maneuvered around the first one now, its two chainsaws lashing out towards the woman beneath its companion, but unexpectedly she grabbed the first¡¯s nearby front left leg and pulled it up to block.
Blake involuntarily facepalmed as he watched the second skitter¡¯s chainsaws eat halfway into the first skitter¡¯s leg before jamming halfway inside the metal limb. This reminded him of this old martial arts flicks he¡¯d watched as a kid, where the one hero took on dozens of assailants and somehow never seemed to get touched while all the enemies accidentally punched each other in the face, except he was on the wrong side. He would have to go over his units¡¯ programming again and look at the friendly fire avoidance routines...
As if to add insult to injury, the woman proceeded to grab the first skitter¡¯s back left leg and lift the entire robot off the ground, yanking the leg free of its cohort¡¯s chainsaws, and bash the entire ten-foot-tall robot down onto the second skitter as if it were nothing more than a crude club. Blake would normally have felt insulted at the act, the equivalent in his mind to using the Mona Lisa to shield oneself from rain, but instead he just felt relief. He saluted these last two skitters. They¡¯d sacrificed their lives, but they¡¯d accomplished their mission.
The entire area within Blake¡¯s viewport and more became a dust-filled haze as every part of the first six downed skitters overloaded and erupted with phenomenal force, sending thousands of shards of shrapnel flying in all directions at hypersonic speeds. Always the paranoid one, Blake had engineered his robots with extra circuit pathways that, when activated, would cause a feedback loop like the one he¡¯d used to kill Jarec all those months ago. Each skitter housed many small crystals, and all it took was for three of them to still be connected to set off a self-destruct. After all, there was no way he could allow his technology to fall into others¡¯ hands.
As the dust cleared, Blake found himself staring at a nightmare of blood and gore. Nobody within the blasts had survived. Thousands of corpses littered the ground, blood seeping from gaping holes and forming small crimson pools all across the area. Quickly he panned around, looking for the woman. He found her sword first, still lying on the ground where it had fallen when she¡¯d been shot. Then, with a sigh of relief, he saw her¡ªor, what was left of her.
All that remained of the black-haired woman was part of her torso, so ruined that it was almost unrecognizable. Half of one arm and a bit of a leg hung from a chest that looked like it had been ripped in half from top to bottom. The rest had been turned to pulp by a sudden cloud of speeding metal. Most importantly, the head was entirely destroyed. He could see bits of brain matter and skull splattered upon the damaged skitters she¡¯d been dispatching when the rest of them went off.
As expected, the sudden loss of thousands of soldiers, combined with the rest of this skitters arriving just moments later, was enough to send the remaining Ubrans into retreat. This was not how he¡¯d wanted to start the day, but at least it had ended on a happy note. Well, at least it had for him; it wasn¡¯t just the Ubrans who¡¯d been caught in the blast¡ªsome of the Eterians had been wiped out also.
Blake leaned back and rubbed his eyes as his stomach growled. He needed breakfast. Still, something continued to bother him. As he thought back through the events of the morning so far, he couldn¡¯t erase the nagging feeling he¡¯d had since the first time he saw the black-haired woman. Something about her had seemed familiar, like he¡¯d seen her before, and recently too. He hadn¡¯t met anybody who resembled her here in Otharia. Had it been somebody from yesterday? He thought about the Eterians he¡¯d seen through the Many, but none of them had looked like her either. Then when? Had it been during the battle itself?
Leaning forward again, Blake brought up footage of the battle from the night before and began clicking about, jumping between feeds and times. Maybe it was all just in his head, but he felt the need to assuage his paranoid mind so it didn¡¯t bug him for the rest of the day. For a while he found nothing. Then, after about a half hour of looking all about the city, he spotted something. He spotted a sword. Long, wide, and pitch black, Blake immediately knew it to be the same weapon the black-haired woman had been using earlier. He found her on one of the large stone walkways that stretched from the city wall to the castle in the middle, standing with her sword above her head over some half-dead woman.
Right, he remembered now. She¡¯d been the first target he¡¯d set for the sniper skitter as he entered the battle. He¡¯d been busy and moved on to another feed almost immediately after. But still, if he¡¯d set her as a target, then-
As if to answer his unspoken question, the sniper¡¯s bullet shot through the woman¡¯s head, exploding it into tiny bits as it passed through as incredible speed¡ªa lucky shot, if he were to be honest, as the robot was programmed to aim for the center of mass. Now completely decapitated, the headless body tipped over the side of the walkway and fell out of view.
A cold dread blossomed in Blake¡¯s gut and he rewound the footage, watching it once more. The woman¡¯s head had been completely and utterly destroyed by that shot, and yet... Quickly, Blake switched back to the flitter drone he¡¯d left hovering over the west gate.
¡°Oh, fuck,¡± he muttered as he surveyed the scene. The sword was gone... and so was the woman¡¯s torso.
Blake stood up and walked towards his workshop. Breakfast could wait. In fact, everything could wait. He needed more. More skitters, more firepower, more everything, and he needed it now. Every second that the Flying Toaster hovered over Wroetin instead of heading back towards Crirada was a second closer to potential disaster. That woman was still out there, somehow, and he had a bad feeling that the same trick wouldn¡¯t work on her twice in a row.
Chapter 67
In and out. In and out. Like a machine, Sofie pushed the wooden needle through the cloth over and over, slowly assembling a shirt from an assortment of rags and half-ruined other clothes. Though she knew that the results of her efforts would be a lopsided, ugly thing that normally nobody in their right mind would willingly wear, she kept at it anyway. These were not normal times, after all, and besides, she needed something to take her mind off of the-
¡°Shit!¡± Sofie swore under her breath as the tip of the wooden needle snapped off. This was the third one she¡¯d destroyed. She couldn¡¯t help it; every centimeter of her body constantly pulsed with anxious tension. It took everything she had to keep from shaking.
The source of her anxiety could be found just beside her, lying still on one of the room¡¯s cheap beds. After her friend hadn¡¯t returned a few hours after the battle¡¯s end, Sofie had ventured out into the night to search for her. Even with Pari¡¯s nose, locating Arlette in the aftermath of the attack had taken many hours. In the end, they¡¯d found her up on one of the cross-city bridges that served as pathways through the city.
Arlette had been through a lot since Sofie had first met her. She¡¯d been hurt many times while fleeing to Stragma, followed by the long period of malnutrition while being chained to a cell wall or a wagon, and then there were the injuries suffered during their escape when she¡¯d almost bled to death. All of that seemed like a mere scratch compared to how they¡¯d found her two days ago. Given the amount of blood covering her body and the even larger amount pooled around where she lay, Sofie had thought her dead at first. Only after a close inspection had she realized that her friend still breathed, though it came halting and weak.
Due to the overwhelming number of casualties from the last attack, the doctors, or whatever sad excuse for healers passed for such in this reality, had sorted her into the ¡°too much work to save¡± category¡ªsomething about critical injuries and internal bleeding¡ªand moved on to others they viewed as more likely to survive. That left Sofie and Pari with little to do but try their best to care for her on their own and hope against hope that she would live.
Sofie picked up her last needle and returned to her sewing. Though she¡¯d kept Arlette fed, warm, dry, and clean, the mercenary still hadn¡¯t done anything at all the whole time other than breathe, though the strength of said breathing had improved a bit. Still, Sofie didn¡¯t know if that meant Arlette would live. Pari insisted that the Scyrian ¡°smelled better¡± than before, and Sofie could only pray that this meant something good.
As if to answer her prayers, Sofie heard a small groan come from her side, followed by a cough. Sofie dropped the cloth and needle in her hands and turned to see Arlette¡¯s eyes flutter open just a crack. The woman moaned in pain softly.
¡°Arly-sis!¡± Pari cried, running over with a wide, gleeful grin on her face.
Quickly Sofie interposed herself between the two, cutting off a potentially-lethal pounce-hug before it could start. ¡°Pari, she''s probably really thirsty. Get some clean water for her to drink, please.¡±
As the girl scampered out of the room, Sofie picked up a damp cloth and wiped away the crust from Arlette¡¯s eyes. ¡°You¡¯re awake!¡± she said delicately.
¡°...how long?¡± Arlette rasped.
¡°More than two days,¡± she admitted.
The mercenary closed her eyes for a moment, seemingly processing the information. Just as she opened them again, Pari burst into the room with a cup of water. Gently, Sofie held Arlette¡¯s head up and helped her slowly drink it. ¡°Do you think you¡¯re going to be okay?¡± she asked. She¡¯d seen the Scyrian¡¯s absurd healing abilities before, but never with injuries this bad.
¡°...eventually,¡± the older woman replied after another moment.
Sofie let out a sigh of relief. ¡°Oh, good! You were so battered when we finally found you, and you''d lost so much blood from all the cuts, that the doctors didn¡¯t even think you¡¯d live more than another day! There¡¯s so much I have to talk with you about...¡±
The Earthling¡¯s voice trailed off as she realized that her friend had drifted back to sleep. Sofie sighed and walked over to her own bed. They¡¯d have to talk later. At least tonight she¡¯d be able to sleep without crippling worry.
¡°You¡¯re looking better,¡± Sofie said the next morning. ¡°A little, at least.¡±
The mercenary grunted. ¡°Everything hurts,¡± she griped.
¡°At least you have the energy to complain,¡± Sofie chuckled. Words could not describe just how freeing the relief coursing through her felt. Just a day ago, she¡¯d thought her friend was going to die in front of her. With a grunt, she pulled Arlette¡¯s upper body up and shoved a few pillows underneath to prop her patient up. ¡°Do you need me to feed you or can you manage it yourself?¡±
¡°I can do it,¡± Arlette replied, strange anger in her tone.
¡°Okay.¡± Sofie placed a bowl of soup on the other woman¡¯s lap.
Arlette¡¯s hand moved slowly and shakily to pick up the spoon. Sofie could see how much effort it took Arlette to even move her arm, but she just sat and watched. Arlette seemed very insistent that she do it without her help.
The spoon trembled in Arlette¡¯s hand as she brought it up towards her lips, the vibration sending drops of liquid falling onto the woman¡¯s chest. Unfortunately, the rest of the soup quickly followed as the spoon slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor before reaching her mouth. Arlette seemed to deflate following her failure.
¡°I got it,¡± Sofie reassured her while picking the utensil off the floorboards. ¡°It''s fine, you just need a little more time and you¡¯ll be good as new!¡±
¡°I¡¯m weak,¡± Arlette sighed as she went limp against the cushions, her eyes lifeless.
¡°Of course you are, you were almost dead just a few days ago. What do you expect?¡±
¡°No... even if I were fully healthy, I¡¯m weak. And because of that, everybody around me dies. I couldn¡¯t stop Sebastian. He killed everyone, Sofie. He did it right in front of me and I couldn¡¯t do a thing to stop him.¡±
Sofie¡¯s spirit plummeted at the news. She¡¯d suspected something along those lines after Arlette¡¯s squadmates hadn¡¯t shown up since that night, but she¡¯d held out hope that they were still alive anyway. ¡°That¡¯s terrible... I¡¯m so sorry to hear that.¡±
¡°I know that he did it to make me feel powerless. It¡¯s what he wanted. It¡¯s what he¡¯s always wanted, I think, ever since I escaped back when I was a child. But...¡±
¡°You think he was right.¡±
¡°I never stood a chance against Sebastian. I gave it my all and even when I thought I¡¯d finally won, it didn¡¯t even matter. He was no match for that woman. That man terrified me my whole life. I was nothing compared to him. What does that make me compared to somebody who killed him without even trying?¡± She sighed again.
¡°What are you talking about?¡±
¡°The Monster. She took down the west gate all by herself, after all I¡¯d done to stop Sebastian from opening it. Just knocked it in with three hits.¡±
¡°Three hits?!¡±
¡°She lost half her body and got up moments later as if it had never happened. I¡¯m not even that strong for a Scyrian; all I have are some tricks, not real power like the Chos or General Astalaria. How am I supposed to do anything against that? I¡¯m nothing... just a fool who thought she could make a difference.¡±
¡°But you did make a difference. You made a difference with me. And with Pari. That''s not meaningless.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t understand-¡±
¡°Really? Feeling useless and impotent, feeling like you have no control over your own life, having to rely on others stronger than you for everything all the time because you¡¯re not good enough... what do you think my life has been like since I got here?¡±
¡°You¡¯re an Earth person, though. All the other Earth people are strong, so maybe you will find yourself to be strong too, somehow. Me? This is as strong as I¡¯ll ever be.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s fair to say all Earthlings are strong just because of the Mother of Nightmares. That¡¯s just one person.¡±
¡°The Monster is also from Earth.¡±
¡°Really?! How do you know?¡±
¡°I watched her lose more than half her body, and a moment later she was whole again like nothing had ever happened. No Scyrian could do that.¡±
¡°Are you sure? You all heal really fast...¡±
¡°Not like that. No Feeler could manage such a thing. It was absolutely terrifying to see. I guess it¡¯s a good thing that she died.¡±
¡°Actually...¡± Sofie coughed. ¡°She¡¯s still alive. When I went out to get some water yesterday, I overheard somebody say that she¡¯d attacked again.¡±
Arlette blinked for a moment before letting out another defeated sigh. ¡°So, her head was completely destroyed and somehow she¡¯s still alive? We really are nothing compared to Earth, aren¡¯t we?¡±
¡°I mean...¡±
¡°You all have fantastic powers and you live in giant metal towers that touch the sky and can fly around the whole world in a single day and even harness lightning like it''s nothing... how are we supposed to compare to that?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not like Earth is a paradise or something. There are things that are worse about it.¡±
¡°Name one.¡±
¡°Well, the weather¡¯s better here, for one. The summer didn¡¯t get as hot, and the whole winter here it hasn¡¯t once gone below freezing. That¡¯s really nice.¡±
¡°Name one that isn¡¯t about the fucking weather.¡±
¡°Uhhhh... well... Women are more equal here. That¡¯s honestly really nice. In my world men have an advantage over women. They get treated better, they get paid better, sometimes they have more rights, stuff like that.¡±
¡°Seriously? Why?¡± Arlette looked genuinely confused at the idea.
¡°I think you got the wrong idea about Earth. Yeah, we have airplanes and cell phones and whatever, but those are just tools. The people themselves are much weaker than Scyrians. We don¡¯t have powers. We can''t run super fast or lift huge boulders or anything. Even our healing is worse. Remember how long it took me to heal that wound when we were running from bounty hunters in Kutrad? It took weeks, when you would have healed it in a day or two.
¡°So it¡¯s different there. Men are larger and stronger. It¡¯s not like here, where a small woman who¡¯s a powerful Feeler can overpower a larger man even with the size difference. I mean, things are better now than they were even fifty years ago, but these things are built into cultures and traditions that have existed for thousands of years. It¡¯s hard to change. Even a lot of women in the world grow up thinking that they¡¯re beneath men because that¡¯s what they were taught all their lives. So, yeah. That¡¯s one thing.¡±
¡°Huh...¡±
¡°I mean really, you don¡¯t understand how crazy everything you do is. Just making fire out of nothing, even a small flame like you do to light a fire... in the past on my world, that alone would be enough to either make others worship you or burn you alive for being a witch. You act like it¡¯s nothing but it¡¯s not. It¡¯s magic. That¡¯s amazing. And terrifying, honestly. Even this is freaking me out a bit. If you were on Earth right now, there¡¯s no way you would be able to talk with me like this already after how bad you were just a few days ago.¡±
¡°Still... I can¡¯t stand up against people with real power. No matter how amazing you find what I can do, it¡¯s all worthless against the truly strong people in this world.¡±
Sofie scratched her head. This wasn¡¯t getting them anywhere. Clapping her hands, she put on a wide smile and picked up the bowl from Arlette¡¯s lap. ¡°Let¡¯s get you fed. If you¡¯re going to be depressed, you might as well be depressed and full.¡±
Arlette grunted but didn¡¯t put up a fuss as Sofie carefully spoon fed her.
¡°You know,¡± Sofie remarked a few minutes later, ¡°I can¡¯t help but realize that you¡¯re stuck here for a while. Meaning, you¡¯re a captive audience.¡± She grinned wickedly. ¡°You ready to answer all my questions?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°What¡¯s that? You don¡¯t need my help next time you need to poop? You can clean it up all by yourself?¡±
Arlette shot her a piercing glare. ¡°Since when did you turn evil?¡±
¡°Hee hee... well?¡±
¡°I¡¯m at your mercy, you shameless woman. What do you want to know?¡±
¡°Hmmmm, let¡¯s see... ummmm, why is everything here a lizard?¡±
¡°That¡¯s your question?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d say yes! I wasn¡¯t ready! And it¡¯s weird that almost every animal is a reptile or insect!¡±
¡°What¡¯s weird about it?¡±
¡°There are practically no mammals, or birds now that I think about it! It¡¯s weird! There should be, like, rats and mice and squirrels and finches and sparrows but there are only lizards everywhere!¡±
¡°What the fuck is a ¡®squirrel¡¯?¡±
¡°You know what, never mind. Better question... I¡¯ve been wondering about this ever since I got here: why do people speak different languages, and why do they still understand each other anyway?¡±
Arlette gave her a puzzled look. ¡°By languages, you mean their speak? The sounds people make when talking?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°What does your speak have to do with communication?¡±
¡°What? But language is literally how you communicate. It is the distillation of ideas into spoken word.¡±
Arlette grunted several times, and Sofie rocked back in shock. While the mercenary had done nothing more than release several nonverbal sounds, Sofie immediately understood them as ¡°Where did you get that idea?¡± The reaction brought an amused smile to the older woman¡¯s face.
¡°The noises people make have nothing to do with what they say. If I wanted to communicate with you entirely through sneezes, I could; it would just be much more taxing. People use their speak simply because it is easier on the mind. Scholars believe that this is because the mind associates ideas with certain sounds, and so verbalizing those sounds makes the conjuration of the idea easier.¡±
¡°But... like...¡± Sofie massaged her head with her hands, trying to wrap her head around the ideas Arlette had just dumped on her.
¡°Is this really such a big deal?¡± Arlette inquired.
¡°Yes! It goes against everything I¡¯ve ever known! Look, in my world, the noises you make are the ideas. It¡¯s a verbal code that you have to learn so that you know that when somebody says ¡®chair¡¯, you know they¡¯re talking about a chair. Languages are incredibly complicated on their own, and that¡¯s not even taking into account the differences between languages since there are so many! But this... this says that, at least in this world, there are not just subjective concepts but objective, hard truths that exist for any and all ideas, objects, concepts, everything! It¡¯s just...¡± She faded off as the weight of these revelations continued to melt her brain into sludge.
¡°Hold on, so in your world, if you don¡¯t know the sound for ¡®sword¡¯ and somebody said that sound to you, what would happen?¡±
¡°I just wouldn¡¯t know what that person said. I wouldn¡¯t understand it.¡±
¡°And you said there are lots of different speaks in your world? What would happen if two people who learned different speaks tried to talk to each other?¡±
¡°If two people who only knew different languages, like say English and Japanese, met each other, they wouldn¡¯t be able to understand each other at all. They¡¯d have to resort of pantomime to get anything across. Like..."
She paused for a second before turning and grabbing the ancient tome that she spent so much time slowly translating. Turning back, she opened the large book and held up its pages for her friend to inspect.
¡°Can you read this?¡± she asked, pointing to the unintelligible swirls inside.
¡°Of course not.¡±
¡°Exactly. Although you can read Eterian Common, you can¡¯t read this. When someone speaks a different language it¡¯s like reading a book written in a different code. It means something, but until you actively learn it you just can¡¯t understand it.¡±
Arlette stared at her, bewildered. ¡°Stars above, how did people on your world get anything done?!¡±
¡°It¡¯s complicated. Luckily, there are a few languages that are so prevalent that a lot of people know them well enough to at least get basic information across. I speak several to some degree. It¡¯s harder when it¡¯s new concepts though. Actually, what¡¯s that like for you? If somebody mentions, say, an animal that you¡¯ve never encountered or heard about before, what do you experience?¡±
Arlette thought about her answer for a moment. ¡°It¡¯s kind of a base understanding I guess. Like, an old, fuzzy memory coming back to the surface. I would understand on a general level what the animal looks like, how big it is, that sort of thing. It matters how much understanding the speaker has of the subject.¡±
¡°That''s really interesting. So, like, what if the person only knows of this animal from a book, or just heard about it from somebody else but never saw it on their own?¡±
¡°If he just learned of it in a book, I would receive a shadow of that understanding. If I saw the animal in the wild later, I would recall it as if I had read that book a long time ago and could only remember the more general facts. If it was something they had learned from another person instead of a book, I would receive an understanding similar to what the speaker received from the other person, though perhaps a bit weaker.¡±
¡°So personal experience matters greatly in this.¡±
¡°Precisely. If, for example, the animal was something the person had dealt with before and feared, I would receive an understanding of that fear as well, and I would likely feel a similar fear if I ever saw that animal myself, even if it didn¡¯t seem outwardly scary.¡±
¡°Weird, I don¡¯t get anything close to that.¡±
¡°Oh yeah? So if I say ¡®red-snouted crotiat¡¯, what do you get?¡±
¡°Uhhhh, it¡¯s an animal, I think. A lizard?¡±
¡°That¡¯s all? What does it look like? How big is it?¡±
¡°No idea.¡±
¡°Well, at least you got that it was a lizard.¡±
¡°That was more of a guess, really. Everything in this place is a lizard. We covered that already.¡±
¡°They¡¯re small reptiles that live in the forests of Gustil. They look harmless but they have a paralytic venom that can kill something thirty times their weight in a single bite. Other people should have felt the caution that I feel whenever I think about them.¡±
¡°Maybe it¡¯s because we¡¯re from different worlds. Maybe there¡¯s some sort of translation problem.¡±
¡°Could be. Given what you¡¯ve told me, you should just be happy that you can understand me at all.¡±
¡°Oh man, if I had appeared in this world without being able to understand anybody, I¡¯d...¡±
¡°You¡¯d be dead before the day was done.¡±
¡°Yeah...¡± Sofie shook her head. ¡°This is getting too depressing. Next question! So this world has humans, elves, and beastpeople. Is that it? Any other kinds of people that I haven¡¯t encountered yet?¡±
¡°No, that¡¯s all there are.¡±
¡°No dwarves or halflings or hobbits or something?¡±
¡°No. All I got from that was a feeling of people but shorter. Why, you know something?¡±
¡°¡®The little-people are all dead, slain by the something.¡¯¡±
¡°What¡¯s that? Something from that old book you always have your head stuck in?¡±
¡°Yeah, I haven¡¯t been able to figure out what the something that did the slaying is yet, but by now I¡¯ve run across several mentions of ¡®little-people¡¯ and I don¡¯t think they¡¯re referring to humans, elves, or beastpeople. I¡¯m wondering if there really was another race that was wiped out somehow. Maybe the people that built that place in the Valley of the Mist?¡±
¡°No, I don¡¯t think that¡¯s likely,¡± Arlette replied with a dismissive frown. ¡°Everything inside there seemed built for people our height. Unless ¡®little-people¡¯ wasn¡¯t referring to their stature, I don¡¯t think it was them. Maybe it means children?¡±
¡°Nah, that¡¯s not how it¡¯s used elsewhere. Hey, speaking of ruins, are there other places like that elsewhere in the world?¡±
¡°Not really. There are definitely some sites here and there, but they¡¯re not intact like that building was. They¡¯re all just rubble and metal. Anything that might be valuable was taken centuries ago.¡±
¡°How old are they?¡±
¡°Nobody knows. Thousands of years, surely. Who made them, what they are, how old they are, it¡¯s all a mystery as far as I know¡±
¡°Hmmmmmm... you know what else is a mystery? The ultimate mystery?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°The reason behind the name ¡®Ivory Tears¡¯.¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Come on.¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Please?¡±
¡°I haven¡¯t told anybody else and I¡¯m not gonna start now.¡±
¡°Awwwwwwwww...¡±
¡°I¡¯m getting tired, so if you have any more stupid questions ask them now. Otherwise, go bother Pari or something.¡±
Sofie paused, a shadow falling over her face as she thought for a moment about what she was going to say. She¡¯d been avoiding the topic since Arlette had first woken up, but it needed to be brought up eventually.
¡°Now that Sebastian is dead, does that mean we are going to leave?¡± Sofie asked, her voice quiet and nervous.
Arlette blinked, then frowned. ¡°Sorry, but my work here is not finished.¡±
¡°But you said Sebastian is dead, right? Isn¡¯t he the whole reason we came here in the first place?¡±
¡°As long as Ubrans stand on Nocend soil, I will not run. I ran away from them once. Never again.¡± She paused for a second. ¡°You, however... I told you to get out of here before this whole thing started and you didn¡¯t listen. I¡¯d love if you could escape, but that¡¯s not possible now. Even if it was, where would you go?¡±
¡°Otharia.¡±
¡°...what?¡±
¡°I need to go to Otharia.¡±
¡°Otharia?! What in the world would make you want to go to that forsaken place?¡±
¡°Because someone from my world lives there. I need to talk to them.¡±
¡°Of course...¡± Arlette grunted. ¡°Why didn¡¯t I realize it before? They said he conquered the country in a matter of days, and nobody knows where he came from.¡±
¡°You heard of this person before and you never told me?¡±
¡°I was told about it back in Begale but it was nothing more than rumors. Something about somebody going by the name ¡®Ferros¡¯ and taking over the country or something. I can¡¯t remember much else. I never put much stock in it. Otharia is a place better ignored than anything else; nobody in their right mind would ever consider going there.¡±
¡°Ferros? Like the Latin word for steel?¡± Sofie muttered to herself.
¡°But how did you find out about this Earth person?¡±
Sofie shot her a disbelieving glance. ¡°Zeppelins floating in the sky over your head are rather hard to miss, Arlette.¡±
¡°Wait... that was real?¡±
¡°Of course it¡¯s real! It shows up every day to deliver more giant robots. What, did you think it was just a dream?¡±
¡°Well... yeah. I¡¯d lost a lot of blood and was really out of it by the end there, and then when you never mentioned it I figured it must have been a hallucination just before I passed out. I thought that if it were real, it would have been the first thing you talked about.¡±
Sofie¡¯s gaze fell to her feet. ¡°I was afraid to bring it up because... because it means that I need to leave, and I¡¯m...¡± Raw emotion that she¡¯d bottled up for the past few days began to well up inside her, bringing tears to her eyes. Quickly she wiped them away. ¡°I¡¯m afraid that if I leave I¡¯ll never see you again. You mean so much to me, you know, and I never...¡± She sniffed. ¡°I never really tell you how much it means to me and how thankful I am that I found you back then. So thank you for... for being a friend even when everything would have been easier for you if you¡¯d just dumped me in a ditch somewhere.¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t really know what to say to that. You¡¯re welcome, I guess.¡±
Sofie just sniffed and rubbed her leaking eyes some more.
¡°So, how do you plan to get out of here, now that you¡¯ve finally decided what you need to do?¡± Arlette asked with a smirk.
¡°It won¡¯t be too hard. The Otharians left somebody here to act as a diplomat. I¡¯ll just talk to her and ride the airship back. This ¡®Ferros¡¯ person will surely want to see a fellow Earthling.¡±
¡°And Pari?¡±
¡°Well, that should be up to her, right? She¡¯s old enough to make her own decisions. Well... some of them at least.¡±
¡°Will you leave today then?¡±
¡°No, I don¡¯t want to leave until you¡¯re well enough to take care of yourself again. I was just going to go talk with the Otharians later and let them know I¡¯m here so they¡¯ll be expecting me when it¡¯s time.¡±
¡°Well... good luck. You should probably get moving on that while you can.¡±
Sofie grabbed Arlette¡¯s nearby hand between her own two hands and squeezed. ¡°I¡¯m going to miss you,¡± she sniffed.
¡°I¡¯ll miss you too.¡±
¡°I guess I¡¯ll go talk to Pari about this,¡± Sofie said as she got up and headed for the door.
¡°It sounded cool,¡± Arlette said softly as Sofie opened the door.
¡°What?¡±
¡°I named it the Ivory Tears because it sounded cool.¡±
¡°That¡¯s it? No deep lore, no poetic metaphors, just some words that when strung together sounded neat?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°Then why didn¡¯t you just say so in the first place, you idiot?¡±
¡°Because it was embarrassing, alright?! A mercenary band¡¯s moniker is supposed to be more than just a name, it¡¯s supposed to carry meaning and weight! It¡¯s supposed to encompass the stories of the people who march under it! It¡¯s supposed to... to matter! I was only fifteen and didn¡¯t know anything about the world but noooooo, I was the leader so it was my job to name the stupid band, and so I just thought up a name that sounded impressive to me at the time and then it stuck and everyone assumed that there was some grand meaning to it and I didn¡¯t know what to do so I just let them think that and then it became too late and we were stuck with it and everybody and-¡±
¡°AHAHAHAHAHAHA!¡± Sofie couldn¡¯t hold her laughter in anymore, prompting her friend to harrumph and sullenly slouch against the cushions, sulking. Sofie couldn¡¯t help but feel that, just this once, Arlette seemed the more childish of the two.
¡°I hope that, once I¡¯m gone, you manage to open up a bit more to everybody,¡± she said with a satisfied grin. ¡°This side of you is worth knowing too.¡±
¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡± Arlette retorted, but Sofie was already out the door. The day was growing long, and she had important business to take care of in the citadel¡ªbusiness that she knew would change everything.
The slam of a door being violently thrown open echoed through the inn.
¡°That fucking BITCH!¡±
¡°Hmmmm,¡± Arlette observed, ¡°that doesn¡¯t sound like somebody on their way out of here any time soon.¡±
¡°I¡¯m going to fucking strangle that woman, I swear to God!¡± snarled an irate Sofie. ¡°I¡¯m going to wring her fucking neck!¡±
¡°Conversation didn¡¯t go as you expected?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve never seen such an arrogant woman in my life!¡± Sofie fumed. ¡°I have no doubt that she gets off from it. It¡¯s like telling me ¡®no¡¯ was the highlight of her year!¡± She flopped down into the chair beside Arlette¡¯s bed.
¡°You couldn¡¯t convince her that you were from the same place as that ¡®Ferros¡¯ guy?¡±
¡°That¡¯s the thing... I think I did! And I think all that accomplished was it gave her even more pleasure when she said, and I quote, ¡®I don¡¯t care who you are or where you¡¯re from. You could be my Lord¡¯s own mother and it wouldn¡¯t matter. His orders are absolute. Nobody rides the airship, no matter what. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll be sure to let him know of your existence.¡¯ And then she smiled this fake smile and had me thrown out. ¡®I¡¯ll let him know of your existence¡¯ my ass. She won¡¯t tell him shit and she knew it and she knew I knew it and she fucking loved every second of it.¡±
Sofie¡¯s hands wouldn¡¯t stop shaking, she was so angry. To have this change put in front of her and then denied by some random functionary with a sadistic streak and a stick up her ass threatened to drive her up the wall.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
¡°I don¡¯t know what else to do, though. There¡¯s no way out of here other than that, right? It¡¯s not like I can just sneak over the wall or something.¡±
Sofie went silent as she noticed Arlette¡¯s gaze staring off into the middle distance. She¡¯d do that sometimes, and afterwards she often came up with a good idea. Perhaps she¡¯d be able to figure out a solution?
¡°I think I know somebody who might be able to do just that,¡± Arlette said after a while. ¡°Maybe. There¡¯s just one problem.¡±
¡°What¡¯s that?¡±
¡°They probably won¡¯t want to do it. And they might just kill you instead.¡±
Sofie¡¯s fist came to a halt, her knuckles just centimeters from the wooden door. Once again, she asked herself if she wanted to go through with this. If she stopped now, maybe she could still find another way out of this godforsaken city. Maybe she could sneak aboard the airship or something like that? But if she knocked on this door then she was likely locked into this path. Whether said path ended in freedom or death was unknown, and that was what kept her fist from moving forward. It felt like she was standing in a minefield, where each and every choice threatened lethal consequences.
¡°Well what do we have here?¡± a soft female voice said from behind her as the cold touch of metal graced her exposed neck.
¡°Eeeep!¡± Sofie squeaked. Her body froze in terror, her heart threatening to seize up from the fear. It seemed that not making a choice counted as a choice as well.
¡°Hey, open the door. We have a visitor!¡±
Just moments later, Sofie found herself bound to a chair with strong rope, her arms tied around the chair¡¯s back. Two people stood around her, each armed to the teeth. After a moment, she couldn¡¯t say if the various battle scars and damage made them more intimidating or less. The woman had a large gash through her left eye, which seemed to have healed in a way that left it cloudy and blind, along with several garish scars and a bloody bandage wrapped around her right forearm. The man, meanwhile, had his own battle scars, most notably the three missing fingers on his left hand, sliced off at the first knuckle. Sofie had to purposely will herself not to stare at the stubby remnants as they unconsciously wiggled slightly when he moved. On the other hand, much like everybody else in the city, herself included, their bodies were thin and quickly approaching ¡°gaunt¡± territory, which cut slightly into the scary aura they each exuded.
¡°Did you have to be so rough??¡± she complained bitterly. ¡°The rope is cutting off the circulation to my hands.¡±
¡°Oho, we got a funny one,¡± the woman observed with a smirk. Her eyes, however, remained hard. ¡°What were you doing skulking outside our door?¡±
¡°I wasn¡¯t skulking, I was... umm... preparing to visit.¡±
¡°Were you now? I counted to a hundred before I made a move. What happened, did you forget how to knock?¡±
¡°I was scared, alright?¡±
¡°Scared?¡± the woman snickered. ¡°What are you doing in this city then? A coward would have run long ago when they had the chance.¡±
¡°Yeah, well, special circumstances alright?¡±
¡°Hold on,¡± the man chimed in, ¡°isn¡¯t this the woman who¡¯s always with the Candle Kitten?¡±
The woman stared at her for a moment before recognition seemed to blink into existence in her mind. ¡°Oh yeah, I knew she looked familiar for some reason.¡±
¡°Candle Kitten? You mean Pari?¡± Sofie inquired, puzzled by the unfamiliar nickname.
¡°What, never heard the title before?¡± the man replied. ¡°Everybody calls her that now. She stands out amongst the rest, after all. Not many kids around, especially ones like her.¡±
¡°The point is,¡± interrupted the woman, ¡°there shouldn¡¯t be any reason for the Candle Kitten¡¯s handler to be seeking us out, should there?¡±
Sofie swallowed. It was do-or-die time, and sadly the ¡®die¡¯ part was terrifyingly literal in this case. ¡°I came because I need a favor, and the only people who can manage to do it are the Masked Battalion.¡±
Before Sofie could even blink, a foot slammed into her chest and sent her and the chair falling backwards. She let out a cry as both she and the chair¡¯s weight landed on her bound wrists and hands. She and the chair now laid on their back. She would have stared at the ceiling, but her gaze quickly became preoccupied with the large dagger pressed up against her throat.
¡°You shouldn¡¯t have said that,¡± the woman growled.
¡°Wait!¡± Sofie cried hurriedly. ¡°I won¡¯t tell anybody! I just need your help to get out of the city, that¡¯s all!¡±
¡°Who sent you here? How did you find us?¡± the woman demanded. ¡°You¡¯re obviously too stupid to have figured it out on your own.¡±
¡°My friend sent me! She was the one who knew where you were! She said you probably wouldn¡¯t help us but there isn¡¯t anybody else left and-¡±
The knife dug into her neck just a little, drawing a grimace and a whimper from Sofie.
¡°What¡¯s her name?¡± the woman ground out.
¡°A-Arlette!¡±
The elves blinked nearly simultaneously before glancing at each other for a split second, but not fast enough for Sofie to miss it. The name ¡®Arlette¡¯ held some sort of significance with these people, but why? Arlette was such a rare name, it could only mean her friend, but there was no reason that she should matter to them, right?
Quickly Sofie recalled everything Arlette had briefed her about before she¡¯d left for this place. The mercenary had been able to remember much of what had happened that night weeks ago. They¡¯d been looking for somebody, a woman, at the request of some elven prince.
No way! There was absolutely no way in hell that he of all people could be royalty... right? But it was the only thing that made sense! Sofie decided to go with it and play the hand she¡¯d been dealt. If she was right, she had a way not just out of this mess but possibly out of the city itself.
¡°It¡¯s good to know that Jaquet made it home safely,¡± she said as confidently as possible, putting on a calm smile to mask her fear as best she could. ¡°After he left us, we never heard from him again so we never knew if he was still alive.¡±
The woman visibly flinched, and Sofie¡¯s smile turned genuine. ¡°Get me up and untie me, please. I have a proposition for you that I think will benefit you as much as it benefits me.¡±
The woman¡¯s eyes hardened again. ¡°No, let¡¯s hear your little proposition first, and then I¡¯ll consider it.¡±
¡°Fine,¡± Sofie grumbled, shifting her weight slightly to relieve some of the pressure off her aching wrists. ¡°Here¡¯s how I see it. You are not necessarily here because of Arlette. That would be stupid and a waste of resources. But, a certain prince, who may or may not have been a fellow member of your group, asked you to look for Arlette while you were here. Am I right so far?¡±
Neither of the disguised elves moved, and so she continued on.
¡°Now, I¡¯m sure that just finding her made this person very happy¡ªhappy enough, perhaps, to use a little of his power and wealth to benefit perhaps you, the Masked Battalion, or both. That would work out well for you. Am I on the right track?¡±
¡°Keep talking,¡± the woman said tersely, her tone providing no hints but her knife backing off from Sofie¡¯s neck telling Sofie what she needed to know.
¡°So it seems to me that there¡¯s just a few problems with all of this, at least for you. Even now, with Otharia¡¯s intervention, victory here is nowhere near assured. It seems clear that you¡¯re doing your part on the wall. But what if you die up there? All that good will you earned back home means nothing then, does it not? Even worse, what if Arlette dies?¡±
¡°Why would that matter?¡± the man inquired. ¡°We were just tasked with locating her.¡±
¡°Oh, didn¡¯t you know? Jaquet is madly in love with Arlette.¡±
Something flashed in the woman¡¯s eyes and the knife returned to Sofie¡¯s throat. ¡°Lies! The prince of the Esmae falling for a human barbarian? There¡¯s no way that would be true!¡±
Sofie returned her gaze with steely confidence. ¡°I traveled with both of them from Kutrad to Stragma and back. He hid it from the others well, but I would know: he was head over heels for her. Do you think he would bother asking you to locate a ¡®human barbarian¡¯, as you put it, if he wasn¡¯t? Now that I think about it, it must have eaten him up inside knowing that he couldn¡¯t act on his feelings for all those years. But that¡¯s getting off topic. The point is, let¡¯s say that the siege ends and it even ends in the Ubrans¡¯ defeat, but Arlette dies in battle before it¡¯s all over. Jaquet isn¡¯t going to know what to do with all that anger and grief. He¡¯ll start throwing blame around, and a whole lot of it is going to land on you because you were here when she died. I¡¯ve seen that man do some really terrible things to people that made him angry. You don¡¯t want to be in his crosshairs, rightly or wrongly.¡±
The two transformed elves shared another quick glance, and Sofie could see a hint of fear in their eyes. Her smile broadened slightly and the confidence in her voice increased as she saw that her words were hitting home.
¡°So basically, unless both you and Arlette survive, things probably won¡¯t end well for you no matter what you do. But what can you do? You¡¯re just two people, after all, and she doesn¡¯t want to leave. Believe me, I tried to convince her but she refuses to go. And if you think that you can kidnap her and get her out of the city when she isn¡¯t cooperating, good luck.
¡°Let¡¯s be honest, we¡¯re all mostly powerless to change our fates here. It¡¯s not like we can just summon up more troops to man the walls, or more food to fill our stomachs. But the man who rules Otharia can. I¡¯m willing to bet that if he wanted to, he could provide far more robots than he deigns to send every day. That¡¯s where I come in. I happen to have an in with that man. If I can get to Otharia, I can talk to him and convince him to increase his help. The problem is, I need to get out of the city to do it. That¡¯s where you come in.¡±
¡°You know the man who calls himself ¡®Lord Ferros¡¯, the tyrant conqueror of Otharia?¡± the woman asked in disbelief.
¡°We both come from the same place, you see, a far, far distant land. There are very few of us from that place here in Scyria, less than ten probably, which makes it sort of like a special club. There¡¯s him, me, the Mother of Nightmares...¡±
She paused for a moment to let that last name sink in. Two of them took a step back, suddenly much more wary of her. She chuckled.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, if I were as dangerous as they, the siege would have been over weeks ago,¡± she bluffed. Or at least she hoped it was a bluff. The idea of being capable of destroying armies like the Monster or the Mother of Nightmares terrified her, but that was a subject for another time.
¡°So what, we help you get out of here and you help end the siege? Is that all?¡± the man asked warily.
¡°More than that. I would be greatly indebted to you, and so I¡¯d be sure to put in a good word with my former party member about just how invaluable you were to protecting his crush. I¡¯m sure that the reward you¡¯d receive would be far greater than what you¡¯d get if things proceed as they are now. It¡¯s a win-win for everybody. You have a better chance of surviving, so does my friend, and you walk away much better off than you would otherwise. What have you got to lose? That is... if you can even do the job.¡±
¡°Hey, I can smuggle anything anywhere anytime,¡± the man boasted.
¡°Quiet!¡± the woman barked. ¡°I haven¡¯t agreed to anything yet.¡±
¡°Look, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I¡¯m presenting you,¡± Sofie pressed, putting in every ounce of conviction she had. ¡°Don¡¯t waste it.¡±
The woman glared at her for a moment before motioning to the man to follow and walking behind Sofie. The man did as instructed, and Sofie heard the sound of a door opening and shutting. Muffled voices that she couldn¡¯t make out followed. The conversation kept going and going, and the longer it went the more worried Sofie became. What if they decided to call her on her lies? After all, while she believed that her shared origin would help her in her quest to meet ¡®Lord Ferros¡¯, she was nowhere near as confident in her chances as she let on. Eventually, the door opened again and the two returned to stand in front of her, faces serious.
¡°If you have such a connection with the Otharian ruler, why not simply take their flying contraption back?¡± the woman asked skeptically.
¡°Because my connection is only with my fellow traveler, not Otharia. I have no sway with the Otharians themselves, meaning that if that fucking witch wants to go on a power trip and deny access to the zeppelin, there¡¯s not much I can do but seek alternative means of escape.¡±
¡°Hmmmmm...¡± the woman replied. She stared Sofie in the eyes for a moment before speaking again. ¡°I have decided that we will help you as you request, in exchange for the rewards you offered-¡±
¡°Oh great!¡± chirped Sofie.
¡°-under one condition.¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°If we get you out of the city, how will you avoid the Ubrans without getting caught?¡±
¡°Uh-¡± Shit, that was a great point which she had no good answers for.
¡°If you avoid the Ubrans, how do we know you¡¯ll do what you say you will do? How do we know you won¡¯t just run?¡±
¡°Um-¡± Sofie started to sweat.
¡°And even if you fully intend to stick to your side of the bargain, it¡¯s dangerous for a single person to travel alone, especially in a land where those who would normally protect the roads are either dead or stuck in here. There is no guarantee that you¡¯d live to honor your commitments.¡±
¡°Well-¡± She had said they¡¯d help, right?
¡°Which is why you will be accompanied on your journey by one of us.¡±
¡°Wha?¡±
The man reached around behind Sofie and tugged on some of the ropes. Suddenly the bindings holding her to the chair slackened, freeing her.
¡°Follow me,¡± the woman commanded, leading Sofie into the room they¡¯d gone into before to discuss her offer. The new room was smaller than she¡¯d expected, with only two beds and a chair inside it. In the chair sat a figure wearing a hooded robe with a veil covering its face¡ªa Many, Sofie realized, though not much more could be said from her limited view. Meanwhile, one of the beds was empty save a rough-looking pillow, while the other was occupied by another man.
Sofie held back a gasp as she noticed the state of this man. He looked far worse off than the first two Masked Battalion members. Half of his body was wrapped in bandages and, most significantly, almost the entirety of his right leg was missing.
¡°This man will be accompanying you on your journey,¡± the woman said.
¡°Call me Jerithim,¡± the grizzled man added.
¡°Uhhh...¡± Sofie began, ¡°no offense, but... how is a one-legged person supposed to help?¡±
¡°It won¡¯t be a problem once we are out of the city,¡± the woman said with a certainty that puzzled Sofie. ¡°We will contact you soon once the preparations have been made and the time is right.¡±
Without further discussion, Sofie was marched back out of the room. ¡°It¡¯s time for you to leave,¡± the woman said.
¡°Alright, thank you for your help, uh...¡±
¡°Call me Embra,¡± the woman offered.
¡°Krotar,¡± said the first man.
¡°Are any of those your actual names?¡± Sofie wondered.
¡°No. Now get out.¡± Before Sofie could say another word, the woman opened the door to the street and Sofie found herself unceremoniously shoved out the doorway.
Well... all things considered, everything had gone about as well as could have been hoped. For the first time in her life, she found herself thankful for Jaquet being Jaquet. Now she¡¯d found a way out of the city, and that was what mattered. The only question remaining was... should she let Arlette know?
Sofie, Pari, and ¡®Jerithim¡¯ slowly ascended the stairs towards the wall along the south side of the city. They were making very poor time, as was to be expected when asking a one-legged man with a crutch to climb tens of flights of stairs. To make matters worse, Sofie couldn¡¯t tell how much left they had to go, as the fog so prevalent this season was back obscuring her view of the top of the wall.
It had only been two days since Sofie had first met with the members of the Masked Battalion, but apparently they worked quickly, as already they were making their move. She¡¯d packed up her book and translating supplies in her Stragman waterproof bladder bag¡ªstill the only worthwhile thing to come out of her stay there¡ªand put on an extra set of clothes under her normal ones. Anything more would look too suspicious. The point was for them to have an accident and vanish, and it wouldn¡¯t look right for them to be loaded down with supplies when they ¡°disappeared¡±.
Pari, meanwhile, had filled her large ratty sack with everything she had, all of it wrapped up in rags to silence the various metal bits, and lugged the almost comically large bag over her back. While normally such a thing would be suspicious, Pari carried the sack everywhere so for her the opposite would have been true. The girl would never have agreed to leave her stuff behind, anyway. It had been hard enough convincing her to leave Arlette. The mercenary had really grown in the catgirl¡¯s eyes since the days of their first meeting. It made Sofie feel all warm inside watching how much they¡¯d come to care for each other.
Speaking of Arlette, she was back at the inn, acting normal. After two more days of healing, her body had grown strong enough to let her walk around as long as she was slow and careful about it and didn¡¯t do it for too long. Once more, Sofie considered just how formidable the Scyrian healing factor was.
In the end, Sofie had decided not to tell Arlette about Jaquet. While it happened rather rarely, there had been times when he had come up inadvertently in conversation and each time Arlette had reacted poorly to his mention. She still found his betrayal both painful and infuriating, and so Sofie had chosen to simply let it be.
¡°I¡¯m going to say this now, and only once,¡± the man said, pausing on the stairs for a moment. ¡°Once we¡¯re out, you must follow me without question, and you must be completely silent. Are we clear?¡±
Sofie nodded. ¡°You hear that, Pari? No talking once we leave the city, alright?¡±
¡°Okayyy!¡± a cheery Pari replied. While reluctant to leave her ¡®sister¡¯ behind, Pari seemed rather excited with the prospect of leaving Crirada. Sofie had been able to see how cooped up the energetic girl had started to feel after a while.
¡°So how are we getting out?¡± Sofie asked for the seventh time.
¡°I told you before, we¡¯re not telling you,¡± the disguised elf stated with annoyance. ¡°It¡¯s important that your reaction is natural or your friend could get in trouble.¡±
¡°Right...¡± Sofie sighed. It was hard to go along with people she barely knew saying ¡®just trust us¡¯, but it was important that everybody believed that what happened to them was just an accident. While the Otharians were now the most important figures in the defense, Pari¡¯s bombs still held value. If certain people, like the Supreme General Erizio Astalaria for example, were to realize that they¡¯d left through some sort of plot, they¡¯d be quite angry and the first person they¡¯d focus in on would be Arlette. The general hated Arlette enough as it was. He didn¡¯t need more reasons to make her miserable.
Soon enough, they¡¯d reached the top. The light of the three moons filtered through the fog lit the entire scene in a ghostly pallor, making the whole thing feel like some sort of waking dream. Sofie could barely see ten meters in front of her. All she could make out were a squad of soldiers milling about and staring out into the clouds.
¡°Halt!¡± one of the soldiers called to them as they summited the stairs. ¡°Turn around, this is no place for children and the injured.¡±
Jerithim coughed. ¡°Please forgive my selfishness,¡± he replied. ¡°I am Jerithim of the west fourteenth squad, and sadly I have little time left before the end. These children were kind enough to help an invalid such as myself to make it up here one last time so that I might gaze out from atop this great wall one last time before I go. Please, allow us this trespass, just for a little while.¡±
The soldier¡¯s face softened as he looked over the older man, who, like the first time two days ago, was still half-covered in bandages. ¡°You picked a bad night.¡±
Jerithim offered a wry smile. ¡°One must accept that which he is given.¡±
The soldier gave a tired sigh. ¡°Well, I guess we can allow it. Just don¡¯t take too long.¡±
¡°Thank you,¡± the elf replied.
As the soldier walked off, the three of them slowly made their way across the top of the wall to the outer edge. There, a small wall, or crenelation, about one and a half meters tall emerged from the stone floor, serving both as protection from invaders and as a railing to keep people from falling off accidentally. Sofie couldn¡¯t help but notice that at the top of the crenelation more stone jutted out at a perpendicular angle towards the three of them for about half a meter. Looking at it, Sofie assumed that it existed to give defenders a little more overhead protection. However, it also seemed wide enough that it would be possible for people to stand on top of it.
¡°It truly is a wonderful night,¡± Jerithim muttered several minutes later as they gazed out into the fog.
Before Sofie could ask what he meant by that, a cacophony of furious roars from their right broke the stillness of the moment. Sofie involuntarily shuddered in fear. She¡¯d heard that rage-filled roar before when they¡¯d been chased through the Kutrad forest by the irate jaglioth mother, only this time, it wasn¡¯t just the roar of a single jaglioth. It was the sound of a dozen... and the roars were quickly getting closer.
¡°Oh no! We won¡¯t make it back to the stairs in time!¡± Jerithim cried out. ¡°Quick, climb up! It¡¯s our only chance!¡± With one hand, the man lifted Pari and her sack of goodies up onto the crenelation before throwing his crutch up and pushing himself up after. Sofie, in the meantime, practically teleported herself up atop the thin platform. While not normally the most athletic girl, the sound of tens of tons of enraged muscle, claws, and teeth barreling towards her gave her ample motivation. Once atop the crenelation, she accidentally looked down and nearly teetered off the edge as her vision spun. It was a long way down.
A strong hand grabbed her shoulder and steadied her. ¡°Don¡¯t go falling off now,¡± Jerithim said with a wry smile.
¡°Is this your plan? Please tell me this is your plan somehow,¡± Sofie begged. ¡°The roars are fake, right? Just something to scare everybody away?¡±
The man only smiled and shook his head as the first massive beast plunged through the fog and into view, its eyes wild and out of blood, followed by several more. Sofie went white as the predator closed in like a runaway freight train. Then, just as it came within reach and reared up on its hind legs, its massive clawed paws swiping out at her, she felt Jerithim pull her backward and she, Pari, and the elf tumbled off the side.
Sofie¡¯s shrill shriek pierced through the billowing whiteness as she fell. The top of the wall quickly faded into the mist as she plummeted towards the earth down below. Unable to see the ground beneath her through the fog as well, and not knowing when her fall would end, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited for a sudden impact. To think that she¡¯d trusted these crazy people!
Her screams were interrupted by a hard tug on her waist, and suddenly her descent slowed. Confused, she looked down to find a small metal wire attached to the waist of her pants. When had that gotten there? She followed the wire up to find it merging with a second wire attached to Pari and a third that supported the lunatic who¡¯d thrown them all off. All three of the wires merged into a small, squat metal cylinder with another wire emerging from the other side and stretching up into the fog above, so far that she couldn¡¯t see where it was anchored. It seemed they were nearly at the ground already.
¡°This is a secret ancient relic, salvaged from a ruin thousands of years ago,¡± Jerithim said in response to her quizzical gaze. ¡°We brought it with us so we could escape if it came down to it, but this works too. Now remember, silence from now on.¡±
A minute later, the three of them had their feet back on solid ground. With a push of a button, the wire reaching up into the sky detached from whatever it had grabbed onto up above and quickly retracted into the case.
As it did so, Sofie looked around into the fog nervously. Ever since the arrival of the Otharian robots and their guns, the Ubrans had moved their camps much farther away from Crirada. This meant that they would have a much harder time covering the entire circumference around the city than before, and there would likely be gaps in their perimeter. That didn¡¯t stop her from expecting to find Ubran forces waiting for them in the gloom.
As quickly as two girls and a single-legged man could move, the three of them made their way south and away from the city. After a few hundred meters, Jerithim held up his hand to signal for them to stop. He crawled over to a nearby depression that would hide the three of them rather well and pulled out some clothes from beneath his outfit. Sofie stared at the new clothing for a second, puzzled by the fact that they were too small to fit him. Then she realized what was going down just as the man began to shrink.
Unlike the first time she¡¯d witnessed the undoing of a transformation, this time Sofie was in the right mind for it and had an up-close view. At first, she watched the entire process with fascination, as ¡®Jerithim¡¯ writhed in what appeared to be incredible pain, his bone structure rearranging, his muscles and tendons growing, shrinking, and realigning, and his skin resizing itself to properly encompass the being he was becoming.
Soon, however, her gaze was stolen by one single realization: his missing leg was growing back. She couldn¡¯t help but stare in fascination as the flesh at the stub of his missing leg suddenly bulged out, growing longer and longer as it reformed into a fully-functioning appendage. There was a time when she would have found the whole thing disgusting, but now it only brought her wonder.
Several minutes later, Sofie found herself watching a completely different person silently dress in the clothes that he¡¯d laid out for himself before. Anybody who hadn¡¯t seen the transformation would have never believed that the two beings were one and the same. The former soldier had been about two meters tall, with wide shoulders, thick muscles, scars all across his visible body, and, of course, a missing leg. The elf that she saw now, on the other hand, was a good twenty centimeters shorter, his body still well-defined but sleek instead of bulky. While the hair color remained a soft brownish-red the entire time, the eyes had changed from a brown to a green and the skin had lightened considerably. But most of all, the new version was smoking hot.
Sofie let out an irritated sigh in her mind. This was getting worse than when she¡¯d watched those Lord of the Rings movies. Why was every elf in this damned world impossibly sexy? Jaquet had ended up sexy, the elves during their short ¡°stay¡± in Drayhadal had been pure eye candy, and now this dude was equally gorgeous. It wasn¡¯t fair! Why couldn¡¯t there have been hot elves on Earth too? And why didn¡¯t the Scyrians, like Arlette, find these perfect specimens to be the studs that they were?
As the elf stood up with two legs for the first time since they¡¯d met, Sofie decided it didn¡¯t matter. What mattered was that this man was their best chance of making it to Otharia in one piece. The fact that he was a super-hot hunk was just a bonus.
With a simple wave of his hand, the elf once known as ¡®Jerithim¡¯ told them to follow him, and together they strode off into the mist.
Chapter 68
¡°Pathetic, all of you!¡± Emperor Haidar Batra snarled as he gazed down on his high officers. The generals and their staff each knelt on a single knee, their heads bowed before him in shame, but that wasn¡¯t good enough for Haidar. He wanted them to sweat, to tremble, to feel his fury through more than just his words. With that thought in mind, he began to Observe, increasing the weight upon them all. ¡°Unacceptable! I stand above all as the ruler of the greatest empire this world has ever seen, and you dare to tell me that my grand army can be thwarted by some contraptions sent by that laughing stock of a nation?! I will not allow it!¡±
¡°Even this cage is an affront to my power,¡± he fumed as he gestured around in disgust towards the thick stone ring that encircled the area. ¡°It is an insult to my name and legacy!¡±
The barrier had been constructed to guard against the Otharians¡¯ metal beasts, specifically the one with a longer snout that could kill from a terrifying distance. After it had nearly succeeded in assassinating him several days after the Otharians had entered the war, the army had set up several stone barriers to protect him from any more such attacks.
There were tunnels that connected the different rings, allowing him to travel between them while keeping his exact location hidden from the enemy, but the fact remained that he had to stay within these stone prisons for his own protection. It made him look weak, like a tiny lizard hiding from predators beneath a rock. The very thought infuriated him. The idea that Otharia, of all countries, had forced him into such a state made it all worse. He could practically hear his ancestors laughing at him.
¡°Incompetent fools, all of you!¡± Haidar spat. ¡°The Eterians have been on their last legs for days and yet you still cannot topple them! Impotent! Useless!¡±
The collected soldiers trembled as he lashed out, but their fear did little to appease his scalding rage. The last time he¡¯d been this angry had been when his forces stationed to the north of Crirada had managed to break through and open the city¡¯s northern gate, only to suffer devastating losses in the span of moments. Nearly a hundred thousand troops had been snuffed out that day, and he¡¯d made sure that the commander of the northern troops, General Maldi, joined them shortly thereafter as penance. A general that couldn¡¯t sniff out a trap was of no worth to him.
¡°General Inagorri, you have failed to deliver on all fronts. All attempts at sabotage have ended in failure. Even your vaunted Agent Agharia proved a bust. Such failure speaks ill of your abilities.¡±
¡°I beg for your mercy, Your Greatness,¡± the woman pleaded. ¡°Agent Agharia has served us incredibly well before-¡±
¡°We could have taken Ofrax at any time of our choosing, with or without him. His past performance means nothing. He failed to deliver on his promises. I want him punished.¡±
¡°Unfortunately, Agent Agharia may have perished in the battle that night. He has not responded to our messages since.¡±
¡°More likely, he had gone into hiding like the worm that he is,¡± Haidar growled. ¡°He knows that his plan ended in failure. If the Champion had not returned, it would have been a disaster. I cannot help but feel that she has been covering up many of your collective deficiencies. Speaking of which, General Moiras.¡±
¡°Yes, Your Grandness?¡± the large, burly man asked, not daring to look up. Haidar noted with pleasure the subtle hint of terror in the experienced man¡¯s voice but made sure to keep any of said pleasure from reaching his face.
¡°The Champion gave you a gift and destroyed the western gate. How is it that you have been unable to take advantage of this opportunity? I expected better from the man who led the conquests of Ofrax and Droaja.¡±
¡°I have no excuses, Your Greatness. I have yet to solve the puzzle that the Otharians present, and their machines get more powerful each day. I am working with the Champion to search for a solution.¡±
¡°You have the best soldiers this army has to offer at your disposal. Use them. If their lives are the price of victory, then so be it.¡±
¡°As you will.¡±
¡°General Arrino...¡± the Emperor ground out, his displeasure extra apparent this time. The leader of the southern troops flinched. The man was sweating so profusely that Haidar could see it dripping down his nose as he stared at the floor. Good. ¡°I believe I gave you twenty-five days to deliver your projects to us. We have well eclipsed that deadline now, and yet I have yet to see your abominations anywhere. Care to enlighten me?¡±
General Arrino swallowed. ¡°T-there was an a-accident on the pass leaving the Divide, Y-Your Eminence. Several wagons were destroyed, leaving some of them to walk. You understand, given their deficiencies, how slow it is for them to move on their own. They will be here within three days now, I place my life on it.¡±
The Emperor¡¯s scowl deepened. ¡°That is correct. You do,¡± he replied. ¡°You will receive ten lashings for your failure to follow orders. The only reason I have not disposed of you already is that you are necessary to fully control those... things. Should they prove less than advertised, you will find my tolerance for your repeated failures short-lived.¡±
To bring his point home, Haidar increased the weight upon the general even more. The sweaty man nodded weakly, unable to work up a reply. His point made, Haidar turned to the last of his four high generals¡ªand perhaps the weakest link among them.
¡°General Barcos, more than any other general under my command, your units have consistently underperformed. I have even received reports of Eterians being able to move units off of the east wall to support other areas, while several gambles you have made have cost us more units while producing few dividends. What do you have to say for yourself?¡±
Peru Barcos had always shown great potential as a leader and soldier. Younger than the others, his promotion had been a bit of a scandal several years ago, with several other commanders feeling like he hadn¡¯t earned his position. Given that the selection had been made by the Emperor himself, they, of course, accepted his judgment quickly. Perhaps they had been right all along. The young man¡¯s brashness continued to be a detriment to his results.
¡°...Your Highness, if I may ask, could even the greatest cook create a delicious meal from spoiled meat? Could the finest musician play a masterpiece on an estrin with broken strings? Could the most skilled artist create a statue admired the world over out of nothing but mud?¡±
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¡°Peru, watch yourself,¡± General Moiras warned.
¡°No,¡± he shot back, rising up from his knees to look the Emperor in the eyes, ¡°I am saying what must be said and what you know yourself but lack the courage to speak. We are running out of soldiers. The last few rounds of reinforcements from the homeland have consisted of farm boys and milkmaids! They have almost no training, they can¡¯t coordinate with other units, and they freeze at the first sign of danger. They are more of a liability than a resource. We are running dry, and we cannot continue to pretend that everything is fine!¡±
Haidar¡¯s eyes drew thin and his hands slowly balled into fists. His fury, which had subsided slightly after the verbal spankings he¡¯d given the others, had returned full force. The weight upon the general increased greatly, but the man refused to bow to it. Peru Barcos¡¯s ability as a Feeler was well known throughout the army. His raw strength was second only to the Champion¡¯s.
¡°Otharia has already shown themselves to be formidable opponents. Their presence will likely only increase, and with that flying machine, they can deliver not just more units but also food to strengthen the Eterians. Kutrad is likely doing everything they can to scrabble up another force, possibly with more of their beast cavalry. And Stragma is paralyzed now, but for how long? They will break out of their stupor eventually, and if we are still here then we are doomed! We are overextended and exhausted. We must retreat at least back to Gustil and shore up our position on this continent now while we still have the chance, because if we do not and Stragma moves, we will be trapped between those metal monstrosities and the only other army left in the world that can rival our strength. It will be the end!¡±
¡°Retreat? Retreat?! You dare to suggest that I turn my back on the enemy and bring dishonor to my legacy?! You dare to say that Ubrus, my grand empire, should flee some savages in a forest?! NEVER!¡±
Haidar¡¯s fingers gripped The Compass with such anger that his nails dug deep into the thick leather cover. The thick tome filled with the deeds of his forebears going all the way back to the First Emperor chronicled, more than anything else, their conquests. Most of his ancestors had expanded the Empire under their rule. Of those who had, none had ever been sent running¡ªespecially not by an inferior opposing force. Were he to retreat now, he would go down in history as the first coward Emperor, the one who couldn¡¯t topple a city even when outnumbering the enemy more than seven to one. NO! He would never allow it! He pointed his hand towards the man who had dared to speak back to him, who had dared to advocate for such a shameful course.
¡°Taras! Deal with this traitor!¡±
Taras, his personal bodyguard, stepped forward from his usual position by Haidar¡¯s side without even a word. The man drew the two large swords strapped to his back as a strange hum began to fill the area. The pitch bobbed and weaved up and down before settling on a single high note that undulated slightly at seemingly random intervals. Steadily, with each step the large man took towards General Barcos, the volume of the note increased, slowly beginning to drown out everything else. The generals and their subordinates all cried out in pain as the sound began to disrupt their inner ears, throwing off their sense of balance and sending the room spinning in their heads.
Still, though Peru Barcos staggered, he did not fall. Pulling out his own war hammer, he gritted his teeth as Taras approached. ¡°You are leading our nation towards a cliff and you refuse to steer away!¡± he cried, his voice barely audible over the endlessly-ringing tone. ¡°You must be stopped before it is too late! Now!¡±
Haidar caught a glimpse of movement in the periphery of his vision off to his right. Somebody, somehow, had managed to hide from sight off to the side of the area. Whereas another ruler might have felt alarm at the sudden revelation, Haidar did not worry in the slightest. Just as Barcos had given his signal, Taras had, without even turning, thrown the sword in his right hand directly towards where the hidden assailant was. Before the mystery assassin could even react, the blade buried itself deep into her chest and straight through her heart, killing her instantly.
The Emperor chuckled. This was standard procedure for Taras. Hiding from his hearing was impossible unless you could somehow live without breathing or a beating heart.
While Haidar had been unaware of the hidden person until just this moment, Taras had surely known all along. Instead of simply dealing with it outright, he¡¯d wisely waited to see if any co-conspirators would show themselves, and they had. He truly was the ultimate bodyguard.
Peru swung his hammer towards Taras, putting as much of his mighty strength into the blow as he could, but the bodyguard avoided the blow with a nimbleness that belied his large, imposing frame. The pitch of the note shifted slightly and the general stumbled again, his own sense of balance changing direction suddenly and throwing him out of whack. He barely managed to interpose the shaft of his hammer between him and the blade swinging for his neck. Now horribly unsteady, the blow sent him crashing to the ground; while he was one of the strongest Feelers in the empire, Taras was likely strongest Weaver in the world, capable of feats of strength almost on the same level.
Taras swung again, swiftly and efficiently, and the head of the youngest general to ever serve Ubrus rolled across the floor, a look of shock and stupefaction still on his face. Suddenly the ringing tone vanished, leaving only stunned silence. Without a word, Taras walked over to the second assailant, picked up his other sword, returned them both to their sheaths on his back, and calmly walked back to his customary position by Haidar¡¯s side.
¡°This is your final warning,¡± the Emperor stated to the quivering lot that remained. ¡°Do not disappoint me. You are dismissed.¡±
With that last utterance echoing through his subordinates¡¯ heads, he turned and left them staring at the remains of their comrade. Later he would have the man¡¯s corpse prominently displayed where the rest of the troops could see it as a demonstration of what happened to those who dared to question him. But for now, it would serve its purpose best haunting the others¡¯ dreams with its glassy-eyed stare.
Chapter 69
It hadn¡¯t even taken an hour in the Stragma Forest for Tehlmar to remember all the reasons why he hated the place. First, there was the omnipresent humidity that caused every article of clothing he wore to cling uncomfortably to his body as if he¡¯d just jumped into a pond. He had no idea how Stragmans could bear to live every single day like this, with not just his clothes but his bare skin sticking to him. Not only was it highly unpleasant, it made maintaining armor a pain and caused the food supplies to go bad far more quickly than normal.
Then there was the endless array of flora, from the massive trees that defined the forest to the overly-abundant bushes and ferns and the curtains of vines that filled the gaps between the wooden giants, which served to block his view in all directions. Years of training and fighting had drilled a constant vigilance into him, to the point that part of his mind was always on the lookout for an ambush. That wariness had saved his life and the lives of his comrades multiple times in the past, especially when they¡¯d been fleeing through the forests of Kutrad several seasons ago, but the density of Stragma made Kutrad¡¯s forests seem like a desert in comparison. At times he felt like an enemy could be just five paces from him and he wouldn¡¯t be able to tell.
But what really drove Tehlmar crazy was the way that the unending plant life made speedy travel seemingly impossible. He needed to make his way south to the current Stragman capital of Hoxoni before they packed up and moved west to their next location, but the progress he was making made it feel like he wouldn¡¯t arrive for another year at the earliest. It was times like this when he understood why the war with these people had never come to a conclusion even after so many centuries. Were the Drayhadans to somehow have just as many soldiers as the Stragmans, rather than a mere fraction of the manpower, they¡¯d still never be able to successfully invade this place. Their armies would bog down almost immediately and they¡¯d be endlessly harassed and picked apart by the Stragmans until they were no more. The Stragmans seemed to know how to move through this sea of trees many times quicker than he could manage. How, he didn¡¯t know. Even after traveling with them for a good while the last time he¡¯d been in here, he¡¯d never been able to figure out their secret. And so, a day and a half after first crossing the tree line, Tehlmar continued to miserably struggle his way deeper and deeper into the forest, leaving a trail of hacked-apart foliage and an unending stream of profanity in his wake.
This was all Pyria¡¯s fault. On the one hand, there were good reasons for him to be doing what he was doing. No matter how successful his sister¡¯s efforts to manipulate the state of the government back home turned out, Drayhadal would never consent to send most of its armies marching on the Ubrans while the threat of a Stragman invasion hung over their heads. That meant that somebody had to go negotiate a truce, if only a temporary one, with the forest-dwellers, and since Pyria and the Masked Battalion were needed in Drayhadal, that left only him. To make matters worse, they couldn¡¯t carry out the negotiations by Many, because that would involve other people. It had to stay within their circle, and that meant he had to go in person.
Still, sound reasoning aside, Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but feel that this was also some form of revenge on his sister¡¯s part. She was very good at hiding her inner thoughts, but there was no way she¡¯d forgiven him for stabbing her back then. In her mind, having to deal with the ¡®savages¡¯ was probably the worst punishment that vindictive bitch could imagine. Tehlmar was in no hurry to correct that misconception. There had been a point in his life when he¡¯d seen the Stragmans in the same way his sister did, but decades of life outside of Drayhadal, as well as days of interaction with the Stragman people, had tempered that greatly. If anything, he preferred the more straightforward nature of Stragman culture to the duplicitous world of Drayhadan nobility. He still hated the forest with a passion, though.
The real question at hand was, would any of his effort even prove fruitful? He, a hated Drayhadan and the brother of perhaps the most hated Drayhadan of all, had a limited amount of time to convince the Stragman leaders to pull a complete about-face. The enormity of the task made it seem just about impossible. Had Tehlmar been able to conceive of any other plan, he would have taken it over this.
With a loud grumble, Tehlmar pushed himself through another patch of lush green vines blocking his way before abruptly coming to a halt just a few finger-widths in front of a gleaming spearhead pointed at his neck. Quickly glancing around, he spotted several more spears pointed his way from both his right and his left, as well as several other people up above him. Likely there were more behind him as well.
Tehlmar turned back to the man in front of him and raised his empty hands up while flashing a wide smile. ¡°It¡¯s about time,¡± he said. ¡°Making all that noise really wears you out after a while, you know?¡±
Days of trekking through the forest later, Tehlmar and the squad that found him finally arrived at Stragma¡¯s winter city, and none too soon for his liking. Long-range Stragman patrols didn¡¯t carry around tucrenyx shackles everywhere on the off-chance they¡¯d run across a mentally challenged Drayhadan in the middle of the wilderness, but that didn¡¯t stop the squad that found him from trying their hardest to make do anyway. One of them had grown some surprisingly strong vines and used them to tie his arms behind him in a very uncomfortable position with a long strand sticking out like a leash. Then they¡¯d led him along the entire trip back like some sort of glorified pet and hadn¡¯t even untied him as he slept. At least now that they¡¯d arrived here at the city, he¡¯d be able to move his arms again.
The city of Hoxoni was, in Tehlmar¡¯s opinion, about as different from the city of Pholis as was possible. While Pholis was constructed around and on gargantuan trees that rose thousands of paces into the sky, creating a city that grew upward almost as much as it grew outward, Hoxoni could be found inside a massive cave system underground. Here, outside of several caverns with high ceilings where marketplaces and other public places could be found, there often wasn¡¯t even enough room for a building to have a second story. Instead, everybody had to build horizontally. Tehlmar couldn¡¯t say just how far the cave system went, but if it was enough to house the entirety of the Stragman populace then it must have continued on for leagues and leagues.
The closest thing Tehlmar could find to the forest outside were the large, thick stone pillars that connected the ceiling and the floor in the large caverns, almost like trees reaching up to a canopy so thick that it blocked out all sunlight. Other than that, it was like all of the Stragman civilization had moved to an entirely different world.
The first thing he noticed was, of course, the darkness. The caves were not entirely without light; large patches of bioluminescent moss and fungi growing on almost every surface provided enough light for the inhabitants to go about their days, but just barely. The entire city had an eerie pre-dawn feel that Tehlmar found quite unappealing.
¡°Do those things glow all the time?¡± he asked the leader of the squad that had ¡®captured¡¯ him. After days of being a talkative nuisance, Tehlmar had finally managed to crack through the Stragmans¡¯ distrust and contempt enough that they¡¯d answer questions every so often, though sustained conversation was still rare.
¡°They dim slightly sometimes,¡± came the gruff reply.
¡°But never all the way off?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Doesn¡¯t that get annoying? Why not just use torches so you can extinguish them when it¡¯s time to sleep?¡±
¡°And fill the air with smoke?¡± The leader rolled his eyes.
¡°It¡¯s not like it could smell worse than it already does,¡± Tehlmar shot back with a sniff. Foul odors assaulted his nostrils with every breath. ¡°It smells like a million babies all shat themselves in here.¡±
The leader¡¯s face darkened. ¡°If those Shells simply knew their place, then-¡± he spat out before thinking better of it and cutting himself off mid-sentence. He sent a withering glare Tehlmar¡¯s way for daring to besmirch the wonders of Stragma, causing Tehlmar to fight down an amused smirk. The man was far too easy to tease. It wasn¡¯t like he didn¡¯t already know about the Shells and the strife they¡¯d caused the last season or two. Everybody knew by now.
Unfortunately, Tehlmar¡¯s knowledge wasn¡¯t much more in the know than the average citizen. He knew about the Shells and their refusal to work. He knew there was a man who led them who, for some unknown reason, the Chos wouldn¡¯t kill even though it would likely end the disruptions. He knew that the man had entered into the public consciousness seemingly out of nowhere and that nobody seemed to know where he¡¯d come from. That was about as detailed as the reports went. Adding in his own experience and knowledge to these reports led Tehlmar to a rather disquieting conclusion as to the man¡¯s origins, though it was one that the agents of Drayhadal were sadly unable to confirm.
One of the dirty secrets of the Masked Battalion was that there were surprisingly few agents in Stragma and none of them were in a position with access to juicy intelligence. Unlike the rest of the world, where the existence of the secret order was little more than a myth believed only by crackpots, in Stragma the order¡¯s existence was taken as a stone cold fact.
Back in the day, the vast majority of Battalion activity had naturally concentrated on Stragma. However, such attention came at a cost; over the centuries, there had been enough cases of dead Stragmans turning into elves for the Stragmans to catch on to the Drayhadan¡¯s activities. From that point onward, the jungle-dwellers had implemented a series of ever-increasing security measures designed to detect impostors, and the task of the Masked Battalion had become immeasurably more difficult.
These days, fewer members of the Battalion could be found in Stragma than at any other time in the last few centuries. The ability of the order to acquire truly useful information had suffered as a result. If he as Jaquet hadn¡¯t luckily learned of the Stragman¡¯s surprise second prong invasion of the Esmae clan¡¯s territory and sent a warning, the Stragmans would have pillaged the entire unprepared area. Three hundred years ago, such lucky circumstances would not have been necessary¡ªthe Masked Battalion would have learned of the attack from multiple different well-placed sources well in advance.
As poor a state the Masked Battalion currently was in this respect, the state of Hoxoni was far worse. The deeper he and his ¡°captors¡± went into the caves, the nastier the surroundings and the accompanying smell became. Only the steady airflow coming from the various entrances kept the place breathable at all.
All was not well in this city. He could feel the simmering anger in the locals¡¯ stares. It bubbled beneath the surface, ready to spew forth at any time. He understood, of course; nobody would enjoy living in a home that smelled like a refuse pile all day, every day, but right now, that anger was pointed at him and he wanted nothing to do with it.
¡°Should we not quicken our pace?¡± he asked. ¡°The sooner I can relay my message the better.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t get to give orders here, elf,¡± one of the soldiers replied, giving the vines a sharp jerk and causing Tehlmar to stumble. The onlookers laughed. ¡°You will go where we take you and that is all.¡±
¡°And where would that be?¡± Tehlmar replied, flashing an unconcerned smile.
The answer turned out to be a cell, a dark one. Here in Hoxoni, it seemed that the country¡¯s prisoners were housed in a section of the caves that splintered off from the rest of the system with only one tunnel leading into the prison area. Unlike much of the rest of the caves, this area seemed largely man-made, judging by the uniformity of the hallways and the cells.
The cell was little more than a small rectangular room with an arched ceiling, a straw mat for a bed, and some glowing moss on the ceiling and one of the walls. A wooden set of vertical bars served as the gate between him and freedom. He thought about just breaking through the wood but thought better of it. Surely they wouldn¡¯t put just some weak wood between all their prisoners and escape. Even if he were to get out, where would he go? While he didn¡¯t particularly like the treatment he¡¯d received so far, if he looked at it from the right perspective, this cell was really just a very poor guest house.
¡°Heh heh, well this is new,¡± chuckled a dry voice from across the way. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen a living sharp-ear in years. Never thought I¡¯d see one while in this place, that¡¯s for sure.¡±
Tehlmar turned towards the sound, looking out through the bars to see a man leaning against the side wall of the cell across the hall. The man was about average in height for a Stragman, with a lean body that bordered on lanky. Abnormally long, pointed triangular ears swiveled this way and that above his speckled tan hair.
Tehlmar strode up to the bars and leaned up against them, letting his forearms hang through the gaps like he didn¡¯t have a care in the world. He smiled a confident, friendly grin. ¡°Well hello there, friend. Seems like I¡¯ll be your neighbor. For a few hours, at least.¡±
¡°Oh, you¡¯re no friend of mine, sharp-ear,¡± the man replied, returning Tehlmar¡¯s smile with a far more predatory one of his own. ¡°And I hate to break it to you, but I doubt you¡¯ll be leaving this place any time soon.¡±
¡°Oh really? And why would that be?¡±
¡°Are you daft? Just where do you think you are?¡±
¡°Your people¡¯s prison?¡±
The Stragman chuckled knowingly. ¡°Is that what you think this is? Where we lock up all the criminals of this country?¡±
¡°...yes? I mean, we have cells, we have bars keeping us inside the cells... I don¡¯t know about you, but I¡¯ve been in a lot of dungeons in my life and they all tend to adhere to the same basic principles really.¡±
His counterpart¡¯s smirk didn¡¯t budge. ¡°Tell me, ¡®friend¡¯, how many cells did you pass by on your way in here?¡±
¡°About ten, I guess.¡±
¡°There¡¯s millions of people in Stragma. Surely you don¡¯t think we¡¯re so well-behaved here that we¡¯d only have ten criminals. The real prisons are outside with everything else¡ªnormal buildings that can be transported like all the rest, not some holes dug in the rock off to the side where nobody will bother to go.¡±
The smile on Tehlmar¡¯s face stiffened slightly. ¡°And just what would this place be, then?¡±
The man leaned in, his eyes gleaming with amusement. ¡°This is where they put the ¡®special¡¯ cases. Those whose existence is... inconvenient for those in charge who would prefer us forgotten by the rest of society.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s smile broadened at the information. ¡°Well, my father always said I was special.¡±
¡°Gwahaha!¡± the man laughed, the first malice-free action he¡¯d performed since the start of their conversation. ¡°You¡¯re an interesting one, I¡¯ll give you that.¡±
¡°Name¡¯s Tehlmar.¡±
¡°Bitol Fogrunner-fleg, at your service.¡±
¡°Let me tell you something, Bitol. Regardless of what you say about this place, I¡¯ll be out of here before you know it.¡±
¡°Thinking of trying to escape? I wouldn¡¯t recommend it if you value your life¡ªwhich, given that you ended up here, maybe you don¡¯t.¡±
¡°No, they¡¯ll let me out on their own. You¡¯ll see.¡± He pointed to his head, knowingly. ¡°I know the magic words.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t wait to see it,¡± Bitol replied, making no attempt to hide the fact that he did not actually expect to see anything of the sort anytime soon.
¡°So what gets a guy like you stuck in a place like this?¡± Tehlmar inquired, shifting the topic of conversation elsewhere before it could get too deep into things he didn¡¯t want to talk about in public. ¡°No offense, but you don¡¯t seem too ¡®special¡¯ to me.¡±
¡°Sorry, that information doesn¡¯t come for free. I¡¯ve been gabbing too much already. Must be the loneliness.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll trade you. Your story for mine. Don¡¯t you want to know what an elf like me is doing in a place like this?¡±
Bitol thought for a moment before shrugging. ¡°Don¡¯t have much else to do around here anyway,¡± he mumbled to himself as he sat down and rolled onto his back to stare up at the softly glowing fungi above him.
¡°Bad luck, bad decisions, take your pick. What matters now is that I¡¯m just leverage,¡± he said with a sigh. ¡°Better than being dead, I guess.¡±
¡°A political prisoner?¡± Tehlmar quickly put the pieces together. ¡°If the Chos is holding you here, then that makes you leverage against...¡±
¡°Yeah, there¡¯s only one person who could stand up to her. Rudra. When I met him he was just a lost and confused man. Had no idea what was going on or what he was doing. Given how things turned out, seems like he still has no idea what he¡¯s doing.¡±
¡°Sounds like you¡¯re not a fan of his actions.¡±
¡°People like me prefer it when things stay as they are. Makes it easier to find the cracks when everything isn¡¯t shifting about.¡±
¡°Then why did they throw you in here if you aren¡¯t even on his side?¡±
¡°I am on his side. I owe him a debt that can never be fully repaid. I¡¯d do just about anything he asked me, short of killing my own mother.¡±
¡°...that¡¯s quite a commitment.¡±
¡°Dying does that to a man.¡±
Tehlmar eyebrows rose in disbelief. So it was true. He¡¯d thought the reports to be hyperbolic exaggerations at best, but here was confirmation: the Stragmans had somebody on their side who could conquer death. It explained how they¡¯d been able to regroup after the failure of the first invasion and strike a second time so quickly. The ramifications of such a fact were not lost on him. It meant the eventual end of Drayhadal. While Tehlmar was not in love with the country of his birth, he didn¡¯t particularly desire the sort of ending the Stragmans would deliver.
Luckily for them, this man, Rudra, seemed far more intent on the end of Stragma than the end of Drayhadal. The state of the city outside this tiny prison said plenty about the man¡¯s goals. Tehlmar almost pitied Akhustal Palebane for the position she was in, but at the same time couldn¡¯t help but grow his respect for her.
Pyria had told him herself all about what she¡¯d done to the Chos¡¯ husband and lover, not to mention the rest of the Second Army. If instead Arlette was dead, and the one person on the planet capable of bringing her back was refusing to do so unless he sold out everything Drayhadal stood for, Tehlmar knew that he would have sold out his country in an instant. That, or he would torture that man so horribly that even Pyria would find his actions appalling. The fact that the Chos had not fallen into either pit even after so long showed her strength better than any physical feat ever could.
¡°Alright, your turn,¡± Bitol said after a moment. He¡¯d shifted into a more nonchalant position, lying on his side with his head propped by an elbow.
¡°I¡¯m here to deliver a message to the Chos.¡±
¡°You came all this way to deliver a message?¡± he laughed. ¡°Now I¡¯m extra curious. That must be one important message if it can¡¯t be sent by Many. Why not tell your new pal Bitol?¡±
Now it was Tehlmar¡¯s turn to laugh. ¡°Oh, we¡¯re friends now? I thought you said you weren¡¯t my friend?¡±
¡°Come now, that¡¯s in the past.¡±
¡°Sorry, can¡¯t tell you. It¡¯s too important.¡±
¡°You can, however, tell me,¡± a third voice cut in.
Tehlmar nearly jumped at the sound of the voice from the end of the hallway, having not detected anybody in the area other than Bitol. Feminine and soft¡ªweak, even¡ªthe voice still carried an authority that could not be denied. Tehlmar recognized it immediately. Several moments later, he spied the grey locks and pallid skin of one Tepin Silverfall.
¡°I am Tepin Silverfall, assistant to the Chos. I am here to hear your message, so state it now,¡± she said with quiet monotone.
¡°My message is for your leader¡¯s ears only,¡± Tehlmar insisted.
¡°I decide what is for her ears,¡± she replied plainly, her voice calm and passionless ever. ¡°Now speak.¡±
Tehlmar stepped away from the bars and crossed his arms defiantly. He stared back at the emotionless woman and said, ¡°I refuse.¡±
¡°Very well,¡± the administrator said with a shrug as she turned away. ¡°Enjoy your stay. I¡¯m sure you two will become intimately acquainted over the years.¡±
¡°Wait wait wait!¡± Tehlmar cried, rushing back up to the wooden bars just in time to see the woman pause at the edge of his vision. ¡°Look, I can¡¯t tell you my message, but I can say this: tell the Chos nothing would make Pyria Esmae more furious than if she met with me in private.¡±
His sister¡¯s name seemed to strike a chord with Tepin, and she hesitated for a moment before continuing way back down the hall. ¡°I will pass that along,¡± he heard her say. ¡°I hope you are ready for what those words will bring upon you.¡±
¡°Shouldn¡¯t we be heading the other way?¡± Tehlmar wondered aloud as he, Tepin, and a small army of Stragman warriors made their way through the cave system. Given the tucrenyx shackles binding both his legs and arms, walking was a slow and laborous process and he didn¡¯t want to do any more of it than needed.
¡°Are you insinuating that I can¡¯t navigate through my own city?¡± inquired an annoyed and weary Tepin.
¡°Well, it¡¯s just that I thought I saw the Chos¡¯ palace or whatever you call it back that way, closer to the cave entrance.¡±
Tepin arched an eyebrow and slowed to a halt. ¡°How would you know what the Chos¡¯ manor looks like?¡± she asked.
An ominous chill ran down his body. ¡°The guards taking me to that cell told me yesterday when I asked them about the fancy house we were passing by,¡± he quickly lied.
The administrator stared at him dispassionately for a moment before turning back and resuming forward motion. Tehlmar held back a sigh of relief. She didn¡¯t look convinced, per se, but she hadn¡¯t pressed the issue so he figured he was in the clear for the moment.
¡°We are not going to the Chos¡¯ manor. The Chos does not have the time nor the interest in altering her schedule to suit some fool of an elf, and so you will meet with her where she is and be thankful that she had deemed you worth talking to at all.¡±
¡°And where would that be, exactly?¡±
¡°Here,¡± the woman replied, stopping before a large wooden door in the side of the cave wall. A closer look at the door revealed that it seemed to be made of a similar material to the wooden bars that blocked the prison cells.
¡°What¡¯s this?¡± he asked as the guards removed the tucrenyx shackles.
¡°Her private training grounds. She¡¯s in a particularly bad mood today,¡± Tepin answered with a sarcastic smile. ¡°Good luck.¡±
Before Tehlmar could protest, the guards shoved him through the now-open doorway and shut the door behind him. The training room was larger than he¡¯d thought, perhaps forty paces wide and long with a rounded ceiling a good twenty paces over his head. Four pillars, each about two paces in diameter, connected the floor and ceiling about a third of the way towards the center from each corner.
To his right, Tehlmar found destruction. What looked like the remains of wooden training dummies were strewn across the floor, along with a scattering of rubble and various broken and dented metal objects. Standing in front of that disaster zone, with her back turned to him, was the giant known as the strongest warrior in the forest: Akhustal Palebane.
Even though he¡¯d seen her before, Tehlmar still couldn¡¯t help but marvel at the sheer size of the nearby woman. She had to be around seven paces tall at least, easily the tallest woman he¡¯d ever seen in his long, traveled life, and that height seemed even more daunting now given his newly-diminished stature. But that wasn¡¯t all. Thick, powerful muscles all over her body rippled beneath taut tan skin that glistened with sweat in the glow of the moss all over the chamber. Long white braids of hair fell down past her shoulders, their brightness popping out against her dark skin. On the top of her head, sticking out through those braids, stood two small circular ears. Something about their tininess when compared to the rest of her lent them a strangely cute look.
After a moment of silence where neither moved, Tehlmar cleared his throat. There was no point in waiting for no reason, right? ¡°I greet you, Akhustal Palebane-chos, with the greatest respe-¡±
¡°Quiet.¡± Tehlmar froze in mid-sentence as the giant cut him off with a simple word. ¡°Grab a weapon from the rack behind you.¡±
¡°Huh?¡± Turning around, Tehlmar found a wide array of different weapons arranged on a rack against the wall.
¡°Did you think you could just stumble into my lands and I would just drop everything to hear what a pathetic elf has to say to me? Ha! No, if you want my attention then you will have to earn it.¡±
Tehlmar gulped. Why couldn¡¯t things ever be easy? The sound of her turning about and closing in on his back pushed him to make a choice quickly. His eyes swept across the array of weapons before settling on a simple spear. When in doubt, go with what works, right? It looked shorter and lighter than the spear he¡¯d carried about with him back in his Jaquet days, but he was also much less of a man physically these days so it worked out.
Hefting the spear, he turned back towards the Chos. Their eyes met for the first time, and the woman¡¯s gaze, originally a mix of annoyance and frustration, quickly darkened into something far more serious. Tehlmar¡¯s instincts, which had saved him countless times throughout his life, suddenly screamed danger. He did not question them and immediately dove to his left just as a tree trunk masquerading as a club roared through his previous position. The air pressure alone was enough to push him back and he rolled several full rotations before coming to a halt and pushing himself up to one knee.
¡°Why?!¡± Akhustal growled as she advanced on him, murderous intent in her eyes. With a smooth, practiced motion, she swung her club down towards his head. Once more, Tehlmar leapt out of the way, just barely avoiding the oversized weapon as it smashed into the ground. The impact shook the room as pieces of stone shot out from the floor, peppering Tehlmar and the surroundings with enough force to bruise. All that remained where the Chos had struck was a crater the diameter of Tehlmar¡¯s arm.
¡°We don¡¯t have to do this,¡± Tehlmar bargained, backing up a step. His back hit upon something solid and he realized he¡¯d backed into one of the stone pillars that supported the chamber. ¡°I just came to-¡±
¡°Why do you look like her?!¡±
The massive club came hurtling around from the side this time, its speed and force even greater than before, and Tehlmar threw himself back down to the ground as it crashed into and through the pillar that had stood behind him just a moment before.
As the room trembled and shook, Tehlmar spun around the stump of the former column, using it as an obstacle to slow the rampaging giant down just long enough for him to regain his wits. This was just about as bad a turn as he could think of. Of course he and his sister resembled each other! Why hadn¡¯t he thought about what that would mean beforehand? No, instead he¡¯d just plowed forward like he always did. But this time, there wasn¡¯t anybody else around to help him get out of the mess he¡¯d made. He¡¯d have to figure out a way through this on his own.
But first, he just had to survive. Back when he¡¯d fought Palebane before, as Jaquet, she¡¯d nearly killed him in a single hit. This time, with his significantly lighter body and lack of Feeler-enhanced strength, a single hit would surely do the job. At least he was nimbler this time, so he¡¯d be able to avoid her lethal strikes more easily.
But then what? This was one of the first times in Tehlmar¡¯s life where replying to violence with more violence seemed like a bad idea to him. This woman with the murderous glint in her eyes was the same person who he needed to negotiate with. Somehow, stabbing her with a spear a bunch of times seemed like a very poor choice. That was if he even could manage it. Without Jaquet¡¯s strength and speed, he didn¡¯t stand a chance locking weapons with her.
Using his blood powers, on the other hand, also seemed like a bad idea for the moment. The lack of blood in his body would put too much stress on him for a prolonged fight. It was better to save it for the right moment or when there was simply no other option.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
¡°Who are you?¡± the Chos growled as she paced around the remains of the pillar.
At first, Tehlmar was tempted to deny any relation to his sister and say his name was ¡°Artiermius¡±, but decided against it. These negotiations needed to be built on trust or they would be worthless.
¡°My name is Tehlmar. I am Pyria¡¯s brother,¡± he said solemnly.
¡°Bullshit! She doesn¡¯t have a brother.¡±
¡°It¡¯s a long story, but it¡¯s true,¡± Tehlmar sighed, avoiding another swipe of the club. ¡°I came here to negotiate with you about matters of extreme importance, so please stop with this.¡±
¡°No, I think I¡¯d rather just kill you,¡± she replied. ¡°I¡¯ve always wanted to bash her head in, and you¡¯re close enough that it would feel almost as good!¡± She rushed forward, her club already arcing towards him.
¡°Please, listen!¡± Tehlmar begged and bobbed and weaved around the Chos¡¯ flurry of blows. ¡°Surely you realize that we cannot continue to let the Ubrans sweep over Nocend, right? We need to do something about it! I know Drayhadal and Stragma have always been enemies. I know that we hate each other. But this is bigger than our feelings! This is about survival! Even Pyria can understand this! Surely you can too!¡±
¡°Silence! Your words mean nothing. Whether you¡¯re a ruse sent by that vile creature or you¡¯re her brother, either way, I¡¯ll end you right here!¡±
The strikes increased in speed and Tehlmar retreated as best he could, ducking behind another pillar. The move revealed itself to be a poor one as the pillar shattered in one blow as quickly as the previous one had, but this time the resulting shards of rock were headed his way. Several struck him with surprising force, knocking him off balance and sending the spear clattering to the ground.
The giant woman pounced, moving with an athletic grace nobody her size should possess, and grabbed him by the throat with one oversized hand. She pulled him up into the air and held him aloft before her as he squirmed, a grin of satisfaction on her face. He put his arms out against her, trying his best to free himself as she pulled him closer, but his strength was not enough to stop her as she wrapped him in a crushing bear hug. Her massive arms seeming to envelop his entire torso and pinned his hands against his chest.
¡°Let¡¯s make it nice and slow,¡± she said with a malicious smile as the pressure on him slowly increased. ¡°I want to enjoy this.¡±
Tehlmar wheezed as the air was forced from his lungs. He could feel his ribcage creaking as greater and greater force was applied from all sides. There was no way he¡¯d survive this if he didn¡¯t do something. If he wasn¡¯t crushed to death, he¡¯d suffocate soon enough. If there was any time to spring his blood power surprise, this was it.
With great alarm, Tehlmar realized he¡¯d made another grievous error. By trying to fight off Palebane with his arms, he¡¯d gotten them trapped between his and her chest, and the pressure on them was so great that he couldn¡¯t ball them into fists and cut his palms with his nails! To make matters worse, he¡¯d received his share of hits and bruises from the random pieces of rock flying about, but he still had yet to be cut! There was no easy way to remove the blood from his body!
The only option left was to bite his tongue and use what little blood he could get from that to open up more cuts elsewhere while getting free. It seemed that there was no other way. But if she was so dead set on killing him, was there even any hope left for his mission? If she lived, she¡¯d never cooperate, but if he somehow managed to kill her, the rest of the country would still never cooperate. His entire goal had been a hopeless one from the start.
A rib cracked and the already-unbearable crushing pain doubled. Tehlmar forced his mouth open and pushed his tongue out as far as it would go. Then he bit down.
His teeth stopped just a hair¡¯s breadth away from their goal as a random final thought popped into his head. The idea seemed completely crazy, and it went against everything he¡¯d ever been taught as a member of the Masked Battalion, but fuck it, if he wanted to be honest with himself, he didn¡¯t owe those assholes anything anymore.
¡°What¡¯s this, some last words?¡± Akhustal asked mockingly.
¡°You really want to kill the Titan of Twin Rock Pass?¡± he wheezed out. ¡°I thought you were my biggest fan.¡±
Ahkustal Palebane froze as her mind processed his words. Suddenly the pressure on Tehlmar ceased and he fell to the ground as she recoiled away from him, a look of horror on her face.
¡°What did you say?¡±
Tehlmar coughed and gasped as fresh air mercifully filled his lungs. He climbed back to his feet, his hands clenching into fist hard enough to break the skin. As blood flowed from his freshly-made wounds and formed into twin crimson swords, he stared his opponent in the eye and spoke the secret that he¡¯d sworn many years ago to die before revealing. ¡°My name is Tehlmar Esmae, but for most of my life, I was known as the mercenary Jaquet Delon.¡±
¡°You liar!¡± the Chos spat, her eyes filled with desperate disbelief. ¡°Did one of your little spies tell you to say that? People know about Jaquet!¡±
¡°Yeah? Remember that sparring match we had last time? Remember how Letty and I beat you by pinning your club down? How many people know about that?¡±
Slowly the implications sank in and the Chos began to tremble. ¡°No. No, no, no, nononononoNO!¡±
Akhustal charged forward, her club whipping around towards him faster than Tehlmar had ever seen it move. Without enough time to avoid the blow, Tehlmar desperately brought his blood swords up to block, reforming them into rudimentary shields to soften the blow as much as possible. That turned out to be not enough, as the giant weapon crashed through the impromptu barriers with momentum to spare and slammed into his left side. Tehlmar felt nearly every rib crumble under the impact as he was thrown clear across the room and into one of the two remaining pillars. The landing did him little better, as the hard stone stopped his flight at the cost of what felt like a fractured tibia.
¡°You!¡± Akhustal Palebane howled as she rushed at him like a woman possessed. ¡°You told them! You¡¯re the reason she knew!¡±
Unable to stand properly anymore, Tehlmar instead used his blood to push him out of the way of the incoming strike. With another ear-splitting crash, the number of pillars in the room dropped to one.
¡°Stop before you collapse this whole place on top of us,¡± Tehlmar gasped out as he created a brace made of blood around his broken leg, letting him wobble back to his feet.
¡°Shut up!¡± she cried, her assault continuing. ¡°Shut up shut up shut up shut up!¡±
The Chos bore down on Tehlmar with an endless series of furious attacks, each one strong enough to kill him with even a glancing blow. Only by using his blood to literally throw himself out of the way of each consecutive attack was he able to remain in the land of the living. The giant woman had been holding back the entire time, he realized as she created crater after crater and shook the very foundation of the cave with every attack that struck the ground. Nothing she¡¯d ever done before in either of their battles had ever compared to this terrifying power.
¡°Why?! Why did it have to be you?¡± she roared as she pushed him back. ¡°Why did the one who gave me hope as a child have to be you?!¡±
With alarm, Tehlmar¡¯s back bumped into the cold, hard stone of the wall far before he¡¯d expected to. She¡¯d cornered him!
¡°It¡¯s over!¡± the giant declared as she swung her massive club around with enough force to liquefy him in an instant.
Using his blood, Tehlmar flung himself straight up and over the incoming weapon as it smashed into the wall behind him, creating large cracks in the wall that grew quickly outward with each passing moment. His stamina was nearly gone, but he didn¡¯t have any choice but to press on. Now at the apex of his ascent, he pushed himself to his limits and once more used his blood to throw himself away from the wall and over his adversary.
To his dismay and disbelief, the Chos, with shocking quickness, let go of her club, turned away from the wall, reached up, and snagged his one remaining good leg as he shot by. Tehlmar barely had time to process what had happened before she brutally swung him down like a whip and bashed him into the stone floor below. Tehlmar cried out as he felt his shoulder splinter into a dozen pieces. He entire body screaming in agony, he weakly rolled onto his back and coughed out blood. He tried to move with his powers, but there wasn¡¯t enough energy left within him to move him more than a fraction of a pace at best.
¡°Killing me won¡¯t accomplish anything,¡± he gasped out, his one last attempt to talk some reason into her.
His words fell on deaf ears. ¡°Enough! Even if you¡¯re not her, you lying, cheating, torturing Esmae bastards are all the same!¡± Akhustal crowed, picking up her massive weapon from the ground behind her. ¡°I will cleanse this world of every one of your clan, starting with you!¡±
What had she just said?! A cold fury roared to life within Tehlmar as the Chos¡¯ declaration filled his ears. As the strength of his rage filled his body, his gaze traveled upwards from the woman¡¯s exultant expression to the club rising up for one final swing, to the ceiling that, just as he focused on it, began to fall in.
Crimson whips shot out from Tehlmar, his blood moving faster than he¡¯d ever made it move before, and wrapped around Akhustal¡¯s limbs and torso. With one final agonizing push, he threw himself towards the other end of the room as hard as he could. The two of them sailed through the air about fifteen paces just as many tons of rock came crashing down on their last position with an ear-splitting boom.
Tehlmar gasped in pain as he landed, his multitude of broken bones each lodging their own individual complaint within his mind, only for that gasp to be cut short as the large muscular woman landed on top of him.
For a second, the two of them just stared at each other before Akhustal climbed off of him. She took a glance back at the corner of the room, which was now completely filled with pieces of rubble ranging from the size of a fist to large enough to crush her flat, and looked back at him with confusion plainly written on her face. ¡°Why did-¡±
¡°Listen up,¡± he hissed, his raging anger the only thing sustaining him at this point. ¡°You want to hate me because your childhood hero turned out to be your hated enemy¡¯s brother? Whatever. You want to hate me because I betrayed your trust so I could save my home? Fine. But don¡¯t you ever, EVER, compare me to that evil, heartless, backstabbing bitch! Never! You got that?!¡±
The Chos blinked. ¡°What?¡±
¡°Gahaha, you stabbed her? But only once? Ahahahaha!¡± Akhustal Palebane guffawed as she reclined on a cushioned sofa in her lavish abode, a large mug of frothy ale in her one hand.
Using his only good arm, Tehlmar took a large gulp from his own stein, luxuriating in the cool soothing experience of a decent beverage running down his throat. ¡°Twice, actually, once in each leg,¡± he replied with a chuckle. ¡°You should have seen the look on her face after the second one. She thought I wouldn¡¯t do it.¡±
¡°Should have been through the heart,¡± the Chos chortled.
¡°Oh, if only. If I could have, I would have stabbed her a million times, and then maybe taken her body on a tour around the continent so everybody else could get their chance too.¡±
¡°You should still do that,¡± came the reply. ¡°Just make sure you head this way first.¡±
Tehlmar raised his beer up towards the Chos, who did the same. ¡°To Pyria Esmae,¡± he intoned. ¡°May she be found rotting in a ditch sooner rather than later.¡±
¡°Here, here!¡± the giant woman called. With practiced ease, she drained the rest of her mug, before twisting around to look towards the door of her chambers. ¡°TEPIN! MORE WINE!¡± she hollered.
Tehlmar smiled. Ahhh, alcohol: the great creator and destroyer of friendships, and also, thankfully, a great way to suppress the pain from numerous shattered bones and injured organs. His body would be working overtime to heal these over the next ten or so days.
¡°It¡¯s funny, for some reason it feels better to know she¡¯s always been like that,¡± the Chos continued. ¡°I always thought she just hated me in particular.¡±
¡°Oh, she definitely hates you more than everybody else,¡± Tehlmar clarified, flashing a knowing grin. ¡°You wanna know why?¡±
¡°Because I¡¯m Stragman, right? I¡¯m the leader of the ¡®savages¡¯ who attack you.¡±
¡°That¡¯s part of it, I¡¯m sure. But really it¡¯s something deeper: she¡¯s jealous.¡±
¡°What? Jealous?¡±
¡°All her life she¡¯s wanted to rule, but she can¡¯t because she¡¯s a woman-¡±
¡°A stupid-ass system if you ask me,¡± Akhustal chimed in. ¡°Who cares what you are, as long as you¡¯re the strongest?¡±
¡°-and then here you come along, some savage living in a forest, and you become the leader of the whole nation and not only does nobody oppose you, you get all the respect in the world. Your citizens love you. I mean, from my experience here, they practically worship you! She can¡¯t handle it, watching you live her dream right in front of her. It drives her up the wall.¡±
¡°So just by being here...¡±
¡°Yeah, you¡¯re causing her pain just by existing. Every day that you rule here is like stepping on a nail for her. She can¡¯t stand it.¡±
¡°Heh. Heheh. Hahahahaha!¡± The Chos could no longer contain herself and exploded with joyous laughter, which continued for a good while. In the middle of her outburst, the slight, silver-haired administrator entered the room, replaced their mugs with new full ones, and left before her boss had even finished laughing. Eventually, Palebane¡¯s mirth settled down and she wiped the joyous tears from her face with a smile that slowly faded into a detached sadness.
¡°Every time I look at you, I still can¡¯t believe that you were Jaquet. I just can¡¯t picture you and him as the same person.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll let you use one of those lie detecting animals you have if you want proof.¡±
¡°No, I believe you now,¡± she said, forlornly. ¡°It¡¯s just that I really looked up to him... you? Whatever.¡±
¡°I still don¡¯t understand why Jaquet the Quick, of all people, became your childhood hero instead of somebody better.¡±
¡°When I was a child, I was already strong,¡± the Chos explained. ¡°I killed my first ranutepo when I was ten, all by myself. It was... startlingly easy, really. Most beasts were, even then.¡±
Tehlmar whistled in admiration as he remembered his fight with the giant acid-spitting creature in the tunnels to the north. It had taken a lot of effort from him and his friends to take down the thing. The Stragmans later had praised him, telling him that it usually took a dozen or so Blous and maybe even a Hono as well to kill one. To think that a ten-year-old girl could do it on her own... well, actually it tracked perfectly with what he¡¯d seen of the Chos.
¡°But the price of that strength was that I was alone. The other kids were always terrified of me. They called me a freak and a monster and they avoided me always. I did not enjoy my childhood very much. But then, one day, I met a man who had fled to Stragma to escape a bounty, and he told me stories about his life as a mercenary traveling around the continent. One of the stories was about a man who was incredibly strong. He would wander the continent, moving from mercenary band to mercenary band alone... always alone. For the first time, I found out about somebody just like me.¡±
¡°I see...¡±
¡°From that point onward, I became the terror of the Marked community¡ªoh, ¡®Marked¡¯ is slang for people who flee here to escape bounties. There aren¡¯t too many of them, so they tend to band together a lot for comfort. Most of them live in the same areas and drink at bars run by Marked for Marked, that kind of thing. So when I was still young I¡¯d basically keep track as best I could of new Marked coming in from the outside and when I found some, I¡¯d go into the taverns and bug them for the latest stories about you.¡±
¡°Wait, how old were you?¡±
¡°I think I started doing this when I was twelve or thirteen? It didn¡¯t go well at first. A lot of ¡®get out of here, kid, the adults are drinking¡¯ and stuff like that. But after I beat them up a few times, they stopped giving me guff and it almost became a game for them. They¡¯d take bets to see how long the new people would last against me. I could always tell who the new arrivals were because they were the only people who didn¡¯t immediately go quiet when I walked in.¡±
She sighed and sank deeper into the cushions. ¡°Now when I look back on that time of my life, I can¡¯t help but think of how much of a fool I was. I¡¯ll never be able to look at it the same way again.¡±
¡°Did they help you back then? The stories about me?¡±
¡°Yeah, they helped a lot.¡±
¡°Then what¡¯s the problem? Look, I get how knowing the truth about who Jaquet really was might make it feel worthless now, but those stories obviously meant a lot to you growing up. Those feelings you had worked, so there¡¯s no reason to be ashamed of them. And besides, I don¡¯t think you connected with a lie.¡±
¡°How so?¡±
Tehlmar drained his cup in one large chug. ¡°I really was alone. Incredibly alone. I had no country, no family, no friends, no home. I had nothing. All those years of wandering about, never staying with a band for more than a year and whatnot? I didn¡¯t know it then, but when I look back on it now, I realize that, deep down, I was searching for something to end that terrible isolation. Something to make me feel like I had somewhere I belonged. The connection you made was real, and it warms my heart now to know that my suffering eased somebody else¡¯s. I¡¯m glad somebody got something out of it, because I sure didn¡¯t.¡±
Akhustal didn¡¯t say anything for a moment, instead just staring into her drink in thought. ¡°I guess you¡¯re right,¡± she said eventually. ¡°Because I¡¯m in a good mood, and in honor of our mutual hatred of your sister, I¡¯ll say that the help you gave me back then balances out what you did to ruin the invasion, alright? So I¡¯ll let you live and go free.¡±
¡°Wait, were you going to kill me after this anyway? After I fucking saved you and everything?¡±
¡°I was considering it. You caused the death of my husband and spoiled what could have been the greatest victory in Stragman history. Should I just forgive that?¡±
¡°We¡¯ve been over this, Akhustal,¡± Tehlmar retorted. ¡°Pyria killed him, not me. I didn¡¯t have anything to do with that. Besides, what would you have done in my position? Would you have kept quiet and invaded your own home and just helped slaughter your own people? Give me a break. It¡¯s not like I knew that Pyria had an old lady from another world who can fuck up your mind waiting for us on the other side. I just thought there¡¯d be some skirmishes and then, with the surprise lost, the army would retreat back into the forest and that would be that.¡±
The Chos glowered at him but didn¡¯t argue.
¡°Look, I get it,¡± Tehlmar continued. ¡°You¡¯re angry, and I¡¯m not going to tell you that you shouldn¡¯t be. But you need to understand that you¡¯re letting your emotions control you, and that¡¯s the worst thing you can do when Pyria is your enemy. She¡¯s a savant at using people¡¯s emotions against them¡ªI would know, she¡¯s done it to me more than I want to admit. Control yourself.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t treat me like I¡¯m a child!¡± Akhustal shot back. ¡°I¡¯m the Chos! Ten million people bow to me!¡±
¡°And yet none of them seem willing to tell you the truth!¡± Tehlmar sighed and rubbed his head with his good hand. ¡°Look, I¡¯m just... I¡¯ve lived a long time, and I¡¯ve made a lot of mistakes¡ªfar more than I¡¯d like to admit. You said you saw yourself in me when you were younger? Well, right now, I see myself in you. I see the young me: impulsive, angry, always carrying a grudge, and filled with the desire to lash out at things and people far beyond my reach. I¡¯m trying to tell you, don¡¯t make the same mistakes I did. Think. Don¡¯t let your emotions rule you. And most of all, when somebody tries to help you, don¡¯t reject them and definitely don¡¯t have them executed.¡±
¡°FINE! Enough already! I already said I wouldn¡¯t kill you.¡± She put her cup down. ¡°Enough idle talk for now. Let¡¯s get down to business and hear that message that you came all this way to deliver.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s start by stating that I believe that the Ubran Empire is a grave threat to this entire continent and needs to be dealt with before they can establish a hold on the rest of the continent. Would you agree?¡±
The Chos thought for a moment. ¡°I believe that a warrior always upholds their promises. When I was unable to honor the treaty to help defend against the Ubrans, I felt a shame greater than I have ever felt in my life. That being said, I cannot say that I fear them invading our lands. Yours, yes. Stragma, not so much.¡±
¡°I think you are underestimating them. Yes, this place is an incredible buffer and it will hold them off for now, but once there¡¯s nobody else to target, they will come for you and there will be nobody left to aid you. And that¡¯s not to mention the powerful weapons they could gain from their conquests. Right now, the Mother of Nightmares protects Drayhadan lands, but what if the Ubrans took her and used her offensively? What if others were as well?¡±
¡°Others?¡±
¡°Surely you realize I would know about your own superweapon. The one who¡¯s been causing such a mess for you these last few seasons? Something so publicly disruptive can¡¯t be hidden for long.¡±
¡°Tch!¡± the woman replied. ¡°Yeah...¡±
¡°Well, there¡¯s more where those came from. Reports are that the Ubrans have at least one, an unkillable reaper of the battlefield, stronger and faster than any Feeler in history.¡±
¡°Hoh? Sounds like a good fight.¡±
¡°Do you remember that young woman who was traveling with me when I arrived here the last time?¡±
¡°The adorable little girl who made explosives?¡± The woman smiled as she thought back to those days. ¡°Such a cutie! I almost wanted to adopt her and raise her as my own. A girl after my own heart.¡±
¡°No, the other one. Light skin, black hair, clung to Arlette a lot.¡±
¡°...nope, don¡¯t remember anybody like that. Is she strong?¡±
Tehlmar snorted. ¡°I think she might be the weakest person I¡¯ve ever met, including many invalid elderly. I¡¯d wager that your assistant could beat her in a fight.¡±
¡°Tepin? You¡¯re joking.¡±
¡°Oh, if only. You¡¯d understand if you knew her. But even she gave me a bad feeling. I could never really put it into words well enough to convince Arlette, but something was always off about her. The point is, she¡¯s one of them too and we just randomly came across her in Kutrad one day. Nobody knows how many others are wandering around this world, still undiscovered. And then... there¡¯s the Otharian.¡±
¡°Hmmm. He seemed very strong, yes. You think he is one of these superweapons as well?¡±
¡°If he can take over an entire country on his own in just a matter of days, even if it is just Otharia, what other explanation is there? I¡¯ve heard he can make metal flow like water, and uses it to build bizarre, powerful devices that can do things long thought impossible. You ever hear of a metal Observer who can do something like that?¡±
Akhustal frowned. ¡°I have not. Metal Observers are incredibly rare but none of the ones I know of can build anything more complicated than a blade.¡±
¡°Right, so he is surely something else. But that¡¯s not all. Did you know that he has even conquered flight?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°It¡¯s true. I haven¡¯t seen it myself, of course, but from what I¡¯ve been told, he created a massive object that moves through the sky and floats in the air like a fish in water. Currently, he sends it to Crirada and uses it to drop his metal warbeasts. Now imagine if the Ubrans got their hands on that. Imagine not just one flying device, but a hundred, each easily floating right over the forest that you count on to protect you. Imagine them dropping soldiers, metal warbeasts, and maybe even other superweapons down on your city. And imagine there being nobody else left to come to your aid.¡±
Akhustal Palebane didn¡¯t respond for several moments. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t have come here without a proposition for this,¡± she said finally. ¡°What is your solution?¡±
¡°There are plans underway to turn Drayhadal away from the non-aggression treaty signed centuries ago and launch an attack on the Ubrans while they still struggle with what remains of Eterium. However, such a plan will never succeed as long as the shadow of Stragma looms over us. Too many in my country still see you as a greater threat than Ubrus. I was sent here to negotiate a secret treaty with you: a temporary truce that can be shown to be durable enough that those in Drayhadal who waver will fall on the side of attacking the Ubrans.¡±
¡°And who sent you here to talk for them? If it were the faction in power now, you would not be here in secret. So who would have the power to back up such a commitment?¡±
¡°...Pyria.¡±
The Chos leapt to her feet, her eyes blazing with fury. ¡°What?! How can I believe a single word that comes out of your mouth when you obey the very woman you claim to despise?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t ¡®obey¡¯ her,¡± Tehlmar clarified, ¡°we just have mutually aligned goals for once. If there was a single other option, I would have killed her long ago and taken it instead. This isn¡¯t like before.¡±
¡°How can you say that, after all your talk?¡±
¡°Because, for once, I¡¯m using her instead. All of this, she thinks it¡¯s her idea. It¡¯s not.¡± He smiled knowingly. ¡°She thinks I¡¯m just some clueless idiot who doesn¡¯t realize what she¡¯s doing, and I see no reason to correct that misconception. She sent me down here to get me out of the picture. If I could somehow negotiate something with you, good, and if by chance I ended up dead, well, all the better. But what she doesn¡¯t realize is that I have my own ideas.¡±
¡°Do you now?¡± she asked skeptically.
¡°Yes. Her idea was that I would ensure that you wouldn¡¯t be invading Drayhadal so our army would be free to strike the Ubrans. Of course,¡± he added quickly as Akhustal opened her mouth, ¡°we would be leaving the Mother of Nightmares behind to keep you from getting any silly ideas.¡±
The Chos closed her mouth with a frown.
¡°The thing is, Pyria will always see you as savages. In her mind, the best plan is to just get you out of the way. I know better. I¡¯ve been here before. I¡¯ve seen just how sophisticated you are, in your own way. That¡¯s why, instead of coming to convince you to stay put, I¡¯m here to tell you that you should strike the Ubrans with us.¡±
¡°A joint attack? Between our two nations? You must be crazy.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve seen enough shifting loyalties on the battlefield to know that it¡¯s possible for two enemies to put their hatred aside for just a moment when it benefits them both. I¡¯m not talking some sort of long-term alliance. I¡¯m just talking about a single operation.¡±
¡°And why would I agree to that? If you¡¯re going to strike the Ubrans, why not just sit back and let you take all the losses? As much as I hate to admit it, we are not capable of something like a large scale attack right now with our current resources.¡±
¡°Because I¡¯m not sure that the Drayhadan army is enough to win, first of all. They¡¯ve always been more of a defensive force, and don¡¯t have the numbers the Ubrans have even if you added in the Eterians. But more so, because an attack would solve your resource problems, at least for a while. Think about it. The Ubrans are sustaining massive numbers and have all sorts of supplies and resources both with their army and coming through the Divide every day. I know it¡¯s a risk, but if you commit, we can defeat them and you can pillage them to your heart¡¯s delight. That should give you some breathing room to help you deal with your own internal problems.¡±
¡°And what would you be doing while we are risking our lives?¡±
¡°I¡¯d be on the front lines, just like you. We both know that¡¯s where I belong.¡±
¡°I need some time to ponder this,¡± said the giant woman. ¡°One last thing, for now: what do you get out of all this? And what does she get out of it?¡±
¡°The continued survival of our nation isn¡¯t enough?¡± Tehlmar asked innocently.
¡°Don¡¯t take me for a fool. She wouldn¡¯t go this far without the promise of something more.¡±
¡°She gets to consolidate power and influence in the Drayhadan government. And more importantly perhaps, she won¡¯t have to worry about my threat to her rule over the Esmae.¡±
¡°Even if you survive?¡±
¡°Yes. Because if I get what I want out of this, I¡¯ll be doing something very, very stupid once it¡¯s all over.¡±
Chapter 70
A blaring cry echoed through all of Wroetin and the other cities of Otharia, its harrowing sound bringing forth agitation from the assembled masses. From inside the House of Manys, Blake watched the various crowds¡¯ reactions through the projections with satisfaction. He¡¯d always loved the sound of those World War Two-era air raid sirens¡ªthey carried an alarming urgency that other klaxons just couldn¡¯t quite nail¡ªand so he¡¯d done his best to mimic the memorable timbre. With a thought, he cut the circuit and the wails cut off, bringing the attention of the crowd before him, and those watching via Many all across the country, back to him.
¡°The system is simple,¡± he explained. ¡°There will be warning sirens placed on city walls at each of the four cardinal directions. The sound will indicate what direction the threat is coming from. When you hear the siren, leave the city by running away from the sound. That¡¯s all there is to it. If all the sirens go off at once, that means that the threat is already inside the city. In that case, leave the city by the closest exit.¡±
He paused for a moment to make sure everybody had heard and digested the instructions.
¡°It is likely that you will never hear this sound again in your lifetime. Still, the fact remains that this world is a dangerous place. It is prudent to be ready even for the least likely situations. If you hear the sirens, do not hesitate. Leave immediately for your own safety.¡±
Once again he paused to let his message sink in. Looking out at the people of Otharia, he took note of the faces of the onlookers. In their eyes he saw the same fear he¡¯d seen back at the beginning of his conquest, simply more muted and concealed than before. Yes, he¡¯d beaten them into submission, but that was all. They did not follow him or cheer him for the great accomplishments he¡¯d already achieved; the fact that he¡¯d provided great improvements to their lives, such as creating the first winter without major food shortages since anybody could remember or drastically improving the sanitation in the major cities, still did not override that fear.
Well, Blake didn¡¯t really care. Soon enough, nobody would be able to deny the truth. He¡¯d said it before: he would hold their head in the water until they had no choice but to drink. If this amount of advancements wasn¡¯t enough, then he¡¯d just have to force more into their lives, starting with this one.
¡°Last, but certainly not least,¡± he continued, ¡°many of you have surely noticed the strange paths being built across the nation. These are train tracks, and they will change the way people move about Otharia forever. Once again, the system is simple: a train runs at regular intervals between all the cities in the nation. Simply wait at a station and when the train stops, get inside. Now you will be able to travel from city to city in just a few hours, instead of days!¡±
His ears caught a smattering of surprised murmurs and he smiled beneath his mask.
¡°For those in Wroetin, there will be a celebration two days from now to mark the first journey of this triumphant new mode of transportation. I look forward to seeing you there. That is all. You are dismissed.¡±
With a wave, Blake signaled for the transmission to be cut off and walked out, his loud tromping through the halls now accompanied by the clacks of a skitter¡¯s feet as it dutifully followed behind him. This skitter looked much different than the standard one, more resembling a large cube with legs than it did its brethren. Blake didn¡¯t much care, though. Function was the primary goal with this unfortunate necessity.
Several minutes later, Blake¡¯s journey came to an end in a large, long chamber down in the bowels of his fortress. Filled with a large supply of cantacrenyx and tucrenyx, assorted half-finished skitters lining the walls, and what could only be described as a bootleg firing range taking up the far half of the room. It was here that Blake spent most of his time these days.
WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!
As if on cue, an alarm¡ªdifferent than the one from the speech but almost equally as unwelcome to Blake¡¯s ears¡ªscreamed out from the skitter shadowing his every move.
¡°Fuck, already?!¡± Blake groused with a click of his tongue. ¡°At least she waited until the speech was finished.¡±
The robotic cube quickly opened up, the simple geometric shape unfolding to reveal a tri-screened battle command station. Immediately the screens powered on and lit up, revealing an overhead view of Crirada on the middle screen. Several readouts listing skitters and an array of readouts filled the others.
Sitting down, he zoomed in on the figure highlighted in red on one side of the screen, his eye twitching in recognition. There she stood, several minutes away from the city walls, swarms of Ubrans behind her: that damnable woman. Of course, Blake knew what he¡¯d see as soon as that alarm had gone off; the battlestation skitter only made that particularly grating sound whenever she appeared. He¡¯d spent several real-time hours in Hyper Mode working on algorithms to spot targeted people by their face, body proportions, and outfit just to make sure that this woman wouldn¡¯t be able to catch him off guard ever again.
Just the sight of her made him subconsciously grit his teeth. How many times had he killed her now, forty? Fifty? No, it had to be at least sixty times at this point. Blake didn¡¯t get it. How did she keep coming back from the dead? It shouldn¡¯t have been possible!
It was almost funny, really. In a world where people could throw fire and shape stone and do all manner of crazy, magical things, his nemesis somehow turned out to be just a woman with a big sword and a stubborn refusal to stay dead. Not that she couldn¡¯t do some crazy things herself. A plethora of destroyed robots could attest quite well to just how much she was capable of.
The two were locked in a seemingly endless cycle. Blake had no doubt that he could absolutely crush the black-haired woman, were he to just throw his entire army at her all at once. Unfortunately, while nice to imagine, such an option wasn¡¯t a realistic possibility.
It seemed obvious, especially after today, that his control over the country still depended largely upon the presence of his skitters throughout the nation. Were he to pull his robots from the cities and the fields and send them on their way north, how long would his rule last? A few days?
Perhaps just as importantly, there existed another threat to Otharia¡¯s safety, one that he also couldn¡¯t ignore. Just beyond the Eterian border stood a ramshackle city of desperate refugees fleeing the invasion. By his estimates, based on the overhead pictures he¡¯d taken, there were several hundred thousand people squatting on his border, waiting for an opportunity to get inside.
As much as he felt for the poor people running from the violence, there was no way that he could allow what amounted to a de facto invasion force into Otharia just like that. He didn¡¯t have enough food to feed them all and the Otharians themselves would never be able to handle the sudden shock. The people of the nation had been indoctrinated for so long with the idea that all outsiders were evil that there was no way they¡¯d be willing to welcome a sudden flood of them. After all, one merely had to look at the way they¡¯d reacted just to him.
The end result was that, for the moment at least, he was stuck with whatever he could send via zeppelin, one trip at a time. To make matters worse, he also needed to include ammunition for his robots and even some food to keep the still breathing defenders from just keeling over when hit by a light breeze. It was a delicate balancing act, one which he was still getting used to.
Somehow, he and the woman had settled into a strange equilibrium where neither of them seemed capable of making any progress against one another. Blake would make improvements and modifications to his skitters, while she would fight back through improving her skills and equipment and by working together with the rest of the Ubran invading force. In all of his life, Blake had never seen somebody improve so much in so little time. The woman seemed to get stronger and faster and harder to hit every day.
Before the Ubrans arrived, Blake began as he always did by divvying up his units. He typically assigned around eighty percent of his troops to focus on the woman while letting the other twenty percent assist the Eterians defending the walls. As much as he wanted to focus entirely on stopping his nemesis, there was no point if the city fell while he had his back turned.
With several clicks of his mouse, Blake selected the eighty percent group and marked the woman as their target. This way was obviously not as efficient as using his powers, but he liked it better. It brought a sense of nostalgia, reminding him of those late nights back in high school when he¡¯d stay up too late playing whatever the hottest real-time strategy game was at the time.
Blake¡¯s unit composition varied from day to day as older units were destroyed and replaced with new varieties in Blake¡¯s constant quest to perfect his machines and finally achieve true victory. For this skirmish, Blake¡¯s eighty percent consisted of three different types of units: five gatling skitters, two heavy battle skitters, and three sniper skitters.
Gatling skitters were a concept he¡¯d originally designed all the way back before his initial conquest. These variants, greatly improved and refined compared to their predecessors, had become a mainstay of his forces in the past few days after a highly successful trial. Focusing entirely on raw output, they lacked any real up close defensive measures, the crystals and parts required to operate such defenses sacrificed to make room both for more ammo and the cantacrenyx crystals needed to power so many shots without slowing down. Of course, it didn¡¯t matter that you had poor defense against up close enemies if nobody could get anywhere near you without being turned into swiss cheese.
In essence, Blake had decided that if the woman could heal a bullet wound, then let her heal a hundred instead. She couldn¡¯t dodge them all, right? So far, the answer had turned out to be that no, she could not dodge them all, but she could still avoid far more than he¡¯d hoped. He would need to increase the turning speed and compensate in the targeting algorithm next time he updated the design, but they were more than good enough for now. Even a few hits could sometimes open her up for a potential snipe, or perhaps a stream of rounds through the skull would be good enough to do the job on their own.
Heavy battle skitters, meanwhile, were a brand new, never-battle-tested addition to his forces. The oversized skitters specialized in defense, horsepower, and close-range fighting using their combination of incredibly thick armor and an abundance of reinforced melee implements. They still had guns, but that wasn¡¯t their real focus. Their job was to tank the woman¡¯s assault for as long as possible, blocking her movements and slowing her down for easier sniping. If possible, they were to use their chainsaws, nets, claws, and any other implements in their arsenal to either capture the woman alive or, when that likely proved impossible, to survive until the end of the battle and secure her corpse before the Ubrans could retrieve it.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of his duels with his adversary was the fact that even though he ¡°won¡± every battle, they never felt like a victory because he always failed to stop her from coming back. That woman always seemed to be able to take out enough of his units that when she finally fell he wouldn¡¯t be able to stop the Ubrans from absconding with her remains. That didn¡¯t stop him from trying, of course, but strangely enough, the Ubran troops seemed willing to sacrifice a few hundred of their lives each time if it meant retrieving their supersoldier. Every time, Blake would be tempted to send his remaining units after them, but he always held back. His skitters were strong, after all, but they weren¡¯t invincible. They could fall if enough Scyrians swarmed them at once, especially once they¡¯d run out of bullets. The heavy battle skitter was designed to change that balance. With them in his forces, hopefully he¡¯d be able to fend off the Ubrans and secure true victory once and for all.
Last, but most definitely not least, were the stars of the show: the sniper skitters. Slow firing, slow moving relative to other models, and limited in function, his snipers had nevertheless been the units to deliver victory in the vast majority of the previous battles. Unlike the other skitters, which used a constant stream of energy to fire their weapons at a much closer range, the sniper skitters needed to build up power in a crystalline capacitor of sorts and discharge all the accumulated energy into a single supersonic shot. The result was a gun that only fired about once every minute but struck with such speed, power, and accuracy that they¡¯d become his greatest weapons against the woman.
After the first few encounters, it had become clear that the only way to take the woman down for more than a few seconds was to completely destroy her head, a task that seemed to get harder all the time. A barrage of normal shots could manage it, and his recent experiments with shotgun rounds seemed promising, but for now, his best chance of accomplishing the deed remained a well-placed massive sniper shell traveling well beyond the speed of sound. It didn¡¯t hurt that, being perched far away on top of Crirada¡¯s great wall, they weren¡¯t being destroyed every battle either.
Blake¡¯s game plan was rather simple. The non-sniper skitters essentially did combat with the woman as best they could, using their various capabilities to harass her and hopefully take her down on their own. Should that fail, as it usually did, they would at least occupy her enough that she would eventually leave herself open to a long-range shot through the skull. It was the best he could manage with the delay in his video feed, where everything he saw was several seconds behind reality. Unfortunately, there seemed to be hard limits to what he could do with his ethereal communication technology.
Speaking of which, Blake watched the feed as the woman entered range. Immediately, Blake¡¯s three sniper bots opened fire from the top of the wall. As if to show their usefulness, one of the three sniper skitters managed to strike home even at the edge of their range, blowing off the woman¡¯s right leg from the thigh down. Still, in this case it only served to show the challenge that Blake faced. One leg suddenly missing, the woman tumbled to the ground but, like always, she seemed almost unfazed by the grievous bodily harm inflicted upon her. Using her free arm, she quickly threw herself back up off the ground and restored her leg before she even landed.
With that, the battle truly began. The woman rushed forward, swerving back and forth like a hyperactive mosquito as she closed the distance with astounding speed. The rest of the Ubrans charged after her. Meanwhile, Blake¡¯s units emerged from the west gate¡¯s tunnel, fanning out into battle formation.
The woman barreled towards the heavy skitters, using the terrain¡ªan uneven plain filled with large craters caused by self-destructing skitters¡ªto keep her exposure to the minimum. Blake always found it significant that the woman ran towards his forces instead of trying to go around them. Perhaps, he surmised, she considered his robots to be as great a threat to the people in the Ubran camp behind her as he considered her. Regardless of her thoughts, this was the way he liked it. It was easier if he didn¡¯t have to chase her down.
Blake began taking notes in his head as the woman came into contact with the heavy combat skitter, looking for weaknesses to improve. It swiped at her with three of its six chainsaws, each from a different direction, and she countered by spinning out of the way and using the force to lash out with her giant black sword. The weapon cleaved cleanly through the arm holding one of the chainsaws, drawing a frustrated mutter out of the former engineer. That blade fascinated him. It was obscenely sharp and never seemed to dull, and could somehow withstand even full-power sniper shots. If only he could get his hands on it to study...
The woman was not yet finished. She continued her spin, whirling around to strike the closest leg. The oversized blade cut well into the armored appendage but came to a halt about two-thirds of the way through. With a whoop of delight, Blake began pumping his fist in the air. In all the interactions between his units and the woman, the biggest weakness his skitters had was her ability to sever their legs, leaving them largely helpless. He¡¯d tried buffing the armor several times before, but nothing had worked until now.
With what looked like a snarl, the woman ripped her blade out from the leg and pulled it back for a second swipe, but the skitter acted quickly and fired its reinforced tucrenyx net at her. The move seemed to catch her off guard, as she barely ever reacted before the metal mesh wrapped around her, pinning her legs and arms to her sides and dropping her to the ground. Blake whooped some more. This was going so much better than he¡¯d even hoped!
Seemingly eager to contribute, the closest gatling skitter managed to maneuver around the obstacle the heavy battle skitter represented and spun up its dual guns. A moment later, just as the woman was ripping herself free, two streams of bullets ripped into her, turning her body into swiss cheese. However, Blake didn¡¯t whoop this time. He¡¯d seen this often enough already to know how it ended. In fact, he grit his teeth as he watched his heavy battle skitter¡¯s chainsaws swipe out, all remaining five this time, only for three of them to swing right through the hail of bullets. The impacts tore the relatively delicate saws into scrap metal.
Note One: improve skitter coordination.
Suddenly the heavy combat skitter lurched to the side as the woman, leaking blood from a myriad of holes, broke out of the net and struck the damaged leg a second time in the same spot, finishing the job. As quick as could be, she swung again, lopping off the skitter¡¯s two remaining chainsaws before diving behind one of its remaining good legs to avoid the gatling barrage. All the while, red smoke continually coalesced around her, filling in her wounds with incredible quickness.
WHAM! A sniper shot plowed into her shoulder and blew off the arm that held her sword as a second just missed her head and slammed into the nearby dirt. The impact nearly sent her reeling, but she held on to the leg with an iron grip using her other arm. Forced to choose between the snipers and the gatling, she chose the gatling and moved to the other side of the leg.
What followed was a sort of scene that Blake had become depressingly familiar with, the sort that made him want to tear his hair out. As the heavy battle skitter struggled to free itself from the woman¡¯s grip, she reformed her destroyed arm and shoulder, finishing just as the gatling skitter finished repositioning itself. The high-volume guns whirling at full speed, the robot resumed emptying its entire contents into its opponent, but the woman didn¡¯t budge. She latched on to the leg with both arms and began to pull, her body literally shaking as round after round plunged into her flesh. But no matter how many bullets slammed into her, the mist seemed to rebuild her just as fast and she just would not fall. Slowly, painfully, the leg began to rip. Blake cringed as he watched. There was no sound in his video feed, but his mind filled in the missing screech of stressed metal for him all the same.
Soon enough, not even the massive, three-foot-wide and twelve-foot-long appendage could hold out. The skitter fell to the side as the woman tore the leg free. Immediately, she turned and threw it at the gatling skitter with a mighty heave. The skitter dodged to the side, but the projectile bought the woman just enough time to grab her sword from the ground nearby and rocket towards the offending robot. By this time, other gatling skitters had managed to find a clear line to her and began to fire, adding their rounds to the storm of bullets already heading her way, but none of them hit home. The superhuman Feeler juked about like crazy, avoiding not just all of their projectiles but also another sniper shot as she dashed towards her next target.
Blake sighed as he watched the woman slice through both of the gatling skitter¡¯s gun emplacements. The legs were the next to go, rendering the formerly deadly machine now little more than a lump of worthless metal. With several clicks of his mouse, he set both of the legless robots to begin charging for self-destruction.
Note Two: consider dialing back gatling skitter¡¯s complete focus on guns, ammunition, and firepower in favor of improving close range defense a bit more.
The other heavy battle skitter bore down upon her by this point, its gun firing and its close-range weaponry lashing out. Unlike the first time, this time the woman took the weapons head-on, slicing through a saw as it cut deep into her midsection, ripping out a claw with her bare hand, even thrusting her sword out to catch the net before it could reach her. She moved with inhuman speed as she tore through the large array of implements. Just a moment later the skitter was largely neutered. Blake ground his teeth in anger.
Note Three: while the skitter¡¯s body armor seemed capable of standing against her, at least for a much longer duration than his other designs, the actual weapons, though reinforced, still weren¡¯t strong enough to make a difference if she was ready for them. Improve arm and weapon durability or consider scrapping idea and going in another direction. Perhaps harpoons? Or bolases?
Then, Blake¡¯s jaw dropped as the woman sliced through one of the heavy battle skitter¡¯s legs. Not only had she done it with a single swing this time, she¡¯d done it with only one hand! Had she just not been trying the first time? And why had she only used one hand this time? Was she mocking him? Rubbing it in? That damnable woman! He would enjoy killing her one day.
Swiftly, the last of the heavy battle skitters fell to the ground, limbless. With a growl of aggravation, he triggered its self-destruct sequence as well, only to watch as the woman rammed her free hand into the robot¡¯s torso and lift it off the ground! What followed made him want to facepalm at his own stupidity. Holding the skitter in front of her, the woman used its body as a shield! The other gatling skitters¡¯ bullets bounced harmlessly off the thick body armor, allowing the woman to quickly advance of each of them and take them out one by one. Meanwhile, the sniper skitters had been programmed to avoid shooting through the bodies of their teammates and couldn¡¯t get a clean bead on her exact location, so, for the most part, they held their fire!
Note Four: Scrap heavy battle skitter concept. Provides too much utility to the enemy.
It was then that something finally went his way. The woman had long gotten used to the general timing for how long it took for his robots to explode, and as if to prove it she tossed away the remains of the heavy battle skitter just before it erupted. Her timing proved to be correct, but what she hadn¡¯t accounted for was that the heavy variant required larger crystals, which meant a more powerful, larger kaboom... and she was still unwittingly in range.
With great force, the heavy battle skitter erupted, sending incredible amounts of tucrenyx shrapnel throughout the entire area around it. A large amount of said shrapnel buried itself deep inside the woman¡¯s body, sending her stumbling back in pain and surprise. Caught off guard, she was momentarily open, and Blake¡¯s prized sniper skitters were ready. Three rounds were fired, and three of them struck home. The woman¡¯s head seemed to almost evaporate from the high-speed impacts.
This was it, Blake realized. The heavy battle skitter had gone off before the woman had been able to finish off all his units. He still had one fully functional gatling skitter! While not equipped for close-range self-defense, the unit did possess a set of two small claws for grabbing objects. All he had to do was grab the woman and her sword now, and maybe he could end all this!
Seeing their hero fall, the Ubrans charged forward to valiantly retrieve her remains. While they continued to assault the walls elsewhere, the Ubran troops generally gave the woman and his units a wide berth. After all, they¡¯d just get in her way and probably die. But now that she¡¯d fallen, a large group of them charged forward, racing for the spot where she lay.
Blake wasn¡¯t about to let that happen. With a click and a drag, he set the group as the skitter¡¯s new targets, and the robot¡¯s upper body rotated towards them. Bullets began to fly while his skitter closed the gap between it and the fallen woman. Blake nearly cackled with glee as he saw the Ubrans begin to fall. He¡¯d finally won!
A volley of rocks and other projectiles hit the skitter from the front, causing it to stumble slightly. What was this? A second group was coming in from the other side! With great dread, Blake realized another of his follies. In an attempt to maintain balance and stability, he¡¯d mounted the pair of gatling cannons on opposite sides of a swiveling upper body. While they could both modify their angle slightly, they were largely locked into place facing the same direction because they¡¯d only really been designed to both fire at the same target. This hadn¡¯t been a problem until now, but suddenly he was in a position where his unit could only fire at one of the two groups at a time!
Blake was now faced with a choice. Risk his last remaining gatling skitter, a highly valuable unit, on the chance that he could perhaps put an end to this once and for all, or retreat and save his forces? Quickly he calculated the variables.
¡°Shit!¡± His skitter wouldn¡¯t likely be able to escape with the woman in time, even if it managed to pick her and the sword up cleanly on its first attempt. There looked to be at least a thousand soldiers converging on that point, easily enough to take down his robot with sheer numbers alone. He had a ten percent chance at success at best. He ordered the skitter to retreat.
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BANG! The battlestation rocked as Blake slammed his arm down upon it in fury. So close! So fucking close!
Note Five: Fuck the Ubrans. And fuck that woman. That damnable woman. Fuck her with a rake.
With a sigh, he set about repairing the battlestation and working on new skitters. The battle would be over soon and he had many new modifications to consider.
WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!
Blake jerked awake with a start as his battlestation blared out its alarm through the darkness, his mind swimming in a sea of half-asleep discombobulation. He groaned as he felt his back spasm from the sudden awkward movement. With a thought, the lights slowly brightened as he formed the exoskeleton around his lower body and pushed himself into a sitting position on the bed¡¯s edge. To his right, a clock blinked ¡°2:41 AM¡±. Blake blinked right back, rubbing his eyes in exhausted disbelief.
Seriously? That fucking woman was attacking again after already striking that morning? He¡¯d just gotten to bed a few hours ago!
Luckily for Blake, his latest shipment of skitters had arrived at Crirada earlier that night, including something rather unusual this time, so he didn¡¯t need to worry about fending that woman off with just a gatling skitter, three sniper skitters, and his weaker old skitter models. However, the Flying Toaster had embarked on its delivery mission a little before the morning skirmish, so, unfortunately, he hadn¡¯t been able to tailor the next shipment to fill the holes left by the last one. He¡¯d have to make do with three heavy battle skitters, two gatling skitters, and two prototypes of his new surprise. Not an amazing loadout, to be sure, but something he could still work with.
The fight began much like it had the time before. The woman rushed towards his units, this time specifically targeting his heavy battle skitters as he expected. However, Blake was ready for such tactics this time. He held one of his heavies back and sent the other two forward, each with a prototype trailing right behind, waiting for the woman to choose a target and act. She did, closing in on the one on the right and engaging with its assortment of chainsaws and other implements. As she did so, the prototype quickly scampered around its oversized bodyguard and charged at her.
The woman turned and saw a boxy skitter heading towards her. The robot was small relative to its cousins, perhaps a bit taller and wider than a large man but no more than that. Given the small, stubby legs attached to the bottom of an upright rectangular body, one would be led to wonder how it didn¡¯t tip over. But Blake didn¡¯t care about any of that right now¡ªit was a prototype after all. What he cared about was what happened next.
The woman slashed her giant blade towards the prototype in a horizontal arc, and at the same time, the robot opened the panels on its body and emptied everything it had towards her. But this unit didn¡¯t have bullets inside it. It had crushers. Unlike the large original versions, these smaller ones were just big enough to wrap around a face or an arm, but they were crushers nonetheless.
The woman reeled back as the dozens of the powerful traps clamped onto various parts of her body. Blake smiled a predatory grin. He¡¯d figured it out! Sure, she could take out large things like his skitters with her massive sword, but what about swarms of smaller things? Those couldn¡¯t be sliced in two so easily.
Flailing about, the woman reached up and ripped off one crusher that had managed to grab a hold of her head and wrap around her face almost like a facehugger from the Alien movies. The trap came off, blood staining its thin but strong appendages, just as all three sniper bots fired and Blake¡¯s jaw dropped to the floor. Two shots were slightly off. One drove into her left shoulder, while the other plowed through her upper torso and through her heart. Yet what caused Blake¡¯s disbelief was the third shot.
Quickly, he rewound the footage and played the bit in slow motion. The bullet had been on target, heading straight for her skull, but suddenly her head had literally rotated ninety degrees so that her ear touched her shoulder. No, it had rotated more than ninety degrees to avoid that bullet. Zooming in, he could see where the vertebrae were bent so hard that they formed a literal perpendicular edge. She¡¯d twisted her head so violently to avoid the shot that she¡¯d literally broken her own neck! What in the world was this crazy-
All thought in Blake¡¯s mind came to a screeching halt as a fierce spike of agony suddenly shot up his spine and dropped him to the floor. No! Of all the times for an attack, why did one have to come now?!
Gritting his teeth through the unbearable torment, Blake pulled himself up to his knees and leaned his upper body against the battlestation as best he could. The world swam around him and he could barely make out the screens in front of him through the haze of pain. Still, the fight had to go on!
As he refocused on the images, he saw the woman powering through the concentrated fire of three gatling skitters, tanking the brunt of two of them with her regenerative abilities while blocking the third¡¯s stream with the broad side of her blade. As quickly as his shaking hands could manage, he sent the second prototype and heavy battle skitter pair her way while activating a special setting on one of his snipers.
The engagement between the woman and the pair began with the same flow as the one before. The woman went to town on the heavy battle skitter¡¯s weapons while the prototype crusher skitter maneuvered its way over to her. That was when events took a different fork in the road. This time, the woman was ready for the prototype and its contents. However, she wasn¡¯t ready for the sniper bullet that came ripping through the heavy¡¯s armor when she least expected it.
After the last skirmish, Blake had added a new setting to his sniper skitters¡¯ behavior routines. When activated, it told the robot to shoot the target whenever possible, even if the shot was blocked by an allied unit. If she were ever to use a skitter as a shield again, any sniper with that setting activated would fire at her regardless... just like now.
Every nerve ending in Blake¡¯s body felt like it was on fire, but he could not let himself look away. The bullet¡¯s force had largely dissipated as it went through the thick metal shell of the heavy battle skitter, but enough momentum still remained to ram into the woman¡¯s thigh and embed itself deep into her muscle. Caught unprepared by the sudden hit, the woman lost her balance and stumbled. Then the crushers fell upon her.
This time, to Blake¡¯s great relief, the combination was enough to disorient her fully. The heavy battle skitter quickly moved out of the way, and the other two snipers did what they were designed to do. The woman fell, headless once again.
The moment he saw the woman fall, the resolve keeping him off the floor vanished and he collapsed in an awkward heap of flesh and metal. The fortress trembled as he laid there shaking, panting, sweating, and crying.
As the pain raced through his very being, the small part of him that was still lucid noted that this was the perfect time for him to seize the woman. For perhaps the first time in many days, he¡¯d managed to take the woman down without losing most of his units. He¡¯d easily be able to fend off the charging Ubrans right now if he could only get up again.
Yet, to his immeasurable bitterness, he no longer had it in him to seize this opportunity. He couldn¡¯t think, he couldn¡¯t move, he could barely even breathe. That damnable woman would escape once more, and this time there was only his own weakness to blame.
It took over a Scyrian hour before Blake had recovered enough to even sit up. This attack had been easily one of the worst he¡¯d ever experienced, no doubt exacerbated by his own actions during it. He didn¡¯t know if this latest attack had been caused by the shock of watching the woman basically kill herself to avoid the sniper¡¯s bullet, or the lack of sleep, or just the general wear his body had been sustaining every day since his entry into the conflict. All he knew was that one day that damnable woman might win their rivalry through attrition just by being the last of the two still standing.
He needed to end it. He knew, deep inside, that this wasn¡¯t something he could keep doing forever. But still, he could not bring himself to throw his other troops onto the battlefield. The cost would just be too great for everything he¡¯d been working towards this whole time. Unless...
There were a few areas that he could borrow some skitters from, right? Quickly he walked over to his standard terminal and brought up a map of Otharia. With a click, he activated an overlay showing population densities, or at least the best estimates that Leo could provide him. With a second click, he brought up another overlay showing his skitter deployments. Yes, there were a few places where he could skim off a robot or two. It would take a few days, but if he really pushed the zeppelin to its absolute limits, he¡¯d be able to increase the size of his force in Crirada by another perhaps twenty skitters¡ªnothing mind-blowing, especially since these were older models, but certainly a force more capable of swarming that damnable woman and still having enough left over to capture her and end this farce once and for all.
Actually... there was one more source of skitters he could throw in, while he was at it. After he¡¯d finished the construction of the sewers in Wroetin, Blake had assigned several skitters to patrol the tunnels and keep any unauthorized people out. So far, they hadn¡¯t been needed; not a single person had tried to enter the sewers on their own. And who could blame them? There was nothing down there but human waste. With a click, he assigned those skitters to the new force as well.
Blake scrolled through page after page of data, periodically rubbing his head to ease the stress migraine threatening to break out inside his skull. No matter how he formatted it or how he presented it, the data made no sense. Well, to be honest with himself, it was very likely that some of that data meant a whole lot to somebody, but that somebody was not him.
Blake¡¯s forte was mechanics, electronics, and programming. It was not chemistry, it was not biochemistry, and it was most definitely not theoretical physics. When creating the special drones designed to collect data from the ¡°blighted area¡± up in that godforsaken city, he hadn¡¯t known just what sort of data to collect, so he¡¯d simply decided to collect every type of data he could and hope to figure it out later.
The end result was a massive block of unintelligible numbers that he had absolutely no idea how to interpret. That didn¡¯t stop him from trying his best anyhow. Whenever he had a spare moment, he¡¯d open up the latest numbers and look them all over, hoping that this would be the day when he¡¯d begin to understand what any of it meant on a deeper level.
Something was definitely happening, that was for sure. Certain metrics featured exponential decay, while others fell almost linearly, while still others seemed to fluctuate randomly between two extremes. Overall, it seemed like something was slowly fading away, almost like radioactive decay, but what was it and would it help point him a way home? He¡¯d thought so before, but now he felt doubtful about the entire concept.
WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!
With a sigh, Blake closed the data and turned around to find his battlestation skitter fully powered up and ready to go. First the previous morning, then last night, and now the following evening? That was three times in two days. Had something happened on the Ubran side? They attacked fairly constantly, but never this often in so short a time.
Blake¡¯s eyes focused in on the red dot signifying the woman. Something wasn¡¯t right. Usually, when the alarm went off, she¡¯d be a lot closer to the city walls, but this time she seemed to have stopped advancing well beyond even sniper range.
Confused, he zoomed in the video feed to the more up-close view he liked to use when watching the battles play out, the one where he could see enough detail to make out her limbs and even her face. Instead of moving forward, the woman was bending backward and twisting her torso around almost an entire half a rotation. What was this, some sort of pre-battle stretching routine that he¡¯d just never caught before?
As if to answer his unspoken question, the woman uncoiled with unfathomable torque, her body straightening out and her arm whipping about so fast that he barely even caught the blur. She released something as she did, something that grew larger in his view so quickly that he didn¡¯t even have time to become alarmed before it was too late. The flitter¡¯s anti-collision routine kicked in, but it didn¡¯t make a bit of difference; Blake hadn¡¯t written that behavior to compensate for something traveling so fast, and as if to make sure it hit, the object split into smaller pieces like a shotgun shell as it neared the drone. The rocks, or metal balls, or whatever they were collided with the side of the flitter¡¯s frame and sent everything spinning madly. Blake just watched, appalled, as the overhead view he¡¯d been watching whirled about, the ground getting closer and closer with each revolution until-
¡°Oh fuck. Oh fucking fuck.¡±
As the drone struck the dirt, Blake was also struck with a realization: he was in deep shit. One of the biggest weaknesses of the data relay system he¡¯d set up, where data moved along a chain of flitter drones connecting the battlefield to his server and back, was that there was only enough bandwidth to provide semi-real-time data from one single drone. Given that limitation, he¡¯d never bothered to put more than a single flitter hovering over the city at any one time. Besides, they were so small and hard to spot, and even if somebody did spy one, what could they even do from such a distance? Blake was constantly juggling what felt like thousands of demanding tasks every day, and so setting up redundant backups that would never be needed was all the way near the bottom of his giant list of priorities.
And now here he was, blind to a battle about to begin, with nothing standing between that woman and his total defeat but the backup routines in his robots. Whirling back to his normal terminal, he brought up his flitter control program and quickly pulled one near the start of the chain to become the newest member of the chain. Then he ordered all the others in the chain to move up one spot and switched his view to that of the chain¡¯s new end.
Hands trembling with anxiety, Blake watched the terrain scroll by as the flitter made its way towards Crirada. The distance between each link in the chain was about fifty miles, so it took several minutes for the massive walls of the city to once more grace his screen. What he finally saw, once the skitter had finally come to rest over the west gate, was nearly a worst-case scenario.
While his older models, generally left alone on autopilot during battle anyway, were doing just fine helping the Eterians hold back the Ubrans assailing the wall, almost the entirety of his anti-that-woman force had been wiped out. The crusher and gatling skitters laid on the ground in pieces. As for the snipers... well, when he located the woman again, it was as she was pulling her sword from the remains of the second sniper bot.
With a curse, Blake reestablished control and ordered the one surviving sniper skitter to hightail it away from the woman as fast as it could. As the robot turned and ran north along the wall, Blake clicked several buttons he had never needed to click until now and hoped for the best.
The woman, perhaps sensing that her chance to be rid of the hated snipers was at hand, turned about to face the fleeing robot and gave chase. While faster than most humans could ever dream of running, a sniper skitter, with its long gun barrel and unwieldy proportions, was perhaps the slowest variety of skitter in existence. That woman, on the other hand, was faster than all of them. The gap closed quickly. Blake eyed the screen with desperate intensity, hoping, no, begging for his final trump card to come in to play in time. Just before the woman made it to her target, Blake saw a light on his screen go green and Blake¡¯s last resort, the hypersonic railgun he¡¯d installed atop the citadel in the center of the city, fired once with every last bit of power it had.
To say that the woman¡¯s top half exploded was to do a disservice to the moment. Any of his sniper skitters could explode part of her with a supersonic bullet. This was no supersonic bullet; this was a massive missile of metal more than a foot wide hurtling at Mach seven right through the woman¡¯s skull and annihilating everything in its way, including not just the woman but also the stone wall behind her, faster than anyone could process. Not even she could react to this. It was like Blake had flipped a switch and altered reality. One moment the woman was just feet away from her prey, and the next moment she was gone, the concussive blast caused by the giant ingot¡¯s passage blowing her sword and her lower body through the newly created hole and off the wall. Only the stunned looks on the nearby Eterians¡¯ faces and the rocking of the skitter as it steadied itself after the blast wave hit was proof that anything had been there at all.
Blake slumped down to the floor with relief. He¡¯d won. Barely, but he¡¯d staved that damnable woman off for another day. Unfortunately, he¡¯d burned his last trump card to do so. The gun he¡¯d installed atop the top of the citadel was, sadly, a single-use item. Though tucrenyx was incredibly strong for a metal, similar to titanium but lighter, not even it could withstand the force such a firing imparted on it¡ªat least, not with Blake¡¯s current skills. The barrel would buckle and the crystallized circuits would crack under the strain. If he were there in person to repair it, perhaps it would be a different story, but such was not the case. As if to make it even plainer that the cannon would not be firing anymore, the stone of the tower upon which it stood gave way and the whole of it plummeted to the ground.
That weapon had been set up long ago, way back in the beginning when he¡¯d had a small window before the woman became a greater threat and before the Ubrans stepped up their attacks. He wished he¡¯d installed it on the west gate instead, where it would have been able to fire directly into the Ubran camp, but past Blake had had a different perspective on how this war would shake out. Unfortunately, it didn¡¯t look like he¡¯d get a chance to install a new one anytime soon. Unless the Ubrans took a sudden unexpected break, the Flying Toaster would be too busy replenishing his forces to waste a whole trip on a single-shot weapon.
A moment later, the relief faded away, leaving only simmering frustration and anger. How?! His flitters were up so high, and they were so small! How had she been able to see it? That woman! That... damnable woman! He hated her so much! Now he was going to have to stay up all night to replace his units, and he needed to write better collision avoidance routines, and... UGH! He was going to kill that woman permanently if it was the last thing he did!
¡°Welcome, people of Wroetin, to a day of triumph!¡± declared an exhausted Blake to the crowd assembled around him at the newly completed Wroetin Train Station. Once again, he gave silent thanks to the fact that his Lord Ferros persona wore a mask at all times. It wouldn¡¯t do for the people of the city to be able to see just how tired he looked and felt.
Standing before the crowd, along with him, were his Chief of Staff Leo Feldmanis and, cowering a bit behind Leo¡¯s body, Samanta. With the station platform at his back, a semicircle of skitters formed a buffer between them and the masses just a few feet away. As always these days, the boxy battlestation skitter was present as well, but since he was giving a speech he¡¯d sent it off to the side where it wouldn¡¯t distract anybody from listening to him.
¡°Today is the first day of operation for our glorious new train system!¡± he called out with pride. ¡°Observe!¡±
Flipping a circuit, Blake started up the train system and turned to the east. Several moments later, a series of three linked train cars rolled into view. As they approached the station, they smoothly slowed down until coming to a stop perfectly aligned with the station platform. Murmurs spread through the crowd as the doors on the train cars opened as one, followed by gasps¡ªbe they of shock, amazement, fear, or a smattering of all three, Blake wasn¡¯t sure¡ªwhen a girl¡¯s rang out loudly for all to hear.
¡°Thak kdak ak... Wroetin,¡± the voice stated clearly. ¡°Novd kdak: Keqont. Prouko kduvk droul ad dho drakavk kaalk.¡±
Blake heard a shaky, disturbed ¡°A-ah?¡± come from Samanta behind him. Blake wasn¡¯t surprised, it was her own voice speaking after all. Recordings of speech didn¡¯t work the same way here that actual spoken word did. After realizing that his own voice couldn¡¯t be understood by the Otharians when played through speakers, he¡¯d recorded her saying all these phrases a while back. In this case, what she¡¯d said was ¡°This stop is... Wroetin. Next stop: Keqont. Please stand clear of the closing doors.¡± The reasons why Blake¡¯s voice didn¡¯t work but Sam¡¯s did were profound and revealing, but now was not the time to ponder them. Now was the time for celebration.
¡°That¡¯s right! Now you can travel from here to Keqont, Eflok, Nont, and Breah simply and easily. Trains run every hour. Simply wait for the proper train to arrive, board it, and you are-¡±
The sound of a scream behind him interrupted his speech and set off alarm bells in his head. Almost instinctively, Blake whirled around, a portion of the forearm on his artificial left arm popping open to reveal a gun barrel. The coils in the barrel powered up, ready to fling metallic death at whoever was so stupid as to try to attack him on today of all days. His mind mentally fingered the trigger circuit and the arm took aim at... a kid.
Two kids actually, a girl chasing a boy in a game of tag or something. Just as he whirled, ready to fire, the boy being chased, looking back towards the chaser instead watching where he was going, ran right into Samanta¡¯s side and knocked them both to the ground. The girl seemed to finally realize what she was doing and froze, her eyes becoming wide with fear as she gazed up at his glowering mask with its glowing eyes. That same terrified look could be found on the boy¡¯s face as well as he stared up at him from the ground, his body noticeably trembling.
The entire crowd had fallen into a fearful silence as they watched. For a moment, nobody moved. Then Blake reverted his arm to its normal shape and waved the children back in the direction they¡¯d come from.
¡°Go on, scram. And watch where you¡¯re going next time.¡±
The kids didn¡¯t have to be told twice. They sprinted back the way they¡¯d come and disappeared into the crowd as Leo helped Sam back up onto her feet.
The surrounding people seemed to collectively exhale and a wave of roaring anger filled Blake. Those fuckers! They¡¯d thought he was going to fucking kill children! Was that all they saw when they looked at him? He¡¯d made a conscious effort to never kill kids, but did that matter to them? No, of course not. They saw only what they wanted to see.
Blake clenched and then relaxed his hands, pushing that anger down for the moment. Now was not the time for unproductive outbursts. Besides, other factors colored the situation. It had been his fault that the children had been able to get into his inner semicircle in the first place. In an effort to help endear his skitters to the public, he¡¯d made sure to program them to be gentle with kids and treat them differently than adults. Right now, he¡¯d ordered the robots around him to keep all potential threats from getting within a certain radius of him and the others, but children were not considered a threat by their programming. It was an obvious oversight in this specific case where he could only blame himself.
More importantly, however, was the simple fact that he couldn¡¯t get mad at the Otharians for thinking he was going to shoot a kid when he¡¯d actually nearly done exactly that. After staying up all night working to replace his forces in Crirada, as well as days of unending stress, his reactions and thought processes had slowed. When he¡¯d heard the sound behind him, he¡¯d reacted without thinking and if he¡¯d been any slower in realizing the truth of the situation, a tragedy would have unfolded in front of everybody.
These facts didn¡¯t make the anger go away, it just gave him reasons to bury it deep within himself, and so he did. Re-centering his thoughts, he took a deep breath and continued as if nothing had happened.
¡°As I was saying, simply board the train car headed in the direction you wish to go and you will be whisked away to your destination in just a few hours! The trains run all day and all night, so you can come and go as you please! And best of all, th-¡±
WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!
¡°FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!¡±
All that pent up rage suddenly burst forth in the form of a howl, causing the crowd to take a collective step back. Blake barely noticed, as he wasn¡¯t even really paying attention to them anymore; instead, he was fuming as he marched towards the quickly unfolding battlestation standing by the station.
¡°Leo, you take over,¡± he growled as he strode past his assistant and grabbed the mouse in his armored hand. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. Most of all, he wanted to strangle something with his bare hands.
That woman!
That... DAMNABLE WOMAN!
Chapter 71
Looking down on the forest of tents and people, Sofie didn¡¯t know whether to laugh or cry. On the one hand, after days of traveling through the deserted plains of Eterium, it was wonderful to finally see some form of civilization again. On the other hand, the civilization in question didn¡¯t look particularly pleasant. A cloud of destitute desperation hung over the city of Obosall and the refugee slums that surrounded it. This was a city of cornered people, and everybody there knew it.
¡°Well, at least it¡¯s not Crirada,¡± Sofie muttered, which brought an amused scoff from ¡®Jerithim¡¯ nearby.
¡°This place wasn¡¯t always like this. It used to be a small fortress city, quiet and out of the way,¡± the elven agent stated. ¡°It¡¯s no surprise that everything¡¯s gone to shit though. There¡¯s no way they¡¯d be able to handle this many new people all at once.¡±
To Sofie¡¯s surprise and enjoyment, Jerithim had turned out to be a surprisingly personable man, rather than the terse, business-like operative she¡¯d expected. Though he¡¯d kept talking to a minimum while they were on the move¡ªhis concentration reserved for avoiding bandits, Ubran patrols, and anything else that could pose a threat to them¡ªwhen they¡¯d settled down for the night he¡¯d proven to be quite the conversation partner.
One of the many things he¡¯d taught her during their trek was the Republic of Eterium¡¯s rather unique city-planning philosophy. Sofie had learned from Arlette long ago that the Eterians used their geographic monopoly to exact hefty taxes and tolls on all the goods moving through the continent, ensuring their economic supremacy. What she hadn¡¯t realized was just how far the nation had gone to put that system into practice.
In order to best police the flow of goods across its borders, many years ago Eterium had created a city practically sitting on its border with every other country. Not just any small city, either. Known as gatekeeper cities, they were some of the largest metropolises in Nocend. Agosa, the city on the Kutrad border, and Begale, the city bordering Gustil, each had nearly two million inhabitants. Even Drogan, the city bordering the isolationist Drayhadal, was nearly half a million people. Only one gatekeeper city stood out as different from the rest: Obosall. As the city bordering the xenophobic Otharians, whose country was supposedly so pathetic and unappealing that the rest of the world had basically ignored their existence for the last millennia, Obosall had never been a priority. In fact, the place, which harbored at most seventy thousand people, seemed to have been created almost as a formality.
That small city now stood like an island surrounded by a sea of humanity. As the trio of travelers had made their way southeast, they¡¯d run across multiple villages. Some were barely populated, with only those too stubborn, too weak, or too ruined to leave still living there. The others had become literal ghost towns, completely devoid of inhabitants. All these people, from the smallest villages to the largest towns, had fled the Ubran menace to this one place, the city farthest from Crirada and the least likely to be the Ubrans¡¯ next destination.
The end result was... not pleasant to say the least. Sofie¡¯s grasp on Pari¡¯s hand tightened as the three made their way through the camps. She couldn¡¯t help but notice the way the nearby refugees were eyeing them and their packs. Even the children seemed to be watching and waiting for a sign of weakness or a chance to steal.
There was no mystery as to why those they passed possessed such wild, predatory gazes. Filthy clothes hung loosely on thin bodies everywhere she looked. She guessed that nobody here had eaten a good meal in a depressingly long time, and perhaps saw them as an oasis in the desert. To make matters worse, both Sofie and Pari were as thin, if not thinner, than those around them¡ªthey¡¯d been living off of tiny rations for weeks and it wasn¡¯t like food had suddenly popped up during their travels either. Only Jerithim looked healthy, perhaps as a side effect of undoing his transformation when they¡¯d escaped Crirada. Once more she thanked her lucky stars that he was there. Only his menacing presence seemed to keep the starving hordes from ripping them apart and taking everything they had. He walked with a wary gait, hands never leaving the two short swords that hung exposed at his sides as a warning to anybody who might get some bad ideas.
After what felt like an interminable length of time but was likely only a perhaps half an hour later, they approached the city walls and the guards manning the gate.
¡°Let me do the talking,¡± Jerithim instructed as they approached.
Sofie let out a breath of relief and nodded her understanding before looking around at her surroundings with a clearer mind. The first thought to strike her mind was just how underwhelming the walls seemed after spending so long in the shadow of Crirada¡¯s absurd defenses. These walls were what, a paltry eight or ten meters at most? Compared to that towering facade from before, this seemed almost childish.
Perhaps her opinion was shared by the guards, because they seemed to be overcompensating for something with an aggressive belligerence that she¡¯d never witnessed in a guard before. It was like they were less interested in policing the flow of people through the gate and instead just keeping anybody from entering at all. On second inspection, that was exactly what they were doing. Sofie gasped as one of the guards delivered a meaty kick to a kneeling man pleading with the guards ahead of her. The noise brought the guards¡¯ attention, and quickly they were surrounded.
¡°I am Daraqon, emissary of the great and mighty Casm clan, here with my two guides to speak with your so-called leaders,¡± Jerithim immediately stated, his voice overflowing with self-important haughtiness. ¡°You will step aside.¡±
The woman who seemed to be the person in charge of the area snorted derisively. ¡°Big words from such a little man,¡± she replied, looking down at the smaller elf with mocking amusement. ¡°It¡¯s going to take more than that. You¡¯re not the first to try this.¡±
The elf reached into the pack hanging by his side and pulled out a roll of parchment, unrolled it, and presented it to the woman. Sofie caught a glimpse of fancy script and ornate decorations running along the edges. ¡°Perhaps this will change your mind?¡± Jerithim asked, smugly.
The woman looked over the document for a moment before rolling it back up. ¡°This is fake,¡± she stated plainly.
Sofie¡¯s heart nearly seized at the pronouncement, but Jerithim didn¡¯t miss a beat. ¡°Bah, what would an uneducated barbarian like yourself know of such things?¡± he sniffed. Stepping close to the woman, his hand snatched the parchment out of her hand and replaced it with a small pouch. Sofie thought she heard the soft sound of coins clinking as the woman¡¯s hand closed around it. ¡°Parasites, the lot of you.¡±
¡°My apologies, emissary,¡± the woman stated with an expressive bow and a smile. ¡°Welcome to Obosall. Will you require an escort through the city?¡±
¡°And spend another moment surrounded by you filthy savages? I have much better uses of my time.¡± He stepped forward authoritatively and the guards moved out of his way. With a dismissive wave, he called Sofie and Pari to follow him. ¡°Come along, you two. I did not pay you to dawdle.¡±
Sofie and Pari hustled forward and they passed into the city thankfully unmolested. As soon as they were out of earshot, Sofie quickened her pace and pulled up next to the Drayhadan. ¡°What in the world was that?¡± she asked. ¡°And where did you get that document?¡±
¡°We made it before we left Crirada, just in case,¡± the man replied with a sly grin. ¡°Worked like a charm.¡±
¡°...but she said it was fake,¡± Sofie objected.
¡°Of course she did. That was all part of the dance.¡±
¡°Uh, what?¡±
¡°There was no way we were getting inside without a bribe. That¡¯s just how things like this work. She didn¡¯t say that it looked fake because she thought it looked fake, she said it to squeeze me. And I gave it to her so she¡¯d have something to squeeze me over, so I¡¯d be able to pay her off, so we¡¯d be able to get inside. That¡¯s the dance. We all knew where we were headed, the question was just how to get there. Just take the right tone, play your part, and it will all go smoothly.¡±
¡°The guards in Crirada didn¡¯t take bribes,¡± Sofie pointed out.
¡°The guards in Crirada were standing in the shadow of their own rulers, who would be very unhappy if somebody besides them were skimming off of their profits. Things are different outside of the capital. Once you get this far away, especially here with the situation they¡¯re in here, I¡¯d be much more concerned if the guards didn¡¯t try for a bribe. A very bad sign, that would be.¡±
¡°Why¡¯s that?¡±
¡°Did you notice how poor everybody outside was?¡± Jerithim asked. ¡°Why do you think that is?¡±
¡°Well, they were forced from their homes, probably didn¡¯t have much they could bring along with them, and there¡¯s no jobs or anything here for this many people,¡± Sofie surmised.
¡°Sure, all a part of it,¡± the man replied. ¡°But you¡¯re missing the one other major thing. The big reason is that all the people with any money paid their way inside the walls and left the poor out there to suffer on their own. If they had refused our bribe, then that would have meant there was no room in here for us, and that would spell trouble.¡±
¡°What would have stopped her from taking the money and kicking us out anyway?¡±
¡°Oh, you can¡¯t get too greedy in a place like this,¡± the elf replied with a feral grin. ¡°Go too far with this many desperate people all around and you¡¯re liable to get yourself killed right quick.¡±
¡°Hrmmmm,¡± Sofie commented noncommittally before changing the subject. ¡°So, what now? Do you have a plan for here on out?¡±
¡°Not yet. We need information before we can make our next move. Besides, I think we all need a good meal and a nice bed for a night, wouldn¡¯t you say?¡±
¡°Pari hungry!¡± the beastgirl chimed in, tugging on Sofie¡¯s shirt.
¡°Well then, what are we waiting for?¡± the elf laughed.
Sofie was glad to be away from the world outside the walls, but a few hours in Obosall proper was all it took to realize that things weren¡¯t much better on the inside either. The town inside wasn¡¯t some rich cosmopolitan metropolis like Crirada. The houses were simple and plain and not always in the best condition. Rather than streets filled with people, Sofie saw mostly empty lanes. The few people she did see walking about in the early afternoon sun seemed on edge, as if they knew there was a bomb hidden somewhere nearby and they were just waiting for it to go off at some unknown point in the near future. Or perhaps they were just stressed from the insane costs of living in this place.
¡°Twenty cromars?! Are you out of your mind?!¡± Jerithim squealed in protest. ¡°That¡¯s more than ten times what it should cost for a night at a high-quality inn, which this is most definitely not!¡±
¡°New here, huh? You think you can find a better price, go ahead,¡± the innkeeper responded with an apathetic shrug. Sofie thought she heard a snicker from one of the few patrons in the inn¡¯s hall.
¡°I think I will!¡± With a huff, Jerithim marched out of the establishment, Sofie and Pari right on his heels.
¡°Look who¡¯s back,¡± the man remarked with a smirk when they returned over an hour later.
¡°Don¡¯t say another word,¡± the elf snarled as he plunked down the twenty coins and grabbed the proffered key before storming up the stairs.
Sofie followed quickly behind, her mind troubled by what they¡¯d discovered. After going around the area, as well as checking the market, it had become clear to them that the prices for literally everything here, even including food, was many times what it would be most anywhere else. Whether it was from scarcity given their situation, or the fact that everybody here had money so people just raised their prices, she couldn¡¯t be sure.
¡°So... plan?¡± she asked after they¡¯d set down their belongings and divvied up the beds.
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Jerithim answered. ¡°I had thought we would have more time, but our money will run out far sooner than I¡¯d thought with how damned expensive everything is here. Let me think a bit.¡±
¡°Alright. Pari, let¡¯s go take a bath and get all clean.¡±
Sofie grabbed the squirming Pari¡¯s hand and led her against her will out the door and over to the small shared bathhouse in the back. Though Jerithim had belittled the inn, it did at least have a small stream running through the shack, the water filling a pool about the size of a hot tub dug in the ground. She¡¯d noticed a lot of small streams of various sizes running through the city and the surrounding lands. They were a pleasant sight, especially after so many days of nothing but dry land and well water.
After undressing both herself and the sullen child¡ªminus Pari¡¯s arm sleeve on her left arm, which she still refused to remove under any circumstances¡ªshe lifted up and carried Pari into the pool. Sitting down with the smaller, unwilling participant hugged close to her chest, she let out a sigh of relaxation. She could practically feel the filth detaching from her body. It felt great. Her companion, however, did not seem to agree. She struggled and twisted, trying to break free of Sofie¡¯s grasp.
¡°That¡¯s enough, Pari,¡± Sofie scolded. ¡°I know you don¡¯t like water but it¡¯s been weeks since your last wash so you¡¯re just going to have to deal with it.¡±
Eventually, after several more minutes of whining, the girl stopped struggling and let Sofie start to wash her. As Sofie did so, she also decided it was time to bring up something she¡¯d been keeping to herself for a little while.
¡°Pari, sweetie, have you been feeling okay recently?¡± she asked the sullen child. ¡°You haven¡¯t been talking much these last few days and you seem rather down. What¡¯s wrong?¡±
The girl didn¡¯t reply, instead just staring down glumly at her reflection in the water.
¡°It¡¯s alright, you can tell your sister,¡± Sofie nudged.
¡°...will Sofie-sis be with Pari forever?¡± Pari asked after a moment of quiet.
¡°Well... that¡¯s a hard question to answer,¡± Sofie began with a sigh.
Something that she¡¯d been mostly avoiding thinking about was the conflicting nature of her own goals. On the one hand, she wanted to love and cherish her adorable adoptive younger sister forever, or at least until she grew up and turned into a snarky teen. On the other hand, she desperately wanted to leave this place and go home, which meant leaving Pari forever. Since actually going home had seemed like such a remote possibility for so long, she¡¯d generally simply ignored the issue. But now, there was another person from Earth, one who could build incredible machines. What if that person could find a way home? Would she just leave Pari alone again? What about Arlette? Maybe she¡¯d be able to take them along?
¡°Forever is a long time, sweetie,¡± she settled on saying. ¡°But I promise that I¡¯ll do everything I can to be with you as long as possible, alright? Why are you so worried about this all of a sudden?¡±
¡°When Sofie-sis isn¡¯t here, Pari feels really lonely,¡± the child admitted.
¡°Awwwwwwwwwww!¡± Sofie squeezed her little angel tighter and gave her an affectionate peck on the cheek. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I can¡¯t always be with you, even if I want to be. Depending on what we find in Otharia, I might be really, really busy, alright? I know! You need a friend you can spend time with when I¡¯m not around!¡±
¡°Pari doesn¡¯t know how to make friends,¡± came the glum reply. ¡°Children say Pari is weird and that children don¡¯t want to be friends with Pari.¡± The girl let out a sniff as if she were about to weep, setting off waves of sisterly alarms in the very core of Sofie¡¯s being.
¡°It¡¯s alright, I can teach you how to make a friend!¡± she hurriedly reassured the forlorn child.
Pari sniffed again. ¡°Really?¡±
¡°Of course! Making friends is easy. All you have to do is be yourself!¡±
¡°But Pari will just be called weird.¡±
¡°That¡¯s just because they don¡¯t know how cool and special you are,¡± Sofie said with a pinch of Pari¡¯s cheek. ¡°Think about it this way. When you met me, did you like me?¡±
¡°Uh huh...¡±
¡°And why was that?¡±
¡°Because Sofie-sis saved Pari when Pari was scared. Pari should save people and they will be Pari¡¯s friends!¡±
¡°Hmmmm... maybe that doesn¡¯t work as well as I thought. Look, Pari, all you have to do is be kind, and be nice, and be caring, and people will want to be your friend without you even needing to ask. You understand?¡±
¡°Pari will be the best and save all the friends!¡±
¡°No, that¡¯s...¡±
¡°Pari will be just like Sofie-sis!¡±
Sofie¡¯s protest died in her throat as the little scamp turned around and looked at her with a beaming smile and adoring eyes so lovable that Sofie¡¯s heart nearly stopped beating forever. With a resigned sigh, she gave up for the moment and just patted her companion affectionately on the head before starting to wash the child¡¯s hair.
¡°Pari, what did I tell you about experimenting indoors while we¡¯re in an inn?¡± Sofie scolded while snatching away a vial filled with who knew what from the mischievous tyke.
¡°But Pari is booooorrreed!¡± the girl whined.
¡°I know, but we don¡¯t have a choice but to wait until we can find a way into Otharia.¡±
¡°Why can¡¯t Pari go now? Pari hates waiting.¡±
¡°It¡¯s because the border is swarming with dangerous robots.¡±
¡°What are robots?¡±
¡°Do you remember the big four-legged things that showed up in Crirada a few days before we left?¡±
¡°The big grey bugs?¡± Pari asked with a spark of curiosity and excitement in her eyes.
¡°No Pari, they¡¯re not bugs and you can¡¯t make ingredients out of them. They¡¯re machines that will kill you if you get too close to them.¡±
¡°Awwwwwww...¡± Pari sulked.
¡°Listen, those machines won¡¯t let anybody go into the place we need to go, so until Jerithim finds a way past them we have to stay here and be good, alright?¡± The sound of a key in the door¡¯s lock caught her ears. ¡°Oh look, there he is now.¡±
A visibly exhausted Drayhadan entered the room.
¡°Did you find something?¡± Sofie asked before he¡¯d even taken two steps inside.
¡°Maybe,¡± he replied as he sat down on a nearby stool. ¡°Sit down, we need to talk.¡±
Sofie frowned at the elf¡¯s demeanor. He wasn¡¯t the sort to be this solemn when they were alone.
¡°Did you actually know Jaquet the Quick?¡± he asked, his face serious as he stared her in the eyes.
Sofie¡¯s body tensed. ¡°I-¡±
¡°Look, I honestly don¡¯t care right now if you lied,¡± Jerithim interrupted with a shake of his head. ¡°They wouldn¡¯t admit it, but I think that my team agreed to this simply as a justification to get me away from Crirada. After I lost my leg, I was nothing more than a burden to them. The only way I could fix that was by undoing the transformation, but that wasn¡¯t an option in there since once you undo the transformation, you can¡¯t bring it back. So they sent me off with the pretense that I was to escort you to Otharia.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t believe that what I said is true, then?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t hear what you said, but their summary of it was absurd. I don¡¯t know how you learned about the Mother of Nightmares but just because you know about her doesn¡¯t mean anything else you said is true.¡±
¡°I wasn¡¯t lying.¡±
¡°You really claim that you are an acquaintance of not only the prince of the Esmae clan but also the ruler of Otharia and Drayhadal¡¯s greatest weapon against the Stragman savages?¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Sofie responded. It wasn¡¯t entirely true, but it was close enough.
¡°The others didn¡¯t know this or they would have had me question you back in Crirada, but I actually trained with the man who became Jaquet the Quick many years ago. Served in the same mercenary band during his first assignment as well, monitoring him in order to judge his readiness for full-fledged field work. I don¡¯t know about the rest of your flimsy story, but I can¡¯t see that man falling for anybody, especially not a human.¡±
Sofie gulped as she saw the knowing glint in his eyes. ¡°It¡¯s true, though. He was really protective of her and was always trying to keep her out of harm¡¯s way.¡±
¡°What was his favorite food?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Come now, you claim you spent more than a season with him and you don¡¯t even know that?¡±
¡°Well, we were not really in a position to choose what we got to eat most of the time. I guess he did complain a few times about how he missed some sort of Droajan delicacy.¡±
¡°Matinau?¡± the elf offered.
¡°Yeah, something like that?¡±
¡°That¡¯s a special dish they only make in his cover¡¯s hometown of Zamery. It¡¯s little more than glorified meat on a stick from what I¡¯ve heard.¡±
¡°Ah, interesting. Wait, Zamery? Wasn¡¯t his fake hometown Zlamery?¡± Sofie inquired.
¡°Is it?¡±
¡°Yeah, I remember this one time, Arlette said it was Zamery and he got all upset. Called that place a ¡®pisshole¡¯ and said everybody there was a ¡®bunch o¡¯ punters¡¯.¡±
¡°That sounds like him, alright. What clan did he claim to hail from?¡± he asked, more sternly this time.
¡°Delon. Wouldn¡¯t that be sort of common knowledge, though?¡±
¡°Not really. He was widely known as ¡®Jaquet the Quick¡¯ and didn¡¯t want to go throwing his clan name about all the time. Just because he was the only ¡®Delon¡¯ on this side of the world didn¡¯t mean that he could just use it with impunity. There was always the chance that somebody who¡¯d been to Droaja might figure out that something was wrong.¡±
¡°Then what about Lucas and Leila?¡±
¡°Who?¡±
¡°This older couple that he took us to in Begale. They were from the same clan too. Wouldn¡¯t they have recognized... oh wait, they were spies too, weren¡¯t they?¡± She saw the man¡¯s frown deepen slightly at her answer and something clicked. ¡°Wait a minute! You were playing dumb on purpose, weren¡¯t you? You knew what his hometown was and you knew about the spies in Begale. You just were trying to trap me in lies!¡±
¡°Hmmmm, maybe I was wrong about you after all,¡± he admitted.
¡°Hmph!¡± she harrumphed. ¡°You should have just believed me from the start. Why would I make up something so ridiculous if it weren¡¯t true? I¡¯m sick of people doubting me all the time.¡±
The spy shrugged. ¡°People do crazy things when desperate. Alright, I guess I believe that you knew the prince.¡±
¡°Why are you asking all this now after we came all this way? Why not back at the beginning?¡±
¡°Because if I¡¯d found out that you were lying, I¡¯d have to kill you and then report back our failure, and I didn¡¯t want to do that right away. It was nice talking to somebody new for the first time in forever. The traveling was nice too; sunshine, clean air, hunting for actual meat... why would I just throw that away by finding your falsehoods immediately? Plus, it would have put my team in a bad light for their poor judgment, and they don¡¯t deserve that for trying to help me. But now that we¡¯re here, I had to make a choice. I¡¯ve enjoyed your company so if you¡¯d been lying about the prince I was planning on just leaving you here to fend for yourself and reporting that I¡¯d killed you, but since you convinced me, that won¡¯t be a problem anymore.¡±
¡°I-I¡¯m glad you believe me,¡± Sofie replied weakly. Why did everybody in this world talk about killing others so casually?
¡°Anyway,¡± the elf continued, rubbing his hands together eagerly with a wide smile on his face, ¡°now that that¡¯s out of the way, I may have found a way into Otharia.¡±
¡°O-oh?¡± Sofie felt like she was getting whiplash from his sudden tone shifts.
¡°Yeah. There¡¯s just one problem though: it will cost us basically all the money we have left. If it doesn¡¯t work or it¡¯s a scam, we¡¯re toast. Best case scenario, we end up outside the wall with the others.¡±
¡°What are the chances that it¡¯s real?¡±
The elf sighed. ¡°Who knows. You¡¯ll notice that pretty much nobody here has tried to get into Otharia, but then again, with how Otharia is, would they even want to?¡±
¡°If it¡¯s a trap, could you fight them off?¡±
¡°Maybe. I¡¯m a pretty good fighter, but I¡¯m not amazing. If there¡¯s more than three of them, chances are we wouldn¡¯t survive.¡±
¡°Well... we have to take it, right? At the rate we¡¯re going, we¡¯ll run out of money soon enough just paying the inn fees. Wait any longer and we¡¯ll lose the opportunity.¡±
¡°It¡¯s still a big risk. Do you really know this Lord Ferros person? Because if that part isn¡¯t true, then we¡¯re just walking to our own deaths regardless.¡±
¡°He¡¯ll listen to me. Just get me in the same room as him and you¡¯ll see.¡±
¡°That wasn¡¯t a yes.¡±
¡°Just trust me for once, alright?¡±
The elf sighed as he stood up. ¡°Alright, I guess I¡¯ll go let them know. Be ready, we¡¯ll leave tomorrow.¡±
¡°Hey Jerithim,¡± she said to him as he headed towards the door. ¡°Since we¡¯re trusting each other now, why don¡¯t you tell me what your real name is?¡±
¡°Seriously, stop asking that.¡±
¡°Wait, so you¡¯re a beastkin and she¡¯s an elf? I thought you people hated each other,¡± Sofie commented as she pushed herself through a patchy bush and hurried after the others. The walk southwest from the city had been an exercise in frustration so far, as her newly-purchased hooded cloak kept catching on the scraggly shrubs that dominated the local Mediterranean-esque ecosystem.
The two people guiding the three travelers through the brush, a lanky beastman and a pudgy elf woman, exchanged a look between themselves.
¡°We grew up as neighbors and have been married for twenty years,¡± the man said.
¡°Oh, uh-¡±
¡°That¡¯s just a Drayhadan and Stragman thing,¡± Jerithim clarified. ¡°Elves and beastpeople who grow up elsewhere don¡¯t have the same hatreds as my people do.¡±
¡°Oh, uh... sorry,¡± she said to the Eterians.
¡°It¡¯s alright. With how much you¡¯re paying us, we can forgive much more than that,¡± the woman laughed.
¡°This had better be what you claim it is,¡± Jerithim warned.
¡°It is, don¡¯t worry,¡± the beastman reassured. ¡°Been a while since the last time we guided somebody here. Must have been what, over a season ago?¡±
¡°Yeah, was another group of three people. Not many people ever seek us out for this particular service. I mean, who would willingly want to go in there?¡± the elf woman recalled, ignoring the glare her husband shot her way.
¡°Anyway, we¡¯re here,¡± the man stated as the pair stopped in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.
Looking about, Sofie couldn¡¯t spot the walls of the city¡ªthey¡¯d ducked beneath the horizon perhaps an hour ago¡ªnor could she see any other sign of intelligent life. All there was to look at was shrubs, bushes, weeds, and the rare stunted tree. Then, off in the distance, she spotted movement. Something large and metallic, moving through the brush on four powerful legs.
¡°Creepy looking, aren¡¯t they?¡± the elven woman remarked. ¡°They don¡¯t get any closer than that, though. We¡¯re still in Eterium.¡±
¡°For now, that is,¡± the beastman added. His eyes took on a look of glassy concentration and a hole began to form in a nearby large rock embedded into the earth. Slowly the hold expanded wider and deeper until a person could easily fit through it.
¡°Climb in,¡± he said as he blinked, the unfocused look gone.
Sofie looked down into the hole to find that the stone only went about a meter down into the earth, and beneath that were...
¡°Stairs?¡± Jerithim asked as he too peered into the opening with a puzzled look on his face.
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¡°Yep. Made this back when the new guy took over and the government locked down the whole border to stop the Otharians from swarming their way north. Figured it would come in handy for smuggling people or goods in and out, but largely it ended up being a waste of time. Never got much out of it other than getting a few people past those things up there. Now hurry up and get in before something sees us.¡±
The five of them climbed inside, one at a time, taking with them their assorted belongings. Sofie had her clothes and books, all neatly packed inside the large waterproof bag made of some sort of animal bladder that the Stragmans had issued her. Pari, as usual, had her sack of candlemaking equipment and the few wax-encased ingredients that remained after all this time. Jerithim just seemed to have some clothes and a few weapons.
Once they were all inside, the man closed the hole above them while Jerithim created a little light with a small candle flame. Once the entrance had closed fully, the beastman made his own equally small flame and worked his way to the front of the group before heading down the stairs. The rest of them followed, carefully taking step after step through the dim darkness.
¡°Rather trusting of you to lead us here like this,¡± Jerithim opined as they made slow but steady progress, the stairway spiraling down, deeper and deeper into the earth. ¡°You didn¡¯t blindfold us or anything. Don¡¯t you worry that anybody who you lead here could just kill you once you show them where the entrance is?¡±
¡°Not really,¡± the other elf replied. ¡°You need us, for reasons you¡¯ll understand soon enough. Besides, nobody who we¡¯ve brought through here has ever come back.¡±
Sofie swallowed. She didn¡¯t like the sound of that last part one bit.
Suddenly, the sound of a splash echoed through the stairwell.
¡°Here we are. The hard part,¡± said the elf.
¡°Water?¡± Sofie asked, confused. ¡°Are we so deep that we hit water?¡±
¡°Those government bastards were worried about Otharians tunneling under them to get through, so they would check for tunnels fairly often for a while. I heard they even had that famous general down here to command the troops, and he¡¯s known to be the strongest earth and stone Observer in the world.¡±
¡°That asshole?¡± Sofie muttered with disgust.
¡°Oh, you know him?¡± the elf woman asked.
¡°Unfortunately,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°He locked my friend away in Crirada and I had to bargain with him to get her out. Most pompous man I¡¯ve ever met.¡±
¡°Well, regardless of your feeling about him, he¡¯s undeniably strong. Any tunnels under the border would have been found by him pretty easily, but there¡¯s always a limit, even for him. All you have to do is go deep enough. As long as nobody finds the shaft down, they¡¯ll never check deep enough to find the passage going under the border. Once they hit water, they stop and assume that that¡¯s the limit.¡±
¡°You dug a tunnel beneath the water table? That¡¯s insane!¡± Jerithim hissed. ¡°How would you even go through it? If this goes all the way to the other side of the border, you¡¯d drown way before you made it to the end!¡±
¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m here,¡± the woman explained. ¡°I¡¯m an air Observer. I go first and create places to breathe.¡±
¡°You¡¯re crazy, both of you,¡± the spy said. ¡°Digging a passage through the water at least a hundred paces below the ground? Honestly, I¡¯m rather impressed.¡±
¡°A hundred and sixty paces or so below the ground, actually. I went deeper by about thirty paces just to make sure that one general wouldn¡¯t find it,¡± the man said in return as he felt around under the water. After a moment he pulled a thick rope up for everybody to see. ¡°Take this rope and use it to pull your way down through the water. At the end of every rope is the next breathing spot. Tie everything you have to your body so your hands are free to pull the rope.¡±
Sofie removed her cloak and shoved it into her sack. Seriously, it was incredible just how wonderfully useful the bag had turned out to be. She didn¡¯t even want to think about what she would have done if all her hard translation work had been ruined by water.
¡°Pari, take off your cloak and give it to me so it doesn¡¯t get wet,¡± she instructed, only to find the girl shivering in the dim light. ¡°Pari, what¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°Pari does not want to go anymore.¡±
¡°It¡¯s only water, Pari. It won¡¯t hurt you. I know that you don¡¯t like baths, but it¡¯s just water, it¡¯s not scary.¡±
¡°Grandfather said that the water had things that were scary even for him. Grandfather said I should stay away.¡±
¡°He didn¡¯t mean this water, sweetie. See how small the water here is?¡± Sofie stretched out her hands to touch the walls on both side of the stairs at the same time. ¡°Your grandfather is really strong, right?¡±
¡°Uh huh...¡±
¡°Surely only something really big could scare somebody like him, right? Nothing that scary could fit in here, right?¡±
The girl stared at the dark water, her thoughts wavering, but Sofie could tell that she wasn¡¯t totally convinced. Taking off her shoes and socks and stuffing them in the bag, she squeezed past the others and hopped in.
¡°Look, see? Nothing to be scared of,¡± she said after coming back up for air.
Pari bit her lip for a moment before standing up straight and giving her a nod filled with courage. ¡°If Sofie-sis is not scared, then Pari will not be scared,¡± she declared. ¡°Sofie-sis is much weaker than Pari. Sofie-sis is the weakest person Pari knows!¡±
¡°Gee, thanks,¡± Sofie responded, doing her best to ignore the snorts coming from Jerithim¡¯s general direction. ¡°Now put your cloak in the bag. Apparently they¡¯re all racist or something over there so we need to hide your ears and tail once we get inside and we don¡¯t want it to be all wet.¡±
¡°Here, put mine in there too,¡± Jerithim said as he held out his cloak.
¡°Bag¡¯s full, Mister Snorts,¡± Sofie sniffed as she shoved Pari¡¯s cloak inside the bag and sealed it back up.
¡°There¡¯s totally enough room left in there for-¡±
¡°Bag¡¯s. Full.¡±
¡°...right.¡±
The trip through the underwater tunnel took hours. First, Sofie had needed to teach Pari, who had never truly been fully underwater before, how to hold her breath beneath the surface. Then, they¡¯d needed to make their way down beneath the water, a few meters at a time. Getting used to the water pressure was also no easy task. The shaft down was constructed in a zigzag pattern, working generally deeper but at a slight angle that would reverse every four or so meters. At every spot where the direction reversed, there would be a bit of an overhang in the tunnel with an indentation in the bottom of it. The elven woman would go ahead of the others and create a pocket of air inside that indentation just large enough for everybody to stick their heads into and breathe for a minute before continuing onward.
Once they¡¯d made it down to the bottom, the same general pattern continued, only horizontally this time. The straight tunnel had indents every so often just like the overhangs did. Like before, the group would float with their heads in the air pocket before taking a large breath and continuing forward to the next one, then repeating the process.
The journey was an arduous one for Sofie. The pressure of the water felt like it would crush her beneath its weight and strained her physically to the point of exhaustion. Even worse, the entire ordeal had to be done blind. Down in the water, not even a tiny flame could manifest, and when in the air pockets, it was more important to save energy than to make a light for nothing more than momentary comfort.
Sofie spent the entire time in a near panic over the thought that Pari would get lost somehow, that they¡¯d all surface at an air pocket and her little sister wouldn¡¯t be with them anymore, lost to the deep darkness. Pari herself seemed to misunderstand her fears, assuring her several times during the trip that Sofie didn¡¯t need to be scared and that Pari wouldn¡¯t leave her alone in the dark.
In the end, the ropes were what kept Sofie sane. They were always reassuringly present, connecting one air pocket to the next. Sofie clung to the knowledge that as long as they just pulled themselves along the ropes they would eventually make it through.
And eventually, they did. The journey back up went agonizingly slowly for her, but she suffered through the process of slowly ascending from pocket to pocket willingly. Sofie didn¡¯t know if they were at risk of decompression sickness, but she wasn¡¯t going to take any chances.
¡°Let¡¯s never do that again,¡± Sofie muttered as she flopped onto the blissfully dry stone stairs.
¡°Pari had fun!¡± the small girl replied, hefting her waterlogged sack out of the water.
The five of them took some time to rest after the long ordeal. Everybody looked exhausted, especially the elf woman, but they were all in relatively high spirits after the successful journey.
¡°I must say,¡± Jerithim remarked, ¡°this is perhaps the most impressive underground tunnel creation I¡¯ve ever seen, and I¡¯ve seen my fair share over the years. You might be the most talented tunnelers in the entire continent.¡±
¡°You praise us too much,¡± the man replied.
¡°I¡¯m serious. Your skills are incredible. To make something like this, just the two of you, and to do it underwater and in such a short time, that¡¯s special. Did you ever consider working for the army? The people in Crirada could really use people like you two.¡±
The man¡¯s face darkened. ¡°I¡¯m not gonna help those bastards,¡± he replied. ¡°Not even if they got down on their knees and begged me. They can all die for all I care.¡±
¡°I see. I apologize for prying.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± the woman chuckled. ¡°He¡¯s just very prickly about the government here. Besides, as I said before, with how much you¡¯re paying us, we can forgive a little prying.¡±
Soon enough, the group rose to their collective feet and climbed the stair back up to ground level. Sofie had to squint as the exit slowly opened and the afternoon sun finally pierced through the darkness. They¡¯d entered the other side in the mid-morning, and already the sun was well on its way down back on the other side.
¡°We made it!¡± Sofie cried, throwing her clenched fist up towards the sky.
¡°Shhh!¡± Jerithim hissed. ¡°We don¡¯t even know what¡¯s out there.¡±
Slowly, he pulled himself up to the lip of the hole and peered around, before hauling himself out. ¡°We¡¯re clear.¡±
Sofie helped push Pari up towards the elf¡¯s waiting hands and then followed after. Looking about, she saw that they stood in a small grove of trees surrounded by the same brushland that they¡¯d been walking through on the other side of the border. Had she no memory of what they¡¯d just endured, she would have never known they were in a different location than the one they¡¯d been in that morning. Luckily, she couldn¡¯t spot any robots around.
Jerithim fished out a small sack of coins and tossed it to the couple still in the tunnel. ¡°Here¡¯s the other half.¡±
The two nodded and the hole began to fill in with stone.
¡°Hey,¡± Sofie interjected, crouching down to the shrinking gap, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I want to thank you but I never got your names.¡±
¡°I¡¯m Remo and she¡¯s Nerva,¡± the man replied.
¡°Thank you both for your help. You don¡¯t know how important it is for me to get this far.¡±
¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± Nerva said with a smile just before the hold closed up completely. ¡°Good luck.¡±
Then the stone filled in and became whole once more. Sofie stood back up and stretched her tired body before turning to Jerithim and remarking, ¡°See? They told me their names and they don¡¯t even know me.¡±
The Drayhadan just rolled his eyes.
¡°What in the stars is that?!¡± Jerithim sputtered, stepping away from the large metal monstrosity closing in on their position.
¡°Calm down, you¡¯re blowing our cover, mister spy,¡± Sofie hissed as the train cars pulled up to the station and came to a halt.
¡°Our cover was blown the moment you stepped onto this platform,¡± the elf retorted. ¡°Did you not see the looks of everybody around when you ran up those stairs? It was like you¡¯d grown a second head.¡±
In retrospect, Sofie couldn¡¯t deny he had a point. Though it was the early afternoon here in the city of Nont, and many people were out and about in the surrounding area, not a single Otharian had stepped within five meters of the train station. She¡¯d just been so overjoyed to see something resembling modern transportation that she¡¯d run right up to the tracks without even realizing what she was doing.
With a series of clicks, the doors on the three cars slid out and then to the side as a disembodied voice suddenly spoke a series of unintelligible gibberish. Sofie listened carefully, unable to make sense of any of the words except the only one that mattered: ¡®Wroetin¡¯.
¡°Well, no use crying over spilled milk,¡± she replied with a shrug. ¡°Get on. We¡¯ll be so far away from here in a minute that it won¡¯t matter anyway.¡±
Pari approached the nearest open doorway and peered inside curiously, sniffing up a storm. Jerithim, however, didn¡¯t move.
¡°I don¡¯t know about this... there¡¯s likely a good reason that one woman gasped like you were about to be eaten alive,¡± he said, looking about the empty station.
¡°I swear to god, if this train leaves without us, I will fucking end you,¡± Sofie stated with all due seriousness. ¡°I¡¯m sick of walking. Get on the train.¡±
With finality, she stepped into the cabin of the front car while ushering Pari along with her. Hesitantly, the elf followed suit.
Jerithim¡¯s words were true. All three cars were entirely empty and showed no sign of use whatsoever. Each car seemed to be arranged in the same way: an open space in the center, with rows of seats facing forward at the front and rear and a single row facing the center on the front end side. The smooth metallic seats gleamed in the midday light. Looking towards the back, Sofie saw that there was one section in the very rear that was closed off into a separate room. A sign hung over the door to the room, a sign that sent literal tears streaming down her cheeks.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?!¡± the elf asked in alarm as the doors closed. ¡°Are you alright?!¡±
The train began to accelerate silently, and the force, combined with her surging emotions, brought Sofie to her knees. The sounds of her companions faded out of her consciousness as she just stared at the sign. On it were two figures, generic representations of a man and a woman in a dress and a vertical line running between them¡ªthe universal Earth sign for a restroom. An honest-to-god restroom.
Earth. Civilization. Home. It was here, right in front of her.
Emotions she¡¯d had bottled up inside her for months began to spill out uncontrollably. She¡¯d seen the robots and the trains, but somehow this was different. The little cartoon people were like a direct acknowledgment from the creator of these trains, something far more significant than robots or zeppelins or secondhand visions of World War Two Japan. They were a message meant just for her, a message that simply said: ¡°you are not alone¡±.
¡°I knew we shouldn¡¯t have gotten into this thing,¡± Jerithim muttered to himself.
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Sofie apologized, standing back up on shaky legs. ¡°I¡¯m fine. I just wasn¡¯t ready for what came over me. Let¡¯s sit down, it¡¯s probably going to be a while before this stops again.¡±
Pari and Sofie took a seat by one of the windows in the front. Pari practically smooshed her face up against the glass as she stared outside, enraptured by the scenery flying past her eyes. Normally, Sofie would have joined in¡ªshe¡¯d always loved watching the world outside zip by¡ªbut her head was clouded by a haze of disparate thoughts. She¡¯d seen much since leaving that tunnel a week ago, but she still didn¡¯t know what to think about any of it.
Maybe they had just missed some villages, or maybe nobody lived that close to the border, but for whatever reason, they hadn¡¯t run across anybody during that first evening. Instead, there had only been wilderness. Once they¡¯d gotten a lay of the land, they¡¯d focused on drying out their wet belongings and finding a place to sleep.
It was around midday the following day when they¡¯d spotted their first Otharian. The man, an animal herder of some sort, had been far too busy with his flock to notice them, and they¡¯d worked their way past him without alerting him to their presence. It was important that they not be seen coming from the border itself. Not until they could act like they were coming from a northern village would it be safe to let themselves be spotted.
The rest of that day, they¡¯d spent their time slowly and carefully working their way around a few small farming villages before camping once more. The nights were cold and uncomfortable, even for Scyrian standards, bringing back memories of her early days with Arlette and the others. Even the fear of being discovered felt familiar.
On the second full day, Sofie and the others saw their first example of life in the new Otharia. They¡¯d come across another farm, this one larger and more populated than the others so far. The farmers seemed busy digging in the dirt, clearing out the fields for spring planting. Sofie had found it puzzling that the people still used what looked to be crude hand tools for everything. There were people clawing at the dirt with rusty, worn-out hoes, others digging with dented shovels, and even two farmers hard at work chopping down a tree with shoddy-looking axes. This was not the sight she¡¯d expected to see in a land of airships and robots.
There was one inconsistency, however. Perched on a hill overlooking the farms stood a single four-legged robot. Sofie watched the machine for a good while, but not once did it move even a centimeter. As time went on, she couldn¡¯t help but notice how the farmers avoided looking at the hill and the robot atop it. It was like they were terrified of even acknowledging its presence.
What was this robot? Was it a jailer? A protector? A policer? A surveyor? Sofie couldn¡¯t say, but it was clear that the people here feared it deeply. What sort of country was this? And what sort of ruler was the man who controlled it?
Those questions had dominated every point of Sofie¡¯s trek from that point up until the present. As they¡¯d made their way further and further south, the frequency of robot sightings and other technology had increased, but so had the incidents. The sight of Otharians running in terror from a robot passing through became depressingly normal. Sometimes all it took for an entire village to panic was for a robot to move a single step. And then there was the worm.
Just the day before, they¡¯d been walking down a well-worn wide dirt road. What had been villages before had now grown into small towns, and with that had come infrastructure, like the occasional shop and inn¡ªnot that they¡¯d been able to partake in any of that, given their complete lack of money, Otharian or otherwise. Even the farms were more impressive, with fences and neat rows and more people working hard to clear out more land for planting.
Pari confused ¡°nya?¡± had been the first sign that something was off. Then Sofie had felt the tremors, the unmistakable feeling that something was moving beneath them. The tremors faded away as quickly as they¡¯d come, leaving the three of them to look around in befuddlement and a hint of fear.
A cry from the left directed their attention to the fields nearby. Off on the other side of the field, perhaps twenty men and women with axes and saws had been working away at a cluster of trees that dominated the area, standing proudly in defiance of the workers and their fields. One extra large tree stood in the middle of the rest as if it were the leader of the local foliage. Easily more than two meters in diameter, it towered over the others and seemed to laugh at the efforts of the farmers. It wasn¡¯t Stragma level in size¡ªnot even close¡ªbut it would have been an attraction in most any national park back on Earth, to be sure. Just looking at it, Sofie had felt that there was no way the farmers would be able to remove it with tools they had available.
However, as soon as that cry had gone up, the entire group of farmers had turned and ran away from the trees as quickly as they could in all directions. And then that giant tree, the one that had seemed nigh invincible just moments ago, had disappeared. A massive grey metallic worm had seemed to leap up from beneath the ground, swallowing the tree from the bottom up. Sofie had simply gaped as the mighty trunk was quickly pulled into the mechanical beast¡¯s maw like a branch fed into a wood chipper. Just seconds later, the worm had receded back beneath the surface and seemingly vanished from the world. Only the missing tree served as proof to the three of them that it had ever been there at all.
While it could be argued that this Lord Ferros¡¯s zeppelin was a more impressive technological feat, the revelation of the worm had forced Sofie to reconsider her view of what the man was capable of. Blimps and whatnot had existed on Earth for decades, after all, but never had she seen nor heard of something like that. However, the sight had also helped to crystallize the uneasy feeling she¡¯d been getting since the first robot¡¯s sighting.
This was not a place where the people and technology worked in harmony. This was a place where the people lived like ants, trying their best to survive without being crushed beneath the feet of giants in their midsts.
Nothing served as a better example in her mind than the image of the farmers sprinting for their lives as the worm arrived. There had been no warning, no alarm, nothing. Anybody who hadn¡¯t felt the tremors, or had too slow to evacuate, or perhaps even tripped, would have been gobbled up along with the tree and died a horrible, gruesome death. Maybe that worm had helped the farmers out by removing the tree, accomplishing in seconds what would have taken them hours, if not days, but it had done so without seemingly acknowledging their existence. It was as if they didn¡¯t matter.
Arriving in Nont the next day had only reinforced this perspective in her eyes. Dozens of robots stood guard around the city, some standing vigilant while others patrolled through the busy streets. The people here weren¡¯t afraid to look at them like the northern farmers were, but they still gave every robot a wide berth as if getting within five meters of one would cause it to explode or something. The image that most stuck in her mind was when they¡¯d crossed through the central market while making their way towards the train station in the south of the city. A robot had slowly walked through the area on some seemingly preset course, and the large crowd of Otharians had parted like the Red Sea itself in order to allow it to continue on its way unimpeded. This was a populace steeped in fear.
As if to accentuate that feeling, subtle tremors continuously sprung up around the city, leading everybody in the vicinity to freeze like a deer in headlights until the rumbling moved away. What was going on beneath the city? She had no idea, but whatever it was, it didn¡¯t seem like the locals were too excited about it.
What, exactly, was the point of all this? Sofie couldn¡¯t say. Her eyes momentarily caught sight of some more farmers as the train zipped along its track. Though she couldn¡¯t tell much for the quick glimpse, their thin frames managed to register before they moved out of view. While the severity varied, almost all the Otharians she¡¯d seen since arriving in the country had been noticeably thin. Was her fellow Earthling, with all his wonderous technology, actually improving the lives of the people at all? The existence of things like the very train they rode inside suggested that progress was indeed being made, but that didn¡¯t entirely outweigh everything else.
Just a week ago, the thought of meeting the ruler of Otharia, this wizard of robotics and machinery, filled her with excitement and anticipation. Now it filled her with anxiety. What would he be like? What would she even say? She didn¡¯t know, and it troubled her greatly.
The grey fortress towered over the city of Wroetin, its massive metallic walls and spires gleaming in the light of the three moons and the multitude of crystal street lamps placed throughout the capital. It wasn¡¯t a castle, nor a citadel. No, only ¡°fortress¡± could properly convey its imposing, almost aggressive presence. An imposition upon everything around it, the fortress existed as a reminder of the current order; as long as it stood, nobody could possibly forget who was in charge. Sofie forced herself to look away from the ugly thing, lest it anger her further.
¡°So that¡¯s it, huh? The place where your friend lives?¡± Jerithim asked as they stepped out of the train car and onto the Wroetin train platform.
¡°Yeah,¡± she responded.
¡°Do you have a plan? How are you going to get in touch with him?¡±
Sofie sighed, looking up at the stars. The sun had set perhaps half an hour prior. ¡°I¡¯ll have to try to contact him tomorrow.¡±
¡°We don¡¯t have any money for an inn, Sofie.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not ready yet, sorry. Plus, I¡¯m tired and hungry. We haven¡¯t eaten in like ten hours. Do you think you could find us some food, and maybe a safe enough place to sleep for the night? Somewhere out of sight?¡±
¡°I can try,¡± the elf replied with a tired sigh. ¡°You know, if you would just let me swipe some coin, we could be sleeping in a warm bed right now.¡±
¡°Do these people look rich to you?¡± she shot back. ¡°Everybody¡¯s struggling to get by as it is. I¡¯m not going to have that on our consciences.¡±
¡°Fine, have it your way. I¡¯ll go see what I can find. You two stay here; you¡¯ll slow me down too much otherwise.¡±
¡°Wait! You can¡¯t just leave us alone in a foreign city! No way!¡± Sofie protested.
¡°As far as I can tell, nobody here dares to even get close to this place,¡± the elf replied, indicating the train station where they stood. ¡°Here, if it makes you feel better, take this. I¡¯ll be back soon.¡± He handed her one of his long knives.
Sofie took the knife with a frown but didn¡¯t say anything. Together with Pari, she sat down by the train tracks to wait nervously for Jerithim to return. She¡¯d never really felt safe in this world, especially without somebody else who was good at fighting around to protect her, but there wasn¡¯t much she could do about it at the moment.
The street in front of her seemed to be a major one, and a good number of Otharians moved about it even though night had recently fallen. Sofie watched them warily, but outside of worried looks from some of the passersby, as well as a few that seemed to say that the two of them were crazy for even going near the place, nobody had given them trouble so far.
Then Pari¡¯s head jerked upward with a start.
¡°Pari? What¡¯s wrong?¡± Sofie asked. She couldn¡¯t see much of what Pari was up to since the hood of the cloak covered the girl¡¯s head and face very effectively, but it seemed that the child was looking about furtively for something and sniffing intently. It was never a good sign when she started sniffing intently. ¡°Pari, what is it?¡±
Her sister didn¡¯t answer. Instead, she suddenly took off running, jumping down the station steps two steps at a time and hightailing it into the thinning crowd. Even though she¡¯d just been behaving strangely, Pari¡¯s actions still caught Sofie by surprise for one simple reason: she¡¯d left her candlemaking sack behind, and if there was one thing that Pari Clansnarl almost never did, it was willingly separate from her candlemaking sack.
¡°Pari!¡± Sofie called out to the child¡¯s retreating back. ¡°Pari, get back here!¡±
Letting out a series of curses that she would never, ever utter where Pari could hear them, Sofie picked up both her own and Pari¡¯s belongings, threw them awkwardly over her shoulders, and ran after the trouble-making beastgirl with everything she had.
Chapter 72
¡°That fucking... can¡¯t even rest for a few hours... one day I¡¯ll... last thing I do... bury her head three miles beneath the ground...¡±
Samanta Zemzaris looked on as her captor muttered angrily to himself, so absorbed in the resolution of a battle in some other country that he¡¯d forgotten the reason that he and she were even together. He¡¯d called her in for a lesson¡ªthe first in several days¡ªbut not even a quarter of the way through, his strange boxy skitter that always followed him around these days had started to scream. It was like she¡¯d disappeared at that moment.
On the one hand, watching Blake have a mental breakdown right in front of her was always enjoyable. On the other, she¡¯d really hoped to get one last lesson in before tonight. She wanted to get as much knowledge as possible while she still could, but that didn¡¯t seem possible anymore.
¡°Why don¡¯t you marry her?¡± she grumbled.
Blake froze for a moment before twisting back to stare at her. ¡°What was that?¡± he asked, an unhinged glint in his eye.
¡°She¡¯s all you ever talk about anymore,¡± Sam shot back, refusing to back down. ¡°Since you care about her so much, why don¡¯t you just marry her and get it over with?¡±
¡°What are you, a middle schooler all of a sudden?¡± Blake snarled at her. ¡°Get the fuck out of here.¡±
¡°What about-¡±
¡°I said go! I have more important shit than you to deal with right now.¡± He impatiently shooed her away and turned back to the screens.
Samanta knew that she wouldn¡¯t be getting anything more out of him today, so she did what he said and left, making her way back to her nearby room. With a beep of protest, Alpha unfolded from his curled position and hurried after her.
Once she¡¯d returned to her room, Sam shut the door behind them and sat down on her bed. Leaning down, she gently stroked Alpha¡¯s smooth back. The machine rubbed up against her leg while letting out a series of beeps, boops, and clicks. Ever since Blake had upgraded him with the ability to make simple sounds, the robot had become quite vocal in its affection. Samanta sighed. Even though he was nothing more than moving metal, and even though he was a creation of the asshole in the other room, she¡¯d come to really appreciate Alpha¡¯s companionship. He would be the one thing she missed about this place.
Lying back onto the soft mattress, Samanta reached into her pillow and pulled out a piece of parchment. Several days ago, when Blake had been unveiling his ¡°train system¡± or whatever, there¡¯d been an incident. Two children not much younger than herself, too busy chasing each other to realize where they were, had crashed into her in front of a shocked and terrified crowd. Blake had nearly killed the children but had instead let them go since they were just children being children. He hadn¡¯t caught the moment when the first one had run into her, nor when a note had been sneakily deposited in her pocket.
¡°We have watched you. We see how you bristle under his yoke. We know the pain of your suffering. It shows us that you are one of us. You are an important piece in the battle to return Otharia to its former glory. Now the time to strike is upon us. On the fifth night from today, wait on the north wall. When you see the light of the glowfly, jump and we will catch you. Join us, and get your vengeance! ¡ªThe Resistance¡±
The fifth night... that was this night. Every time she read those words, she had trouble believing that it was real. She¡¯d hoped and wished for somebody to save her from this man for so long, but never dared to believe that it would ever come. But here it was, proof that somebody was on her side. Tears formed in her eyes, but she blinked them away. It wouldn¡¯t do to get the note wet.
With her lesson prematurely ended, there wasn¡¯t much she could do until the sun went down, so she pulled out a small ball and threw it against the nearby wall. Alpha ran after it, trying his best to catch it as it caromed around the sparsely furnished room. Watching the tiny robot, smaller front to back than her two hands put one after the other, try to corral a ball half its size with nothing but its four legs was always amusing. For how much practice the thing had, it still wasn¡¯t very good at it.
Samanta stood atop the north wall, leaning against the railing that kept anybody from falling off. She wasn¡¯t really sure why there was a railing up here, or even why there was a walkway on top of the wall at all. It wasn¡¯t like there were any guards here. There were a few robots that roamed the area, but they didn¡¯t need a walkway to do that. Well, she wasn¡¯t going to complain about it now, not since it meant she could escape this place more easily.
Back in the beginning, there was no way that she would be able to be up here, all alone in the night. Blake had always been very strict about bedtimes and that sort of thing. At least, he had been until this business with the war. Nowadays, he was seemingly far too distracted to care. He would come to regret that, she told herself with a smile. She knew more than anybody else just how vulnerable he was now.
Down below, in an alleyway on the other side of the street that circled the fortress, she spotted a soft light. It pulsed quickly twice and then paused for a moment before lighting up again with a longer pulse. A few moments later, it came again: short pulse, short pulse, pause, long pulse. The pattern of the glowfly, a creature that everybody in Otharia grew up chasing about in the summer evenings. It was time.
Samanta looked down off the wall and tightened her grip on the railing. It was a long way down. Did she really have the courage to just jump off? The note said that they would ¡°catch¡± her, but how? She didn¡¯t see anything down there other than cold, hard ground.
Her desire for freedom warred with her instincts for self-preservation. On the one hand, there was no guarantee that anybody would ¡°catch¡± her at all. It was possible that she would just fall and die. On the other hand, she didn¡¯t really want to live like this anyway, did she? A prisoner to an Elseling, subject to his every whim for the rest of her life?
As if to remind Samanta of her daily life, a soft beep sounded by her feet and she looked down to find Alpha rubbing himself against her ankle. She bent over and picked him up and gave him a hug. Holding him out in front of her, she looked at him from all sides. It was startling how lifelike he was. The way he moved, the way he acted, it was all an excellent imitation of an animal... but it was still fake. No matter how much he tried, Alpha would always just be an imitation of the real thing. Just like her life, were she to stay here.
¡°Thank you,¡± she said to the little robot. Then, she turned and threw the tiny skitter back towards the fortress as hard as she could. A plaintive beep faded off as Alpha fell out of her view, causing her to feel a twinge of guilt as she turned back towards the railing. She shoved that feeling away from her thoughts and squeezed through the railing bars. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and jumped.
The air roared in her ears as she plummeted towards the earth. Quickly the wind rushing through her hair and buffeting her face and body increased in intensity. She opened her eyes again to find that a strong updraft was pushing against her fall, slowing her down. She was still falling, however, and the ground still approached with startling speed.
Sam let out an ¡°oof¡± as she smacked into the street belly first. The impact knocked the wind out of her, and she laid there for a moment as she tried to regain her composure. It seemed she¡¯d be getting a lot of bruises from that sad excuse for a landing, but luckily that was the extent of it. No broken bones, as far as she could tell.
Pushing herself to her feet, Samanta hustled across the street, ignoring the startled looks from the few people still awake and walking in the area at this time of night. Sprinting as best she could into the alley, she ran towards where the light had been, eager to meet the people who¡¯d finally come to save her.
Around the corner, she spotted several men and women huddling just out of sight of the fortress. One of them waved her hurriedly towards them. There they were! Her saviors! She rushed forwards, fighting back emotions as she ran. It was strange, getting so worked up over strangers she¡¯d never met before, but just the thought of others on her side was enough right now to bring tears to her eyes again.
Then somebody threw a sack over her head.
¡°Take it off.¡±
Samanta blinked as the world around her shifted from darkness to... less darkness. She looked around fearfully, wondering where she was. Judging by her surroundings, she was in a warehouse of some sort. Large crates and barrels were stacked all about, lit by several torches burning along the walls. The roof above was rather high, perhaps two stories or more. She could see three hatches of some sort in the middle of the ceiling, two of which were open to the night sky. Those things didn¡¯t matter, however. What mattered were the people surrounding her.
More than a dozen of her fellow Otharians stood in the dark warehouse, their faces grim. Intimidated by the many adults twice her size, Samanta wilted slightly under their harsh stares. Something in their eyes told her that these people were dangerous and that they were not her friends, but before she could turn and run, two strong adult hands grabbed her arms and held them behind her back, keeping her from moving.
A woman stepped forward. She looked to be in her forties, with long white hair and a scar running across the side of her head. The woman eyed Samanta with contempt.
¡°Well, what do you know, the Elseling¡¯s Pet right here in the flesh,¡± she sneered.
¡°L-let me go!¡± Sam squealed as she struggled futilely against the hands grasping her arms.
The woman laughed. ¡°After all the effort we went through the get a hold of you? Of course not.¡±
¡°Why are you- why are you doing this? You said that you needed me! That I was important to fight him!¡±
¡°And you are, both as bait and as a hostage,¡± came the reply. Samanta paled as the woman laughed again, this time with the others all joining her. ¡°You didn¡¯t really think you would get to join us, did you? You, the greatest traitor our country has ever known?¡±
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
¡°B-but I¡¯m not a-¡±
Samanta¡¯s protest was cut off as the woman backhanded her across the face with violent force. She cried out in surprise and pain, as she reeled from the blow. The tears she¡¯d been holding back all day resurfaced, and this time she couldn¡¯t stop them.
¡°Silence!¡± the woman snarled. ¡°You were with the Elseling from the beginning! We saw you with him when he attacked this city! You were there when he declared his rule through the Manys! You were there when he slaughtered our brothers and sisters in the army! You were there through it all! Don¡¯t lie to us, you treacherous worm!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry!¡± Samanta wailed as tears streamed down her cheeks. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to but he made me! He forced me to help him! I-¡±
This time, the woman silenced Samanta by driving a foot into her abdomen. Sam gasped out in pain and her legs lost their strength. Only the strong hands holding her kept her from dropping to the ground in agony.
¡°I said silence! You dare to pretend that you aren¡¯t on his side? You have had entire seasons to kill the Elseling, and yet he still lives. And what about that abomination he calls a ¡®train¡¯? If you oppose him, then why does it speak with your voice? You have no right to call yourself an Otharian!¡±
Samanta quivered as each sentence struck her harder than the physical blows. She wanted to argue, she wanted to fight back, but she couldn¡¯t find the words. Maybe they were right. Her deepest fears, the ones that had tormented her for days on end at the beginning, the ones that caused her endless nightmares, the ones she¡¯d finally thought herself free from... maybe they¡¯d been right all along. Maybe she¡¯d been right all along and she really was a traitor to her people. Maybe it really was all her fault.
¡°Let¡¯s just kill her now and get it over with,¡± somebody said.
¡°Hmmmm, perhaps you¡¯re right,¡± the woman replied. ¡°We just need the Elseling to know we have her. He won¡¯t know that she¡¯s dead until it¡¯s too late for him anyway.¡±
¡°N-no! Please!¡± Samanta begged. ¡°Please, I- help! HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!¡±
¡°It¡¯s no use,¡± the woman sneered. ¡°Nobody knows you¡¯re here but us. No one will help you.¡±
Samanta writhed about, struggling against the grip holding her fast, but she was only a child. Her weak strength could do nothing to free her. She watched in horror as the woman drew out a blade, the metal gleaming in the red torchlight. Her heart pounded in her ears and she trembled as she watched the blade grow closer.
Tack tack tack.
The woman froze as the sound of three small, hard objects bouncing on the ground nearby echoed through the warehouse. ¡°What was that? Somebody¡¯s here!¡± she hissed.
¡°Commander! There¡¯s something here!¡± one of the others called out as he bent over and picked something up. He held it up and inspected it in confusion. The object was small and cylindrical, with a small flame coming from the top. ¡°It¡¯s a... candle?¡±
Without warning the ¡°candle¡± erupted, pouring dark smoke into the man¡¯s face and the area around him. He gagged and dropped the object, letting it fill the air with thick clouds of smoke. Almost simultaneously, two more plumes of acrid smoke spewed forth amongst the group. Quickly hacks and coughs filled the warehouse. Sam was no exception; she gagged and sputtered as the most noxious smell she¡¯d ever experienced filled her nose and mouth.
Her own body warred with her mind. She wanted to get away, to seize this opportunity and escape, but her body was too busy threatening to vomit every meal she¡¯d ever eaten out onto the clay floor. Deep hacking coughs came from above and behind her and the grasp on her weakened. Still coughing herself, she writhed and twisted even harder than before, but her small body still couldn¡¯t find the strength to break free.
That changed suddenly as a shadow fell from above. Samanta heard the sound of a heavy impact coming from behind her, and with a loud ¡°URK!¡± the man holding her collapsed to the ground, knocking her over as he fell partially on top of her. Still gagging and choking, she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, struggling to free her one foot that remained trapped beneath the man¡¯s body.
The hem of a cloak entered her view, and her eyes followed the garment upward to the hood. She couldn¡¯t see much, between the haze and the tears in her eyes and the dim lighting made even weaker by the smoke, but what she could see was enough to make her blood run cold.
Two inhuman eyes gleamed back at her through the darkness, their irises seeming to glow with an eerie yellow luminescence. Unlike the proper round pupils of a person, these eyes had the slits of a predator. An instinctual shiver ran down Samanta¡¯s spine when she saw those pupils contract as they focused directly onto her. She immediately knew that she had locked eyes with something wholly and manifestly evil, but for some reason, she couldn¡¯t look away.
The... thing... whatever it was, drew nearer, for some reason completely unaffected by the toxic smoke that filled the warehouse. Leaning closer, it stared directly into her soul, its piercing gaze holding her in place against her will, and it said, ¡°Pari saved person! Person be Pari¡¯s friend?¡±
Samanta blinked and coughed. ¡°H-huh?¡± she sputtered, unable to process the words or the high-pitched, childish voice that delivered them. And that voice... it had sounded almost... cute?
¡°Yaaaayyyy! Pari friend, Pari friend!¡± the mysterious imp sang as it hopped excitedly up and down.
Unsteadily, Sam pushed herself to her feet, shocked to find that the terrifying cloaked being was actually shorter than her by about the width of her hand. The figure reached out and a tiny hand grabbed her own. ¡°Come with Pari!¡± it exclaimed as it pulled her along behind it. Still adrift in this sea of confusion, Samanta simply followed along as best she could.
¡°Don¡¯t let her escape!¡± the woman hollered from somewhere behind them.
A man came barreling through the smoke, causing the figure leading her to jump out of the way with a ¡®nya!?¡¯. He grabbed Samanta around the waist with a bear hug and lifted her off the ground. ¡°I got her!¡± he called.
Sam wasn¡¯t about to let her one chance at freedom slip away, however. Extending her hands, she Observed the pressure building up in her right hand while removing it the best she could from her left and placed her palms less than a finger¡¯s width away from the sides of the man¡¯s skull. The technique felt almost natural at this point; she¡¯d practiced it a thousand times since Blake showed her what to do, all in the hopes of using it on him one day. Samanta released her hold one the pressure and a ¡°CRACK!¡± rang out through the warehouse as a small bolt of lightning passed between her palms.
The man¡¯s body slumped to the ground, releasing her. In a flash, the cloaked figure re-grabbed Samanta¡¯s hand and pulled her towards the closest exit. Pushing open the door, they paid no heed to the continued shouts coming from behind them and ran out into the open air. Samanta gasped and wheezed as the cleaner air worked its way into her lungs, slowly driving out the noxious fumes.
Together the pair ran as fast as they could down the alley, taking several turns. Soon enough, the figure began to giggle dementedly. ¡°Friend is so cool! Friend was like ¡®zap¡¯! Heeheeheeheeheeheehee!¡± the thing stated, seemingly to nobody in particular.
As they came up to a branch in the alley, both of them froze in surprise as a large skitter passed by overhead, jumping over the alley from rooftop to rooftop. Then, down at the end of the branch to the right, Samanta saw another three skitters pass by, also moving at high speed. She paled as she put the pieces together. Blake¡¯s skitters never moved that fast when patrolling. They only did so when on a mission. Given that they were headed towards the warehouse where they¡¯d just been, it wasn¡¯t hard to realize what the mission was. Blake was hunting for her.
Freeing herself from the small figure¡¯s grasp, Samanta sprinted down the left branch, deeper and deeper into the alleys. She would not go back. Never in a million years!
¡°Friend?! Friend, wait!¡± the creature behind her called, but she ignored its cries. The only thing on Samanta¡¯s mind was escape, at any cost. Checking behind her, she noted with alarm that it was now chasing her. Samanta ran faster.
¡°Pari! Pari, where are you?!¡± a woman¡¯s voice called out from the right alley.
The figure let out a surprised ¡°ah!¡± and her pursuit faltered.
¡°Pari, you get out here this instant!¡± the woman shouted, palpable anger in her tone. The figure halted completely, seeming to droop, before turning about and heading towards the woman¡¯s voice.
Samanta gave silent thanks to the voice as she continued her flight. Finally! Finally, she could be free! Now all that was left was to... to what?
Samanta¡¯s feet came to a halt as she pondered the sudden question. She¡¯d escaped to join the Resistance and help bring down the terrible reign of her former captor, but she¡¯d never expected to find that they hated her as much as they did Blake. What else could she do? Quickly she went through whatever options she could think of, crossing them off her mental list.
Staying in the city was out. The people here knew what she looked like the most out of anywhere in the country. Even if they didn¡¯t recognize her face, they¡¯d definitely recognize the large collar that she still wore. Plus, this was where Blake had the most robots. There would only be so long she¡¯d be able to hide before being found.
That meant getting out of the city and trying her luck somewhere in the country. Maybe there people might not know as well who she was. But how would she get out of the city without being caught? Surely Blake would station extra robots at the gates in search of her. And even if she did make it out, would the people out in the country trust a stranger wearing a collar like the one around her neck?
The collar. The last vestige of Blake¡¯s control over her. As long as it remained around her throat, she would never truly be free. Before anything else, she needed to be rid of it. That was the only realistic first step.
Slowly, Samanta¡¯s steps resumed, her footfalls now slow and silent. With a proper goal in mind, she felt confidence once more. Carefully, she continued down the alley and began her search for a blacksmith from which to steal.
Chapter 73
Sofie ran down the street in a near panic, her and Pari¡¯s packs bouncing awkwardly against her back with every step. She¡¯d lost sight of the squirrelly child over a block ago, and now she had no idea where to look. This street looked the same as all the rest: a row of nondescript buildings on both sides, with several alley openings periodically present along the way. Just a few people were still out in the glow of the crystal street lamp, most of them busy on their way somewhere. Four people ahead of her on the right were in the middle of disassembling some sort of stall.
Pausing her chase for a moment, Sofie strained her ears, trying her best to hear some sort of sign to help her re-locate her adopted sister. Instead, all she could hear was her own panting, the sound of items being placed in a cart, and clicks... lots of metallic clicks. Sofie wasn¡¯t entirely sure what the sounds were, but they were coming from every direction and getting louder.
The people loading the stall into the cart noticed the clicks just a moment later. An uneasy feeling sprouted inside Sofie as she observed them quickly go from tiredly doing a mundane task to a state of utter terror within seconds. Almost as one, they dropped everything they were holding and ran as fast as they could, leaving the half-disassembled cart behind.
That was when the first robot came careening around the corner, all the way down at the end of the street. A second one followed right behind. With trepidation, Sofie turned around to find two more barreling down at her from the opposite direction, just scant meters away from running her over. With a reaction speed that the old Sofie would never have managed, she let go of the packs slung over her shoulder and flung herself to the side. The move came not a moment too soon, as the massive metal machine, moving at a speed comparable to an automobile, sped through the space she¡¯d just occupied.
Scrambling back towards her discarded supplies¡ªwhich, thankfully, hadn¡¯t been crushed by any large robot legs just now¡ªshe hefted them back up over her shoulders and peered about. More robots were converging on a building down the road, several even moving across the roofs of the stone buildings as they made a beeline towards their destination. Sofie shuddered as she watched the damage they inflicted on the stone. To think that she¡¯d almost taken one of them head on...
But what if Pari was taking them head on? The thought sent her mind spiraling down an anxiety vortex. What if Pari was in that building down the way? What if she was currently under siege, or hurt, or even bleeding out or-
¡°Friend?!¡± a familiar child¡¯s voice called out from somewhere nearby. ¡°Friend, wait!¡±
¡°Pari!? Pari, where are you?!¡± Sofie called out as her worry transmogrified into a combination of relief and irritation. A surprised ¡°ah!¡± rewarded her. Sofie¡¯s aggravation rose. What was she doing in there?! There were giant robots rampaging through the area and she was gallivanting around in some alley on her own in a city she didn¡¯t know? It looked like Sofie would have to give the child a stern talking to. ¡°Pari, you get out here this instant!¡±
Walking over to the alley nearest where Pari seemed to be hiding, Sofie waited with her hands on her hips for the youngster to appear. ¡°Pari! Don¡¯t make me come in th-¡± A small, cloaked figure emerged from the darkness. Sofie marched towards her companion, filled with motherly disapproval. ¡°Pari, you can¡¯t just go running around like-¡±
The scolding died in Sofie¡¯s throat as she got her first good look at the child¡¯s tear-filled eyes and quivering lips. Alarms immediately began to blare inside her head as she realized that the dreaded, worst-case scenario was upon her: her beloved angel was about to cry.
¡°Sweetie, come here!¡± she quickly said while scooping the child into a comforting hug. ¡°Tell Sofie-sis what¡¯s wrong.¡±
¡°F-frien... person ran away,¡± Pari sniffed, her voice trembling with pent-up emotion. ¡°Pari saved person like Sofie-sis but p-person r-r-ran a-aw-w-w¡±
Oh no. Sofie could tell that if she let the beastgirl get even one more word out it would be too late to stop the tears, so she interrupted with the first thing she could think of. ¡°Did you ask them to be friends?¡± she asked hurriedly.
¡°U-uh huh,¡± Pari sobbed.
¡°And, umm...¡±
Crap. Sofie had hoped that maybe Pari had gotten a tad too excited and perhaps forgotten to actually communicate some desire for friendship. Now she didn¡¯t have anywhere else to go! She wracked her mind for something to say, something that would stave off disaster for even another minute.
¡°...did they... uh...¡±
She couldn¡¯t do it! Her mind was drawing a complete blank! Well, almost a complete blank: she¡¯d come up with a single response, but it was so stupid that she didn¡¯t dare say it! Yet what other option was there? She was out of time! She had to say something! Sofie cursed her own ineptitude and said the stupidest idea to ever cross her mind.
¡°...did they say no?¡±
¡°N-no? Person didn¡¯t...¡± replied a confused Pari.
Sofie had never believed more in the existence of a god than just now. She¡¯d weathered many a storm since arriving in Scyria. She¡¯d been stabbed, hunted, and nearly killed multiple times. She¡¯d been starved and abused and chained to dungeon walls the continent over. But nothing had ever hurt Sofie like listening to her sister¡¯s anguished cries on that fateful day when they¡¯d first met. She¡¯d rather be stabbed a hundred times than see that weeping face ever again. And so, Sofie did what she had to do. She put on her most sisterly smile and lied through her fucking teeth.
¡°That means that they¡¯re your friend then! If they didn¡¯t want to be your friend, they would have told you no, wouldn¡¯t they?¡±
Pari looked up at her with hope in her eye so sweet and pure that Sofie nearly contracted diabetes. ¡°R-really? P-Pari has a friend?¡±
¡°Of course! I¡¯m sure they just had to, uh, go somewhere... or something. I¡¯m sure that your new friend will come back and see you later, alright? That¡¯s what friends do, after all.¡±
¡°Pari has a friend!¡±
The look of joy that suddenly appeared on the child¡¯s face was enough to melt even the most crotchety being¡¯s heart, but Sofie couldn¡¯t help but feel a deepening dread. She¡¯d just dug herself a hole so deep she couldn¡¯t even see the sky. Now, when the truth came out, not only would Pari be devastated, she¡¯d also lose trust in her!
Sofie sighed. What was done was done. At least now, maybe she¡¯d be able to think of some way out of the mess she¡¯d just created. She handed Pari her sack and took her hand, leading her back towards the station. ¡°So tell me about this fr-¡±
Sofie never finished her sentence, as suddenly the robots down the street filled the air with the sounds of gunshots and screams.
¡±How exactly have you stayed alive for so long when you can¡¯t even follow simple directions?¡± a quite irate Jerithim asked when the pair returned to their meeting place. ¡°I believe all you needed to do was stay put, but apparently that was too much for you to handle?¡±
¡°Sorry,¡± Sofie mumbled glumly.
¡°Did something happen?¡± he inquired, noticing her sullen demeanor. ¡°Do you know what those sounds were?¡±
¡°...I don¡¯t want to talk about it.¡±
¡°Well, whatever,¡± Jerithim said, pivoting topics. ¡°I found a place, so let¡¯s go. I don¡¯t like how quiet it¡¯s gotten around here.¡±
The ¡°place¡± turned out to be a small seemingly-abandoned shack tucked away from the main roads. It would do for the moment, she agreed¡ªnot too big, out of the way, and empty. Pari curled up by her side and fell asleep almost immediately, while Jerithim slept how he always slept: lightly, with his weapons in his hands. Sofie, however, remained wide awake, lost in her thoughts.
There had been people in that building back there, ¡°had¡± being the operative word. Sofie didn¡¯t know who those people were, or what they might have done, but she knew that nobody deserved what had happened to them. She could still see the look on the one woman¡¯s face as she¡¯d charged out of the building, only to be turned into swiss cheese before she¡¯d even taken three steps. It hadn¡¯t been a fight, it hadn¡¯t even been a massacre. It had been an execution.
She¡¯d seen things like this before. Not in real life, but in textbooks and documentaries. This sort of thing happened in third world countries, the ones run by despots who ruled by fear, intimidation, and violence.
Was Otharia a country like that? Was Lord Ferros, the Earthling, the man like her, the person who she¡¯d placed more hope than she rightfully should... was he a monster? This fear, and the uncertainty that it created, had been growing in her ever since her arrival in this nation. But witnessing this atrocity had turned it from a nagging worry to something she couldn¡¯t ignore no matter how much she wanted to. The problem was, what was she going to do about it?
She didn¡¯t know. No matter how she looked at it, she couldn¡¯t find a solution. She didn¡¯t have an army, or powers, or fighting skills, or really anything else that might help fix this. All she had were her presence and her words. She didn¡¯t even know what she would say if she met the man living in that domineering metal monstrosity standing in the center of the city.
With a sigh of resignation, Sofie laid down beside Pari and gave her a soft hug, eliciting an unconscious purr from the adorable tyke. Since she didn¡¯t know what to do, Sofie decided to just go with her heart and do whatever felt right at the time. Whatever that would be, she¡¯d find out tomorrow.
After so many months without a proper toilet, having one readily available whenever she needed it made Sofie feel like a deaf person hearing music for the first time. As she slumped back against the toilet and did her dirty business, she pondered the existence of these public installations. It seemed that her Earth cohort didn¡¯t like the way everything smelled so much that he¡¯d put them seemingly everywhere. Not that Sofie minded. Wroetin¡¯s many faults aside, she couldn¡¯t deny that it smelled orders of magnitude better than pretty much any other city she¡¯d visited since her arrival on Scyria.
Still, to create such a system must have been a tremendous undertaking. The restroom contained a working sink and toilet, meaning that there had to be water pipes hooked up to it. What¡¯s more, the poop had to go somewhere, which meant sewers as well. Sofie doubted that Wroetin had fully working sewers before this, which meant that Lord Ferros had probably created those as well. Given the ease with which those giant worm robots dug through the earth, she could see how he was able to accomplish it. Actually, on second thought, that was likely the cause of the rumblings back up in Nont: sewer creation. It made sense that he¡¯d want to apply his system to the entire country. After all, unlike the trains, it seemed that the Otharians actually were willing to use these installations.
Pulling the cord hanging from the ceiling, Sofie listened to the familiar sound of a toilet flushing¡ªa sound she found strangely soothing¡ªbefore letting out a surprised ¡°eep!¡± as a hidden bidet kicked in and squirted her rear with surprising force. On second thought, she should have seen it coming, as there was no toilet paper or anything similar anywhere to be found.
Sofie pulled up her pants and turned on the faucet. Speaking of things missing, where was the soap? There was a little shelf sticking out of the wall that clearly was meant to hold some sort of soap, but the shelf was empty. Grumbling to herself, she exited the stall, refreshed and ready to go. Except... now her hands felt dirty and gross.
She knew it made no sense. She knew that her hands were pretty clean, relative to how dirty they¡¯d been most of the last year, but something about being in an actual toilet stall had re-heightened her declined standards. And, she justified to herself, she wanted to appear as clean and respectable as possible when meeting this Lord Ferros. First impressions were important! So she insisted to the others that they go find another stall where she could wash her hands. It wasn¡¯t until after the next three stalls were all also missing soap that she gave up.
¡°What is it?¡± Jerithim wondered as he stared at the crystalline panel embedded in the metal before them. The group stood next to a large gate in the side of the fortress¡¯s outer wall. In front of them looked to be a door, though there were no knobs or handles to be found. All that they could see to work with was a smooth dark panel beside the maybe-door.
¡°Maybe it¡¯s a magnetic lock?¡± Sofie mused. ¡°Or a handprint scanner?¡±
¡°Handprints? What?¡± the elf replied.
¡°It scans the patterns on your hand to see who you are,¡± Sofie explained.
¡°You can tell who people are by their hands?¡± the spy wondered with concern.
¡°Yeah, it¡¯s all about the little grooves and stuff. You just put your hand on here like this-¡± She placed her palm onto the panel with her fingers splayed out. ¡°-and if you¡¯re in the system then you get to-¡±
Brrzt.
A negative buzzing tone sounded from somewhere behind the panel, causing her to jump in surprise. ¡°Wow, it actually is a handprint scanner. So... crud, that means we can¡¯t get in this way, can we.¡±
Brrzt! ¡°Hehehe.¡±
¡°All the gates are completely shut,¡± the elf remarked. ¡°There are no guards, and I have not seen a single being enter or leave this place all day. It seems that this friend of yours does not wish to be bothered.¡±
BRRZT! ¡°Hehehehe.¡±
¡°Well, too bad for him,¡± Sofie stated flatly. She hadn¡¯t come all this way to let some damn walls stop her, no matter how technologically impressive they might be. But what other ways inside were there? The walls were quite high, but with Jerithim¡¯s grappling-hook-y device they¡¯d potentially be able to scale them. Yet Sofie was sure that nobody who was smart enough to make all the technological marvels she¡¯d seen so far would design a security system that could be circumvented by just climbing over it.
As if to confirm her thoughts, Sofie spotted a glimpse of a robot making its way along the wall. Yeah, they¡¯d probably be shot as soon as they got even two steps into the place that way. But if going in from the side and above were out, that only left...
BRRZTBRRZTBRRZT! ¡°Hehehehehehehehe.¡±
¡°Pari! Stop doing tha...¡± an exasperated Sofie began just as a previously unseen panel opened up above the scanner. A robotic arm with a long, thin pipe on the end emerged, the pipe looking to Sofie suspiciously like the barrel of a gun. The arm turned and twisted so that the end of the pipe pointed down at them. ¡°Run!¡±
The three of them hightailed it away from the wall as fast as they could, ducking into an alley and out of sight of the wall as soon as possible. Seemingly satisfied, the arm folded back into its compartment and the panel closed.
¡°Well, seems ringing the doorbell over and over until he answers the door is a bad idea,¡± Sofie observed. As she stared out at the city, away from the fortress, her eyes fell on the public restrooms installed along the main road that led out of the city. They¡¯d been erected at set intervals, almost like kilometer markers along a straight stretch of road, all the way from the edge of the city to the fortress. And if the toilets led to the fortress in a straight line, then maybe...
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Another one of Sofie¡¯s patented ¡®terrible¡¯ ideas began to form in her mind. ¡°Hey Pari,¡± she inquired, ¡°do you still have that acid that Arlette and I wouldn¡¯t let you experiment with?¡±
Sofie stared at the ronutepo corpse and tried not to barf. The toad-like creature, with its misshapen face and mouth and its pockmarked skin, was disgusting enough to look at while alive, but now that it was dead it not only looked gross but smelled putrid as well. If the gasses leaking from its open maw were anything to go by, the thing subsisted entirely on a diet of rotten eggs and spoiled milk.
The Stragmans had arrived shortly after they¡¯d managed to somehow kill the giant beast, and were now standing around the body, chatting with Arlette, Jaquet, and Basilli. They didn¡¯t seem too interested in talking to Sofie and Pari, so that left the two of them with nothing to do until the group was ready to reconvene outside the caves. At least, that¡¯s what Sofie had thought until she noticed the little troublemaker peering into the beast¡¯s gaping mouth with a disconcerting level of interest.
¡°Pari, what are-¡±
Seemingly without fear of the sharp teeth or deadly acid, the girl hopped inside the ronutepo¡¯s maw and began rolling around in the slimy, sticky mucus found inside, giggling all the while.
¡°Pari!¡± Sofie shrieked as the sight nearly gave her a heart attack. ¡°What are you doing? Get out of there!¡±
¡°Pari is getting ingredients!¡± the little catgirl chirped, as if fooling around inside the mouth of an oversized animal that spat acid was the most normal thing in the world. Now entirely covered in the slime, Pari pulled out a knife from beneath her ratty cloak. The sharp implement looked to be made not of metal but of bone, or perhaps a large tooth or claw. Regardless of its source, the implement proved incredibly sharp, as the small child began stabbing and slicing away at a section of the creature¡¯s mouth with relative ease.
¡°Calm down, she won¡¯t be hurt as long as she¡¯s covered with mucus,¡± a nearby Stragman man said to the fretting Sofie. ¡°That¡¯s how it keeps the acid from eating away at it from the inside.¡±
Looking around, Sofie realized that multiple people had witnessed the child enter the beast¡¯s maw but nobody else seemed too concerned about it.
¡°Hmm, she really knows her stuff,¡± the Stragman commented as Pari continued to slice away at the flesh. ¡°She¡¯s digging right where their acid sac is found. Normally only a master carver dares to take out one of those. I wonder who taught her that.¡±
¡°Do your people use the acid for things?¡± Sofie wondered.
¡°Not usually. It¡¯s nearly impossible to store, or so I¡¯ve been told. Eats away at almost any container you try to put it in and dries up quickly.¡±
Pari put her knife away and dug her hands into the meat before pulling out a giant gland almost a third of her size. Carefully avoiding the teeth, she waddled out of the mouth and over to her sack. Placing the organ down for a moment, she rooted in her sack and pulled out a large ball of soft wax. Sofie knew that sphere¡ªit was the source of all the wax Pari used to make her candles and store her ingredients. Like everything else, the child claimed she¡¯d gotten the wax from ¡°grandfather¡±, and Sofie wasn¡¯t sure what Pari was going to do when the wax supply ran out.
Humming a happy tune, the beastkin pulled off a generous portion of the wax ball and reshaped it into something halfway between a bowl and a cup. Then with practiced efficiency, she poked a hole in one side of the acid sac and began to pour a thick, viscous liquid into the wax container. Once the organ was empty, she closed the opening at the top and sealed the wax shut with a small flame.
Sofie didn¡¯t feel too confident about Pari lugging about a ball of wax with deadly acid inside it everywhere she went, but the ease with which the girl harvested the ¡°ingredient¡± and stored it, along with the Stragman¡¯s comments, gave Sofie the impression that Pari knew what she was doing so she said nothing. She could always bring it up with Arlette and if they thought it was too dangerous they could confiscate it later. Besides, was it really any different than whatever else the child had in there? This was a kid who made explosives for fun, after all.
Her task complete, Pari stood triumphantly back up and turned to Sofie with a proud smile on her face. Putting her arms out, she closed in for a loving embrace, only to stop in confusion as Sofie instinctively avoided the slime-covered tyke.
¡°Pari, go clean yourself off first, okay?¡± Sofie said, taking a step back.
Puzzled, Pari reached out again, pausing to watch as Sofie contorted herself out of the way.
¡°Pari, stop,¡± Sofie insisted. An ominous dread grew inside her as she watched the child realize what was going on. Pari¡¯s adorable face split into a wide, mischievous grin.
¡°Pari, no.¡±
¡°Heh.¡±
¡°Pari, I¡¯m warning you...¡± Sofie chided as she took another step back.
¡°Heheheh.¡± Pari stepped closer.
¡°Don¡¯t you dare-¡±
¡°Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe-¡±
¡°NO! PARI! STAY AWAY!¡± Sofie cried, but she could see in the scamp¡¯s eyes that it was too late for reason at this point. So instead she turned and ran, a giggling, mucus-covered child hot on her heels.
Sofie had never been in a sewer before, and she had to admit it wasn¡¯t entirely what she¡¯d expected. She¡¯d seen depictions in movies and television shows, of course, which had led her to expect a certain level of grossness which the Wroetin sewers did not reach. The tunnels were actually... well, they were still gross, just not that gross. A large stream of refuse-laden water slowly flowed down the center of the large tunnels that made up the arteries of the system, the foul liquid imbuing the sewers with the putrid stench that Sofie had expected. Luckily, there were thin but relatively dry paths on either side where they could travel without stepping in the water itself.
The newness of the system surely played a huge factor in making the sewer experience more palatable for her. There just hadn¡¯t been enough time for the tunnels to become inhospitably disgusting yet. Also, unlike the places she¡¯d seen on television, every single surface here seemed to be coated with the same shiny, gray metal that made up all the other technology Lord Ferros made. Sofie wondered where all the metal came from. There sure seemed to be a lot of it to go around.
¡°Twenty-two...¡± Sofie counted aloud. After entering the sewers through a grate outside the city, the trio had found their way to the large tunnel that ran beneath one of the city¡¯s main roads, the roads that went all the way from the wall to the fortress. From there, she¡¯d begun to count the small openings in the top of the tunnel as they went. As she¡¯d expected, a certain distinct set of openings could be found at the top of the tunnel, each placed at the same interval as the toilets up above. She¡¯d already counted the number of stalls on this street, coming up with a total of...
¡°Twenty-three!¡± Sofie declared triumphantly. ¡°We have arrived! Look, the pattern of openings stops here. That means we¡¯ve reached the fortress. And the tunnel still goes straight, see? I told you this would work.¡±
Jerithim simply let out a resigned sigh. ¡°We still don¡¯t know that it will work.¡±
¡°Sure we do. The hardest parts were the candle and this. The rest will be easy.¡±
¡°Are you sure your... candle thing can eat away at so much metal?¡±
¡°You saw how little was needed to work through the grate at the entrance, didn¡¯t you?¡± Sofie reminded him. ¡°There was a lot more where that came from, and we¡¯re about to use it all. Unless there¡¯s ten solid meters of metal right above us, we should get through... I think. It¡¯s not like we¡¯ve ever tried this before. So no, I¡¯m not sure. But we¡¯re going to find out!¡±
She smiled as the elf sighed again and rolled his eyes.
A little further down the tunnel, they came upon some new features sticking out from the ceiling every so often: hexagonal protrusions the width of her head, each with an iris-shaped hatch in the center. Sofie scoffed at the sight. This man was so paranoid that he even had gates for his poop chutes.
¡°This is probably the best spot, right in the middle,¡± Sofie stated, stopping beneath one of them. ¡°Pari, place the candle here please.¡±
¡°Okay!¡± Pari chirped as she set down her sack and pulled out the largest candle Sofie had ever seen her make. The long, thin cylinder stood nearly forty centimeters tall with a diameter of perhaps eight centimeters. Pari had used almost all of her remaining wax stash to create this thing, which made Sofie feel quite guilty. They would have to find a replacement soon. Sofie didn¡¯t want to think of what would happen if Pari couldn¡¯t relieve her boredom through experiments anymore. She¡¯d probably burn down a whole city or something.
The two of them backed away a good fifteen meters, making sure to take the direction of the airflow into account and moving upwind. Pari lit the wick before turning and running back to join them. For a moment nothing happened, but just as Sofie began to wonder if the candle was a dud, the candle began to spew forth acid like a spray can spraying paint straight up towards the ceiling. The ronutepo acid began to eat away at the metal as Sofie had hoped, quickly opening a hole that grew with startling speed. Together, the three of them watched as the hole widened and widened while the candle sprayed acid upwards harder and harder, all as a dark metallic liquid rained down onto the walkway below. Perhaps a minute and a half later, the show came to an anticlimactic end as the candle sputtered out and went silent once more.
After giving it another few minutes, Sofie carefully approached the area. An acrid smell powerful enough to overwhelm the sewers¡¯ ambient aroma filled her nostrils, making her cough as she covered her nose and mouth with some extra fabric. The area around the candle was covered in pockmarks from the stray drops of ronutepo acid that had fallen to the ground, as well as puddles of dark metallic residue¡ªan apparent byproduct of the reaction¡ªthat were slowly draining into the stream in the center of the tunnel. After dipping a small piece of cloth into the closest puddle and seeing no reaction, Sofie decided it was harmless enough. She stepped forward, kicked the remains of the candle into the water, and looked up. A victorious grin grew on her face as she gazed through the hole and saw a ceiling on the other end... one that had partially melted away as well. The tunnel was more than a meter wide, more than enough for her and Pari to squeeze through.
¡°Huh, that¡¯s some dangerous stuff,¡± the elf remarked as he joined her. ¡°You just had that lying around this whole time?¡±
¡°Honestly, the only reason I didn¡¯t make her get rid of it was I forgot she had it in the first place,¡± Sofie admitted as he handed her a rope. Quickly she began tying her supplies to her back so she¡¯d have both hands free to climb. ¡°Glad I didn¡¯t, though.¡±
¡°Pretty lucky.¡±
¡°Yeah... sometimes it seems luck is all I have going for me.¡±
She stepped out of the way, letting the elf pull out his grappling hook device which had kept them all from dying on their way down from the walls of Crirada several weeks back. Now he¡¯d refitted it with a payload of thicker rope which could be used for climbing. Aiming it up through the hole, he launched it up the tunnel and over the edge. The grapple on the edge latched onto something out of their view.
¡°Seems good enough,¡± he remarked, giving the rope a series of hard tugs. ¡°You two go first, I¡¯ll take up the rear.¡±
Pulling herself up on the rope, Sofie slowly climbed her way up the tunnel. As she did, she couldn¡¯t help but reflect on the fact that there was no way that Earth Sofie would have been able to climb a rope on her own power, and that was not even considering the extra weight tied to her back. In fact, it was entirely possible that early Scyrian Sofie wouldn¡¯t have been able to do what she was doing now. But here she was, stronger and more capable than before. It felt good to know that she¡¯d grown stronger since arriving here.
Several minutes later, Sofie huffed and puffed as her head finally peeked over the edge. Looking about to make sure the coast was clear, she saw a room that reminded her of the toilet stalls out in the city, only much nicer. There was the toilet, the sink, what looked like a metallic mirror, and even what seemed to be a shower stall. Luckily, the door to the room was shut. ¡°We¡¯re in,¡± she remarked to her companions below. ¡°Now we just have to find Lord Ferros and-¡±
¡°Oh, no need for that,¡± interrupted a cold voice behind her as, without warning, the door slid into the wall. ¡°I¡¯m right here.¡±
Still hanging from the rope with only her head sticking through into the restroom, Sofie froze at the sudden appearance of a man in a large metal suit of armor standing in the hallway on the other side of the door. Her face, flushed with exertion and excitement, paled as her eyes focused on the large minigun pointing right at her head. The gun barrels began to spin.
¡°AHHHH!! Don¡¯t shoot us! Don¡¯t shoot us!¡± Sofie screamed as she ducked her head back below the lip of the hole. Looking down to see if she could lower herself more, she was shocked to find that the bottom of the hole had closed up, trapping the three of them inside.
The man let out an amused laugh. ¡°Yeah? And why shouldn¡¯t I shoot assassins breaking into my home?¡±
¡°Because we¡¯re not assassins! I¡¯m from Earth too! Uh, McDonald''s! Star Wars! Rihanna!¡±
A tense silence fell over them for a moment, before Sofie heard the loud bang of something heavy falling to the metal floor.
¡°Y-you¡¯re...¡±
Peeking cautiously back over the edge, Sofie saw the man known as ¡°Lord Ferros¡± standing where he stood before, the minigun previously in his hand now lying on the cold hard floor. Even with the armor on, Sofie could see that he was shaking. With a groan of exertion, she pulled herself up into the room and stood up.
¡°That¡¯s right. My name¡¯s Sofie. I¡¯m from Belgium. You?¡±
¡°I...¡± the man said gasped out as his trembling increased. The mask covering his face fell away, revealing a Caucasian man in his mid-thirties with a round face and a long, narrow nose. The greasiness of his dirty-blond hair and the pronounced bags under his green eyes spoke volumes about what he¡¯d been going through before she¡¯d arrived, while the tears in his eyes and the shaking of his body said all that needed to be said about what he was going through right now. ¡°Blake... my... name is Blake...¡±
¡°You¡¯re not alone, Blake,¡± Sofie said softly. She could see how the realization was ripping through him, as feelings of isolation and loneliness built up over months and months burst out without warning. She¡¯d been through the same experience herself, several months prior when she¡¯d realized that the Mother of Nightmares was from Earth. The relief that had brought her had been so powerful and sudden that she¡¯d felt like she was going to break apart from the inside.
This was the moment Sofie had been dreading the last few days, the one where ¡°Lord Ferros¡± the icon, the ruler, the shadow that fell over all of Otharia would fade away and the human that he truly was would finally be revealed to her. The one where she¡¯d have to make a choice. Strangely, the choice that had been the source of so much fretting now seemed obvious. The feelings and thoughts that had been warring in her mind were now suddenly silent in this moment of clarity. She knew exactly what needed to be done.
Beaming a warm, friendly smile, Sofie slowly walked up to the shaking man and socked him in the face.
Chapter 74
With an evil grin, Blake momentarily softened the metal of the bathroom floor, allowing the grappling hook to sink in. Once it was deep enough to stay put, he re-hardened the metal and watched the rope attached to the hook go taut. The whole situation made him want to laugh out loud. Here he was, not just waiting for a group of idiotic assassins to break into his home but actively helping them do it. Still, he kept silent so as not to spring the trap too soon.
They¡¯d thought they¡¯d found a way through his defenses, the fools. Of course he¡¯d thought of somebody trying to tunnel through the metal. That¡¯s why he¡¯d created circuits running through every wall that would trigger if something broke them by, say, eating through them with acid. The alarm had gone off before they¡¯d made it even two feet into the bottom of his fortress, and he¡¯d already been standing in the adjacent hallway, ready for their arrival, when the acid had finally broken through and destroyed the floor of the restroom.
Finally, after what felt like an interminable wait, the first assassin poked her head through the hole. Only she wasn¡¯t an assassin. She was something he¡¯d never thought possible: somebody from home.
He wasn¡¯t alone.
In his typical self-absorbed way, Blake had never once considered that there would be anybody else from Earth on Scyria, and why would he? He¡¯d never come across another installation like the one that had brought him here. Hell, he¡¯d never come across any other technology on that level at all! But now that he looked at the thin girl climbing out of the hole, with her messy short black hair and her grey eyes, it occurred to him just how stupid of an assumption that was. Why couldn¡¯t there be other installations hiding around the world? If you could build one, what would stop you from building many more?
He wasn¡¯t alone.
As that realization hit home, a weight that had been pressing down upon his soul, of which he¡¯d been unaware this entire time, evaporated and a geyser of emotion sprang forth within him. His body trembled uncontrollably at the sudden onslaught, the shockingly strong feelings coursing through him clouding his mind and making him weep. There were so many things he wanted to say, but he found himself barely able to say his own name while remaining upright.
He wasn¡¯t alone.
This girl, Sofie... she was from Earth. She knew what a movie was. She¡¯d listened to rock and roll. She¡¯d wasted hours browsing shitty websites on her phone. She¡¯d breathed the same air and stared up at the same sky. She knew the greatness of home, of the truth about civilization that he¡¯d so far been unable to convey to Samanta, Leo, or the other Otharians. Finally. Finally, he¡¯d found somebody who would look upon his works and understa-
A fist struck him squarely in the jaw and his head rocked back. He stumbled¡ªmore from surprise than from the blow¡¯s rather paltry power, really¡ªand steadied himself against the nearby hallway wall.
¡°WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!¡± Sofie roared at him, rage hotter than the sun burning in her eyes. ¡°DO YOU THINK YOU¡¯RE SPECIAL OR SOMETHING?! THAT RIGHT AND WRONG DON¡¯T APPLY TO YOU?! HUH?! SINCE WHEN DID BEING A FUCKING MURDEROUS DICTATOR BECOME AN ACCEPTABLE THING TO DO?!¡±
¡°You... you hit-¡± Blake stuttered, confused by the unexpected onslaught.
¡°THIS ISN¡¯T A FUCKING GAME, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!¡± The girl hollered as she shoved him hard in the chest. ¡°THESE ARE PEOPLES¡¯ LIVES YOU¡¯RE MESSING WITH!¡±
¡°Hold the fuck up!¡± Blake shot back, his mind finally catching up to the moment. He straightened up to his full height and stared angrily back into the irate woman¡¯s burning gaze. ¡°You think you can just waltz in here and fucking punch me in my own home? Who the fuck do you think you are?¡±
¡°I¡¯m the only one with the courage to fucking stand up to you and say what needs to be said, that¡¯s who!¡± she spat back. ¡°What you¡¯re doing-¡±
¡°What I¡¯m doing is I¡¯m saving this shithole! What I¡¯m doing is what needs to be done!¡±
¡°Oh, really? Terrorizing an entire populace? That needs to be done? What about just gunning people down in the street? You don¡¯t get to pull some wannabe Stalin act and just hand-wave it away! This whole thing is bullshit and you know it!¡±
¡°Oh, fuck off! Haven¡¯t you seen what the people in this world are like? And you¡¯re gonna fucking come at me with this shit?! Where¡¯s your anger for the way they treat each other, huh? Don¡¯t act like I¡¯m the bad guy here!¡±
¡°They don¡¯t know any better,¡± Sofie replied through clenched teeth. She leaned forward, her furious glare never leaving him, and shoved a pointed finger in his face. ¡°You do! You know right from wrong, but you threw it away and sank down to their level! That¡¯s unforgivable!¡±
¡°Like I care about your forgiveness! Jesus fucking Christ!¡± he retorted, rolling his eyes as hard as he could for maximum effect. ¡°I¡¯m the only reason that any of those fucks outside haven¡¯t fucking starved to death! I¡¯m the one who¡¯s lifting them out of their shitty-ass lives and showing them what civilization can offer!¡±
¡°What, you mean like those trains that they avoid like the plague? How¡¯s that working out for you? Maybe if you weren¡¯t a fucking murderous dictator they¡¯d be willing to get within ten meters of one!¡±
¡°Right, because it¡¯s my fault that they¡¯re so fucking stupid that they won¡¯t use my shit unless I fucking force them to! Their superstitious, xenophobic bullshit culture is all on me! I¡¯m the evil one for trying to help them after everything they did to me!¡±
¡°Stop trying to justify going full techno-Hitler! No, you know what? That¡¯s too good for you. You¡¯re more of a techno-Mussolini!¡±
¡°Alright, that¡¯s enough! You fucking break into my home, act like you know every fucking thing about my life, and think you get to judge me? You don¡¯t know shit! Get the fuck out!¡±
¡°No! I¡¯m not going anywhere! Somebody needs to be your conscience since you apparently forgot yours back on Earth!¡±
¡°Yeah? Then maybe I should show you what somebody without a conscience does to people that piss him off!¡±
¡°Go ahead and try, dirtbag! I ground the King of Kutrad¡¯s balls into paste! I¡¯m not afraid of you!¡±
¡°You will be when I¡¯m done with-¡±
WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!
The two Earthlings both froze mid-holler as Blake¡¯s mobile battlestation skitter, which he¡¯d placed discreetly around the corner where the hallway crossed with another passage, let out an arresting series of cries and began to deploy.
¡°You gotta be shitting me,¡± Blake muttered. Of course that woman would show up now. It was like she knew precisely the most inconvenient times to appear and made sure never to miss a single one.
Thoughts warred in his mind for a moment, but his choice was an easy one. This harpy who went by the name of Sofie was infuriating, yes, but if she was capable of doing something beyond yelling at him she would have done it already. That woman, on the other hand, was an actual threat, one which could not be ignored.
¡°Stay here,¡± he growled as he stomped towards his awaiting battlestation.
¡°No,¡± Sofie hotly replied. ¡°Come on guys, let¡¯s go. I need to cool my head. If I have to listen to this loser¡¯s bullshit for another second I¡¯m going to end up doing something I¡¯ll regret.¡± Waving the other two to follow, she marched past Blake and continued down the hall towards the other end, where the door to an elevator stood.
¡°Hey hey hey! Where do you think you¡¯re going?!¡± Blake shouted after her. ¡°I¡¯m not fucking done with you!¡±
¡°I¡¯m not going anywhere, creep!¡± Sofie shot back, flipping him off with both hands as the elevator doors opened. ¡°Don¡¯t you worry about that! Oh, and by the way, I didn¡¯t even watch those stupid movies and I can tell that your mask is just a big Iron Man ripoff!¡±
Blake could only glare in response as the door slid closed.
With a heavy sigh, Blake closed the battlestation¡¯s battle command application and took a moment to lean against the hallway wall. Nearly every battle he¡¯d commanded against that woman lasted just a few minutes; she would clash with his units in a violent ballet of carnage and bullets and then it would be over. So, it figured this was the one that took forever¡ªwhat was life, after all, but a parade of suboptimal events? Instead of charging into the fray, that woman had decided to play a game of cat and mouse, probing in and out looking for a way around his defenses. Checking the console¡¯s clock and doing some quick math, Blake realized that it had taken him over an hour to finally put the woman down. Of course, his efforts to recover the body and her weapon had ended in futility like always.
Putting his mask back on and switching the battlestation skitter back into its dormant mode, Blake slowly walked towards the nearby elevator and hit the button. Now that the distraction was over, he had a moment to collate his scattered thoughts and decide what to do about the events of the day so far.
Suffice it to say that Blake was not enamored with his newly arrived Earth comrade. Her little tirade had demonstrated quite clearly the enormity of the chasm between them. However, now that the adrenaline and feelings of the moment were gone, he couldn¡¯t deny that he still felt a yearning for her understanding. To have his efforts rejected so completely and harshly had stung more than he wanted to admit. Maybe, if he could talk to her again, this time without the tension and emotional instability, he¡¯d be able to get through to her. It was worth trying, at least.
The elevator door opened and Blake stepped out into a larger hall, one of the main chambers of the fortress. He caught a glimpse of somebody passing by out of the corner of his eye and called out to them.
¡°Hey, Leo!¡±
The older man halted at his voice, before turning about and heading his way. ¡°Yes, my Lord?¡± he asked upon approaching.
¡°You may have run into some... uhh... unexpected visitors...¡±
¡°Ah, yes,¡± the administrator replied. ¡°We weren¡¯t sure what to do about them at first, but we decided that if they were all the way inside and still breathing then you wanted them here so we let them be. Quite a noisy bunch, especially the woman. Seemed quite upset.¡±
¡°Any idea where they might be now?¡± Blake inquired. He could always go to the nearest terminal and find them if he had to, but Leo seemed to have a knack for knowing where people were and it was easier just to ask.
¡°Probably the same place anybody goes when they don¡¯t want to interact with you,¡± the Otharian replied. ¡°Now if you¡¯ll excuse me, I am behind on my work today.¡±
¡°-going to listen to you when the first thing you do is attack them?! After everything it took just to get in the same room as this guy, you-¡±
Blake stepped out onto the observation tower right into the middle of what would generously be called a ¡°heated discussion¡±. Leo turned out to be right, as per usual. There they were, huddled together on the top deck of the observation tower, the highest and loneliest point in the entire fortress. For the first time, now that Sofie wasn¡¯t right in his face and they¡¯d removed their hoods, Blake¡¯s mind truly registered the other two members of the trio.
One member, a pale elf, with brownish-red hair and sharp green eyes that seemed to habitually dart about looking for threats, was busy berating Sofie. This was the second elf he¡¯d ever seen in person, the first being the Drayhadan Many sent to open up communications between the two countries. Like any good nerd, his eyes focused in on the man¡¯s pointed ears. Scyria fell more on the anime side of elf ears, with long, thin protrusions that could wiggle about and potentially stab somebody in the eye, as opposed to the more Tolkien elf with human-like ears that just happened to taper off into a point.
The other was barely a person, standing under four feet tall. Pitch black hair that seemed to suck in light fell messily down over dark amber skin, but Blake barely noticed any of that. He was too busy staring at the triangular ears twitching atop her head and the long, thin tail waving back and forth from her lower back. A catgirl. An honest-to-god catgirl, right in front of him. Instantly Blake felt a dire urge to scratch those ears, to pet that head, and maybe even scratch under her chin like he always did to the kitties back at his parents¡¯ place, but he shook his head and tabled such thoughts for later. He was here for a reason and it wasn¡¯t time for more distractions, no matter how adorable they might happen to be.
The three of them noticed his presence almost immediately¡ªnot a difficult feat given the clank that came with every step¡ªand their argument halted dead in its tracks. Blake stepped forward and spoke quickly. ¡°The two of you leave, I wish to speak with her alone.¡±
The two others hesitated for a moment, but Sofie just nodded. ¡°You guys leave,¡± she said.
¡°I don¡¯t think this is the best idea,¡± the elf replied, his hand discreetly creeping towards his hips, where two large sheathed daggers hung. ¡°He can talk with us all here.¡±
¡°No, this is between me and him,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°It¡¯s an Earth thing, you wouldn¡¯t understand.¡±
After a moment, the elf seemed to give up. He strode past Blake with a wary gait. Blake returned the favor, secretly softening his weapons as he passed by just to be sure he didn¡¯t try anything funny. The little catgirl followed behind him. As she passed by with a large sack slung over her shoulder, the contents letting out metallic tinks and clinks with every step, she turned her head to look up towards him, stuck out her tongue, and let out a hearty raspberry before dashing into the elevator, all the while glaring at him. As the door closed, he thought he heard an adorable voice say something about a ¡°mean bad man¡± before the sound got cut off.
Sofie, for her part, stood against the fence by the edge of the observation platform. The woman looked much different than she had the first time. She seemed much frailer and smaller than before, and Blake couldn¡¯t help but notice her puffy red eyes, a sign she¡¯d been crying at some point after their argument. Still, the hostility in those eyes had not abandoned her.
Blake walked a little closer while ignoring Sofie¡¯s wary gaze and slowly lowered himself down against the safety fence that kept people from accidentally tumbling off the side of the platform. He leaned back against the metal and let his helmet melt into the rest of his armor. After a moment, Sofie sat down as well, and a tense silence fell over them both.
¡°Well?¡± she asked after a while. ¡°I thought you wanted to talk.¡±
Blake let out a tired breath. ¡°Every morning, I get up out of bed and I put on my armor, and I take this long metal grabber device that I made, almost like a pair of thin, motorized tongs, and I shove it up my butt,¡± he said.
For a moment, all that could be heard was the wind blowing against the tower.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, what?¡± Sofie eventually managed to sputter out.
¡°It¡¯s a messy process. Sometimes the poop comes out readily, but often it¡¯s soft and mushy and it breaks down when I squeeze it. Those mornings are the worst. It doesn¡¯t help that the pressure of rooting around in there often makes me start to pee while I¡¯m in the middle of the process. Can¡¯t stop it either-¡±
¡°Uh...¡±
¡°-since when it decides it¡¯s time to go it just goes. Doesn¡¯t matter if I¡¯m in bed, in my suit, when my bladder determines it¡¯s pee time, I gotta just take it. The worst part is that I usually don¡¯t even know it¡¯s happening until I smell it-¡±
¡°What are you...¡± Sofie groaned, her face in her hands.
¡°-and so I had to build in stuff in my suit to handle it automatically. It¡¯s a constant pain in the ass. And then, of course, there are the sexual urges that-¡±
¡°AAAGGGHHHHH! STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP!!!¡± Sofie shrieked. ¡°What in the world are you talking about?! Why are you saying this?!¡±
¡°Because I want you to understand my life. I want you to understand why I am who I am,¡± Blake answered. ¡°What do you see when you look at me? You see some big, angry strongman, throwing his weight around and abusing the people, don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°What else is there to see?¡± Sofie replied with a glare.
¡°The truth is, I¡¯m not big. I¡¯m not strong. I¡¯m barely a man anymore.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t get it.¡±
¡°When I got here, I saw what their lives were like. I saw how harsh and brutal it was, and I saw how it could be better. There were so many easy ways I could have helped them, and I told them so. I¡¯ll admit that it wasn¡¯t entirely altruism motivating me; I wanted to survive, and offering my knowledge seemed like the only way to ensure that. But, instead of accepting my offer of assistance and a better life for their people do you know what they did?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°They cut my arm off.¡± Blake twisted as he melted away the metal around the remains of his left arm, letting Sofie get a good look at the metal prosthetic strapped onto his shoulder and upper arm. She stared at the wound with wide, appalled eyes and gulped.
¡°O-oh...¡± was all she eventually managed to get out.
¡°That wasn¡¯t the end of it though. They branded me as this evil and terrible being and hunted me across the country. It didn¡¯t matter that I didn¡¯t want to hurt anybody; I was evil and that was that. Still, even as they forced me to run and fight for my life, I tried to keep an open mind. I tried to convince myself that it was the leaders, the Church and its Voices and Apostle, that were the evil ones, not the poor, misguided people. That foolishness ended when one of those poor, misguided people stabbed me in the back¡ªliterally.
¡°The blade cut my spinal cord and paralyzed me from the waist down. A head, most of a torso, and an arm; that¡¯s all that remains of the naive fool who appeared in this forsaken place a year ago. Now I¡¯m reduced to manually pulling my own shit out of my body because I can¡¯t poop properly. All I have left is the anger. Because they took the rest of me away.¡±
¡°I... I¡¯m sorry to hear that. I had no idea that you¡¯d been through so much.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not supposed to. I have to keep up that front no matter what. I have to seem strong because that¡¯s the only way I can survive. Those people out there believe that I¡¯m an abomination that needed to be purged from the world, and they believed that from the moment I arrived. It was a literal part of their religion. There is no reasoning with that.¡±
Sofie didn¡¯t reply for a moment. He could see indecision in her eyes as she thought about what he¡¯d said. But that indecision quickly vanished, and she looked at him with clarity again. ¡°That¡¯s still not an excuse for murder, though,¡± she stated.
¡°Oh, give me a break! They treated me like a was a monster!¡±
¡°And your reaction was to prove them right! Maybe some of it at the beginning was self-defense. Maybe you had no choice at the time; I can¡¯t say. But that time is long gone. I¡¯m sorry that you have suffered so much. I¡¯m sorry that your life sucks. But that doesn¡¯t justify mass slaughter. It doesn¡¯t justify what you¡¯re doing now. No amount of suffering makes that okay. Period.¡±
¡°Spoken like somebody who¡¯s had an easy life,¡± Blake snarled back. ¡°You really don¡¯t know the ugliness of this world, do you? You don¡¯t know what it¡¯s actually like here.¡±
¡°Oh, don¡¯t I?¡± Sofie replied with a scornful glare. ¡°Let¡¯s go through it then, shall we? Within an hour of me stepping out of the place that brought me to this world, I was captured and made into a sex slave. That sound nice and fun to you?¡±
Blake looked away while letting out a grumble of reluctant concession.
¡°Didn¡¯t think so. How about the time when I barely escaped Zrukhora before it was wiped from the map? Or what about how my friends and I were hunted by swarms of bounty hunters all the way from Kutrad to Stragma for weeks and weeks on end? Or how I had to trek through a fucking jungle only to get wrapped up in a fucking war and then turned into a prisoner? Or how after that I was taken all the way back to Kutrad, starved and mistreated the whole trip, before I finally escaped the day before my execution? You want to tell me that¡¯s the easy life?¡±
Blake remained silent.
¡°Yeah, and that¡¯s not even half of what I¡¯ve been through, so you can shut your fucking trap. I have been hunted, stabbed, had fucking fireballs thrown at me, and dealt with all kinds of other shit, and do you know how many people I¡¯ve killed? Zero. There was even a time when my friends and I were in deep trouble and I could have solved everything just by killing somebody, but you know what? I didn¡¯t, because I understand that you can¡¯t just throw away principles when they¡¯re inconvenient! If you do that, they¡¯re nothing, and you¡¯re nothing.¡±
¡°What if, because you didn¡¯t kill that man, you or your friends died?¡± Blake asked. ¡°Are these beloved principles worth losing your life or people you care about?¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes. ¡°I¡¯m not interested in arguing bullshit hypotheticals.¡±
¡°No, seriously. Like, how should I put this... ah! Did Belgium have people that believed in faith healing?¡±
¡°What does that have to do with anything?¡±
¡°Just answer the question.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe. Why?¡±
¡°Because back in America, if I remember right, it was a problem. There were these people who would have, say, a young child who would get sick, but they wouldn¡¯t take him to the doctor. Instead, they would just try to pray the illness away and, shockingly, nothing would happen the kid would die. It was their beliefs, right? Their religion. So at what point should the government or outsiders intervene? If you could save the child even against the parents¡¯ wishes, would you?¡±
¡°Of course! It¡¯s not the child¡¯s fault that their parents are hurting them.¡±
¡°Alright, now what if the parents¡¯ response to you trying to save the child was to try to kill you? What then? What if the only way to save the child was to kill the parents? Would you do it? Where do you draw the line, Sofie?¡±
¡°I¡¯d find a way to rescue the child without killing the parents, even if they attacked me,¡± Sofie replied.
¡°Yeah? You going to do it all by yourself? What if it¡¯s not just the parents, but neighbors too, or their whole town, or even the entire country? You think you can take them all on without hurting anybody? Life isn¡¯t that easy and you know it. You don¡¯t get to just snap your fingers and make the good outcome happen.¡±
¡°What are you trying to say?¡±
¡°That sometimes, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. That¡¯s the world we showed up in, Sofie. This place doesn¡¯t let you do nice things for free.
¡°Kids, elderly, they were starving to death right in front of me when I first arrived. Now, because of my direct actions, there¡¯s more food in Otharia than any year people can remember. Nobody will have to starve to death every winter anymore. I didn¡¯t have to do that; I could have just left. But I decided, instead, to do what needed to be done, to purge this place of the ignorance and stupidity that kept Otharia the laughingstock of the world. It isn¡¯t always clean, but I don¡¯t care. You can call me a monster or whatever, but I choose to save the child, because that child shouldn¡¯t have to die just because they were born and raised by ignorant cretins who tried to murder me.
¡°I mean, do you realize what these people are really like?¡± Blake continued as his voice grew louder and more insistent. ¡°There¡¯s this metal all over this country called ¡®tucrenyx¡¯ that¡¯s fucking amazing. It¡¯s stronger than steel, lighter than titanium, it¡¯s a fucking wonder material. Do they use it? Fuck no! Apparently, ¡®tucrenyx¡¯ means ¡®trash metal¡¯ or ¡®poison metal¡¯ and they only use it to chain people up! They could do so many things with it, but no, they¡¯d rather wallow in stupidity. And then there are the cantacrenyx crystals, or ¡®trash crystals¡¯ as they call them. Everything I¡¯ve done has been done entirely with shit that¡¯s been right underneath these people¡¯s goddamned feet for fucking millennia! They¡¯ve had ages to try something with it but they¡¯re too stuck in their bullshit superstitions and because of that, thousands of people have to suffer and die! I¡¯m not going to apologize for changing that!¡±
¡°The end doesn¡¯t justify the means, Blake. You know that. Besides, even if you say you have good intentions, that doesn¡¯t excuse becoming some authoritarian oppressor. It doesn¡¯t excuse... this.¡± She swept her hand around, gesturing towards the fortress and the city it towered over. ¡°You say you are helping the people of this place, and maybe that¡¯s how you sell it to yourself, but that¡¯s not what I see. What I see is a superpowered child throwing a tantrum, demanding that everybody tell him how good and smart and correct he is. I see somebody who can¡¯t handle losing an argument when he knows that he¡¯s the one who¡¯s right. There had to be ways to accomplish your goals without leaving your soul a blackened husk.¡±
¡°Enough of this shit. You just show up acting like you understand everything, when you don¡¯t know anything, and when I try to explain it to you, you don¡¯t listen! You don¡¯t know what Otharians are really like, but you act like you do. You don¡¯t know all the pain I¡¯ve endured, but you think you can judge me anyway. You don¡¯t know shit.¡±
Sofie just rolled her eyes. ¡°And you do? I¡¯ve been all across this continent, meeting many different people and seeing different cultures the whole time. What about you? When¡¯s the last time you stepped out of this place? Have you ever even left Otharia? What the hell do you know about anything?!¡±
Blake snorted. ¡°More than you, that¡¯s for sure. While you were running around everywhere and sleeping on rocks or whatever, I was sleeping in a comfortable bed with plenty of time to do some actual scientific inquiry, and I¡¯ve learned plenty.¡±
¡°Yeah? Like what?¡±
Blake smiled as he remembered a discovery that was sure to cause Sofie to experience existential dread.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
¡°Souls are real.¡± Sofie opened her mouth to say something, but Blake cut her off. ¡°As in, actual, non-metaphorical existences.¡±
¡°...huh? No, I call bullshit. I don¡¯t care how good at science you might be, nobody can actually prove something like a soul exists. I know Scyrians use ¡®soulforce¡¯ as an analogue for ¡®magic power¡¯, but that¡¯s just a word and words don¡¯t prove anything.¡±
Blake wagged a finger at her, a smug grin on his face. ¡°Actually, words prove everything. Think about it. You¡¯re not speaking English right now, but I can understand you perfectly. Why is that?¡±
¡°Because here on Scyria, ideas aren¡¯t just the words we say. There¡¯s a baser sort of understanding that happens where I¡¯m imparting my internal knowledge and meaning to you beyond just the sounds coming out of my mouth. Or at least that¡¯s how it was explained to me.¡±
¡°That¡¯s all you know? That¡¯s basically nothing. You just described the what, but not the why or how, and even that wasn¡¯t completely right.¡±
¡°Then how does it work, genius?¡±
¡°The knowledge or understanding doesn¡¯t just come from nothing. It comes from the soul. On Scyria, every person has a body, a mind, and what I feel is best described as a soul: an non-corporeal amalgamation of your knowledge, understanding, memories, and overall general existence. While the mind handles thinking and all the rest of that sort of thing, the soul works in tandem with it in a sort of overlapping and redundant manner, handling things like understanding, knowledge, and experiences as well as the transmission of ideas and concepts from one person to another. And before you ask, it is my theory that either we generated souls when we arrived here or Earth does have souls but they are so weak that they don¡¯t actually do anything.¡±
¡°Yeah? And where¡¯s your proof? Because it sounds like you¡¯re just pulling this out of your rear like it¡¯s poop.¡±
¡°I¡¯m getting to that. When setting up my security with this place, I discovered that people can only understand each other when we are nearby each other. I wanted to be able to contact my assistant in his office from inside my chambers, so I set up an intercom system so we could talk and guess what? We couldn¡¯t understand a single word each other said. Only when we were close and could hear each other¡¯s actual voices could we understand each other. There is no underlying truth just floating through the aether, it is a transmission created by the person.
¡°However, it¡¯s different than the understanding of the mind. Did you notice that my trains speak Otharian? That¡¯s because I found that even if the soul can¡¯t receive any understanding, the mind, since it processes speech on a different level, can still understand a spoken language if it¡¯s one that it knows. So the people out there can understand it, but you cannot.¡±
¡°You know, I bet hearing and comprehending something without understanding it through the soul would feel weird if you¡¯d never experienced that before. It¡¯s probably scaring people away from the trains,¡± Sofie speculated.
Blake frowned. As much as he didn¡¯t want to admit it, she¡¯d just made a decent point that he hadn¡¯t considered. Perhaps it would be better to turn off the speakers and switch to programmable screens showing written Otharian? But then some people wouldn¡¯t be able to read it...
¡°But,¡± Sofie continued before Blake could sink too deeply into pondering, ¡°all you¡¯ve proven to me is that meaning is transmitted from person to person through proximity. That doesn¡¯t mean there has to be some non-physical soul-organ. It could just be some feature of the world, or psychic fields, or something. For somebody who seems so set on logic and science, there¡¯s a lot of assumptions and guesswork in there.¡±
¡°That¡¯s because I wasn¡¯t finished,¡± Blake countered. ¡°This is where a second, more definitive piece of evidence comes in: Manys.¡±
¡°Manys? What about them?¡±
¡°Think about it. If meaning can only be transmitted from person to person in proximity, how do Manys work? Why can I speak to a Many here in the fortress, and yet somebody in a whole other country can understand me perfectly? How does the meaning get from my Many to the one in, say, Stragma?¡±
¡°I... I don¡¯t know,¡± Sofie admitted after a moment of thought. ¡°You would think that the distance would be too great between the Many here and the other Many, so the meaning would be lost. That¡¯s how they work right? Two of them, one on each end? I¡¯ve never seen more than one at a time.¡±
¡°And that¡¯s exactly why you don¡¯t understand. You¡¯ve never seen more than one at a time,¡± Blake explained, his smug grin widening. ¡°I hadn¡¯t either for a while, until one day I noticed a Many here in the House of Manys that looked just like the Many I saw in Eflok during my execution. After inquiring about it, do you know what I found out?¡±
¡°What? Just tell me already instead of lording your superior understanding over my poor little ignorant self,¡± Sofie sniped back.
¡°Every Many is an identical twin or triplet, and every identical twin or triplet becomes a Many. Every. Single. One.¡±
¡°They¡¯re... twins? But...¡± Sofie froze for a moment as the revelation sunk home, before burying her face in her hands. ¡°Why didn¡¯t I realize that?! Many! It¡¯s in the fucking word!¡±
Blake let out a series of knowing laughs. ¡°You feel real dumb right now, don¡¯t you? I did too, back then. But there¡¯s more to it. Manys are proof that we each have our own soul, because they don¡¯t.¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Think about it. Why are my words able to transmit across countries through a Many? If distance matters when talking between two people with two souls, why doesn¡¯t it matter with Manys?¡±
¡°Because... they don¡¯t have two souls!¡± the girl gasped.
¡°Precisely! A sperm and an egg become one, and a new life is created. At that moment, a soul is generated as part of that life. But then, something happens! The cells end up splitting into two separate beings! But there is still only one soul!¡±
¡°One single soul split between multiple bodies, carrying understanding instantaneously across the world...¡± Sofie muttered, her voice filled with wonder. ¡°But do they each have only a piece of the soul? Their soul is smaller than everybody else¡¯s?¡±
¡°It¡¯s hard to say, since as far as I know there¡¯s no way to measure a soul. Personally, I believe that their individual soul fragments grow to fill them until they¡¯re like normal people, so they each possess a fragment the same size as a normal person¡¯s soul. After all, the conventional wisdom is that the soul or spirit or whatever provides the energy for Scyrian magic, right?¡±
¡°Yeah, that¡¯s how I understand it. That¡¯s why they call it soulforce.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve heard that illusions are very taxing to create and maintain, and yet they are able to handle those big projections for a pretty long time. If they only had half a soul to power that with, that might not be enough. That¡¯s my theory, at least.¡±
¡°Holy shit... it all makes sense... Those poor people, it must be like trying to listen to multiple radio stations and television shows all at the same time.¡±
¡°Yeah, you¡¯re right,¡± Blake agreed. ¡°Apparently, the government takes custody of identical children when they are born. That¡¯s because, without strict training, the kids are unable to function due to the overwhelming stimulation. Their minds can¡¯t process it all and they overload. You¡¯ll notice I only mentioned twins and triplets. That¡¯s because anything more than that and not even the training can save them. There¡¯s just too much noise and they can¡¯t handle it and die. Even with the training, it¡¯s hard for Manys to deal with all the input. That¡¯s why they have people to handle them and take care of them, and they wear veils and are kept in quiet, dark rooms and all that jazz.¡±
¡°Wow... I had no idea...¡±
¡°You see my point? There¡¯s a lot about this world that you don¡¯t understand one bit,¡± Blake remarked. ¡°So maybe you should think twice before showing up out of nowhere and passing judgment on stuff you barely comprehend.¡±
Sofie¡¯s gaze turned dark. ¡°Nice try, but I don¡¯t need to know how this world works to understand morality, Blake. In fact, I think you know too much because it¡¯s obviously twisted you. I watched your robots gun down a whole building full of people last night! They just ran up and surrounded a place, and then a few minutes later killed everybody inside! It doesn¡¯t matter what world we¡¯re in, public massacres are pure evil and it scares the shit out of me that I have to tell you that!¡±
¡°The evil ones were the people inside that building!¡± Blake fired back. ¡°Those people were some of the last remnants of the old Otharian army who hid themselves among the civilians and claim to be some ¡®Resistance¡¯ movement. They would have killed me the first chance they got, and I wasn¡¯t about to give them any chances.¡±
¡°That doesn¡¯t mean you can just kill them! You didn¡¯t even try to capture them or stop them in any other way, you just painted the ground with their blood! That¡¯s what tyrants do!¡±
Blake let out a disgruntled snort. ¡°You just don¡¯t get what it¡¯s like here. Spend a month out there living with them and then come tell me what you think¡ªif you¡¯re even still alive by then. They hate you as much as they hate me, you just don¡¯t realize it yet.
¡°I mean, really, did you seriously come all this way just to give me fucking church sermons? Why are you even here, anyway? Actually, now that I think about it, how did you even get into Otharia?! The border system should be impenetrable! How¡¯d you get past it?!¡±
Sofie crossed her arms and looked off the side with a petulant harrumph. ¡°Not telling!¡± the girl huffed. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t even have a system like that anyway! Don¡¯t you know how many thousands of people are suffering up there when you could just let them in?¡±
¡°Let hundreds of thousands of foreigners into Otharia? Are you nuts?¡±
¡°They¡¯re starving up there! What happened to wanting to help starving people?¡±
¡°I barely have enough food to feed the people already here as it is, and that¡¯s not even considering the chaos they¡¯d bring. Otharians don¡¯t like outsiders, remember? Besides, the last time I had open borders, those Eterian fucks sent assassins to kill me and I nearly died. It¡¯s not happening.¡±
¡°If you hate the Eterians so much, why are you helping them at Crirada?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°I have my reasons. Wait, how do you know what I¡¯m doing in Crirada?¡±
¡°Because I was in the city until just a little while ago, idiot,¡± she snapped. ¡°Thanks, by the way, for making me have to walk all the way here when you could have just let me ride your zeppelin.¡±
¡°You were in Crirada?¡±
¡°Yeah, I was in Crirada. It was bad in there, Blake. They were basically out of food, exhausted, and ready to break when I left. I can¡¯t even imagine how bad it must be inside there now. That¡¯s why I came, since you want to know so badly. I came to beg you to send more help. They need food, bodies, anything you can offer. The Ubrans have made it a war of attrition, and they¡¯re going to win soon if you don¡¯t do something.¡±
¡°There¡¯s not much more I can do,¡± Blake replied. ¡°I can only make and send so many skitters-¡±
¡°Skitters?¡±
¡°My robots, the ones with four legs.¡±
¡°Seriously? That¡¯s your name for them?¡±
¡°Shut up. As I was saying, I can make and send only so many skitters a day, and they get destroyed fast enough that I haven¡¯t been able to make headway.¡±
¡°Just send some of the ones that you already have, the ones terrorizing farmers for no good reason.¡±
¡°No, they¡¯re what keep me in power here. They¡¯re critical to my goals.¡±
¡°What goals? Stockholm Syndrome-ing an entire country?¡±
¡°Will you just-!¡± Blake stood up in exasperation. ¡°Look, I will try to find more ways to help win the war, alright? You win. And now that you got what you came for, you can leave. Shoo. Go away.¡±
¡°Absolutely not. I¡¯m staying here,¡± Sofie announced, rising to her feet in response.
¡°What?! Fuck no, you¡¯re not!¡± Blake cried as he stepped forward, arms gesticulating wildly. ¡°This isn¡¯t some apartment complex where you just show up and declare you¡¯re moving in!¡±
¡°How can I just leave after what I¡¯ve seen?!¡± Sofie shot back, stepping forward herself until the two of them were just inches apart. ¡°It¡¯s plain to see that this place would have been much better off if somebody, anybody, had been able to tell you ¡®no¡¯, and since apparently everybody else in this country is either too scared or too dead to do it, that responsibility falls to me.¡±
¡°Listen up,¡± Blake growled, the anger from their last encounter returning. ¡°I don¡¯t want you here, and I don¡¯t need you here. Now you take your little group and you get the fuck out, or-¡±
¡°Or what?¡± Sofie spat, not backing down an inch. ¡°You¡¯ll kill me? Dump me in a ditch somewhere for the crime of disagreeing with you? Or will you just lock me away forever in a dungeon, like all the other countries that you claim to be so backward do? Go ahead, do it! Prove me right! Because if you don¡¯t, I¡¯m going to keep coming back every single day, as many times as it takes.¡±
Blake glared into his adversary¡¯s determined gaze and fought back the urge to strangle something. She was right, if he did something extreme, he was just proving her right, and that was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment. But he could tell that she wasn¡¯t going to back down either. If he just threw her out, he had neither the time nor the energy to deal with her constantly trying to break into his home every day.
And... as much as it galled him, she was also the only person from Earth that he knew of¡ªthe only person who had seen a movie, or ridden on an airplane, or experienced the wonders of air conditioning. She was the only person who might get his references, the only one who understood the world from which they both came. Did he want to throw her out of his life so quickly?
After a moment of consideration, Blake¡¯s answer was no¡ªbut only barely.
¡°Because you came so far,¡± he ground out through gritted teeth, ¡°you can stay, as a guest, for a LIMITED. TIME. Got it? That¡¯s as much as you¡¯re going to get. You are not going to live in my fortress, no way, no how, never. Now if you¡¯ll excuse me, I have things to do today that are actually worth my time!¡±
Sofie let out a ¡°Hrmph!¡± as Blake turned and stormed towards the elevator doors. Grumbling to himself, he stepped inside and turned back towards the doors, only to realize that the woman had followed him into the elevator. Wonderful.
The awkwardest of silences permeated the cabin as it slowly descended from the top of the tower. Blake began counting the seconds as they passed, pleading with the elevator to go faster and wondering if he should perhaps make some on-the-fly modifications to literally speed up this descent. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck with this walking morality scale any longer than necessary.
Given how things had been going, perhaps he should have expected what came next. He¡¯d been under a lot of stress, and Sofie¡¯s presence was only making him tenser. Maybe that was the cause¡ªor perhaps it was just Murphy¡¯s Law coming into play once more. In the end though, the reason didn¡¯t matter. Once Blake felt the pain rise from within his lower back, he didn¡¯t have much mind left to ponder such things. All he could do was catch his fall with his arms as he toppled against the side of the cabin.
Sofie gasped. ¡°Are you alr-¡± she began, only to cut herself off as the elevator¡ªand everything else¡ªbegan to shake violently. The cabin suddenly began to plummet and Sofie let out an earsplitting shriek of terror before the emergency systems engaged and their sudden free fall came to an equally sudden halt.
Blake could hear Sofie saying more things, but he no longer had the capacity to process them, his consciousness overwhelmed by the agony that came with every one of these episodes. His body shook and the world around him shook with it. Eventually, at some unknown point later, the tremors waned and he found himself panting on the cabin floor, his body covered in sweat inside its metal shell.
¡°W-w-what the fuck was THAT?!¡± Sofie screeched.
Blake mentally reached out and checked the elevator machinery. Finding it all within working order, he restarted their controlled, proper descent. ¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡±
¡°NOTHING?! You had a fucking seizure!¡±
¡°It just happens every so often. I¡¯m fine now,¡± he told her, his right arm unconsciously reaching back and touching his lower spine.
¡°Bullshit you are!¡± she snarled. ¡°It¡¯s your spine, right? Let me see it.¡±
¡°No,¡± Blake replied, almost automatically. He hadn¡¯t shown anybody his injury and he wasn¡¯t going to start now.
¡°Blake, just this once, don¡¯t try to pull that stupid macho male thing where you ¡®tough-guy¡¯ your way through pain. That was not some little incident where you stubbed your toe, that was a full-blown attack of some sort. Have you had it looked at? Do you have any idea if there¡¯s something going on?¡±
¡°Like I would trust an Otharian to look at my body!¡± he scoffed. ¡°Scyrian bodies don¡¯t even heal like ours do. They wouldn¡¯t have the slightest clue what they would be looking at.¡±
¡°Then let me look at it. Just to make sure.¡±
Blake grumbled, but he couldn¡¯t help but admit that she had a point. It couldn¡¯t hurt. Sofie was perhaps the only person in the world who he knew didn¡¯t have it in her to do something if he exposed his weakness. It couldn¡¯t hurt, and he did have trouble seeing it himself, given the location on his body. ¡°Fine...¡±
Sofie bent over behind him as he willed the metal armor to recede only in that one spot, revealing his wound.
¡°Oh, wow,¡± he heard her mutter. ¡°That doesn¡¯t hurt?¡±
¡°What doesn¡¯t hurt?¡±
¡°This looks infected. Like, really infected. Like, we-need-to-deal-with-this-right-away infected.¡±
¡°Oh,¡± Blake deadpanned. ¡°Fantastic.¡±
¡°Men,¡± Sofie sighed.
¡°I need something sharp,¡± Sofie said as she leaned over Blake¡¯s back.
¡°For what?¡± Blake asked warily.
¡°To get the fucking pus out, Blake, god,¡± she scoffed. ¡°I¡¯m not going to drive a knife into your skull after everything I said about not killing people, chill out. I¡¯m not a hypocrite.¡±
¡°I¡¯m just... a little skittish of people with knives behind me,¡± Blake admitted as he extruded a small amount of tucrenyx from his suit and formed it into the shape of a scalpel.
¡°Thanks,¡± Sofie said as she grabbed the implement. ¡°Where¡¯d you put the alcohol?¡±
¡°Over there,¡± he replied, pointing at the small container of the hardest liquor he could get his hands on in short notice.
¡°Great.¡± Sofie picked up the liquor and poured some in a cup and dipped the blade inside it for a few seconds before pulling it back out and moving back to where he couldn¡¯t see her. ¡°This might hurt, or I guess it might not. We¡¯ll see.¡±
Blake concentrated on his back but felt nothing.
¡°Ugh, the smell!¡± Sofie gagged a moment later. ¡°Yuck!¡±
¡°Just do what you¡¯re gonna do and get it over with,¡± Blake grumbled.
¡°I am, I am...¡± came the reply. ¡°So, now that I see what your room is like, I definitely can¡¯t leave. This place is gross. There are dirty clothes everywhere, the smell... when is the last time you cleaned in here?¡±
¡°What are you, my mother?¡± Blake groused. ¡°Stop it, you¡¯re like fifteen years younger than me.¡±
¡°And you¡¯re mentally twelve. Now stop moving before I do accidentally stab you. There¡¯s a lot of necrotic flesh to scrape off and I don¡¯t want to end up cutting too deep.¡±
¡°What, seriously? It¡¯s that bad?¡±
¡°Yes, you numbskull! This is the kind of thing I¡¯m talking about! You need to take care of yourself!¡±
The two of them settled into another disgruntled silence as Sofie slowly tended to his old wound, until, as always, she piped up once more.
¡°So... uh... I kind of lied before... about why I came to see you,¡± she softly admitted.
¡°You don¡¯t want me to help Crirada more?¡±
¡°No, I do! It¡¯s important, and it¡¯s what I told everybody to get them to help me and so I owe it to them to try and all that, but... that¡¯s not the real reason.¡±
¡°Then why are you really here?¡± Blake asked.
Sofie didn¡¯t respond, though her silence told him everything.
¡°...you want to go home,¡± he answered for her. ¡°You saw my robots and my technology and you thought ¡®maybe he¡¯s figured out a way to go home¡¯.¡±
¡°Please...¡± she said, her trembling voice just barely more than a whisper. ¡°Please just tell me there¡¯s a way to leave this place. Tell me you can reverse the machines that brought us here. Tell me anything.¡±
¡°...I¡¯m sorry. The machines don¡¯t work that way, as much as I wish they did. I¡¯ve looked for anything else I could find. I even got involved in that stupid war because I thought that Severed events might point me towards a way back, but the data¡¯s a mess and don¡¯t even know if I¡¯m smart or knowledgeable enough to get anything out of it. I¡¯m still at it because there¡¯s still a chance, but...¡± He shook his head morosely. ¡°...it seems more and more like it¡¯s a million-to-one shot at this point. It would be best, I think, for you to accept that we won¡¯t ever be going home and move on.¡±
Sofie let out a long, wet sniff. ¡°...yeah. Deep down I think I knew that. I just... needed to hear it from you, I guess, before I could finally give up. I mean, hope never dies, right? H-hold on... I need to... disinfect my hands...¡±
Blake heard her stand up and walk away, followed by several more sniffs and a soft sob, but he kept his gaze down on the floor. He couldn¡¯t bear to look at her at this moment. Just speaking that truth aloud had hurt him inside far more than he wanted to admit.
A moment later, Sofie returned and resumed her work. ¡°I apologize... I just got a little emotional.¡±
¡°It¡¯s fine, I understand.¡±
¡°Every night, as I fall asleep, I wonder why we ended up here.¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s a bit presumptuous to think of it that way, to be honest. Why does there have to be a reason at all?¡±
¡°But somebody had to bring us here, right? This can¡¯t have been some sort of accident.¡±
¡°Why not? Why can¡¯t it just be random bad luck?¡±
¡°How?¡±
¡°Like, perhaps some weird ancient civilization version of the Y2K bug. Some structural flaw deep in their systems that stayed hidden for millennia, until one day all the conditions are met and it manifests itself and all the machines activate on their own and boom, here we are.¡±
¡°You really think that¡¯s the reason? We¡¯re here because of some ancient glitch?¡±
¡°It makes just as much sense as anything else, in my opinion. The place I appeared in looked like it had been abandoned for centuries. There was no sign that anybody had been in there to summon me or whatever. Was there any sign where you appeared?¡±
¡°No, it was empty.¡±
¡°Exactly. There¡¯s no evidence of anybody being involved, and I think that we shouldn¡¯t assume that we¡¯re here as some part of some great shadowy master plan without that evidence.¡±
¡°But then... why can you do what you do? Don¡¯t you think your powers point towards some sort of intelligent or divine intervention?¡±
¡°Not really. I think that it¡¯s a manifestation of us as people. Working with machines is what I¡¯ve done for most of my life¡ªdesigning them, building them, programming them... It¡¯s like when I came to this world, I became who I already was, just... a million times more, to the point where it turns into a superpower, you know?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not really following you.¡±
¡°It¡¯s like, do you know how complicated this suit is? There are trillions of microscopic transistors in each limb alone, on a level of complexity that should make it basically impossible to understand. But somehow, I can look at these transistors and watch the energy flow through them and in a nanosecond I just understand everything going on. I know what they¡¯re doing, I can see if there¡¯s a bug or a mistake, it¡¯s like I just... know all of it within a fraction of a fraction of a second. And then I can create those trillions of incredibly complex patterns practically without thinking at this point, and I never forget them or mix them up. It¡¯s the sort of thing that should be impossible, but if I look at it as basically what I was doing before but taken to an absurd degree, then it makes sense. But it¡¯s only what I was good at before. I¡¯m not some sort of super-genius in everything, just engineering. What about you, what¡¯re your powers?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t have any powers for some reason,¡± Sofie glumly replied.
¡°Being annoying is your superpow-OW! FUCK! What happened to not stabbing me?!¡±
¡°My hand slipped.¡±
¡°Uh-huh.¡±
¡°Sorry, I¡¯m just a little... it¡¯s not fair, you know? Everybody else gets powers and I don¡¯t get anything. It makes me feel so weak, and I hate it.¡±
¡°That must really suck-wait, everybody else?! Are there more of us that I don¡¯t know about?!¡± He twisted about to look at her in surprise.
¡°Stop that, I¡¯m almost done,¡± Sofie replied, pushing him back down. ¡°Yes, I know of two more. And who knows, there might be more than that out there.¡±
¡°Who are they?!¡±
¡°One is a woman with the Drayhadans. I think she¡¯s Japanese or something like that. She¡¯s a powerful psychic who can take out an entire army on her own. They call her the Mother of Nightmares.¡±
¡°That¡¯s one hell of a name.¡±
¡°Yeah, my friend got hit by her abilities a while ago. They said that she put them in a vision that was so overwhelming that they believed they were really there. The other person is a woman who fights for the Ubrans. There¡¯s a lot of names for her, apparently, but the Eterians call her The Monster. You probably know all about her. She¡¯s-¡±
¡°Hold up!¡± Blake interrupted. ¡°Is she a woman with black hair, average height, and a huge-ass sword? Crazy strong and fast, seemingly immortal, takes bullets through the heart like they¡¯re nothing?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve heard she¡¯s unkillable, yeah, that¡¯s why they call her The Monster. My friend who''s still in Crirada said she blew her in half and she just grew her body back. Sounds creepy to me, honestly.¡±
The revelation made Blake want to smash his head against a wall until his brains came out. ¡°Jesus fucking Christ, how can I be so stupid?¡± he moaned. ¡°It was right there in front of me the whole time!¡±
¡°You know her, I take it?¡±
¡°Know her? Ha! I¡¯ve killed that woman what, sixty times? Eighty? I don¡¯t know, I lost count. She¡¯s the reason I haven¡¯t been able to stop the Ubrans more than I already have. I should have realized what she was forever ago, but I just thought she was some super-powerful Feeler or something. God, what¡¯s wrong with me?¡±
¡°Well, isn¡¯t it good you know now at least? Maybe instead of fighting, you can try talking to her or something. Bring her to our side.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know... She looks Latina to me, at least through the video feed. Do you know Spanish?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t judge somebody by their looks, Blake. You have no idea what languages she speaks.¡±
¡°Well I¡¯m just saying, unless she knows English, or... what can you speak?¡±
¡°French, German, Dutch, and English. But no, not Spanish.¡±
¡°That many? Yeesh. I could barely get a C minus in high school German class.¡±
¡°I¡¯m good at languages.¡±
¡°Well as I was trying to say, and I¡¯m just playing the odds here, her most likely language is Spanish, which we can¡¯t speak. If it turns out she doesn¡¯t know any of the languages you listed, there¡¯s no easy way for us to communicate with her through my robots. I mean I know ¡®hola¡¯, but that¡¯s about the limit to my Spanish knowledge. I guess I could have them just repeat that over and over again...¡±
¡°Then just go there in person and talk to her.¡±
¡°Hell no! Are you out of your mind? There¡¯s no way I¡¯m going within twenty miles of that murder machine!¡±
¡°Then maybe there¡¯s some non-verbal way to communicate with her? Like, I don¡¯t know, music or something?¡±
¡°Music, huh...¡± Blake let out a depressed sigh. ¡°You know, sometimes I think that I¡¯d give my other arm just to hear Earth music again.¡±
¡°I know what you mean.¡±
¡°It wouldn¡¯t even have to be a genre I like. Could be, like, bluegrass or something.¡±
¡°...I miss Earth, Blake. I miss it so much.¡±
¡°Me too.¡±
¡°I miss the food, and the sounds, and the smells, and all of that. I miss movies and books and music and concerts and my family and... I... I miss feeling safe.¡±
All Blake could muster in response was a forlorn ¡°...yeah...¡±. Almost as a matter of survival, he always did his best to avoid thinking about Earth and everything he was missing. His family, his friends, and everything else. But now it was unavoidable, and the thoughts emptied him out and left him feeling hollow inside.
A few minutes later, Blake let out a hiss of pain as a burning sensation ran up his spine.
¡°Oh, you felt that? That¡¯s good,¡± Sofie commented. ¡°Almost done. Just finishing applying alcohol and then we wrap you up and you should be a lot better.¡±
¡°...thanks,¡± he managed to say.
¡°You can thank me by showing me to our rooms,¡± Sofie replied.
¡°Hold on, I said that you could stay here for a little while, but I never said those other two could. Especially not the elf. Don¡¯t trust him; he feels dangerous.¡±
¡°Well, give him a bit of money so he can afford an inn and food, at least,¡± she said. ¡°He spent all his money getting us here and I owe him for a lot so it¡¯s only fair. But Pari stays with me, period.¡±
¡°Yeah? And why should I agree to that?¡±
¡°Because she¡¯s my precious sister, that¡¯s why. I swore to protect her and take care of her and that¡¯s not going to stop now.¡±
¡°And? She¡¯s not my sister, and I sure didn¡¯t swear anything. You¡¯re already imposing too much on me.¡±
¡°But isn¡¯t she super adorable and cute? Don¡¯t you want to rub her ears and scratch her head and hear her purr?¡±
¡°She is cute, but she doesn¡¯t even seem to like me anyway and I don¡¯t need more distractions. You alone are bad enough.¡±
¡°Fine, if that¡¯s how you want to play it, let me put it this way. If you don¡¯t let her stay here, that means I won¡¯t be able to supervise her. And an unsupervised Pari means that this city will be up in flames by the end of the week.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Did you think Jerithim or I were the ones who ate through your floor? Nope, it was my little angel.¡±
¡°Hold on,¡± Blake sputtered, ¡°you¡¯re saying that that little girl created an acid-spewing death-weapon?!¡±
¡°Oh yeah, only took her half an hour too. She makes all kinds of things. Explosives, chemical weapons... the works.¡±
¡°You¡¯re joking.¡±
¡°Totally serious, swear to God. So, unless you want somebody like that running around your city, unsupervised and bored out of her mind...¡±
¡°Uuuugh! Fine! She can stay here too. I already have one kid running around this place anyway, what¡¯s one more? But you share the same room!¡±
¡°Glad you see it my way.¡±
A minute later, Sofie stepped back into view, hands on her hips as she admired her handiwork. ¡°All done!¡± Sofie proclaimed.
¡°Thanks,¡± Blake begrudgingly said as he reformed the armor around the lower back and stood up.
¡°No problem. I¡¯ll probably have to change the bandages every day for a while though. Anyway, did you say you have a kid? That seems very... unlike you.¡±
¡°Yeah, her name¡¯s Samanta. I picked her up a while ago.¡±
¡°Where is she? I haven¡¯t seen her.¡±
¡°Oh, she ran away last night.¡±
¡°She what?¡±
¡°Yeah, funny story... you know that ¡®Resistance¡¯ group we were talking about earlier?¡± he chuckled, smug as could be. ¡°They somehow got a note to her offering to help her escape from my ¡®evil clutches¡¯. I have a robot that keeps track of her when I¡¯m not around and it recorded the note so I found out about it pretty quickly. I figured, hey, why not let her go out for a bit? Let her blow off some steam--she¡¯s been getting a bit snippy lately. I thought it would do her good to remember how shitty her countrymen are, since she¡¯s spent so much time safe in here with me, and if she led me to them, hey, all the better. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I should send somebody to pick her up. I forgot all about her because you showed up.¡±
¡°You... you used a child as bait?!¡±
¡°It was fine,¡± Blake said with a dismissive wave. ¡°Nothing was going to happen to her. They said they wanted her to join them so they weren¡¯t going to hurt her, and I was watching from above the whole time. She was perfectly sa-¡±
A fist struck him squarely in the jaw and his head rocked back.
Chapter 75
Samanta Zemzaris crept through the dark night towards her target, her eyes and ears straining to pick out any signs of life from the blacksmith¡¯s shop. As she expected given the late-night hour, no lights could be seen anywhere in the forge or what looked to be the blacksmith¡¯s home connected to the side of the forge. With luck, she¡¯d sneak in, find what she needed, and get back out without anybody being the wiser.
Fortunately, the forge itself had its own entrance, separate from the entrance to the rest of the house. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, said entrance was securely locked from the inside. Carefully walking around the building as quietly as she could, Sam spotted several long and thin windows placed high up near the top of the wall, likely for ventilation. The openings were too short for an adult to squeeze through, while a series of metal bars inside the windows would dissuade anybody else from trying. Well, almost anybody; Samanta was far too desperate to give up so easily.
With the sprightly athleticism of youth, she awkwardly climbed up the wall towards the vent windows, using the cracks in between the stones as handholds and footholds for her small digits. Like many of the buildings in Wroetin, the blacksmith shop was built from stones and some sort of mortar that she knew little about. The smooth, continuous stone found in church buildings was actually quite rare, or so she¡¯d been told. Stone Observers capable of creating structures out of a single piece of rock cost a great amount of money, to the point where only the Church and the wealthiest Otharian families could afford to hire one to build their houses. The rest had to use stones and mortar, or, if they were on the poorer side, just plain old lumber.
Soon she was high enough to wrap her hands around the bars. Lifting her feet up against the wall and pushing off of it with them for leverage, she pulled on the bar. It didn¡¯t budge. Neither did the second one, or the third. Finally, on the fourth bar she tried, she felt it wiggle ever so slightly. Was this her lucky break?
Giving the bar a series of hearty tugs, she felt the bar¡¯s wiggle increase until all resistance gave way suddenly and without warning. With a startled yelp, Samanta tumbled off the wall, the dislodged metal rod still clutched firmly in her hands. Her body smacked awkwardly against the hard ground, her rear end and lower back striking the surface first and sending a shock wave of impact shooting up her spine. Between this and the fall from the fortress wall, she¡¯d be seriously sore the next day, that was for sure.
For several moments she didn¡¯t move, simply laying there and trying to regain the wind that had been knocked out of her while listening for any signs of life in the nearby area. After hearing nothing out of the ordinary, she smiled through the pain, knowing now that it hadn¡¯t been for nothing. Looking up at the window, she could make out in the darkness a gap between the bars that was just wide enough for her child¡¯s body to squeeze through.
After slowly clambering back up, Samanta paused for a moment and peered into the murky darkness, looking for anything amiss. The light from the three moons filtered in through the different barred openings at various angles, rendering the interior of the shop a confusing mess of strange shapes and overlapping shadows. Still, she didn¡¯t see anything alarm-worthy, and so, with a soft grunt of effort, she pulled herself up into the gap. The fit was tight, but with some struggling, she was able to make it through and drop down to the shop¡¯s floor without too much trouble.
Holding out her hand and creating a tiny flame for a bit of extra light, Sam began to search the room for anything that could contribute towards her goal of finally ridding herself of this accursed collar. Sadly, her complete lack of knowledge about smithing immediately proved problematic. In the dim illumination, she found herself staring around at the collection of tools and trying to discern their purposes to little success.
Several metal blocks with holes of different shapes and sizes sat by the wall near her feet. What use they had she had no idea, but they surely wouldn¡¯t be useful for her task. A variety of tongs and graspers in different shapes and sizes hung on a nearby wall¡ªalso not anything she could use.
Finally, she spotted something worthwhile on the other side of the room: a hammer! More accurately, an array of hammers, all placed in a row and arranged in order of size atop a stone table on the other end of the chamber. Samanta tiptoed her way over to the table and eagerly inspected them. Many were too big for her to handle with a single hand, but the smallest third seemed doable. Grabbing the largest of the that third, she hefted it up, only to be surprised how heavy it was. There was no way she¡¯d be able to swing something like this properly. But would the smaller hammers be strong enough for what she needed?
Perhaps if she got some sort of chisel? Chiseling with a hammer against her own neck would be incredibly reckless. She¡¯d probably have to get the chisel in at an angle to avoid hitting her neck, and that was if she didn¡¯t just hit herself with the hammer. Still, how else was she to get this thing off by herself? She could feel a desperation inside her driving her decisions forward. The thought of having to return to that bastard Elseling¡¯s fortress was almost too much for her to bear.
The chisels and other assorted bits looked to be stored on a rack behind her, on the other side of the room across from the open doorway that led to the rest of the abode. Samanta crept towards the rack, her eyes on the prize. Once she¡¯d found the proper chisel, she could leave this place and find somewhere private to-
Suddenly, a hand reached out from the shadows of the doorway and seized her by the upper arm. Samanta let out an unholy shriek, struggling against the powerful grip to no avail. The fingers squeezed around her arm like vices, strong and unrelenting to the point of pain.
¡°Did you think I wouldn¡¯t know when somebody¡¯s skulking about in my shop?¡± a menacing female voice asked as a woman stepped out from the darkness.
¡°I¡¯msorrypleasedon¡¯thurtmepleaseIjustwantedtoborrowthempleaseI-¡± Samanta blubbered as she squirmed, as the woman¡¯s glowering eyes bore down on her.
¡°I don¡¯t know if you¡¯re desperate or just stupid, but-¡±
The woman¡¯s speech halted abruptly and she pulled Samanta in closer, cutting off her desperate pleas. Seizing the child with both hands now, the woman inspected the trembling child, her eyes taking in Samanta¡¯s face, her hair, and most of all, her collar. Even in the moonlight, Samanta could see the woman¡¯s face pale.
¡°Birel! Get over here!¡±
A loud yawn could be heard from somewhere off in the darkness beyond the workshop. ¡°I¡¯m coming, I¡¯m coming,¡± a tired male voice replied, punctuating it with another yawn.
A bright orange light bloomed in the shadows, illuminating the world on the other side of the doorway to reveal what looked to be a hallway leading off to the left. The light grew brighter and brighter until a short man rounded the corner, a large, brilliant flame hovering over his upturned palm.
¡°Is that a child I hear?¡± the man likely named Birel asked nonchalantly as he turned the corner. ¡°What is a child doing in your workshop in the middle of-¡±
The woman dragged Samanta around and presented her to the man. ¡°Look,¡± she stated. He did, and a moment later, his eyes went wide and the flame vanished into nothingness.
¡°Oh dear,¡± he muttered. Birel hurried past them to the door, unbolted it, and opened it a crack to peek outside. ¡°There¡¯s nobody outside,¡± he reported a moment later. The large, bright flame reappeared, lighting up the blacksmith shop in bright warm colors.
¡°Are you sure?¡± the woman asked.
¡°I think so,¡± came the reply. ¡°Have you ever known those things to be quiet?¡±
¡°True. In that case...¡± Samanta gasped as the woman turned and shoved her roughly against the nearby wall. ¡°What are you doing in my shop?! Talk!¡±
¡°Tereta, don¡¯t overdo it,¡± Birel cautioned. ¡°She¡¯s just a child.¡±
¡°She¡¯s not just a child, she¡¯s his child!¡± Tereta snapped back. ¡°They might not be out there now, but that doesn¡¯t mean they¡¯re not on their way!¡±
¡°For what, though? We haven¡¯t done anything, and even if we had, why would she be involved? What is she doing out here in the middle of the night like a vagabond?¡±
¡°So what then, are you saying she ran away? There¡¯s no way that...¡± Tereta¡¯s voice trailed off as she looked into Samanta¡¯s terrified eyes and realized that the possibility was not only there, but likely. She looked back to her cohort, possibilities twinkling in her eyes. ¡°Do you think we could get a reward if we returned her?¡±
¡°No!¡± Samanta cried as tears began to stream down her cheeks. ¡°Don¡¯t send me back! Please! I don¡¯t want to go back I don¡¯t want to go back I-¡± Unable to hold her emotions back anymore, she broke down into sobs and slumped to the floor as she wept.
¡°Now look what you did,¡± Birel scolded.
¡°What? Don¡¯t act like this is all my fault!¡± Tereta protested. ¡°I didn¡¯t do... AAAARGH! FINE!¡±
Samanta watched through tear-clouded eyes as the woman strode off into the hallway. A few moments later, she returned and shoved something into Sam¡¯s face.
¡°Here! Eat this and quiet down, will you!¡± the woman grumbled. ¡°It¡¯s the best we have, so don¡¯t complain.¡±
Samanta blinked several times to clear her vision, only to find a large wedge of cheese hovering in front of her. Cautiously, she took the proffered food. The cheese smelled great and she was honestly feeling pretty hungry at this point, so she hesitantly, she took a bite. The smooth texture and flavor almost brought a smile to her face. It had been a long time since she¡¯d eaten cheese like this. Blake wasn¡¯t a fan of the stuff, so it wasn¡¯t readily available back in the fortress. ¡°Y-you won¡¯t s-send me back?¡± she stammered, her words muffled by a mouthful of cheese.
¡°We won¡¯t. It¡¯s clear that being with Lord Ferros is a terrible situation, and we don¡¯t support throwing children into terrible situations,¡± Birel assured her. He turned his head towards the larger woman and gave her a pointed stare. ¡°Isn¡¯t that right, Tereta?¡±
Tereta crossed her arms belligerently while looking away from the both of them. ¡°Fine,¡± she answered with a petulant huff. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t mean I forgive her.¡±
¡°Well,¡± Birel chuckled, ¡°that¡¯s about the best you¡¯re going to get, uh... what¡¯s your name?¡±
¡°Who cares? Just call her ¡®the Elseling¡¯s Pet¡¯ like everybody else does,¡± the woman chimed in.
¡°Come now, honey, there¡¯s no need to be so belligerent.¡±
¡°Of course there¡¯s a need! She broke into the shop! My shop!¡±
¡°Fine, fine. Just keep it under control. Remember what happened with the Moraskos¡¯s child? We don¡¯t need something like that happening again.¡±
¡°Hey, I apologized!¡±
¡°And yet they still switched over to a different smith for most of their jobs, didn¡¯t they?¡± He shook his head. ¡°We¡¯re getting distracted. Now that I think of it, how did she even get inside?¡±
¡°Looks like she pried a bar loose. See, up there? That fraud of a mason! He said he¡¯d fixed them all, that bastard!¡±
¡°He¡¯ll probably claim it was a bad bar.¡±
¡°I¡¯d like to see him try! I¡¯ll beat him with it and let him tell me just how bad it is!¡±
The man sighed. ¡°Sometimes I wonder how I got stuck with such a violent wife...¡±
¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?!¡±
Samanta watched the two of them bicker from her seat on the floor as she slowly munched away at the cheese. Now that there was actual light, she could finally make out the details on the pair.
Tereta was a large woman both in stature and build. She stood taller than the average man, her body covered in well-defined muscles, especially in her arms. She kept her silver hair very short, only falling to around her chin.
Birel, meanwhile, was quite short for a man, with a soft, pudgy body and a bald head lined with the remnants of light blue hair. Both of them appeared to be in their mid-forties, and something about how they argued gave Samanta the impression they''d been married for most of that time. There was a nostalgic quality to their dynamic that reminded Sam of her parents.
"My name is Samanta,¡± she said, interrupting the squabbling couple. Both of them stopped and stared at her, as if they had forgotten she was even there.
¡°Why hello, Samanta,¡± Birel replied after a moment. He crouched down to get more on her level. ¡°I¡¯m Birel and this is my lovely wife Tereta. Don¡¯t mind her, she just tends to get a little worked up sometimes.¡±
¡°Hey!¡± Tereta interjected.
¡°So tell me, Samanta, what are you doing breaking into a blacksmith¡¯s workshop in the darkest hours of the night?¡±
Sam¡¯s head drooped. ¡°I just want to get this off but I don¡¯t know how,¡± she admitted, pointing to the large, thick tucrenyx ring that encircled her neck. ¡°Please help me. I want to be free.¡±
¡°Is the Elseling searching for you? Can he track you down somehow?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Samanta admitted. ¡°I don¡¯t think he can find me too easily. I¡¯ve been gone for hours.¡±
¡°How about this, then. We¡¯ll help you get that collar off and let you sleep here for the night. Then, tomorrow morning you get out of here and we never see each other again. Deal?¡±
¡°Wait, don¡¯t just decide this for me!¡± Tereta objected.
¡°What do you suggest we do then? Just throw her out into the streets in the middle of the night?¡± Birel shot back. ¡°You of all people should know what that would mean for her.¡±
¡°I just...¡± The woman scowled and folded her arms against her chest. ¡°Fine, but she¡¯s gone by sunrise!¡±
¡°Thank you! I¡¯ll never forget this kindness!¡± Samanta said.
¡°Better for all of us if you do forget,¡± Birel replied. ¡°We don¡¯t want to get involved with Lord Ferros. He¡¯s bad news all around. Now let¡¯s see what we can do about this collar.¡±
Samanta stood back up and the couple crowded around her, peering intently at her neck.
¡°This is tucrenyx!¡± a shocked Tereta observed.
¡°Weren¡¯t you the one who thought that all of the Elseling¡¯s creations were made with tucrenyx?¡± Birel inquired.
¡°I was, but... didn¡¯t you Observe a flame earlier?¡± she asked Samanta.
¡°Yeah?¡± Sam replied.
¡°How? That metal hurts anybody who Observes.¡±
Samanta could only shrug. ¡°It¡¯s never bothered me.¡±
¡°Well, either way, this is a problem. Tucrenyx is really strong and durable. If it wasn¡¯t poisonous to the spirit we¡¯d use it for a lot of things. Either way, getting something this thick made from tucrenyx off your neck without hurting you will be very dangerous.¡±
The word ¡®dangerous¡¯ triggered a memory in Samanta¡¯s mind, one that she¡¯d tried her best to forget over the last year. ¡°Ummm... there¡¯s something else I forgot to tell you. It might explode.¡±
¡°It might what?!¡± Tereta cried as the two adults practically threw themselves away from her.
¡°He said that if I tried to take it off it would explode and I¡¯d die. He showed me what would happen.¡±
¡°We can¡¯t touch this,¡± Birel said, while Tereta nodded in agreement. ¡°Sorry, kid.¡±
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
¡°That doesn¡¯t mean it will happen!¡± Sam argued. ¡°He¡¯s not Othar! He makes mistakes! All the time! Just because he said that doesn¡¯t mean you can¡¯t get it off just fine!¡±
¡°And what if we can¡¯t and you die?¡± Birel responded.
¡°...that would be fine too,¡± came the soft reply.
Tereta¡¯s hand swiped forward without warning and struck Samanta across the face, knocking Samanta to the floor. ¡°You stupid girl!¡± the smith hollered. ¡°Never say something like that!¡±
¡°Tereta!¡± Birel cried as he practically threw himself onto his wife to keep her from advancing on the prone Samanta. ¡°Stop! You need to calm down, now!¡±
The burly smith paused for a moment as she huffed with unexplained fury. She stared daggers at Samanta, but for some reason, the child felt she saw disappointment and sadness in those eyes as well.
¡°I¡¯m... gonna go take a shit,¡± Tereta said after a moment. She marched over to the door that led to the street, practically ripped it open, stomped through, and slammed it shut.
¡°Wh-what...?¡± Sam stammered, pushing herself up into a sitting position, the harsh stinging pain bringing more tears to her eyes.
Birel sat down beside her with a tired sigh. ¡°Let me see that,¡± he said, taking a closer look at her face and prodding it with his fingers. ¡°Nothing broken, at least. Looks like you¡¯re going to have a nasty bruise for a day or two.¡±
¡°Why did she hit me?¡± Sam sniffed.
¡°You said the one thing that she can¡¯t stand. Tereta gets worked up over a lot of things but the one thing that makes her lose it is people giving up on their lives,¡± Birel explained as he sat down beside her. ¡°Not that that¡¯s any excuse.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± Sam said.
Birel sighed. ¡°She lived a hard life when she was younger. She and her younger sister were orphaned when she was fifteen and they nearly starved to death on the streets here. Tereta had to join a gang to survive, but her sister never got over the loss of their parents. She basically just... gave up. After all the pain that Tereta went through to support her, and despite how much Tereta needed her, one day she ended her own life. Tereta¡¯s never gotten over that. It doesn¡¯t help that you¡¯re about the same age that her sister was when it happened.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, I didn¡¯t know.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t be sorry, how would you have any idea?¡± He chuckled for a moment. ¡°It¡¯s funny, but you¡¯d never know what hardships she¡¯s been through looking at her now. It helps that she¡¯s a blacksmith, I guess. Lets her work out a lot of that anger, pounding the metal all day.¡± He chuckled again. ¡°It¡¯s a good system for both of us; I handle the business side and provide the heat, and she does all the actual work.¡±
¡°I see...¡± Sam replied, eying the door with trepidation.
Birel picked up on her unease. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, she¡¯ll have calmed down in a minute once she¡¯s let it all out. I¡¯ll make sure she apologizes.¡±
¡°Where did she go?¡± Samanta wondered. It was confusing. The woman had said she was going to poop, but she¡¯d gone outside instead.
¡°She went to use the toilet booth a block down. She¡¯ll be back soon.¡±
Shock and anger suddenly bloomed inside Samanta at his casual admission. She shot to her feet in outrage. ¡°You use those?! B-but that¡¯s-!¡±
¡°Most everybody uses them these days. What¡¯s the problem? The city has stopped smelling so bad since.¡±
¡°They¡¯re his! The Elseling¡¯s! You can¡¯t use them! It goes against our ways!¡±
¡°What, so we should all go back to using chamberpots?¡±
¡°Yes!¡± Sam cried indignantly. ¡°Nobody should use anything that bastard makes! We have to reject it all, together as a country! If we allow ourselves to be corrupted by his influence, we¡¯ll never be able to bring Otharia back to how it used to be!¡±
¡°But what if we don¡¯t want to go back?¡± Birel replied sagely.
¡°W-what?¡± The answer left Samanta absolutely flabbergasted. She took an unconscious step back, eying the man with renewed suspicion. ¡°You support that monster?!¡±
¡°Oh, no, not at all,¡± he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ¡°I¡¯m not happy that Lord Ferros is here. I¡¯d love for him to be gone, as would everybody. But that doesn¡¯t mean that I want to return to how things were before. Things were terrible then, too, just in a different way. The Church ruined just as many lives as Lord Ferros has. More even.¡±
¡°How could you say such a thing!?¡± Sam hissed, her small hands balling into fists.
¡°All I¡¯ve said is the truth. You¡¯re just too young to understand. The reign of the Church was not some glorious era, no matter what they liked to proclaim. Just look at my wife. I told you she lost her parents. How do you think that happened?¡±
¡°I-¡±
¡°The Church happened. First, they killed her father when she was only eight. Said he was a spy and a heretic. Then few years later, her mother died from the food shortages that happened every winter. Her mother had to sacrifice some of her own food so that her children wouldn¡¯t starve, and it left her weak to the point where she became ill and passed away. These were not uncommon back in the past Otharia. The Church caused the deaths of countless people, be it through their purges or through their mismanagement. I will not miss them, and neither should you.¡±
¡°But... I...¡± Samanta clutched her head in her hands. She didn¡¯t know what to say or think anymore. Was he right? Was she clinging to a past that didn¡¯t exist?
¡°It¡¯s okay. You don¡¯t have to suddenly come around to my perspective so suddenly,¡± Birel stated, giving her an encouraging pat on the shoulder. ¡°Just think about what I said, alright? Learning to see things from other people¡¯s views is part of growing up.¡±
Sam¡¯s head snapped up at the sound of the workshop door opening. A muted Tereta entered, and Samanta approached her and gave a small bow. ¡°I apologize for my words,¡± she solemnly stated, remembering the words of her father, who had always said that it was better to be sorry and save a relationship than to be proud and ruin one. ¡°I was not considerate of my words.¡±
¡°You told her,¡± the woman said to her husband, more as a statement than a question.
¡°I did.¡±
¡°Haaaaahhhhhh,¡± she sighed. ¡°Look, kid. I¡¯m not good with words and crap like this guy over here. All I¡¯m gonna say is this: the world is harsh, and painful, and there¡¯s going to be many times when you feel nothing but despair and you want nothing more than to just give up and stop, but you can¡¯t. You have to keep living and looking for a place where you can be happy, and never stop until you find it. Alright? If it looks like there¡¯s no hope, change how you¡¯re looking at everything and find a new way forward. That¡¯s what living is all about.¡±
Sam glumly nodded.
¡°I¡¯m sorry that I hit you, and I¡¯m sorry that we can¡¯t get that collar off of you, but we can at least let you sleep here tonight, alright? So let¡¯s go do that.¡±
¡°No, I should go,¡± Sam replied.
¡°Nonsense!¡± the smith declared. ¡°You look dead on your feet! You¡¯ll fall asleep in some alleyway somewhere and get your throat cut. Believe me, I know how it is out there. Let¡¯s all get some rest, and then you can continue on your little whatever-it-is tomorrow.¡±
Samanta began to protest, but the woman¡¯s words were right. She could feel just how exhausted she was and finding the energy to argue proved to be more than she was capable of at the moment. She let the adults lead her to a spare room with a straw mattress, and she was out within moments.
Samanta realized something was off the moment she opened her eyes: the sun was too bright. Shooting to her feet, she rushed out of the spare room to find the smiths relaxing and sipping something from a pair of mugs.
¡°You¡¯re finally awake,¡± Birel observed. ¡°Good timing, we were about to get to work and that was going to get very loud. The neighbors complain about it constantly.¡±
¡°What about me leaving at sunrise?¡±
The two exchanged an amused look. ¡°We tried to wake you but you wouldn¡¯t come to,¡± he replied.
¡°Slept like an anvil,¡± Tereta added. ¡°Never seen somebody so tired. Do you have trouble sleeping back at your home?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not my home!¡±
¡°Whatever it is. Either way, it doesn¡¯t matter. Nobody has come looking for you. Just leave when you want.¡±
Samanta looked at the ground and shuffled her feet nervously. ¡°Thank you for everything,¡± she finally said. ¡°I broke into your home and you helped me anyway.¡±
¡°Think nothing of it,¡± Tereta replied.
¡°It was interesting to meet you,¡± Birel added. ¡°Gives us a good story to tell a decade from now, at least.¡±
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation, causing all three of them to tense up. The couple exchanged another glance, this one devoid of amusement.
¡°There¡¯s a back door down the hall,¡± Tereta said in a low voice. ¡°Get out of here while we distract them.¡±
Samanta ran down the hall, listening as best she could for anything worrying. The back door was much like the front, a wooden door with a bar locking it shut. As she pulled the bar aside, her ears picked up a voice from the other side of the house.
¡°Good morning, madam. I am here to retrieve Lord Ferros¡¯s ward.¡±
Sam¡¯s blood ran cold. She knew that voice. It was Leo¡¯s. Hurling the door open, she froze at the sight of two large skitters standing on the other side. Though she knew that they were not truly alive and had no eyes, she couldn¡¯t help but feel like they were staring directly at her.
¡°Who?¡± Tereta responded.
¡°Please, madam, your desire to protect her is commendable, but we know she is here. My lord has been watching her since first fled her home last night. Please be at ease; I assure you, I am not here to harm anyone, regardless of what you may believe.¡±
A series of light taps approached from behind her. Samanta turned to find Alpha speeding his way down the hallway towards her. As it drew near, it let out a series of chirps and boops that struck Samanta as both happy and accusatory at the same time before hopping up and down beside her feet.
With a sigh, she picked up her metallic companion and returned to the front of the house. There, standing in the front door, was Leo. A whole group of skitters stood behind him, including a long-legged one that Blake used to get around.
¡°There you are,¡± Leo said when she appeared. ¡°Come along now, I have much more to take care of today and-¡±
He paused and bent over, inspecting the large bruise that had formed on her face from Tereta¡¯s smack the night before.
¡°Did they hurt you?¡± he asked, his voice suddenly dark and ominous.
¡°N-no! I, uh, hurt myself when I fell in the dark when I broke into their shop last night,¡± she lied.
¡°You broke into their home?¡± Leo repeated, surprised.
¡°...yes,¡± she glumly admitted.
Leo let out a tired sigh and reached into his shirt, pulling out a small bag and handing it to the couple. Samanta heard the clinking of coins come from inside.
¡°On behalf of the child¡¯s guardian, I humbly apologize for her actions,¡± he said somewhat stiffly. ¡°I hope that this is enough to repair anything she may have broken and smooth over any grievances you may have.¡±
¡°Uhhh... yeah,¡± Birel replied, staring into the bag. Samanta was surprised at Leo¡¯s actions. There must be a lot of money inside for somebody like him to be struck speechless. Was she considered so valuable to Blake?
¡°Come now, let¡¯s go,¡± Leo said, gripping her firmly on the shoulder and leading her to the long-legged skitter. Samanta didn¡¯t argue or struggle. There was no point anymore. It was over. She¡¯d lost, completely and utterly.
The ride back was quick and quiet. Neither of them spoke the entire way. Sam just didn¡¯t have it in her to say anything anymore. After starting last night with so much hope, she hadn¡¯t even managed to make it out of the city, and to make it worse, that accursed collar was still on her. It couldn¡¯t get any worse than this.
¡°You will find him in there,¡± Leo said after leading her to a room near their quarters that Samanta didn¡¯t recognize. Had the layout of the fortress changed while she¡¯d been away? ¡°Go inside. I have to take care of my work.¡± Without another word, Leo turned and left.
Reluctantly, Samanta hit the panel to open the door and entered. On the other side was a room that reminded her of a study, with a couch, several chairs, and a low table between them. On the other side of the room was a doorway leading to another room.
¡°-but you¡¯re not listening!¡± a female voice asserted. ¡°You can¡¯t measure the progress of a society by technology. Society matures through its morals and values, not by how close it is to television and airplanes!¡±
¡°And how do they get the opportunity to mature, huh?¡± Blake shot back. ¡°Cultures won¡¯t become utopias where everybody is good and happy if they¡¯re all starving to death and they have to work all day every day just to stay alive! I¡¯m buying them that window!¡±
She couldn¡¯t see much of the second room, but judging by the heightened voices pouring out from there, Blake was inside arguing with somebody. The fact that he would argue with anybody struck her as odd. Instead of entering the second room, she decided to just wait where she was. She wasn¡¯t really in the mood to deal with other people, anyway.
¡°Give me a break! All you¡¯re doing is-¡±
¡°Nya?!¡±
Suddenly a third voice spoke up, bringing the argument to a halt. In the silence that followed, all Samanta could hear was what sounded like somebody sniffing.
¡°What is it? Is something wrong?¡± the woman asked.
¡°Friend?¡± a young voice replied. For some reason, the voice struck her as eerily familiar. ¡°Friend!¡±
Without warning, a small dark shape rocketed through the doorway. ¡°Friend came back!¡± it cried as it slammed her to the floor in what could only be described as a ¡°glomp¡±.
Samanta looked down at the strange dark figure and blanched as her mind put those golden eyes and that familiar voice together at last. It was the demon creature that had saved her the night before! But now that she could see the thing in good lighting and without the hood, Sam realized that it might be even worse than she¡¯d thought. Those were beast ears, which meant that the creature latched onto her torso had to be a beastkin, one of the forsaken beings right alongside heretics, elven, and Elselings.
¡°This... this is your friend, Pari?¡± the unknown black haired woman asked the creature currently latched onto Samanta¡¯s prone body.
¡°Uh-huh! Uh-huh!¡± the beastkin replied as she gleefully rubbed her face into Samanta¡¯s torso.
¡°Oh... oh thank god!¡± the woman replied with a strange level of relief. Then her expression changed, slowly morphing from mild curiosity into dark, ominous anger. ¡°Blake... why is she wearing a collar?¡±
¡°So she¡¯ll behave,¡± came the curt reply. ¡°What? Don¡¯t give me that look! I don¡¯t tell you how to raise your brat, don¡¯t tell me how to raise mine.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you dare call Pari a brat!¡±
As the argument between the two picked back up and the beast creature continuously nuzzled her face into Samanta¡¯s chest, she stared blankly up at the ceiling and sighed in defeat. How silly of her to forget: it could always get worse.
Chapter 76
The harmonies of millions of voices humming and singing filled the Stragman rainforest as an entire civilization traveled through the thick foliage to the site of their next home. Rudra Kapadia did his best to join in, though he didn¡¯t know words or notes to the seemingly endless tune the way everybody else seemed to. The song, referred to by the Stragmans as ¡°the beacon¡± or ¡°the beacon song¡± seemed to be an age-old tradition from many centuries ago.
As far as Rudra could tell, there had been two purposes to singing the beacon song. The first could be found right there in the name: to act as a beacon for hunting parties and other groups that split off from the main procession, helping them relocate the city as it moved. The second was that it would help ward off threats; making some noise in the forest was a great way to summon predators, but making a hell of a lot of noise would help drive them away.
Both these reasons helped illustrate the nature of Rudra¡¯s frustrations with Stragman society. The beacon song was likely very useful back in the day, back when their civilization was a small fraction of its current size. Now, it just seemed like a monumental waste of energy. Over ten million people moving through a forest while carrying their entire city on their backs made more than enough noise to scare away predators and guide hunting groups back, but that didn¡¯t seem to matter. Stragman civilization prized tradition over sense, in his opinion. The issue with Shells was perhaps the largest example, but it was only one of many.
With a casual flex of his arms, Rudra lifted the massive bundle of logs and other materials up slightly to keep them from clipping on a large exposed tree root. Though it had been many months since his arrival, he still couldn¡¯t get used to his herculean strength. Perhaps the reason for that was how little he used it, having spent the vast majority of his time sitting in a cell. Either way, it still boggled his mind that he was capable of absurd feats of strength such as this. If only he¡¯d possessed such physical prowess on Earth, back when he¡¯d worked construction.
In a society filled with people capable of some degree of super strength, Rudra overshadowed them all. Naturally, such a display drew stares from everyone. He could feel the eyes of the people nearby burning into the back of his head and tried to ignore them as best he could, but there was no getting around the fact that being stared at like this bothered him.
Many of the looks he received were glares of displeasure, ranging from irritation to anger to full-on hate. Such looks were to be expected. He¡¯d become the icon of the Shell liberation movement, and everybody who had problems with the idea of Shells getting more rights would naturally see him as the target of their ire. Luckily, the average citizen would have trouble getting to him even now that he was out of his cell, as a group of fierce-looking guards walked with him at all times.
Either way, those looks, while somewhat disquieting, were to be expected. Change bothered people, especially people benefiting from the status quo. He¡¯d known from the start that his actions would engender a great amount of grievance from a large swath of the Stragman public, and as such these looks didn¡¯t bother him too deeply. They were simply part of the price of change.
However, there were other stares: hope-filled, worshipful looks he saw coming from many of his fellow Shells. Unlike the antagonistic gazes from the other castes, these troubled him to his core. They were a constant reminder of the burden he¡¯d put on himself, a burden taken on without really knowing if he was up to the task. Rudra had never wanted to be a hero or an icon. It had never been in his personality. But here he was, having basically made promises of a better life to an entire group of people. Could he even succeed? What even was success at this point? Would a compromise that lessened suffering but didn¡¯t get rid of it entirely constitute success? This wasn¡¯t something he knew much about or had any prior experience in, and it made him feel like he was flying blind through unknown territory.
Normally, this was the sort of thing he would mention to Tepin, but that wasn¡¯t possible these days. Back in Pholis, his cell had been designed to cut him off from everybody else as much as possible, which is why it had been hung between several giant trees so that nobody could get within tens of meters of it from any direction. However, thanks to Tepin¡¯s friend Sneak and his strange and nauseating shadow-teleporting powers, that isolation had become an asset. They¡¯d been able to spend time together without fear of discovery as long as she stayed out of view. That convenient situation was no more. These days, he walked surrounded by guards, he ate surrounded by guards, he slept surrounded by guards, he even did his dirty business surrounded by guards. At least until the migration was over, the two co-conspirators had to avoid each other.
The strange thing was, he unexpectedly found himself missing the acerbic, business-oriented wolfwoman. Though Tepin Silverfall projected a cold veneer and largely stuck to topics concerning their mutual endeavor, and though in the beginning she¡¯d treated him like a dog that had just peed on the rug, Rudra had warmed to her company to the point that he looked forward to her visits now. Their conversations were some of the only ways he had to learn about this world and its goings on. Perhaps more importantly, she always seemed largely unimpressed by him. When she looked at him, she didn¡¯t see a hero or an icon. She simply saw an ordinary, unimpressive man. It felt refreshing to be taken as just a normal person after all the hero worship and idolization. Whereas many Shells hung on every sentence he uttered, those same words would just make her roll her eyes.
Tepin would surely visit him once they¡¯d arrived at the cave system the Stragmans called Hoxoni, but that was still days away. For now all he could do was put one foot ahead of another and hum along.
The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Looking at his surroundings, Rudra wanted to laugh. During the migration he had wondered what his cell was going to be like for the entire trip south. Would it be some small room embedded deep into the cave rock? Maybe a cage made of stalagmites and stalactites? The possibilities had seemed vast. So, of course, here he sat, once more confined in a cell suspended high in the air.
The city of Hoxoni sat inside a gargantuan cave system. The city was primarily located in the chambers closest to the outside world, where the airflow was the best and where most of the glowing moss and fungi grew. However, the cave system reached far beyond the bounds of the city, extending down and out past the point where few people ever bothered to go. There was nothing really worth finding down there, after all, other than rocks and underground rivers. Except, apparently, one area known as ¡°the Chasm¡±.
The Chasm was precisely what it sounded like: a large crack going down into the earth at least a hundred meters wide and hundreds of meters deep. Like the rest of the deeper caves, the Chasm offered little of value for the civilization and was therefore generally avoided. However, it did make a perfect place to hang a cell to hold your number one political prisoner.
Looking down from his cell as it hung from the ceiling, Rudra couldn¡¯t help but be amazed at the size of not only the Chasm but the cavern itself. By his estimates, the chamber had to be at least the size of a major cricket stadium. Other than the massive gorge running through the center of the cave, the rest of the floor meters below him was mostly unremarkable. There were some rocky outcroppings and other typical underground geological features, but that was about it. The only other notable thing was the tunnel that wound its way through many more meters of thick rock and led back towards the city. That tunnel entrance was so distant, situated at the edge of the chamber hundreds of meters away, that he couldn¡¯t make it out in the dim light even from his high vantage point.
These conditions all combined to drive home his isolation. Given that there was only one way in and that his cage was so far from the city, the Stragmans didn¡¯t even need to post guards in the cavern; they just put them at the far end of the tunnel, which was just as effective and much less of a hassle for the guards themselves. At least it meant that Rudra could make all the noise he wanted and it wouldn¡¯t bother anybody, since there was nobody around to hear it.
Usually. A series of familiar high-pitched squeaks interrupted his thoughts. Rudra turned around to find a small woman and a lanky man standing in the cell. As the man silently melted into the shadow on the floor and disappeared, a long, bundle of fluff jumped from the woman¡¯s arms and ran excitedly about the cell.
¡°Slinky!¡± Rudra cried, bending down and reaching out with his arms towards the pet wruelit. ¡°Come to papa, cutie!¡±
The wruelit chomped down onto his large finger, drawing a small chuckle from him as he raised his hand, pulling the furry creature up into the air. She flailed about in the air before latching onto his arm with her claws and using her newly found leverage to pull herself up onto his beefy bicep.
¡°Her bites don¡¯t hurt anywhere near as much as they used to,¡± Rudra observed proudly as the tiny creature chittered away on his shoulder before scrambling up the side of his head and down onto the other shoulder, then down his back and back onto the floor. ¡°I think she¡¯s finally taken a liking to me.¡±
¡°If that thing likes anybody, it¡¯s me,¡± Tepin replied, tossing him a small bag of food for both him and his elongated weasel. ¡°I¡¯ll have you know it doesn¡¯t bite me at all and lets me pick it up without struggle.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll win her over, you just watch,¡± Rudra proclaimed. ¡°Slinky will love me more than you soon enough.¡±
¡°I sure hope so,¡± came the dry reply.
¡°So, aren¡¯t you a bit early today? I wasn¡¯t expecting you just yet.¡±
¡°What are you going on about? I¡¯m actually later than usual,¡± she said.
¡°You are? How can you tell? It¡¯s just darkness down here.¡±
¡°The glowmoss, of course,¡± Tepin replied, indicating the thick layer of moss, along with several large mushrooms, growing from the ceiling of the cell. The luminescent moss let off a soft glow of blue-white light that caused the beastwoman¡¯s silver hair, wolf ears, and tail to almost shine in the darkness. ¡°Did you not notice that it dims during the night?¡±
¡°What? How am I supposed to notice that?¡± Rudra scoffed. ¡°It¡¯s not like I¡¯m used to this.¡±
¡°Sadly, you¡¯re about to become very used to it.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t I at least have some fire or something so I could see beyond two meters in here?¡± he groused. ¡°It¡¯s so dark even when the moss is brighter.¡±
¡°Flames are normally forbidden around glowmoss because it¡¯s a severe fire hazard. The moss is incredibly flammable. Just a tiny flame is all it takes to set it alight, and then it will burn bright and hot, spreading quickly,¡± Tepin explained. ¡°It¡¯s highly dangerous.¡±
¡°Psht! I bet that they just don¡¯t want me to be able to burn the cell down and escape if I get tired of this.¡±
The small woman frowned. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be so confident this time,¡± she cautioned. ¡°Unlike the last cage, this one has been specially built with your strength in mind using wood from the Mother Tree herself. It won¡¯t burn, nor do I think it will break, not even under your prodigious strength.¡±
¡°Really? Something like that exists?¡± he wondered.
¡°You¡¯ve seen the Chos¡¯s warclub, have you not? It¡¯s the same material. Nearly indestructible.¡±
¡°Huh... I would have thought that they would have made a more ambitious prison if they had access to stuff like that,¡± Rudra mused. ¡°Just making another hanging cage feels very... unoriginal.¡±
Tepin rolled her eyes, the sight bringing a slight smile to Rudra¡¯s face after so long. ¡°It¡¯s been so long that I had forgotten what a dunce you are,¡± she remarked. ¡°While this arrangement may seem uncreative to a dullard such as yourself, I find it highly worrisome. The point of this design is to isolate the prisoner from the rest of the world, both to keep them from escaping and to keep them from interacting with anybody the Chos doesn¡¯t want them interacting with. Their mistake was assuming that placing you high above the city was enough. Instead, it only made things worse for them because they couldn¡¯t hide you. You were the Shell that defied the Chos every day in front of everybody. It was a powerful sight for many.
¡°This time, they have not made the same mistake. This is a good quarter of an hour away from the edge of the city, and the only way into this area is a long tunnel with guards on the other end. We¡¯re so far away from another person that you could yell and not even the guards would hear you. Even if somebody were to make it inside this cavern, they wouldn¡¯t even be able to see you in this darkness. The Chos has cut you off from the movement which you lead. It is worrisome.¡±
¡°Well, at least you can still come see me,¡± Rudra offered, eliciting a contemptuous snort from the small woman.
¡°If things go as I fear, there will be little reason for me to visit you other than to relay bad news,¡± she confided. ¡°The fight has already been taxing on the Shells, and now it will only get worse. Back in Pholis we were able to supplement our food supply by growing fruits. That will not be possible here. As things get tougher, morale will falter. I worry that our people¡¯s determination will falter without your constant presence to inspire them.¡±
¡°We acquired better pay in exchange for assisting the migration,¡± Rudra reminded her. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t that help?¡±
¡°Indeed. It means that we can support more strikers with fewer people. However, it also makes the prospect of leaving the movement and returning to work more palatable for many. There is a limit to how much suffering anybody can take, and the better the other side looks to the Shells, the more people will be tempted to stop fighting. That¡¯s why you are so important. It gives everybody a banner to rally around.¡±
¡°Am I really that important?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think you understand just how fractured the Shell caste was before you came here,¡± Tepin explained. ¡°Being a Shell is different than being something like an elf or a Eterian or other kinds of social groups. It¡¯s not determined by how you are born or where you live. The single constant between Shells is one thing only: failure. Shells are the failures of Stragman society. The people deemed not good enough. To be a Shell is to have shown yourself before the country to be deficient. It is perhaps the greatest mark of shame a Stragman can have, and as such, it pushes most Shells apart instead of bringing them together over common ground. To truly take ownership of your place as a Shell is to fully accept your dishonor, and that is incredibly hard to do. Believe me, we in the Hidden Fang have been trying for years and it¡¯s been harder than, well... than corralling wruelits.¡±
She glanced at Slinky, who was currently busy trying to climb the cell walls and failing, as her claws were unable to dig into the impossibly hard wood.
¡°You changed so much more than you realize, Rudra,¡± she continued. ¡°Not only did you choose to be a Shell, strongly and proudly as the entire country watched, you then proceeded to go toe to toe with the Chos herself and even make her bend to you at times. No Shell has ever been willing or able to do such a thing. When the others saw you do that, it was like something bloomed inside them. Suddenly they didn¡¯t feel as horrible being a Shell, and they started working together. But now, with you removed from the scene, I fear that all our progress will soon crumble.¡±
¡°Surely you can figure out something?¡±
Tepin gave him an annoyed look. ¡°You act like I can just snap my fingers and fix this. I¡¯m not like you. I don¡¯t have that sort of capabilities.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t sell yourself short, Tepin. You¡¯re far more important than me in this fight.¡±
¡°Did you not listen to anything I said before? You are special. I am replaceable.¡±
¡°That¡¯s horseshit! Without you, everything would fall apart within hours¡ªnot just for the Shells, but for the whole country!¡± He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ¡°You¡¯re frighteningly competent, incredibly devoted, terrifyingly passionate in your causes... without you, none of this works. I just sit here and look pretty. You¡¯ve always been the one making the gears turn, and even a blind person would be able to see that!¡±
The small woman drew back from him as if struck. ¡°I should go,¡± she said said hurriedly.
¡°Wait, already? But you just got here!¡±
¡°I have other business to take care of. Believe it or not, I cannot devote all my waking hours towards relieving your boredom,¡± she said icily as she picked up Slinky and tucked the furball into her cloak. ¡°Sneak!¡±
With the calling of his name, the lanky man flowed up out of Tepin¡¯s shadow and placed a hand on her shoulder, just by where Rudra had put his hand, except this time Tepin didn¡¯t flinch. The two of them sank into the murky darkness, leaving behind a befuddled Rudra wondering if it was something he¡¯d said.
Rudra¡¯s eyes opened to the chirping of birds and the puttering of motors on the streets outside his bedroom.
¡°Mmmmmmmm... hey, sleepyhead...¡± a sultry voice purred in his ear.
¡°Jaya...¡± he whispered, staring into her mesmerizing eyes.
¡°Have a good dream?¡± she asked.
¡°I... uh...¡± Rudra paused, trying to recall the dream. ¡°I can¡¯t remember. But I¡¯m sure it had you in it, so it must have been wonderful.¡±
¡°What a charmer you are,¡± she chuckled. With a tired moan, she snuggled up against his muscular arm and buried her head against his shoulder. Rudra froze in place, determined to never move again, lest he disturb this divine moment. ¡°And what if I wasn¡¯t in it?¡±
¡°Then it must have been terrible and I don¡¯t care to remember it,¡± Rudra replied.
Jaya let out and amused snort into his shoulder. ¡°So all that matters is me? That¡¯s it?¡±
¡°Of course. What do I always tell you? You are the light in my life. Without you, I would be blind and lost.¡±
¡°And what do I always say in return?¡± she prodded.
Rudra sighed. ¡°That centering your entire existence around another person is unhealthy and that I need to get out more.¡±
The still half-asleep woman hummed her agreement into his side.
¡°But none of that would matter, right? Because you wouldn¡¯t leave me. Right?¡± he asked with a hint of trepidation, finally putting words to the nagging fears her answer always generated in his heart.
¡°Mmmmmmmm... nope, never,¡± she replied. ¡°And if the sex is always as good as it was last night, I might never even get out of this bed ever again.¡±
Rudra shifted onto his side and pulled his newly wedded wife close to him, his lips meeting hers. It was a good thing he didn¡¯t have work today, because neither of them would be getting up for a long time.
Rudra¡¯s eyes opened once again to semi-darkness, only the soft glow of the glowmoss lending any illumination to his surroundings. With a groan, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned his back against the nearby wall. Between the omnipresent darkness and the lack of anything meaningful to see or do, he¡¯d taken to sleeping a lot more in this new cage than in the old one. The gratuitous sleeping often messed up his perception of the flow of time, but with only the subtle change in the glowmoss¡¯s brightness to go by, he could barely tell if it was day or night regardless.
With a weary sigh, he rubbed his tired eyes. He¡¯d dreamt of Jaya again. That was the one problem with all the sleep: it meant more dreams.
He wondered what Jaya would have thought about his current life. The funny thing was, while she would surely hate the decor, she¡¯d probably find his current endeavors highly appealing. She¡¯d always had that activist spirit that he¡¯d lacked. He¡¯d had no real vision or ambition, instead being content with just following along behind hers. That was a large part of what had pushed her away, he believed. It was also a large reason he¡¯d been so willing to head down his current path, stupid as that sounded. In some ways, he was still chasing her, still trying to become the man she¡¯d wanted him to be even though he¡¯d likely never see her again.
It hadn¡¯t worked. Nothing worked. Years and a whole other realm later, the void she¡¯d left in his heart remained.
Rudra stood up onto his feet and walked over to the wooden bars that served as one of the walls to the cage. He knew he couldn¡¯t allow himself to dwell on those thoughts. If he didn¡¯t stop himself, he¡¯d just end up spiraling down and down and down endlessly, and nothing good would come of that. It was just so hard to stay strong these days, trapped alone in the darkness as he was. He¡¯d done his best to stay positive and engaged, but the endless gloom and the solitude was getting to him these days.
Only Tepin¡¯s visits provided any sort of light anymore, but sadly even those were not as they used to be. Ever since that first day in Hoxoni, it was like there was a chasm between them, one almost as wide as the literal divide that his cage hung over. Tepin treated him coldly again, like she had when they¡¯d first met. Rudra didn¡¯t understand what he¡¯d done wrong. All he¡¯d done was complimented her!
As if summoned, the most influential Shell in Stragma rose up from the shadows, a scowl on her face as per usual. Still, though her expression remained similar to how it always was these days, Rudra knew immediately that something was wrong. There was a worry in her eyes that replaced the standard annoyance he normally saw.
¡°A small riot happened today,¡± Tepin informed him as Slinking leapt from her arms. ¡°Over three hundred Shell are dead.¡±
¡°Oh no,¡± Rudra replied with great dismay. ¡°There hasn¡¯t been a riot in a long time, right?¡±
¡°Yes, not since the first days of the strike,¡± Tepin agreed solemnly. ¡°The thing is, I fear this may be just the beginning. Tensions are high on both sides. The unsanitary conditions throughout the city continue to worsen, creating more anger towards us every day. At the rate this is going, that will not be the last time their rage boils over.¡±
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
¡°What do we do?¡± Rudra fretted.
Tepin¡¯s face darkened. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Morale is at an all-time low. They have corralled all the Shells into the foulest areas. Food and other supplies are running out, and incidental violence against us has become more and more commonplace. Every day more people leave. I can¡¯t stop them and I can¡¯t blame them. If we still had you to heal them and be a symbol of hope, things wouldn¡¯t be as bad but...¡±
¡°Then can¡¯t we do that?¡±
¡°How? If you magically escaped this place without breaking out, that would expose the secret fact that we have ways to come and go as we please. It would put the entire operation in danger. Only if it could be explained by your physically breaking the cell would it be a worthwhile idea.¡±
Rudra hung his head. ¡°No, you were right. This wood is too sturdy; I can¡¯t even bend the stuff. Can¡¯t we sneak one of those broadcast people in here instead? Maybe let me send a message to everybody to show them that I¡¯m still with them.¡±
¡°No, we wouldn¡¯t be able to hide an event like that from the government. They would start asking questions and eventually they¡¯d figure out our secret just the same as if we stole you from here.¡±
¡°Then at least bring people in here secretly so I can heal them. Let me help somehow! Sitting this out is driving me up the wall!¡±
Tepin shook her head. ¡°Even that is too risky. In Pholis, you could perform your miracles because you were in public and we were able to build a way up to your cell. We can¡¯t do that here. People would start to notice, especially the Chos¡¯s undercover agents. All it would take was for them to grab one healed person and make them squeal and it¡¯s all over.¡±
¡°Then what do we do? Give up?¡±
Tepin¡¯s gaze hardened. ¡°I have not given up once in the forty-one years of my life, and I don¡¯t plan on starting now. Neither should you. Just think. You have nothing better to do, right? Maybe you¡¯ll come up with something so crazy it might work.¡±
¡°Alright, I don¡¯t know what I¡¯ll be able to think of, but I¡¯ll try,¡± Rudra agreed.
¡°Very well,¡± Tepin replied, scooping up Slinky as the wruelit scurried by her feet and cradling the squeaking creature in her arms. ¡°It¡¯s time I left. Farewell.¡±
¡°Hold on!¡± Rudra quickly cried, before she could disappear. ¡°Why not stay a little longer? I could use a little more conversation, you know? There¡¯s nobody else to talk to up here.¡±
¡°I think it¡¯s best if we keep our interactions brief whenever possible,¡± she curtly answered. ¡°Goodbye.¡±
Rudra let out a tired groan and went and sat down in the back corner of the cell. Why had she become so distant? Frustrated, he whacked his head several times with the heel of his hand. Now wasn¡¯t the time for this. He needed to come up with something as soon as he could. Little did he know that even if he did think of something, in a few days it wouldn¡¯t matter.
Rudra paced back and forth nervously as he waited for Tepin to arrive. Just that day, Akhustal Palebane herself had decided to pay him a visit. The Chos checked in on him every month or so, likely just to placate her fears that he would somehow suddenly vanish. This visit had been different. Much different. Stupendously different. So different that he didn¡¯t know what to do. But somebody else would. He just had to survive the wait until she arrived... assuming she even did. For some unknown reason, there¡¯d been no visit the night before.
Eventually, the familiar sight of Tepin Silverfall and her underling Sneak emerging from the shadows appeared before him. ¡°Tepin! Palebane, she came and... and...¡± he cried, so excited that he had trouble finding the words.
¡°I know, you oaf. Calm down,¡± Tepin replied testily as Sneak once more sank away into nothingness and Slinky hopped down from her chest. ¡°What did she offer?¡±
¡°Better pay, the removal of second-class status, all of it! All I have to do is resurrect everybody, end the strike, and give some speeches! What happened?!¡±
¡°An elf arrived, of all things,¡± she said with a smirk of amusement.
¡°An elf? You mean one of those Drayhadans she hates so much?¡±
¡°Not all elves are Drayhadans, but in this case, yes. He arrived two days ago, and my life has been utter chaos ever since.¡±
¡°Oh, is that why you didn¡¯t come visit last night?¡±
¡°Correct. I apologize for not sending word but I was far too busy dealing with the Chos and her new friend... or perhaps I should say old friend?¡± She shook her head slightly as if to clear her mind. ¡°None of that is important right now. What matters is this: the Chos wishes to join the war against the Ubrans. The elf has convinced her, perhaps rightly, that our country has far more to gain than to lose through such an action. But war is impossible as we are now.¡±
¡°I see! They need us!¡±
¡°Correct. With so much of the populace missing, we will be needed even more to fill the gaps. Not only that, but there is another migration coming soon, to Kukego. War is not possible without our cooperation.¡±
¡°Should I cooperate?¡± Rudra wondered. ¡°Basically, this would make me responsible for so many future deaths, and you know my beliefs on that.¡±
¡°The war is already raging,¡± Tepin reminded him. ¡°If anything, Stragman involvement would likely bring it to an end sooner and save lives overall.¡±
¡°I guess you have a point,¡± Rudra allowed. ¡°But is she really willing to agree to every one of our demands just for a war that would be over quickly? These are permanent changes we¡¯re asking for.¡±
¡°I thought the same thing,¡± Tepin agreed. ¡°I think there¡¯s several factors to consider here. First, the most important thing is that the elf presented the Chos with a way out of her troubles, at least for now. If their plan succeeds fully, the spoils would likely be enough to offset much of the damage that we have caused, if not more. I believe that she has been looking for a solution to the problem we present that isn¡¯t just her giving in to us. This allows her to save face in front of everybody and sell it as something more than just weak capitulation.
¡°Second, I think she misses her husband greatly. He¡¯s been dead for two seasons now, and it is my belief that if he were still alive, the Chos might have killed you long ago. Once again, she sees a path to getting her husband back without looking entirely like she betrayed the Stragman people and she¡¯s jumping on it.
¡°Third, and perhaps most importantly, however, is the nature of the power dynamic between you and her. This is where we must be wary. As of now, we hold three major sources of leverage in our fight against her. There is the Shell strike, there is her dead husband, and there are the rest of the dead soldiers. The problem is that once we agree to terms and you resurrect everybody, those last two are gone and we can¡¯t get them back. The Chos is not the most devious of people, but she is not a fool. It is very possible that she could agree to our terms now, only to go back on her word in a season and leave us with little left to fight with. In that way, agreeing to our terms would be fairly easy for her.
¡°What¡¯s more, General Bloodflower has always been known to be a believer in the strength and sanctity of Stragman traditions. Once he returns to life, he will likely become an ideological counterweight that will pull the Chos¡¯s positions on all of this back towards the hard-line traditionalists, greatly increasing the risk that she reneges on the agreement.¡±
¡°Yeah, you make sense. Our victories would only last as long as she says they would,¡± Rudra admitted. Sadly, Tepin¡¯s last point had severely dampened his mood. ¡°So then... what should we do?¡±
¡°We have more leverage now than any time before. The Chos is willing to make a deal. We should use that leverage to bargain for stricter terms. I can already think of several ways we can make some of our demands harder to backtrack. Then, once we get as much as we can, we agree.¡±
¡°Even if we can¡¯t get everything we want? Even if there¡¯s always the threat of being backstabbed?¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Tepin replied without hesitation. ¡°This is what we¡¯ve been working towards for years. To throw away our chance now would be ludicrous. In addition, I actually agree with the Chos and the elf. The Ubran Empire is an existential threat to our people, and they need to be dealt with as quickly as possible before they turn their gazes toward us. There¡¯s no point in tearing down our own home fighting for our dignity if the cost is that the Ubrans make all our work irrelevant in the end.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± a cold voice said as a lanky figure flowed out of the shadows.
¡°Sneak?! Why are you-¡±
Tepin never finished her sentence, as a blade flashed in the soft light of the glowmoss and a long red slit appeared across her throat. She dropped to the floor, writhing about as blood gushed from her wound and puddled onto the floor.
¡°Tepin!¡± Rudra cried, rushing towards her and her treacherous subordinate standing over her dying body. The cage rocked with each powerful step as he lunged towards the man, intent on grabbing him before he could flee, but Sneak just fell into the shadows by his feet before Rudra could get a hand on him.
Cursing the shadowy bastard, Rudra looked around but couldn¡¯t see anybody anywhere in the cell. All there was to see were the shadows encroaching at the edge of the glowmoss¡¯s dim light. Rudra didn¡¯t know where Sneak was hiding in those shadows, or if he was even still around. After several moments of feverishly checking all around him, he decided that he needed help. He didn¡¯t know what this man was fully capable of. However, one other person here did.
Hurriedly shifting his focus to Tepin¡¯s body at his feet, Rudra crouched down beside her and began to concentrate. Quickly but carefully, he began to apply his power, making sure not to push her too far. Her corpse trembled as blood seemed to materialize around her wound, flowing back into her body. Then the wound abruptly closed, the cut quickly shrinking from right to left until it was no more. Releasing his ability¡¯s hold on her, he watched as Tepin blinked, looked up at him, and then looked at something past him.
Alarms rang in Rudra¡¯s head at the same time that she cried ¡°Look out!¡± He twisted around just in time to see a sharp object just centimeters from his face and heading his way. Instincts took over and he jerked his head back, but it was too late. The knife plunged into his right eye and a little deeper, severing the ocular nerve and suddenly turning half of his world black. Only the head jerk, the remnants of a reaction forged by hundreds of street fights back in his younger years, prevented the blade from penetrating further and likely saved his life.
That didn¡¯t make the pain feel any better, however. Rudra screamed as agony burned in his mind and blood dripped down his face. Disoriented by the sudden lack of vision and the swinging of the cage brought on by such sudden and forceful movements, he stumbled backwards and fell.
Rudra brought his arms up to protect his body from the expected followup attacks, but instead he watched as Sneak ignored him and instead drove the knife deep into the prone Tepin¡¯s heart.
¡°Stay dead this time,¡± Sneak snarled.
¡°Curse you!¡± Rudra spat as he stood up on unsteady feet. He didn¡¯t know what to do. Normally, in such a situation, his plan would have been simple. Tackle the man¡ªanything more drastic would constitute violence, and he wasn¡¯t willing to throw away his vows, not even now¡ªand hold him to the ground until the situation could be properly dealt with. However, even if he managed to get his hands on his wiry opponent and bring him to the floor, Sneak would likely be able to meld into the shadows and disappear, then reappear and stab him from a different angle!
Wait, the knife!
Rudra rushed towards his opponent again, once more sending the cage swaying even more violently than it already was. Like the last time, Sneak simply avoided Rudra¡¯s oncoming charge, becoming one with the darkness as expected. Bending down, Rudra quickly reached out with his ability and undid the damage to Tepin¡¯s body. She blinked and looked up at him again, but this time he was already twisting around. Years of experience in dangerous gang fights told Rudra exactly where Sneak would be. He¡¯d be behind Rudra, shaded towards Rudra¡¯s right side where he¡¯d be hidden in his prey¡¯s brand new blind spot, and Rudra was ready for him this time.
The glint of metal caught Rudra¡¯s remaining eye. He lifted his right arm up where the dagger would be and hissed through grinning teeth as the blade bit into the thick muscle of his bicep. He¡¯d caught it. With a flex, immense muscles on the strongest body in the country tightened around the blade, locking it in place.
¡°What?!¡± Sneak gasped as he pulled on the weapon¡¯s handle but found himself unable to budge it even a single millimeter.
With a hiss, the assassin disengaged and melted away once more, only to reappear behind Tepin, who had just managed to get to her feet amid the unsteady swings of the cage. He drew another knife out from somewhere¡ªa smaller, more utilitarian one this time¡ªand grabbed the woman roughly, pulling her in front of him and holding the knife up to her neck. ¡°Back away or she dies!¡± he cried.
Rudra laughed as he pulled the dagger from his arm and took a step forward, his newly acquired weapon in his hand. Rudra had no plans to attack Sneak, of course, regardless of the man¡¯s despicable actions. His eye wound, while costly, was not the first heavy injury he¡¯d received thanks to his beliefs, and it would likely not be the last. However, his opponent didn¡¯t know that Rudra had no desire to harm him. Rudra could tell that, even if he knew that Rudra was a pacifist, Sneak in no way believed it right now. And so he put on his most terrifying grin and advanced on the desperate man.
¡°Do it,¡± he said mockingly. He could always bring her back, after all.
¡°Stay back!¡± Sneak shouted, the panic in his voice rising as the distance between the two of them shrank steadily. ¡°Stay back stay back stayAAAAGGGHHHH!!!¡±
Suddenly and without warning, Slinky leapt up onto the lanky man¡¯s face and sank her claws and teeth deep into his flesh, causing him to unleash an unholy shriek as he lost his grip on Tepin and stumbled back towards the far side of the cell where the wall was little more than vertical bars. His arms flailed about wildly about his face as he tried to pry the vicious wruelit off of him.
Surprised at the unexpected turn of events, Rudra froze momentarily as he tried to think of what to do now. Tepin, on the other hand, had no such issues. Immediately upon being released from Sneak¡¯s grasp, she reached a hand up towards the ceiling and conjured a small flame, sending it up and into the glowmoss above them all.
Rudra recalled Tepin¡¯s claims that glowmoss was a dangerous and highly flammable fire hazard, but even that warning did not prepare him for the sudden bright blue flames that burst into existence over their heads. The flame spread shockingly rapidly as well, covering the entire ceiling in flames in under five seconds.
It took Rudra a moment to realize what she¡¯d done, but he couldn¡¯t help but grin once he did. With the fire burning above them all, its light shining down from all angles, she¡¯d effectively banished the shadows!
Just about the same time, Sneak finally pulled the incensed mammal from his face. Looking around, he realized his predicament and snarled. ¡°Don¡¯t ever think you¡¯ll be safe,¡± he growled as he began to sink into the floor.
Rudra gasped as he realized that not every shadow was gone. Though weak, there were still shadows beneath the three of them! He rushed forward, desperate to stop their enemy from escaping, but Tepin was faster. She held up her hand and it began to glow brighter than even the fire above them. ¡°Die!¡± she hissed as Sneak¡¯s head reached the floor and her hand seemed to explode with blinding white light.
It was as if the world¡¯s largest flashbulb went off right in front of them. Half blind in his one working eye, Rudra stumbled about as he tried to stay on his feet while the cage continued to sway, throwing off his sense of balance. Finally, after several tense moments and what felt like hundreds of anxious blinks, his vision returned.
The sight before him took him aback. Sneak still remained there in the cell. Or, at least, his head still remained, a shocked expression on his face.
¡°No more shadows,¡± Tepin muttered as she went limp and fell to the floor.
¡°Tepin! Are you okay?!¡± Rudra asked as he ran to the fallen woman.
¡°...head...¡± she barely managed to get out.
¡°What?¡±
¡°...stop the... head...¡± she wheezed.
Rudra looked back towards Sneak¡¯s last position, only to find it missing! Instead, thanks to the rocking of the hanging cell caused by their battle, the head was rolling towards the one wall that consisted only of bars. Rudra didn¡¯t know why Tepin cared about the head, but he knew there had to be a reason it mattered to her, so he did his best. He rushed towards it as it rolled between the bars and even dove on to the floor, reaching out after it as much as he could as it teetered on the edge before plummeting into the chasm below. Unfortunately, he was just a fraction of a second too late, his hand swiping just centimeters away from the falling skull.
Rudra frowned back towards Tepin, who seemed to visibly deflate. ¡°It¡¯s over... everything is ruined...¡± she muttered just before she lost consciousness.
Rudra sat against the cell wall opposite the bars listening to Tepin slowly breath in and out on the floor beside him. Listening to her was about all he could do, now that the glowmoss had all burned away. Out in the larger cavern several patches still shone, but their light was nowhere near bright enough for him to do anything but sit and wait.
The sound of tiny claws scraping against the wood nearby caught his ears. He reached out into the semi-darkness and gently grabbed Slinky by the torso, pulling her in to his chest and slowly stroking her soft fur. ¡°You were a very good girl, Slinky, yes you were,¡± he said. The wruelit squeaked back at him.
A low groan from Tepin interrupted his thoughts. Slinky immediately jumped down from his chest and hopped onto Tepin¡¯s, releasing a series of excited chitters as she stirred.
¡°I guess tonight proves it,¡± Rudra conceded. ¡°Slinky does like you more than me.¡±
Sitting up and rubbing her face, the wolfwoman blinked several times before finally realizing her situation. She looked up at Rudra¡¯s concerned face and her eyes went wide. ¡°Your eye!¡± she gasped.
¡°Yeah... he got me pretty good,¡± Rudra admitted.
¡°Can you not heal yourself like you do others?¡± Tepin asked.
¡°It doesn¡¯t work that way, unfortunately. It¡¯s hard to explain, but basically it¡¯s as if I¡¯m pushing the other person back somehow. I can¡¯t push myself. There¡¯s nothing to push off of.¡±
¡°I see,¡± she sighed. ¡°Then at least we should wrap it. Is there any clean cloth here?¡±
¡°Not particularly. I think just about the cleanest thing we have is my pants, of all things. Can¡¯t see too well, but I don¡¯t think much blood got on them.¡±
¡°Fine. Rip me several long strips.¡±
Rudra did and handed them to her. She reached up and began tying them around his head so they covered his destroyed eye.
¡°How long was I out?¡± Tepin asked as she tied a knot behind his head.
¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe an hour? Not too long, which is good.¡±
¡°I see,¡± she replied noncommittally. ¡°Did you get hurt anywhere else?¡±
Rudra showed her the stab wound on his arm and she scowled.
¡°More strips,¡± she ordered.
"I was worried when you collapsed like that,¡± he said as the frail woman slowly wrapped the makeshift bandages around his bicep.
¡°It took everything I had inside me to make that flame and that light,¡± she said bitterly. ¡°Most anybody else could perform Observations on that level with ease, but I¡¯m so weak that doing just one pushed me beyond my limits. When I did the second I thought I would likely die for it.¡± She frowned, her eyes filled with deep sadness. ¡°It would have been better if I had.¡±
¡°What are you talking about?!¡± Rudra blurted out. ¡°We won! You won! You beat him! You should be happy! Why aren¡¯t you happy?!¡±
¡°Because we won the battle but lost the war,¡± Tepin replied, her voice dead. ¡°My life, my work, all of it ended the moment that Sneak betrayed us.¡±
¡°Is that why you wanted his head? I don¡¯t understand.¡±
¡°How do I leave this place without Sneak¡¯s power?¡± Tepin said.
¡°Oh. Right.¡±
¡°Exactly,¡± she replied as she slumped back down against the wall beside him, her work finished. ¡°In just a handful of hours, the Chos will arrive, eager to hear your decision on her proposal, and she will find us here together. That will be the end of everything, especially for me. First I will be tortured until they are satisfied that they¡¯ve extracted all my secrets. Then I will be executed before the country as a lesson in loyalty. All that, of course, assuming that she doesn¡¯t just kill me on the spot in a fit of rage.¡±
¡°She wouldn¡¯t!¡± Rudra objected.
¡°The Chos does not appreciate betrayal, and nobody has betrayed her more than me.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry. If I had just managed to grab his head-¡±
¡°No, even if you had, our chances were extremely slim. We had no way to make him comply to our wishes. You would have needed to revert him back to a point before he heard our conversation, and he would have figured out something was wrong quickly. It is hard to miss when a whole chunk of your life suddenly vanishes, and he was not a fool. How would you explain how he blinked and suddenly you¡¯d lost an eye?¡± She let out a defeated sigh. ¡°It¡¯s all my fault. I knew he was not Stragman, but he was too useful. I ended up relying on him too much.¡±
¡°You knew?¡± Rudra inquired, surprised at her admission.
¡°I did, though I believed he worked for the Eterians. Now it seems obvious that he was an agent of the Ubran Empire this entire time. I was a fool not to see it.¡±
¡°But why would you ally with outsiders against your own country?¡±
¡°Did you think I became the secret leader of an underground opposition movement without help? Just one weak Shell with a dream? What about my position beside the Chos? The previous occupant seemed quite healthy at the time. That was when Sneak made himself known to me, offering to assist me in my goals, for a price.¡±
¡°And you jumped at the chance,¡± Rudra observed with a hint of disappointment.
¡°Of course I did,¡± Tepin replied with annoyance. ¡°I needed powerful friends if I wanted to ever have even a chance of success. The Hidden Fang was nothing more than a small group of idealists with more courage than sense. All that Sneak asked of me was that we work towards an eventual Shell uprising, the one that we¡¯d planned before you came into the picture. I didn¡¯t see much of a downside to it, since I¡¯d had similar ideas myself.¡±
¡°But then I messed that up.¡±
¡°You did, though I don¡¯t believe he cared, since the country was disrupted either way. In fact, your method likely worked better for his purposes than our original plan would have. It wasn¡¯t until we decided to end it that he acted, after all...¡± Tepin slumped against the cell wall and curled up into a fetal position, burying her face into her knees. She let out another forlorn sigh. ¡°...and then he ruined everything. Years and years of working myself to the bone, sacrificing my life, my reputation, everything I had, all of it wasted and worthless.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t give up. You told me once that you would never do that,¡± Rudra reminded her, but his attempt to raise her spirits felt hollow. He understood the truth of what she¡¯d said.
Tepin didn¡¯t respond, and the two lapsed into silence.
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Tepin stated after a long while.
¡°Don¡¯t apologize for getting me involved in this,¡± Rudra replied with a shake of his head. ¡°Yeah, I didn¡¯t want to spend my life locked away in a cell, but funnily enough, this has been one of the most fulfilling times of my life. I made a difference, one that actually mattered to people. If given the choice, I¡¯d do it again.¡±
¡°No, not that. I¡¯m sorry for...¡± She paused to consider her next words. ¡°...for treating you so poorly. You reached out to me and said nice things to me and I pushed you away. I was afraid.¡±
¡°What is there to be afraid of?¡±
¡°I¡¯ve never had friends, or anybody who cared for me at all, really,¡± she admitted. ¡°When you are so weak that you make other Shells look almost mighty in comparison, you find yourself alone. Even when I became the Chos¡¯s assistant, the only people who wanted to get close to me only did so in an attempt to curry favors through my position. Combine that with my secret life, and it meant that I could never allow myself to get close to others, lest they discover something they shouldn¡¯t. I have lived a very solitary life. It hasn¡¯t been the most pleasant way of living, but it is what I¡¯m used to. It¡¯s what I¡¯m comfortable with now.
¡°When you tried to become closer to me, I didn¡¯t know what to do. Even though I knew at the time that you only meant well, it scared me, so I ran away and rebuilt the wall between us. It made me feel safe. But you didn¡¯t deserve that. I knew it then, but I was too much of a coward to admit it, even just to myself.¡±
¡°Oh, is that all?¡± Rudra laughed. ¡°Here I thought I¡¯d done something wrong.¡±
¡°No, you did nothing wrong. The fault lies with me.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve already forgiven you, Tepin, so stop beating yourself up about it. It¡¯s unimportant. What matters is that you were here for me and I was here for you.¡±
Tepin¡¯s only response was to bury her head back in between her knees. The silence returned until she spoke again, mumbling something Rudra couldn¡¯t pick up even with his incredible heightened ears.
¡°What was that?¡± he inquired.
She mumbled something again.
¡°Come now, Tepin, speak up. It¡¯s just the two of us here.¡± With a mischievous grin, he reached over and grabbed the diminutive woman around the waist with both hands and lifted her into the air, eliciting a surprised squawk from her before plopping her down on his lap facing him. ¡°If you have something to say, just say it. I don¡¯t mind.¡±
Tepin squirmed in his grasp and looked away, for some reason deeply embarrassed. Somehow, Rudra couldn¡¯t help but find her awkwardness cute. It made him want to tease her more.
¡°Well? Spit it out,¡± he said with a grin.
¡°I... have a request...¡± she said, her voice small.
¡°Yeah? What?¡±
¡°...have...¡± She gulped, strangely nervous. ¡°...have sex with me.¡±
Rudra blinked in the darkness, unsure if he¡¯d heard her correctly. Of all the various things he¡¯d expected her to say, that hadn¡¯t been one of them. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, could you repeat that?¡±
¡°Please don¡¯t make me beg anymore than I already have,¡± she said.
¡°I¡¯m not, I just... why me? Why now?¡±
Tepin hugged herself close. ¡°B-because I¡¯ve never done it,¡± she confessed.
¡°Wha- really?¡±
¡°Who would want to mate with me? Nobody has ever truly wanted me for anything. To my parents I was just a burden. To society I am a disgrace that should have been left behind to die. The Chos and the other powers only see me as a tool. Even my fellow Shells view me as a traitor to the movement and my kind. Just once, before the end arrives, I want to know what it feels like to be desired. Would you do that for me? Please?¡±
Looking into Tepin¡¯s pleading eyes, Rudra found his answer obvious. Why not? Rudra was no prude. It had obviously taken her an immense amount of courage to even ask him for such a thing. He could imagine the shame she felt admitting to him that she was essentially a forty-one year old virgin, and he didn¡¯t have the heart nor the desire to hurt her even more in her time of grief. And so he didn¡¯t say anything. He just pulled her closer and put his lips to hers, and let that be all the answer she needed.
What followed was the most awkward sexual experience of Rudra¡¯s life. Given his partner¡¯s frailty and his prodigious superhuman strength, he felt constantly terrified that he¡¯d end up hurting her. It didn¡¯t help that her inexperience also meant he basically ran the whole show for both of them. But somewhere in the middle of it all, as he caressed her tiny form while she clung to him with every last bit of her minuscule power, he realized he wasn¡¯t just doing a kind act for somebody in need. He was doing it for himself.
He wanted this. He wanted to make her moan and pant and shiver in his arms. He wanted to hear her gasp as he nibbled on her cute little silver ears sticking out from the top of her head. He wanted to delight in the way she yelped as he grabbed onto her fluffy grey tail. He wanted to make her happy, and maybe, just maybe, finally learn what Tepin looked like when she fully smiled.
And so he did his best, pulling out every trick and technique he¡¯d learned from his time spent with Jaya. The experiences were nothing alike; sleeping with Jaya had always been like braving a storm in a small sailboat atop a raging ocean, while sex with Tepin was more akin to a gentle rafting trip down a tranquil stream. Yet strangely, Rudra found both equally fulfilling.
It wasn¡¯t long before the small wolfwoman gave one last shudder and collapsed atop him, completely and utterly spent. Hugging her against his broad chest, he took a seat against the nearest wall and gently stroked the comatose woman¡¯s sweat-soaked hair. Rudra realized now that he cared about Tepin Silverfall.
Rudra didn¡¯t know if these new feelings were feelings of love; they sure didn¡¯t feel like the same sort of passionate love he¡¯d known during his time with Jaya. Maybe they were something else, just two people desperately clinging to each other, each of them merely serving as the other¡¯s life raft in a sea of loneliness and despair. He wasn¡¯t sure, but whatever it was, he didn¡¯t really care. All that mattered to him at that moment was that, for the first time since Jaya had left him, the gaping void in his heart where Jaya had once been seemed smaller than before.
Chapter 77
Akhustal Palebane opened her eyes to the soothing chirps of the lizards and the warm light of the morning sun leaking through her window. Well, not really; the Stragman people still made their home in the dark, cavernous, sunlight-deficient confines of Hoxoni in the south of the Stragman forest. But in her mind, those warming rays of light and familiar sounds were as real as the glow of the glowmoss by her bedside. For the first time in seasons, Akhustal felt content. She smiled as she stretched. Today was sure to be a very special day.
The guards offered a firm salute as Akhustal strode into the Stragman government headquarters some minutes later. Making her way through the various hallways toward her personal chambers with a confident smile on her face, nodding to the array of government functionaries saluting or bowing as she passed, she arrived in perhaps the best mood of her life and gave the door a hearty tug.
To her befuddlement, it refused to open.
¡°Tepin?¡± she called, pounding on the door several times with her oversized balled-up hands. Not once in her life had this door ever been locked when she¡¯d arrived. Tepin always unlocked it when she arrived, which was generally well before Akhustal bothered to wake up. ¡°Tepin, are you in there?¡±
There came no answer.
Akhustal gave a mental shrug. This whole situation struck her as rather strange, but she wasn¡¯t about to let a locked door ruin her day. Not today. With a single swing of her club, she bashed the lock into pieces and pulled the freshly remodeled door open.
The room inside stood undisturbed, everything as it had been left the day before. Nobody could be found inside.
¡°Tepin?¡± she called again anyway. What was going on? Though weak, the Shell basically never missed a day, and on the incredibly rare occasions that she did, she always made sure to arrange a temporary replacement. For her to not only be absent but also to fail to find a substitute would simply be annoying on any other day. For it to happen today, however, left a strangely ominous feeling in her gut. Tepin was a Shell, so wouldn¡¯t she want to be present for today¡¯s events more than anything? Akhustal told herself that it had to be just a meaningless coincidence, but the feeling wouldn¡¯t go away. Furrowing her brow, Akhustal left her chambers and headed down the hallway to the office of General Stonefist-hono, the head of Stragma¡¯s Intelligence apparatus and another notorious early-riser.
¡°Have you seen Tepin?¡± Akhustal asked as she barged into his room, interrupting some sort of briefing. All the assembled Stragmans stared up at her in confusion for a moment, caught off-guard by her sudden forceful arrival, before jumping to their feet and saluting their leader.
¡°Is something the matter?¡± the general asked.
¡°Yeah, Tepin¡¯s missing,¡± Akhustal grumbled. ¡°She wasn¡¯t around when I arrived.¡±
¡°Strange, I have not seen her this morning either,¡± Stonefist-hono replied, rubbing his chin. He looked around at the assembled intelligence officers. ¡°Have any of you seen the Shell anywhere this morning?¡±
They hadn¡¯t.
¡°Have you sent somebody to her home?¡± the general suggested. ¡°You know how frail she is. Perhaps something happened unexpectedly.¡±
¡°Normally Tepin would be the one handling that,¡± Akhustal griped. Still, General Stonefist-hono had a good point. Marching back out, she headed back towards the building¡¯s entrance and grabbed two of the guards outside. Once they¡¯d gotten over the shock of her massive mitts grabbing them by the shoulders from behind, she ordered them to go retrieve Tepin from her home, wherever that was. She was sure they would be able to figure it out.
Patting herself on the back for a job well done, Akhustal decided to head out. Normally, she¡¯d need Tepin to give her the day¡¯s agenda, but today there was only one thing that really mattered. A skip in her step, she headed into the caves, making her way deeper and deeper into the city.
The massive cage swayed as it moved, the pulley system bringing it ever so slowly closer. Akhustal tapped her foot as she waited for the cell to arrive at the edge of the Chasm.
¡°Make it go faster!¡± she growled at the Shells as they turned the large, heavy gears installed to power the system.
The Shells shared a look, seemingly arguing with each other silently. One of them seemed to slump silently, having apparently lost.
¡°Please forgive us, Chos,¡± the Shell said while looking at her feet. ¡°We must be cautious. Too much force might cause the stone above to break under the strain.¡±
Akhustal scowled. This was an unexpected first: a Shell was talking back to her. Yes, his tone was reverent and respectful, and he gave a legitimate reason, but he was still a Shell refusing a command from a superior¡ªthe Chos herself, no less! Such a thing would have been unthinkable even a year ago, but Shells had grown bolder in the last season. It was all the fault of the man in the cage far above them. If he hadn¡¯t shown up...
If he hadn¡¯t shown up, she would have lost hope. That was the truth that she had trouble admitting to herself but which, in the end, she could no longer deny. Had Rudra never come into her life, her days would have been much simpler and easier, but they¡¯d also be without hope. Her husband would be gone for good and she¡¯d be horribly, terribly alone. But now that was about to change!
A loud clamor back by the entrance to the Chasm¡¯s cave broke her from her thoughts, and she turned to find the two guards she¡¯d sent to fetch Tepin emerging from the tunnel. Both seemed nearly out of wind as if they¡¯d sprinted through the city without stopping. Yet for some reason, they were alone.
¡°Where is she?¡± the Chos demanded to know.
¡°We could not find her,¡± the one guard admitted, gasping to catch his breath. ¡°She was not at her home, and those living nearby claimed they had not seen her since the early evening the night before.¡±
¡°What? Then where did she run off to?¡±
¡°Please forgive us, Chos. We don¡¯t know!¡±
¡°Impossible! You incompetent fools!¡± she barked. Glancing back, she found the cage only seconds away from touching down onto solid ground nearby. ¡°Stay here. I¡¯ll deal with you two in a moment.¡±
With a snarl, she whirled back around and marched towards the cage before suddenly halting in utter shock. The side with bars was facing away from her, the cell having rotated during its travels, so she could not see inside. But already her sharp nose had picked up a scent, one that she was amply familiar with: the scent of blood.
Ripping a glowmoss stick from the hands of a nearby Shell, she raced around to the side with the bars and door. There she came to a complete stop, her mind unable to process what she saw in the glow of the mosslight. Large splotches of dried blood stained the cell floor. The glowmoss that had covered the ceiling just the day before was gone, now only a dead, ashen husk of its former self. And deep in the gloom, sitting back against the far wall, were too many people. One too many, to be precise.
Some part of the Chos noticed the large man and his alarming condition. With a bloodstained cloth wrapped around his head and eye, along with another around his large arm, he instantly reminded her of the walking wounded she would see after every battle with the Drayhadans. The sight sent a shiver of fear down her spine as the implications of Rudra¡¯s premature death flashed through her mind.
But most of Akhustal Palebane¡¯s attention focused not on the man but rather on the limp, lifeless figure on his lap. Though the face was turned away, she would recognize that wilted silver tail and that silver hair and those triangular ears anywhere. She¡¯d found Tepin, somehow in the one place she couldn¡¯t be.
¡°What is this?!¡± she hissed. Quickly she pulled out the cell key and yanked the door ajar, boundless rage coursing through her veins. She was here! With him! What was she doing in the cell? How had she even gotten inside?
Akhustal¡¯s grip on her club tightened as her vision tunneled in on the back of her assistant¡¯s head. How dare Tepin backstab her like this?! That woman knew just how much of a thorn in Akhustal¡¯s side that man had been! Yet here she was, going behind Akhustal¡¯s back to secretly meet with him! If the purpose of Tepin¡¯s actions was to anger the Chos as much as possible, it had worked grandly.
Fury-fueled murderous thoughts rampaged through the Chos¡¯s mind. Akhustal¡¯s first instinct was to swing her club down upon them both¡ªshe¡¯d done so before, back when Rudra had first refused her, smashing him through several walls with a single arc of her weapon¡ªbut the man was far too important for her to risk anything. Not now, when she was so close to getting Caprakan back by her side. She paused, and in that moment of hesitation, the elven prince¡¯s lecture two days before bubbled up inside her mind. She¡¯d almost done exactly what he¡¯d accused her of doing and let her anger drive her actions. Even now, the urge to strike them both down blazed inside her, screaming at her to act. Yet she suddenly found that, now that she recognized it, that urge no longer had the same hold upon her as before.
¡°What are you doing here, Tepin?¡± the Chos snarled.
¡°Don¡¯t bother. She¡¯s out cold,¡± Rudra replied softly.
¡°I don¡¯t care. Wake her up,¡± the Chos ordered.
¡°I¡¯ve tried. She won¡¯t come to,¡± he replied. Gently, Rudra turned Tepin around, revealing the comatose woman¡¯s blank, non-responsive face and blood-soaked front. Akhustal¡¯s eyes went wide at the sight of the blade-shaped holes in her top. They went right over where the small woman¡¯s heart would be.
¡°Guards! Get in here!¡± Akhustal roared. Quickly, the seven guards in the cavern rushed into the cell as fast as they could. They assembled in a small mass to her right, looking about and at her with confused glances.
¡°Take her from here and lock her away in the most secure cell we have,¡± she commanded.
As the guards warily advanced on Rudra, the large man scowled and wrapped up the minuscule woman on his lap with his arms in a protective embrace.
¡°Give her,¡± she ordered. ¡°Now. Don¡¯t make this any worse than it already is.¡±
¡°No,¡± Rudra responded with defiance in his eyes.
¡°I want her out of his arms this instant,¡± a seething Akhustal commanded the hesitant guards. A ruthless grin grew on her face as an idea hit her. ¡°Use your weapons. Cut her into pieces if need be. He can always just bring her back.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you dare!¡± Rudra warned, glaring between her and the surrounding guards as they pulled out an assortment of blades.
¡°Or what?¡± she smirked back. ¡°You can¡¯t protect her from all seven of them at once. Or will you finally find the courage to fight?¡±
As the Shell glared about, she saw an anger in his gaze that she had never seen in him since his arrival, but that anger soon gave way to resignation. Rudra¡¯s shoulders slumped and he let out a defeated sigh. ¡°Promise you won¡¯t hurt her,¡± he bargained.
¡°You¡¯re in no position to make demands,¡± she replied.
¡°If you hurt her, then I will never revive your husband,¡± he stated resolutely. ¡°Even if that means I die. You will never see him again.¡±
A spike of pure fury lanced through her soul, but Akhustal held herself back, if only barely. ¡°Very well. Hand her over and she will not be harmed,¡± she agreed after a moment. Akhustal hadn¡¯t planned on hurting Tepin anyway, not before she had wrung every last drop of information out of the diminutive woman. And after that... well, who could say what the future held?
A reluctant Rudra handed Tepin¡¯s limp form to the nearest guard and the group filed out of the cell. Akhustal followed. While her plans for Rudra and the war still hung over both their heads, she needed to reassess the situation.
As Rudra¡¯s cell began to lift off the ground, Akhustal stared into Rudra¡¯s eyes, unblinking. ¡°I¡¯ll be back,¡± she stated to him, her words sounding much more like a warning than reassurance.
Sitting in her chambers, Akhustal was struck by just how quiet and lifeless they felt now. Tepin had never been one to make much noise, but just her presence had been enough to lend a little life to the place. The Chos had never really realized the importance of that small contribution until now that it was gone. Though filled with furniture and hunting trophies, her chambers somehow felt empty.
Her mood foul, Akhustal brought her club down upon a nearby chair with a frustrated snarl, crushing it and sending splinters flying everywhere. Letting off steam like that usually made her feel better, but the five destroyed pieces of furniture littering the room indicated that this time was different. Even now, several hours since the incident in the cell, anger still poured through her veins unabated.
For some reason, Akhustal found that she was taking this whole thing far more personally than she would have thought. At first, she¡¯d believed her rage to be a consequence of Tepin¡¯s complete disrespect for her orders as the Chos. Indeed, the Shell spitting on her authority did contribute to it to some degree. But now, hours removed and still seething, Akhustal realized that there was more to it. This was personal. This was somebody she¡¯d trusted wholeheartedly going behind her back to join with her second-most-hated enemy.
Akhustal wondered if this was what it felt like to be cheated on. The feeling of having her trust violated left her feeling dirty and abused, and it just made her angrier by the second. No amount of smashing would calm that down any time soon. No, what she needed weren¡¯t more things to destroy. What she needed were answers. That was why she¡¯d ordered General Stonefist-hono to get to the bottom of this whole affair. All she had to do was wait, though that had proved far harder than expected.
Luckily for her, she didn¡¯t need to wait much longer. A quarter of an hour later, the General of Intelligence entered her chambers. The man gave a side-eyed glance to the wreckage strewn across the floor but wisely chose not to comment on it.
¡°Finished already?¡± she wondered. ¡°I thought you said you would need several days.¡±
The general let out a cough. ¡°Our investigation is ongoing, Chos,¡± he respectfully replied, a strange hint of anxious, worried energy in his voice. ¡°However, our preliminary conclusions are alarming enough that I believed you needed to hear them as soon as possible.¡±
Akhustal frowned. General Stonefist-hono was a very thorough and cautious man who never liked to give his assessment to anything before he¡¯d inspected every single detail. This didn¡¯t bode well. She solemnly nodded to the man and sat down in the closest still-intact chair.
¡°Have you figured out how she got into the cell?¡± she asked.
¡°While the exact method is still unknown, we¡¯ve managed to narrow the possibilities down. The wruelit interrogations of the guards stationed at the Chasm entrance have completed, and we have cleared all of the guards of suspicion of bribery or treachery, as we have confirmed that none of them saw Tepin Silverfall even once yesterday. It seems safe to say that Silverfall did not get into the Chasm¡¯s cavern through the tunnel.¡±
¡°But that¡¯s the only way in or out,¡± Akhustal objected.
¡°Indeed. We have people checking the cavern for any hidden or new openings, but so far we have found nothing. At this point, I doubt we will find anything. There is a much more likely third possibility: a third party. Somebody with an ability to travel unseen and infiltrate locations that should be impenetrable.¡±
¡°Really? I¡¯ve never heard of such an ability.¡±
¡°Nor have I,¡± the general admitted. ¡°But strange powers have appeared before. There are likely many things that people can do that we have never known. Regardless, my theory is not just idle speculation; there is too much circumstantial evidence pointing to at least one more person being in the cell last night.¡±
¡°Oh?¡±
¡°Between the blood and the burned glowmoss and the injuries on Kapadia, it is obvious that a fight had occurred in that cell last night. You likely know the two people in question better than almost anybody. Would either of them attack each other?¡±
Akhustal let out a dismissive snort. ¡°Not a chance. Tepin is too weak and Rudra is too stubborn.¡±
¡°So there must have been more people there last night, including somebody who took Silverfall inside the cell. And then a battle of sorts occurred, and in the end they abandoned Tepin inside.¡±
¡°There were stab holes in her top,¡± Akhustal added, her mind whirring with new thoughts. ¡°Somebody wanted her dead.¡±
¡°Somebody likely tried to kill them both, judging by their wounds,¡± the general agreed.
¡°So where is this person, then?¡±
¡°We¡¯re not sure. If they can move about as I suspect, then they will be incredibly hard to hunt down. Or they may already be dead. There is too much blood inside that cage to come from just the two of them.¡±
Akhustal let out another snort. ¡°You aren¡¯t seriously suggesting that those two...¡±
Stonefist-hono shrugged. ¡°Stranger things have happened.¡±
¡°But there was no body in there. If somebody died in that cage, then the body should still... the Chasm!¡±
¡°Precisely. It hasn¡¯t been easy to find anybody willing and capable to descend into the Chasm, but we¡¯re working on it. Since it¡¯s such a treacherous climb, and given that there¡¯s nothing of value down there, it seems that nobody has bothered to go down in generations. I believe we will find the people we need soon though. We¡¯ll know if there¡¯s a body down there within a few days.¡±
¡°Well done,¡± Akhustal said with a nod of approval. ¡°I want these people hunted down with everything you have. Somebody with that sort of capability cannot be allowed to move about unchecked under our watch.¡±
¡°Of course, Chos,¡± the general agreed. He fidgeted for a moment, seemingly nervous about something. After a moment, he spoke again. ¡°That wasn¡¯t the reason I came to you so early, however.¡±
¡°Today has been long enough already,¡± the Chos grumbled. ¡°Just get to the point.¡±
¡°Very well...¡± the man gulped. He took a breath before speaking again. ¡°It is my belief that Tepin Silverfall is in league with the Hidden Fang.¡±
The words stunned Akhustal for a moment, leaving her speechless. Perhaps sensing her state, General Stonefist-hono continued.
¡°Along with the two Shells, we also found a wruelit inside the cell, which seems to be the same animal that Kapadia requested as a pet shortly after his arrival. More so, small crumbs of wruelit food were found inside Silverfall¡¯s clothes. This suggests to me that she was taking care of the creature. However, I doubt she would just take the thing with her to visit Kapadia for no reason. This meeting was obviously an important one, given what happened. A wruelit would be an unnecessary distraction. Which means that she brought it because she was asked to. Which means that there has been a line of communication between Kapadia and Silverfall already. Perhaps she had even visited him before.¡±
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
¡°What are you trying to say?¡± Akhustal asked, a strange mix of confusion and dread welling up inside her.
¡°What I am saying is that I do not believe that Silverfall simply tracked down these people and convinced them to take her to Kapadia last night. The evidence points to the idea that they have been working together for much longer than that. Once I realized this, I began to see other events in a new light. Do you remember the murder of General Burningbriar-hono?¡±
¡°Who could forget?¡± Akhustal replied as her mind leapt back to five years prior, when General Burningbriar-hono, one of the top generals in the nation, had been unmasked as a Shell abuser. The woman would take male Shells and use her superior strength and position to force them into unwilling sexual activities for her own private entertainment. Akhustal had been shocked at the time; Burningbriar-hono had always been publicly outspoken as a supporter of Shells and their treatment.
Shell abuse was a crime just as much as any other. The general had been found guilty and locked away for a sentence of ten years. However, just days later, with guards just paces away, she¡¯d been killed in her cell in the middle of the night. Nobody knew how the culprit had gotten in or out. Once news of the murder came out, the Hidden Fang had claimed responsibility for the act, saying that it was retribution for the lives she¡¯d ruined.
¡°Over the past ten years, there have been seven murders where nobody has been able to figure out how the murderer entered or exited the scene,¡± Stonefist-hono reminded her. ¡°I looked up the files again to make sure. All seven of them had in some way harmed Shells. The Hidden Fang claimed credit for three of them.¡± He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming intently. ¡°I believe it is highly likely that the Hidden Fang possess somebody capable of getting into Kapadia¡¯s cell, and likely capable of bringing people with them. And if Silverfall has made use of them more than once, then she must have ties with them.¡±
¡°But if she was one of them, then...¡± Akhustal¡¯s voice trailed off as the deeper meaning of his words struck home.
¡°Exactly. Why has it been so hard to hunt those bastards down? So difficult that you demoted the last two generals for failing to do exactly that? Why is it that our sting operations always seem to fail, as if they know about our plans before they happen? Being able to move unfettered about the city helps, but that wouldn¡¯t save an entire organization. No, the reason they have survived for so long is that they had somebody on the inside. Her. Tepin Silverfall.¡±
With a furious cry, Akhustal stood up and turned around, smashing her massive club down upon the chair she¡¯d been sitting upon just a moment before.
¡°That fucking bitch!¡± she howled as wood chips and stuffing flew through the air. She turned towards a nearby table and swung again, sending it flying against a wall in bits and pieces. ¡°She played us! She played me!¡±
The Chos¡¯s rampage continued as she proceeded to systematically destroy nearly every object in the room, as well as parts of the room itself, the absolute mess she was making not even crossing her mind. All she could think about was how Tepin always seemed even more tired and weary than usual the morning after a trap for the Hidden Fang failed, or how she attended all the intelligence meetings to take notes, or how her predecessor, a Blou the Chos genuinely liked, had died in a tragic fluke accident all those years ago. She¡¯d been so blind, all this time. It had all been right there if she¡¯d just wanted to see it.
¡°FUCK!¡± she roared out, loud enough to be heard over the din of her room¡¯s demolition. The ground trembled as she unleashed every ounce of rage that had built up inside her over the course of this trying day.
Moments later, Akhustal stood surrounded by debris, her massive chest rising and falling as she huffed out the last of her fury. Not a single item, outside of General Stonefist-hono, had been spared her wrath.
¡°Um...¡± a small voice chimed in from behind her, by the door.
¡°WHAT?!¡± she snarled, whirling on the voice to find a young guard who immediately cowed under her stare.
¡°I-I¡¯m uh... here t-to report as ordered that the... um... t-the prisoner is awake,¡± the guard squeaked out before quickly retreating behind the door frame and out of the room.
The Chos directed a grim smile towards her subordinate, who stared, dismayed, at the layers of rubble strewn across the floor. ¡°What do you propose I do with her?¡± she asked.
¡°A public execution, of course,¡± the general immediately responded. ¡°Show the Shells the cost of treason.¡±
¡°Hmmmmmmm... perhaps,¡± Akhustal mused. ¡°But before that, I think it¡¯s time that the two of us had a little chat.¡±
Tepin Silverfall laid on her back on the cold stone floor, staring blankly up at the featureless ceiling above. The woman didn¡¯t react to the Chos¡¯s arrival, nor when Akhustal shooed away any prying eyes and ears so that the two of them could talk in private, even going so far as to move all the nearby prisoners elsewhere for a while. Only the slow rise and fall of her chest and the occasional blink told Akhustal that Tepin was alive at all.
¡°Just yesterday, I never would have believed that I would find my most straight-laced subordinate locked in a cell, and yet here you are in your second one in a single day,¡± Akhustal quipped.
Tepin didn¡¯t respond.
¡°You were always so reliable. Whenever I needed a job done right, I knew that I could leave it to you and you never disappointed. I trusted you, Tepin. I believed in you.¡±
Still, no response came from the figure in the cell.
¡°Well?! Say something!¡± she snapped. ¡°You think you¡¯re better than me, don¡¯t you, laughing behind my back as you used me for years!? I treated you as a friend and you treated me like a fool!¡±
¡°This isn¡¯t about you and me,¡± Tepin finally replied, her voice flat and empty. Her head turned towards the Chos and she stared at Akhustal with cold, unfeeling eyes. ¡°And for the record, despite what you might wish to believe, you have never, ever treated me as a friend.¡±
¡°You¡¯re right, this isn¡¯t about you and me, it¡¯s about you and your betrayal!¡± Akhustal shot back. ¡°How dare you lecture me after you betrayed your own people, you little worm!?¡±
¡°I betrayed my own people?¡± the Shell asked, seemingly unconcerned. ¡°Who are these people I betrayed, I wonder? The Honos? The Flegs? The Blous?¡±
¡°All of them! You betrayed the entire nation!¡±
¡°Are not the Shells part of our nation as well? And yet you seem to consider working to better their lives to be treasonous. It¡¯s almost like you and your kind never viewed us as Stragmans at all. In fact, until the strike, I bet you barely ever even realized we existed.¡±
Akhustal¡¯s face twisted into a snarl. ¡°You dare accuse me-¡±
¡°I do,¡± Tepin interrupted, her voice still calm and composed. ¡°I accuse all of you. You and your generals and the other Honos and the Blous and the Flegs. All of you. You blind yourselves to the suffering and injustice because it¡¯s simpler and easier to just turn away from the truth than to admit to its existence. My crime, it seems, is having eyes clear enough to see more than just what I wish to see.¡±
¡°Enough of this,¡± the Chos growled. ¡°I wished to speak with you in private before General Stonefist-hono and his people got their hands on you out of gratitude for your years of service, but I see now that I was a fool to ever treat you with any sort of respect. You have a choice, Tepin. You can tell me who you took orders from in the Hidden Fang and how to find them, and I promise that your death will be swift, painless, and private. However, if General Stonefist-hono and his people need to wring that information from your skull¡ªand I know that you know just how capable they are¡ªthen know that your death will be so horrible that even the Drayhadans will weep for you. What will it be?¡±
All the Shell did was let out a small, unconcerned yawn.
¡°You-!¡± the Chos growled, her hands clenching around her club¡¯s large handle with all her might. She was the one with the power, the one standing outside the cell! So why did it feel like the prisoner on the other side of these bars had the upper hand? This was supposed to be the time when Akhustal could lord her power over Tepin and make the always-composed Shell squirm and beg for mercy!
¡°One small benefit to being as weak and sickly as I am is that threats of pain and death don¡¯t mean much anymore,¡± Tepin remarked with a smug smirk. ¡°I was supposed to die decades ago; I have already made my peace. If I must leave this world, I would much rather do so watching you try to strangle that absurd stick of yours as I take my secrets with me.¡±
Akhustal ground her teeth in anger at Tepin¡¯s nonchalance. This woman was acting so infuriating, pushing every single one of the Chos¡¯s buttons! It was almost like she wanted to die!
As the Chos glared daggers into the cell, she realized suddenly that she might have been more right than she¡¯d thought. Nobody alive knew Akhustal better than Tepin did. Was the Shell truly trying to work her into a fit of rage, hoping that Akhustal would end her once and for all right now? It seemed so! But why?
Suddenly something in the Chos¡¯s mind shifted, and everything about the whole situation fell into place. Before, this whole mess had felt like being lost in the densest areas of the Stragman forest, where vines and leaves grew so heavily and the mist was so thick that you could barely see your hand in front of your face. But now, it was as if the mist had vanished and the leave had parted, showing her a path all the way back home. She smiled.
¡°He cares about you, doesn¡¯t he?¡± she said. Akhustal¡¯s keen eyes picked up the subtle twitch of the Shell¡¯s ears, and she seized on that like a predator around their prey¡¯s throat.
¡°You know what? I changed my mind,¡± she said warmly. ¡°You deserve to live a long, healthy life here in this cell. I wouldn¡¯t want to distress those who care about your well-being, after all.¡±
¡°W-what?¡± Tepin hissed, suddenly and unexpectedly flustered for the first time. Her eyes went wide in fear as she realized what Akhustal meant. ¡°Don¡¯t you dare!¡±
The oversized woman¡¯s smile grew into a large, vicious grin. ¡°Funny, he said the same thing.¡±
The cell touched down on the cavern floor with a loud thump of finality. Humming a cheerful tune, Akhustal unlocked the cell door and stepped inside to find Rudra still sitting against the back wall.
¡°Rudra, my friend! Have you even moved once since I left this morning?¡± she laughed. ¡°It¡¯s important to stay active, even in a place like this. Hungry?¡± She held out a ripe kaharl fruit near his face.
Rudra looked up at her, confused by her drastic change in attitude. He eyed the fruit with suspicion, but eventually grabbed it and took a tentative bite, and then a second larger one.
With another chuckle, Akhustal clapped several times. A moment later, several people entered the cell behind her, carrying between them a stretcher of sorts. On that stretcher laid a withered and desiccated corpse. Without a word, they deposited the stretcher in front of the large Shell and left.
Akhustal stared at the man expectantly. ¡°Well?¡± she asked when he didn¡¯t move. ¡°Get to it. Bring him back!¡±
Rudra looked at the mummified body at his feet, visibly unsure what was going on. ¡°Who is this?¡± he asked, his mouth still half full of fruit.
¡°It¡¯s my husband, Caprakan Bloodflower-hono, you idiot,¡± she replied. ¡°Who else would it be? Now start doing that thing you do. I¡¯ve waited long enough.¡±
Rudra swallowed.
¡°I haven¡¯t agreed to anything yet,¡± the man objected after taking a moment to collect himself. ¡°What about the terms we discussed yesterday? I want proof that you-¡±
¡°Oh, I¡¯m not going to do any of that anymore,¡± Akhustal interjected. ¡°I don¡¯t need to. I have your lover.¡±
Rudra visibly paled at her words, though he quickly caught himself and tried to put up a false front of bravado. ¡°You can¡¯t make me-¡± he stubbornly began, but the Chos was having none of it.
¡°Oh I can do whatever I want,¡± she interrupted once more. ¡°I¡¯m the Chos. You made me forget that for a while, but that¡¯s over with now.¡±
She crouched down onto the balls of her feet and stared at him with a glorious newfound fire in her eyes. ¡°Here¡¯s how it¡¯s going to work from now on. You are going to give me everything I want¡ªthe return of my fallen army, the Shells fully cooperating again, all of it¡ªand in exchange, Tepin gets to keep breathing. It¡¯s that simple. Should you decide to make a fuss, then I invite you to imagine the slowest, most painful way to die. I assure you that what poor little Tepin will endure will be many times worse. It will be horrible. It will be agonizing. And when she eventually breaks, I will have her burned to ashes and scattered about the forest. You will never see her ever again, and you will get to live the rest of your life knowing that you sent her to her demise. I¡¯m done playing around, Rudra. Is that understood?¡±
The Shell bit his lip as he seemed to wrack his brain for a way out of his situation.
¡°I know what you¡¯re going to try,¡± the Chos said before he could speak again. ¡°You¡¯re going to try the same tactic you¡¯ve always used and dig your heels in. You¡¯re going to say that if I don¡¯t release her, you won¡¯t resurrect my husband or anybody else. That isn¡¯t going to work this time, I¡¯m afraid. You see, it turns out that Tepin is actually one of the most wanted and reviled criminals in Stragman history¡ªone of the Hidden Fang, a group of terrorists hated by all who are not Shells. But I¡¯m sure you already knew that, didn¡¯t you?¡±
Akhustal smirked as her eyes caught the momentary twitch on Rudra¡¯s face before he quickly covered it up. She kept going, putting on the pressure.
¡°Now, the streets are already buzzing with the news about you and her. I tried my best to keep it all under wraps¡ªeven locked up the witnesses¡ªbut word gets around, you know? But the public only knows that she was with you. They don¡¯t know about who she really is... yet. Too many people know the truth; it¡¯s going to get out eventually, and when it does, there¡¯s going to be an uproar the likes of which none of us have ever seen. When they find out that she is alive and well inside a cell, instead of hanging in the public square where she belongs, they¡¯re going to riot in the millions. They will hunt her down, drag her out of her cell, and carry out the justice they believe in.
¡°But they won¡¯t be satisfied with that. Oh no. Poor Tepin is a Shell, and her treason will turn everybody¡¯s anger on those like her. Tens or hundreds of thousands of Shells will die to their rage, and I will be powerless to stop them. Even many of my own troops will probably be a part of the riot, regardless of my orders. They¡¯re all very angry about the strike and all of that, you know.
¡°There¡¯s only one thing I can think of that will guarantee her safety: the people also learn that her continued survival is the key to them seeing their dead loved ones again. That is a price they will be willing to pay, and I can make sure that that news spreads as well when the inevitable happens.
¡°You don¡¯t have a choice anymore, Rudra. Disobey me and she dies, either by my hand or the hands of the people. It¡¯s that simple.¡±
The Shell looked lost, unable to find a way out of his predicament. The growing despair she saw on his face brought a perverse joy to Akhustal. It felt so good to finally have the upper hand.
¡°I want to see her. Every day,¡± Rudra finally responded. ¡°Nobody harms her.¡±
¡°You are in no position to make demands,¡± Akhustal flatly retorted.
¡°I¡¯m not going to agree to any of this if you could just kill her anyway without me knowing,¡± he said. ¡°I want her brought to my cell every day for two hours, so I can know that she is still alright. If you do that, then...¡± Rudra sighed despondently. ¡°Then I will do what you ask.¡±
¡°I will allow one hour, and nothing more,¡± Akhustal replied. ¡°Enough talk. I¡¯m done waiting. Bring him back.¡±
With another forlorn sigh, Rudra shifted onto his knees and leaned over her husband¡¯s corpse. For several moments, nothing seemed to be happening. Just as she was about to open her mouth and express her outrage, the body transformed in an instant, going from a mummified corpse to living breathing flesh in a tiny fraction of a second. Caprakan¡¯s eyes flew open and he let out a huge gasping breath, his limbs flailing about in wide-eyed panic.
In a flash, Akhustal scooped the smaller man up into her arms as he writhed, ignoring the sticky remains of the wrappings that still clung to his skin. Though he was alive, he was not the Caprakan than had left her for battle. His body remained emaciated, with fresh scars and wounds everywhere she looked. Tears began to fall from her eyes as she held her beloved to her chest.
¡°Shhhh!¡± she comforted her spouse. ¡°It¡¯s alright, Caprakan! You¡¯re home now.¡±
Caprakan¡¯s squirming quieted down. ¡°Akhustal?¡± he breathed, his voice weak and nearly inaudible. ¡°What... how? I don¡¯t...¡±
¡°Shhhhhh... you¡¯re safe now, my love. Nobody will hurt you anymore.¡±
¡°Akhustal... I...¡± he mumbled. Then, it was like the flame inside of him went out. He collapsed against her chest, unconscious but still breathing.
The Chos sniffed and turned back to Rudra, blinking her eyes to clear her vision as best she could. ¡°Thank you,¡± she said before turning away and heading towards the door. ¡°I will send you to take care of the others shortly, so be ready. There are many more people who deserve their family back. They have waited for far too long.¡±
Tens of thousands of eyes stared up at Akhustal Palebane, Chos of Stragma, as she stood upon the podium. Millions more watched through the eyes of the Manys arrayed near the front of the massive crowd. It bothered many people to be under so many gazes, but not her. Not now. As she stared out at the countless faces looking back up at her, she couldn¡¯t help but think of how much had changed over the country¡¯s history, and how much more would soon be different.
The founders of Stragma had been little more than brigands and outcasts who¡¯d fled into the forest simply because it was the only place their pursuers would not chase them. Their paltry population, more than anything else, had been what dictated such an isolationist policy. Over the next several millennia, as their population struggled to grow in the harsh, demanding environment, their interest and interaction with the outside world had been limited to a series of violent and deadly border wars with their Drayhadan neighbors.
Then, about nine hundred years ago, they¡¯d reached a sort of population critical mass where they had enough strength to defend themselves against the dangers of their home more effectively, as well as dedicate more people to improving the living conditions of the citizenry. That, in turn, led to a rise in both birthrates and life expectancy, which only served to further strengthen the cycle until today, when Stragma was more than ten million strong.
It was during this centuries-long population boom that Stragman leadership had decided to finally inject themselves into the goings-on of the outside world. Given the mercurial, season-dependent nature of Stragman society, as well as the general difficulty the forest presented to outsiders, such interaction largely consisted of trading resources for goods that were hard to manufacture here. But there was one other thing that they¡¯d been unable to avoid: a series of continent-wide agreements known in total as ¡°the Begale Treaty of Eight Forty-four¡±.
All the other countries at the time had demanded that Stragma join the preexisting pact as part of the price of trade, and the Chos at the time had done so reluctantly. By doing so, they¡¯d agreed to two items. First, they agreed to contribute to the manning and upkeep of Redwater Castle, the fortress built to protect against any possible invasion from the neighboring continent of Obura. Second, should Redwater Castle fall, they were to fight alongside the other nations of Nocend to push the invaders out.
The Stragman public knew little of this, especially the latter half. Being forced to sign the agreement against their wishes had made Stragma and the Chos at the time look weak, so it had largely been kept under wraps except to send a contingent of soldiers to Redwater Castle each year as a ¡°cultural exchange and information gathering¡± mission. As far as the people were concerned, the problems of those not of the forest had no bearing on their lives.
That didn¡¯t mean that the Stragmans didn¡¯t honor their commitments¡ªon the contrary; circumstances at the time of signing aside, an agreement was an agreement. Those who could not honor their agreements were weak. Akhustal had never felt more shame than that day when the time to honor the second half of the accords had finally come and Stragma had been unable to honor their commitment. Once she finished this speech, she would allow herself to feel some measure of redemption.
¡°People of Stragma,¡± she began, her voice amplified by several sound-specializing Observers, ¡°I come before you tonight at a moment of crisis. Long ago, when our ancestors first fled to this forest, they decided, in their great wisdom, to remove themselves from the dealings of outsiders. Deep within the loving embrace of Ruresni, the plights and problems of those outside the trees were no longer their concern.¡±
¡°However!¡± she continued, her voice rising in intensity. ¡°There comes a time when the people outside the forest, in their arrogance, decide to reach into places they do not belong! We all know the tale of the Third Great Hunt eight hundred years ago, when the foolish Gustilian king sought control of the mountain forests in the north. Their army expected small bands of savages hiding in the trees. They never expected the entirety of Stragma, from every Fleg to every Hono, to fall upon them and send them running for their mothers!¡±
A round of cheers went up from the people at the mention of the Third Great Hunt, as well as a smattering of laughter at the silly Gustilians who thought they could even dream of winning a war amongst the trees.
¡°It is during these times of crisis that the world witnesses the true strength of this great nation! I stand before you now to tell you that it is time to show that strength once more! As some of you may know, the armies of the Ubran Empire have swept into our continent, wreaking havoc wherever they go! Gustil is no more, with those that still live now living under the Ubran heel! The grand armies of Eterium and Kutrad were destroyed, leaving the Ubrans free to conquer city after city! Now they lay siege to Crirada, the last bastion standing between them and half the continent!
Concerned murmurs sprung forth from the crowd. Akhustal gave the people an understanding smile and gestured for them to quiet down.
¡°I understand your confusion and your concern,¡± she assured them. ¡°You¡¯re probably thinking, ¡®what do the fates of the Gustilians and the Eterians matter to us? The Ubrans would surely not be so foolish as to attack us, right?¡¯ That is where you are wrong. People of Stragma, I have called you here today to announce that last night the cowardly Ubrans struck against us right here in our city!¡±
The concerned murmurs from before swelled into ones of shock and confusion. Unwilling to abandon her building momentum Akhustal continued over the din.
¡°All of you know of the one known as Rudra Kapadia. He is one of Stragma¡¯s greatest treasures, capable of returning your loved ones to you, even from beyond the grave! Whether it be a loved one or a friend, or even yourself, all of you have been touched by his gifts these last few seasons! As long as he is with us, our armies will not falter, for we need not fear even death! The Ubrans know this, and so they sent their assassins to strike him down in the dead of night!¡±
A stunned silence settled over the crowd for a moment before the people almost simultaneously exploded in collective fury. Akhustal fought back a smile and raised her hands, telling the masses to settle down. Rudra was perhaps the most famous person in the country other than Akhustal herself. Though many people disliked his involvement in the mass actions of the Shell caste these last few seasons, none could deny the great boon he had provided them all since his arrival. The troops he¡¯d brought back to life, as well as their families, felt especially strong in his favor. Such attitudes had been a large reason why she¡¯d never been able to punish him more harshly for his meddling in their ways.
Stragma¡¯s intelligence units had spent hours interrogating both Rudra and Tepin throughout the day. Though Tepin remained stubborn, Rudra had told them everything he knew without much hassle. He didn¡¯t seem to know most of what Akhustal¡¯s people wanted to know, but he did know that the man who¡¯d attacked them last night had been Ubran. Not that it mattered; Akhustal would have claimed that the assassin was Ubran regardless of the man¡¯s actual affiliation. There was no way to prove otherwise, after all.
¡°I am relieved to inform you that, though he was gravely injured in the fight, Rudra Kapadia still lives and is ready to resume his resurrections. He returned my own beloved, General Caprakan Bloodflower-hono, back to me just today! But though the Ubrans¡¯ evil plans failed, they still showed their true intentions! They have already set their sights upon this forest, and there is no doubt that they will invade as soon as Crirada falls! Their actions show that they fear our might. I say to you that it is time to show them that their fear is justified!¡±
The anger of the crowd had nearly boiled over at this point, angry shouts merging into a dull rumble. They just needed a little more to push them over.
¡°My people!¡± Akhustal called out. ¡°Should we allow the Ubrans to attack our people?!¡±
¡°NO!¡± countless voices answered.
¡°Should we allow their brazen arrogance to go unpunished?!¡±
¡°NO!¡± the voices cried.
¡°Then should we just sit back and wait for their armies to invade our lands, or should we fight with everything we have!?
¡°FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!¡±
She flashed the assembled people a feral grin.
¡°People of Stragma, you have made your voices heard!¡± she roared. ¡°It is time that we show them what true might is! I, Akhustal Palebane, Chos of this great nation, hereby announce the Fourth Great Hunt upon the armies of the Ubran Empire!¡±
The crowd collectively gasped before erupting in a frenzy of patriotic cheers.
¡°WE ARE THE PEOPLE OF THE FOREST!¡± the Chos thundered. ¡°WE ARE THE STRONG! WHO ARE WE?!¡±
¡°STRAGMA!¡± the assembled masses cried out, their bloodthirsty voices so loud that Akhustal momentarily feared they would bring the entire cave system down upon their heads.
¡°Prepare the city! We march in ten days!¡± she declared, then turned and left the podium to deafening hollers and chants of ¡®Stragma!¡¯ echoing through the caverns. As she reached the floor, Akhustal couldn¡¯t help but smile. She had her beloved husband back, her people were unifying under one banner once more, and soon, they¡¯d be able to pillage more than enough to offset all their losses the last few seasons. The path to this point had been fraught with frustration and pain, but in the end, it had been worth it. She¡¯d finally gotten almost everything she''d wanted.
Chapter 78
¡°...and we should hopefully have the new mine operational in no more than ten days,¡± concluded Martis Tievais, Blake¡¯s Minister of the Interior.
¡°Excellent, well done,¡± Blake replied. It was times like this that he wished he didn¡¯t always need to wear his masked helmet as part of his ¡®Lord Ferros¡¯ persona. It kept his subordinates from seeing his encouraging smiles. Still, it was important that he be ¡®Lord Ferros¡¯ to these people. The only people who followed him, with the possible exception of Simona and Leo, did so out of fear. The public only obeyed to the extent that they did out of fear. Fear was what kept him alive. If people were to find out that beneath the daunting mask of Lord Ferros stood some schlub named ¡®Blake Myers¡¯...
Blake stopped that train of thought before it could get too far out of the station. He didn¡¯t want to think about that now, or ever.
¡°Moving on, any update on the elf?¡± Blake asked Leo. ¡°Has he actually done anything worth noting yet or is he still just, like... sitting around?¡±
Leo nodded to Gunta Izkapts, the Minister of Justice.
¡°The Elsel- the elf has largely behaved himself, but an incident occurred last night¡± Gunta explained. ¡°It seems that an altercation broke out between him and two citizens. He was roughed up somewhat, but his two opponents are much worse for wear. There are conflicting accounts about who caused the incident. As of now, we have all three of them in custody.¡±
¡°Let the elf go,¡± Blake ordered. ¡°He didn¡¯t do anything.¡±
¡°B-but it is still undetermined if he is the culprit in this matter!¡± the Minister objected.
¡°Give me a break. He¡¯s all alone in a country that hates people like him. Do you really think he¡¯s going to go around picking fights with people? Let him go. As for the others, I want you to make sure that they¡¯re punished as fully and as publicly as possible.¡±
¡°My Lord, I don¡¯t think-¡±
¡°Gunta, you know full well how I feel about Otharians attacking other people just for being from someplace else,¡± Blake stated, his tone laced with warning. ¡°I want it made clear to everybody just how little tolerance I have for this shit. I want you to come down hard on them. As hard as you can within the limits for this sort of thing.¡±
¡°...as you wish,¡± Minister Izkapts conceded with a resigned nod.
¡°But while we¡¯re on the subject, double¡ªno¡ªtriple the surveillance on the elf. I don¡¯t trust him either. If he¡¯s anything like those other two, then-¡±
¡±BLAKE MYERS!!! GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!!!¡±
Speak of the devil...
The room went silent as everybody turned to stare at the door where the furious but unmistakable voice of Sofie Ramaut had come from. Blake, in particular, went white as he realized what she¡¯d just done.
¡°STOP HIDING AND COME OUT, YOU COWARD!!!¡± the woman hollered from behind the metal panel.
¡°Everybody out, meeting adjourned. We¡¯ll handle the rest tomorrow,¡± the engineer-turned-despot commanded, trying his best to keep his voice sounding as calm and composed as possible. He wasn¡¯t sure just how well he did, but at least he kept his voice from wavering. ¡°Use the other door. I¡¯ll deal with this myself.¡±
Once the others had filed out, Blake, ever so reluctantly, opened the door and an enraged Sofie barged in, her expression looking like she was ready to murder him. Without saying a word, she swung something long and thin at his head, which Blake managed to barely block with his arm.
¡°Hey! What the fuck are you...¡± he protested as he finally got a good look at the ¡®weapon¡¯ she brandished. ¡°Is that a stick?!¡±
¡°Shut up, you fucking prick!¡± she snarled as she swung the thick tree branch at his head again. ¡°Every single time I think I see some shred of humanity remaining inside of you, every time I have hope that maybe there¡¯s a decent person hidden beneath that fucking mask of yours, you prove me wrong! I swear-¡±
On the third swing, Blake finally managed to catch the wooden weapon and bring an end to the sudden assault. He willed his mask to melt down into the rest of his suit so that he could talk to his assailant face to face.
¡°What the hell are you on about this time?¡± he demanded to know.
¡°Strapping bombs to children, you lunatic!¡± she cried as she struggled to free her tree branch from his powerful grip. ¡°Samanta told me everything! How could- How- GRRRRR! Let go!¡±
¡°No way!¡± Blake shot back as he tried to understand just what the crazed woman was frothing over. A moment later, he managed to put the pieces together. It had been so long since any of it had been relevant, he¡¯d largely forgotten about it. ¡°Look, Sofie, calm down. I didn¡¯t strap a bomb to Sam¡¯s neck. That¡¯s not what happened.¡±
Sofie glared into his eyes. ¡°Oh really?¡± she asked, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.
¡°Really!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t lie to me, Blake! She told me you blew up a body with a collar to show her what it could do! Tell me right now, can Samanta¡¯s collar explode?! Yes or no?!¡±
¡°...wellllll technically-¡±
¡°BLAKE!¡±
"Hey, I didn''t make the rules for how this stuff works! You think I wanted cantacrenyx crystals to explode if you arrange the power flow wrong?! That''s just how it is! Yeah, her collar can explode. So can this suit, so can all my robots, so can this entire fucking fortress! Almost everything I make could explode if configured incorrectly. That doesn''t mean I strapped a bomb to her neck. I would have to significantly rework the internal systems of her collar if I wanted to blow her head off."
Sofie rubbed her temples, her eyebrows scrunching together in frustration, as she tried to process what he''d just said. "So... not a bomb..."
¡°No!¡±
¡°...unless you want it to be.¡±
¡°Once again, not my choice.¡±
¡°But you told her that it was a bomb.¡±
¡°Look, this is a lot more complicated-¡±
¡°Blake, that¡¯s almost as bad! Putting somebody under that sort of trauma is a horrible thing, especially if they¡¯re a child! She¡¯s been living for an entire year thinking you could just snap your fingers and kill her whenever you want!¡±
¡°I did what I had to do!¡± Blake spat. ¡°And stop acting like she¡¯s some fucking angel! She didn¡¯t tell you why I did it, did she? Huh? You just listened to her sob story and drank it alllll up, didn¡¯t you?!¡±
¡°What are you talking about?¡± Sofie asked, his sudden outburst causing her to shrink back slightly.
Blake leaned in towards her, refusing to let her back away. ¡°Who do you think stabbed the knife into my spine? It wasn¡¯t one of their Apostles or soldiers; it was your beloved Samanta! She literally stabbed me in the back after I saved her fucking ass from the bastards that killed her family, and you know what? If I hadn¡¯t clamped that thing around her neck and told it I¡¯d kill her if she attempted anything, she would have tried to finish what she¡¯d started. You weren¡¯t there, you didn¡¯t see the way she looked at me. I wasn¡¯t a human being in her eyes. I was something that had to be put down.¡±
Sofie withdrew under Blake¡¯s intensity, turning her head to avoid his gaze. He could see the conflict raging inside her, and he reveled in every second of it; though it felt like she argued with him constantly, such moments were frustratingly rare.
¡°Why go through all this then? Why didn¡¯t you just kill her?¡± she finally asked.
Blake hesitated. Did he really want to just tell her everything? For a split second, he considered just telling her some half-truth, but no. It was true that Sofie was generally frustrating and annoying and even infuriating much of the time, but one good thing to having her around was that he could open up to her in ways that he couldn¡¯t to the Scyrians. She¡¯d harp on whatever he told her, saying that he was a moral degenerate or something along those lines, but strangely, he never felt hate from her. It felt liberating to finally be able to confide in somebody, even if all it engendered was scorn.
¡°I almost did,¡± he admitted. ¡°It was close, closer than I want to admit. I was so... so angry then. I don¡¯t think you understand what it¡¯s like to just lose half of your body in the span of a second. I sure wouldn¡¯t have been able to comprehend it before it happened to me. It doesn¡¯t feel like you just lost half of your body, it¡¯s like you lost half of what you are. You feel like you, as a person, can never be whole again, and it just makes you feel so... violated. Everything in your world just falls apart, and then it¡¯s all down to a war between the part of you that wants to curl into a ball and cry and the part that wants to make everything around you burn and suffer for your pain.
¡°Well, the world in flames part of me won. In that moment I wanted to make everybody and everything feel the anguish I was feeling, especially her, but... she was just a kid. If Samanta had been your age, I think I actually would have killed her right then and there. It would have been messy and painful, too. But there was this one little part of me still left inside that wouldn¡¯t stop yelling that she was just a child. That voice saved me. It made me stop just long enough to realize what I should do.
¡°Samanta¡¯s a believer. You know the type, right? The ones who aren¡¯t just religious, but actually live and breathe all that shit. That¡¯s her, if you can¡¯t already tell. Hell, she was quoting scripture as she stood over my broken body. When I looked at her and I saw the hate and the fear and the conviction in her eyes that said that killing me was a holy act of goodness, it was like I was seeing everything wrong about this country all wrapped up in a single little girl. If I could fix her, if I could fix the dogmatic worldview, and the xenophobic hatred, and the slavish worship of authority, and the rampant ignorance... if I could fix all that, then I could fix everything about this place. Besides, her entire family had just been murdered before her eyes out in the middle of nowhere. She would never have survived on her own. So I took her with me.¡±
¡°So you were just gonna ¡®fix¡¯ her?¡± she asked, skeptical. ¡°That simple? Just debug the code, unclog the pipes, tighten the bolts, and suddenly she¡¯s all better? People aren¡¯t machines. It¡¯s a lot more complicated than you¡¯re acting. Especially given the things you put her through.¡±
Blake shot Sofie an annoyed glare and let out a sigh. ¡°I know, I know. I thought I could do something. Show her the truth, but...¡±
¡°But it¡¯s not going so well, is it?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t think it would be this hard. She¡¯s stopped fighting me every day over her studies, so there¡¯s that, but... I think what I want, more than anything, is just to have her understand that what she did wasn¡¯t some virtuous deed. She¡¯s never once expressed any real remorse over it, never once told me she was sorry. I¡¯ve taken care of her, fed her, taught her, protected her, given her a home, and I¡¯m still the enemy in her eyes. No matter what I do, it can¡¯t overcome some stupid fucking passage in a book saying that I¡¯m evil and need to be eradicated.¡±
¡°The problem is that she doesn¡¯t view this as a home, she views this as a prison and you as her jailer. She¡¯s right. You do treat her like a prisoner. And you¡¯ll never make real progress until you stop.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t treat her like a prisoner at all! She has her own room, she can go generally wherever she wants in the fortress, she can-¡±
¡°She has a collar! Strapped! Around! Her! Neck! Nothing else matters!¡± She groaned and rubbed her forehead in exasperation. ¡°Look, you still don¡¯t trust her, Blake. The way you deal with her practically screams that, and everyone can feel it! Take the collar off. Show her you believe that she can grow and learn on her own, instead of saying that you view her as a threat in what¡¯s supposedly her own home. You can¡¯t be a father figure for her and treat her like a criminal at the same time. You have to trust her, and that starts with getting rid of that damned collar.¡±
¡°I never said I wanted to be a father figure for her,¡± he vehemently denied. ¡°I just wanted to set her straight and keep her from dying out in the wilderness or alone in an alley somewhere, that¡¯s all.¡±
¡°You expect her to grow up without parents? She needs a father, and sadly, you¡¯re the best she has right now. So I suggest you take another look at what she needs and how you treat her.¡±
Blake¡¯s mind kept flashing back to that fateful night and to the almost euphoric mix of fear, pain, and exultation he¡¯d seen plastered over her face in the light of the moons. Sure, she could still be petulant, moody, uncooperative, and unappreciative, but it did seem like she wasn¡¯t that anymore. Was Sofie right? Was he sabotaging his own efforts?
¡°I¡¯ll think about it,¡± he eventually replied.
¡°Think quickly,¡± Sofie said, crossing her arms. ¡°And while you¡¯re at it, tell her the truth about the collar, or I will.¡±
¡°Fine, fine, I get it,¡± Blake grumbled.
¡°Good. It¡¯s annoying having to find something metal-free to beat you with. Now while I¡¯m here, let¡¯s talk about Crirada.¡±
Blake groaned.
¡°No groaning! You promised to help them more, so what are you doing about it?¡±
¡°I¡¯m working as best I can, but there are limits. The Flying Toaster can only carry so much in a single trip, and decreasing my current reinforcements even a little risks that damned woman breaking through and ending the siege.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t you just make more zeppelins?¡± Sofie wondered.
¡°Given the proper crystals, sure, but that¡¯s one of the biggest limitations of cantacrenyx technology. We can only pull so many of them from the ground a day, and I don¡¯t get to choose their size. I don¡¯t have the materials I need to make a second one yet.¡±
¡°Then what else can you do? Can¡¯t you just make some big trucks or something and drive a robot army north?¡±
¡°I already lightened my security in Otharia to beef up the units in Crirada when you asked the first time. I¡¯m not doing it again, not with the Otharians the way they are and not with that peasant army up at the border.¡±
¡°Aaargh! Come on, people are dying up there every day! They have to be on their last gasps at this point!¡±
Blake shook his head stubbornly. ¡°If we want to turn the tide, we¡¯re going to need to find new weapons. New ideas. Actually, do you know what would do it?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°If you got that catgirl to fucking work with me and help me make some real explosives.¡±
¡°Maybe you shouldn¡¯t have made her dislike you,¡± Sofie shrugged.
¡°I didn¡¯t do anything!¡±
¡°You yelled at me, her sister.¡±
¡°Oh, come on! This whole ¡®we¡¯re family¡¯ act is stupid bullshit.¡±
Sofie¡¯s eyes flashed with malicious intent, and Blake brought his arm up just in time to block another swing of the tree branch.
¡°Say that ever again and I¡¯ll make you regret it for the rest of your life,¡± she warned.
¡°What, you¡¯ll find a second stick and start dual-wielding?¡±
¡°Blake, I¡¯m not joking! Pari takes her ¡®family¡¯ very seriously, and so do I! She¡¯s my precious little sister no matter what you say, and if I ever saw somebody yelling at her the way you yelled at me, it would get far uglier than what she¡¯s doing to you! You should just count your blessings that she didn¡¯t try to blow you to smithereens!¡±
¡°Maybe if she tried, it would give me some clues and I might be able to figure out how to make the bombs we need,¡± Blake replied with a roll of his eyes.
¡°I¡¯m serious!¡± Up came another swipe of the stick, once more ably defended by a blocking arm.
¡°So am I!¡± Blake countered. ¡°We should be on the same side here. Didn¡¯t you say that another ¡®family¡¯ member is still in Crirada? If you want them to survive, then help me! Get that little urchin to cooperate so we can end this stupid war and go back to doing the things we wanted to do in the first place!¡±
¡°Fine, fine, I¡¯ll talk to her,¡± Sofie grumbled. ¡°I¡¯ll do what I can, but she¡¯s stubborn and does what she wants most of the time. You have no idea how hard it¡¯s been to keep her from blowing up every campsite and inn room we stopped at these last few seasons. I shudder to think of what might have happened had you not created that courtyard for her like I asked. Come find us in a few hours.¡±
As Sofie turned to leave, Blake realized that thanks to her furious outburst taking precedence, he¡¯d nearly forgotten all about a certain grave misdeed. ¡°Hold on!¡± he said, quickly grabbing her by the shoulder before she could exit the room. ¡°Don¡¯t think you can just skip out of here after what you did!¡±
¡°What did I do?¡± she asked, puzzled.
¡°You said my name in front of everybody, you idiot!¡± Blake growled.
¡°...and?¡±
¡°You realize there¡¯s a reason I wear this mask every time I leave my chambers, don¡¯t you?! I didn¡¯t call myself ¡®Lord Ferros¡¯ for fun! I¡¯ve worked constantly to craft an image as an overpowering, domineering figure that nobody would dare oppose, because that¡¯s the only way I can reliably wield power here, and you just destroyed all of that with the people I need to work with the most! I need these people to bow down to me, and nobody is going to bow down to somebody called ¡®Blake Myers¡¯!¡±
Sofie just stared at Blake¡¯s aggrieved visage for a moment before a small smile crept onto her face. She let out an amused snort, which quickly turned into a fit of giggles.
¡°This isn¡¯t funny!¡± Blake protested, which just led to more snorts from his counterpart.
¡°Blake... oh Blake...¡± Sofie said in wry amusement.
¡°What?!¡±
¡°They already know who you are, Blake. They knew your name before I ever showed up.¡±
¡°W-wait, everybody?¡±
¡°Not the public, I think, but your advisers or whatever? Oh yeah. They probably knew from the start.¡±
The news stunned Blake, sending his mind reeling. It didn¡¯t make sense! ¡°But how? And why didn¡¯t they...?¡± he mumbled to himself.
¡°Blake, chill. This is a good thing. It¡¯s probably the only reason they¡¯re still serving you. It let them know you¡¯re human. I mean, who would want to work for a faceless monster?¡±
With an amused smirk lighting up her face, Sofie turned and walked out of the room and out of Blake¡¯s view, leaving him standing alone in the conference room, slack-jawed and befuddled.
¡°Oh, and don¡¯t worry,¡± Sofie added, popping her head back around the door frame, ¡°even with a name like ¡®Blake Myers¡¯, we all still know that you¡¯re a violent, angry jerk. Later!¡±
Every so often, Blake would redesign some or all of the interior of his fortress, creating a whole new layout of rooms and hallways. It helped spice things up a little and let him deal with things like two moochers who¡¯d decided to just crash at his pad for an undetermined length of time. However, it always took him a little while to fully remember how to get to various places, especially concerning rooms he rarely visited. He¡¯d often need to consult a map for the first few days. This time, however, he didn¡¯t bother. All he had to do was head towards the sounds of explosions and the high-pitched laughter that followed.
Soon enough, he emerged into a large courtyard and squinted as the strong midday sunlight washed over his eyes. Once his vision adjusted, he saw what appeared to be some sort of war zone before him.
In an effort to keep the courtyard from becoming an oven of reflected sunlight and burning-hot metal, he¡¯d placed the room at ground level and covered the floor with four feet of topsoil and grass. The effort of essentially ripping out a large section of a pleasant field, transporting it into the city and deploying it in his fortress made him realize just how difficult and demanding landscaping must be back on Earth, but he¡¯d been proud of the final result. He wished he¡¯d thought of it before, and it rankled him slightly that it took a suggestion from Sofie for him to even think of it. The soft green grass provided a welcome change of pace from the smooth grey metal that so dominated the rest of the place. At least, it had on the first day. Then Sofie¡¯s little monster had set up shop.
By the end of the second day, Blake¡¯s idyllic pasture had disappeared for good. Gone was the lush flowing grass, replaced instead by a series of craters of various widths and depths. Bits of dirt and plant life could be found strewn all about the area, not just in the craters and on the small patches of field that still remained, but also on the benches set against the side walls, the one remaining table in the corner, and even on the clothes and hair of the two children responsible for the mess.
Pari Clansnarl was every bit the pint-sized terror that Sofie had portrayed her to be. When she¡¯d first said that the catgirl would burn down the entire city if left unattended out in an inn somewhere, he¡¯d humored his fellow Earthling but hadn¡¯t put much stock in her claims. The woman had demonstrated a tendency towards hyperbole, after all, and how could something so adorable be that dangerous?
Now that he¡¯d witnessed the tyke¡¯s true nature firsthand, any urge he had to scratch behind those ears had evaporated into thin air. He thanked his lucky stars every day that he¡¯d listened to Sofie¡¯s advice on this particular matter. The last thing he needed was more chaos out there to deal with, or, even worse, any remaining Otharian resistance hardliners hidden in the population getting their hands on her explosives. Just thinking of Otharian candle-based IED¡¯s made his blood pressure spike. In other words, while he thought it good that Samanta finally had somebody around her age to associate with, he wasn¡¯t sure that this particular child was the best choice.
He spotted the two children on the other side of the yard, standing over a freshly created smoking hole. While Pari looked to be her typical ebullient self, Sam lacked her usual sullen demeanor, her mood seemingly overrun by sheer bewilderment, as if she didn¡¯t know how to feel about anything happening in her life right now. Blake understood where she was coming from.
That sympathy didn¡¯t stop him from feeling slightly irate at her, however. She¡¯d been the only person he¡¯d given his name, so the knowledge of his identity could only have come from her. The revelation further clouded his already muddy thoughts concerning the girl and his relationship with her. On the one hand, truly reaching her and showing her the error of her ways and worldview remained one of his top goals. If his own actions were impeding that goal, then it was only logical to address said actions. On the other hand, he couldn¡¯t help but feel that her actions constituted some form of attack towards him, some childish attempt at undermining his authority. Even if Sofie claimed it hadn¡¯t worked as intended, part of him wanted there to be consequences.
Both of the kids spotted him just a moment later. The way their faces fell when they noticed his presence reminded him how much he hated dealing with children. He¡¯d always thought that children were all a bunch of selfish, ungrateful, and annoying little runts, and between Samanta¡¯s passive-aggressive angsty brooding and Pari¡¯s complete inability to show him an ounce of respect, his opinion had only solidified further. Still, he put on his best smile and gave a friendly wave. He needed this to go as smoothly as he could manage it, and if that meant putting on a false veneer, then that was what he¡¯d do.
¡°You kiddos having fun?¡± he asked in as dadly a manner as he could manage.
¡°Pari was having fun with Sammy-friend until Metal Man came,¡± the catgirl replied, her ears flattening against her head and her tail beginning to flit about.
¡°Hey, hey, call me Blake,¡± he said, as friendly as could be. ¡°Sofie says you promised to show me how to make nice explosions. Can we do that now? I¡¯m very busy.¡±
¡°Hmph!¡± Pari snorted, turning her head off to the side in a huff. ¡°Pari is busy too! Metal Man should come back later!¡±
Blake¡¯s smile faltered slightly for a moment as the urge to strangle the brat in front of him flared up inside him. God, he hated dealing with kids.
¡°Just give him what he wants and he¡¯ll leave so he can get back to ranting about this woman he hates,¡± Samanta chimed in from the side. Blake sent a pointed glare her way, but she just returned it with the same dead-eyed stare she usually gave him.
Luckily for him, his ward¡¯s words did the trick and Pari perked up immediately. ¡°Metal Man will leave quickly if Pari teaches him?¡± she asked.
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¡°If you do a good enough job teaching me, then yes. And for the last time, my name is Blake!¡±
¡°Metal Man, come look! Pari will teach!¡± the child chirped as she ran back to the other side of the enclosure to a large patch-covered sack and pulled out a variety of objects from within. The items fell into two categories: metal containers and contraptions of various sizes, and small blobs of what looked to be some sort of soft wax.
¡°That reminds me,¡± Blake began as he joined the child on the other side of the courtyard, ¡°is the wax I got for you acceptable?¡±
Pari frowned in seeming dissatisfaction. ¡°Pari can use Metal Man¡¯s wax, but grandfather¡¯s wax is way better. If Pari didn¡¯t need to use last of grandfather¡¯s wax to store supplies, Pari would not use Metal Man¡¯s wax.¡±
With practiced motions, the girl quickly connected several of the larger metal contraptions into a larger unit. Curious, Blake reached out to inspect it, only to have it pulled away from him at the last moment.
¡°No!¡± the beastkin cried, possessively hugging her equipment to her small chest. ¡°This is Pari¡¯s! Metal Man get his own!¡±
¡°And where did you get yours?¡± Blake inquired, his blood pressure rising. It was like Sofie had trained her to be as obnoxious as possible.
¡°Grandfather made it just for Pari!¡± she proclaimed as if that answered the question.
Blake fought back a comment about this mythical absentee grandparent, knowing it would only derail the conversation further. Still, he couldn¡¯t help but wonder at the identity of this mysterious figure. Whenever people mentioned other people when speaking, they sent understanding about the person in question along with their words, just like how they did with any other words. Most often, that understanding would contain bits of the person¡¯s appearance or personality. This held true for Pari as well, or at least it did when she was talking about anybody else, like Sofie or Sam. But whenever she mentioned her grandfather, no images or anything else of that sort came with it. All Blake ever got was a feeling of strength and power. It bothered him and made him wary. Maybe the power she sent along was just the worship of a child, but either way, the thought of some powerful old man hiding out there somewhere left him a little leery.
With a tired sigh, Blake activated his powers and drew out some metal from the nearby wall, quickly forming it into a copy of Pari¡¯s equipment. Pari let out a small gasp at the sight, her eyes suddenly twinkling with interest as if she¡¯d just found something new to play with.
¡°Show Pari again!¡± she demanded.
¡°Maybe later,¡± he answered with a shake of his head. ¡°Let¡¯s just get this started. Show me how to make a bomb.¡±
¡°Pari doesn¡¯t make bombs, Pari makes candles,¡± the girl stated.
¡°Right, you just keep telling yourself that.¡±
Pari picked up several of the wax lumps and quickly opened them with a claw, revealing several different small supplies of dried seeds, leaves, and even a tiny collection of different insects. ¡°Just copy Pari,¡± she said.
Pari proceeded to use several containers to measure out portions of four ingredients and pour them into a mortar, all while explaining what each was and where she found it. Blake followed along as best he could, trying to imitate everything she did down to the finest detail and committing it all to memory. After combining all four ingredients, the child pulled out a pestle and began to grind the seeds, leaves, and bug carcasses together.
¡°Isn¡¯t all of this too dry?¡± Blake wondered aloud as he crushed an insect with his pestle, his mind already working on ways to speed up the whole manufacturing process.
¡°Mix not ready,¡± Pari replied, continuing to grind away with patience he¡¯d never seen in her during any other activity. Several minutes later, she finally stopped grinding and sat up a little straighter. ¡°Mix ready now!¡±
Blake looked about for a stash of water among the ingredients but didn¡¯t find one. Instead, he stared in disbelief as the child picked up the mortar, brought it closer to her face, and proceeded to spit several times into the container before placing it back on the ground and resuming her work with the pestle.
¡°Seriously?¡± he asked incredulously.
¡°Nya?¡± the confused catgirl replied.
¡°I have to spit in this? Why not just use water or something?¡±
¡°Metal Man is really stupid,¡± Pari responded, giving him a condescending look that made Blake want to throw her off a cliff. ¡°Why would Pari use water in candles? Water makes fire go out!¡±
¡°Saliva is also-¡± Blake ground out before catching himself. Arguing with a normal child would be unproductive. Arguing with this one would perhaps constitute the greatest waste of time in history. ¡°Whatever. So I just spit and keep grinding?¡±
¡°Uh-huh,¡± Pari said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Fighting down his irritation, Blake did as instructed. Several more minutes of intense grinding later, Pari pronounced them done. She then pulled out a large block of wax. Blake recognized it as some of the wax he¡¯d provided, a sort made by a Scyrian insect that seemed to fill the same ecological niche bees filled on Earth. Then she took out a series of small cylindrical containers and, with a precision born of years of repetition, used a tiny flame to melt the wax and coat the insides of the cylinders with thick layers of it, creating a casing to hold the mixture.
¡°So you just pour it in and that¡¯s it?¡± Blake inquired.
¡°Sometimes Pari mixes more wax inside,¡± she replied.
As the two of them poured their mixtures into their respective candle shells, placed wicks in the middle of each, and covered the open tops in another layer of wax to seal them up, Blake couldn¡¯t help but find the process underwhelming. He¡¯d expected some sort of secret ritual, but instead, he¡¯d gotten nothing more than a girl grinding up common items into a paste and putting it inside some wax. It made no sense to him that this wasn¡¯t more known. Given the abundance of these materials, some aspiring alchemist surely would have discovered something along these lines centuries ago, right? If he hadn¡¯t seen the results already, he would have believed this all to be some sort of hoax on the child¡¯s part. After all, who would believe that mixing plants and some dead insects together created an explosive compound?
Ready to test the results, the three of them moved more towards the center of the chamber. Blake pulled a small metal wall up through the soft ground for protection, something he realized he should have done days ago.
¡°Pari lights candles like this,¡± the girl explained, snapping the fingers in her left hand to create another tiny flame. Then, once the wick caught, she threw the small wax cylinder over the wall and ducked.
Crack!
A sharp explosion echoed off the walls. Even though he¡¯d expected it, Blake still reflexively flinched at the sound.
¡°Heeheeheeheehee!¡± Pari giggled manically. ¡°Now Metal Man try!¡±
Unlike Scyrians, Blake couldn¡¯t just conjure fire from nowhere, so he had Samanta light one of his candles with her electrical powers instead. Quickly tossing the lit candle over the wall, he bent down beside the others and waited for the Earth-shattering kaboom.
Only silence greeted them.
¡°What the hell?¡± Blake muttered. Covering himself in his full armor, he strode over to the candle, which sat, unlit, in a nearby crater. Picking it up, he saw that the wick had indeed burned and melted away the wax at the top, but the fire seemed to stop at the mixture inside.
As soon as he¡¯d returned to the safe side of the wall, defunct candle still in hand, Pari tossed a second of hers over. This time, his helmet and mask still in place, Blake stood up to watch what happened.
The candle bounced, its wick still lit, and settled against a small mound of dirt resting on the side of a moderately sized crater. Voraciously, the fire ate its way down into the wax and then-
Crack!
Once again, the candle erupted in thunder and flame. Quickly Blake had Sam light another of his creations and threw it over. It bounced several times before settling several feet from where Pari¡¯s candle had been. Just like with hers, the flame rapidly worked its way into the wax, but then, instead of the desired fireworks, the fire simply petered out with a pathetic little wisp of smoke.
¡°What the hell!¡± Blake said again, much more vehemently this time. ¡°Did I fuck up somehow?¡±
¡°Metal Man bad at making candles,¡± Pari giggled in from the side.
¡°Gee, thanks. How about I make some more and this time you watch me and tell me what I¡¯m doing wrong.¡±
¡°Okay!¡±
This time Blake went slowly and deliberately, making sure he had the right ratios and confirming each step with the child both before and after.
¡°Are you sure I can¡¯t use water or something?¡± he asked as he stared at the mostly ground materials in the mortar.
¡°No! Pari spit every time!¡± she stubbornly insisted. ¡°Makes paste smooth!¡±
¡°Ugh, gross...¡± Blake spat once more into the mortar and resumed his work.
Minutes later, he stood over another crater, profanities spewing forth from his mouth like water from a broken hydrant. Another dud! The frustration of failure threatened to reach a boiling point now, spurred to greater and greater heights by the catgirl¡¯s amused laughter.
It didn¡¯t make any sense! They¡¯d followed the same steps and used the same ingredients! Pari had even signed off on the second batch after each step! There was no difference between his candles and hers, except...
Blake paused in his rage as a strange thought came to him, one that seemed almost ludicrous but was perhaps the only explanation. Then a second idea came to him, one that he could use to perhaps solve two problems at once.
¡°Sam! It¡¯s time for a test,¡± he proclaimed, striding back to the others.
Samanta stiffened at the sudden change in his demeanor.
¡°Do you remember what I taught you months ago, about the foundation of science? The scientific method?¡±
¡°Ummm, I think so,¡± the child cautiously replied.
¡°Well, I guess we¡¯re about to find out. You watched us this whole time, right?¡±
Sam nodded hesitantly.
¡°Good. I want you to figure out why my candles do not explode and hers do. I want you to prove it with an experiment.¡±
¡°Uh...¡± Samanta stared blankly into the middle distance as she considered the situation. ¡°You both seemed to do the same things... and you used the same ingredients... except... spit?¡± She looked toward him, somewhat nervously.
Blake shook his head. ¡°This is a surprise exam. I¡¯m not going to help you.¡±
¡°Well, the one difference is that you used different spit. Maybe your spit is different from hers for some reason.¡±
¡°Very well, then how would you test for that?¡±
¡°Um... well Pari¡¯s candles are the ones that work and they¡¯re the normal ones since she is the person who always makes them, so I guess those would be the standard group-¡±
¡°Control group,¡± Blake interjected.
¡°-the control group,¡± Samanta corrected. ¡°And then candles with your spit would be the experiment group and uh...¡±
¡°Should I make the experiment group candles?¡±
¡°No, Pari should and use your spit because spit is the, uh...¡±
¡°Independent variable,¡± he prodded.
¡°...independent variable,¡± Sam repeated nervously, ¡°and the other variable-¡±
¡°Dependent variable.¡±
¡°-would be if the candle explodes.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a good start, but we can go further, can¡¯t we?¡± Blake asked.
¡°Uh?¡± Samanta replied, puzzled.
¡°If it is spit that makes a difference, is it Pari¡¯s spit that makes it work, or my spit that makes it not work? Maybe it¡¯s not Pari that matters. Maybe it¡¯s that I¡¯m not from Scyria.¡±
¡°Well, Pari could make one with my spit too then. Maybe a fourth one with no spit at all as well.¡±
¡°Interesting...¡± Blake said, rubbing his chin. ¡°Well, Pari? Sam seems to have a plan. Will you help her?¡±
¡°Pari will always help Sammy-friend!¡± the catgirl chirped with a broad, toothy smile. She pulled out more supplies, while Blake made four separate mortars and pestles to contain each of the samples, and the pre-adolescent alchemist got to work in a flash.
Soon enough, four separate candles sat on the top of the low wall.
¡°Let¡¯s begin the testing,¡± Blake declared. ¡°Save the control group for last.¡±
Sam picked up the candle made entirely without any sort of bodily fluids and handed it to Pari, who lit it and threw it over the wall. Several moments later, the flame fizzled out without even a hiss. The next candle was the one with Sam¡¯s saliva; it too went out without the desired boom. The third candle, Blake¡¯s, predictably behaved just like all his others¡ªa dud like all his others.
¡°You gotta be fucking kidding me,¡± he grumbled as the fourth and final candle arced over the wall and towards the pockmarked land on the other side.
Crack!
¡°What... the FUCK!¡± Blake cried, whirling on the catgirl. ¡°Do you have like, explosive spit or something?! Are you some sort of freak?! What the hell are you?!¡±
¡°Nya?!¡± Pari yelped, scrambling away from him. Strangely, the little gremlin seemed just as confused as the rest of them.
¡°I¡¯ve seen her spit in every candle and they don¡¯t all explode,¡± Samanta chimed in. ¡°They do a bunch of different things.¡±
¡°So, then what, like, a catalyst of some sort? Are all beast people like this? What about other stuff? Have you tried blood?¡±
¡°Grandfather said to not use people¡¯s blood! Too dangerous, grandfather said!¡± Pari said, still backing away slowly.
¡°Did he say people¡¯s blood, or did he say your blood?¡± Blake pressed. ¡°Who the fuck even is this old bastard, anyway?! I¡¯m sick of you always talking about him and never saying who he is!¡±
¡°Grandfather is the best!¡± Pari declared, her chest swelling with pride. ¡°Grandfather is super strong and super great! Grandfather makes the bad people run away and then grandfather kills them anyway because bad people are bad!¡±
¡°What kind of bullshit answer is that?! That didn¡¯t tell me fucking anything!¡±
¡°Nya?¡±
¡°Blake, leave my sister alone!¡± a stern voice from the end of the room commanded. Blake turned to find Sofie marching out into the courtyard.
¡°What, can¡¯t I get some answers? Don¡¯t I deserve some goddamned answers by now?! Don¡¯t we all?!¡±
¡°If she doesn¡¯t want to talk about him, then she doesn¡¯t have to talk about him.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know if that¡¯s even what is going on here,¡± Blake grumbled.
¡°That¡¯s not what you¡¯re really mad about, is it? What¡¯s the real problem here?¡± Sofie inquired.
¡°The problem is that your ¡®sister¡¯ is some sort of fucking mutant, and nothing works without her!¡± Blake fumed. ¡°This ruins everything! If the bombs only work with her spit, then I won¡¯t be able to mass-produce them to win the war! We¡¯ll only be able to make a few each day! Fucking bespoke munitions! This is bullshit!¡±
Sofie shrugged. ¡°Yeah, I had no idea. I don¡¯t know what else you want me to say.¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t think it was weird that she always spit in her concoctions?¡±
¡°She makes candles that explode and crawls into the corpses of acid-spewing toads and all kinds of other shit. Everything about her is weird. Why would something that insignificant stand out?¡±
¡°...fair point,¡± Blake conceded.
¡°Pari, sweetie, did your grandfather teach you to spit in your mixtures?¡±
¡°Uh-huh! Grandfather always did, so Pari did too!¡± the child attested.
¡°So is there like this deviant catperson genetic line somewhere in Scyria where their bodily fluids are bizarre chemicals?¡± Blake wondered aloud. ¡°And why haven¡¯t I heard of them?¡±
¡°Maybe they were hunted down or something?¡± Sofie speculated. ¡°Pari never mentions her parents, only her grandfather.¡±
¡°Hmmmmm, yeah I could understand why that might happen,¡± Blake agreed.
With Pari now busy putting away all her toys, including the new ones Blake had just made, his eyes now fell on Samanta. It had taken some work, and she¡¯d struggled to remember all the terminology, but overall he believed that she¡¯d demonstrated a good understanding of the basics of scientific thought. As her teacher, he couldn¡¯t help but feel a bit of pride in her. She¡¯d listened and learned, internalizing concepts that he¡¯d taught her a while ago.
¡°Listen up, Sam,¡± he said to the girl. ¡°You did well and passed the test, so I guess you deserve a reward of some sort. So... here.¡±
Samanta stiffened as Blake bent down, grabbed the thick metal ring that encircled her neck, created an opening with his power, and removed it from around her throat. She took one hesitant step back and then another, her eyes quickly moving from Blake¡¯s face to the collar and back, looking for some sort of trap.
¡°Look, uhhh,¡± Blake continued when Samanta just kept staring at him like a deer in headlights. ¡°If this were a movie right now, there¡¯d be this sweeping, sappy music playing and I¡¯d say something moving and emotional and we¡¯d hug and cry and all that, but this is real life and I¡¯m still not completely over the fact that you paralyzed me and shit but like... this is your home now. I¡¯m sorry, I should have taken it off a long time ago but I wasn¡¯t considering your feelings. So... yeah.¡±
Blake looked at his young charge, hoping that his words had some effect, but she didn¡¯t even seem to hear him. Her attention was focused on her throat as she touched her hands to her neck gingerly, as if afraid she would still find the smooth metal wrapped around her neck. Then, without warning, she turned tail, sprinting as fast as she could towards the far exit without even a single word.
¡°Could have at least said thanks,¡± an annoyed Blake muttered as he watched her small back disappear into the shadows of the hallway.
¡°Well, that was the most pathetic heartfelt monologue I¡¯ve ever seen, but at least you did it,¡± Sofie commented with a bit of a snicker, that annoying wry smirk back on her face.
¡°What¡¯s that smug look for now?¡± he grumbled.
¡°You like her more than you let on.¡±
¡°I do not! You¡¯re just making shit up.¡±
¡°Am I? You didn¡¯t notice me but I was watching from the hallway during the whole last bit. You said you wouldn¡¯t help her, and then you led her along the whole way. You wanted her to succeed.¡±
¡°...I just wanted to see all my hard work pay off, that¡¯s all,¡± Blake huffed.
¡°Sure you did,¡± Sofie replied with a knowing grin. ¡°It¡¯s funny, after all the complaining you do about her and what she did, you actually do care for her somewhere deep down in there, don¡¯t you. Maybe there¡¯s still hope for you ye-¡±
WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP!
Both of them froze as Blake¡¯s battlestation, placed out of sight and mind in a nearby corner the whole time, let out its customary shriek and began unfolding.
¡°That time again?¡± Sofie sighed.
¡°Yep,¡± Blake stated as he made his way over to the skitter. ¡°Actually, it¡¯s good timing for once. Those flags you made arrived in Crirada last night. I thought you might want to watch and see what happens.¡±
¡°Oh, good, I¡¯d like that. Speaking of which, did you give them a good look to appreciate my world-class sewing machine skills?¡± she said with pride.
¡°No, and it¡¯s only world-class because you¡¯re the only person to ever use the sewing machine I built three days ago.¡±
¡°Spoilsport,¡± she grumbled.
¡°Quiet, it¡¯s starting.¡±
As the various skitters ambled out to face his nemesis, a small one about the size of a moderately-large dog sprinted out ahead of the rest and headed straight for her. As it went, several compartments opened up to reveal several cloth flags that Sofie had created several nights before. Among the ten or so flags that deployed were the flags of the United States of America, Mexico, and Brazil. Since they weren¡¯t sure of the woman¡¯s country of origin, Sofie had tried to include as many likely countries as she could remember flag designs for, but sadly she only knew a few.
As the skitter approached the woman, it slowed down. Blake couldn¡¯t hear it, but about now is when it was supposed to start playing a recording of their highly limited knowledge of Spanish, which was basically just ¡°Hello¡± and ¡°Where is the library?¡± repeated ad nauseam. The pair watched with great interest as the woman spied the small skitter, seemed to tense up, and...
¡°She punted it,¡± Sofie flatly observed.
¡°Yes, I can see that, thank you.¡±
¡°She seems really furious now, for some reason.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not blind, you know. I¡¯m watching the same thing you¡¯re watching.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think that worked. I think we just made her madder.¡±
¡°No duh. We¡¯ll try something else next time. Now be quiet, I need to focus on-WHATTHEFUCK?!¡±
Blake hurriedly zoomed out as two of his skitters suddenly switched from ¡®operational¡¯ to ¡®destroyed¡¯ without warning. What he saw baffled him.
Bouncing and rolling across the battlefield was a massive chunk of ice about the size of a mansion.
¡°Where the hell did that come from?!¡± he cried as he watched the gigantic boulder of frozen water continue along its trajectory¡ªthankfully missing the other skitters, though some only barely¡ªand crash heavily into the mighty Criradan walls.
Switching to a different camera that provided a better view of the city as a whole, a stunned Blake spotted half at least half a dozen other gigantic projectiles¡ªincluding fire, stone, ice, and water¡ªflying towards the city from various points in the Urban encirclement. Panicked, he zoomed in on the nearest source and blanched.
¡°Oh my god,¡± Sofie gasped.
¡°What in the world is that?¡± Blake wondered in horrified fascination.
¡°I think I¡¯m going to throw up,¡± Sofie warned, turning away.
On the screen, the two of them saw an overhead view of what could only be described as an abomination. A mass of flesh, it writhed in place as it sat on a large bed of some kind, one large enough to hold several people at once.
¡°Those are people...¡± Blake barely managed to breathe, his voice barely audible over the sound of Sofie¡¯s retching and the contents of her stomach spilling onto the mangled grass below. ¡°Are they... sewn together?¡±
Against his better judgment, he zoomed in further, upping the resolution as best he could as well. What he witnessed horrified him. It looked as if somebody had taken someone and sewn another person to both his left and right sides, joining them shoulder to shoulder so their flesh had almost melded into each other and turned them into some sort of artificial conjoined being. While they each possessed their legs, it looked like only two arms remained while all the arms in between which would have gotten in the way of their joining had been cut off. Looking even closer, he saw the eyes of the outer men had been plucked out and their eyelids sewn shut. Their noses were missing as well.
¡°Are those... Manys?¡± Sofie asked, her voice weak. ¡°Look, they all seem almost identical, if you ignore the...¡± She fought back a second vomiting session. ¡°...the wounds. It¡¯s like they took triplets and fused them together. It looks so horrible, they must be in so much pain...¡±
Blake winced. He couldn¡¯t bear to look at them any longer, so he quickly returned his view to the battle between the woman and his units where, thankfully, his skitters seemed to be holding their own for the moment. ¡°As bad as they look, they¡¯re worse news for us. Their range is much farther than anything I have over there, even my sniper skitters.¡±
¡°What? So you can¡¯t stop them?¡±
¡°Not with what I have over there, no. Even if I send everything I have towards them, those things are heavily protected and in fortified positions. All my units would likely get wrecked before they could even get close enough to do any damage. It would be like troops charging at cannons during the Civil War.¡±
¡°But otherwise, the Ubrans just keep tossing giant fireballs on the Eterians! They won¡¯t be able to hold out like this!¡±
¡°This is why I needed Pari¡¯s help so badly. They beat us to artillery. Fuck!¡± Blake unleashed his frustration, slamming his fist against the nearby wall. The sound of metal crashing against metal rand out into the courtyard.
¡°Then what can we do?!¡± Sofie cried.
¡°...I don¡¯t know.¡±
Chapter 79
Arlette sprinted along the wall, pushing her tired body to its limits as the ground around her darkened with startling speed. This was new. After over a season of siege warfare, Arlette had assumed that the Ubrans had run out of tricks, but she¡¯d been wrong. In all her years of experience on the battlefield, Arlette had never seen projectiles of this magnitude. Boulders the size of mansions. Fireballs like miniature suns. Massive balls of ice that ruptured into smaller sharp fragments upon impact. Each area of the wall seemed to have its own flavor of giant missile headed their way. Her area was currently being slammed by the stone variety, each enormous rock slowly building in size far off towards the back of the Ubran camp before eventually reaching the desired size and launching towards the wall.
Nobody knew what had changed. The sites where the boulders and such came from were too far away for her or anybody else around to see clearly. All they knew was that yesterday things had been normal, or at least as normal as a siege can be, and that today everything was utter chaos. But none of that really mattered now. What mattered was not getting turned into paste.
With one final leap, she threw herself forward, bouncing and spinning across the hard floor and nearly bowling into a nearby skirmish. Some fellow fighters tumbled beside or in front of her. Others weren¡¯t so fortunate. The massive boulder, wide as five houses, crashed into the wall behind her, crushing the slow or poorly positioned like a lizard beneath a garoph¡¯s hoof. If she hadn¡¯t already been on the ground, the tremor that shook the wall would have sent her to her knees.
The force of the impact was too much for either party to handle. A crack as wide as a man was tall formed on the seemingly impervious wall, which had stood unblemished for generations. Meanwhile the massive projectile shattered into many smaller pieces, sending shrapnel ranging from the size of Arlette¡¯s arm to the size of a wagon hurtling outward in all directions. Arlette twisted as a chunk of rock twice her size flew towards her, but her already awkward position prevented her from fully avoiding the tumbling stone missile. Despite her best efforts, a piece of it clipped her on her right upper arm, sending a sharp pain lancing through it.
A litany of profanity bubbled up in her mind as she recognized the feeling deep in her arm immediately, having felt it several times before after being on the receiving end of a particularly heavy strike from a blunt weapon. A bone in her arm had cracked. Fortunately, she could still move it so it wasn¡¯t completely broken, but every motion brought a surge of pain, especially twisting. Unfortunately, her longsword was a weapon best held in both hands. Given that she was left-handed, she could still manage to swing to some degree, but her strikes would be clumsier and weaker, perhaps dangerously so.
The explosion of the giant boulder brought a moment of pause to the battle going on around her, but it lasted only a fraction of a moment¡ªlong enough for her to realize what had happened to her arm, but not long enough for her to think of what to do about it. Arlette stepped back as the fighting resumed, hoping to stay out of the fray at least momentarily, but two Ubrans spotted her immediately and charged.
The man on the left carried a longsword much like hers, though he wore much thicker and sturdier armor than she did. He even wore a helmet that protected all of his head and face except for two large eye holes. The armor seemed largely unused, lacking the sort of dents and scratches one would expect from a suit that had seen many days of battle. On the chestplate, Arlette saw a crest of some sort, one which tickled something in the back of her mind.
The woman on the right lacked the fancy equipment of her comrade, instead donning thinner leather armor more akin to Arlette¡¯s own, but her wicked-looking spear with a head curved like a waning moon marked her as likely the more dangerous of the two. Spear wielders were always a pain if they knew what they were doing. She had few ways of taking them down even when at full strength if they were good enough to stay out of her range, and now this one had backup.
Arlette swayed to the left, ducking out of the way on an incoming spear thrust, and raised her sword with a wince to redirect the man¡¯s horizontal slash upward. A loud grunt of pain escaped her lips as her right arm screamed at her, despite her best efforts to bear the brunt of the force with her left. Returning the man¡¯s strike with one of her own, she swung down and across her body, but the speed and coordination just weren¡¯t there and the man avoided it with ease.
Arlette quickly strafed to her left, purposely placing the man between her and the spearwoman, and closely watched how he reacted. Bringing his sword up, he locked eyes with her and stepped forward. Arlette grinned. Perhaps there was more hope to be found than she¡¯d previously thought. It seemed that the man was not accustomed to fighting alongside others¡ªor this woman, at least. A better move would have been to step aside and give her a clear lane to harass Arlette with her spear¡¯s reach while he attacked from a different angle. Instead, he was almost serving as a shield for Arlette, actively impeding his fellow Ubran as she tried to back him up.
In the chaos of battle, such actions could often go overlooked, but they added up. Too many mistakes and miscommunications often led to one¡¯s premature death. Arlette felt like her opponents had been making more of these mistakes recently, as if the overall experience level of the Ubrans was on the decline. It made sense: as the battle-hardened veterans were slowly whittled away, fresh new recruits were stepping up to take their places. Not that Arlette was laughing; at least the Ubrans had bodies to fill those holes, unlike her side.
Stepping forward as well, Arlette executed her standard illusory maneuver, stepping both left with her real body and right with a fake one to keep her real body as far from the spearwoman as possible. That choice immediately proved wise as the crescent blade of the spear shot through her other self almost as soon as it appeared. Unfortunately, the strike served to show her target just how not real the right version of her was. After reeling back slightly in the initial shock, unsure which side to focus on, he recovered quickly and shifted all his attention towards the real her just in time to block her thrust.
Arlette ground her teeth, partly because of the pain and partly because at full health her blade would have pierced between the two plates that protected her target¡¯s left side. Letting the last illusion vanish, she quickly spun away from the counter slash before immediately rushing back in. Her opponent likely understood something was wrong, but years of experience had taught her that there was still a little time before he would fully comprehend what she was doing. This window was her time to act.
Instead of splitting left and right this time, she stepped forward while sending her illusory self ahead of her and following close behind. The man slashed cautiously at the oncoming illusion, careful to not overextend and leave himself open. Fake Arlette avoided the strike with a grace that defied physics and human anatomy¡ªone of the benefits of being made up¡ªand lashed out, though not with her sword but with a lightning-fast jab at his helmet. Except it wasn¡¯t a fist, and it wasn¡¯t just at his head; she¡¯d extended her pointer and middle fingers, and they were headed directly for the man¡¯s eyes. Even though he knew the fingers weren¡¯t real, Arlette¡¯s opponent couldn¡¯t stop himself from reflexively flinching, his head rocking back his arms rising to try to ward off the threat.
That was all Arlette needed. Her real sword came thrusting up towards his suddenly exposed left armpit, the blade slipping into the crease and biting deep into his flesh. She couldn¡¯t help but grin slightly at her success. It was almost comical how often that ploy worked, especially against the inexperienced.
The man cried out as she wrenched her sword out from his armor with a grunt of pain. Even though she was doing as much of the work as possible with her dominant left arm, every move still made her want to scream. She would never underestimate her right arm¡¯s contributions ever again.
¡°No! I don¡¯t want to die!¡± the man wailed, backing away with a look of sheer panic in his eyes.
Arlette froze for a split second at his lament, shock and horror running through her as she suddenly came to a terrible realization. The glint of a certain crescent-shaped blade hunting for her legs brought her back, but it was too late. Battle-trained reflexes kicked in and she jumped away, but not in time to completely avoid the blade. She let out a cry of agony as she awkwardly fell to the ground, a large gash running across her right calf.
Arlette knew a losing situation when she saw one. Desperately looking for help or a way out, she found neither. More and more Ubrans were surmounting the wall and entering the fray every moment, pushing the greatly outnumbered Eterians into smaller islands of resistance. Normally, this would have been an opportune time to unleash a jaglioth or two, but that sort of rescue would not come this time.
The boulder that had landed nearby moments ago was not the only one to strike down atop the wall. Another had landed on the far side of her section, closer to the gate. The resulting piles of rubble cut off the jaglioths stationed near the gate from her area. There would be no blood-soaked beasts tearing through Ubrans to save her today.
Nor, for that matter, would there be any beasts of the metal variety. Some of the Otharians¡¯ terrifying creations¡ªthe smaller ones at least¡ªused to patrol up atop the wall, sometimes holding down entire sections on their own. That had changed recently, as more and more of them were sent instead to stop the Monster¡¯s rampage.
Towards the center of the penned in Eterians, Arlette spotted her final hope standing farther down the wall: General Khilran, the commander of her area and the strongest Eterian nearby. Sadly, she found little cause for hope from the sight. A large group of Ubrans pressed in on Khilran and her subordinate officers, overwhelming them with sheer numbers to such a degree that the General didn¡¯t even seem to want to fight anymore. Instead, she was busy gulping down some sort of black drink in a tiny bottle.
The spearwoman didn¡¯t give Arlette time to find a way out of her mess. With a bellow, she swung her spear down in a deadly arc towards Arlette¡¯s gut. Arlette rolled away as quickly as she could, but for the second time in a row, she was too slow. She felt the blade slice across her side just below her cuirass and let out a hiss. Arlette thanked the stars that her roll kept the weapon from cutting deep enough to hit her internal organs, but that didn¡¯t make it hurt any less.
The spear flashed down a second time, this time towards her neck. Given no other option, she held up the flat side of her sword with both hands to try to block it. This proved to be a misjudgment as soon as the blades met.
Arlette¡¯s right arm gave in immediately and her left followed shortly thereafter, pinning her hands against her chest as the point of the spear gleamed less than a hand¡¯s length from her throat. This was what happened when an Observer engaged in a physical contest with a Feeler. It was why other Observers always tried to keep a good distance between them and their enemies. Arlette¡¯s injured arm only made the inevitable happen faster. Only her desperation and lack of options had forced her to try in the first place.
With a grunt, the spearwoman suddenly shifted her grip and torqued the spear to her right, catching Arlette¡¯s sword with the inside of the spearhead and ripping it from Arlette¡¯s hands. The blade clattered to the ground perhaps ten paces from Arlette¡¯s feet, far too distant for her to retrieve it.
Arlette¡¯s good arm flashed down to her leg, grasping for one of the throwing knives she kept strapped to her upper thigh. Just as her fingers wrapped around the hilt of one, something wet slammed into her side, knocking the knife from her hand. The next thing she knew, she found herself tumbling uncontrollably through rushing water with only half a breath.
Arlette tried in vain to swim against the powerful currents but found that she could barely move. It was as if the water was as thick as honey and fought her no matter what she did.
She¡¯d first thought that the water had come from some bombardment like the giant boulders, though how it had fallen on them all without anybody seeing it she hadn¡¯t been able to explain. That impression had gone out the window as soon as she¡¯d looked around and realized that she wasn¡¯t alone. The soldiers from both sides who¡¯d been fighting nearby also floated in the water all around her. The water blurred her vision, making it hard to see more than a handful of paces away, but she thought she could make out fuzzy humanoid shapes writhing about as far as she could see. To be able to Observe so much water at once, with this absurd level of control, was impossible! Who was doing this, and how?
The answer came just a moment later, as a single figure seemed to slide along the wall quickly approaching Arlette¡¯s position. As they did, Arlette saw the water roil about as they passed and suddenly people began to move. Some sank out of the levitating liquid mass and fell to the ground, while others flew out the side as if shot from a bow.
The people were getting sorted, she realized as the figure quickly grew closer. The Eterian defenders were falling out of the water and down to the safety of the ground below, while the Ubran attackers were being thrown off the wall to die! Since it seemed she couldn¡¯t do anything other than hold her breath and pray, she did exactly that, asking the spirits, the stars, the moons, and anything else she thought might listen for her to be recognized as a defender.
Her moment of judgment came mercifully soon, as the figure zipped along beneath her. Arlette was surprised to realize the person was, in fact, General Khilran. The general looked up towards her, a bright golden glow shining from her eye sockets. There was a strange familiarity to that aura which beckoned, though she couldn¡¯t quite remember where she¡¯d it seen it before.
All at once, the hold on her body disappeared and Arlette mercifully fell out of the water. She coughed and sucked in a fresh lungful of air, turning around just in time to see the spearwoman plummet off the wall and fall out of sight. Arlette looked back towards the general, but General Khilran was already halfway down the walkway, somehow riding atop a small wave of water towards the other side where hundreds more waterbound people still floated off the ground.
Arlette could only sit and stare as the commander proceeded to dispose of the rest of the Ubrans. Nobody on the wall could manage to do anything else; they were all too in awe of the show of overwhelming power.
The command of the Criradan defense consisted of two ranks under Supreme General Erizio Astalaria: Major Generals and Generals. The Major Generals were the strongest of the strongest, the most powerful fighters that the Eterian Army had to offer. Arlette didn¡¯t know how many there had been before the invasion, but four still lived today. They would usually hang back and reinforce areas in need, using their great battle prowess to bring the Ubrans to a halt long enough for the other defenders to rally and push them back. Though direct comparisons of power never captured somebody¡¯s true battle ability, Arlette had always believed¡ªwith more than a smidgen of pride¡ªthat Jaquet was perhaps on the level of a Major General. Major Generals, for all their power, could never even dream of approaching the feats happening here.
General Khilran wasn¡¯t even a Major General, merely one of the twelve lesser Generals who served under them. Their jobs were to manage their assigned section of the wall, coordinating and leading the defense. Even though they were not as strong as Major Generals, that didn¡¯t mean they weren¡¯t special. The general, for example, was a powerful water Observer capable of shooting out blasts of water that could bowl over a normal person with a single hit. But she¡¯d never shown herself to be capable of something like this.
Then, somehow, everything became even crazier. Just as the general finished sorting the last people trapped within her floating lake, the appearance of a large shadow caught everyone¡¯s attention. Another massive boulder, this time even larger than the others, arced directly towards the water Observer. Many turned and ran, but General Khilran only snorted.
The large mass of water hanging above the walkway coalesced into a large sphere twice the size of the boulder and hurtled up towards the incoming projectile with startling speed. The two massive balls of matter collided in the air with a mighty splash and the flight of the boulder faltered. Still not done, the general sneered and a torrent of water the size of a river manifested out of the air in front of her. The massive geyser of water shot forth with startling speed and power, blasting into the gigantic airborne rock and practically halting it in place until it plummeted down onto the field below.
Still not finished, the general held out her arms and the torrent ceased to be. Instead, a sphere of the clear liquid appeared, starting about the size of a man and rapidly growing larger and larger faster than Arlette could believe. Quickly it grew to the size of one of the boulders, then to twice the size, then three, then four, then five.
Finally, the flow of water ceased and the massive globe hovered above the wall, dominating the sky in its sheer size and majesty. General Khilran lowered her hands, bringing them down to point out at the area deep within the Ubran camp where the huge stones would manifest before heading towards the wall.
The ball quivered for a moment before shooting forward in a blur, streaking towards the camp. Arlette¡¯s gaze followed as it traveled, its path almost a straight line, as opposed to the high arcs of the shots that would come in the other direction. The circular tsunami slammed into the camp with the roar of a thousand waterfalls, throwing tents and equipment all about like a toddler sick of their toys.
But General Khilran wasn¡¯t satisfied with just that. Already a second sphere began to form, but then, for some reason, it stopped growing and began to tremble. Arlette¡¯s focus shifted to the general herself. Khilran, who just now had been standing tall with strength and confidence, had fallen to her knees.
The water in front of her evaporated as web-like veins as black as a moonless night began to grow all over the general¡¯s body. Her body shook and it looked as if she were screaming, though no sound came from her open mouth. The veins spread across her skin like a plague, covering more and more until Arlette couldn¡¯t see a single patch of exposed skin devoid of corruption.
Arlette flinched as the general¡¯s body erupted with a disgusting squelch, spraying those closest to her with bits of blood and gore. Arlette blinked. All that remained of General Khilran were the remains of her armor and weapons lying in a large puddle of crimson flesh.
A stunned silence fell over the assembled defenders, as the only sounds to grace Arlette¡¯s ears were the sounds of the Ubrans retreating towards their encampments. Was it over? For a moment she looked out towards the Ubrans, searching for any more boulders growing, soon to be thrown her way, but found nothing. Now that her mind and body had nothing left to drive or distract them, exhaustion finally wrenched control and she slowly fell to the ground.
What in the world had just happened?! Arlette tried to wrap her head around it but couldn¡¯t no matter how much she tried. Was it some secret Eterian technique that burned your life force for a burst of insane power? Did the small bottle she¡¯d noticed the general drinking from moments before have anything to do with it?
Speaking of which, she spotted the vial lying up against the walkway¡¯s inner lip just a few paces away. Grunting, she pulled herself back to her feet. The gash on her calf made it harder to stand, but she found that, if she focused on her good leg, she could still slowly limp and hobble her way around, and so she did, stumbling over to to the nearby bottle and picking it up. The tiny crystalline vial, complete with stopper, glimmered in the afternoon sun as she held it up for a closer look. A single drop of a pitch-black liquid still sat at the bottom of the vial. Looking around to make sure nobody noticed her actions, she tucked the vial out of sight. Maybe it would prove interesting later.
Sitting back down against the nearby wall, Arlette said a prayer for the fallen general who¡¯d saved her and everybody else¡¯s lives today, as well as the other fallen Eterians, and finally for the man in armor whom she¡¯d heavily injured and who was almost assuredly dead. There¡¯d been a small chance that, with immediate medical attention, he would have been able to survive the wound she¡¯d given him, but then he¡¯d been thrown from the wall. Nobody, other than perhaps the Monster, could fall the hundreds of paces from the top of the wall to the field below and survive.
She released a defeated sigh. The man¡¯s crest on his armor had looked familiar from the moment she¡¯d seen it, but it hadn¡¯t been until he cried out for help that it had come back to her. For the longest time, Arlette, like everybody else, had given very little thought to the speak of those around her. After all, if the meaning was the same, what did it matter what actual words came from your lips? But ever since her conversation with Sofie about the matter, the topic had been more on her mind and she¡¯d started taking note of the actual spoken languages gracing her ears. That was why, even in the heat of battle, she¡¯d noticed the man¡¯s speak.
He¡¯d spoken Ofraxian.
That crest had been the family crest of an up-and-coming merchant family back when she¡¯d been the princess. She¡¯d even met several members of the family once, including two boys about her age. Had one of those boys grown up to be the man she¡¯d killed? It was disturbingly possible.
Ofrax was dead and gone. Arlette knew that. She knew that her homeland had been swallowed up by the Ubran menace years ago. But for some reason, she¡¯d never truly come to grips with the idea that Ofraxian people would be integrated into the Ubran armies. Now, the thought haunted her. How many other people from her home had she killed since the start of the siege?
The thought filled her with a deep sadness. She told herself that those people had been trying to kill her, but it didn¡¯t make the sadness fade much at all. She knew she would have to simply live with that knowledge for the rest of her life.
Once she finally regained enough energy to move properly, she sought out the leader of her new squad, which she¡¯d been separated from thanks to the rubble, and got dismissed. Unlike the other squad, nobody invited her to spend time with them or associate with them at all. She could see the relief in their eyes as she made her way towards the stairways. They believed the rumors, just like many of the others.
Arlette¡¯s identity had come out shortly after the night of Sebastian¡¯s plan. Too many strange events had happened that night for the higher-ups to not look into everything. Everybody now knew who she was, and with that knowledge came infamy. Not only had she lost her entire mercenary band in a single day, but she¡¯d also lost her entire squad in a single night. Rumors had sprouted from there. Some claimed that she¡¯d betrayed her comrades both times for some devious goal. Others posited that she was cursed and brought bad fortune to all around her.
Either way, the result ended up being that nobody wanted anything to do with her, especially not those in her new squad. Arlette had no problem with this since it meant that people finally left her alone. Though Jaquet, Sofie, and even her own rational mind had told her that she wasn¡¯t responsible for the loss of her band, Arlette still felt a great deal of guilt over their deaths. That was one of the primary reasons she¡¯d tried to avoid befriending her first squad. But those friendly fools had persisted, worming their way into her heart, and now they too were dead.
Between Ofrax, the Ivory Tears, and her latest friends, it felt like anything she touched suffered a bad fate. Perhaps she really was cursed.
It was a shame that said curse didn¡¯t work on General Astalaria. She wouldn¡¯t have minded if he got offed somehow. His men had appeared the day after Sofie and Pari had left and dragged her still-healing body to the citadel. The investigation into that chaotic night had finally concluded, and that, combined with the sudden disappearance of their primary bomb maker, meant a furious general.
There were only two reasons she was still free and breathing. One was that Pari, given license to make all the explosives she wanted, had been quite productive before her disappearance. She¡¯d left behind a large cache of bombs and preprocessed materials to make more bombs. Even when those ran out, somebody could always make more since she¡¯d left the recipe behind.
The other had been that, to put it plainly, Arlette had been right. The general had laughed at her back then, but all the warnings she¡¯d given had come to pass. The bodies of some of Sebastian¡¯s minions had been recovered in the gatehouse, and that, combined with other corroborating evidence, had been enough to prove her claims of an Ubran plot correct.
Sadly, the one claim she¡¯d most wanted to rub in his face¡ªthe existence of Sebastian¡ªwas the one she hadn¡¯t been able to prove, as his body was never found. Struck by the flying gate, he had been thrown out of the tunnel and had mixed in with the other corpses from the subsequent battle. By the time anybody knew to look, it had been too late; he¡¯d been treated like all the other dead and either fed to the surviving jaglioths or burned once the beasts had been satiated.
Strangely, knowing that the chief architect of the misery in her life no longer drew breath didn¡¯t bring her the joy she¡¯d expected. Perhaps it was because her homeland would never return in her lifetime. Perhaps it was because the other man responsible for her refugee status currently resided just out of reach to the west. Whatever the reason, the anxiety that had gnawed away at her insides since the day Sebastian had reentered her life remained even after he had left it for the last time. It left her feeling miserable both mentally and physically.
The whole starvation and the daily stress of fighting for her life didn¡¯t help, either. As the largest, most important, most thriving city in the Republic of Eterium, Crirada¡¯s supplies for a siege outclassed perhaps every other metropolis on the continent, but even it was finite. The rationing tightened more and more seemingly every day. The soldiers around her looked more like sticks assembled into a humanoid form than actual people.
Everybody looked to be on their last legs, both in body and in spirit. Willpower and soulforce could only maintain somebody for so long.
¡°I need a drink,¡± Arlette muttered to herself as she began the slow descent from the top of the wall. Of course, said drink was nothing more than a dream; the city¡¯s stocks of alcoholic beverages had run out well before the food.
It suddenly occurred to her just how little alcohol she¡¯d consumed since this parade of troubles had begun. Back in the ¡®good times¡¯, she¡¯d relied on alcohol to fight off the ever-present pressure of command and the voice in her mind which otherwise never went away, the voice that told her that she wasn¡¯t good enough and that soon enough the curtain would fall away and everybody would finally see what a fraud she was and had always been. But ever since the destruction of Zrukhora, she¡¯d had little opportunity to drink away her doubts and fears. She¡¯d been too busy running and fighting.
The walk to her ¡°home¡± took longer than ever, thanks to her latest injuries. The streets were emptier now than ever, as the count of the living fell day after day. The repurposed inn felt empty too, the only sound in the entire building being the door¡¯s long creak as she entered, the soft thuds of her feet as she walked into her room, pulled over a box full of boiled bandages, and sat down upon the straw mattress that served as her bed.
Still, it was better than the alternative. Arlette felt a good amount of relief knowing that Sofie and Pari had somehow managed to not only leave this place alive but also make it all the way to Otharia. They would be safe now, finally.
Sofie¡¯s message sent via Many telling her of their success had brought Arlette no small amount of happiness. Weirdly enough, despite the many dangers involved with escaping Crirada and crossing half a continent before infiltrating another country and somehow meeting with its reclusive despotic leader, Arlette had found herself wondering when she would hear from Sofie, rather than if she would ever hear from Sofie. Somehow, deep down, she¡¯d had a feeling that they would be alright and that she need not worry about them.
¡°You¡¯re the one people should be worried about,¡± a familiar voice cut in, causing Arlette to drop the bandages and nearly fall off the straw mattress.
¡°By the stars above, Peko, I already told you, stop doing that!¡± Arlette hissed, giving her other self a nasty glare as he sat on a nearby chair, a mischievous smirk plastered all over his face.
¡°But it¡¯s so fun and works every time!¡± the illusory man snickered.
¡°I¡¯m not in the mood for your pranks,¡± Arlette informed him as she bent down and began to wrap the gash on her leg.
¡°I know, that¡¯s why I¡¯m here. You¡¯ve been in a malaise for a while now. What¡¯s got you so down?¡±
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¡°What¡¯s got me so down? You mean, besides the fact that I¡¯m in pain and exhausted and starving and spending every day in a city surrounded by the army of a country I hate, just waiting for the day when I die?¡±
¡°Yeah, besides that.¡±
Arlette¡¯s glare intensified. ¡°Why are you asking? You already know the answer.¡±
¡°Because I want to hear you say it so we can deal with it,¡± Peko insisted. ¡°You¡¯ve been moping ever since that night with Sebastian. I¡¯d thought we¡¯d be over this by now, but apparently not, so it¡¯s time to talk this out.¡±
Arlette gave her counterpart a sullen frown. She wasn¡¯t in the mood to talk about this sort of thing, but she knew that Peko wasn¡¯t going to let it go. Once he got something in his head, he never did.
¡°...I¡¯m weak,¡± Arlette finally sighed.
¡°No, you¡¯re not. You¡¯ve been fighting most of your adult life. I would think a weak person would be dead fifty times over,¡± Peko scoffed.
¡°That¡¯s because I never needed to fight anybody really strong. If I had trouble, I could always use my illusions to escape and let Jaquet handle them.¡±
¡°So you¡¯re weak because you¡¯re not stupid enough to fight a losing battle?¡±
¡°That¡¯s not what I¡¯m saying-¡±
¡°Then what are you saying? How many people have you killed just since you came here? Dozens? More? You walk into the grinder every day and maybe you don¡¯t come out unscathed, but you do come out! Weak people don¡¯t make it through everything you¡¯ve been through.¡±
¡°Fine, then I¡¯m not weak. But I¡¯m not strong either. I can¡¯t stand against the real threats¡ªthe special people like Sebastian or the Chos or General Astalaria or Jaquet or...¡±
¡°Why does it matter so much to you all of a sudden? What¡¯s wrong with being pretty great instead of amazing?¡±
¡°Because I¡¯m not strong enough to have control over my fate, that¡¯s why. My whole life has been an endless procession of me watching things happen to myself and everybody I care about, all the while being unable to do anything about any of it. This whole thing, this whole stupid idea where I came here with the thought of finding Sebastian and stopping his plans and all of that foolishness, it was all just a vain attempt to prove to myself that I was good enough. That I was strong enough to live my own life. Look how that turned out.¡±
¡°You foiled his plan and saved the day?¡±
¡°Stop patronizing me. We both know that was all luck. He could have killed me at any time, he just wanted to enjoy it like the sadistic fuck that he was. Surviving because the Monster killed him does not make me strong, it just makes me fortunate for once. He could see through my illusion, Peko. You remember that, right? What am I supposed to do when that happens? Without them, I¡¯m just a mediocre swordfighter with nothing else going for me. I¡¯m nothing more than a single good trick. If that gets taken away, I have nothing left.¡±
¡°You¡¯re a bit old to start branching out now, wouldn¡¯t you say?¡± Peko replied with a ponderous frown.
¡°I need something to fall back on when my tricks stop working,¡± Arlette asserted. ¡°I just don¡¯t know what that could be. You¡¯re right, it¡¯s pretty much too late now for me to master another discipline.¡±
¡°Maybe you just need to get better tricks,¡± Peko offered. ¡°The problem, in my view, isn¡¯t that you had nothing left when Sebastian saw through your illusions, it¡¯s that he saw through them in the first place. Perhaps we need to do some training, try to boost your illusions somehow. Make them better, increase how much you can do at once, change how you use them, all of that. What if in the middle of battle you could make two fake Arlettes at once instead on only one? Or what if you had been able to make a fake boulder like the ones falling on everybody today? Imagine how much the Ubrans would have dropped their guard as they ran.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t have the mental capacity to handle more than one fake me at a time,¡± Arlette retorted. ¡°And everybody would know the boulder isn¡¯t real if I made it nearby. It would need to manifest hundreds of paces away from me at first, and you know I don¡¯t have the soulforce to pull off something like that and stay conscious. Remember when I tried something like that back in Zrukhora? I was out for days.¡±
¡°But that¡¯s what I¡¯m saying. You plateaued for years. When is the last time you could say that you focused on improving your Observing? Who says you couldn¡¯t handle two fake Arlettes if you trained harder?¡±
¡°That would take forever, and might not even yield any results.¡±
¡°The same could be said for any other path you take,¡± Peko argued. ¡°You know full well there¡¯s a reason everybody isn¡¯t chucking fireballs and ice shards at the same time while lifting wagons over their heads. It¡¯s going to take time regardless. If you¡¯re going to spend that time, do it on something you know works. And whining aside, illusions have worked wonders for you over your life.¡±
Arlette sighed again. ¡°I guess. But what do I do right now? How can I get stronger today?¡±
Peko shrugged. ¡°Maybe start using all the candles Pari left you? More than the few you take with you every battle. Really go all out.¡±
¡°That sounds like a recipe for suicide,¡± Arlette shot back. ¡°One stray flame and all that¡¯s left of me is a massive crater.¡±
¡°Well, then I¡¯m out of ideas. You¡¯re going to need to think about it on your own. But the important part is that you think,¡± he informed her, pointing at her forehead. ¡°Thinking yes, moping no. Make a plan, carry it out. That¡¯s how to get things done.¡±
¡°That¡¯s what Sebastian used to say,¡± Arlette reminded him.
¡°Well he was a massive jerk, but that doesn¡¯t mean he wasn¡¯t right sometimes.¡±
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll try,¡± she conceded. ¡°I just-¡±
Arlette¡¯s sentence came to a sudden halt as she heard the sound of boots on the floorboards down below. She looked downward in the direction of the noise, and then back up to tell Peko to scram but he had already vanished.
¡°You sure this is the place?¡± a voice asked.
¡°I think so, looks like the same place we found her the last time,¡± a second voice responded.
¡°If you say so... ARLETTE DEMIRT! GENERAL ASTALARIA REQUIRES YOUR PRESENCE IMMEDIATELY!¡± the first voice boomed.
¡°Yeah, yeah...¡± Arlette called back as she opened the door to her room. ¡°What¡¯s he want this time?¡±
¡°That¡¯s his business, not mine.¡±
¡°Well, tell him I¡¯m busy,¡± she replied. ¡°I have to make a sling for my arm and I¡¯m still all bloody from the battle.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not our problem. He demands to see you at once. Either come down or we will seize you by force.¡±
¡°...hold on, give me a moment,¡± she sighed.
¡°Told you this was the right place,¡± the other man said as Arlette closed the door.
¡°Jerks,¡± Arlette grumbled to her self as she pulled off her blood-soaked outfit and changed into a clean one as quickly as she could manage with only one good arm, which was not very quickly. The clothes didn¡¯t fit perfectly; she¡¯d lost nearly all her clothes in the Severed incident while ago, and most of her current wardrobe consisted of garments taken from others around her size who¡¯d died. Still, they would have to do. Grabbing her weapon both for protection and to use as a makeshift cane, she left the room and hobbled down the stairs to join the two men below.
¡°Demirt,¡± Supreme General Astalaria growled out, his mouth curled down into his trademark scowl as always. The man sat beside a table covered in what looked to be a map of Crirada and its surroundings. Various pieces were placed around the map marking the main concentrations of Ubran troops ringing the city.
Arlette¡¯s first thought when she came face to face with the pompous ass for the first time in days was to take note of just how worn down the man appeared. Erizio Astalaria looked very much like everybody else in the city: gaunt and disheveled. The dark bags beneath his eyes and the patchy beard on his face spoke volumes about his condition. As much as Arlette wanted to see this man humbled, the sight unnerved her. If even the top commander was this badly off, the outlook was even more dire than she¡¯d thought.
The man was working himself to the bone, Arlette realized. She¡¯d known, as had everybody, that the general was fighting a second front beneath the ground every day largely on his own. As the most powerful earth Observer alive, the task of fending off dozens of Ubran earth Observers and tunnelers trying to create passages beneath the surface into the city largely fell to him. Just the thought of trying to defend the entire city from underground threats by herself left Arlette feeling wiped out. The fact that he had managed to do just that for over a season now showed just how capable he was.
But Erizio Astalaria¡¯s capability had never been Arlette¡¯s problem. She¡¯d always respected his power and ability. She just wished he wasn¡¯t also an arrogant prick.
¡°I had hoped I would never need to see you ever again, Demirt, but as always you continue to be a thorn in my side,¡± the General said, giving her a scathing look.
Arlette returned his gaze, refusing to back down. ¡°I could say the same thing,¡± she replied. ¡°So why did you drag me in here before I could even finish treating my injuries?¡±
¡°My alchemists tell me that your child¡¯s bomb recipe is a fraud. They have been attempting to replicate the process since the munitions and materials that were left behind were exhausted several days ago and have come to the conclusion that the girl hid something important from us.¡±
¡°And? What does that have to do with me? Did you just call me here to complain?¡±
The general¡¯s scowl deepened. ¡°Those traitors were your charges. The responsibility falls on your shoulders.¡±
¡°Fuck off,¡± Arlette snarled back. ¡°Sofie and Pari aren¡¯t my fucking kids! They are their own people with their own lives and decisions. It was their choice to come to Crirada and their choice to leave, and if you have a problem with that take it up with them. I don¡¯t control them and I don¡¯t bear any responsibility for their actions. If I did control them, I would never have allowed them into this city in the first place! So you can take your fucking lectures or whatever and fucking shove them up your ass, assuming you can fit them past your neck! I¡¯m leaving!¡±
Furious at the man¡¯s pettiness, she turned to leave, only to find her path blocked by two guards. They glared at her, their weapons gleaming in the torchlight.
¡°You leave when I allow you to leave,¡± General Astalaria said, his voice frigid with anger. ¡°Might I remind you that those two supposedly independent people lived with you, associated with you, and sold their services for your freedom? Only my benevolence kept me from locking you back up the day they disappeared. I am feeling far less generous these days.¡±
¡°Then what do you want from me?¡± she demanded, whirling back to glare at the man with every ounce of hate she had for him. ¡°Are you just going to throw me into a cell to make yourself feel better? Because that¡¯s about all you¡¯re going to get from me. I can¡¯t help you with your little bomb problem. I don¡¯t know how it works.¡±
¡°Oh, am I interrupting something?¡± a cold, almost metallic voice asked.
Through the door scuttled a bizarre contraption, followed by a smiling woman in her mid-to-late twenties. Its eight long legs making sharp tapping sounds against the stone floor as they moved. The arrangement reminded Arlette of some of the insects that she¡¯d run across during her treks through the Stragman rainforest, with each of the legs emerging from the central body slanting outward and upward into a sharp joint before then extending out and down to the floor. Unlike the creatures of the forest, the central body here was a large upright cylinder composed of a cage of sorts made out of thin strips of metal. Inside that cylinder stood a woman, her eyes glazed over. A Many.
The most notable thing, however, was the likely source of the voice: the projection of a man hovering in front of the Many, dressed in a suit of armor that concealed his body entirely from view. Arlette had never before seen anything quite like the suit he wore. The level of detail, the complexity, the massive frame, and, perhaps most memorably, the unnerving red eye holes that glowed ominously in the man¡¯s mask, all combined to create an imposing aura of deadly competence. This could only be one person: Lord Ferros, the conqueror of Otharia and man from a different world.
¡°I¡¯m told you wanted to speak with me, General,¡± the man stated, though his tone was decidedly lacking in warmth or interest. ¡°What do you want now?¡±
¡°Greetings, Lord Ferros,¡± General Astalaria replied, rising to his feet. Arlette noticed how suddenly more uptight he seemed. ¡°I am just concluding another matter. Please give me a few moments.¡±
¡°I¡¯m a busy man, General. If you can¡¯t talk now, then I¡¯ll check back in a few days when my schedule opens back up.¡±
¡°Ah... my apologies,¡± Erizio conceded. ¡°This is a matter of vital importance which must not be delayed.¡±
He waved for the guards to take Arlette away. They grabbed her by the shoulders and started ushering her from the room, but Arlette suddenly had an inspiration. The arrival of the leader of Otharia was exactly what she needed to get General Astalaria off her back. She dug in her heels.
¡°Wait!¡± she cried as they slowly dragged her past the floating illusion. ¡°I ask to speak to you, Lord Ferros!¡±
The armor¡¯s head turned to stare as her as the guards pulled her by. ¡°Who¡¯s this?¡± he asked.
¡°A person of no consequence,¡± General Astalaria assured him.
¡°I request only a moment of your time,¡± Arlette pleaded.
¡°Alright, you have my curiosity. Let her go,¡± the armored man ordered the guards. They looked over at the Eterian general, unsure if they should listen to the instructions of another, no matter how authoritative he sounded. The general only sighed and waved for them to release her.
¡°Make it quick,¡± Lord Ferros said.
Arlette gave the figure a small bow. ¡°I simply wished to thank you for helping my friends. I appreciate your kindness.¡±
¡°You must be that woman who Sofie was talking about, the illusionist. The one who protected her after her arrival. Arlette, was it?¡±
¡°Yes, my name is Arlette Demirt,¡± she stated.
¡°The more I get to know her, the more impressed I am that you kept her alive for so long.¡±
¡°It was a... unique challenge,¡± Arlette agreed.
¡°Yes, it speaks wonders for your competence,¡± the Otharian said with a nod. ¡°Stick around. I want you here for this.¡±
The sudden turn of events caught Arlette off guard. All she¡¯d wanted to do was link this man with Sofie and Pari in front of General Astalaria so he would shift his ire from her to the Otharian ruler, leaving her free to hobble home and finish dealing with her wounds. She hadn¡¯t expected that it would backfire, forcing her to remain instead when all she wanted was to get the general off her back and go back home. The general hadn¡¯t even made the connection she¡¯d assumed he would make!
¡°Lord Ferros, we are about to discuss matters of the gravest importance,¡± the general objected, ¡°matters far too sensitive for someone like her to be present.¡±
¡°No, I want another independent observer here for this. Her record shows that she at least has a good head on her shoulders.¡±
¡°You do not know her as I do,¡± the general pressed back. ¡°She is not Eterian and should not be trusted!¡±
¡°And what does it say, then, that I trust her more than I trust you? She stays.¡±
The two of them engaged in a staredown, each too willful to give in.
¡°You seem to have forgotten who needs who here,¡± Ferros continued after a moment. ¡°I can always leave.¡±
Supreme General Erizio Astalaria seemed to slowly deflate. He lowered himself back into his seat and wearily propped his head up with his hand. ¡°As you wish,¡± he sighed. ¡°The rest of you, leave. Nobody comes within fifty paces of this room, understood?¡±
The guards nodded and exited the room as Arlette looked on. She couldn¡¯t believe what she was seeing, but this man from another world had forced the most prideful person she¡¯d even known to bow to him. Did Lord Ferros even know how humiliating it was for the general to acquiesce to an Otharian? Probably not, but she was relishing every moment of it. The only problem was that her presence also meant she was now getting roped into whatever ¡®important matters¡¯ the general was talking about, something she wasn¡¯t sure she wanted to be involved in whatsoever.
¡°Alright, get on with it then,¡± Lord Ferros demanded. ¡°What¡¯s so important?¡±
¡°The defense of Crirada will end, one way or another, within days,¡± the general admitted sorrowfully. ¡°Our warriors are on their last legs.¡±
¡°I already told you that I will not be providing more units than what I already send each day,¡± the metal man sternly replied.
¡°We are past that point now,¡± the Eterian solemnly stated.
¡°Then what, you want my help retreating?¡±
¡°There is no point in running. The Ubrans will chase us down and slaughter us all. This is our best defensive position. If we cannot hold here, we have no chance anywhere,¡± Erizio Astalaria replied. Lord Ferros glanced back at Arlette and she nodded her agreement with the general¡¯s statement. ¡°That is why we must instead attack. It is our last hope for victory.¡±
Arlette¡¯s ears perked up, and she suddenly understood why General Astalaria didn¡¯t want her, or anybody else, around to hear. He wanted to attempt a surprise attack.
¡°What could you hope to accomplish when you are already so heavily outnumbered?¡± the armored man wondered, skeptical. ¡°There¡¯s no way you¡¯ll win. Even my units can be brought down eventually if sufficiently overwhelmed, especially once they run out of bullets.¡±
¡°We don¡¯t need to kill them all, we just need to break them and send them running,¡± the general asserted.
¡°And how would you do that?¡± the still unconvinced Otharian asked.
¡°By killing the Emperor,¡± Arlette stated, putting two and two together. She glanced at her current nemesis and he nodded begrudgingly. Arlette¡¯s heart began to beat faster as she contemplated the thought of killing the one other man who¡¯d done so much to rob her of her childhood. Outside of Sebastian, there wasn¡¯t anybody she hated more than the Emperor. Even her loathing for the man in front of her couldn¡¯t compare.
¡°The Emperor is the closest thing the Ubrans have to a god,¡± Arlette continued. ¡°Take him out, and they will likely crumble.¡±
¡°The fool holds court in the camp to the west, commanding his armies personally instead of relying on his commanders. Probably to show the brilliance of his command or his untouchable power or some such nonsense,¡± the general spat.
¡°I see, so he wants to be the conqueror,¡± Lord Ferros mused. ¡°Or he fears that his top general would lay claim to the continent and declare his own empire if he stayed home.¡±
¡°Regardless of his motives, his presence is their weakness,¡± Astalaria said.
¡°But how do you propose to accomplish this?¡± Ferros asked. ¡°I¡¯m sure they know he would be a target. In fact, if he is the person I¡¯m thinking about, they built several protective emplacements for him out there. The stone is so thick that my snipers can¡¯t do anything to punch through. You¡¯d have to fight through a whole army just to get to him.¡±
¡°That¡¯s why I propose an all-out assault from every angle,¡± the general stated. ¡°Our troops will attack from the west gate, hitting them from the front. Meanwhile, your... creations descend upon them from above, as they did the night you first arrived. My troops will occupy the main western force, at least for a time, while yours will create chaos and panic within their camp. Meanwhile, I will lead my best soldiers underground and emerge from the rear, striking them while they are occupied and distracted.¡±
¡°Hmmmm...¡± the Otharian replied, deep in thought, before continuing several moments later. ¡°The biggest problem I have with this is that you can¡¯t hide a zeppelin. As soon as it starts acting differently than normal, they¡¯re going to know something is up. If they see it heading for the Emperor, they¡¯ll know what¡¯s happening and they¡¯ll implement some sort of countermeasures. So I¡¯d have to start my move later so as not to warn the Ubrans that you¡¯re coming. But lowering my units takes time, and I¡¯d be late to the battle already... and that¡¯s not even considering that damned woman. I don¡¯t want her wrecking my airship by chucking rocks at it or whatever before it even gets to the Ubran camps... Oh, I know! Change of plans. I¡¯ll send my units out to fight with the rest of your troops. That way the Ubrans will be forced to respect them and my skitters can engage with the Monster when she shows up. That would keep her busy. Then instead of sending down units, I¡¯ll fly my airship higher out of that woman¡¯s reach and drops bombs on them. That will create more than enough chaos. Any problems?¡±
¡°Yes, I have one,¡± Arlette chimed in. Both turned to look at her. ¡°General Astalaria¡¯s abilities are well known to the Ubrans. When the attack begins, they¡¯re going to be looking for you and the other generals among the attacking troops and it will be very apparent very quickly that none of you are present. Once they realize that you are missing, it will not be hard for the Ubrans to figure out where you really are and prepare for your sudden arrival.¡±
¡°That is a risk I must take,¡± the general replied. ¡°Or did you have a better idea?¡±
¡°I think so. First, it is my belief that the Ubrans have people who can see clearly for long distances. Many times, it has felt to me like they could target individual people up upon the wall even from a great distance. Today was the starkest example. At one point, the area of the wall where I fought was almost completely obscured by a wall of water, and yet the Ubrans were able to precisely target General Khilran with a massive boulder. Such a thing should not be possible with normal eyesight.¡±
¡°They likely have some Feelers who specialize in enhanced senses for scouting and things of this nature, yes,¡± General Astalaria stated. ¡°We Eterians had several, but they all perished well before we arrived in Crirada.¡±
¡°Or maybe they have some sort of telescope,¡± the Otharian offered.
Arlette didn¡¯t know what a telescope was¡ªsomething about glass and tubes, apparently¡ªso she just shrugged. ¡°My point is, I believe they have this capability. If so, then I would wager that they also watch each time your airship loads and unloads and track its movements as much as possible.¡±
¡°Seems likely,¡± Ferros agreed.
¡°I assume also that you will be taking your people into the airship before the attack begins?¡±
¡°Yes, that seems prudent. I cannot just leave them here to die if everything falls apart.¡±
¡°That will most definitely be noticed as well. The Ubrans will know something is afoot the moment they spot your people boarding the airship. I suggest we use this to our advantage.¡±
¡°How so?¡± Erizio asked.
¡°You will need to enter the underground tunnel before any of the rest of this begins, correct?¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
¡°Then create your tunnel entrance somewhere here in the citadel, somewhere deep where you can all enter without being seen from outside. After your group enters, the Otharians will board their ship. Then I, along with fake versions of you and your strike force, will board after them. The Ubrans will see this and believe that you are boarding the ship.
¡°This works for us in two ways. First, it will give the impression that you are running away. Massing all of your forces means pulling them off the wall. This is unavoidable, and will also be noticed. With this ruse, however, they will expect us to emerge from the east gate, or maybe the south, in some desperate last attempt to retreat farther into Eterium. They definitely won¡¯t expect an attack from the west gate. Second, they will still believe you to be on the airship once the attack begins, as they witnessed you board it. They will believe that you are coming from the sky, not from beneath the ground.¡±
¡°Aren¡¯t you glad I told her to stick around?¡± Lord Ferros smugly said.
¡°Indeed, loath as I am to admit it, your idea holds merit,¡± General Astalaria agreed.
¡°There is one other item of concern,¡± the Otharian stated. ¡°What do you know about those... those things that the Ubrans started using today? The siege weapons? Do you think they might be able to hit my zeppelin? What¡¯s the maximum height of their shots?¡±
Arlette and Supreme General Astalaria shared a puzzled glance.
¡°Are you referring to the mechanism by which the Ubrans were able to fire such mighty projectiles at us today?¡± the general inquired.
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°We know nothing about it,¡± the general admitted. ¡°A bombardment of such power is unheard of. We were caught completely unprepared.¡±
¡°They were too far away to see, even up on the wall,¡± Arlette added.
¡°Well then, let me show you what is behind your sudden troubles,¡± Lord Ferros said. Arlette heard a series of clanks and clacks from somewhere outside of their view. Then something flat and dark moved in front of the Otharian, blocking their view of him.
Suddenly the dark object lit up, revealing a horrifying sight. It was an overhead image of an atrocity made flesh, a fusion of tissue and bone which made Arlette¡¯s stomach roil just from the sight of it.
¡°W-what is that?¡± she gasped out through dry heaves.
¡°That is one of the abominations that was hammering your walls so hard today,¡± Lord Ferros replied. ¡°I think that one, in particular, was throwing giant balls of fire onto the east wall. Sofie thinks that they¡¯re Manys. Does this help?¡±
¡°This... I¡¯ve never seen anything like this before. It is unfortunately beyond my understanding,¡± General Astalaria admitted.
¡°Damn,¡± Ferros swore. ¡°Is there anybody over there who can tell us how they work, their limitations, or anything at all that might be useful?¡±
¡°No,¡± the general said with distaste. ¡°Were Crirada not under attack, there would be several scholars who might be able to offer an explanation, but they are obviously no longer here.¡±
¡°A shame. I guess we¡¯re just going to have to find out. Can you hold the city for a few more days?¡±
¡°Likely, though I ask that you move as quickly as you can. If the Ubrans continue their bombardment, only sacrificing more of our best with chimirin will stop them, meaning every day you delay, the weaker our final strike becomes.¡±
¡°Understood,¡± the metal man replied with a nod. ¡°I¡¯ll get on the munitions creation the moment we are done here.¡±
¡°Lord Ferros, I assume that you will be having Pari create your explosives?¡± Arlette asked, seeing another opportunity to get the general off her back.
¡°Yes,¡± Lord Ferros confirmed. ¡°Actually, is there anything you might be able to do to get that catgirl of yours to focus and make me as many bombs as she can as fast as she can? Maybe put in a word for me? She¡¯s not being the most cooperative right now, even with Sofie keeping her in line.¡±
¡°You shouldn¡¯t need to push her too hard,¡± Arlette advised. ¡°Just tell her how you want to make the biggest explosions ever and that if she helps you she¡¯ll get to watch it all go boom. Do that, and I bet you Sofie will have to tie her to her bed at night to get her to stop.¡±
¡°Y-you possess the bomb child?!¡± an irate General Erizio sputtered indignantly. Arlette suppressed a small smile as her plan finally worked.
¡°What of it?¡± Lord Ferros shot back.
¡°That child was an important component of our defense, and you stole her from us!¡±
¡°Do you really want to speak of stealing when I just witnessed your people using my chimirin today?¡± the Otharian growled.
Arlette wasn¡¯t sure what that meant, but the general must have as his protests immediately came to a halt.
¡°I do not like it when my property is stolen, and I especially do not like it when that same property is used to try to kill me,¡± Lord Ferros continued, his voice dark with malice. He looked back at Arlette. ¡°Are you Eterian, Arlette?¡±
¡°I am not,¡± she replied.
¡°Good. Do you believe that General Astalaria would have anything to do with an Eterian plot to assassinate me?¡±
Arlette still didn¡¯t exactly understand what he was talking about, but she shook her head. ¡°I despise this man with all my heart. He is an insufferable pompous ass who is convinced of his own superiority and loves to lord his abilities over everybody else. He has personally made my life miserable more than once. But I do not think that he would do something like that.¡±
¡°Oh really?¡±
¡°Yes. While I doubt the Eterians as a whole would attempt to kill you already, given that they would be more likely to try to strangle you economically first, I can imagine such a thing occurring. But I cannot imagine General Astalaria ever being involved. I think he believes such activities beneath him.¡±
¡°I see...¡± Once more, Lord Ferros fell still. It was hard to tell what was going on beneath the man¡¯s mask, which was surely the way he liked it.
¡°Very well,¡± he finally said. ¡°I will overlook this for now. Let it be known that if I do find you or anybody involved in the defense of Crirada to be in any way responsible for that attack on me I will not hesitate to let you all suffer miserable deaths by Ubran blades. If I didn¡¯t want access to your city for my own purposes, I would have already left you to die. Remember that when we speak again.¡±
Before anybody could respond, the projection vanished into thin air. Without a word, the woman and the Many transporter walked out of the room, leaving only the two soldiers to stare at the open door.
¡°...an insufferable pompous ass who is convinced of his own superiority?¡± Supreme General Erizio Astalaria finally asked.
¡°Just be happy that I didn¡¯t tell him what I really think of you,¡± Arlette shot back. ¡°Now leave me alone. I have to go heal before this all starts.¡±
Without looking back, she hobbled from the room.
Chapter 80
Sensation returned to Gabriela in a sudden rush as her head reformed into its original state, good as new. She blinked and her vision quickly gained clarity, revealing the same familiar tent that she¡¯d become so familiar with the past season. Normally she would spend at least a minute or two staring up at that fabric roof in quiet resignation, wallowing in the melancholy that came with one more failure, but not today. Today, rage replaced that sadness¡ªa scalding rage towards her enemies, her allies, and herself.
Quickly jumping to her feet, Gabby seized the Blade of Eternity and propped it up onto her shoulder, making sure to keep the edge of the blade away from her neck. The crystalline blade remained as sharp as ever, no matter how many robots she sliced with it. Sure she could always heal any nicks she might accidentally inflict upon herself, but just because she dealt with pain all the time didn¡¯t mean she liked the experience. Wasting no time, Gabby strode out of her tent, a woman on a mission.
¡°Oh!¡± a voice to her left called out. Gabby turned to find Chitra walking up to the tent, a small bag in her hands. ¡°You¡¯re up earlier than normal.¡±
¡°I¡¯m going to go have a chat with the Emperor,¡± Gabby informed her.
Chitra blanched. ¡°Not looking like that, you¡¯re not!¡± she firmly replied before dragging Gabby back into the tent. ¡°Did you even look at yourself? You look like you haven¡¯t slept in a week and your hair is an absolute mess and-¡±
¡°I don¡¯t care how I look!¡± Gabby hotly retorted.
¡°Well I do!¡± came the stern response, Gabriela¡¯s mood having little effect upon the unflappable Ubran. Chitra¡¯s steely grip on her arm remained firm despite the squirming and she quickly set about stripping off Gabby¡¯s rumpled clothing. ¡°Following protocol is important for the rest of us you know. I don¡¯t want to be judged harshly just because the only person I¡¯m serving can¡¯t be bothered to try to look decent when making an appearance before the Emperor.¡±
¡°We¡¯re in a war and you still care about appearances,¡± Gabriela snarled.
¡°Gabby, what has gotten into you?¡± Chitra asked with concern.
¡°I¡¯m sick of this, that¡¯s what!¡± she yelled back. ¡°I¡¯m sick of going out there day after day and fighting and dying and then getting back up and doing it again for nothing! I¡¯m sick of that smug bastard sitting in his palace or wherever, safely far away while he fills me with holes! I¡¯m sick of this lack of progress! Every day I¡¯m here is one more day that... that...¡±
Her voice drifted off as she found herself unable to finish that thought. Quickly two slender arms wrapped around her waist and she felt the soft touch of Chitra¡¯s amber hair against her shoulder and neck.
¡°It¡¯s alright, you don¡¯t have to say anything more,¡± a soft voice assured her.
¡°He¡¯s laughing at me now, did you see?¡± Gabby continued, her voice quieter but no less harsh. ¡°He knows where I¡¯m from and he¡¯s decided to rub my face in how I¡¯m stuck here instead of back home with my children, flying parodies of Mexican flags and mocking me with terrible Spanish.¡±
¡°He knows where you¡¯re from? Are you saying he¡¯s another person from your world?¡± Chitra asked with concern.
¡°Of course he is! He must be!¡± Gabriela asserted, her tone dripping with venom. ¡°Who in this world would be able to make robots with guns and chainsaws? From the first moment I saw those things, I knew their creator must be from Earth. It¡¯s not like this is the first person from home that I¡¯ve met. Remember that jerk back in Gustil that I killed?¡±
¡°How could I forget? You wouldn¡¯t stop harping about him for days!¡±
¡°He laughed at me for wanting to go home,¡± Gabby spat. ¡°This asshole¡¯s no different, living in luxury with a robot army. If he wanted to talk, he wouldn¡¯t have killed me seventy-two times first. No, this is some plot of his. He¡¯s trying to hurt me mentally. Well, I won¡¯t let him get away with any of this. I¡¯m going to hunt him down and flay him alive if it¡¯s the last thing I do!¡±
¡°Well, it¡¯s good to see you motivated at least,¡± Chitra allowed. ¡°Let¡¯s just finish combing your hair and get you dressed and you will be good enough.¡±
¡°Only good enough? What happened to being judged harshly?¡±
¡°Well, as you said, we are on a battlefield. Surely the Emperor will understand.¡±
The stone rings stood solemnly near the rear of the western camp, standing in stark contrast to the fabric city surrounding them. For some reason, whenever Gabriela looked at a ring she was reminded of the pictures she¡¯d seen of Stonehenge in the United Kingdom. The comparison wasn¡¯t even that apt, since Stonehenge was a largely open ring of stone slabs, while these rings were entirely solid other than the several small man-sized passages that led inside.
Gabby and Chitra entered the middle circle of the three, passing by a series of soldiers standing guard. The soldiers all saluted and bowed to them as they passed by. Even after so long, Gabby still found the worship the members of the Ubran Army had for her unsettling. It wasn¡¯t as if she was some sort of inspirational leader or anything. Being the center of attention usually made her want to run and hide, and so that was what she basically did, spending the vast majority of her conscious time in the camp sheltering in her tent.
The inside of the stone shelter looked much as she remembered it the only other time she¡¯d visited: a lavish and ostentatious throne room that in her opinion seemed wholly out of place anywhere near a battlefield. The entire floor of the interior was comprised of large stone tiles instead of the grass and dirt found inside everybody else¡¯s tent. Large stone pillars rose up towards the sky, forming the corners of a square in the center of the ring. Bright lit torches were set into the pillars, bringing light to the various tapestries hanging from the outside wall and casting stark shadows all around. The light of the moons was largely blocked by the heavy canvas stretched out above to form a roof of sorts, largely to block the sight of the enemy¡¯s hovering spy drones.
The display of absurd wealth even in the face of the enemy was a sort of flex, a demonstration of the Emperor¡¯s untouchable power¡ªor at least that was how Chitra had explained it. Gabby didn¡¯t agree; to her, it just seemed like a huge waste of time, money, and resources.
The one difference from the last time was that this time the room was largely empty. Several more soldiers stood inside and saluted as soon as they saw Gabriela emerge from the passageway, but the various ministers and especially the Emperor were nowhere to be seen.
¡°Where is everybody?¡± she asked.
¡°The Emperor is not holding court now, it is too late. Follow me,¡± Chitra replied, leading her behind a nearby pillar. There, the Ubran woman reached down and pulled aside the stone tile, revealing a hidden tunnel in the earth. Grabbing a nearby torch, she lowered herself into the hole and beckoned for Gabby to follow.
¡°Oh, I get it,¡± Gabby stated, more to herself than anything. There were three rings for a reason: to prevent the Eterians from knowing the Emperor¡¯s exact location. To keep the enemy from being able to follow the Emperor from ring to ring, the Ubrans had created tunnels leading between them, allowing for the Emperor¡¯s easy relocation without anybody knowing. Chitra had led her into the middle ring so that nobody could use her arrival to better guess his location¡ªa wise decision, given Gabby and the Ubrans¡¯ conviction that she was being watched from above at all times.
¡°How much further do we have to go?¡± she wondered as the tunnel stretched on.
¡°Shh. We¡¯re almost there,¡± came the reply.
Soon enough, Chitra¡¯s words rang true. Gabriela¡¯s ears caught the muffled sound of voices that became clearer as they approached what appeared to be the end of the tunnel.
¡°...sure that they will be ready for tomorrow¡¯s attack?¡±
¡°I assure you, the Unified Manys will be ready for battle every day. As long as we take care to avoid overextending them, they will be fine with a full night¡¯s rest.¡±
Gabby and Chitra came to a halt beneath a small wooden door set in the roof of the tunnel. Unaware of their presence, the voices above continued.
¡°Excellent. The destructive power of your creations is even greater than I was led to believe, and so I will forgive you for the tardiness of the delivery.¡±
¡°Thank you, Your Eminence! I told you I would deliver you victory where the Champion could not.¡±
With a growl, Gabriela threw open the door so roughly that she nearly ripped it from its hinges. Before her eyes could even adjust to the light, she felt the cold touch of a blade against her neck¡ªa sword held by Taras, the Emperor¡¯s blind bodyguard. Doubtless, he¡¯d heard the two of them coming before anybody else. Gabriela wasn¡¯t in the mood for any of this. She reached out and clamped her right hand around the weapon, holding back a hiss as it bit into her palm, and squeezed. The metal creaked in protest as it crumpled like it was made of wrapping paper.
Sending the bodyguard a murderous glare that he couldn¡¯t even see, Gabby climbed out of the tunnel and turned her ire towards its original target.
¡°Say that again,¡± she growled to General Luki Arrino, the source of the obsequious voice that had dared to demean her.
¡°Ch-Champion!¡± the sniveling general stuttered, turning white as a sheet. Even though he stood more than a head taller than her, he began to back away, his eyes darting about in search of an escape route. ¡°I assure you, this is all just a big misunderstanding!¡±
¡°I have sacrificed myself every day to keep those robots off your back,¡± Gabriela continued as she advanced. ¡°For weeks and weeks, I have been the only thing standing between you and a gruesome death! Go on! Say it again! Tell me how I¡¯m not doing enough!¡±
¡°I would never-¡±
Gabby grabbed the general by the front of this shirt and pulled him down to her eye level. ¡°What have you done that gives you the right to talk? All you did was create some sort of nightmare out of a horror story. Are you really proud of that? Maybe you¡¯re the one people should call a monster.¡±
This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
¡°Champion Carreno, how nice of you to visit,¡± Emperor Haidar Batra¡¯s smooth voice cut in. ¡°I know that General Arrino, myself, and all of our citizens are tremendously grateful for everything you¡¯ve done. We still value your contributions immensely, it is simply that we no longer need you to carry the burden of this war on your own. Our newly formed Unified Manys Corps will be able to help you finally take Crirada once and for all. They are the product of decades of important research that is now finally bearing fruit.¡±
Gabby unceremoniously released her grip on the general¡¯s front, causing him to stumble back a step. ¡°Research? You call that research? What sort of unholy stuff are you people doing?¡±
¡°Your Grace, I humbly apologize for this intrusion,¡± Chitra cut in hurriedly. ¡°We meant to ask for an audience, but-¡±
¡°Fret not, my dear,¡± the Emperor reassured her with a warm smile. Gabby could clearly see how much the old man enjoyed the company of the young woman, no doubt in large part due to her excessive beauty. ¡°It is always good to see my favorite Batranala again. And I do believe we owe our Champion some sort of explanation for her efforts.¡±
¡°Yes, of course,¡± the general immediately agreed with feverish nodding. He cleared his throat while Gabby stood in front of him, her arms crossed and an expectant look on her face. ¡°I assume you are familiar with the basics of observational mechanics?¡±
¡°No,¡± she flatly replied.
¡°I see...¡± he gulped. ¡°Well, to put the relevant matter simply, Observers cannot jointly manifest a phenomenon. If two Observers, even those of the same specialty, try to create in the same space, their observations will interfere with each other, causing the intended result to manifest poorly or often not at all.
¡°This is the basis behind the generally accepted fact that the most powerful Observations can only come from the strongest of individuals, those rare few blessed with not just a large well of soulforce, but also the talent to understand their field to the finest degree and the ability to wield that experience to the fullest. For millennia, it was common knowledge that this was the limit of Observation.
¡°Even with extensive training, multi-person Observation just does not work. Though each individual is working towards the same outcome, their internal conception of that outcome will be different because their understandings are unique. But! What if each individual is working from the same experiences, and doing so through a linked consciousness? Wouldn¡¯t they be able to bring multiple minds together to observe in perfect harmony, since they are separate and yet whole? That was the beginning of our research. And as you can see, the results of our efforts are profound. A three-part Many can observe with speed and power many times greater than the combined output of three normal observers. They are truly a wonder!¡±
¡°¡®Wonder¡¯ is not the word I would use,¡± Gabby growled. ¡°You did this by sewing people together. Living people.¡±
¡°N-now now, let us not jump to conclusions. These are Manys we are talking about. I would argue that my procedure allows them a superior existence to that of the standard Many life.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t seriously expect me to believe that!¡± she spat back. ¡°You¡¯ve heard the way they moan and cry out! They¡¯re in pain all the time!¡±
¡°Do you know what it is like to be a Many?¡± General Arrino returned. ¡°A Many¡¯s life is a pitiable one. Their consciousness is constantly bombarded with sensations that they can barely comprehend. They spend their entire life in dark rooms doing nothing more than existing, because to do anything more is unbearable to their already overwhelmed mind. They are separated across vast distances from not just their family, but the rest of their bodies. It is the dreariest existence I could imagine. One would be hard-pressed to even call it a life at all!
¡°My Unified Manys, however, are a different story. The aim is to make them into something as closely resembling a normal single-bodied being as possible, unlocking their power for a whole new frontier of possibilities! Yes, it is necessary to take away the outer bodies¡¯ ability to see, hear, and smell, but lowering the total sensations means their mind can be clear enough even for things like simple conversations, something a regular Many could never hope to accomplish! I can only see the pain as a price worth paying for the ability to live a life, no matter how basic.¡±
¡°Make all the philosophical arguments you want. All I see is a butcher who thinks he¡¯s Frankenstein,¡± Gabby bluntly replied.
¡°Now, now, there¡¯s no need for my two best assets to bicker so,¡± Emperor Haidar cut in. ¡°I value both your contributions immeasurably. Now, my Champion, what finally brings you to see me? It has been a long time since we have met face to face.¡±
¡°I wanted to talk about a new strategy,¡± Gabby informed the elderly man. ¡°I¡¯m through fighting robots every day. It¡¯s time for me to take the fight to the enemy. I¡¯m going to attack the Otharians to shut them down once and for all.¡±
¡°Absolutely not!¡± the Emperor immediately declared. ¡°We would be open to attack without you to stop them! Your leaving is out of the question!¡±
¡°What, weren¡¯t you two just talking about how strong your new Unified Manys are? Let them hold the line for one day! Those Otharian bastards probably won¡¯t even do anything if you just halted your attacks for a day or two.¡±
¡°Nonsense! The Eterians'' defenses will collapse any day now. Their sudden use of chimirin proves they¡¯re at the end of their rope.¡±
¡°And what happens after Crirada?¡± Gabriela contested. ¡°Do you think those are all the robots they have? This is about more than just this battle, it¡¯s about the rest of the war! And if the city is really falling, are you going to give them the chance to cook up something truly crazy? They¡¯ll make whatever the Eterians do seem like child¡¯s play!¡±
¡°I said it is out of the question and that¡¯s final!¡± Emperor Haidar roared like a father dealing with a defiantly misbehaving child. ¡°I will not expose my forces on a foolish whim!¡±
¡°Foolish?¡± Gabby snarled, her ire peaking. ¡°You and your vaunted armies can¡¯t even take a single city without me.¡±
¡°Listen and listen well,¡± Emperor Haidar Batra said, his voice low but filled with cold, indignant anger. ¡°I am the Emperor. I command, and no one else. Need I remind you that without the assistance of me and my people, you have no way to return to your children?¡±
Gabby clenched her teeth so hard that it was a wonder they didn¡¯t shatter. Furious beyond belief, she turned away and stormed towards the exit.
¡°STOP!¡± several voices cried out at once. Only the fact that one of those voices was Chitra¡¯s caused her to heed the cries at all.
¡°Champion, please! We must leave through the tunnel,¡± Chitra begged softly as she gently steered Gabby back towards where they¡¯d first entered. ¡°If you walk outside, you¡¯ll reveal our position. Have you not realized where we are?¡±
¡°What?¡± Gabby looked about and for the first time noticed that something was indeed off. She¡¯d been so angry that she¡¯d tunneled in first on General Arrino and then on the Emperor and never actually had the presence of mind to look around. Now that she did, she saw an abundance of canvas and a startling lack of stone.
¡°What are we doing in a tent? Aren¡¯t you supposed to be hiding inside the stone bunkers?¡± she snapped towards the elderly man nearby.
The Emperor scowled. ¡°The Eterians are desperate enough now to use chimirin, a rare drug that gives one incredible power for a short time at the cost of their life. It is their final card, and means that they know their days are numbered. They will try something soon. Their most likely gambit will be an attempt to take my life. The last place I should be is where they believe me to be.¡±
¡°...oh. I didn¡¯t think of that,¡± Gabby reluctantly admitted.
¡°Nor would I expect you to. Now go swing your sword elsewhere and leave the thinking me.¡±
Seething with contemptuous fury, Gabriela slammed the trap door shut so hard that it splintered into mulch.
¡°Gabby, you¡¯ve been pacing back and forth all night. Come eat something. It¡¯s very tasty,¡± Chitra advised her companion, taking a large bite from a massive drumstick to demonstrate and letting out a loud hum to demonstrate the meat¡¯s deliciousness.
¡°I¡¯m not hungry,¡± Gabriela replied, glancing at the large smorgasbord arrayed on a table at the side of her tent. The food had been sent by the Emperor as part of an attempt to soothe her feelings. It hadn¡¯t worked. Knowing that it was from him made the otherwise enticing food unpalatable. She looked over the spread, noting the mostly consumed servings of various meats and the untouched bread, vegetables, and fruits. ¡°You seem to be doing a fine job finishing it yourself.¡±
¡°It¡¯s been a long, stressful day, thank you very much. If anybody else were to disrespect His Highness like that, they¡¯d be executed on the spot. I was afraid for my own life just for being nearby. It shows how much he values you.¡±
¡°Why are you trying to patch things up between us? Whose side are you on?¡± Gabby suddenly snapped.
¡°What has gotten into you?¡± Chitra wondered with worry in her eyes.
Gabby hesitated for a moment. She¡¯d done a lot of debating in her head these last few hours and had finally come to a decision. ¡°Do you remember when you told me you would always be with me, as long as I needed you? Is that still true?¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t lie to you, Gabby,¡± the Ubran assured her.
¡°I¡¯m going to attack Otharia,¡± Gabriela informed her friend, her voice steady and firm.
¡°You will defy the Emperor?!¡± Chitra hissed in shock.
¡°I will. I¡¯m leaving tonight. Are you going to help me? Or is your allegiance to that man worth more than our friendship?¡±
Chitra looked away, avoiding Gabby¡¯s eyes, her gorgeous face marred by a conflicted frown. After a while, she sighed and turned back to meet Gabby¡¯s gaze, her concern apparent. ¡°You can¡¯t leave tonight,¡± she said.
¡°What do you mean? Are you choosing him over me?¡± Gabby bristled.
¡°No, listen,¡± the Batranala quickly said, grabbing the shorter woman by the shoulders. ¡°We know the enemy has their flying drones watching for you. If you leave as it is now, they will know you¡¯re coming, and they¡¯ll be ready. Also, they¡¯ll know that we¡¯re vulnerable and they will attack while you¡¯re gone. You don¡¯t want that, do you?¡±
¡°No...¡±
¡°Then wait for a little. I have an idea that can help you get out of here. I¡¯ll call in a few favors, and then in maybe two or three days, you¡¯ll be able to head for Otharia without the Otharians or the Emperor knowing you¡¯re gone. Sound good?¡±
¡°Thank you! I knew I could count on you!¡± Gabby beamed, wrapping the larger woman in an enthusiastic hug. She sniffed, as tears welled in her eyes and threatened to fall. ¡°You¡¯re the older sister I always wished I had.¡±
The other woman sighed and returned the embrace, affectionately patting Gabby¡¯s back. ¡°You know I want what¡¯s best for you, Gabby. I just hope you know what that is.¡±
Chapter 81
Hoxoni bustled with activity as the Stragman people hurried to prepare for the Great Hunt¡ªor at least, that was what Rudra assumed was going down. The day following the Chos¡¯s proclamation, his remote cavern remained largely undisturbed. His cell still hung from the cave ceiling, rocking back and forth almost imperceptibly as he sat against a wall and wallowed in his misery.
He had failed. It was that simple. Any attempts to rationalize his actions, to couch them in softer terms, fell flat. He¡¯d failed himself. He¡¯d failed the Shells. Worst of all, he¡¯d failed Tepin.
Though he was the one who¡¯d bargained for daily visits from Tepin, he found himself growing more and more agitated as the first such visitation approached. On the one hand, there was nobody he wanted to see more. He found himself almost pining for the fragile beastwoman, their recent time together having fanned flames in his heart that he¡¯d thought extinguished years ago. Yet, on the other hand, he found himself dreading her arrival more with each passing second. He could already picture the look of betrayal on her face, and his imagined version was more than enough to send him into a spiral of despair. He couldn¡¯t conceive of what the real one would do to him.
Several moments later, Rudra heard the sound of gears clacking many meters away. With an unceremonious lurch, the cell began to slowly travel from his usual location above the center of the Chasm along the system of chains and pulleys fixed to the ceiling. An agonizing span of minutes later, the cell finally touched down onto solid stone.
Rudra watched as the cage¡¯s door swung open, revealing two large silhouettes with a much smaller one sandwiched between them. He immediately recognized the tiny figure as Tepin. The two larger figures¡ªsurely guards¡ªshoved Tepin into the cell and closed the door behind them. She stumbled from the force but caught herself before she fell.
Slowly, she strode towards him. Rudra, for his part, simply stayed seated against the back wall and let her approach. The small woman halted her advance right in front of him and said nothing. Rudra, for his part, wanted to say a number of things, but he couldn¡¯t seem to find the words for any of them.
The glowmoss that Tepin had burned just several days ago had not even begun to grow back, leaving only the soft glow of the moss growing intermittently around the cavern to illuminate his prison. The light from behind created a halo effect, leaving much of her face hard to discern with his one good eye. All he could make out were her eyes shining in the darkness, those iridescent orbs gazing down on him in silent judgment. He didn¡¯t see betrayal in those eyes. Instead, he found profound disappointment. He quickly discovered that was just as terrible.
Without a word, Tepin drew her right hand back before swinging it towards his cheek.
Slap!
¡°You.¡±
Slap!
¡°Stupid.¡±
Slap!
¡°Bloody.¡±
Slap!
¡°Fool!¡±
Already huffing and puffing from the mild exertion, Tepin¡¯s arm fell. Still, her rebuke continued.
¡°All our progress is disappearing as we speak! The Chos will feel emboldened to undo everything she agreed to now that she has you under her control! We don¡¯t even have our largest source of leverage anymore since you saw fit to bring her husband back, and he¡¯s far more conservative than she is! He¡¯ll push her to revoke every concession and likely restrict Shells even beyond how they were before! All because you were weak!¡±
¡°What was I supposed to do then? Just let you die?¡± Rudra asked.
¡°Yes, you idiot! You should have just let them kill me! As long as she can hold my life over you, everything is lost. I should end it myself and free you of that burden.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t even think such things,¡± Rudra scolded her sternly. ¡°I¡¯ll just bring you back every time.¡±
¡°No! Why would you say that?! I¡¯m not worth the rights of every Shell! I¡¯m don¡¯t deserve that treatment!¡±
¡°Yes, you do! Why not?! You deserve to have a life just as much as all the other people out there! A good life, one with dignity and respect! After everything you¡¯ve put yourself through, after all the sacrifices you made to help your people, you deserve it more than anybody! You¡¯re a special person, Tepin. I know that now, more than anybody. I couldn¡¯t just sit here and let them hurt you and kill you, not when I could stop it! I¡¯m sorry! I just couldn¡¯t do it. I just couldn¡¯t handle the thought of losing the person I care about... not... not again...¡±
His voice drifted off into the aether and his head fell back down to gaze at the floor. A moment later, he felt the soft touch of a hand against his cheek.
¡°Whatever should I do with you?¡± she wondered aloud as her fingers lightly ran along the bandages wrapped over his eye. ¡°You¡¯ve given so much for me, even your sight, and yet I¡¯ve done so little in return for you, my stupid, boneheaded, naive, foolish, stubborn lunk of a man...¡±
Raising his head against that touch, he saw that the disappointment from before had disappeared. In its place, he found guilt. But beneath that guilt lurked something else, something he hadn¡¯t seen from anybody close to him in a long time: affection. The sight sent his feelings roaring out of control, like pouring liters of oil onto a sputtering fire.
Rudra reached out and wrapped Tepin up in his large arms, drawing her in against his burly chest. She let out a small surprised yelp as he pulled her close and planted his lips on hers.
Tepin squirmed awkwardly in his embrace and he pulled their heads apart, confused.
¡°There are people out there!¡± Tepin protested weakly. ¡°They¡¯ll- they¡¯ll hear everything!¡±
Rudra could only grin.
¡°Let them hear,¡± Rudra replied roguishly. ¡°I will not be ashamed of love, and neither should you. If the world already knows, then let them hear all of the ways I love you.¡±
Tepin blushed so heavily that Rudra could see it even in the dim light. ¡°You sappy idiot...¡± she mumbled.
He leaned in and kissed her once more. This time, she welcomed it.
Rudra shifted awkwardly as the wooden cage held above his head caught on a branch of a vine somewhere above. Unlike the migration to Hoxoni, his burden for the latest trek was the very cell that he¡¯d spent the last season inside. The wooden cage was very awkward to handle and, somehow, incredibly heavy. Other than the massive tree he¡¯d lifted months ago, it was easily the heaviest object he¡¯d ever had to deal with. The reason behind the wood¡¯s absurd density was beyond his ken, but at least it explained why even his immense strength couldn¡¯t even make a dent in the material.
It didn¡¯t help that his arm still ached from the stab wound he¡¯d received in the fight against Sneak. Luckily, the wound had largely healed at this point¡ªStragman salves were no joke¡ªbut the arm still protested when taxed. Sadly, no amount of salve would save his right eye; the blade had bitten too deep. The bandages over the socket had been replaced by an eye patch, but little else had changed. It didn¡¯t look like he¡¯d see anything from his right eye for a good while, if ever.
The lack of complete vision made traveling through the Stragman jungle even more difficult. He still had trouble getting used to the lack of depth perception, and things like stray branches had a knack of sneaking up on him from his right. Still, he sallied forth, making sure to stay in stride with the rest of the long line of Stragmans winding their way north.
Several weeks ago, when leaving the Hoxoni cave system, the Stragman populace had split into two separate groups with differing objectives. One group had departed northwest towards Kukego, the site of the traditional Stragman spring city. Rudra had never been to Kukego, but he understood that it was located on the western edge of the forest and within a day¡¯s travel from the Divide. That made it the closest of the four sites to the place where he¡¯d first arrived in this world.
The way Tepin had described it to him¡ªa wide, sprawling city spread out in the least-dense area of the forest¡ªmade it sound like an almost normal place compared to the other three. It sounded almost idyllic, except for the reason the Stragmans had to move on to their next site every year: the massive swarms of large centipede-like insects, countless in number, that made their way through the area every year, devouring every single bit of organic matter in their path. As Rudra understood it, many herds and flocks of beasts in the Stragman forest could number in the hundreds of thousands to the millions. For something here to be called a ¡°swarm¡± really meant something terrifying.
The group headed that way consisted of the children and the elderly, perhaps two-thirds of the Shell population, and a large contingent of Flegs for protection¡ªabout half the population of Stragma in total. Their job was to establish Kukego as best they could with their diminished worker base and hold it until the other half returned, triumphant.
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Rudra found himself in that second group, the one headed north intent on killing and pillaging not just at Crirada but along the entire Ubran supply line. He wouldn¡¯t be participating in either activity, of course, but the Chos wanted him nearby for any and all resurrections that might be required. After all, the more live people, the more arms available to carry back the loot.
Rudra¡¯s capitulation to the Chos had already put him in a major funk, one that not even several hours a day spent with his new love could eradicate. Whenever Tepin wasn¡¯t around to distract him, his thoughts would always wander back to the same subject: his failure. Now the prospect of being an accessory to wholesale slaughter made it all far, far worse. He felt like he¡¯d almost completely lost at this point, and he had nobody to blame but himself.
That or Tepin, at least, and he wasn¡¯t about to offload his self-loathing onto her. Though she would have been far more suited for the Kukego group, the small wolfwoman had accompanied him in the war group. Rudra didn¡¯t trust in her safety without him somewhere nearby, and so he¡¯d used the one bargaining chip he had¡ªthe Chos¡¯s agreement to allow the two of them one visit each day¡ªto demand that she come along. Given her weakness that made even other Shells seem mighty in comparison, Tepin spent the majority of each day riding along inside Rudra¡¯s cell instead of walking.
The war contingent consisted of the normal Stragman army, as well as the stronger Stragman citizens to bolster their already numerous forces. Every non-Shell Stragman, from Flegs on up, was in effect a sort of reservist, ready to put aside their normal life at a moment¡¯s notice to defend their people from threats of any form. Given the Stragman culture¡¯s emphasis on combat strength, he didn¡¯t doubt that the reservists would do just fine.
A large number of Shells also accompanied the war party, both as porters for the army¡¯s supplies and as extra people to carry back more spoils of victory. Now surrounded by thousands of others rather than secluded away in a remote cavern, Rudra could no longer avoid the gazes of his fellow Shells. They looked at him much like how a child looked at their favorite athlete after they lost the big game. Each glance was like a small paper cut on his soul, painful yet insignificant on its own, but devastating when multiplied.
At least there was one silver lining he could point to from this whole ordeal. Tepin¡¯s reputation among her peers had never been very positive. When she¡¯d refused to join the Shell strikes¡ªpublicly at least¡ªand continued to aid the Chos as her assistant, other Shells had viewed her as a traitor of sorts. That seemed to have changed. Perhaps the goodwill he¡¯d enjoyed had simply rubbed off onto her via association, but it looked to him like they recognized her now as one of their own. During the few hours each day that she left their cage and traveled on foot with the others, nearby Shells would go out of their way to help her. They would help clear her path or even, to her obvious dismay, carry her along.
Rudra found it remarkable how much the Shells as a people had changed in just a few seasons. When he¡¯d first arrived, ¡°Shell¡± had been simply a catch-all pseudo-slur to refer to the so-called ¡°failures¡± of Stragman society: the weak, the cowardly, the sick, etcetera. There¡¯d been no collective identity between them; to be a Shell was simply to be somebody incapable of fulfilling the basic requirements of a true Stragman. But now, he felt that Shells had become something defined by more than just failure. They were something much more unified, and in some ways radicalized. The sight lent much-needed warmth to his heart.
Smack!
Suddenly, a long branch caught on the lower edge of the cage finally bent far enough to slip free, causing it to whip around from the right and whack him straight in the face. Rudra let out a low grunt of pain as he fought to keep from dropping the cage above his head. Tepin was likely sleeping inside and he didn¡¯t want her getting hurt. As he kept going, placing one foot in front of the other, Rudra pondered the benefits of imprisonment. Sure, he¡¯d been locked in a single room for months on end, often bored out of his mind, but at least he hadn¡¯t had to deal with arbor assault.
Tepin slumbered softly against Rudra¡¯s shoulder in the darkness of the night, her breath calming in its rhythm. It felt wonderful to have somebody again, even under such adverse circumstances. It didn¡¯t hurt that he found the small beastwoman so adorable. He found himself especially fond of the fluffy lupine ears sticking out of her mess of tangled silver hair atop her head. The urge to caress them warred with his fear that he¡¯d wake her up.
The two of them laid inside the wooden cage, which he¡¯d plopped down in the middle of the Stragman camp at the end of that day¡¯s march. It seemed that they were close now, only a few days at most from reaching the northern end of the forest. Soon, the bloodshed would begin.
Eventually, Rudra drifted off to sleep to the sounds of the jungle outside and the soft whisper of breath by his side.
¡°I just don¡¯t understand how you can accomplish anything if you¡¯re not willing to fight for it,¡± Rudra said as he sat and skimmed the newspaper. ¡°When the other side is willing to do anything and you¡¯re not, then all that¡¯s happening is you¡¯re going into a fight with both hands tied behind your back.¡±
¡°I never said that being a pacifist is easy, Rudra,¡± Jaya replied as she quickly chopped away at a handful of carrots with expert precision. ¡°Yes, it can be a handicap sometimes. You have to make sacrifices. But you can¡¯t stop just because life is hard.¡±
¡°So when you put everything you have into your dream, and it doesn¡¯t work out, then what?¡±
The knife in Jaya¡¯s hand paused. Slowly she put it down and walked over to where he sat. She bent down and leaned against the arm of his chair, putting herself at his eye level.
¡°Then you get up and you try again.¡±
¡°That¡¯s it?¡±
¡°Somewhat, yes. Don¡¯t think you can just try the same thing again and expect a different result. Consider changing the vector of your approach. Look for other points of leverage. Find other people to work with. But yes, the most important thing is simply to keep trying. Perseverance is your greatest asset. I know that things didn¡¯t go well the first time, and I know that you¡¯re afraid, but you have to keep trying. They need you. She needs you.¡±
¡°What are-¡±
Jaya reached out and caressed his face with her soft hand. ¡°I¡¯m glad you finally found somebody else. You can finally let me go.¡±
¡°But I don¡¯t want to let you go,¡± Rudra protested.
¡°You can¡¯t cling to me forever. You need to live for yourself and those around you, not for a ghost of your past. It¡¯s time, Rudra. You found somebody else, somebody special. It¡¯s time to move on.¡± She gave him a shining smile, the sort that could light up even the blackest void, the sort that had made him fall in love with her in the first place. ¡°I want you to know that I¡¯m proud of what you¡¯ve done, mistakes and all. Goodbye, Rudra.¡±
Without another word, Jaya faded away until there was no trace that she¡¯d ever been there in the first place, leaving him alone in the small apartment.
Rudra¡¯s eye snapped open as he jerked awake to find himself back in his cell, the glow of the morning sun was still nowhere to be seen. His sudden movement woke his partner as well. She yawned and looked up at him with a sleepy gaze.
¡°What is it?¡± she asked.
¡°Nothing,¡± he replied. ¡°Just a dream.¡±
¡°Mmmmmm, really?¡±
¡°Yeah... no... I just...¡± He paused for a moment and took a breath to find his thoughts. ¡°I decided that I¡¯m going to keep fighting, I guess.¡±
¡°Oh, is that all?¡± came the seemingly bored reply.
¡°...yes? Does that mean nothing to you?¡±
Tepin stared at him like he had the intelligence of a houseplant. ¡°What else is there for people like us but to fight? Do you think that I¡¯ve stopped fighting just because I lost my cover and my position and my freedom? As long as I breathe I will fight. What else would I do?¡±
¡°I... I just had sort of given up for a while, you know? It all seemed so hopeless. I mean, you say that you are still fighting, but what can we even do anymore?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Tepin admitted, ¡°but I¡¯m going to keep thinking until I come up with something. I didn¡¯t get into this mess to stop the moment something went horribly wrong. Now go back to sleep. You can¡¯t think with a tired mind.¡±
With that said, she snuggled back up against his shoulder. Within moments, Rudra could hear light snores coming from her petite mouth. He couldn¡¯t help but grin as he reached over and gently stroked his partner¡¯s soft silver ears, eliciting from her a soft moan of happiness. Jaya was right again. She always was.
Chapter 82
The karnak howled in pain as the club crashed into the middle leg on its left side. Though the massive pillar of muscle was easily over ten times the thickness of Akhustal¡¯s weapon, the wooden bludgeon smashed through the scales, muscles, tendons, and bone as if they were little more than brittle twigs. With all three of its legs on the left side now completely unable to bear weight, the massive beast toppled uncontrollably onto its side, thrashing and screaming. Akhustal quickly reduced her club¡¯s density to the lightest she could manage and leaped out of the way of the falling creature.
As soon as she landed, the Chos sprinted for the massive lizard¡¯s head. Around her, three other karnaks battled it out with the other Honos who¡¯d accompanied her on this hunting mission; they¡¯d left the biggest one for her to tackle, and she had confidence that they¡¯d be able to take down the others, but she never liked to leave things like this to chance. The sooner she could join them, the better.
The karnak¡¯s head, over twenty paces long and ten paces wide, whipped about with dangerous force as the humongous beast thrashed. Akhustal skidded to a stop just outside of the head¡¯s range, careful not to get too close and take an incidental head butt from the injured creature. It didn¡¯t matter how strong you were, getting hit by a house of flesh would kill most anybody.
Raising her club over her head, she waited for the karnak¡¯s skull to swing back her way. As soon as it was close enough, she brought the feather-light club hurtling forward and altered its weight to the opposite end of the spectrum just before it hit scales. Now heavier than the entire karnak, the club shattered the beast¡¯s skull with ease, bringing the lizard¡¯s life to a messy end.
A rumbling, doleful gurgle behind her marked the death of a second karnak, bringing a grin to her face. Stragmans were strong.
A very short time later, Akhustal and the others stood before four massive corpses. She couldn¡¯t help but be in a good mood over the hunt¡¯s success. Each gargantuan lizard, four hundred paces long or more, could feed hundreds of thousands of people. Now all that remained was to transport the carcasses back to the main force as it worked its way ever northward.
Akhustal Palebane loved to hunt, the bigger and deadlier the creature, the better. Sadly, she rarely found the opportunity since ascending to the position of Chos. Nowadays, nearly all her hunts came during large population movements like this one. In almost every other area, migrations and the like were a major headache of logistics and organization, but in this one aspect, she loved them.
Now that the hunt had ended, Akhustal put two fingers in her mouth and let out a loud, piercing whistle, signaling to a second group that trailed far behind the hunters. Composed largely of Flegs and Shells, their job was to dismantle the massive beasts and transport them back to the rest of the populace. Her work completed, she turned and headed back ahead of them.
After several hours, the Chos and her companions rejoined the main column just as they finished setting up camp in the evening light. They welcomed her arrival with great fanfare, and she gave some perfunctory waves before breaking from the others. Shaking off several officials as she wound through the camp, she grabbed several armfuls of food and made her way towards her personal quarters.
¡°Caprakan, dear, I have returned,¡± she called out as she pushed through the tent flap and entered the canvas enclosure that served as her portable home these days.
There came no response. Setting the food down on a nearby foldable table, she looked around and quickly spotted the figure of her husband sitting near their bedrolls. Even from across the tent she could see his vacant stare.
Picking up several roasted maewi flanks, she strode over to her beloved and squatted down beside him.
¡°Caprakan.¡±
Still he didn¡¯t respond, her voice unheard.
¡°Cap!¡± she said loudly, waving a hand in front of his face. The man¡¯s eyes regained focus and he stiffened for a moment. She pushed down her disappointment with his reaction by reminding herself that at least he wasn¡¯t screaming anymore.
Caprakan¡¯s gaze traced up her arm and settled on her face. ¡°Oh, welcome back,¡± he said, offering a hollow smile that didn¡¯t reach his eyes despite his efforts. ¡°Did the hunt go well?¡±
¡°4 adult karnaks,¡± she replied. She held out her other hand, the one holding the roasted flanks. ¡°Food?¡±
Her husband quickly reached out and snatched the proffered legs from her grip. With almost desperate energy, he took a large bite from one and chewed vigorously, seeming to relax a bit as the savory juices flowed into his mouth.
Akhustal suppressed a sigh. Back in the day, her husband had never been what one would call a ¡°picky eater¡±, but he was nothing like the man before her. The Caprakan of the present acted like every meal was the last one he would ever get.
Fury roared through her for what seemed like the millionth time since Rudra had revived him only fifteen days before. That bitch Pyria! Just what sorts of torture had they inflicted upon her beloved husband? And would he ever fully recover from it?
When she¡¯d carried his unconscious form from Rudra¡¯s cell, Caprakan had been little more than skin and bones, his body covered in wounds and half-healed scars. His muscles had atrophied from many days of starvation and lack of use. The tendons and ligaments in his legs had been severed, keeping him immobilized for several seasons at least. Akhustal could only thank Ruresni that they¡¯d spared his arms. She didn¡¯t think either of them would have been able to handle the embarrassment of having to spoon feed him like a toddler for half a year or more.
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His body had begun filling out and those scars had all healed now that he could finally sleep soundly and eat as much as he desired, but the same could not be said for scars on his soul. Her husband rarely seemed present these days. He would often zone out, his eyes staring off into nothingness as his thoughts drifted away from the moment and into some terrible abyss that only he could see. Even when he was present, he acted distant. Sure, he tried to put on a brave face, but she saw through it all. His ordeals still haunted him.
When Akhustal was growing up, she¡¯d learned that strength was all that mattered. No matter the problem, it could be solved if you were strong enough. Stragman society only reinforced those preconceptions, and the first three decades or so of her life had done little to dissuade her from such views. But recently, everything had begun to fall apart.
She, the strongest Stragman, had been powerless to save her husband from Pyria¡¯s clutches. She, the mightiest Stragman, for seasons, been unable to force the Earthling Rudra to revive her husband and the other dead. And now this. No amount of strength would help her solve this, and that realization had cast her adrift on a sea of fear and uncertainty.
Just days ago, Akhustal had exulted in the thought that she¡¯d finally prevailed and gotten everything she¡¯d wanted. She knew now that she¡¯d been wrong. This wasn¡¯t what she wanted at all.
¡°We¡¯re only half a day from the forest¡¯s edge now,¡± Akhustal informed her husband as they rested in their tent some nights later.
¡°Yes, I noticed,¡± Caprakan replied as he whittled away at a branch using a small knife. While his body looked even healthier than before, he was still many days away from being able to stand under his own power. Two Shells had to carry him in a hanging chair that hung from their shoulders, leaving him with very little to do for most of the day. Given this situation, he¡¯d taken to whittling and his skills improved every day.
The fact that he even needed to deal with boredom demonstrated his mental improvement. Before, there would have been no need, since for the first leg of the journey he spent his travel time rocking back and forth, trapped in his own personal world.
These last few days, he¡¯d been much more lucid, though still largely withdrawn. Akhustal would find herself recognizing bits of pieces as small fragments of the man she knew before. But that didn¡¯t mean everything was fixed or close to it. All it took was one small thing to send him on a backslide into his mind and she¡¯d lose him for hours. She wasn¡¯t sure if he was actually getting healthier or simply getting better at hiding the damage from others.
¡°Why the delay?¡± Caprakan inquired with a frown.
Akhustal paused, realizing now that bringing up the subject had been a mistake. It was too close to dangerous territory. She should have seen the question coming.
Her husband¡¯s frown deepened into a frown as her hesitation told him everything he wanted to know.
¡°It¡¯s crucial that we coordinate so that the Ubrans are not alerted to our advance until the last possible moment,¡± she replied hurriedly, hoping to absolve her actions in his eyes.
¡°We shouldn¡¯t be coordinating with them!¡± he spat, his hands starting to shake. ¡°We shouldn¡¯t even be speaking with those knife ear bastards!¡±
¡°Honey, please, calm down...¡± she soothed in a near panic, knowing where this was headed now. Gently she grasped his shoulders from behind and gave a soft squeeze.
He shook loose of her grip and twisted in his seat to face her directly. ¡°I never thought that you, of all people, would befriend them,¡± he hissed, the shaking in his hands spreading to his whole body. ¡°Not after what they... did... what they did...¡±
She was losing him again.
¡°Caprakan, dear, why don¡¯t we just have Rudra return you back to before you were captured?¡± Akhustal begged. ¡°Your body would be all healed and you wouldn¡¯t remember any of the things that Pyria-¡±
¡°No!¡± he sharply cried. ¡°No...¡±
Caprakan pulled his legs up against his chest using his arms and began to rock back and forth, his eyes returning to that empty gaze that she¡¯d come to dread so much. ¡°No...¡± he mumbled, seemingly more to himself than to her. ¡°I don¡¯t... no...¡±
¡°Cap, honey...¡± Akhustal gently shook her love and waved her hand in front of his face, but he didn¡¯t respond to her no matter what she tried. It was like she and the rest of reality didn¡¯t even exist to him anymore.
After several more moments of trying in vain to bring her husband back, the Chos stood up, grabbed her club, walked out of the tent, and kept walking and walking. It wasn¡¯t until she¡¯d traveled a good half hour from the edges of the camp that she finally stopped, turned to the nearest object¡ªa large rock about three times her size¡ªlet out a scream of pure fury, and smashed the rock over and over with her club until the stone was nothing more than dust.
This feeling of powerlessness, this feeling of futility... she hated it with every fiber of her being. But no matter what she did, it wouldn¡¯t go away. Nor would the rage that came with it. Akhustal could only hope that she¡¯d be wading into battle sooner rather than later. She had a lot of aggression to work out of her system, and woe betide anybody who tried to stand against her when that time came.
Chapter 83
Tehlmar Esmae stretched his tired body as he sat outside his small, one-person tent. With a small cloth, he wiped away the sweat beading on his brow and let out a weary breath. He felt exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.
After several days of hurrying through the Stragman forest with his local ¡°escorts¡±, he couldn¡¯t help but once again be impressed with just how quickly Stragmans could move through the jungle they called home when they really wanted to. This particular squad had been assigned to ferry him to the edge of the forest quickly and quietly so that he could take care of his end of the bargain while the Stragmans marched north. According to his new buddy Akhustal Palebane, the squad was composed of the best scouts the nation had to offer, and it showed. It was like they had some sort of sixth sense that kept them from getting turned around in the thick underbrush and a seventh sense that let them detect and avoid threats so far away from the group that Tehlmar never even got to find out what they were.
The end result was that they crossed distances each day that he would have thought impossible in such an ecosystem had he not traveled those same steps right alongside them. The other end result was a body sore from head to toe. He had never had to work this hard physically since reverting to his original form, and he hated it.
Jaquet had, in many ways, been built for this sort of thing. Large, strong, and with plenty of fat reserves for the long haul, the old ¡°Jaquet¡± Tehlmar would have been able to handle such hardships with relative ease. His current body, on the other hand, was slight and short and rather lacking in strength compared to the others, meaning he had to work extra hard to keep up.
The weather didn¡¯t help. Even in the winter, the jungles of Stragma never seemed to stray below ¡°muggy and hot¡±. The humidity clung to his skin and made sweat leak from every pore. He wasn¡¯t looking forward to the plethora of rashes he¡¯d have by the end of the journey.
Sadly, the ambient heat did nothing to warm the icy looks sent his way by the rest of the party. It was obvious from the start that the group resented being ordered to assist him in returning to Drayhadal. He found the whole treatment quite irritating. Beyond the glares, they refused to talk to him outside of the bare minimum required and every so often, when they thought he wasn¡¯t paying attention, they¡¯d do something to try to trip him and send him falling face-first into the mud. He hadn¡¯t fallen¡ªyet¡ªbut still, he felt it was time to do something about it and he knew just what to do.
The next time he caught a glare¡ªwhich wasn¡¯t long at all¡ªhe stared right back at the Stragman, refusing to avert his gaze. ¡°See something you like, tree-fucker?¡± he asked the man. Tact had never been Tehlmar¡¯s strong suit, but he¡¯d stopped caring about diplomacy since the second day of the trek.
The man stiffened from the unexpected rebuke. ¡°What was that?¡± he asked, rising to his feet as the rest of the camp went still.
¡°You heard me the first time,¡± Tehlmar replied, taking a nonchalant swig from his water pouch and looking around the camp. ¡°Seems like you all have something to say, so stop being cowards and just say it already.¡±
¡°Everybody halt,¡± the voice of the squad leader cut in as the first man took a step towards Tehlmar and several others got to their feet, malice in their eyes. ¡°Don¡¯t fall for the sharp-ear¡¯s taunts.¡±
¡°That¡¯s an awfully rude way to speak of a friend of your leader,¡± Tehlmar sent back.
The leader, a tall, muscular man in his mid-forties, stepped forward. ¡°I don¡¯t know what trickery you used to fool the Chos, but it won¡¯t work on us!¡± he declared. ¡°We would never make peace with the likes of you! Drayhadan aggression will not be forgotten so easily!¡±
Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but laugh. ¡°You Stragmans are all the same. You attack us and yet we are the aggressors? Typical treelickers.¡±
¡°Your people set fire to the forest first! The forest is as much a part of us as our flesh and blood! How could we forgive those who would lay waste to our home?¡±
Tehlmar took another swig. ¡°Let me see if I can make this simple enough for somebody like you to understand. How would you like it if, every night, your neighbor stole a small portion of your house and added it to their own? Would you simply shrug and watch as your house slowly vanishes, or would you do something about it? You Stragmans say that everything within the forest is yours¡ªa bullshit position, for the record¡ªand yet your beloved forest grows east every day. Your country is literally consuming ours. Why should we sit back and let that happen? We have as much a right to exist as anybody.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s answer was poorly received by his Stragman audience, as expected. The other Stragmans closed in, their eyes glinting with menace.
¡°Why don¡¯t we just kill him?¡± one of them asked.
¡°You would dare to harm somebody under the Chos¡¯s protection?¡± Tehlmar asked.
¡°We could just say you wandered off and you¡¯d already become something¡¯s food before we could find you. She¡¯d never know.¡±
¡°I find it shocking that you would think your own leader to be so oblivious as to be unable to see through such an amateurish ruse,¡± Tehlmar remarked. ¡°But hey, if you really want to try...¡± Still staying seated, he turned his gaze back to the leader towering above him and stared the man down, his gaze unbending. ¡°...go right ahead.¡±
The leader flinched as he felt something sharp press against his neck. He quickly retreated a few steps and stared as the blood tendril, which Tehlmar had sneakily extended along the ground and up the leader¡¯s side, retracted back into the elf¡¯s body through the small cut on his palm.
¡°I¡¯ll take all of you on at once if that¡¯s what you want, but it would be wise to remember that Akhustal Palebane doesn¡¯t befriend the weak,¡± Tehlmar warned. ¡°So... are we going to have a problem?¡±
For a moment, nobody on either side moved or spoke. Then, after what felt like an eternity, the group leader cracked a small smile. ¡°You have some guts¡ªfor a sharp-ear, at least,¡± he allowed. Turning back to the others, he clapped once. ¡°Enough of this. We still have work to do before we slumber. Let¡¯s go!¡±
Tehlmar let out a silent sigh of relief. It seemed that his problem would be over, at least for a little while. Still, that had been a closer call than he¡¯d originally wanted. For all the bluff and bluster, Tehlmar didn¡¯t want to fight any of these people. Without them, he¡¯d lose his way in the forest in a matter of hours and lose his life not soon after. As much as he didn¡¯t want to admit it, he needed them to get home in time for the troop deployment.
Still, had events turned another way, he had confidence he would have emerged the victor. He could take them, even if they all ganged up on him at once. Probably. Unless they surprised him. Or attacked him as he slept...
Suddenly Tehlmar didn¡¯t feel like sleeping anymore. Maybe this hadn¡¯t been such a smart move after all.
Not once in a million years would Tehlmar have ever thought that he would be glad to see Artiermius¡¯s face, and yet here he was, nearly brought to tears by the sight of the persnickety assistant. It meant that he¡¯d finally made it back to Esmaeyae. Indeed, for a place filled with such noxious memories, he found the sight of the palace gleaming in the mid-morning sun almost nostalgic.
The Stragmans had not killed him in his sleep, obviously, but they had taken his provocation as a challenge. Every day they¡¯d pushed the pace more and more, perhaps hoping to break him through sheer exertion. They would head out earlier each morning and halt later each night as well. The entire ordeal had turned into a days-long endurance run, one he didn¡¯t dare fail.
He didn¡¯t mind it in the abstract; he¡¯d wanted to get back to Drayhadal as fast as he possibly could, so that had worked in his favor. The problem had been surviving such a pace. It had taken everything he¡¯d had physically as he¡¯d pushed himself to his very limits, but he¡¯d done it¡ªbarely, but barely still counted as success. Now it was all over and he could finally take a nice refreshing nap¡ªor so he thought until the other man immediately began interrogating him.
¡°Prince Tehlmar, if I may say so, what were you thinking?!¡± he fumed. ¡°You can¡¯t just disappear for tens of days without a word! Your father is most irate over your actions! We had no idea if you would even return in time for the campaign!¡±
¡°Good to see you too, Artiermius. After all the problems I kept running into here, I decided I needed to go out and find myself,¡± Tehlmar lied. ¡°The transition from my old life to my current one hasn¡¯t been easy, you know? So I decided to travel north over the Baenen Mountains and spend some time camping alone up by the border. Just be with myself and the land and maybe figure some things out. Did something happen? Everybody seems on edge today.¡±
¡°Did-!¡± Artiermius cut off his exclamation and let out a deep breath through his nostrils as he pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. ¡°While you were gallivanting about, the clan heads decided to strike against the Ubrans in Eteria! And you were chosen to command the campaign! If you had not arrived today, the entire Esmae clan would have been humiliated beyond words!¡±
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¡°W-what?! Me?!¡± Tehlmar exclaimed with his best ¡®totally shocked¡¯ face. ¡°Why me?! And why would such a change happen now? I thought the isolationist faction still held sway as they have for the last millennia! What happened?¡±
Artiermius shook his head. ¡°Who can say what goes on inside the Council¡¯s chamber? The thoughts of those high above me are not mine to discern. But whatever it was, it was impactful enough to completely shift the philosophies of enough influential people to reverse centuries of precedent!¡±
¡°Huh,¡± Tehlmar replied, putting on a perplexed expression. On the macro scale, he knew exactly what had happened: the Masked Battalion. How exactly they¡¯d created this sudden reversal he couldn¡¯t say; he¡¯d purposely left the details up to the Battalion and his sister. The less he knew about the happenings, the less likely he would accidentally say something compromising and give it all away.
The dark secret to why any of Pyria¡¯s plan had a chance at success was the incredibly sterling reputation of the Masked Battalion earned through millennia of absolute obedience. The order understood the scary implications of its members¡¯ abilities quite well, and as such strove to ensure that their loyalty was never questioned. It prized the trust it earned in the ruling class greater than anything and would go out of its way to make sure that its actions never put that trust in jeopardy. The royalty of Drayhadal viewed Masks as the ultimate loyal subjects, and rightly so, for as long as the order existed.
That was why they would never see the Battalion¡¯s betrayal coming. It would be like expecting your own mother to stab you in the back. On second thought, given Tehlmar¡¯s experiences with Drayhadan royal politics, a maternal stabbing would be far more likely.
¡°You look filthy and it appears that most of your skin I can see is covered in rashes,¡± Artiermius observed. ¡°Did you not bother to bathe while you were out there?¡±
¡°Well-¡±
¡°No matter, time is of the essence. Head to the baths post-haste while I prepare your uniform. You are expected to address the gathered commanders later today and we must be off within the hour or you will be unfashionably late.¡±
¡°Wait, today?¡±
¡°Indeed. Now get a move on. We do not have time for more questions.¡±
The assistant clapped twice and a horde of servants materialized from a nearby doorway and practically dragged the stunned Tehlmar out of the room. It seemed that a nap would have to wait.
One by one, twelve men entered the command tent, disgruntled faces in full display on each one. The dozen soldiers comprised the top commander of each of the four ruling clans, along with their two top deputies. None of them seemed happy with his presence in their camp. He understood full well why: they resented his sudden promotion, something they viewed as unearned. Not even the trio from his own clan thought he deserved to command the army outside the tent, though they had the tact to hide their disapproval better than the rest.
¡°I have called you all here to address my plans for the upcoming campaign and give you all my initial orders,¡± Tehlmar began.
¡°Why should we respect the orders of a political appointee with no command experience?¡± one general immediately interrupted. Tehlmar recognized him as Tanquan Astr, the highest-ranking officer from the Astr clan and the longest-serving commander in the country. The man was so famous that Tehlmar recognized him even after spending the last twenty years out of the country. In a normal situation, he would be the top choice to lead the combined armies of the clans and the fact that he had been denied such an honor surely rankled him.
¡°Because I have more experience leading offensive actions than all of you combined, that¡¯s why,¡± Tehlmar shot back. ¡°When is the last time any of you have had to assault an enemy instead of staving off their assault? When is the last time you had to coordinate a pincer movement instead of a delaying action? I have years of experience taking fortified positions and you all don¡¯t. I also have spent years traveling through Eterian lands. I know them well, while I doubt any of you can say the same. It¡¯s that simple. Oh, and because the clan heads say so, that¡¯s why.¡±
The scowls remained, but nobody spoke up to challenge his arguments.
¡°All right, then,¡± he continued, leaning over a map of the lower half of the continent. ¡°We head north tomorrow. We will follow the Hebora Road north to the Baenen Range Pass. But from there we will head east to avoid Drogan when we enter Eterium. As we march, every available member of the Masked Battalion will move ahead of the main force. Their mission is to infiltrate and replace the scout patrols to the south and southwest of Crirada as best they can. It is vital that we keep the Ubrans from knowing we¡¯re coming until the last possible moment. Any questions so far?¡±
Still, nobody objected, though Tehlmar knew that was about to change. He took a breath and resumed, readying himself for the imminent outbursts. ¡°Once we have crossed the Baenen Range Pass, the specific timing of our march will depend on the movement of the Stragmans to the west. On the orders of the Council, Drayhadal has struck a deal for a temporary non-aggression pact and the Stragmans have agreed to join us in our attack on the Ubrans. Currently, they are making their way north towards Crirada, but given the distance and forest slowing them down, they likely won¡¯t be ready until several days after we are.¡±
A chorus of angry voices rose up at once, eventually quieting down as each officer quickly yielded to the crimson-faced Astr commander.
¡°This is absurd! You want to coordinate with those savages?!¡± the elder sputtered.
¡°We can¡¯t stop the Ubrans on our own. We need numbers and they have the numbers.¡±
¡°They can¡¯t be trusted!¡±
¡°I agree, we can¡¯t trust them, at least not completely. That¡¯s why the Mother of Nightmares will remain in Drayhadal to safeguard the nation,¡± Tehlmar responded, deflating the older man¡¯s bluster slightly. ¡°But we can trust them a bit this one time. Our agents have been very clear on this.
¡°You have to look at the Stragmans in the context of their current struggles. The Shells protesting without warning for seasons on end nearly crippled their economy and caused great unrest in their society. They lost many valuable resources thanks to an unexpected early migration from Krose to Pholis in the summer, and then the strike cost them even more during the migration from Pholis to Hoxoni. The Stragmans are on hard times.
¡°Meanwhile, the Ubrans have a seemingly endless flow of supplies crossing through Gustil from the Divide to Crirada. The Stragmans want those resources, and they want them badly enough that they will even team up with us to get them. For perhaps the first time in history, the goals of our two nations align. This is clear in the reports I have received from my former comrades in the Battalion. I trust their assessment. If they say that the Stragmans will be no trouble, then I assure you they will not give us any trouble.¡±
¡°We should not be helping our enemy,¡± the old man countered.
¡°We will not win on our own,¡± Tehlmar stressed. ¡°The Ubrans outnumber us ten to one at least, and unlike the Stragman invasions, we won¡¯t have the benefit of walls to aid us. If you have to, think of it this way: nobody stands to lose more people than the Stragmans, so in a way, their involvement will actually benefit us.¡±
The Astr crossed his arms and let out a harrumph, but didn¡¯t argue further. However, that wasn¡¯t enough for Tehlmar.
¡°I need to hear it from your mouth right now or we can¡¯t go any longer,¡± he told the old warrior. ¡°Will you follow my every order on this campaign to the letter?¡±
Tanquan Astr¡¯s scowl remained, but after a moment he gave a curt nod. ¡°I do this under protest, Prince Esmae, but my troops and I will follow where you lead.¡±
¡°Good enough,¡± Tehlmar replied. He looked around at the rest of the people assembled in the tent. ¡°What about the rest of you?¡±
One by one, each commander gave their begrudging assent.
¡°Excellent. I want you all to have your units ready to march first thing in the morning. Dismissed!¡±
The collective filed out one at a time, leaving Tehlmar blissfully alone. He stretched and let out a long, tired yawn just as somebody strode into the tent.
¡°My Prince!¡± Artiermius said as he stepped inside. ¡°There are several matters-¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Prince Tehlmar, I must-¡±
¡°No. I don¡¯t care what it is,¡± Tehlmar said as he pushed the functionary back out of the tent. ¡°It can wait until tomorrow. If it can¡¯t, I authorize you to deal with it for me.¡±
¡°But-¡±
¡°No buts. Tehlmar sleep now.¡± With one final shove, he was finally blissfully alone.
Tehlmar yawned again, even louder this time. Days of sleep deprivation had worn him down. He needed this rest more than anything. After stripping down, he crawled into his travel bed¡ªa prince couldn¡¯t just have a normal bedroll, that would be too functional¡ªand closed his eyes.
Everything was coming together at last. There¡¯d been so many moments when he¡¯d thought it wouldn¡¯t happen, but somehow it had all worked out so far. Now all he needed was the most important part.
¡°Just stay alive, Arlette. That¡¯s all,¡± he mumbled as he drifted off. ¡°Just survive.¡±
Chapter 84
The air felt cold for an early spring morning, though the heavy gusts of wind had a lot to do with that. The weather these last few days had been nothing but clear skies and a cold breeze, winter¡¯s final gasp against the incoming spring warmth and rain. Arlette would have preferred something a little calmer and balmier for this deciding day, but she¡¯d settle for this because at least it meant no precipitation.
Trudging towards the citadel in the soft predawn glow, Arlette took in the sights of the mostly empty city one last time. She didn¡¯t know if she¡¯d ever see this place again after this morning. For all their planning, Arlette and the others knew that the odds of success were stacked against them. She didn¡¯t know what would happen to her once the battle was over. If her side lost and was wiped out while she watched helplessly from above in the Otharians¡¯ floating ship, what would happen to her then? Would she travel back to Otharia? Would they kick her out somewhere? Either way, she wouldn¡¯t be coming back here. With that in mind, she¡¯d packed up what little important supplies she still possessed and taken them with her.
A current of guilt had been running through her from the moment that the plan had come into form. If this was to be the final battle, then she should be there with the rest of them, fighting the good fight instead of sitting in a floating contraption in the sky, safe but alone. She understood the critical role she played in the plan¡ªshe¡¯d suggested it herself, even¡ªbut that didn¡¯t make the guilt go away.
Crirada itself seemed to embody her mood. The city stood largely quiet. The majority of the army would be waking soon to be ready for the final counterattack. The Ubrans often led a strike mid-morning, so it was imperative that they hit the Ubrans before then. Arlette, however, had woken even earlier so she could join the commanders in the final planning and preparations.
She arrived at the citadel just before the sun peeked over the horizon. Supreme General Erizio Astalaria must have told the guards to expect her because they waved her through without challenge or comment. She found Astalaria in his work chambers. All the other high officers were there as well, both the Eterians and the leader of the Kutrad contingent. The Kutrad leader, Commander Rhona Moor, seemed highly incensed as Arlette entered the room.
¡°-insanity! You¡¯re talking about a suicide mission!¡± Moor protested.
¡°That¡¯s correct. Look around you,¡± General Astalaria solemnly replied, gesturing to the others in the room. ¡°This is all that remains. We¡¯ve lost eleven of our best in the last few days. Each gave their lives to hold the Ubrans off just for a little longer so that we could make this one last attack. What would you prefer, that we stay holed up here and let the Ubrans overrun us? You know that the end is coming sooner rather than later. If the end has come, then let us go out in a blaze of glory.¡±
The Kutradian ground her teeth for a moment but said nothing at first. Finally, she turned towards the door and growled out ¡°I have to go prepare my troops. It will take time to bring all the jaglioths down to the ground.¡± With that, she was past Arlette, out the door, and gone.
The Supreme General pulled out a small black vial, turned to a nearby subordinate officer, and handed it to him. ¡°Go follow her. Make sure they don¡¯t get cold feet.¡±
¡°Sir, but then I won¡¯t be able to fight in the strike team!¡± the alarmed man argued.
¡°It¡¯s more important that the jaglioths are in the fight. Besides, it¡¯s not like you won¡¯t be able to contribute. With chimirin, you should be able to pierce their defenses from the other end and provide a gap for the troops to capitalize on. Go now, and may your ancestor¡¯s blessings be upon you.¡±
The man nodded and ran out of the room.
¡°What¡¯s with that look, Demirt?¡± the general asked suddenly, causing Arlette to stiffen in surprise.
¡°Doesn¡¯t chimirin kill anybody who takes it? Are you giving it to everybody?¡±
Everybody still breathing on the Eterian side knew about chimirin now. It had always been an old myth, an explanation for Otharia¡¯s continued existence, but most people had scoffed at the idea before. Now, after several days of miraculous feats followed by horrific deaths, the brutal reality of the drug could not be denied.
¡°We have enough left for the underground strike team.¡±
¡°What about you?¡± she inquired with a twinge of disbelief.
¡°What do you take me for, Demirt? Some cowardly commander who is unwilling to die with his soldiers when the time comes?¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t respond, in part because that had been exactly what she¡¯d thought of the despicable man. He¡¯d always been known as an incredibly powerful fighter, but she¡¯d never seen him as the sort to lead his people into the breach. Rather, she¡¯d imagined him delegating such roles to subordinates as he manipulated his assets like pieces on a game board.
¡°I hate to disappoint you, but nobody here is entirely as you seem to believe. I know that while you will likely survive this day, I will assuredly not. But I will take that bastard emperor¡¯s head with me when I go, that I can assure you.¡±
The non-so-subtle clicking of metal on stone saved Arlette from any further embarrassment as the uncanny insectoid Otharian Many transporter entered the room with the Otharian official¡ªwhose name Arlette now understood to be Simona Jumala¡ªclose behind. Almost immediately, the image of the armor-clad Otharian leader appeared in front of the Many.
¡°Alright, I¡¯m here,¡± the Otharian leader said. ¡°Is everything ready?¡±
¡°Almost. Our troops will be moving into position soon,¡± General Astalaria replied.
¡°How will you keep the Ubrans from noticing that something is different?¡± Lord Ferros inquired.
¡°We usually change the units atop the wall in about one and a half hours, before the Ubrans usual assault. As long as we strike before that time, there shouldn¡¯t be any activity that would warn them before we attack. Once the attack begins, those atop the wall will make their way down and join in as the rear guard.¡±
¡°I see. Seems you have it all figured out.¡±
¡°Of course. You have the explosives?¡±
¡°Loaded and ready. What¡¯s the signal to start the attack?¡±
¡°You are the signal. When this conversation is over, my strike team will descend into the tunnels. It will take us about an hour to make it to our destination, as I will have to create the final stretch as we go. Begin your attack several moments before then to create chaos and ensure the Ubran emperor moves to one of his three fortified positions. Once we hear the explosions, we will wait long enough for their emperor to relocate and then we will strike.¡±
¡°Very well, I will do that. Is there anything else?¡±
The general paused. ¡°Aim well.¡±
The Otharian let out a loud, barking laugh. ¡°Good one. Simona, let¡¯s move. We need to begin loading the zeppelin now.¡±
¡°As you wish,¡± the woman beside the Many acknowledged. Together, the woman and the Many contraption left.
¡°Before you go, I need to memorize your appearances,¡± Arlette interrupted before anybody else could exit. ¡°Line up as you leave, please.¡±
She walked around each person as they approached, taking in their features and committing them to memory. Finally, only the Supreme General remained.
Arlette looked at the man who¡¯d been such an unmerciful villain in her life, who¡¯d bullied and harassed her both as a child and now as her commander. She wanted to feel that same hate for him that she¡¯d felt for all these years. He was a creep and a jerk and an asshole and had always been such, to the point that she didn¡¯t need to inspect him to make a double; his arrogant smirk was already etched into her mind. She wanted to say something spiteful, one last swipe in their season-long verbal brawl. But looking at him now, she couldn¡¯t find it in herself to hate him anymore. Not today, the day his story would end.
¡°Make them pay,¡± she said instead. The man only nodded and walked away.
Arlette watched as the metal loading cage rose into the air, carrying the Otharians and what little of their supplies they kept down in the citadel upward. It took a little longer, but everybody needed to play their part to the fullest. As much as Arlette¡ªor Supreme General Astalaria, for that matter¡ªhated it, it needed to look to the Ubrans like the leaders of the defense were not just going up to the airship but actively running away and abandoning the very people they were supposed to lead. That was why she stood in the citadel courtyard, watching the large metal cage retreat into the sky, instead of by the west gate with everybody else.
All around her stood illusory copies of the most senior officers. There was a time, long ago, when this many people would have taken everything she had. Now, provided she didn¡¯t have to deal with anything else like fighting on a battlefield, she barely needed to try. Looking back on her conversation days ago, she realized that Peko had been right; she¡¯d come a long way, farther than she¡¯d admitted to herself before this. Perhaps she could do more now in battle than just create a single doppelganger of herself.
Soon enough the cage returned, setting down with a rather loud and disconcerting crash, though the compartment itself didn¡¯t look to take any damage. The gate opened and she walked forward, her illusions all around her. The gate closed behind her without her even doing anything¡ªhow it knew, she could not say¡ªand quickly the metal rope that the cage hung from went taut and she began to ascend.
For a moment, she luxuriated in the strange feeling, watching her surroundings sink below her while she didn¡¯t even move, then turned her gaze to her destination above.
Even looking at the massive floating object up close, Arlette couldn¡¯t understand just how the huge metal airship didn¡¯t plummet to the ground. After all, metal was even heavier than stone. So what kept it in the air? Were she to try to come up with her own version of a giant flying machine, she would have tried to base it on a bird, or even better, the great flying beast that destroyed Zrukhora. But both birds and that beast sported wings¡ªlarge ones relative to their size¡ªthat they would beat through the air to soar through the skies, while this craft had no wings whatsoever. The closest she could find was a series of fins on what she believed to be the rear of the airship. Everything else was the opposite of wings, the main body round and bulbous with a somewhat boxy protrusion covered in what appeared to be windows jutting out from the bottom. It didn¡¯t even seem to have anything that moved. The body and even the fins stood still, while the only motion she could see came from these relatively small circles sticking out from the body, each whirling about a central axis so quickly that she couldn¡¯t even make out what was spinning.
Arlette¡¯s musings ceased as she cleared the citadel walls and the cage became subject to the harsh winds whirling above. She clutched the railing with both hands as the cage swayed perilously in the air, gusts buffeting its side. She¡¯d watched Simona ride the same compartment through the same winds without trouble, but Arlette couldn¡¯t put the same faith in the metal contraption as the Otharian could.
The journey upward felt like an hour, though in reality, it surely was a small fraction of that. It took all she could manage to hold her illusions while the cage shook, and she found herself wanting to just close her eyes and pretend she was back on solid ground, but she needed to make sure the illusions remained and reacted properly.
Mercifully, Arlette¡¯s ascent came to an end not too much later, as the cage entered a hatch at the bottom of the airship and came to a stop. Quickly the hatch shut¡ªmoving under its own power, somehow¡ªleaving her standing in darkness for a moment. Then the door to the cage slid aside and another door behind it moved aside as well, revealing a hallway and one rather unenthusiastic woman.
¡°Welcome aboard,¡± Simona said, seemingly put off by Arlette¡¯s presence on the ship.
Arlette let out a sigh of relief and released her illusions. She nodded to the Otharian and stepped out of the cage and into the ship proper. Though she knew that she was still floating high up in the sky, the enclosed environment at least gave her the feeling of stability and let her relax.
Looking around the hallway, which was all of the ship that she could currently see, Arlette couldn¡¯t help but gawk at the alien aura it possessed. Much like the hallways of the castle below, it possessed impressive length. However, that was the only similarity she could find with the hallways she was used to. Gone were the open windows, the well-worn stone, the torches lending their pleasant orange light and whispers of flame every few paces. Instead, there was nothing but four flat planes of metal extending onward for paces and paces, with some sort of glowing crystals embedded in the walls every eight paces or so. The place felt sterile, lifeless, and eerily quiet; the only ambient sound she could hear was a low drone on the very edge of her hearing that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end.
¡°This craft is quite... impressive,¡± Arlette replied after a moment.
¡°Of course it is!¡± the Otharian woman scoffed, puffing her chest out with pride. ¡°It was created by Lord Ferros himself! There¡¯s nothing he cannot do!¡±
¡°It reminds me of this fortress I found in the Stragman rainforest last year,¡± Arlette commented. ¡°The sliding doors and the use of metal are quite similar.¡±
Lightning flashed in Simona¡¯s eyes. ¡°You would slander Lord Ferros¡¯s greatness by comparing it to the work of jungle savages?!¡±
¡°No, it was-¡±
¡°Obviously, you have yet to understand the miracles of my lord¡¯s work! Perhaps a short tour will erase that ignorance.¡±
¡°No, I¡¯m-¡±
¡°Come with me!¡± the Otharian declared as she spun about and marched down the hallway.
Arlette let out a sigh and began to follow. She didn¡¯t really want to do this given that a battle was about to start any time now, but at least this would keep her from getting lost. Besides, there was only one way to go down this hallway.
Simona stopped before a small panel jutting out beside a doorway-sized depression in the long, flat wall. Arlette could make out several different colored buttons on it, though she had no clue what any of them did. The Otharian pressed the largest one, a green square with rounded corners, and suddenly the depression slid into the wall, revealing a massive room that ran parallel to the hallway and stretched back to the loading cage¡¯s hatch and beyond.
In the dim light, Arlette could make out what seemed to be a row of large spools starting near their position and traveling all the way back to the far end of the room. Each spool was attached to the ceiling and around the spool wound what looked to be some sort of rope, except the rope was made of metal just like the rope attached to the loading cage. A bit of the rope hung down below the spool, and at the end of said rope was some sort of massive metal claw easily six paces wide. Each of these claws grasped a wooden barrel equally as large.
Arlette let out a low whistle as her eyes followed the row of barrels down the long room. There had to be at least twenty of them in there.
¡°Are those-¡±
¡°Yes, Lord Ferros will rain these bombs down upon the Ubrans shortly.¡±
¡°Wow, Pari really went overboard,¡± Arlette mumbled to herself.
¡°What was that?¡±
¡°Two friends of mine traveled to Otharia a while ago. One of them makes explosives and she was the person who made these. I¡¯ve seen what her smaller creations can do, so I¡¯ll just say I wouldn¡¯t want to be near any of these when they go off.¡±
¡°Ah, you are an acquaintance of the Lord after all?¡±
¡°No, well- I mean...I guess you could say I am a friend of a friend.¡±
¡°I see,¡± she nodded. ¡°That explains why my Lord felt comfortable allowing you to board. He is not normally so open with others. These friends of yours, I know of them. They surely have told you much about Lord Ferros, yes?¡±
¡°Yeah, Sofie says he¡¯s a... a very nice and wonderful individual.¡±
The Otharian hummed in agreement. ¡°We are blessed that he arrived to deliver us from the darkness.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t respond, turning her head away to keep her counterpart from noticing her roll her eyes. It had been a long, long time since she¡¯d met somebody with this level of zeal for anybody or anything. It put her on edge. This sort of devotion never led to good things in the long run.
Arlette heard a soft click and the door slid back into place, cutting off her view.
¡°Next, the living quarters.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t we have better things to do?¡± Arlette wondered aloud as she hurried after the Otharian heading further down the corridor. ¡°There¡¯s a battle about to start.¡±
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
¡°And what can we do about that from here?¡±
¡°...drop the bombs?¡±
Simona chuckled knowingly. ¡°That is not our responsibility.¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°You shall see very soon.¡± They arrived at the next door and Simona pressed the green button, revealing a short passage that ended at a perpendicular hallway. Arlette could see part of a doorway peeking around the corner of the inner hallway. ¡°This is where the living quarters are. Should the Lord require your presence back in Otharia, which I highly doubt, you will be given one cabin for sleeping and privacy.¡±
The door shut in Arlette¡¯s face, barely missing her nose as she leaned in. She held back a nasty retort as anger flared inside her. What was Simona¡¯s deal? It felt like the Otharian official held a grudge against her but Arlette couldn¡¯t think of a single thing that she¡¯d done to offend the other woman. Was this just how all Otharians treated non-Otharians? Stories about their hatred of others were as old as folklore and just as well known throughout the continent. Simona was the first one she¡¯d ever met in person, however, so Arlette couldn¡¯t say for sure.
¡°And lastly, our desired destination,¡± the Otharian said, moving swiftly towards the end of the hallway. The rest of the hallway was nothing but smooth walls and they arrived at the end of the passage in no time.
There the walls curved inward before opening up into a large room shaped roughly like a wedge terminating at the front of the craft. Unlike the other rooms, large windows lined the chamber on both sides, filling it with bright morning light. Arlette had to blink at the sudden transition from the dim glow of the crystals to the warm rays of the sun reflecting off of the varied surfaces.
The room almost appeared to be two rooms fused into one. Several seats, benches, and tables¡ªall smooth metal without even a hint of a cushion anywhere in sight¡ªgrew out of the floor in the wider back half of the room. The other half, on the other hand, had only a single seat up near the very front. Instead, two long metal protrusions ran along the walls beneath the windows, like teeth around the inside edge of a mouth.
Every single finger¡¯s width of these installations had something sticking out of it. The majority of it consisted of buttons of all shapes and sizes. Arlette couldn¡¯t even begin to guess at the significance of any of the hundreds of buttons, but she found herself nearly getting lost in their mesmerizing blinking patterns. Almost all of the rest consisted of strange flat surfaces that, through some unknown wizardry, displayed various moving images upon them. She wondered where the pictures came from and for a moment Arlette mused that somebody, presumably Lord Ferros, had stuffed several Manys inside the cabinets, before deciding that such an idea was crazy even in this objectively insane context.
The nature of the images caught her eye, however. It took only a moment for her to realize that they were views of the surrounding area somehow being displayed on the glowing surfaces. That realization brought her back to the moment, reminding her of her priorities. Placing her pack down by the hallway entrance and walking over to the nearest window, she looked through the clear panel and down upon the city where she¡¯d lived, slept, and fought for the past season and more. This time, the steady stability of the craft and the solid glass pushed away the unease that had bombarded her on the way up, bringing a sigh of relief to her lips.
There Crirada stood, spread out like a wheel with spokes connecting the citadel near the center to the outer wall. The city looked barren and broken, with entire areas either destroyed in the fighting or ransacked for materials by the defenders later. The area that had once been the Worker¡¯s Quarter stood out even amidst the general wreckage, a whole massive area of the city now nothing more than empty craters.
Four massive collections of tents surrounded the city, hemming the defenders in. At the rear of the western camp, she could see three stone rings standing above the tents. A scowl subconsciously grew on her face. That was where the bastard who¡¯d swallowed up her home lived. She couldn¡¯t wait to see those rings crumble into ruins.
It boggled Arlette¡¯s mind just how many Ubrans the Empire could field even this late in a costly campaign on a different continent. At least from up here, she could easily make out the holes in their blockade. Not even the Ubrans could completely encompass a city of Crirada¡¯s magnitude.
Arlette¡¯s balance shifted to the side as the low, almost imperceptible hum grew in volume to a moderate rumble and the land below began to turn. First, the ship rotated about slowly, stopping as the front settled on a north-northeast heading. Then, she felt the craft begin to move forward, creeping away from the citadel and moving in on the northern wall.
¡°Aren¡¯t we going the wrong way?¡± she asked.
¡°Lord Ferros means to give the impression that your commanders are fleeing to Kutrad, both to complete the ruse and to misdirect attention,¡± the Otharian explained. ¡°We will move north, then turn towards the western camp and come upon them from the northeast.¡±
Arlette just nodded, forcing down the turmoil she felt inside at the prospect of watching it all play out. She kept quiet as they cleared the northern wall and continued forward, moving at her estimate about as fast as a fit man¡¯s jog.
¡°Who is controlling this thing?¡± Arlette finally asked, unable to hold back her curiosity any longer.
¡°My Lord is, of course,¡± the Otharian replied.
She looked around the chamber, paying special attention to the large chair at the front of the room. The two of them stood alone. ¡°Is he here somewhere?¡±
¡°Of course not! Why should he be here when he can control the craft from his palace back home?¡±
¡°He... what?¡±
¡°Observe,¡± the Otharian instructed, pointing to the installation directly in front of the single chair. The large seat had previously obscured most of the panels at the very front, but now Arlette could see that the surface before the chair was covered in an array of devices not found elsewhere in the cabin. She saw what looked like levers, small flat wheels that were too big to be buttons like the ones found everywhere else, and, near the very center, a strange contoured rod protruding straight upward. The shape seemed designed to be grasped with a hand, but for what purpose she could not say.
Arlette nearly jumped as the rod suddenly tilted noticeably to the left for a moment before returning to its full upright position. Then, a lever to the left of the rod, which had been level with the floor, rose slightly. All of this gave her the impression that somebody invisible sat on the chair, secretly manipulating the controls as she watched, bewildered.
¡°Surprised?¡± The Otharian let out an amused giggle. ¡°There is nothing Lord Ferros cannot do! This is child¡¯s play to him!¡±
¡°But... how?¡±
¡°That is not for you to know,¡± she smugly replied. ¡°So, now do you understand Lord Ferros¡¯s greatness?¡±
¡°I guess I-¡±
Arlette¡¯s statement cut off abruptly as, without warning, the stick seemed to throw itself to the left as far as it could go, the lever twisted upward until it could point no higher, and various other implements began shifting rapidly about by some transparent hand. The moderate rumble droning in the background crescendoed into a deafening roar, one that seemed to come not just from the rear of the craft but from all around them.
Arlette stumbled and flailed wildly as the ship lurched beneath her feet, the massive construction accelerating and pitching to the left faster than she thought possible. A shadow passed by the windows on the other side of the cabin, though she couldn¡¯t make out the source before it passed by.
¡°What is-¡± Arlette tried to holler above the din, but once more she could not even get out a full sentence before the entire craft seemed to tilt the opposite way and throw itself to the side. Another dark shape passed by, this time on Arlette¡¯s side of the cabin. Her eyes went wide as she recognized the object as a massive stone boulder, a hundred paces or more in diameter. The giant projectile rocketed past her viewpoint, somehow barely missing the entire structure as it continued upward through the air in a high arc.
Several moments later, she caught sight of the stone again as it plummeted back toward the earth, its journey culminating in an earth-shaking crash into the ground below. Even from hundreds of paces away, Arlette could hear the sound of the impact through the howl of the machine around her.
The floor beneath her lurched once more, though a bit less harshly this time. Another stone flew by, but it rose slower than the others and came back down sooner. The ship was rising quickly, Arlette realized rather belatedly¡ªshe¡¯d missed the change in velocity because she¡¯d been too busy trying not to fall over during the evasive maneuvers.
Arlette looked over to find Simona standing nonchalantly nearby. The other woman didn¡¯t even look like she¡¯d broken a sweat, almost as if there was absolutely nothing to worry about. She grinned, amused by Arlette¡¯s evident worry.
¡°You don¡¯t have to worry,¡± the Otharian said. ¡°There is no way they can hit us with such paltry offerings.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t know if the woman spoke from experience and knowledge or merely from faith, but she decided it wasn¡¯t worth getting into. The danger seemed to have passed, as no more boulders came flying their way in the next few moments.
Arlette glanced down and found that the ship had reoriented and they now were heading slowly towards the western camp. She let out a relieved breath.
¡°I guess it¡¯s finally time,¡± she muttered to nobody in particular as she resumed her vigil over the land below. Everything looked to be as good as she could hope.
However, a seed of doubt began to grow inside her as time crept on. She turned to the Otharian. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we be moving faster at this point?¡± she inquired. ¡°Why are we going so slowly?¡±
¡°Lord Ferros will pilot as he sees fit,¡± came the reply.
¡°But we¡¯re running out of time!¡± Arlette argued. ¡°The strike team below is relying on us to herd the Emperor into position and signal that the attack has begun! If we¡¯re even a little late, the whole plan will break down!¡±
Simona simply shrugged and stated, ¡°My Lord has a plan for everything. Our place is merely to watch.¡±
Arlette stared at the calm, seemingly unconcerned woman and bit her lip to keep herself from breaking into a tirade. She didn¡¯t know if the Otharian knew something or if she was simply overly trusting in her ruler. Arlette had found Simona¡¯s demeanor off-putting from the start, but now she wondered if that was simply her instincts trying to warn her that something was wrong.
She eyed the zealous woman with suspicion. Were the Otharians going to betray everybody else? Lord Ferros had made his lack of concern for their lives abundantly plain several days ago. But no, that made little sense. Why would the Otharians bother to involve themselves in this final strike when they could just leave everybody here to die? What would be the point?
They were finally approaching the Ubrans¡¯ western camp. She could see the Ubran troops far down below scrambling to prepare for its imminent arrival. As if on cue, the city¡¯s western gate opened and every available soldier that could still move sallied forth and charged for the Ubran encampment, hoping to strike before the Ubrans could fully mobilize.
A boulder twice the size of the ones before shot up towards the airship from nearby in the western camp. Arlette sucked in her breath and cringed as it rocketed straight at her, but the craft did not swerve in the slightest and the projectile ran out of upward momentum perhaps fifty paces below her. She released a sigh and took a deep breath. It seemed that they were now too high to be reached, even by whatever super-Observers the Ubrans seemed to have on their side.
That didn¡¯t stop the Ubrans from trying, however. A second rock soared into the air, then a third, and then a fourth. All missed and instead slammed into the earth with tremendous force, shaking the world around them.
Now that the drone of the airship had died back down to moderate levels, the crash of the boulders against the earth could be heard loud and clear, even at their great height. With the threat the stones presented no longer something to fret over, Arlette found the sight and sound of them terminating their flight in failure almost cathartic. It reminded her of the dull boom she used to hear from Pari¡¯s larger bombs, something you felt as much as you heard.
Arlette stiffened as a sudden, terrible thought crossed her mind. She turned once more to the Otharian, who stood by another window looking down upon the people below with detached dispassion. ¡°We need to go faster and drop the bombs, right now!¡± she cried.
Simona glanced up for a fraction of a moment before returning her gaze to the events beneath them. ¡°I have said it enough already-¡±
¡°No, listen!¡± Arlette seized the other woman¡¯s shoulder and gave them a rough shake. ¡°The strike team is listening for the bomb explosions, but they¡¯re far underground! They won¡¯t be able to tell the difference between the bombs and those boulders landing! If they attack too soon-¡±
Her words came to a sudden halt as she noticed the ground beneath the stone rings begin to quake. From her vantage point, it looked almost as if the land itself was shivering. In any other context, the sight would have left her overjoyed. But now, it only meant that the plan was falling apart in the worst possible way.
¡°Oh, no...¡± she breathed.
The shaking intensified as the earth moved with such chaotic force and intensity that it seemed to liquefy, becoming much closer in Arlette¡¯s eyes to the frothing ocean than sturdy, reliable land. One by one the rings collapsed in on themselves under the incredible strain, the large cohesive stone cracking and crumbling into rubble. Arlette prayed to her ancestors that the Ubran emperor had been inside one of the rings; being crushed to death would be a fitting end for the twice-damned villain.
Suddenly the earthquake ceased and a moment later the ground beneath the central ring¡¯s remains erupted, sending chunks of rock flying all over. Out of a hole in the center of the rubble stepped Supreme General Erizio Astalaria and the rest of the strike team. Arlette pumped her fist at their entrance. If the Ubran emperor were inside the central ring, he was surely dead now.
But then, she saw something that sent a chilling spike of dread lancing into her: a massive boulder sent from an Ubran super-Observer directly at the strike team. With almost comical ease, General Astalaria glanced at the incoming rock and earth surged upward and forward, almost as if it were alive, and deflected the projectile. But that wasn¡¯t the problem. The problem was that the Ubrans were willing to attack that location at all. There was no way they would dare to bombard their own emperor like that. It was too risky. And yet, they had done so without even a second thought. Even as she pondered that notion, more projectiles, from fireballs burning like miniature suns to humongous shards of ice, were already on their way towards not just the strike team, but also the remains of the two other rings!
¡°He¡¯s not in there,¡± she gasped with horror.
Another equally terrible thought began to burn inside her and she turned back to the Otharian, who still looked out the window with a complete lack of care as the battle grew in ferocity.
¡°Why haven¡¯t we dropped the bombs yet?!¡± Arlette demanded. ¡°We¡¯re three-quarters of the way through the camp!¡±
Simona shrugged again. ¡°Lord Ferros will do whatever he deems best.¡±
¡°Best for who? For us or for you? Are you betraying us?¡±
¡°Lord Ferros does not have to explain his decisions to you.¡±
¡°Lord Ferros, Lord Ferros, Lord Ferros! Enough of this shit!¡± She glanced out the window and saw that they were nearly atop the remains of the stone rings, which marked the rear of the Ubran encampment. ¡°Don¡¯t you care what happens to the people down there?! They¡¯re going to be slaughtered!¡±
A small smile crept onto the Otharian¡¯s face and she looked down once more at the battle below, but this time Arlette didn¡¯t find ambivalence in her eyes. She found hate. ¡°The fewer Eterians that draw breath, the better the world,¡± Simona stated.
Fury surged forth from Arlette¡¯s soul. She slammed her left fist into the Otharian¡¯s gut, doubling her over, before driving her right fist into Simona¡¯s temple as hard as she could. Simona slumped to the ground, out cold. Arlette stepped past, not bothering to watch as the woman fell to the hard metal floor.
She¡¯d had enough, enough of all of it. It was time for her to have a ¡°face-to-face¡± talk with one Lord Ferros.
Chapter 85
Blake set a timer for fifty-five minutes in his suit as his people walked out of the meeting room in Crirada. Quickly the Many transporter and Simona made their way to the rooms given to them for the duration and Blake got down to business.
¡°Pack up everything you need to take with you that can be taken in time. I will fetch my sensor skitter and have it board with you. I want you, the Many, our stuff, and that Arlette woman on board with at least twenty minutes to spare. I¡¯m going to fake a run north, to make it look like the Eterian leaders are running away to Kutrad, then we¡¯ll turn towards the west and come down on them from their northern side. I trust that you can handle the loading process yourself?¡±
¡°You may rely on me, my Lord,¡± Simona replied in her standard enthusiastic and confident manner.
However, Blake caught a hint of reluctance in her that she quickly hid behind her normal demeanor. ¡°Is something wrong?¡± he asked his minion.
¡°Of course not!¡± came the reply.
Blake didn¡¯t buy it. ¡°Simona, you¡¯re one of my top subordinates. It¡¯s important that we keep a clear channel of communication between us, so don¡¯t hide your reservations from me, especially not now when they might matter.¡±
¡°It... it is of no importance, my Lord.¡±
¡°Stop it. Today is a busy day, so just say it and we can move on.¡±
¡°...it feels wrong to allow that woman aboard the Flying Toaster, my Lord,¡± she finally admitted, glancing away and avoiding looking his way. ¡°The ship is Otharian. She does not belong there. Her presence will sully it.¡±
Now Blake understood. He should have realized it on his own. A dislike and distrust of outsiders ran through most every Otharian, but Simona was easily the most fervent of his subordinates. He didn¡¯t blame her, after what she¡¯d been through as a child growing up near the Eterian border and living through raids and abuse of the Eterians. The Flying Toaster was special. It was something that only he, and by extension Otharia, could do. He should have realized that others would view it as hallowed ground of sorts and that they wouldn¡¯t want to share. He even shared those feelings a little, like a man overly protective of his new sports car, he wasn¡¯t willing to let just anybody ride. Still, it was too late for objections in this case.
¡°I understand your misgivings, but it¡¯s too late for them this time,¡± he informed her. ¡°We need her for part of the plan.¡±
¡°Do you truly believe that her ruse will help?¡± Simona asked skeptically.
¡°Ehhhh, probably not that much, but it¡¯s worth it even if it just makes our odds two percent better, wouldn¡¯t you agree? It¡¯s not like it really costs us anything more than mild inconvenience.¡± Blake didn¡¯t mention that certain other residents of his fortress also desired that the Arlette woman be kept out of harm¡¯s way and had been very annoying about it. ¡°You don¡¯t have to be a gracious host. Just let her aboard and then kick her out when the fighting is over.¡±
Simona bowed. ¡°As you wish, my Lord.¡±
Blake cut the transmission with a quick wave to Agrits and walked out. Quickly he headed back towards his personal chambers, but a familiar face poked through the exit before he could leave the House of Manys.
¡°Oh hey, are you done already?¡± she asked. ¡°I was hoping to talk to my friend if I could.¡±
¡°You¡¯re too late. She¡¯s already off doing whatever she needs to do.¡±
¡°Oh...¡± came the disappointed reply.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, she¡¯ll be up in the zeppelin the whole time. Nothing is going to happen to her,¡± Blake said before Sofie starting getting all nervous and badgering him about something.
¡°I know, I know,¡± she said with a scowl.
Blake made to move past her and she placed a hand on his metal-clad arm as he passed. ¡°Blake, thank you for doing this. I know you didn¡¯t want to help the Eterians any more than absolutely necessary so I appreciate you going out of your way to do this for me.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not doing this for you,¡± Blake shot back. ¡°Though it does make my days less annoying when you aren¡¯t harping on and on about it all the time, so I guess I¡¯m doing it just a little for you.¡±
¡°Then why are you helping them at all? You never seem to care if they live or die.¡±
Blake¡¯s face scrunched up with indignation behind his mask as he thought about the dozens of battles waged between his forces and that woman, and how they always ended in frustration. ¡°Because I¡¯m stubborn, I guess. Just packing up and running would be tantamount to losing, and I refuse to lose. Not to her. I get pissed just thinking about it. Also, thanks for basically calling me an evil heartless bastard. You really know how to make a guy feel good about himself.¡±
¡°Well, maybe if you-¡±
Blake tuned out Sofie¡¯s outraged rebuttal and continued into the fortress proper. The hallways stood largely empty, even more so than usual. Today was a weekend day of sorts, so few people would be around, though Blake knew that Leo was almost definitely in his office, the workaholic maniac that he was.
Finally back in his own chambers, he delicately placed himself into his ¡°command chair¡±, as he liked to refer to it in his mind, and activated the console in front of him. The setup in many ways mimicked the battle station that followed him around everywhere, only with even more devices sticking out from every angle. One feature, for example, was a setup that resembled the flight stick he¡¯d purchased back on Earth to play flight simulators on his PC. He¡¯d chosen this interface to steer the Flying Toaster because it was the one he was most familiar with, and as the creator and pilot of the craft, his experience was really the only thing that mattered.
He¡¯d need that in a moment, but for now, he needed to retrieve his sensor array for loading onto the ship. Calling up the skitter, he ordered it to proceed from the ¡°blighted area¡±, as the locals called it, to the loading area within the citadel grounds. There, through the overhead viewpoint of a nearby flitter, he watched as it joined Simona, his Many transporter, and several small boxes of supplies in the lift.
With the click of a mouse, he began the final transfer of data from the bot. The transfer would take some time, so he leaned back and let out a yawn, content to wait while Simona handled the boarding. He checked his timer. Forty-five minutes.
Blake wondered to himself if involving his forces in the Ubran invasion had been a good idea. He¡¯d done it for his own reasons, namely to study the aftereffects of the massive Severed event in the hopes of finding a key to returning to Earth. He¡¯d hoped the obvious extra-dimensionality of the occurrence meant that there would be ample data to collect and harness for his purposes. He¡¯d been wrong.
Blake had originally not known what to look for, so he¡¯d decided to harvest everything he could and sort it out later. Using technology he¡¯d copied from the bunker, Blake¡¯s sensor skitter had collected reams of information of all kinds. However, after many hours of careful study, what data he could figure out suggested that he¡¯d been looking at it all wrong. He¡¯d thought that Earth, Scyria, and the tentacle realm were all just three layers in a dimensional cake, and if he could figure out how to detect these different layers, he would have one vital link to Earth. Now, he¡¯d come to realize that his assumption was likely very incorrect. For all he knew, Earth and Scyria were like two separate and distinct onions, and the tentacle realm was merely another layer on the Scyrian onion. He¡¯d found nothing that suggested a way home. He didn¡¯t want to think about the ramifications of that right now, or ever.
The lift was nearing the Flying Toaster a second time, this trip featuring one woman and a bunch of illusions made to look like all the important people still in the city. Blake found it strange that the illusions showed up on camera, given how speech translation did not work through machines. Were the images some sort of hard light constructs? What about the projections of the Manys? Maybe he¡¯d look into that one day when he was bored and had free time. He chuckled. When was the last time he¡¯d had something resembling free time?
Thirty-seven minutes.
With the full allotment of passengers now aboard the airship, Blake decided to do one last systems check of the payload resting in the ¡°bot bay¡±, as he liked to call it. Within the long chamber towards the rear of the gondola hung eighteen massive bombs, the product of several days of non-stop collaboration between him and the bioorganic terror known as Pari Clansnarl.
Each bomb stood a good five feet wide and eight feet long. He¡¯d hung them lengthwise, with a modified clamp clutching the flat sides on the left and right, using the same equipment he normally used to deploy skitters from the ship. He¡¯d found neither the time nor the desire to heavily rework the machinery in that compartment, so the clamps still hung from the same long cables that he would normally unspool to lower the skitters before releasing them. Since all he had to do was open the bay doors and release the clamps, keeping the rest of the setup as it normally was wouldn¡¯t matter either way.
The bombs themselves packed quite a wallop, and he held a fair amount of pride in them. They contained a certain mechanism that, once armed, would cause the whole thing to go up in a massive explosion upon a sudden decelerating impact. They also looked like giant barrels, the kind that Donkey Kong would have thrown, because Pari had refused to use a proper metal bomb casing, instead insisting that the bombs be giant candles. Given the sheer insanity of trying to acquire several tons of wax, he¡¯d done his best to talk some sense into her, and wooden barrels lined with wax were the best he had been able to manage. They looked stupid in his eyes, but what did he care in the end? They went boom and they did it well, and that was what really mattered.
It took several minutes to run the checks, but in the end, all of the bombs returned the proper response codes. He armed them and turned back to the airship controls. The timer ticked down to just under thirty minutes, and so he grabbed the flight stick and began to rotate the craft north before setting the thrust at twenty-five percent and sending the Flying Toaster on its way.
The process took a little over a minute. When flying in the normal mode, the Flying Toaster steered much as he imagined the Titanic steered back in the day: slow and cumbersome. The video delay didn¡¯t help either. He took solace in the fact that there were no icebergs in the sky.
There was another mode, one where the massive metal machine could soar through the sky with speed and surprising grace. Sadly, the energy required to power that level of thrust from both the main propellers and the multitude of smaller fine-control propellers meant it could only run that way for fifteen or twenty minutes before the cantacrenyx crystals would run low on power, leaving the Flying Toaster adrift in the skies until they could recharge enough to resume powered flight. Outside of testing, he¡¯d only used that mode once, when he¡¯d first sent the zeppelin to Crirada and realized that the city was in danger of falling before he even showed up to rescue it.
beep
The final data upload had finished. With little else to do other than wait, he decided to check it out. Pulling up the telemetry, he glanced over it for a few minutes, finding little remarkable about it. He found the most interesting aspect of the days upon days of data to be the slow decay of various forms of radiation that he¡¯d never heard of before, like the remnants of an eldritch nuke. The strange modulating frequencies of the radiation had always puzzled him, though it remained a curiosity at best. There was little to take from the readings that would point him towards anything constructive.
BEEPBEEPBEEP
An alarm from the system pulled Blake back to the present and he looked up to find his beloved airship swerving back and forth in the air as it barely avoided a pair of incoming boulders, each the size of a large yacht. Blake had not expected the Ubran artillery to be able to reach the height of his ship, so this caught him by surprise, as did the fact that one of the boulders seemed to be made entirely of ice.
Ever since that monster woman had somehow knocked down one of his flitters with a well-placed throw, he¡¯d added in predictive avoidance routines to all his flying contraptions. Using the cameras on the bottom of the ship, the system looked for anything over a certain size heading in its direction, calculated the velocity of the object, activated ¡°emergency mode¡±, and did its best to steer out of the path of the incoming danger.
beep
The system worked rather well. It was able to both react faster to the object and, using the multiple angles of the cameras, better predict the object¡¯s flight path than he would be able to. Adding in the delay in the video feed, and Blake had no choice but to rely on the system. Other than adjusting the altitude controls to set the ship ascending out of reach of the rocks, he had to trust the avoidance system to keep his beloved Flying Toaster from an untimely end.
And that would be, for sure, the end result if one of those boulders were to hit the zeppelin. It would have punched through the side of his ship with startling ease. Structural integrity was not the Flying Toaster¡¯s strong suit.
Once the airship had gained enough altitude that Blake didn¡¯t have to worry about it gaining an unwanted hole, he checked the timer again: twenty minutes. Good enough, he supposed. He reoriented the ship to point towards the western camp, cut the engines down to ten percent, and leaned back with a sigh.
beep
The soft, subtle sound graced his ears once more, only this time he actually noticed it. This was not the full-on whooping klaxon of an upcoming battle with that damnable woman, nor the more insistent beeps the system usually made for various alarms and emergencies such as his prized airship having to dodge giant boulders. Puzzled, he pulled up the console¡¯s menu to figure out the source of the sound and found a soft yellow dot blinking in the lower right. Clicking on it, he brought up a submenu and noticed the dot now blinking on something labeled ¡°Bugs?¡±.
Now he remembered. Long ago, while working on his airborne surveillance network, he¡¯d written a background script designed to analyze the various feeds coming in from his vast array of skitters and flitters and look for things that seemed wrong. The script had been very useful in the formative phase of the project, helping him weed out issues with the functionality of his systems, but once he¡¯d deemed the systems basically complete, he¡¯d downgraded the script so that the notifications wouldn¡¯t bother him much, with a subtle beep once every five minutes should it find anything noteworthy. He¡¯d left it running the entire time because, as every programmer knows, strange edge case bugs sometimes had a bad habit of popping up years or even decades down the line.
Still, Blake had not been expecting such a notification. It had been months since the script had last found anything noteworthy; so long, in fact, that he¡¯d forgotten it was still running.
Well, he still had fourteen minutes to kill so he clicked into the program. Seven messages popped up. He glanced at the first.
Flitter 287: Object detected traveling outside set normative velocity bounds (avg 309 mph). Possible tracking calibration issue?
¡°Huh?¡± Blake gasped in puzzlement. He hadn¡¯t known what to expect, but this surely wasn¡¯t it. Hadn¡¯t he solved this error within the first two days? He looked at the next one.
Flitter 254: Object detected traveling outside set normative velocity bounds (avg 322 mph). Possible tracking calibration issue?
¡°What?¡± he mumbled to himself. Were his flitters breaking down all of a sudden? Was there a design flaw he¡¯d missed that wouldn¡¯t rear its ugly head until enough wear and tear had built up on the hardware? He looked at the next message.
¡°Possible tracking cal... are they all the same?¡± he wondered aloud as he scrolled down. They were.
Something wasn¡¯t right. Seven flitters, all with the same bug out of nowhere? Blake had seen enough bugs in his life to know that stuff like this didn¡¯t appear randomly. Checking the timestamps, he found a worrying trend: each occurrence was a few minutes after the previous one.
With a frown, Blake brought up a map of Otharia with his skitter and flitter deployments overlaid on top. With a few quick instructions, he isolated the flitter overlay and brought up the individual flitter identification numbers before removing all but the seven flitters listed in the reports.
Seven circles, each showing the respective flitter¡¯s coverage area, remained. A sinking feeling formed in Blake¡¯s gut as he realized that the circles together formed a rough, diagonal line oriented northwest-southeast. And if he ordered them in the chronological order of the timestamps...
beep
Two more messages popped up. Hurrying, he checked the flitter ids and found, as he expected, that the next two flitters continued the line southeast. Given the diameter of each flitter¡¯s observational area and the speed it was traveling through those areas, the object had to be moving at three¡ªor perhaps four¡ªhundred miles per hour. And if he extended the direction further... it was headed right for Wroetin.
Panic began to set in as he brought up the visual feed of the next flitter in the sequence as fast as his hands could move. His eyes scoured the forested landscape in front of him, looking for anything amiss. Then he saw it, something rocketing through the trees at a blinding pace. Pausing the feed for a moment, he zoomed in on the entity, then rewound it several seconds until he found a frame where the trees didn¡¯t entirely block his view.
His blood ran cold as he zoomed in more. The foliage still blocked most of it, and the resolution was appallingly low, but in the gap between trees he could still make out one very familiar giant black crystal sword.
She¡¯d gotten through.
¡°Oh, fuck.¡±
Blake had always worried that the one person he never seemed to be able to kill would give up on assaulting Crirada and head for him instead. But several issues made being ready for such an event harder to deal with than he¡¯d wanted. He had a system to detect the woman by face, body type, height, etc., one which had proven highly reliable through the winter months. But sadly, the system required a special, more complicated flitter, of which he had very few relative to the total flitter fleet because they needed several cantacrenyx crystals of just the right size and shape to power the extra systems while still being able to fly indefinitely. These crystals had proven very hard to come by recently, capping his output far below where he desired it.
Given such a hardware shortage, Blake had decided to concentrate his system on two areas. The first was, obviously, Crirada and the surrounding area. The other area was the Eterian border. It made perfect sense. Thanks to the leviathans that lurked beneath the waves, he didn¡¯t need to worry about somebody crossing the seas to either side of the border. There was no other way anybody could get into the country but through the border.
And yet here she was, racing through the heartland of Otharia without a single peep from his detection system. Judging by her speed and location, she would arrive in...
He did some quick mental math.
...eleven minutes.
¡°Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck-¡±
Heart pounding in his chest, Blake reset the timer to ten minutes and triggered the emergency alarms in the north, the west, and the center of the city, signaling the population of Wroetin to escape to the south and east of the city and beyond. His ears soon picked up the harrowing wail of the sirens outside, their screech only adding to his growing panic.
He knew his warning to the populace came far too late, but he needed as many people out of the way as he could manage for what was about to come. A demon was coming for his head, and he had less than fourteen minutes to turn everything between him and her that he could into a killing field swarming with skitters. The fewer people to gum up the works, the better.
Feverishly, Blake brought up a readout of all the skitters and other various units nearby, his heart sinking as he went down the list. It was shorter than he¡¯d hoped. There was no helping it, the situation was as it was. He couldn¡¯t give himself more units¡ªcreating a single skitter took far longer than the time he had¡ªbut he could, at least, give himself more time to come up with a way to use what he had available.
Hundreds of cantacrenyx crystals of different sizes could be found inside Blake¡¯s armor, all connected to their respective circuits, all with important jobs that kept his suit running. All, that is, except one crystal the size of his thumb, embedded in his chest plate with just a few fractions of an inch between it and his flesh. With a thought, Blake removed that thin seal, pressing the crystal into his chest just outside his heart, and entered Hyper Mode.
The world slowed to a crawl. Hyper Mode wasn¡¯t good for everything, but one thing it excelled at was giving him more time to think. And so, he thought.
One by one, he considered his options, came up with plans, and evaluated them based on estimates of their effectiveness based on past experience, how well they meshed with his available resources, and if he even had the time to set them up before that damnable woman arrived. Finally, he settled on a strategy that satisfied all his conditions better than anything else he could come up with. It wasn¡¯t the most radical plan, but it would do.
First, he needed to round up every skitter in the area and order them to relocate to an area outside and atop the city wall to the northwest, directly between him and her current position. His experience combating her all these days and nights told him that she would most likely try to use her momentum to blast right through rather than take a detour. He needed to use that directness of hers against her if he wanted to emerge victorious.
Unfortunately, the skitters close enough to make it to the upcoming battle in time were a mixed bag at best. The vast majority of them were old models designed back in the beginning of his reign for occupying the country instead of taking down a superpowered woman. They lacked the size, specs, and firepower of the later base model skitters. On the other hand, he did have a handful of larger, more powerful robots¡ªrelics of his war with the Otharian army during his initial conquest¡ªtucked away in a storage room.
In total, he had substantially more skitters than he normally did at Crirada, but their average capability paled in comparison to that of their more modern counterparts. Blake would have to make especially good use of the few special skitters to balance out that discrepancy. That, and the two aces up his sleeve, which-
Blake felt something was off, a subtle pressure on his left side, rocking him ever so slowly that it had taken him hours in Hyper Mode to even realize it was happening. That was one of the downsides to the trance-like state. It was so easy to tunnel into a problem and lose awareness of the outside world.
Pulling himself back down to real-time speed, Blake turned around to find a frightened Sofie standing beside him.
¡°Blake!¡± she hollered over the howling din of the sirens.
¡°What are you doing here, you dumb-ass?!¡± Blake hollered back.
¡°What¡¯s happening?!¡±
¡°That woman is coming! Now get out of here while you still can! We have-¡± He checked his timer. ¡°-nine-and-a-half minutes!¡±
¡°But what about Crirada!¡± she replied, worry written across her face.
¡°They¡¯re on their own!¡±
¡°But-¡±
¡°THERE¡¯S NO TIME! GO!¡±
As if to punctuate the urgency of the moment, Blake liquefied the floor beneath him and fell through several solid feet of tucrenyx, leaving a panicking Sofie behind, before emerging from the ceiling into a passageway below. As he landed, he liquefied the passageway¡¯s floor and sank into that as well. He normally would never consider such a drastic method of movement but he needed to get down to the bottom of his fortress with as much time left as he could manage. Taking a direct path down, while uncomfortable and mildly dangerous, would be far faster than navigating the labyrinthine hallways of his fortress.
Finally, with eight minutes and twelve seconds left to go, Blake landed in the closest thing his home had to a basement. There sat his final aces: two absolutely gigantic cantacrenyx crystals, bigger than any others he¡¯d ever seen. The pair had originally been a trio, but Blake was using the smallest of them to power the Flying Toaster. The remaining two put that smaller one to shame, with the largest coming in at over twelve feet tall and nearly twenty-six feet long.
Blake had been holding onto these last two, waiting for projects that would require massive levels of power. In part because the war had stolen so much of his time, he¡¯d yet to find anything worthy of their juice. But that just meant, luckily for him, that they were still available for this very moment.
Four lengths of tucrenyx emerged from the top of the chamber and connected, two each, to the crystals to form two separate circuits. More metal melted down to form a spiral staircase, which he immediately ascended. As he climbed, he focused on three tasks at once, multitasking as best he could. First, he tunneled out the space above him, letting the spiral staircase extend up into the rest of the fortress as he climbed. Second, he ran as many connections as he could from the smaller crystal to other normal-sized crystals embedded in the fortress, the many crystals which powered all the basic functionality of the place like the powered doors. Third, as he went, he grew one gigantic crystallized tucrenyx line from the basement up through the fortress along his route.
When Blake had first discovered his powers, he¡¯d determined after experimentation that the limit of his ability¡¯s range was about forty-five feet. After months of practice, experience, and training, that limit was now... forty-five feet. However, altering metal at a distance had been a difficult and slow process when he¡¯d first started. Now, while metal thirty feet away didn¡¯t flow like water the same way it did near him, it responded to his will dozens of times faster than at the beginning. The same held true for metal that he couldn¡¯t see. Many days of experience creating and maintaining mental images in his mind helped him alter even parts of his fortress with forty feet of tucrenyx in between.
The drastic improvement in his techniques was crucial now, allowing him to set up these circuits within the time he had to work with. It was a shame that he couldn¡¯t affect more than a forty-five-foot radius around him at once, rather than the entire fortress. Given the lack of time, he wasn¡¯t going to be able to prepare more than a small section of his home. Still, it was far better than nothing. He would just have to make do with what he could accomplish before she arrived.
Heavy clangs rang through the fortress as Blake made his way higher and higher, moving as quickly as a half-paralyzed man in a heavy metal suit could go. His mind strained as he pushed it farther than he¡¯d ever pushed it before. He struggled to keep a dozen distinct images and thoughts in his head at once as he built and modified the web of tucrenyx channels connecting the various crystals within range to the smaller of the two down in the basement, while simultaneously growing the thick channel from the larger of the giant crystals all the way up through the fortress, all while extending the staircase and trying not to trip as he went up it. His head pounded and he could feel a massive headache coming on, but he powered through it with a combination of adrenaline and fear.
Blake ended his efforts halfway up the fortress on the fourth floor, as he emerged from the makeshift stairway into the offices of the Ministry of Agriculture. This particular level of the fortress consisted almost entirely of administrative departments, with the office of each Minister featuring its own large balcony. Fricis Upeslacis¡¯s office happened to be the one that pointed in the right direction for Blake¡¯s needs, so that was where he decided to make his stand.
While he knew it unlikely, Blake hoped that he could win the upcoming fight before any violence came to his location. He could already imagine the old farmer chewing him out for ruining all of his department¡¯s paperwork. The old coot hated paperwork; it had been hard enough getting him to fill it out the first time. Getting him to do it all again would be a tremendous pain. He¡¯d take that pain over a sword to the neck if it came to that, however. These offices were the best location for his hastily conceived strategy, grumpy elders be damned.
Blake checked the timer as he stepped out onto the balcony: one minute and fifty-three seconds remained. A cacophony of panic and terror pounded his eardrums as soon as he opened the doors to the outside world. Bedlam reigned on the streets below as tens of thousands of people pushed and ran and fought to get away from the sirens as quickly as possible. Such pandemonium choked every road and alley he could see, and Blake felt a moment of sympathy for those who got caught and trampled in the chaos, but he consoled himself with the thought that at least everybody seemed to be heading in the right direction.
Turning around, he focused on the wall above him, the grey luster gleaming in the mid-morning light. Much of the metal above him began to push outward, extruding from the fortress¡¯s exterior and forming a large tube. The tube grew and elongated, reaching outward from the fortress towards the northwestern wall. Blake wrapped a tight spiral of power-conducting tucrenyx along the inside of the tube as it moved along, finally stopping as the tube reached a length of thirty-five feet and a diameter of three feet. Quickly, he formed a large system of gears and motors around the base of the tube and connected several strands of power circuitry to it before separating the tube¡¯s base from the rest of the fortress wall. The tube¡¯s front end dipped as the whole thing tilted downward. Gears spun wildly before catching and stopping it from tilting any lower. Finally, he connected the huge power line he¡¯d drawn up through the fortress from the biggest basement-dwelling crystal to the tube and grinned.
The second, and largest, hypersonic cannon ever created lacked even a shred of elegance or sophistication, more resembling a giant straw poking out of his castle than anything that resembled a weapon, but what a weapon it was. By his estimates, it could launch a slug heavier than your average car and three times the size of the previous cannon¡¯s munitions at speeds that Blake wasn¡¯t even sure of, and with the gigantic subterranean crystal powering it, this version of the cannon wouldn¡¯t need to charge for precious seconds each time before firing.
The cannon¡¯s angle of fire was limited to a small arc of the city, and it would very likely break down after a single shot like the previous one did, but that was what Blake was here for. He could fix it up and load it with a new shell in a matter of seconds.
Of course, the speed, power, and range of the gun didn¡¯t matter if it couldn¡¯t hit anything. Though he¡¯d gotten lucky several times in important situations, Blake was not an especially good shot. But in this case, he didn¡¯t have to be. He connected one final line, hooking the cannon up to the server. Long ago, Blake had implemented a system for his sniper bots, allowing them to coordinate with other information sources like flitters to properly aim at targets their sensors might not be able to detect clearly enough at long range. It was a huge reason his snipers had been so effective. Without the system, the first hypersonic cannon¡¯s only shot would surely have missed, firing all the way from the citadel to beyond the outer wall as it had.
With a few quick tweaks, Blake entered the cannon into the system, properly setting its orientation. The gun barrel moved left and right, up and down as it went through a series of short calibration tests before it became fully integrated. As the tests finished, Blake caught movement in the office and his trusty battlestation came galloping onto the balcony. Unable to follow him through the floors or up the thin spiral staircase, the skitter had been racing through the hallways of the fortress for minutes, trying to catch up, only to barely arrive in time.
¡°Took you long enough,¡± he grumbled as he deployed it, making sure he could see both the screens and the city without having to turn.
The timer read negative twelve seconds and counting. She would be showing up at any moment now. Of course, this was all based on an extrapolation of his estimate of her velocity. That was why he¡¯d given himself a minute less than his original calculation, just to be safe.
Now he just had to find her, a much more simple task now, thanks to the large open fields of farmland outside the capital versus the wooded area before. Flipping through the feeds of the few remaining flitters on her assumed trajectory, Blake found her within seconds. The woman was still a few miles out, but closing fast. He marked her as the one and only target with a single click and watched as every component of his hastily assembled defense turned as one towards their new adversary, her location data being fed through the targeting system from the flitters above. Blake let out a satisfied hum. Finding a single person in a sea of people, based on body shape, height, face, and equipment was difficult and required high-spec equipment. Tracking a pre-marked target, on the other hand, was easy as pie. One could almost say the system as a whole had been built for just that sort of thing.
Less than a minute later, the woman was just two miles from the city walls, her body hurtling towards his fortress at the center with reckless abandon. The sound of gears turning above and behind him brought a wicked smile to Blake¡¯s face as the cannon adjusted to its target¡¯s position. He melded the soles of his armored feet to the balcony below, bracing his legs, spine, and neck with extra support as metal flowed from the fortress wall into the gun barrel and solidified into a perfectly balanced three-foot-wide, seven-foot-long solid shell. Then, almost as an afterthought, he secured his battlestation to the floor as well. It was time to say hello.
Blake felt the power surge before anything else. It was like a pulse traveling along his spine and up into his brain, so powerfully euphoric that he almost forgot where he was and what he was doing. For that tiniest of a fraction of a second, nothing mattered. He was on top of the world.
Then that world exploded, almost literally.
A shockwave unlike any he¡¯d ever felt slammed into his suit, pressing him back like the giant invisible hand of a god. Had he not fused his suit with the floor below, he knew without a doubt that the blast would have flung him back into the offices behind him. Then, the air reversed, rushing back in to fill the void created by the pressure wave.
Blake never took his eyes off the woman on the screen. What he saw made him want to cackle. One moment she¡¯d been racing toward his city. The next moment, everything below her shoulders disappeared. The small remainder spun wildly as it tumbled backward through the air, her arms flailing wildly about, though Blake noted that she still kept her grip on that massive sword.
The pained screech of metal against metal pulled Blake from his revelry as the cannon, or what was left of it, began to collapse. Quickly, he stabilized the weapon, repairing the multitude of stress fractures along the barrel, reforming the twisted gears, rewiring the broken spiral inside which generated the incredible thrust. The process took him almost as long as the cannon¡¯s initial creation, but he had to be sure he didn¡¯t miss a single flaw or the next time it fired it might actually explode on him.
The woman¡¯s body reformed as he worked, and she redoubled her efforts. The small army of antique skitters came at her from the front and both sides, but they proved to be far less effective than Blake had hoped. The woman spun and danced and hacked away at the robot force, a whirling dervish of endless movement and violence. The smaller caliber rounds seemed to have no real effect upon her, and every time she swung her blade, three skitters fell to the ground in pieces. They wouldn¡¯t hold her long like this.
Blake ordered the skitters to retreat back towards the wall, where the more advanced units atop the wall would be able to provide support. They dutifully fell back, though that just meant she advanced as well. That was alright, because Blake¡¯s cannon was finally whole once more.
A second pulse of raw power coursed up from the basement, through the fortress, and into the cannon, sending tingles through Blake¡¯s body and soul. The weapon erupted once more, nearly bursting into pieces from the sheer strain of its own power.
Unfortunately for Blake, this time the woman jumped up at the last moment as she went to slice down onto a nearby skitter. The shell shot right through her former position, embedding itself into the ground behind her with enough force to shatter a small mountain. Earth sprayed everywhere as the ground exploded into the air where the oversized bullet struck.
Though technically a miss, the shot still disrupted the woman¡¯s movements, the shockwave of its passing and the blast that followed as it cratered into the ground sent her flying, buying him precious seconds. He concentrated on reforming the newly destroyed cannon for a third shot. This absurd gun was his best chance now. It was obvious that the old skitters didn¡¯t stand much of a chance on their own. They were just too weak, designed to fight far less powerful foes. He still had a bit of hope for the variety of heavy-duty robots up on the wall. They probably wouldn¡¯t be able to stop her, but they could at least slow her down. That was all he needed.
His battle plan was, in every way that really mattered, essentially the same as it had always been: lock the woman down and destroy the head in any way possible. It was what had worked up until now, and he saw no reason why it wouldn¡¯t work again. The hypersonic cannon was his best bet. All he had to do was hit her upper half and that would be that. There were no Ubran soldiers here to retrieve her body and weapon before he could. This time, he¡¯d blow her brains out and lock her in solid tucrenyx for the rest of eternity.
She was back among the skitters again, and every second his unit count dropped precipitously. The high caliber gatling and machine gun skitters, old yet powerful, opened fire while several massive heavy skitters entered the fray. The woman had faced similar opponents back in Crirada, especially in the heavy and gatling varieties, but these differed in significant ways. While all these battle skitters were cruder, they were also just... more. That was the reason he¡¯d never sent these models to Crirada: they just didn¡¯t fit into his zeppelin¡¯s bot bay. Still, their large size and old systems didn¡¯t mean they couldn¡¯t hold their own.
The heavy skitters towered over the battlefield, twice as tall and wide as those she¡¯d fought in the past, their armor three times as thick as their newer counterparts. Their array of fifteen-foot-long chainsaws were effectively reaper¡¯s scythes, cutting through flesh and bone like a thresher harvesting autumn wheat. What they lacked in speed they made up for in imperviousness.
The gatling skitters were a similar story. More than one and a half times the size of their Criradan variation, they sported four twelve-foot-long gatling cannons capable of spewing out larger caliber bullets than their newer variation and doing so at a faster rate. The largest issue he had with these skitters was simply that they ran out of ammunition far too quickly, which, all things considered, was a fairly good issue to have.
The woman leaped to the side, moving with incredible speed and grace through the mass of skitters as she stayed one step ahead of the fire from the wall. Blake grimaced as the rounds from his machine gun and gatling skitters tore through the crowd of basic skitters around her. He¡¯d never bothered to update the programming on these as he¡¯d done for his newer models.
Suddenly the woman pivoted and hurled herself at the nearest heavy skitter, ducking under a sweep of a chainsaw. Her sword flashed out, faster than Blake¡¯s eyes could pick up on the screen, and the oversized skitter toppled forward as each of its front legs collapsed into two separate pieces.
Blake gaped. Hadn¡¯t she gotten her blade stuck in the legs of the newer, smaller heavy skitters? This model¡¯s legs were far thicker, and yet she¡¯d cleaved through these like they were made of butter! Was she even stronger now than before? That had to be it. Nothing else made sense.
Not only was she stronger, but she was also faster. Before he could even blink, she was already speeding beneath the second heavy skitter, her weapon lashing out this way and that before she turned and made a beeline for the last remaining heavy skitter while the second one collapsed onto its rear, missing its back two legs. She just wasn¡¯t fair.
Blake clicked his tongue in distaste. Worthless they were, the lot of them. But one thing that wasn¡¯t worthless sat above him, the final bit of damage finally vanishing from the barrel¡¯s interior. It reoriented, pointing out towards the figure who was just finishing wrecking him final heavy skitter.
Another pulse, another boom.
The woman spun towards him, shifting her massive weapon in between her and the cannon and bracing it with the forearm and shoulder of her off hand just as the meteoric shell struck the crystalline sword¡¯s wide, flat side. Both the bullet and the woman went flying from the collision, the woman, in particular, spinning hundreds of feet along the ground and bouncing into the air. Between the titanic force of the bullet and the countless collisions with the ground that followed, her body was in terrible shape; the power of the blow had crushed the bones of her arms into dust, driving the sword into her body and turning much of it into paste as it went¡ªthough sadly the head and part of the shoulders survived largely intact¡ªand yet, somehow, the sword remained intact, unscratched even, a detached hand and wrist still clinging to the handle as it twirled through the air.
Blake wanted to throw a fit. What the hell was that thing made out of? Was it literally unbreakable? Where did it come from? And how had she gotten it in the way in time?
A loud ringing reached his ears seconds later. The high-pitched tone sounded like a bell or a chime and could only be the ringing of the sword vibrating with tremendous energy before finally embedding itself point-first into the dirt.
Blake sent what few functioning skitters he had outside the wall scurrying towards the dislodged weapon, but the woman was already back on her feet and zipping after it faster than any robot could hope to move. Blake cursed. If she hadn¡¯t blocked that shot, he was sure it would have ended her. He turned his primary focus back to prepping another shot. That last time she¡¯d just gotten lucky. This time it would work.
The final antique skitters fell to the woman¡¯s blade, and she leaped up onto the wall as Blake hurriedly rebuilt his cannon. Bullets flew towards her from both sides as the machine gun and gatling skitters opened up with everything they could muster, but the terrain had them at a disadvantage. Stuck atop the wall, his robots couldn¡¯t properly flank her and were always in each other¡¯s way. They¡¯d lost as soon as she¡¯d made it to them.
Still, that much firepower should have been enough to take her down; it had done the job many times before. Yet Blake¡¯s opponent seemed like a completely different person than the enemy he¡¯d battled dozens of times already. The old ¡°that woman¡± had been a formidable foe, possessing strength, speed, and resiliency dozens of times that of a normal human. But now, she zipped about with a quickness he¡¯d never seen before, slipping with ease around supersonic projectiles that would normally have taken her head clean off. She attacked with a power she¡¯d never shown before, her strikes destroying in a single swing what would have taken five or ten blows just a month ago. Her wounds seemed to heal almost instantly, and she fought through them as if they weren¡¯t even affecting her. Only the grimace on her face suggested that she even felt it when a bullet tore through her heart or severed a leg.
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Where was this all coming from? Had she been holding back this whole time? Was she simply trying harder than before? Whatever the reason, Blake knew he needed to end this as soon as possible.
Blake focused his efforts on the cannon, repairing it as quickly as he could while his final skitters fell one by one. Though it took less than a minute to bring the weapon back to full operation, that was enough for the woman to take down all but one of his remaining defenders. Her blade lashed out, neatly slicing off the final gatling skitter¡¯s front right leg and lower right cannon as Blake fired one more shot.
A pulse of unfathomable power ran through the fortress and the woman pivoted towards him, swinging her giant knife up from behind her back and down in a large overhead arc, placing it right into the hurtling projectile¡¯s path. Blade edge met man-sized, hypersonic bullet head-on with an earsplitting screech.
The blade won. Backed by the full power of the woman¡¯s prodigious strength, the absurdly sharp edge cut the hurtling projectile in twain right down the middle. That didn¡¯t mean the woman got off unscathed, of course; there was just too much force behind the shot for that. The collision sent her reeling and the two halves of the bullet did the rest, slamming into her shoulders and driving her through the guardrail on the outer edge of the wall and back out of the city. The shockwave of their passing was so great that the nearby three-legged gatling skitter, still mostly operational, tumbled off the wall and landed upside down, thoroughly destroying both of its upper cannons at it hit the ground. Though still technically operational with one last working cannon, he knew he wouldn¡¯t be able to count on it for anything more today. All his skitters had failed miserably.
A litany of profanity poured from Blake¡¯s mouth. How had she managed to do that?! It was like she¡¯d known the shot was coming!
A terrible thought crossed his mind: what if she had known it was coming? The pulse! Blake could feel and see the energy flowing through tucrenyx circuits when in Hyper Mode but only in Hyper Mode, and yet he¡¯d felt the overwhelming power as it flowed into the cannon just before every shot even while normal. From the way she¡¯d blocked the third shot and countered the fourth, Blake could only conclude that he was not the only person who could feel the powerful surge. Which meant... he¡¯d been tipping his pitches from the beginning.
His best chances had been the first, and maybe second, shot. Now that she knew when they were coming, she could dodge or block or whatever she needed to do whenever she felt the warning sign. That meant that his chances of winning with his giant new toy were now slim to none, especially since that last shot had, by her actions, missed her head.
As if to drive the point home, the woman appeared once more, jumping up through the fresh hole in the wall, good as new. Dropping down to the ground, she took off running towards the fortress, and towards him.
Blake let the cannon melt away; there wasn¡¯t enough time now to repair it again before she arrived. Instead, he unfastened his suit from the balcony floor and drew some metal and several crystals from the wall behind him, forming them into a large shotgun in his left hand. Moving his battlestation to his left, he stepped forward to make himself as noticeable as possible. He had another trick up his sleeve, but he needed her to see him for it to work.
Seconds later, the woman neared the outer wall of his fortress, her speed once again up to several hundred miles per hour. Blake could see her looking right at him, and he prayed that she would do what he expected given her tendency towards confronting things straight on. She did, launching herself right towards him instead of merely jumping the wall or breaking through a gate and entering the fortress from the ground.
A knowing smirk formed behind his mask. While the woman seemed far more powerful than he could ever remember, he took solace that she still had the same predictable behaviors. He watched, almost serenely, as she soared in his direction, her body twisting, readying herself for a mighty horizontal swing.
Blake leveled his shotgun at the incoming woman¡¯s head and activated Hyper Mode once more. Everything slowed to a crawl, and Blake could see everything with startling clarity. He could see the woman¡¯s body starting to uncoil, her massive blade beginning its fatal arc towards him. He could see the snarl of rage on the woman¡¯s lips, and the boiling hatred in her gaze. Well, it was time to do something about that.
Hyper Mode provided few worthwhile bonuses in combat, especially close combat. While his mind revved up to about six hundred times that of real-time, nothing else did. He couldn¡¯t grow tucrenyx any faster nor move his body quicker. He couldn¡¯t even quickly look around with his just eyes, and god forbid he try to walk or do any other sort of complex physical movement. But what it did do was allow him a moment for analysis and contemplation, and, in rare cases like this very moment, allowed him to time something juuuuuuuuust right.
Tweaking his aim just slightly upward, he fired, feeling the recoil press against his mechanical arm and up into his shoulder. He watched as, in slow motion, the tightly-packed shot exited the muzzle and spread out, forming a swarm of metal death a bit more than a foot in diameter. He rejoiced as said swarm and the woman¡¯s head flew into one another, the multitude of metallic spheres turning her skull into a fine mist and finally, finally, beheading her. It was over, just in the nick of time.
The woman¡¯s sword was already mid-swing when his blast struck true. The blow sent her her body tumbling, but Blake realized with dismay that the blade was still headed towards his side. He willed his body to lean away as best he could, but like everything else, it moved like it was stuck in wet cement. Sadly, there was no avoiding what was to come.
The blade bit into the armor on his left side by his kidney, the edge burrowing into the metal like it wasn¡¯t even there. A hot spike of burning pain coursed through his body as the blade cut a gash several inches deep into his torso, slicing into the muscle and more. For the first time in his life, he dropped out of Hyper Mode due to something other than his own free will. The world sped up in a flash as he fell to the balcony floor, and the next thing he knew, the decapitated body of that damnable woman crashed through his battlestation and careened into Minister Upeslacis¡¯s office, leaving a trail of wreckage in its wake.
Through sheer willpower, Blake fought down the howl of pain threatening to emerge, focusing instead on shunting metal from his armor into the gap to plug the hole in his side as best he could. It was far from the perfect solution, but a year with this body had taught him that he was strangely hardy compared to his Earth self. If he could just slow the bleeding now, the wound would probably heal in a few days or weeks. It was how he¡¯d survived his prior injuries, which would surely have killed him back on Earth; just losing his arm should have led to him bleeding to death.
He¡¯d be fine. Well, not fine, but functional. Hopefully. For now, he¡¯d just ride the adrenaline to keep the pain down to a dull inferno until he could better deal with it. Right now, he had more important things to deal with, like taking his adversary¡¯s body and sealing it away forever before she could resurrect some hours from now.
But first, he needed to stand up. Sealing away the crystal in his chest plate so he wouldn¡¯t slide back into Hyper Mode on accident mid stumble, he slowly worked his way back to his feet, his side protesting every movement. Finally vertical once more, he turned around.
The damnable woman¡¯s body stood, braced against the far wall of the office, crimson smoke solidifying atop her neck into a new head.
¡°You have to be shitting me,¡± Blake muttered in disbelief, a cold sweat breaking out all over his body. This wasn¡¯t how things were supposed to work!
As quick as he could manage, he leveled his shotgun at his foe and fired, but it was too late. Her crystal sword interposed itself between the two of them, letting out a dull ring as the shot bounced off it.
¡°Well, if that¡¯s how it¡¯s going to be, then...¡± Blake uttered, stepping into the office. If even complete destruction of the brain didn¡¯t stop her, then it was time to try everything in the book, no matter how much it cost him. He triggered a circuit in the wall behind her, one of the hundreds he¡¯d wired on his way up. A jolt of power flowed into the wall from the smaller of the two crystals below his keep, and the crystal inside the wall exploded without warning, destroying the wall. Shrapnel ripped into the woman from the back, staggering her just as a second crystal ruptured beneath her sent her tumbling across the office. He fired another shot, which struck her left leg, blowing it apart. ¡°...welcome to my playground.¡±
No area in the world contained more cantacrenyx crystals than Blake¡¯s fortress. He used them for everything, from moving sliding doors to powering lights to flushing toilets. Every wall, every floor, every ceiling had a crystal somewhere inside it¡ªoften more than one¡ªand Blake had rigged every single crystal within forty-five feet, from the ground floor up to the floor they stood in, to explode on command. He¡¯d created his own personal minefield, one that it pained him to use¡ªrupturing cantacrenyx crystals always felt like an incredible waste¡ªbut he had little choice in the matter now.
Blood-red smoke rushed in to replace the woman¡¯s destroyed leg as she dove to the side and out into the greater Agricultural Ministry offices. Blake triggered the door motor as he tumbled through, the subsequent detonation sending her flying out of control into a series of filing cabinets.
The last thing Blake wanted was to lose sight of his opponent, so he followed her through the now-ruined doorway, but she was far faster than he. Already on her feet, she grabbed the dented filing cabinet behind her and flung it towards Blake with startling speed. Unable to dodge in time, all he could do was liquefy the metal heading his way and let it wash over him while stacks of forms and other documents bounced off his armor.
Unfortunately, the metal splattering all over his helmet and upper chest meant he couldn¡¯t see. He jumped back, firing blindly as he willed the top foot of the floor around him to liquefy. His efforts were rewarded as the sound of a splash and a surprised growl graced his ears, and he hurriedly re-solidified the floor. As his vision cleared, he found the woman¡¯s legs embedded in the metal up to her shins.
Blake fired his shotgun and this time his aim was true, her head bursting into tiny bits of flesh and bone, but to his utter dismay, fresh strands of crimson smoke were already materializing to return her to full health. He blanched at the sight as he cursed this absurd situation. How was he supposed to kill the unkillable? It didn¡¯t matter how many times he won against her. His resources were finite. As long as she kept getting back up, she¡¯d come out on top in the end. It was so unfair it made him want to scream.
The microsecond his shotgun had finished recharging, Blake fired again, but it was already too late; that cursed sword was already in the way. The sword was just as unfair as the woman herself. He couldn¡¯t break it, he couldn¡¯t stop it, and he couldn¡¯t have it. No matter what he did, no matter how he punished her body or took her life, her hands maintained a death grip on the weapon¡¯s handle.
With a snarl of rage and the piercing screech of overstressed metal, the woman ripped her legs free from the floor and charged. Blake jumped to his left, liquefying the top foot of the entire floor of the room this time minus the spot where he stood. However, instead of tumbling into the liquid metal, this time she drove her feet into the floor with such force that the fluid floor pushed back.
Blake could change the softness/liquidity of metals anywhere from solid to the approximate viscosity of water. In nearly all cases, Blake went all the way to water. It allowed for the fastest flow of metal as he built stuff and gave the least resistance in the few times he used it as a trap like this. But even the least resistance was still some resistance. Blake had seen videos on the internet of things like cars driving on water and the like; all it took was for an object to strike the water hard and fast enough that it could get sufficient resistance. He¡¯d just never expected to see a person do it.
That lack of expectation proved costly. Caught unprepared, Blake jumped back again but, after just a few feet, found himself with his back against a wall. The crystal blade whipped through his previous position, slicing neatly through his shotgun and rendering it into scrap. Blake set off every crystal within their vicinity, blowing apart the nearby walls and sending the two of them flying apart. The ceiling above them groaned as more and more load-bearing walls fell.
As the woman came to a stop across the office and climbed to her feet, Blake took a split second to repair his armor and ponder new strategies. It seemed that turning the floor into a watery swamp wouldn¡¯t work anymore.
He wanted to sigh. It would have been so nice if he could have just willed metal spikes to shoot into her from all around, but his powers didn¡¯t work that way, as much as he wanted them to. Liquefied metal didn¡¯t have the strength to pierce anything. It had to be solid, and even if he tried to make a solid tip, the liquid behind it would just squirt out from the counter-force. Things would be so much easier if he could just go all Terminator 2 on her, but sadly, that was not to be.
But if he couldn¡¯t attack her directly with his powers, how else could he slow her down? And even if he could slow her down, what was he supposed to do to take her out for good? Just destroying her head wouldn¡¯t cut it anymore. He needed something more drastic.
A memory came of him from his old college days, a snippet of a lecture from a material science class, and he realized that he¡¯d been going about this the wrong way. He didn¡¯t need to create swamps and pools of liquid metal to stop her, he needed the opposite. He needed a puddle.
As the woman made to charge at him again, Blake altered the makeup of the floor all around her, liquefying just a small layer of the tucrenyx, less than a tenth of an inch. The woman¡¯s foot, rather than driving her forward, slipped out from beneath her and sent her falling to the floor in a sudden, uncoordinated heap. Frustration growing, she tried to push herself up with her hands but found it nearly impossible to keep a stable footing.
Blake snickered at the sight. Yes, this would work nicely. As long as he could maintain the thin layer of liquid metal beneath her, he¡¯d be able to keep her from nearing him ever again. It didn¡¯t matter how strong you were if you couldn¡¯t leverage that strength to do anything.
But this didn¡¯t solve the larger issue. Sure, she wasn¡¯t able to reach him right now, but what was he supposed to do, just stand there forever and hold her until the end of time? Another soft groan from above brought an idea to his mind, but he hesitated. It would be powerful, yes, but wouldn¡¯t it also be too dangerous? Was it worth the risk to his life? He wasn¡¯t sure.
With another snarl, the woman stabbed her sword down into the floor, embedding it solidly and giving her something to use for leverage. Seeing this, Blake¡¯s hesitation vanished. As dangerous as what he was about to try would be, it couldn¡¯t be more deadly than her.
Reaching out with his mind, Blake stretched his ability to the full extent of its range and cut out the metal from the three floors above in the shape of a cylinder, separating the area above their heads from the rest of the fortress and the structural support provided. Then, taking a deep breath, he ruptured the crystals on every remaining wall within his reach, both on the fourth floor and all the higher floors. Blasts of metal slammed into him as the explosions rocked the offices, knocking him onto his back just in time to give him a perfect view of the ceiling closing in as Blake dropped over forty tons of tucrenyx onto the both of them.
With a crash that could surely be heard for miles, the first floor of plummeting tucrenyx slammed into the floor below, shaking the entire fortress and crushing everything underneath it. Everything, that is, except Blake. As the ceiling grew closer, he liquefied the area above him, making it as soft as he could. He would have loved to just create a hole instead, but he wasn¡¯t sure he could make one large enough in the split second he had. Failing to make a big enough hole ran the risk of straight-up killing him, so instead, he just turned it into liquid.
Liquid metal was still metal, however, and remained just as heavy. His armor groaned as the metal crashed over him like a dull gray wave, threatening to crush him under its pressure. He could feel the armor of his chest plate buckle inward under the sudden and he scrambled to reinforce it in time.
Then the second floor slammed down, and then the third, each impact sending shocks through his whole body and causing the gash in his side to flare up with agony.
As soon as the third and final floor fell, Blake got to work, using his powers to extract himself from the rubble. He turned to look at the scene as he began to repair his damaged armor. The sight of his beloved home¡¯s state made him grimace.
The discs of the floors above rested atop the fourth floor like three pancakes stacked on a plate. Each one leaned slightly askew thanks to the wealth of furniture and other items which had been crushed beneath them. Between the mess in front of him and the damage done by his earlier fight, it looked like his fortress had been a part of a war zone for years and then been struck by a massive earthquake.
The fourth floor still held, a testament to the quality of his design and craftsmanship. It was good that it had; his body ached all over from the other impacts. Though metal was in the way, his hand instinctively pressed lightly against the gash in his side. He knew he was tough, tougher than nearly everybody, but he couldn¡¯t keep this up too much longer. Unlike his enemy, his body had a limit to how much punishment it would take in one day.
The rubble shifted.
¡°For fuck¡¯s sake...¡± Blake muttered to himself as the entire mass slowly rose off the ground. He ducked down and peered into the gap.
There the woman was, whole and un-flattened. She was bent over one knee, her left arm up by her bowed head as she pushed against the thick slab of metal pressing down on her back and neck. Her right arm was down by the floor, its hand still gripping her sword which had been pushed so far into the floor that a mere two or three inches were all that stuck out.
The woman looked over at him, her eyes filled with bottomless malice, and Blake shuddered. He stood up and focused, this time reaching down with his mind instead of up. Just like how, moments ago, he¡¯d cut out huge circular chunks of the floors above them, this time he cut out circles from the floor he stood on and the one below it so that the entire mass of rubble in front of him would drop. Then, once again, he blew every wall beneath those floors to smithereens.
The metal in front of his feet fell away as the entire mass of metal dropped two stories from the fourth floor to the second before slamming into the second story floor. Blake imagined in the calamitous din that he heard the sounds of flesh and bones being mashed into a mass of unrecognizable bloody pulp, but he knew he couldn¡¯t get his hopes up. Extruding a set of stairs from the edge where the floor used to be, he began to make his way down after the tons of collapsed fortress but halted as he heard the telltale groan of tucrenyx under too much stress. It was a good thing he did, as the second level¡¯s floor gave out under the eighty or more tons of metal and sent the entire mess falling even further down to the ground floor.
Quickly, he descended, jumping down the last ten feet or so and landing atop the massive pile of rubble. The room he stood atop was the main entrance hall of the fortress, a long, wide room with multiple large doorways leading to the area outside. While the floors of the other levels were only two or three feet thick, the floor of the ground level was many times that. All that rested beneath it was ground and the one crystal bunker deep below. This floor would hold.
The rubble, on the other hand, would surely not. Blake was under no illusions now; the woman would revive, even after all of this. That was why he immediately acted, extending his ability over as much of the giant mess as possible and pulling it inward around her location while leaving out the assorted other materials like ruined furniture and even cantacrenyx crystals. The metal responded to his will and flowed into a giant sphere of solid tucrenyx over fifty meters in diameter before hardening into fifty feet of solid, unblemished, incredibly strong metal without a single imperfection, pocket, or weak point to be found anywhere inside and one freakishly persistent superpowered woman in the very center.
Blake melded the bottom of the sphere with the floor for stability and took a step back and worked to catch his breath. There wasn¡¯t much he could do now but wait, and pray, and hope.
He didn¡¯t wait long. Only moments later, he felt a tremor run beneath his feet. The sphere trembled, like an egg about to hatch. Then Blake heard the low groan of tucrenyx under strain and a small crack appeared running vertically along the outside of the sphere, a tiny hairline fracture. He sealed it up, but the crack reformed, larger and wider this time. Blake resealed it again, but this time it wouldn¡¯t hold. With the cringe-inducing high-pitched screech of metal being torn apart, the crack grew and grew as the sphere was slowly forced open from the inside out.
Blake peered into the divide and paled at the sight. The woman stood, wedged inside the crack as thick smoke poured from her mouth and whirled around her and the sword still in her hand. Her arms flexed with ever-increasing strength as she forced the sphere apart faster and faster while letting out a roar of pure rage as she noticed him. Her muscles pulsed with power as she prepared to give one final push.
Blake liquefied the metal around her and sealed the sphere back up. How stupid of him. The biggest lesson he¡¯d learned so far in this fight was that he needed to deprive her of solid materials she could use to leverage her seemingly bottomless strength, and then he¡¯d gone and sealed her in a purely solid chunk of metal. Of course that wasn¡¯t going to work.
This time, he treated it like the egg it appeared to be, liquefying all the metal inside the sphere other than a shell about a foot thick. Maybe this would finally hold her. There was little way she would be able to get solid purchase while floating around in there. Hell, maybe she would just drown.
A sudden shockwave pulsed outward from the sphere as it seemed to inflate for a moment, the shell crying out in high-pitched agony as it threatened to explode from a sudden pressure. Several small cracks formed, leaking liquid tucrenyx, and Blake hurriedly repaired them.
What was she doing? How was she creating such a concussive force while trapped in the liquid? There was nothing in there for her to hit except herself. Was she seriously pulling some Hulk-ass shit and clapping so hard that fifty tons of metal couldn¡¯t withstand it?
A second shockwave, even stronger than the first, flared out, creating several dozen fissures this time. Blake sealed them back up, but already he was working his brain, trying to come up with another solution. It seemed obvious that not even this would hold against the monster within.
He didn¡¯t have time to come up with anything. Just moments after the second shockwave, a third and far more powerful shockwave slammed out from the sphere, rupturing it in hundreds of places everywhere Blake could see. The sphere jerked up and forward, then back and away, and then burst open just to the right of him as the woman came hurtling out, sword first, just feet away. Before he could even react, she lashed out, her blade slicing a long diagonal cut up his right side as she flew by.
Blake was at his wit¡¯s end. He couldn¡¯t fight, yet he couldn¡¯t run. His only hope was to somehow kill the unkillable, but that was manifestly impossible. What was left?
The woman skidded to a stop thirty feet away and turned back towards him, ready to take the battle to its conclusion, when suddenly the sound of cannon fire rang out. A hail of large bullets struck her on her left side, puncturing large holes in her chest and blasting her head to smithereens. Blake froze, befuddled by the sudden twist, following the bullets back to a doorway to his right that led outside. There, on the other side of a bullet-riddled door sat the final gatling skitter.
Blake couldn¡¯t believe it. He¡¯d been too busy to turn off the targeting system after the woman had made it past his defense lines, so even with only one working cannon and two-and-a-half working legs, his faithful creation had crawled its way back to the fortress from the city wall, intent on carrying out its mission to the bitter end. The thought brought a tear to his eye.
It was a shame that it wouldn¡¯t matter. The woman¡¯s head was already healed, not even a second after being splattered all over the floor. She rounded on the machine and shot towards in the blink of an eye, swerving under and around the skitter¡¯s fire. She was just too fast now, and it too slow.
Slithering beneath the cannon, the woman took her sword in both hands and thrust it upwards into the guts of the machine. With a loud grunt, she heaved the skitter in his direction.
The skitter¡¯s body crashed through the wall and barreled towards him, the woman not far behind. Blake threw himself to the side, just barely avoiding the skitter¡¯s last intact cannon as it swept by. In a panic, he triggered every remaining crystal within his range on the ground floor. He got lucky as several crystals happened to be in the floor just under and in front of her. The blasts threw her back, peppering her with sprays of shrapnel and sending her tumbling once more towards the far end of the chamber. Working quickly, he extruded a makeshift wall across the entrance hall, a temporary barrier between them.
Blake needed time. Time to think, time to plan, time to come up with some way to stop this damned woman once and for all. But to get that time, he needed firepower. Firepower he didn¡¯t have. The embedded crystals were a speed bump to her at best, their original function having nothing to do with violence. They were largely used up already, anyway. He could make himself another shotgun, but that wasn¡¯t strong or fast enough on its own. He needed something to utterly destroy her, over and over and over again until she finally stopped reviving or he came up with something better.
One option was obvious, but just as obviously worthless: the two crystals below them. Given a little time, he would likely be able to rig up a system so the larger crystal overloaded the smaller crystal and ruptured it. The problem was that, while it might kill that woman, it would definitely kill him. Given his experience with the power of explosive cantacrenyx overloads and how their yields grew as the crystal size grew, the smaller crystal¡¯s burst would likely be enough to take out not just the entire fortress, but likely most of the city as well. He didn¡¯t even want to think of what could happen if the larger of the two somehow ruptured, though such an event would take a massive amount of energy that not even every other crystal in the city combined could generate. So, that was out.
But what else was there? There was nothing else around for him to use! All he had was his fortress, his suit, and the remains of one gatling skitter. Then, an idea came to him. It wasn¡¯t the best idea in the world, but it was definitely an idea, and that was more than he could ask for at the moment.
Running over to the skitter¡¯s wreckage, he examined the cannon that had nearly clubbed him into next week a moment ago and found it completely intact. The woman had focused her attention on the skitter¡¯s body, meaning that the large, twelve-foot-long gun remained essentially undamaged. Severing it from the rest of the machine, he grew a set of handles from the back, hefted it off the ground, and leveled it at the newly formed wall. Between his enhanced physique and the assistance of his armor, he could lift the massive weapon, but it wasn¡¯t easy so he grew a mount from the floor and secured the gun to it.
A long metallic cable, thicker than a fire hose, sprouted from the floor beneath him and attached itself to the gun¡¯s central motor and energy conduit. Blake could feel the power of the largest cantacrenyx crystal in the world thrumming through the cable, lending the weapon power and speed it had never been able to boast before. More tucrenyx flowed up the bridge created by the cable, feeding into the barrels as they began to spin.
The now-familiar high-pitched screech of crystal on metal graced Blake¡¯s ears as his foe burst through his makeshift wall sword first, only to be greeted by a deafening roar as Blake opened fire with the most overclocked gatling gun ever made. Fist-size holes bloomed across the woman¡¯s body, from her legs to her torso to her head, as he pumped her full of metal and sent her reeling backward.
Yes, this could work.
Blake pushed his adversary back into the wall behind her, quickly reinforcing the wall with foot after foot of extra thickness to withstand the cannon¡¯s punishment. There had to be a limit to her abilities, surely. Nothing was truly infinite, after all. If he could just keep her constantly repairing herself, she wouldn¡¯t be able to do anything else and either she¡¯d finally die or he¡¯d have time to come up with a better plan. The crystal beneath could power this cannon for weeks without running out of juice, and he had literally an entire fortress of ammunition with which to send her way. The hardest part of the whole thing was dealing with the recoil and keeping the gun trained on her, which he was managing well with the assistance of the mounting. It wasn¡¯t like every round went straight through her head, but a good eighty percent of them hit somewhere on her body and with so many rounds heading her way every second, that was more than enough. He could do this.
Large, thick plumes of crimson smoke continuously formed around the woman, filling in the gaps in her flesh as fast as they appeared. Blake fed more power into the cannon, doubling the firing speed to overwhelm her, but the plumes of smoke kept pace, growing more numerous and thicker as time went on. Cursing under his breath, Blake kicked the gun up another few notches, creating a veritable stream of supersonic metal.
Blake was starting to strain a little. Drawing in countless pounds of tucrenyx from the fortress around him up into the gun¡¯s whirling chambers and transforming that metal into properly-shaped bullets on the fly, especially at that speed, was no easy task.
The smoke billowed all around her now as round after round hammered into her, pounding her over and over against the wall behind her. Soon it thickened again, coalescing into a hazy cloud that encompassed her entire body. Her right arm, its hand still holding her sword in a death grip even though it sometimes was more hole than arm, twitched.
¡°God damn it!¡± Blake howled at the sight. Metal flowed up from the floor by her side and engulfed the sword before solidifying around it and locking it in place. He pushed the cannon¡¯s fire rate even further. ¡°Just fucking DIE ALREADY!¡±
But the woman refused. The arm twitched again, and again, and again, each time stronger than the last. The sounds of crystal against metal grew with every tug until, and with one final mighty pull, she ripped the sword free and dragged it between her bullet-riddled body and the cannon, holding it vertically with the handle at the top to effectively block her from his attacks. The sword let out an endless series of high-pitched peals as bullet after bullet slammed into it, forcing the sword backward and sandwiching the woman between it and the wall behind her, but Blake had already lost the advantage. His blood ran cold as the voluminous scarlet cloud was suddenly sucked into the space behind the blade so quickly that he thought he heard a popping sound echo from her position.
The sword rose slightly and the woman took a step forward, pushing against the stream of hurtling metal. Blake immediately liquefied the floor beneath her with a ten-foot radius around her position, robbing her feet of purchase and sending her sliding back. Blake hoped that the woman would try to strafe away from his fire. He was sure the slippery floor and the force of his attack, combined with the woman¡¯s base no longer oriented in direct opposition to him, would result in her being knocked to the ground. Then he could get back to turning her into swiss cheese.
The woman, however, had no intention of anything of the sort. Her legs pumped back and forth with superhuman vigor, driving her feet against the liquefied floor faster and faster. Each step pushed against the melted tucrenyx with greater speed and force than the last, each impact gaining more and more traction until her feet moved so quickly and powerfully that when they struck, even the liquefied metal¡¯s low friction couldn¡¯t keep her from acquiring leverage.
Blake pushed the gun faster and faster and himself harder and harder, pulling more and more tucrenyx every second up into the gun barrels and forming them into rounds fast enough to keep up with the cannon¡¯s ever-increasing speed. It took everything he had to keep up with the weapon¡¯s insatiable demand while keeping himself upright and the floor beneath his enemy liquefied.
Even the simple task of creating a hole beneath her was too much for him now, as it would mean he¡¯d have to lower his bullet output, and that would only mean demise. She was getting closer. Even with his cannon¡¯s torrential output hammering her from the front, even with the very floor she stood on denying her solid purchase, inch by inch she closed in, her legs practically blurring as they churned.
A small part of his mind noted that he was screaming now, though he could not recall just when he¡¯d begun. Even he could barely hear it over the roar of cannon fire and the calamitous ring of tucrenyx impacting against impervious crystal with tremendous force. It was a scream of defiance, a scream of raw, furious opposition.
This was it. He had no more capacity for surprises, for plans, for stunning stratagems of any sort. His enemy seemed to share his single-minded state. There was nothing left for either of them to do but press onward in their contest of wills.
Blake¡¯s heart pounded in his chest so hard he felt like it was about to explode. His body shook with strain as he fought to keep the cannon aimed forward as it bucked against the mount the force of the cannon and his mind felt like it was about to crumble under the pressure. There was a limit to how much tucrenyx he could process at once and he had hit that limit moments prior. He only had one final option. Once more, Blake brought himself into contact with the crystal in his chest plate and entered Hyper Mode.
The world slowed to a crawl, and Blake could see everything. He could see the barrels of the huge gatling gun rotating ever so slowly. He could see the almost blinding glow of the cantacrenyx power coursing up from the floor, through the power cable, and into the cannon. He could see the tucrenyx surging up around that fire hose-sized cable into the back ends of the barrels to form the large bullets keeping the woman at bay. And he could see how his hated adversary¡¯s front leg paused for a small fraction of a second before she somehow found yet another gear.
Blake watched in horror as the woman¡¯s leg drove downward and backward with a speed and force tens of times greater than anything he¡¯d seen from her before. She launched forward, pushing through the outpouring of metal as if it were nothing more than a stiff breeze. Blake tried his best to turn the cannon and block her path but found it futile. Though he could see what was to come, he couldn¡¯t move his body fast enough to do anything about it. Once she¡¯d taken that first step, it was already too late.
The split second that it took for her to make it to the end of the cannon felt like an eternity in Hyper Mode. He watched, helpless, as she plowed through one round, and then a second, and then she was by the muzzle, the sharp edge of her sword scraping against the side of the barrels as she went.
Blake halted all bullet production and redirected his focus on absorbing as much of the incoming blow as possible. He had only a fraction of a second, but that still amounted to several minutes for him. He concentrated on his helmet and chest plate, making the metal bubble outward and expand as much as he could in the limited time offered to him. The idea was to create a sort of ¡°crumple zone¡± on his front and back similar to what was used in cars to siphon off as much force as he could, though the painfully slow flow of the tucrenyx limited what he could create.
As the woman closed in, Blake caught a glimpse of her face from around her massive weapon. Her jaw was set and her eyes shone with a singular tenacity, a complete and total refusal to lose written across her face. Part of him couldn¡¯t help but admire that unfathomable resolve that eclipsed even his own. The rest of him found it infuriating.
Minute after minute crept along as Blake continued to puff up his armor as best he could while the woman drew ever closer. The tension ramped up higher and higher as the flat side of the crystalline sword closed in. Three feet. Two feet. One foot. Six inches. By the time the blade sat just an inch away from his chest, Blake felt like the wait for the hit was more agonizing than the blow itself could ever be. Then the heavy, six-foot weapon crashed into his front, fracturing nine or ten of his ribs in multiple places, and he immediately changed his mind.
For the second time in his life, Blake exited Hyper Mode from something other than his own free will. As both time and his own body accelerated simultaneously, it felt to him almost like he didn¡¯t so much fly into the wall behind him as teleport into it. His body cried out in agony as it caromed off the wall behind him and smashed into a second wall before collapsing in a broken heap against the farther wall.
Blake¡¯s head swam from the impact, the pain signals coming from his body bombarding his brain while mixing with a sudden wooziness and nausea. He tried to move but found he couldn¡¯t, his consciousness shaky and tenuous. The nausea spiked and blood and bile surged up his throat and spewed from his mouth. Blake barely managed to disengage his helmet in time before the vomit coated its insides, the sickening liquid instead coating the crumpled chest plate.
He was alive. His skull felt like it was going to burst with every beat of his heart, his rib cage felt like it had been stomped on by an elephant for a week straight, and it hurt to breathe, but he was alive. For now. The manic look in the woman¡¯s eyes as she caught her breath cast doubt on that lasting much longer. Perhaps rupturing the crystals below would be worth it after all. It would certainly be one hell of a way to go, and if he was going to die, he wanted it to be on his terms.
¡°Stop!¡± a familiar voice shouted from somewhere out of view to his right before his thoughts could go much further. A fist-sized rock flew through the air towards the woman before falling short and coming to a rest by her feet. ¡°Don¡¯t kill him, you idiot!¡±
Even in his battered state, Blake couldn¡¯t help but let out a defeated sigh. He¡¯d told Sofie to run away repeatedly. Why couldn¡¯t she just fucking listen to him when he told her to do something? Was it really that hard?
¡°Honestly, why are you both like this?!¡± Sofie fumed as she marched towards them, her hands balled into fists and a furious look on her face. ¡°We¡¯re all from Earth, we should be working together, not fighting!¡±
The woman eyed Sofie warily, the Belgian¡¯s sudden appearance throwing her off. Her massive sword swung around to point at Sofie, who immediately halted mid-step.
¡°No,¡± the woman simply replied, resuming her strides towards Blake.
¡°Wait wait wait! STOP!¡± Sofie repeated, sprinting forward and skidding to a stop in front of him, her arms outstretched to the sides.
¡°Move,¡± the woman warned, her voice hard and uncompromising. ¡°I don¡¯t know who you are, but don¡¯t think I won¡¯t kill you too.¡±
¡°Look, I know Blake¡¯s an asshole, but we need him to get home!¡±
Unspeakable fury flared in the woman¡¯s eyes. ¡°Do you think I¡¯m a fool?¡± the woman spat. ¡°I¡¯ve spent the last year doing everything I could to return to my children and nobody has done more to stop me from seeing their faces again than him!¡±
¡°A mistake! A misunderstanding!¡± Sofie pleaded.
¡°I¡¯m done with this. Move aside.¡±
¡°But we need-¡±
¡°I do not need him!¡± the woman snarled. ¡°Once I find the Eyes of Pirath, I will use the Empire¡¯s device to go back to where I belong and that is that! You can join me and return as well, or you can die here with him. This is your last chance! Get. out. of. my. way.¡±
Blake couldn¡¯t help but let out a disbelieving snort, which sent a spike of pain coursing through his chest. He could feel control of his body¡ªor the part of it above the waist, at least¡ªreturning to him. His vision had cleared somewhat, as well. ¡°You can¡¯t be serious,¡± he croaked, incredulous. ¡°That¡¯s the biggest bunch of bullshit I¡¯ve ever heard. There¡¯s no way the Ubrans have a way to send you home.¡±
¡°What would you know?¡± the woman pushed back. ¡°I saw it! They can reverse the machine and send people back, as long as I can get the power sources they need!¡±
¡°Machine?¡± The floor in front of him writhed momentarily, forming into a perfect miniature replica of the main chamber in the bunker where he¡¯d first arrived. He¡¯d spent so much time there studying the mechanisms there that he could reproduce it all by memory down to the smallest detail even in his current state. ¡°This machine?¡±
The woman gazed at his creation and hesitated for a moment, telling Blake everything he needed to know.
¡°Machines like this can be found all over the world,¡± he continued. ¡°I¡¯ve spent many days studying the one that brought me here. Did you think I wouldn¡¯t have thought to check something so obvious? It was the first thing I looked into. They cannot send things away, only draw them in. They¡¯re one-way devices.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t know that!¡± the woman objected.
¡°I do! I know better than anyone else in this primitive-ass world,¡± Blake countered. ¡°I can tell you exactly what each piece of this thing is, and what it does. See this here?¡± He pointed to the large slab he¡¯d crashed into when he first arrived. ¡°This is the conduction unit. There¡¯s hundreds of thousands of tiny circuits inside it that interface with the array of twenty-one projectors here-¡± He pointed at a sphere of cones with rounded points set in a sphere, all pointing towards the slab. ¡°-to open the wormhole or whatever that brought us all here.¡± His finger moved to the long rows of other equipment leading away from the slab. ¡°Everything else here provides control or power. It builds up a large amount of energy and uses that to break reality for a moment and then it stops. It is not an elevator that can take you back and forth between worlds. It is a pin created to pop a balloon and more power just means a larger, sharper pin. It does not and will not work the way you want it to. All you will accomplish is you¡¯ll bring another unlucky bastard here.¡±
¡°But I watched them do it! They showed me and it worked!¡± she protested, her body language growing antsier by the second.
¡°They sent somebody to Earth, but not you?¡± he asked, skeptically.
¡°They sent a coin-¡±
¡°A coin?!¡± Blake snickered.
¡°I saw it! They turned it on and I saw the coin vanish!¡±
¡°No, you didn¡¯t. You saw an illusion¡ªpart of a plan to play on your fears. That coin was never real.¡±
¡°He held it in his hand!¡±
¡°That¡¯s nothing. Any illusionist worth a damn could do that, right Sofie?¡±
Sofie stiffened slightly as he called on her suddenly, but she quickly nodded. ¡°He¡¯s right. My friend Arlette could do something that simple without even trying. The coin could even be in somebody else¡¯s hand. Easy.¡±
Blake could see how Sofie¡¯s statement rocked the woman¡¯s already wavering confidence and pressed on despite the pain each word brought. ¡°Let me guess how this all went down. They take you to their machine, they fake this demonstration, and they say, ¡®Oh, if only we had more power, we could send you home!¡¯. Then they tell you that only by conquering the world will they be able to get the power they need to send you back. How convenient for them. That sound about right?¡±
¡°No... no, it isn¡¯t like that!¡± the woman asserted.
¡°Yes it is, face it!¡± he forcefully demanded. ¡°You know it¡¯s all fake! You know they can¡¯t send you back! You¡¯ve known it since the beginning! You just can¡¯t admit the truth, because it would mean that you will never see your precious children ever again!¡±
¡°Shut up! You¡¯re LYING! You¡¯re all LYING! SHUT UP!¡± the woman insisted desperately as she stepped forward again, her voice rising to a shout. She held out her sword, its point aimed squarely at his chest, but even with his hazy vision, he could see how it trembled. ¡°YOU¡¯RE JUST TRYING TO TAKE MY ONLY HOPE AWAY FROM ME!¡±
¡°I DON¡¯T WANT TO TAKE IT FROM YOU, DAMN IT!¡± he hollered back. ¡°YOU THINK I WANT TO BE HERE?! YOU THINK I-¡±
His tirade cut off abruptly as his chest seized up and he let out an agonizing series of coughs, spraying blood across the ground in front of him. He took a few shaky breaths, feeling the cold air move in and out, before looking his adversary squarely in the eye as best he could.
¡°Look at me, both of you,¡± Blake wheezed. Blood dripped from his mouth as he let out another pained hack, his pulverized ribcage screaming bloody murder, and winced. Slowly, the armor encasing his body began melting away, slowly revealing the full state of his wretched self.
First, what was left of his left arm felt the soft chill of the outside air, something it had not experienced in months. Once a full, strong limb, now only a barren stump remained, covered in rough, pasty skin.
Then his chest and torso became exposed, bringing into view the brutal gash through his left side and the shallower but much longer slice up his right side. Though the blood seemed to be stanching, it still seeped slowly from each wound, dyeing the skin and metal a nasty dark crimson. Just as bad, if not worse, was the massive bruise all across his dented ribcage.
Sofie and the woman stared at his disfigured body with varying degrees of unease, but it wasn¡¯t until the metal finally receded from his legs that their eyes went wide. Since that fateful day many months ago, Blake had never shown anybody his legs¡ªnot Sofie, not Leo, not even Samanta. Withered away from a year of disuse, they appeared to be little more than desiccated sticks of bone covered in loose, ill-fitting skin. A garish web of blackened veins could be seen winding through the almost translucent tissue. The only splotches of color to be seen were from three puncture wounds caused by tucrenyx shrapnel during the battle, wounds he hadn¡¯t even known were there until now. Barren and underdeveloped, his lower half would have looked comical juxtaposed with his otherwise broad and muscular body if it weren¡¯t so absolutely horrid. But there was nothing to laugh about here, only putrid decay and suffering.
Sofie muttered something to herself and gagged, turning to look elsewhere. Even the monstrous woman by her side, the slayer of thousands who had surely seen a lifetime of blood and gore these last few months, had gone pale.
¡°Don¡¯t look away. Look. At. Me!¡± he hissed. ¡°I was a happy, healthy guy before I came here. This is what I am now. This is what this fucking world did to me in just a single fucking year. Do you think this is what I wanted with my life? Do you think it doesn¡¯t kill me every time I wake up and, just for a second, think I¡¯m back in my bedroom with my good life and my friends and my family before I remember the reality of my existence? It hurts! It all hurts so much and it never stops and I just...¡±
A soft sob escaped his lips, and then another, and then another still. Tears were flowing down his cheeks now, a waterfall that he could no longer contain. His body shook as days and weeks and months of pent-up sorrow wracked his battered form. Slowly, those sobs began to fluctuate and change, melding into a laugh, though one utterly devoid of mirth. It was the laugh of a man who¡¯d finally accepted his lot in life, the laugh of somebody who¡¯d finally come to recognize what was, rather than what he wished there to be.
Tears still falling onto his blood-soaked chest, Blake looked the woman right in the eyes and spoke the words that he¡¯d been unable to say since the day he¡¯d first arrived in this world, the dark truth that he¡¯d been unable to admit even to himself even that very morning. ¡°I talk a big game, you know? About how I¡¯m going to drag this place into civilization no matter what and all that. But the real truth is that if there was a way to go home... I¡¯d already be gone.¡±
¡°But Blake, what about the Severed stuff you were investigating?¡± Sofie asked, dismayed. ¡°Wasn¡¯t there still a chance that could show us the way?¡±
¡°Nothing but worthless noise. A dead end.¡±
¡°And there¡¯s truly nothing left to try?¡± Sofie beseeched him, looking for some sign for optimism.
¡°That was our last chance. There is nothing left.¡±
¡°No... please!¡± the woman implored him, her expression begging him to smile, to joke, to do anything to say he didn¡¯t mean what he said. But he couldn¡¯t.
¡°There is no way out of this godforsaken place. We¡¯re stuck here, forever,¡± Blake admitted, his voice soft but filled with abject finality. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I¡¯m... so sorry.¡±
The woman swayed on her feet as if ambushed by a sudden and tremendous bout of exhaustion. Her massive pitch-black sword slipped from her hand, falling to the floor with a loud clatter. Her body followed as her legs gave way and she awkwardly slumped to the ground and went still.
Blake understood. While he¡¯d scorned her for her self-delusions, the truth was that he had no right to say anything, for he was just as guilty. He¡¯d known for months now just how unlikely the odds of finding a way home were. The investigation into the Severed event in Crirada had been his last hope, and that hope had slowly evaporated more and more each day. But he¡¯d held on, through a combination of wishful thinking and desperate avoidance. He¡¯d told himself that as long as the odds weren¡¯t zero, there was always a chance for a miracle. He¡¯d refused to think about what it meant for him should that miracle not occur. Even this morning, when he¡¯d looked over the final data transfer and found nothing of use, he¡¯d kept his thoughts in line and refused to reckon with his reality.
It was easier that way. Easier to just pretend, to ignore the blindingly obvious, to stick his head in the sand. He could keep going as long as the embers of hope still smoldered in his heart, even when those hopes were based on false premises. He just had to shove the truth of his situation down into a box somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind and never acknowledge it.
That wasn¡¯t possible anymore. This was the moment when that last ember of hope finally went out. Now there was nothing left to hold off the darkness, and Blake could only weep.
And so he did. He wept for his family. He wept for his friends. He wept for himself and his life, unable to run from the painful knowledge of all that he had lost. He would never be able to see his home again. He would never be able to listen to his favorite music, or eat his favorite food, or just sit on the couch and watch a football game.
Instead, all he had to look forward to was a life of pain and suffering. A life of violence, and fear, and paranoia. A life stuck in a half-broken body. A life he¡¯d have to fuel with spite and bitterness and stubborn anger, because nothing else would get him through the day. A life where-
The sound of two hands colliding echoed through the empty fortress, startling Blake out of the whirlwind of bleakness churning inside him. He looked up to find Sofie wiping tears from her face and eyes.
¡°Alright! That¡¯s enough of that,¡± she declared.
With a steady gait, Sofie approached the woman and knelt down beside her, softly saying something to her that Blake couldn¡¯t make out. Blake eyed the crystal blade lying several feet away on the other side of them, but the woman didn¡¯t move. She didn¡¯t blink. She didn¡¯t respond in any way whatsoever, not even when Sofie rested her hand gently on the woman¡¯s shoulder. It was as if she didn¡¯t even know Sofie was there.
With a sad sigh, Sofie stood up and headed his way. The fire of determination burned in her eyes, the same fire that Blake dreaded because it only showed up whenever she made up her mind on something, which was when she became her most insufferable. Striding with purpose, Sofie walked up to his right side and held her hand out, beckoning for him to grab hold. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go.¡±
¡°Go away,¡± he bitterly grumbled. He wasn¡¯t in the mood to deal with her, not now, not like this.
¡°Oh, so now the fearsome Lord Ferros, tyrant of Otharia, wants to wallow, does he?¡± she huffed derisively. ¡°What are you ¡®Lord¡¯ of, anyway? Pity parties?¡±
¡°What, I¡¯m not allowed to be sad once in a while?¡± he snarled at her. ¡°I seem to remember you getting choked up when I told you we couldn¡¯t leave.¡±
¡°Yeah, for a minute maybe,¡± she retorted. ¡°But I didn¡¯t have a nation to take care of or a castle to repair, and I definitely wasn¡¯t bleeding out everywhere. And don¡¯t even get me started on those legs of yours. I can¡¯t believe you hid that from me. So come on, on your feet. Let¡¯s get you somewhere not...¡± She looked around at the ruined walls and wreckage strewn about every surface that remained. ¡°...somewhere not utterly destroyed, at least. You two really tore this place apart. Like, more than half of the Administrative Floor is just gone. That old farmer guy is going to kill you, you know.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t remind me,¡± Blake groaned as he relented to Sofie¡¯s stubborn demands. He used his one good arm to prop himself up while tucrenyx flowed around his legs and lower torso before stopping beneath the lowest cut.
Sofie reached down and, grunting with effort, lifted him onto his feet and wrapped his good arm around her shoulders so he could lean against her. ¡°Oooof,¡± she grunted. ¡°You¡¯re heavy even without wearing all that metal. Speaking of which, we need to talk later about you not wearing clothes under there.¡±
¡°I wear clothes!¡± he immediately replied. ¡°I just make them myself out of tucrenyx, form it out of ultra-fine metal thread. Normal clothes don¡¯t do so great with the whole liquid metal flowing over your body thing.¡±
¡°Uh-huh,¡± she replied, unconvinced.
¡°I¡¯m serious!¡±
¡°No, I believe you,¡± she said, her tone informing him in no uncertain terms that she did not believe him whatsoever.
Blake took a slow step forward, and then another, and then stopped, his eyes drawn to the closest being he¡¯d ever had in his life to a nemesis. The woman still hadn¡¯t moved an inch, her body so motionless that it didn¡¯t even appear to draw breath. She just stared down at her hands, her eyes unfocused, unresponsive to everything around her, now little more than an empty husk of the powerful, determined, unyielding person he¡¯d known her to be. The only sign that she still lived was the occasional tear that would fall from those unseeing eyes down onto her calloused fingers below.
It would be so easy, Blake thought, eying the motionless figure. Just one shot. Something told him that, were he to strike down her now, she wouldn¡¯t be getting up anymore.
¡°Blake, no!¡± Sofie scolded him with a pointed finger shoved right in his face. ¡°Don¡¯t hurt her, don¡¯t kill her, just let her be, alright? You already won. Enough is enough.¡±
¡°Who made you the arbiter of my life?¡± Blake snapped. ¡°She¡¯s dangerous! Do you know how many people she¡¯s killed?¡±
¡°And how many people have you killed, Mister Ruthless Overlord? You two want to have a murder contest?¡± she snapped back. ¡°She¡¯s as much a victim as the rest of us and you know it. Besides, she...¡± Sofie glanced back with a mournful expression at the forlorn form behind them. ¡°...I don¡¯t think she¡¯s going anywhere for a while. We can deal with her later. Come on, there are more important things to address right now, like fixing up your wounds. And getting food. I¡¯m hungry. Aren¡¯t you hungry?¡±
¡°But-¡±
She tugged him forward, forcing him to either start walking again or fall over. He sighed and gave up. This was a fight he wasn¡¯t going to win.
¡°You¡¯re so weird sometimes, you know that?¡± he remarked as they headed out of the room, one slow, small, shuffling step at a time.
¡°Yeah, well, I just don¡¯t see the value in getting trapped in your own feelings this far down the road. We¡¯ve been here a year now. At some point, you just have to accept reality and move forward, or your past will always hold you back. That¡¯s what Arlette used to say to me when-¡± Sofie froze in her tracks, eliciting a gasp of pain from Blake as the sudden jerk caused him to stumble. ¡°Blake! The battle! What about the battle?!¡±
Blake stared back at her in complete incomprehension. Battle? What was she talking about? The battle was over! He¡¯d won! Well, sort of won. He¡¯d survived, and wasn¡¯t that victory in this case? So why did she look so fretful all of a sudden?
The last two properly working brain cells in Blake¡¯s head bumped into each other, and suddenly Blake remembered. Right, that battle. The one that he¡¯d been preparing for. The one for which he¡¯d filled his zeppelin¡¯s bot bay with explosives. He¡¯d forgotten all about that battle. What had he been doing before getting so rudely interrupted? Ah yes, he¡¯d set his beloved airship on a southwest course towards the western Ubran camp, along which it would have just kept going... and going... and...
¡°...aaaahhhhhhhh, shit! My zeppelin!¡±
Chapter 86
The sounds of Arlette¡¯s footsteps echoed through the hall as she marched quickly towards the sleeping quarters, the only logical place for the Otharian Many to be. Coming upon the door, she pressed the green button as she¡¯d observed Simona do. With a soft hiss, the panel slid aside, revealing another hallway leading inside. Even after seeing it in the Stragman ruins, the way the metal moved on its own, as if alive, with the single press of a finger still baffled her. But now wasn¡¯t the time to ponder such things. Now was the time for action.
She strode to the end of the short hallway, which terminated at another hallway perpendicular to this one. Down the hallway, in both directions, Arlette spied doors and panels. Which one housed the Many? With a mental shrug, she rounded the left corner and pressed the green button on the nearest panel. There was only one way to find out.
The door slid aside to reveal a small, plain room containing a thin bed that bordered on being a cot in one corner and a small cabinet in another that seemed to have grown from the wall and floor. After pausing just long enough to verify that the room was empty, she moved on to the next room, only to find it too was vacant. She tried the third room. Also empty. The fourth as well.
Finally, the fifth room bore fruit. Sitting alone against a wall, veil over her face, was the Many.
Arlette ripped the veil aside, startling the Many and activating the training ingrained in her since childhood. A hazy three-dimensional image appeared in front of the Many before quickly sharpening into the image of an empty room somewhere in Otharia. Arlette glanced around the image, looking for the handler who should have been somewhere nearby to take care of incoming communications, but she saw nobody.
¡°HEY!¡± she yelled, hoping that somebody was nearby but out of sight. No response came, other than a constant high-pitched sound coming from somewhere far outside the illusory room.
Hooking her pointer finger and thumb into her mouth, she blew a piercing whistle. Surely that would be loud and obnoxious to be heard by the Many handlers. And yet, still nobody appeared.
With a sinking feeling in her gut, Arlette realized that she was completely on her own. She couldn¡¯t even reach the man who¡¯d inexplicably abandoned and likely betrayed her side, while his overly-zealous lackey was lying in a heap on the cold metal floor, completely unconscious. She had to fix this by herself.
Rushing back to the front of the gondola, she stopped by the empty chair. The complicated array of controls before her carried an intimidating aura. Over three dozen lights blinked at her, their meanings inscrutable. She could see at least seven different dials, four levers, and, of course, that large rod protruding from the middle of the entire setup.
Arlette shook her head and gave herself several mental slaps as she worked up her courage. Sure, the whole apparatus appeared unknowably complex at first glance. Yes, she couldn¡¯t even begin to fathom how any of it functioned, the inner workings being practically magic in her eyes. But this was not some mystical creation of some higher being. This was the creation of a person¡ªa person no better than her or anybody else. They might have come from Earth, but that didn¡¯t automatically make them superior. Sofie was proof enough of that.
She could do this. She could figure it out. No, she had to figure it out, and quickly.
Stepping up to the controls, she placed her hand around the stick and moved her gaze to the world outside the craft. She quickly surveyed the land below. They¡¯d completely passed over the battle at this point, leaving the chaos behind them. Below stood the low rolling hills of the Eterian plains, stretching on and on far beyond the horizon. All that could be found there was grass, the occasional tree determined to defy the odds, and a large mass of people headed their way from the west.
Wait.
Arlette squinted at the large group, hoping to make out more detail, but she was too high up and they were still rather far away. She could tell there were a lot of them, however, and that they were approaching quickly. The sinking feeling in her gut returned with a vengeance at the sight. They could be only one thing: another Ubran army coming to reinforce the one already here. The situation was already terrible enough without more Ubrans entering the mix. She couldn¡¯t afford to waste even a single moment now.
Tilting the stick left, Arlette swayed as the craft also began to tilt to the left. She grabbed onto the nearby chair with her other hand to steady herself, its presence suddenly very welcome. Returning the stick to its centered position stopped the rotation, but the craft remained tilted. Judging by the land below, they were now still headed in the same general direction forward, but also a bit to the left as well.
That wouldn¡¯t do. Arlette tilted the stick right until the craft returned to level. How could she get this thing to turn around?
Experimentally, she tilted the stick forward. As expected, the nose of the craft fell and the entire thing began to descend. Nope! She pulled back on the stick until they were flying straight forward again.
What else could she do? It seemed that she¡¯d just have to try everything until she found the one she needed. Her hand went from the stick to a nearby lever that went side to side. She pulled it left. Nothing happened, as far as she could tell. After a few moments of waiting, she pulled it right. Still nothing. She returned it to its centered position. Turning the nearby dials accomplished little as well, as far as she could see.
She reached over to another lever, this one traveling vertically, and pulled it all the way down. The craft trembled and began to fall towards the ground, causing her to stumble. Panicking, she pushed herself back up and pulled the lever back to its center position. Their plummet quickly slowed and came to a halt, and Arlette swore to never touch that lever again.
All that remained was a lever that moved forward and backward, its current position slightly past halfway. She pulled it towards her and, as she¡¯d guessed by now given the working of the other lever, the craft slowed to a halt before reversing course.
Progress!
Still, this wasn¡¯t what she wanted. She couldn¡¯t properly see where they were headed like this. She needed to turn the craft around.
Now that she sort of understood the mechanics, she could see the general design. But she couldn¡¯t spot the controls she needed to turn the entire thing about. The closest she could see was the stick, but that was only for tipping the craft... or was it?
Grabbing the rod again, she twisted it left and fought the urge to smack herself as the ship began to rotate as she¡¯d desired. It had been right there the whole time. The good news was that this little delay had taken no more than a few moments. Now that she knew what she was doing, she could pilot the craft, albeit clumsily, back towards the battle.
Steering the craft felt very different than something like driving a cart. A cart was grounded and if you left it headed straight, it would continue along that path. This thing, on the other hand, drifted constantly. There was no ground to steady it and give it purchase, and the winds constantly pushed against it, sliding it sideways. Thankfully, this task didn¡¯t require more than the most basic level of skill. Soon enough, she had the craft pointed in the general direction of the ongoing battle. She pushed the speed lever forward as far as it would go and sank back into the chair behind her as the craft accelerated. The thrust barely resembled the force that had thrown her about back when the craft was under attack, but she could see their velocity increase markedly.
The wait to return to the battle was perhaps the longest wait of Arlette¡¯s life. She knew that her comrades were dying every moment, and it was partly because she hadn¡¯t acted until it was far too late. All she could hope to do now was cause as much damage as she could while she still had the chance to help.
A mighty battle raged ahead. The Eterian strike force, their abilities augmented with chimirin, had set about causing as much death and destruction as possible while they still could. However, they¡¯d run up against a formidable force on the other side: the Ubran siege weapons.
Large boulders and chunks of ice soared towards the strike force, only for the ground itself to burst forth like a massive hand and swat them from the sky. One of the Eterians raised their hands and hundreds of blazing spheres formed in the air above them, launching up into the sky before and raining down upon large swaths of Ubrans like hail only to bounce off of shields of ice, water, and stone created by the Ubran abominations.
The two sides were at a stalemate. While each member of the strike force was leagues more powerful than the abominations the Ubrans had, they were only a handful. The Ubrans¡¯ horrid creations were also few, but they still outnumbered the Eterians by a large margin. Their combined power was enough to slow the Eterians¡¯ progress greatly, though they were still making progress. That might have been fine if the Eterians weren¡¯t fighting on borrowed time.
She needed to drop these bombs as soon as possible. But... how? It was at this point that Arlette realized she¡¯d only figured out the first half of her task.
Jumping up from the chair, she ran towards the bomb compartment at the far end of the hall, her sword bouncing against her hip. The doors opened like the others with the single press of the green button, and Arlette was greeted with the long row of bombs still hanging from their claws.
This meant that the controls she needed would be here, inside this room... probably. Entering the chamber, she looked around for some sort of panel and found a metal box protruding from the wall to her right. Looking closer, the sinking feeling in her gut returned with a vengeance. There were no simple green buttons here. Instead, over a dozen gray, unmarked buttons gleamed in the glow of the crystal lighting.
Now what?
Pausing for a second, Arlette considered her actions and her options. She needed to accomplish two tasks: open the doors at the bottom of the chamber like she¡¯d seen done every time the Otharians delivered new machines, and then release the explosives, in that order. However, with the unmarked controls available to her, there seemed the definite possibility of doing those two things in the opposite order. She¡¯d seen what Pari¡¯s concoctions could do when the size of Arlette¡¯s fist. If one of these gargantuan things went off...
She shook her head. Surely somebody so brilliant that they could create something that flew through the air would make sure that bombs wouldn¡¯t release if the doors were closed... right? Surely...
She didn¡¯t have the time to mess around to figure this out properly. Gathering her courage, she put as much faith as she could in her assumptions about the room designer¡¯s competence and started pressing buttons randomly.
On the ninth press, the doors mercifully began to swing open. Arlette blinked as the morning sunshine rushed in to drive away the gloom, joined by chill winds that swirled around the chamber. She released the breath she hadn¡¯t realized she¡¯d been holding this hold time. Step one: complete!
Now came what was surely the easy part. Taking a quick peek over the edge, Arlette saw that they were crossing over the middle of the Ubran camp, a perfect target for explosives. Releasing them here would create chaos without running the risk of accidentally killing her allies. With growing confidence, she hit a button.
Nothing happened.
She hit another.
Still nothing.
The concerned frown on her lips grew with each button hit, mirroring the blossoming of the panic inside her. Other than accidentally closing the doors one time, nothing happened no matter what she pressed. What was she supposed to do?
The craft would be past the Ubran camp in mere moments. She needed more time.
Sprinting back to the front cabin, Arlette reversed the thrust for a moment before setting it to neutral. Hopefully, this would let the ship hover over the intended area long enough for her to figure out what she was doing wrong.
Her feet struck against the smooth floor with added anxiety now as she hurried back to the bomb chamber. How much more time did she have before it wouldn¡¯t matter anymore? Was it already too late? Had she already failed?
Upon returning to the rear room, Arlette resumed hitting every button she could, as fast as she could. Only two of them did anything, and those were the ones that opened and closed the bottom doors. The others would not respond, no matter if she held them, pressed them, or hit them in various combinations. Nothing worked.
A seed of a reckless idea germinated in her mind. She¡¯d been trying to go through the proper procedures in her own clumsy way, but did it matter how she released the bombs? She was willing to bet that the answer was no, that as long as she got them out, the rest would go as she hoped.
There was only one way to find out. Acting before her mind could talk her out of her crazy thoughts, she approached the nearest bomb and climbed up onto it. Hanging about a pace away from the edge of the floor and with handy handholds protruding out around the edge, the barrel-shaped object was simple to surmount. The claw from which it dangled was even easier, with a nice, flat, broad middle section she could stand on.
Now all she had to do was dislodge the bomb from the large metal claw that held it. With a casing made of wood, if she applied pressure the right way, maybe she could pry it loose. Then, she could hop to the next one and repeat the process.
Making sure that the sword on her hip wouldn¡¯t get caught, she grabbed the side of the claw so she wouldn¡¯t fall and hopped down, delivering as heavy a stomp as she could manage onto the edge of the barrel. It creaked, but that was all. As far as she could see, it didn¡¯t move even the width of a hair.
She tried again, and again, jumping up and down and striking it with all her might, but her might wasn¡¯t much to speak of. If she was a Feeler, or maybe just had a larger body, this would be a different story.
What did weaker people do when they didn¡¯t have somebody mighty to help them with heavy labor? Oh, right, they used tools, and she happened to have a tool on her. Not the best tool for the job, but better than nothing.
Pulling her sword from its scabbard, she positioned herself chest down on the claw with her head and shoulders leaning over the edge and began chipping away at the edge where the claw met the bomb as fast as she could. The wood proved softer than expected, but still, the barrel wouldn¡¯t budge.
A sound broke through the din of the rushing air and the tohubohu below. Arlette raised her head and froze for a moment in surprise. There, by the control box, stood a very furious Simona, her hand inserting a crystalline key into the top of the box. She eyed Arlette with a look of pure, unmasked hatred.
¡°Wait-¡±
Refusing to even listen to Arlette¡¯s panicked plea, the Otharian slammed her palm down upon the buttons. Arlette caught the sound of something above her releasing. She managed to look up just in time to see the spool of metal rope from which the claw hung begin to unwind, sending her, the claw, and the bomb plummeting out of the chamber and into the howling winds.
As her precarious perch descended, the patchwork of canvas tent roofs rushing towards her with terrifying speed, Arlette couldn¡¯t help but let out a shriek. Gusts buffeting her to the point that they threatened her hold, all she could manage to do was grip the claw with desperate strength and pray to the spirits that she didn¡¯t fall off when the spool ran out.
When she reached about eighty paces above the ground, her fall came to a quick and sudden end. The claw and bomb jerked and bounced sharply, sending her tumbling head over heels over the edge despite her grip. Flailing about for her life with everything she had, she just barely managed to snag her left hand onto the barrel¡¯s rim as she fell past. Her heart pounding in her ears, Arlette used every last shred of strength she still had to scramble back atop the claw, whereupon she wrapped her arms around the metal rope and swore to never let it go ever again no matter what.
Finally stable, she proceeded to evaluate her situation. The first bit of bad news was that she¡¯d lost her sword in the tumble. She could see it laying on top of a tent down below her. That left only the five throwing knives she had strapped onto her person should she somehow get into a fight. The second bit of bad news was that she was hanging about eighty paces above the enemy camp atop a massive explosive.
Said massive explosive still hung in the claw¡¯s clutches, though Arlette noticed that it had shifted slightly, with the wood on one end cracked where the wood met the metal. With one foot, she reached down and gave it an experimental shove, but found that she still couldn¡¯t seem to budge it. The thought of being within such close proximity to the large device made her insides squirm.
Arlette briefly entertained the thought of climbing the hundreds of paces back up to the ship, but after trying for a moment, she gave up. The metal rope was far too smooth and the wind too strong; she couldn¡¯t even make it twenty paces higher, let alone the hundreds between her and safety. She was stuck dangling in the air, the wind swaying her back and forth as she slowly drifted over the battle.
That led to bad news part three: the state of the battle below. As she swung around, she saw that a core of Eterians battled fiercely to her west, their number at most half of what they were just a quarter of an hour before. Jaglioths roared in anger and defiance as they swiped blood-covered claws and sent Ubrans soaring overhead. Their Kutradian and Eterian counterparts echoed that primal cry, pushing against the enveloping Ubrans with everything they possessed, knowing they would not live to see the sunset but determined to take every invader they could with them when they went.
That was where things were now. She could see that any hope of taking the Emperor¡¯s head had vanished. The Ubrans surrounding the Eterians like water around a few large bubbles, outnumbering the defenders greatly now that the troops from the northern and southern camps had fully joined in. The eastern camp¡¯s soldiers were just moments away from joining the slaughter as well. Those bubbles would pop soon. Only the fact that the horrible melded flesh people, who moved much slower than the rest of the troops, were still a long ways off prevented the fight from being over already.
Speaking of which, the ones already here in the western camp would be turning to the remaining Eterians momentarily. Only two members of the Eterian strike force still lived¡ªSupreme General Astalaria and a stocky man with a gray beard, a general on the western wall that she never really dealt with¡ªthe others having been slain or taken by the chimirin. She could see what looked like blackened body parts sprinkled across the ground near their entry point.
That being said, the devastation they¡¯d managed to inflict before passing was remarkable. Nearly a third of the Ubran camp was on fire, a small army of non-soldier Ubrans rushing about trying to fight the flames. To the south, tens of thousands of Ubran bodies covered the ground, some charred, some crushed, all dead. By her quick estimate, the chimirin-powered people had killed more than a third of the Ubrans in the western camp, the largest of the four camps. Most of the living siege weapons had fallen to their hands, as well. The power of the drug terrified her.
Arlette watched in awe as three cyclones thirty paces in diameter danced through the camp towards one of the remaining Ubran abominations. A large, thick wall of stone grew between them, but the newly created shield crumbled against the might of the whirlwinds. The abomination stood no chance against the funnels¡¯ power, the winds sweeping it off the ground and flinging them high into the air.
The trio of tornados pivoted almost immediately towards another enemy, but suddenly faltered and dissipated. Arlette¡¯s gaze swept back to the gray-bearded man, who seemed to tremble as if he were being shaken by an invisible giant as horrid blackness rotted away at his body. Then, like all the others, he burst like a putrid pimple, bits of blackened flesh spraying the surrounding area. In most situations, the sight would have been enough to make Arlette want to vomit, but surrounded by so much blood and gore, it barely registered on her now.
Perhaps fittingly, the general¡¯s death left the Supreme General as the final surviving member of the secret strike team, their best and only hope for victory. He swept out a hand, sending a ripple through the earth that swelled into a wave forty paces wide and fifteen paces high. Like a storm surge battering the land amidst a furious storm, the wave swept outward, violently tossing everything in its way up into the sky. Hundreds of Ubrans spun helplessly as they arced through the air before slamming back down to the hard ground, breaking bones, cutting themselves on their own weapons, or worse.
But then, like the cyclones before it, the wave faltered. Arlette didn¡¯t even need to look to know what was about to happen, and she didn¡¯t want to. Instead, she averted her gaze, looking out at the horizon. There, the second Ubran army could be seen only a few hills away, banners dyed an assortment of colors fluttering as they closed in. Only... those weren¡¯t the banners of the Ubran Empire. The Ubran banners were usually black and gold. These were sky blue, dark green, yellow, white, and more. Arlette did a double-take. Surely they couldn¡¯t be-
An overbearing, deafening roar from above interrupted her stunned thoughts. Her perch began to sway wildly. In a panic, she looked above her and her blood ran cold.
Arlette realized now that she¡¯d made a crucial error in her understanding of the flow in battle. Up until now, she hadn¡¯t had to worry about incoming arrows or fireballs. The majority of the fighting was happening farther off to the side, rather than beneath her. What¡¯s more, those in the camp below were far more concerned with the series of large fires than they were with a single woman dangling eighty paces above the earth. There were better things to do and graver threats than an unarmed woman stuck hanging in the air at the bottom of a rope.
Now that the Eterian strike force had perished, she had thought the remaining Ubran siege weapons would turn their might on the last pockets of Eterian resistance. But there was no reason to do that. The regular Ubran soldiers were all that they needed for total victory. So, why bother when a huge, menacing target floated in the sky above you instead? An object that Arlette had unintentionally lowered back down into their range?
The ship roared with stunning power as it seemed to almost leap and pirouette out of the path of a rising fireball, its mass tilting sharply as it barely avoided the incoming projectile. Teeth clenched so hard it hurt, Arlette clutched the metal rope in sheer terror as the ship tugged it every which way, flinging her and the claw and bomb combo she rode through the sky like a child playing with a piece of string.
While Arlette managed to hang on despite the constantly changing directions, her legs and arms wrapped as tightly and firmly around the metal rope as she could manage, but the bomb could not. As they swung through the air, the bomb apparently decided it had had quite enough of all this bullshit and slipped out of the claw¡¯s grasp. Arlette watched as it soared through the air over the Ubran camp before crashing down amidst the throngs of Ubran soldiers.
THOOM!
For a moment, a sun bloomed before her eyes. Then, her ears were greeted by a crash of thunder so loud and forceful that it overpowered even the deafening roar of the craft above. Even the air reversed direction for little, the stiflingly hot air rushing over her like a hot gust of desert wind before the cold currents reestablished the natural order.
A stray thought flitted through Arlette¡¯s mind, a picture of another reality where Pari and the others had never crossed paths. The girl¡¯s morals were sketchy at best, and that was after a full year of Sofie indoctrination. What would have happened had that terrifying beastkin been picked up by some criminal enterprise instead of their raggedy band of fugitives? Used correctly, her talents could probably take down an entire country.
As the smoke cleared, Arlette found a crater over a hundred paces wide where there had once been flat ground and hundreds of Ubran soldiers. The shock of sudden, unanticipated attack brought a lull over much of the battlefield as much of the Ubran force tried to comprehend what had just occurred. The relative silence allowed them¡ªand Arlette¡ªto notice a new sound, one previously concealed by the shouts of warriors and the clash of metal on metal: the war cries of the newly arriving army from the east.
They were now close enough that Arlette could make out individual people, and she could finally see what felt so off about them. While some elves and beastkin lived outside of Drayhadal and Stragma, there were far too many of them here in one place for this group to be Ubran reinforcements. So many in one place could only mean one thing: the two southern countries had finally joined the war.
¡°You fucking bastards! Now you show up!?¡± she hollered into the wind, her heart torn between indignant anger at their timing and elation that they were here at all.
What could bring the two nations together to the point that they were within paces of each other and yet weren¡¯t stabbing their counterparts to death, Arlette didn¡¯t know. What she did know was that their arrival completely changed everything. Already, commanders were barking orders, the majority of the Ubrans splitting away from the Eterians and moving west to intercept the incoming attackers before they could swarm over the Ubran camp that rested between the two sides.
At first glance, the Ubrans still outnumbered the combined Nocend forces, but the difference was now less than two to one. However, the new arrivals had the advantage of surprise and positioning on their side. Would it be enough to even the odds?
Arlette didn¡¯t get a chance to watch and find out. The Ubran siege weapons were still lobbing the odd boulder up towards the airship, causing the claw to continue swinging about as the airship bobbed and weaved. But whatever steered the ship as it avoided danger didn¡¯t seem to care about the metal rope hanging from the ship¡¯s bottom as it did nothing to stop the side of one of the massive projectiles from colliding with the rope as it passed underneath. Arlette could see the whip-like action shooting down the rope towards her. She tightened her grip even more.
¡°Nononononono-¡±
The rope bucked as it struck her in the chest like the kick of an angry garoph, the force ripping her from her perch and sending her flying. Gravity took hold and the camp below rushed towards her.
Not knowing what else to do as she spun slowly through the air on her one-way trip downward, Arlette curled into a ball and prayed to the spirits for her survival.
The spirits were on her side. Arlette¡¯s entire body shuddered as she slammed into the canvas of a tent of above-average size, knocking the wind from her lungs. Her body was oriented in such a way that her left shoulder and upper left side hit first. As it did, she felt the fabric resist for just a fraction of a moment before tearing, absorbing some of her momentum, but not enough. It was the small wooden table on the other side of the tent roof that absorbed the rest. Massive pain blossomed in her shoulder as both it and the table splintered upon impact.
Arlette didn¡¯t move for a moment. Her whole body hurt, her left shoulder and upper arm most of all. Eventually, she let out a cough and winced in pain. Her head swam from the way it had bumped into the broken table, even with her arm in between. Her left shoulder was most definitely broken. The rest of her side would surely be covered in large bruises soon enough. Even her chest plate seemed to have been severely dented, judging by the way it was digging into the side of her rib cage. But she was alive. That was more than she could ask for.
She looked around. The tent, a relatively large one that, judging by the presence of real furniture all over, looked to belong to someone fairly important. Her body complained as she pushed herself up to her feet, but she powered through the pain. Right now the tent stood blessedly empty, but after such an entrance, that wouldn¡¯t last for long.
Rolling onto her right side, she gingerly climbed to her feet. With her upper body taking most of the hit, her lower body was severely bruised but still fully functional. Arlette gave thanks to the spirits that she hadn¡¯t fallen leg-first and snapped an ankle or something like that. A broken shoulder on her dominant side meant she couldn¡¯t fight, but she could still run. A broken leg meant she could do neither.
Arlette felt along her left side with her right hand, tracing the dent with her fingers. She had to take the armor off, she reluctantly decided. It was causing her too much pain. The armor had always been secondary protection; she preferred to avoid hits whenever possible rather than take a hit and block it with armor. While it had proved its worth multiple times during this last campaign, it had to go if it meant she wouldn¡¯t be able to move or breathe well.
But how would she remove it? Gritting her teeth, Arlette found that she could open and close her hand and bend her elbow with some pain, but that pain was on a level she could handle if she was ready for it. The real problems came if she tried to move her shoulder, especially if she tried to raise it away from her body. This presented an issue, because raising her arms over her head was basically the only way to get her dented armor off.
Fearing that she was running out of time, she walked over to a sturdy-looking tent pole in the center of the tent, grabbed her left arm with her right, and pulled it up so it could grab the pole and hang down. The hardest part was keeping silent through the torture she was subjecting herself to, but what had to be done had to be done. After a few moments of squirming with her right arm and head, she managed to successfully remove her ruined armor from around her chest and let her left arm fall, an action she immediately regretted as another spike of pain lanced through the shoulder.
Chest plate removed, Arlette quickly searched the tent for a replacement to her lost sword. After finding nothing of the sort, she made her escape. Instead of heading towards the tent flap, Arlette crept over to the nearest wall, pulled out a knife, cut a vertical slit at its bottom tall enough for her to squeeze through at a crouch, and squeezed herself through. Better to avoid being seen as much as possible. Making sure nobody noticed her exit amidst the hubbub, she slunk between two nearby tents where she would be harder to spot. After cloaking herself in a fake Ubran outfit like that of the people she saw running around nearby, she began to consider her situation.
Things weren¡¯t looking so great. She had no sword and only five knives, which were better suited for throwing than hand-to-hand combat. Her left arm was out of commission¡ªagain, though this felt much worse than when she¡¯d been stabbed in the same shoulder up on the wall¡ªmeaning she could only effectively fight with her non-dominant right hand.
To make matters worse, she was stuck in this condition in the middle of the enemy camp. She didn¡¯t know if she could defeat a single well-trained, experienced soldier right now. Here, it would never come down to her versus one Ubran. She¡¯d be surrounded and turned into a pincushion before she knew what to do.
There was no choice for her but to run. She¡¯d put herself in Crirada with the hope of being one drop of water amongst the many it would take to quench the Ubran flame. But on her own, she would simply boil away while accomplishing nothing. If she could get away and heal, maybe she¡¯d be able to find another avenue towards her revenge. The arrival of the Drayhadans and Stragmans meant the situation in Eterium would be fluid for a little while. But first, she had to get out alive.
But how? If she could somehow get to the western side of the camp and blend into the Stragman and Drayhadan forces, she could probably sneak out of the battle and get to safety. But that would put her in a massive amount of danger. All it would take was one fight she couldn¡¯t run from for her to be in massive trouble.
After a moment of consideration, Arlette decided to head east and hide for as long as possible in the camp, or make a break for the north if she could see an opening. She thought it wise to see which side looked to have the upper hand before she committed to a plan.
The sound of thousands of throats calling out for blood grew louder and louder as she pondered her best move. The first wave of Ubran soldiers rushed past her little hiding place, which was her cue to get out while she still could. She didn¡¯t want to get caught up in the impending bloodbath.
As a student of history, and as somebody who¡¯d been in a few large-scale battles herself, she knew that conflicts between two large armies usually went one of two ways. There was the sort of battle like the one happening on the eastern end, where one side was dwarfed by the other. If the smaller force couldn¡¯t or wouldn¡¯t retreat, the battle would go as it was now: the smaller force would do everything they could to keep themselves from getting split apart and overwhelmed while the larger force would surround them and press in until the smaller side broke.
On the other hand, two armies of relatively equal power clashing followed a very different path. What would start as two organized, distinct forces with battle lines and whatnot usually turned into a chaotic mess quickly after the two sides crashed into each other. The fight would break down into thousands of individual battles between small groups, where your chance of surviving past the next moment depended less on the size of your army and more upon the strength of your squad and the people within a hundred paces of you on each side. While numbers mattered in the grand scheme of things, sometimes a three-on-one fight could still be a losing fight for the three if the one was powerful and experienced.
Battles of this sort spread quickly outward as everybody vied for space and positioning. It was this sort of chaos that Arlette wanted desperately to avoid. She didn¡¯t have anybody to watch her back, and either sides might take her to be their enemy. But with the two armies meeting nearby, she had little time to avoid such a fate.
She stepped out and ran against the flow of the Ubrans, making sure to keep herself looking as confident and not-scared as she could. Her goal was to look like a messenger carrying a message away from the front lines. The trick, like anywhere else, was to look like you belonged and knew what you were doing and where you were going. Run fast, but not too fast; run towards something, not away from something.
It wasn¡¯t easy. The bouncing of her run caused a small spike of pain to shoot up from her left shoulder with every footfall as her arm tugged against the joint, forcing her to hold it in place with her other arm. But still, the tactic worked as she¡¯d hoped. The other Ubrans had too much to worry about, what with the surprise army and all, to care about some soldier heading the other way.
At least, they did for a while. Unfortunately, her luck didn¡¯t last forever. After making some good progress, a stern voice called out to her.
¡°You there!¡± an imposing-looking commander shouted as she passed. ¡°Where are you going? The enemy is that way!¡±
¡°Delivering an important message, sir!¡± she called as she ran by.
The man frowned at her answer and turned to give chase. Arlette swore under her breath and ducked between two tents before going into a full sprint. The commander followed after her, yelling at her to stop. She refused.
Emerging from the gap, she veered towards another one in the next tent row and shot down it. Exiting that one, she repeated the process, swerving at random to make it harder for the man to keep track of her and put as many other people as possible between them. The pain with each stride hurt more now, but she ignored it, her adrenaline helping to make it a problem for a later time.
¡°Halt! Somebody stop her!¡± the man called, but nobody could process his orders in time before she was already gone through the chaos.
Seven rows of tents later, he¡¯d fallen behind enough for Arlette to pull out one of her usual reliable tricks. Running past the end of another tent, she veered sharply to the right this time so the tent blocked her pursuer¡¯s view of her for a moment. A fake Arlette sprung forth, rushing towards the tents in the next row, while she crossed to the other side of the tent to her side and entered the gap on the opposite side of the one she¡¯d just left.
Crouching down, she conjured up a crate to hide inside and watched. The commander spied the fake Arlette just as she ducked between the tents and ran after her. Unfortunately for him, the fake Arlette was just too fast. She was already through the gap and out the other side by the time he reached the entrance. He gave chase anyway, but there was no way he would catch her, since after veering out of sight, the illusion vanished.
Arlette didn¡¯t move as soon as the commander left her view. She wanted to wait a few moments to make sure he¡¯d given up before she left, and she needed to catch her breath anyway. As she began to plan her next move, voices in the tent to her right caught her ears. She caught a tone of panic and listened closer.
¡°Absolutely not!¡± an older male voice declared. ¡°I will not go down in history as a coward who ran! This whole plan was bad enough! I should be out there inspiring our soldiers, not hiding away! It makes me look weak!¡±
¡°But Your Eminence!¡± another male voice, pleaded. ¡°We cannot risk your safety! Let us escape while our people deal with this threat!¡±
Arlette nearly gasped out loud. The Emperor was here, in the tent beside her? A thousand crazy thoughts raced through her mind. What if she could somehow...
No! She was injured, and the Emperor was clearly not alone inside that tent. There were probably a half a dozen or more guards in there with him, all of them strong fighters, plus whoever was arguing with him. Revenge tempted her, but she knew it would be a mistake. She wouldn¡¯t even last a moment if they found her.
¡°I already bent too much when I agreed to vacate the stone rings for this pathetic tent! I will not bend again!¡± the Emperor pronounced. ¡°This is the last gasp of the Nocenders! Break them and there will be nothing left to challenge my conquest! We will not run, and that is final! Enough of this! What of my Champion? Has she not been located yet?¡±
¡°Ah... no, Your Holiness,¡± another voice, female this time, replied. ¡°We are still looking, but the Champion is nowhere to be found. Nor have we been able to find the Batranala who serves her. They have both vanished. What¡¯s more, my people found an entrance to an unauthorized tunnel leading south within their quarters.¡±
The tent grew quiet for a moment. Arlette¡¯s eyes widened as she realized that she hadn¡¯t seen the Monster anywhere. With the Otharian units idle, this would have been the perfect time for her to destroy the Eterian defense once and for all, but she was nowhere to be found.
¡°A Batranala betraying her master? This... this is...¡± Arlette could hear the cold fury in the Emperor¡¯s voice. ¡°Once this battle is over, I want her hunted to the ends of the world! Use as many people as you need. I want her alive and on her knees before me before the season¡¯s end! Understood? She will pay a thousand-fold for her disloyalty!¡±
¡°As you command, Your Grace!¡± both voices responded.
¡°Furthermore, neither of them has the capability to make a tunnel without being found out. They must have had help. Root out all who would conspire against me and stick their heads on pikes for all to see!¡±
¡°Yes, Your Grace!¡±
¡°You are dismissed! Do not disappoint me as they did.¡±
Arlette could hear the two Ubrans quickly leave the tent. Once more, she considered the idea of sneaking in and murdering the one man she hated as much as Sebastian, the man who¡¯d destroyed her home. But once again, she thought better of it. The odds of success were just too low.
If she was guaranteed to take that blasted man¡¯s life, she would, even if the price was her own life. Her insignificant existence against the ruler of a continent? That was a trade worth taking any day. But the likely outcome was her dying by ten different blades while the Emperor watched, unscathed. It just wasn¡¯t worth trying.
A soft step nearby on the other side of the fabric graced the edge of her hearing and almost twenty years of battle-trained instincts started screaming at her to get the fuck out of there. She immediately dove away just as two large swords cut through the tent and her former position.
As Arlette staggered to her feet, a large, heavily muscled man with milky-white eyes emerged from the newly created entrance, a sharp, gleaming ornate blade in each hand. Her ears picked up a loud, high-pitched whine that slowly grew in volume, it¡¯s tone modulating in a way that made her feel... wrong. Dizzy and off-balance, the world spun even though she was standing upright and not moving.
She recognized this man. He always stood by the Emperor¡¯s side as he held court outside the walls, likely as his bodyguard. She¡¯d found the man¡¯s presence scary then; up close it was far more menacing.
She took a step back and the ground seemed to shift beneath her just a little, threatening to make her stumble. She caught herself and threw the knife in her right hand at the bodyguard, creating several fake knives that split off as she flung her hand around.
The man swept a sword out in front of him, knocking the real knife away while not even reacting to the others. The tremendous speed at which the sword sliced through the air brought a fearful gasp from her. He was a Weaver.
This whole situation was bad. Just one look told her that this man was way out of her league. Nobody became the bodyguard of the most powerful person in the world by being weak.
A large group of Ubran soldiers had been running by her when this all went down. Seizing this chance, Arlette rushed into the crowd to hide. With her illusory Ubran army uniform on, she figured she could blend into the others fairly easily.
The bodyguard didn¡¯t give chase right away. Instead, he stayed put for a moment as if waiting for something. Then, nodding his head as if accepting orders, he shot after her.
Arlette swayed as she ran, the sound somehow messing with her sense of her body and what direction down was. The interference slowed her considerably and messed with her agility, which she considered her greatest physical advantage. It left her feeling weak and vulnerable.
Still, she did what she could, trying to put as much distance and as many people between her and the man as possible. The mass of Ubran soldiers had been headed for the expanding combat zone to the west, its deadly pandemonium growing closer and closer as the fighting spread. Against her earlier judgment, Arlette headed towards the front line along with them, at least for now. If she couldn¡¯t lose the bodyguard in this group, she would likely need the messy chaos of combat to escape.
Her milky-eyed pursuer, however, wasn¡¯t going to let her get away that easily. Plowing into the group like an enraged jaglioth, he pursued her with frightening persistence, knocking people out of his way to take as direct a path towards her as he could. The fact that these people were Ubrans seemed of no importance to him.
Seeing him quickly gaining ground, Arlette veered to her left while sending a fake version right. The terror within her spiked as she saw him immediately follow her without even a hint of hesitation. She tried again, this time heading right. He went right as well.
Arlette had a bad feeling deep inside. The way he was tracking her didn¡¯t feel like he was just getting lucky. She swerved left again, sending her doppelganger deeper into the throng while she headed out of the group and towards the space between the nearest two tents. She could see a smattering of real fighting going on just on the other side of the nearest row. If she could just reach it...
She risked a glance back and paled at what she saw. Not only was the man still hot on her heels, he was even closer, now less than thirty paces behind. In a desperate bid to create more of the chaos she needed, Arlette took out another knife and threw it backward into the crowd. The blade struck home in a soldier¡¯s hip, the wound nowhere near enough to incapacitate him but definitely enough to cause him to trip. The resulting pile-up of flailing bodies created a wonderful roadblock.
Arlette couldn¡¯t help but grin as she took another peek back at the shrinking mess of limbs and torsos. She could see the bodyguard... no, wait. She couldn¡¯t see him anymore. Where had he-
Something struck her left thigh, sending her sprawling onto the ground, her left shoulder taking much of the impact for the second time. But the tremendous pain coming from that stood no chance against the overwhelming pain that spiked up from that leg, wrenching an agonized scream from her lips. A sword as wide as her palm and longer than her arm was now completely embedded through her left thigh. The blade entered from her left and traveled all the way through the muscle so that the hilt pressed against her skin while the majority of the blood-drenched metal stuck out of her inner thigh just below her groin. If the blade had been just a little farther back, or rotated differently, it would have cleaved straight through the bone.
Her pursuer stood about twenty paces to her left, his right hand extended towards her and conspicuously missing the sword it had held just moments ago. When had he managed to slip around to her side like that? Had she misjudged her situation because of the sound he kept emitting that was making her woozy? She tried to puzzle out the answers, but the pain and disorientation made thought difficult.
Try as she might, Arlette could not contain the whimpers coming from her throat. She tried to crawl away, but every movement felt like absolute torture. She couldn¡¯t put any power into either of her left limbs, and the blade sticking out of her thigh blocked her right leg from moving as well. All she could manage was to weakly drag herself along the ground with her right arm.
The bodyguard approached her now, his other sword ready to put her out of her misery. She didn¡¯t know what to do anymore. In a last gasp of panicked defiance, she created an illusory ball of flame big enough to fry the man whole and sent it at him, hoping to frighten him even for a moment. He didn¡¯t even blink, walking through it without even acknowledging its existence.
Something finally clicked together. The man¡¯s blank, clouded eyes. The way he moved without looking around, even while a battle raged nearby. The way he¡¯d known she was outside the tent. He was blind.
How he could move around like a normal person, and how he seemed to know where everything was, probably had something to do with the sound that made her feel dizzy. He used echoes to navigate just like the dorkati--cave lizards that used sound to see in the lightless caverns they called home. Her illusions never worked on him because he didn¡¯t even know the illusions were there in the first place!
Faster than her. Stronger than her. Completely unaffected by her illusions. Able to disorient her so she couldn¡¯t rely on her agility. It was like he was the perfect counter to everything she could do.
Once again, she was too weak.
¡°Prince Tehlmar, there¡¯s another one over there!¡±
A chorus of shouts broke through the warbling whine the bodyguard continued to emit. He stopped short of her and raised his sword to his right as a blood-red whip lashed out and wrapped around the blade. As he pulled back, swinging his weapon free, a group of twenty or so elves decked in resplendent armor rushed into Arlette¡¯s view.
The whine in her ears intensified and changed pitch as an all-out battle between the bodyguard and the elves broke out. Though the elves had the advantage of numbers and looked like they knew what they were doing, they moved oddly, as if their bodies lacked the coordination of somebody trained in martial arts and body control for years. At the same time, her wooziness lessened dramatically, as if a pressure on her brain had suddenly vanished.
¡°Finally!¡± a voice behind her sighed. ¡°Letty, do you have any idea how many blue-haired women there are running around this place?¡±
Arlette froze, her mind going blank. Only one person ever called her that. She¡¯d thought she would never see that person ever again. But, as she turned her head, there he stood.
The bodies were different, the man before her short, slight, and lithe, completely at odds with the tall, wide, and girthy body of the man who¡¯d once been her greatest friend. The faces were nothing alike either, the refined visage she saw now¡ªwhich she¡¯d only witnessed once before but would never be able to forget¡ªbearing no resemblance to the round, pudgy face with the bulbous nose and wide, thick mustache that she¡¯d seen so many times over the years. But that cheeky, shit-eating grin... no matter the face, no matter the body, she¡¯d recognize that smile anywhere.
The being who¡¯d once been her greatest friend stood right there, right behind her. Pure rage flared within her at the sight of that smile. After all he¡¯d done, he had the audacity to show up beside her like this? She clenched her jaw shut and stared daggers his way. Only the extent of Arlette¡¯s injuries and the current situation kept her from beating the living daylight out of him.
¡°Prince Tehlmar, be careful!¡± one of the nearby elves warned.
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¡°Stay focused on the Ubran!¡± he yelled back. ¡°We need to hold him until she finds us!¡±
Tehlmar? So that was his name. The name fit better to the man standing there than Jaquet ever would. There was no way in the world Jaquet would ever have been caught in such an ornate, gaudy set of armor.
¡°Here,¡± Tehlmar said, pulling out a roll of bandages and handing it to her. Her rage seemed to flow right through him like he wasn¡¯t there, which only stoked her anger further. ¡°Hold still. This is going to hurt.¡±
Checking the battle behind him for a moment to make sure he was clear, he bent down, grabbed the blade wedged into her leg by the handle, and pulled it free. Arlette hissed as the cold metal slid out of her body, but her right hand immediately went to work, wrapping the wound with the practiced movements of somebody who¡¯d done this many times before while holding the bandage in place with her left, which was about the extent of what that hand could do motion-wise at the moment.
The fight nearby wasn¡¯t going so well for the Drayhadan side. In just a few moments, four of the elven fighters were down and another two were clutching their wounds as they continued to fight, while the Ubran bodyguard looked entirely untouched. Arlette had been too distracted to see how it had all gone down, but she could make a pretty good guess just by the way the fight progressed as she wrapped her leg tightly.
The elves seemed just as affected, if not more so, by the destabilizing sound as she¡¯d been. They stumbled and swayed like they¡¯d had a good few too many drinks and were just trying to stagger their way home. The Ubran, on the other hand, danced with graceful precision between their strikes, moving with a nimbleness that a man that size shouldn¡¯t possess. Seeing the situation, Tehlmar joined the fray, fighting against the dizziness to charge at the Ubran¡¯s undefended back.
Alarm bells went off in Arlette¡¯s head, but it was already too late.
Thrusting his newly-acquired sword at the man¡¯s upper back, Tehlmar gasped as the blade found nothing but air. The Ubran bent forward, reaching up and behind him with his free hand to grasp the weapon firmly before twisting about and sending a powerful roundhouse towards the elf¡¯s head. Tehlmar had to release the sword, but by doing so he was able to pull his arm back enough to intercept the incoming strike before it could pound his skull. The move saved his consciousness, and maybe even his life, but the kick still had enough power to send him crashing into a nearby tent. The tent, a smaller one that likely housed two soldiers at most, collapsed on him in a shower of fabric.
Nearly finished, Arlette kept wrapping. She just prayed that the other Drayhadans could keep the Ubran menace at bay long enough for her to get back on her feet.
Unfortunately, that looked less and less likely. Now reunited with both his of swords, the bodyguard¡¯s assault on the elves took on a whole new level. He became a whirling bringer of death, twin blades lopping off arms and severing heads with blinding speed. One elf dropped, then another, then a third, all before Arlette could even blink.
In just moments, only ten elves still stood, the other ten or so now nothing more than corpses littering the ground and making footing all the more unreliable. The remaining elves spread out and backed away, readying their weapons or conjuring up some fire or ice. Meanwhile, Tehlmar managed to extricate himself from the collapsed tent, crimson liquid poured from his palms and forming into two long whips. He let out a piercing whistle and stepped forward, the blood whips lashing out at the Ubran as if they had a life of their own.
Tying several tight knots with the bandage, Arlette took one of her three remaining throwing knives and cut off the unused bandage before rolling over her good right side and pushing herself up. Her left leg screamed as she rose unsteadily to her feet, but she felt that she could at least hobble with it for the moment if she took her time.
Another elf had fallen by the time she worked herself upright. The remaining nine and Tehlmar were doing their all just to stay alive as the Ubran continued his relentless onslaught.
Arlette had never seen anybody fight the way Tehlmar fought. Thick red liquid morphed into a variety of shapes, from shields to swords to whips to more abstract things like simple spikes with smaller spikes growing out of them, changing to suit his immediate needs. There was an elegance to the way each shape flowed from one to the next in a way that seemed almost natural and left almost no openings.
And yet, even ten-on-one, the Ubran still had the advantage. A flurry of strikes pushed Tehlmar back, and Arlette could see how he struggled to keep his footing with his disrupted equilibrium. She also couldn¡¯t help but notice how pale he looked. Fighting this way took an obvious toll on him.
With a strong flick of her good arm, Arlette threw one of her last knives at the Ubran, causing him to halt his attack and step out of the way just long enough for Tehlmar to retreat and for the other nine elves to jump in and harass their enemy. Then she started backing away as quickly as she could manage¡ªwhich, for the record, was very slowly¡ªand made her way for the gap between two nearby tents. She was getting out now, while she still could. What happened to the rest of them, well... that wasn¡¯t her problem.
¡°Letty, wait!¡± Tehlmar called out.
Arlette ignored him and kept walking, but before she could take more than another two steps, a low female voice roared out from somewhere on the other side of the tents in front of her and stopped her in her tracks.
¡°WHERE¡¯D YOU GO, YOU ESMAE SON OF A BITCH?!¡± the woman hollered. ¡°YOU PROMISED ME STRONG OPPONENTS!¡±
A massive club tore through a tent, barely missing Arlette and throwing the structure aside to revealing the irate, hulking form of Akhustal Palebane¡ªalong with two other beastpeople¡ªstanding on the other side. The Chos and Arlette blinked as they saw each other. Realizing she still had her Ubran uniform disguise illusion active, Arlette quickly dropped it before the Stragman could knock her head off. Palebane blinked in surprise and recognition.
¡°You?! What are you doing-¡± She stopped mid-sentence as she spied the Ubran standing amidst the bodies of the slain, blood flying from his swords as he gave them each a powerful flick. An excited, predatory grin appeared on her face, growing wider and wider the more she stared. ¡°Oh. Ohohoho, I know you! You¡¯re Taras, the Blind Butcher! Oh yeah, you¡¯re just what I need right now!¡±
She stepped forward, pointing at Tehlmar. ¡°You two follow his orders for the rest of the battle. This one¡¯s mine!¡±
¡°Yes, Chos!¡± the others responded, moving around to join the elves. They eyed each other warily but neither side said anything.
¡°Alright, everybody, group up!¡± Tehlmar commanded as he sidestepped over to Arlette, never turning away from the Ubran, who¡¯d gone fully still. ¡°We¡¯re falling back!¡±
The elves and beastkin faded towards the two of them. Making a decision, the blind man leapt towards Arlette and the others. Tehlmar¡¯s blood flowed outward into two large circular shields to intercept the strikes. He staggered back from the blows, grunting with exertion as he used the compression of the liquid to absorb much of the force.
But before the bodyguard could strike again, he twisted to his right and brought up his weapons. Stragman wood met Ubran metal and the Ubran lost, the blow sending him crashing through one of the few tents still standing nearby.
¡°Buh? That¡¯s it?¡± the Stragman leader muttered to herself.
¡°Let¡¯s go, she¡¯s got this,¡± Tehlmar stated, grabbing Arlette¡¯s right arm and placing it over his shoulders for support.
Irrational fury coursed through Arlette¡¯s soul at the touch. She shook herself free and hobbled forward, away from the Chos and towards the battle.
¡°Don¡¯t touch me,¡± she snapped at him, no longer able to keep her silence.
¡°But-¡±
¡°No. Somebody else, maybe. But not you.¡±
The elf frowned. ¡°You!¡± he barked at the shorter of the two beastpeople, who stood about Arlette¡¯s height. ¡°Help her along! We¡¯re moving!¡±
The beastkin¡¯s face made his displeasure at taking orders from a Drayhadan quite clear, but his ruler¡¯s orders were even clearer. He took Arlette¡¯s shoulder and they quickened their pace.
The sound of club against sword was heard behind them once again, followed by disappointed complaints from the Stragman woman.
¡°I heard you were a deadly warrior! The greatest in the Empire! Protector of the Emperor himself!¡± she griped. ¡°I thought you¡¯d be somebody worth going all-out against, but you¡¯re nothing more than a pretender with a worthless TRICK!¡±
As she yelled that last word, the sound of metal striking wood rang out one last time, though much louder than before.
¡°Look out!¡± Tehlmar cried as a shape went shooting past them only a pace or two above their heads.
Tumbling out of control, the Ubran soldier who¡¯d effortlessly dispatched ten experienced warriors in just moments landed in a heap before rolling to a stop a good forty paces in front of their group. They stopped as he slowly pushed himself back to his feet.
Arlette almost couldn¡¯t wrap her mind around the night-and-day difference between the Taras that twenty experienced soldiers couldn¡¯t touch and the Taras she saw now. He looked battered and bruised, his face scrunched up in a grimace of pain. One of his two large swords looked slightly bent about halfway down the blade, while the other¡¯s tip looked to have been completely broken off. All of this in just a few short clashes between him and the Chos.
¡°You¡¯d better fight harder, weakling, or I¡¯ll kill your beloved Emperor extra slowly as punishment for being such a disappointment!¡± the Chos taunted him.
The man froze, her words impacting him enough that he dropped the chipped sword. He reached down and pulled a small black vial from his pocket and put it to his lips.
Arlette instantly went as white as a sheet. ¡°RUN!¡± she shouted, turning away from the man and, when her helper didn¡¯t follow, hopping and hobbling as fast as she could away from the Ubran and the Chos.
¡°Letty, what-¡±
¡°Just run, asshole!¡± she hollered back at Tehlmar. ¡°Everybody, run if you want to live!¡±
Tehlmar backed away from the Ubran slowly, initially confused at Arlette¡¯s reaction. But then, as the air itself began to shake, a low rumble vibrating out from the bodyguard and shaking all of them through to their very core, he wisened up instantly.
¡°Move!¡± he shouted to the group, as he broke into a sprint in her direction. ¡°You two, carry her!¡±
The Stragmans seized Arlette roughly as they ran by her, picking her up and carrying her feet first horizontally beneath their arms like they would a long log. She squawked in protest as their grip sent spikes of pain through her, but she didn¡¯t fight it. A little pain was a price worth paying for her life. As a bonus, thanks to her head hanging out from behind them, she got to witness up close what was about to go down.
The air shook heavily now, reality itself seeming to rumble with ever-increasing ferocity. The world around the Ubran seemed to bend like how it did in desert updrafts, only far more violently. Arlette¡¯s ears felt like they would rupture at any moment, even with the increased distance between them and him.
The man bent his legs for a moment, his muscles flexing with unknowable power, and picked up his dropped weapon. Then there was a crack of thunder and the man rocketed at the Chos with speeds Arlette had never seen before, not even from the Monster. The Chos met him head-on, her giant war club swinging across his path with mighty authority, but before it hit, a shockwave strong enough to knock down every tent within two hundred paces exploded out from the man and threw her backward.
Arlette couldn¡¯t believe her eyes as one of the man¡¯s blades sliced into the Chos¡¯s heavily muscled leg. The woman didn¡¯t seem upset at all. On the contrary, she was cackling, her eyes shining with delight like a child receiving a gift. Her club whipped forward with blinding speed, slamming into the Ubran as the two began their dance of death.
This time, it was the Ubran¡¯s turn to fly backward. As he tumbled through the air, another shockwave burst forth from him and his momentum halted mid-flight. Falling to the earth, he blurred forward again the moment his feet touched the ground.
Palebane shouted some sort of exhortation that Arlette couldn¡¯t make out amidst the din and the two converged in a flash. The Stragman¡¯s club hurtled downward, its massive might threatening to pulverize the Ubran, but Taras blurred again just before it hit, reappearing by her left side as the club crashed into the ground. It didn¡¯t matter.
The ground all around the Chos erupted from the colossal hit, hurling the Ubran about ten paces into the air. Palebane was also flung upward by the sudden rupture, but she kept her grip on her weapon, letting the force flip her nearly upside-down while her monumentally heavy club remained implanted in the earth. Then, with a grace that implied she¡¯d done this many times before, she twisted in mid-air and swung the weapon up and around like it weighed less than a tiny stick¡ªwhich, Arlette knew, was precisely what it weighed at that moment. Taras managed to bring his swords around in time to block the strike, but the oversized bludgeon connected with far greater force than he could absorb, its weight shifting in the last fraction of a moment to that of a massive Stragman tree ten paces thick.
The man¡¯s body streaked off into the distance, his passage leaving a trail of destruction as he hurtled through ten rows of tents and countless people before finally coming to a stop. Then, just a few heartbeats later, he somehow popped right back up, looking little worse for wear than before, and shot forward to continue the fight as the Chos laughed and laughed, a wild gleam in her eyes.
That was all Arlette saw, as her group passed by another row of tents and she lost sight of the spectacle. She could still hear her laughter. The crashes that followed were loud enough that she believed they could have been heard in Gustil.
¡°I need to rest for a moment,¡± Tehlmar said to the others a few rows later. They slowed down and came to a halt at the entrance of a moderately large tent. He peeked through the tent flap for a moment before stepping inside and beckoning the rest of them to follow.
Crates about three paces tall and wide filled most of the inside, along with a few left over tent poles and other assorted tent supplies piled in the corners. A supply tent, one of many in the camp.
The elf¡¯s face looked paler than the moons as he slowly lowered himself down to the ground. Arlette half-sat on a crate as far away from Tehlmar as she could manage, letting her left leg hang off of the side so she wasn¡¯t putting any pressure on the wound. The rest of the soldiers interspersed themselves in the gap between them.
Nobody spoke for what felt like forever as they listened to the sounds of combat. She could hear the screams and shouts of soldiers from both sides as hundreds of small battles raged throughout the camp. She could hear the dull thuds of boulders and the like falling atop Drayhadan and Stragman and Eterian troops. The clearest of all, perhaps, she could hear the crashes and booms of the Chos and the Ubran bodyguard as they went at each other with full force.
Still, the biggest reason for the silence was the palpable tension between the two figures on each side of the group. Arlette kept catching Tehlmar peeking at her through the gaps between the other soldiers. She did her best to ignore his glances, lest she lose control of herself. Just looking at him caused a flood of anger to surge through her.
¡°Alright, Letty, here¡¯s the situation,¡± the pale elf finally said, breaking the tense silence inside the tent.
Arlette squeezed her jaw shut and closed her eyes, refusing to respond.
¡°Thanks to our successful surprise attack, we have the tactical advantage for the moment. However, we could only bring a third of our forces here in time to help. The rest are still at least two days away. That means the Ubrans still have a large troop count advantage. They will be able to push us back eventually. Once I¡¯ve recovered, we¡¯ll need to move quickly to get out of here. Looking at your condition, I think it¡¯s best if we head south through the fires to avoid as much fighting as-¡±
¡°Why are you here?¡± Arlette finally interrupted with a snarl. Just the sound of his voice talking to her like he was giving some standard mid-battle action report had driven her into such a rage that she could no longer contain herself.
¡°I¡¯m the commander of the Drayhadan armies,¡± he replied she should find that impressive.
¡°No, asshole, why are you fucking here, where I can see you?¡± Arlette spat, pointing straight down at her feet.
¡°Watch your tone!¡± one of the elves shot back, taking a belligerent step towards her. ¡°You shall not address the Prince of the Esmae Clan with such disrespect!¡±
¡°Stand down, soldier. This is between her and me,¡± the prince ordered, his voice taking on a weariness that struck Arlette as far more genuine than the chummy tone from before. He let out a tired breath and stared back at her.
¡°What do you think I¡¯m doing here, Letty? I¡¯m here to rescue you. When I saw you fall, I took my guards, persuaded Palebane to follow along, and fought my way to you.¡±
¡°And then you just came running in to save the day? My hero!¡± She let out a barking laugh. ¡°I don¡¯t recall ever asking for your help.¡±
¡°Oh, come now, Letty! You¡¯re being ridiculous!¡± he scoffed, incredulous. ¡°What was I supposed to do, just leave you to die?¡±
¡°Well, it wouldn¡¯t be the first time, now would it?¡± she ground out through clenched teeth.
¡°Look, I didn¡¯t want to do that, I didn¡¯t have a choice! And it¡¯s not like I just left you with nothing, I gave you the keys! I knew you¡¯d get out on your own just fine!¡±
¡°Shut your fucking mouth,¡± an incensed Arlette growled, pushing herself up off the crate and taking a somewhat wobbly series of steps in his direction. ¡°You think I¡¯m going to trust a single word you say? You lied to me for more than half a fucking decade! Every single thing you said was a fucking lie. All of it! Did you think you could just show up and flash a smile and make it all better?¡±
¡°Letty-¡±
¡°No! You don¡¯t get to call me that!¡± she snarled as she closed in, the others between them quickly getting out of her way. She could see from the way the light in his eyes faded that she was crushing his spirit, but she didn¡¯t care. She never wanted to see him again. Just seeing him now was already one time too many. Her rage drove her forward, the words gushing forth like a geyser. ¡°Only one person ever called me that, and that person is now dead, if they were ever even fucking alive to begin with. You are not that person.¡±
¡°Come on now. You¡¯re overreacting,¡± the elf pleaded. ¡°I¡¯m still the same person you remember, I just look different.¡±
Arriving in front of him, Arlette leaned over and stared down at him with eyes wide and filled with murderous contempt.
¡°No, you are not. Jaquet was my friend. My greatest and only friend. You¡¯re not him. You¡¯re nobody. You are not my friend, you are not my ally, you¡¯re not even my fucking acquaintance. You are nothing.
¡°I don¡¯t know what made you think that showing up to rescue me would somehow undo everything you did and make it all even, but that¡¯s not how it works. You lied to me, you used me, and when you were done with me, you abandoned me at the lowest point of my life in a fucking dungeon the night before my execution! I don¡¯t know what you really want from me, but if you want to be forgiven, then you can fuck right off and go back to your little elf land, prince. You will never get even a drop of forgiveness from me. Not now. Not ever.¡±
The elven prince deflated like a full waterskin with a hole in the bottom with every successive word she spoke. By the end of her diatribe, he looked like he¡¯d aged decades in just a few moments. Arlette felt not even a single twinge of guilt for any of it.
¡°Are you done with your ¡®rest¡¯?¡± she huffed, turning away from him and limping over to one of the nearby extra tent poles and picking it up. About eight paces of solid wood, the pole was thin enough that she could wrap her hand around the shaft and light enough that she could lift it and use it as a makeshift walking stick to support her. Its length would be a little cumbersome, but it beat the alternative of leaning on somebody¡¯s shoulder the whole time. It was a shame there weren¡¯t any weapons in here as well. ¡°We need to get going before somebody finds us. Then, once we¡¯re out of here, we can go our separate ways and you and the Chos and the Emperor can all go kill each other for all... I...¡±
Arlette¡¯s voice trailed off as she came to an idea. A terrible, reckless, crazy, dangerous idea, but one that would be worth everything if it worked out. There were enough people here to provide at least a modicum of success. An opportunity like this would surely never present itself in her lifetime again. There was just one problem: she would need Tehlmar¡¯s full cooperation, and she¡¯d just spent the last few moments vomiting her raw, unvarnished opinions about him all over his face.
Turning back around, Arlette¡¯s gaze met his, and he turned his head in that way he always had, a Jaquet mannerism which meant ¡°What is it?¡±. Seeing such actions coming from a body half his weight and with a different face felt profoundly disconcerting. It bothered her. What bothered her even more was how she had nearly reacted naturally to the unspoken question out of habit.
After a moment of awkward silence, she decided to just say it. She cleared her throat. ¡°I, uh, know where the Emperor is hiding.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s eyes sharpened and the other elves and beastmen stiffened in surprise at her admission.
¡°I think,¡± she continued, ¡°if we¡¯re smart enough and strong enough, we could kill him and end it all right now.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s face went hard. ¡°No. We¡¯re getting you out of here. Then I¡¯ll come back afterward with more people and do it myself.¡±
¡°You won¡¯t have time! You said it yourself, you don¡¯t have the numbers to keep up the fight for too much longer! This is our only chance!¡±
¡°It¡¯s too dangerous.¡±
¡°Please, Tehlmar,¡± she pleaded. ¡°We cannot let this opportunity pass us by!¡±
¡°You keep saying ¡®we¡¯. I thought you never wanted to see me again. I thought you hated my guts.¡±
¡°Look, I...¡± She paused to consider her words. ¡°You hurt me. You hurt me deep. Just looking at you makes me want to beat your head in. I¡¯m never going to be able to forget the pain you caused. But you only hurt me. That man stole my life. He stole my mother, my home, my country, my childhood, all of it. He took it all. He and Sebastian together ruined everything good in my existence and I will never, ever hate anybody to the level that I hate them.
¡°Do you think I ended up in this forsaken place by accident? Do you think I didn¡¯t know what I was getting into? I knew since the start of this mess, more than a season ago, that I was almost definitely going to die here. I didn¡¯t care. I wanted revenge. Any sort of revenge. I¡¯d trade my life to take his in a heartbeat. Anything I can do to ruin that fucking bastard¡¯s day is worth it. That¡¯s how much I hate him, and the only way you could ever make me hate you as much as I hate him would be to take away my best chance at revenge when it¡¯s finally right in front of me.¡±
The elf closed his eyes for a moment, deep in thought.
¡°How many guards?¡± he finally asked.
¡°I don¡¯t know. I couldn¡¯t see inside the tent, but it wasn¡¯t large enough to hold too many people. I¡¯d guess no more than ten.¡±
¡°I need more than a guess.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, but his bodyguard caught me before I could find out anything more. I had no choice but to run.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll make you a deal,¡± he replied. ¡°After the battle, you and I go for one last drink, like old times. That¡¯s my price.¡±
¡°...fine,¡± Arlette agreed. She truly didn¡¯t want to see him ever again, but one more meeting was almost suspiciously cheap compared to what she was asking in return.
¡°That being said, this will be an exploratory mission. We only attack if I think the odds are good we¡¯ll succeed. Understood? And either way, you¡¯ll stay back and out of the fray.¡±
Arlette reluctantly nodded. That was the best she was going to get.
¡°Glad we could work this out,¡± the elf stated as he stood up and turned towards the tent flap, his face having regained much of its lost color. ¡°Arlette, lead the way.¡±
The journey through the camp went much smoother for Arlette the second time. The elves that still lived were accomplished, experienced, and skilled warriors, as proven by their ability to survive the Ubran bodyguard. The Stragmans turned out to be no slouches either, especially the shorter one who turned out to be a rather powerful fire Observer.
With such a high-level group, most small squads of enemy resistance stood little chance, though Arlette still made sure to steer clear of trouble as much as she could through the chaos. And chaos it remained. The fires to the south continued to grow. Thousands of tiny struggles between groups from each side popped up all around them as both armies continued their butchery. Arlette couldn¡¯t tell anymore if the same held true for the more defensive Eterians on the eastern side, but she hoped some of them still lived as well. And then there was the cacophony nearby.
The one-on-one battle between the Chos and the chimirin-dosed Ubran continued, at least if the endless series of booms and crashes were any indication. Though it would have surely gotten her killed, part of Arlette wished she could have stuck around before to watch the two throw down. She found it amazing that somebody could keep up with a boosted person without taking chimirin themselves. It truly spoke to the sheer aberrational power Akhustal Palebane wielded. Already recognized as the strongest person in Stragma, she was likely the strongest person on the continent, or maybe even the world.
Idly, she wondered how much longer the Ubran had before he went the way all the others who took the death drug did. Having seen multiple people die from it, she¡¯d formed a loose theory that the time each person had before they died was proportional to the strength of their soul force. It explained, at least, how Supreme General Erizio Astalaria had been the final person to live among the strike force even though he was surely the first person to ingest the stuff at the start of the battle. If she was right, then the strength of the bodyguard¡¯s soulforce was up there with the most powerful.
¡°That one, there,¡± Arlette said, stopping a hundred paces from an unmarked tent. Looking at it now, she found nothing to distinguish it from the sea of tents around it. The size, shape, color, quality, placement, and all the rest were completely unremarkable. It truly was an incredible place to hide somebody important. Only the slice in the side, where the bodyguard had attacked her before, confirmed she¡¯d found the right place.
She and Tehlmar looked around, studying the surrounding area. The tent was located near the center of the camp, though a bit towards the western side, rather far from the largest confrontations on either end. A few battles could be seen and heard nearby, but on the whole, the area was quieter than most of the camp. That just meant fewer people to muck things up.
Tehlmar seemed to agree with her assessment. He turned to the Stragman Observer and said, ¡°Light it up, starting with the far end. Let¡¯s see how many things crawl out.¡±
Three burning spheres the size of Arlette¡¯s head rained down onto the tent canopy, lighting a blaze on the back half of the structure¡¯s roof. A series of shouts could be heard from within, and six soldiers wearing pristine armor rushed outside.
¡°Probably another few still inside,¡± Tehlmar muttered to himself. ¡°Still, that¡¯s less than I thought. Good enough.¡±
He charged forward, the others following behind him. Arlette, for her part, sidled closer but made sure to keep behind a tent to avoid detection as best she could.
The soldiers protecting the most powerful person in the world were, not surprisingly, very strong and capable fighters. But the Stragmans and Drayhadans assaulting them were equally some of the best of the best, and they had numbers in their favor.
As they fought, Tehlmar lashed out with a long whip of his blood with a sharp crimson blade on the end, cutting through the front of the tent. The fabric fell away to reveal an old man with a large book in one hand flanked by two more soldiers, their weapons at the ready and their eyes on the lookout for more threats.
The old man, easily recognizable to everybody as Haidar Batra, Emperor of the Ubran Empire, extended his empty hand forward, his eyes glaring at the assembled fighters as if they were nothing but disgusting trash. ¡°Kneel!¡± he snarled.
Arlette watched with puzzlement as all the other non-Ubrans outside the tent stumbled all at once before catching themselves and continuing their battle.
¡°I said kneel!¡± the apoplectic Emperor cried, and the attackers stumbled even harder than before.
Arlette noticed that her allies all were moving slower now, their steps unsteady and their form poor. Was this another balance disruption technique, similar to his bodyguard¡¯s? The effect didn¡¯t extend to her hiding place, so she couldn¡¯t say for sure. What she could see was that whatever was going on was greatly hampering her side¡¯s ability to fight, even with their numbers.
Tehlmar also apparently agreed. Seeing the situation he sprang into action, the blood in his hand, currently in the form of two swords suddenly split into a hundred long, thin spikes as he threw defense aside and went for the immediate kill. Two of the spikes stabbed into his opponent¡¯s skull, killing him instantly. Without waiting a heartbeat, he went on the offensive against the closest enemies to his left. They managed to block his sudden assault but were forced to step back, freeing the two elves who¡¯d been engaging them until now.
¡°Go!¡± he shouted. The elves seemed to know what he meant, as they simultaneously broke off and rushed towards the Emperor and his two remaining guards as fast as they could while under this strange, invisible condition.
The Emperor stepped back, a mixture of fear and outrage on his face, as the two guards engaged the pair of attackers just a few paces from him.
¡°T-this is...!¡± he sputtered. ¡°Taras! Taras, return at once!¡±
A blurry streak flashed across Arlette¡¯s vision, accompanied by a loud boom and a shockwave that threw everybody¡ªArlette included¡ªoff their feet and blew away the burning remains of the tent. Somehow, the Emperor stood completely unaffected in the now-open area, his terrifying bodyguard now standing before him.
The man that Arlette had last seen going up against the Chos barely resembled the man that slouched in front of his master, panting heavily. The new Taras was covered in scrapes, bruises, and worse. He held one of his swords in his left hand, the blade broken off completely about halfway along its full length. His right hand, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was most of that arm; less than a half an upper-arm¡¯s-worth of skin, muscle, and bone extended out from his right shoulder before terminating in a messy mash of all three. The sight made her wince. She¡¯d seen crushing injuries before, but never on that level.
However, despite his appearance, the man remained incredibly deadly. Blood dripped from his half-broken sword as he stood over the now-decapitated bodies of the two elven assailants. After pausing for a moment to catch his breath, he turned towards the group of Ubran guards and Drayhadan and Stragman attackers, all of whom were quickly climbing to their feet as fast as possible without dropping their guard. He blurred again and another boom struck. When he stopped on the other side of the group, all but two of the attackers had lost their heads.
Arlette gasped in horror as the headless bodies fell, blood still squirting from their necks. All that remained were Tehlmar and one other elf, who had been just far enough to the side to be out of reach. He turned towards the final two.
A tent pole, longer and thicker one than the one Arlette held, streaked towards him like a javelin from the right of Arlette¡¯s vision, causing Taras to abort his next attack. He turned and blocked it with his sword, but the pole hit with a force many times greater than it should have given its weight and speed, sending him flying more than twenty paces.
¡°Hey!¡± a familiar low female voice hollered. Akhustal Palebane skidded to a stop near Tehlmar and the other Drayhadan. She looked beat up as well; cuts covered her arms, including several where pieces of Taras¡¯s swords looked to be still embedded in her flesh. Far, far worse, her left ear was just gone. Instead of a cute round white ear like the one that stuck out of the upper right side of her head, there was nothing. Something had sliced off not only the ear but the hair and the skin around it, revealing blood and a patch of skull to the world. Arlette also thought she saw stumps where the Stragman¡¯s left ring finger and pinky should be. And yet... for all the blood and the wounds, she didn¡¯t so much appear hurt or in pain as she did angry and annoyed.
¡°Where do you think you¡¯re running off to?¡± she demanded to know, her club flicking out to the side absent-mindedly to slam into one of the Ubran guards and send the unfortunate soul rocketing out of Arlette¡¯s view. ¡°We¡¯re not done yet!¡±
Taras shot forward and the Chos moved to meet him, their cacophonous battle resuming right before Arlette¡¯s eyes. Meanwhile, Tehlmar and his last remaining comrade faced off against five of the remaining guards while the fifth kept by the Emperor. The Ubran ruler looked about with concern on his face and said something that Arlette couldn¡¯t make out of the din. Then he turned and walked a few paces away and pulled a hatch up from the ground.
Arlette¡¯s blood ran cold as she watched him lower himself down into the earth. A tunnel! Arlette recalled how Supreme General Astalaria had needed to spend the majority of his days this last season foiling the Ubrans¡¯ attempts to tunnel into the city. She would have bet a year¡¯s pay that those same tunnelers had been tasked long ago with creating a tunnel network below the camp to allow for clandestine movement of important people. It would explain how the Emperor had appeared here in this nondescript tent, when everybody had thought him to be in the stone rings. If the Ubran ruler could make it into those tunnels, they¡¯d never be able to find him in time! After all this, he was going to escape!
Everybody else was too busy to notice his actions. She couldn¡¯t sit there any longer. Cladding herself in an Ubran army uniform, she left her hiding place and half-hobbled, half-ran a circuitous route around the fighting, making sure to keep tents between her and the rest of them. She emerged around the other side several moments later and limped towards the guard by the tunnel entrance. He noticed her quickly and turned her way.
¡°Stay back! Don¡¯t come closer!¡± he warned her. The illusory Ubran uniform kept him from immediately attacking, helped by the fact that the guards besides Taras hadn¡¯t seen her face the first time. Arlette knew that was about to change.
¡°Please help me!¡± she begged, stepping ever closer. ¡°I don¡¯t want to die!¡±
¡°I said stay back!¡± The man hefted his war hammer in a threatening manner.
The two of them were only six or so steps apart now. Arlette took another step and sent a doppelganger surging at him, the fake tent pole striking out at his chest. Even though he was on his guard, the soldier was taken by surprise and he swung his hammer down and through the matter-less construct. Arlette¡¯s right hand whipped out, hurling her second-last knife point-first towards his throat. This time, her aim was true and it sank deep into his neck. He fell to the dirt, clutching at his throat as he died.
¡°The Emperor!¡± one of the remaining guards cried. The five guards had managed to kill the elf that wasn¡¯t Tehlmar and were pushing Tehlmar into a tight spot, but Arlette¡¯s actions caught their attention. Four of the five broke away and rushed towards her. Taras as well went for her, but the Chos blocked him ably.
Seeing the sudden change, Tehlmar spun past the one guard still fighting him and used his blood to launch himself up and over the oncoming Ubrans. Landing in front of her, he used his own blood to slice a long horizontal cut on the front of each of his shoulders and turned around. A half-dozen crimson blades grew from the new wounds, floating in the air suspended on thin liquid tendrils.
¡°Go! I¡¯ll hold them here!¡± he declared.
Arlette hesitated. ¡°But-¡±
¡°GO NOW!¡± he cried as he began to fend off all five Ubrans with his swarm of blades.
Arlette didn¡¯t need to be told a third time. She pulled up the hatch and gingerly lowered herself into the hole below.
After entering the tunnel, Arlette realized it was too cramped for her makeshift walking stick, and she¡¯d have to leave it behind. Dropping it reluctantly, she hobbled forward as quickly as she could, creating a small flame to light her way as the light from the entrance behind her fell away. She saw no sign of the Emperor in the tunnel. He must have moved on. Luckily, there was only one direction to go. She could only hope the tunnel didn¡¯t diverge later.
Arlette didn¡¯t know how long she was down beneath the earth, but it felt like forever. Thoughts warred in her mind, part of her telling her to go as fast as possible, while the other part worried that she¡¯d make too much noise and warn others that she was coming. She decided to err more on the side of speed than silence. Stealth would do her no good if the Emperor was gone when she got to the other end.
Coming to a halt, Arlette stared at the passageway ahead and sighed. It figured the tunnel would split into three separate directions. Why would she ever catch a break?
Unsure of her next move, she closed her eyes and listened intently. Above her, she could hear the muffled sounds of the battle as it continued without her. The sounds were far too indistinct for her to glean any information from them, however.
Sticking her head into the left tunnel, she listened more intently but heard nothing, not even the sound of air. The central tunnel was the same. From the right tunnel, however, she thought he heard something, a scratching, scraping sound from farther down the passageway. She headed in that direction.
As she traveled further down the tunnel, Arlette noticed signs of damage to the walls and ceiling. The tunnel was not just a hole in the earth; stone and wooden beams supported the top and sides to keep them from collapsing. Yet with each successive step, the boards and stone start to sport wider and deeper cracks, and larger and larger pieces of earth had fallen to the floor.
It took her a moment, but Arlette soon realized what this meant. These tunnels led to the stone rings on the western edge of the camp, where her side had thought the Emperor to be. The passageways must have been created to allow him to travel out of the rings without being noticed by anyone, letting him hide in an unremarkable tent while the Eterians wasted their best shot at killing him.
The rings were located solidly behind the Stragman lines, a theoretically dangerous place for the Ubran leader to be, but Arlette doubted that anybody would be inside or even notice him hiding there. After all, why would anybody look for the Emperor behind them? And who would waste their time guarding a trio of destroyed stone circles? They¡¯d probably swept through it once, found nobody, and continued onward to engage the Ubrans, if they had even bothered searching it at all.
Still, Arlette would have bet everything she owned¡ªadmittedly very little at the moment¡ªthat this was not where the Emperor actually wanted to go. It was more likely that there just wasn¡¯t a choice. She understood now that the point of this tunnel was secrecy, so even if other tunnels existed around the camp, they couldn¡¯t be allowed to connect to this one. The fact that the most powerful man in the world was potentially stuck behind the enemy because the Ubrans had gotten too coy with their stratagems tickled her greatly.
The tunnel shrank as the damage grew. She found herself having to get down on her hands and knees to crawl through several portions. The direction she¡¯d taken and the fact that the tunnel hadn¡¯t completely collapsed suggested that she was heading for the northern-most ring of the three. That one had been the farthest from the epicenter of General Astalaria¡¯s attack, and while it had collapsed, from up in the airship it had looked to her to be the least-damaged.
She slowed down drastically and extinguished her flame the moment her eyes caught the sight of light ahead. Pulling herself through the constricted passage as quietly as she could, she crept up to the entrance and stealthily took a peek outside.
From what she could tell, the stone ring remained a stone ring, only now the ring was made up of broken boulders instead of a single solid piece of rock grown to the desired shape. Many smaller broken pieces could be found strewn across the middle of the ring, the shards of broken columns or something of that sort. Off to the side, she spotted the Emperor, his body turned to the side. The man¡¯s ornate and assuredly expensive outfit was covered in dirt and grime, though he didn¡¯t seem as bothered about that as the dirt that had gotten onto his book. She heard him muttering to himself as he wiped the edges of the pages, trying to clean them with his hands.
He wasn¡¯t looking.
Silent as a black vine snake, she crawled from the open tunnel hatch and hid behind a nearby rock about two-thirds her full height, where she began to plan her next move. Perhaps it was time to put her training into practice. She pulled her muddled thoughts together and focused while she began moving slowly along the broken column, circling the distracted old man.
¡°I¡¯ve been dreaming of this moment for almost as long as I can remember,¡± her voice said as a phantom clone stepped up from the tunnel entrance.
The Emperor¡¯s head snapped up, his eyes going wide with surprise as he spied the fake form shambling towards him. Arlette had considered making the illusion resemble her at peak capacity, but chose instead to make her look like she did now. She needed it to be just threatening enough to distract him but not enough to make him try to run.
¡°Kneel!¡± the man barked, but Arlette¡¯s false copy continued unaffected by the man¡¯s mysterious discombobulation effect.
¡°You¡¯re nothing but a ravenous beast, consuming everything in sight,¡± the fake Arlette continued. ¡°How many people have died for your ambitions? How many lives have you destroyed?¡±
¡°How?! How can you still move?!¡± the despot cried out as the illusion closed in. ¡°Impossible! Nobody can go unaffected! Unless...¡±
That was when he spotted another figure out of the corner of his eye, not more than eight paces from him, her knife held forward to strike.
¡°Kneel!¡± he barked again, turning his head towards the new threat.
The new Arlette stumbled much like the warriors had before, her knees bending and her body having trouble staying on her feet. Her body swayed as if off balance and as she took another half step, and her foot slid out from beneath her, sending her to her knees. The first Arlette flickered repeatedly but did not disappear.
¡°An illusion Observer, as I thought,¡± the Emperor gloated. ¡°I must commend you on your ability. Few people can maintain their Observations while under my power. However, to try to take my life by yourself with nothing but a dagger and some parlor tricks speaks poorly for your intelligence. But do not worry, that is why I am here: to enlighten you all to the truth and wonder of service in the name of the Empire. In my name.¡±
¡°Eat shit,¡± the second Arlette gasped out. ¡°You Ubrans love to talk about how you ¡®bring civility to the world¡¯, but Ofrax was fine before you showed up. We were happy! We had good lives! We never needed you, but when have you ever cared for the thoughts of anybody but yourself?!¡±
¡°An Ofraxian? How rare! What are you doing on this side of the Divide?¡±
¡°Living the life you gave me, you and Sebastian and all the rest of you bastards! And every time I finally think I¡¯ve gotten my life back, you fucks show up and ruin it all over again! But go ahead, enlighten me to the truth and wonder of service in your name! I can¡¯t wait to hear it!¡±
Unable to contain her victorious grin as her second clone emptied her soul at the man responsible for the events that had sent her life into the gutter, the real Arlette sneaked around the end of the broken column and emerged behind the thoroughly distracted tyrant. The best way to convince somebody to let their guard down was to make it seem like they¡¯d already won.
She felt a certain level of joyous accomplishment from the feat. Creating and maintaining two full doppelgangers while still being able to move and fight with her real body had been beyond her since childhood. Larger illusions she could handle. Multiple people she could handle as well, as long as she didn¡¯t have to do anything more than walk slowly. But as soon as she had to move independently and even battle at the same time, one Arlette became her limit. It had been so difficult and seemingly unrealistic that by her teen years, she¡¯d given up even trying. But at Peko¡¯s encouragement, she¡¯d found that she could handle more now than ever before. Her control still wasn¡¯t fully there, so an all-out sword fight with two doppelgangers was still a little out of reach, but slowly sneaking up on an old man was entirely in her wheelhouse.
Arlette crept steadily closer, taking each step slowly and quietly while making sure to keep the second fake her ¡°struggling¡± with the Emperor¡¯s unsteadying power. Calling on all her years of training and experience to mask her presence, she slowed her breathing, stepped with the balls of her feet, and raised her knife to strike.
She never got the chance. A healthy and rested Arlette would have likely pulled off the attack with great success, but the real her was injured and worn out, and that exhaustion brought mistakes. Just a few steps away from the unsuspecting tyrant¡¯s exposed back, Arlette¡¯s left foot¡ªwhich she wasn¡¯t raising as high due to her wound¡ªstruck a small stone, sending it bouncing lightly to the side. The sound it made was slight, but not slight enough. The Emperor turned her way.
Arlette staggered as her body all of a sudden felt herself being pulled towards the ground. It was as if every part of her body was strapped to a heavy weight. The two phantom Arlettes vanished as she strained against the sudden burden. So this was his power. She¡¯d completely misunderstood its nature. Had she known, she would have gone about this differently, but it was too late for that now.
Seeing her window of opportunity slamming shut with alarming speed, she flexed her right arm as best she could and threw her last knife. Her throw went wide, but instead of flying off and hitting a boulder behind them, it curved sharply towards the ground and skidded to a stop behind and to the left of the despot.
¡°Kneel!¡± he commanded, his eyes flashing with fury.
Arlette¡¯s legs trembled, but she refused to submit. Her left shoulder screamed at her as the pull from her arm increased dramatically, but she would rather die than kneel before him. So weighty was the burden that she temporarily abandoned any thoughts of taking another step forward. To attempt such on a faulty leg risked falling over and never being able to get back up against the constant pressure. So instead, she concentrated on staying as upright as she could, willing her back to straighten even just a little.
The two of them faced each other, locked in a static battle of wills. While the Emperor¡¯s pressure kept her from moving forward, maintaining it also kept him from moving as well. The focus needed to Observe kept most Observers immobile while doing so, lest their movements mess with their perspective and foul up their technique. Moving hands or talking didn¡¯t matter much, but moving the position of one¡¯s viewpoint did. Arlette was a special case in this regard; the Emperor was not. However, the situation was far from a stalemate. He had the upper hand, making the biggest question simply how long she could stay upright as the complaints from her knees grew louder and louder.
¡°You pathetic people don¡¯t know when to give up!¡± he snarled.
¡°You won¡¯t win, we will stop you one way or another,¡± she growled out, matching his hateful gaze with her own.
¡°Silence! I will not allow you ignorant Nocend fools to spoil my legacy!¡± the old man seethed, his gaze increasingly unhinged. ¡°I am the ruler of this world! You all belong to me! It is my right!¡±
A familiar low roar suddenly sounded far away, quickly gaining in intensity as it rapidly grew closer to them. The Ubran paid it no mind, continuing his ranting as he pressed his power down upon her, but Arlette grasped upon the sound. She knew exactly what it was and what it meant, and so she prepared herself as best she could.
¡°You will all kneel before me! Every last one of you! Now KNEEL!¡± The power pressing down on her suddenly seemed to triple. It was like an invisible hand smacked down upon her body. Unable to resist any longer, she collapsed down onto one knee, with her left knee on the ground and right still upright. Her body pressed down against her right leg, making even drawing breath a nearly impossible task.
¡°Ahaha, yes! If I command you to kneel, you shall kneel! If I command you to die, you shall-¡±
thoom thoom Thoom Thoom Thoom THOOM THOOM THOOM THOOM THOOM THOOM!
A cascade of thunderclaps erupted outside the stone ring, each successive clap growing closer and closer until it sounded like the world itself was splitting in two. The final bomb¡¯s burst set off tremors in the ground beneath them so strong that the Emperor lost his balance and teetered backward in shock and surprise. His focus suddenly disrupted, the force pressing Arlette to the ground momentarily vanished.
Arlette was ready. Launching herself forward with her good leg, she threw herself against the Emperor before he could reestablish his Observation. Together they fell to the ground in an uncoordinated heap, with Arlette¡¯s head on top of his gut and her chest pressing down on his legs.
The old man howled in indignation as Arlette clawed forward with her good arm, a wicked smile on her face. Now he had to decide: crush them both, or crush neither? Either option was acceptable in her eyes.
A brutal weight pressed down upon her, making his decision clear. Digging her feet in against the ground, she pushed her right arm out, grabbed his shoulder, and let out a grunt of extreme effort as she pushed and pulled herself forward until she laid completely on top of him like two pancakes. As the Ubran ruler was a bit taller than her, she ended up staring down at his exposed neck, her face pressed down upon his chin.
Arlette was out of weapons, so she grabbed his throat as best she could with her right hand and began to squeeze. In some sense, this was how she wanted it. In her wildest of imaginings throughout the years, she¡¯d always pictured his death not as some quick, painless end, but rather as a slow, agonizing experience, his life gradually slipping away while he struggled powerlessly to stop it.
This was for her family. For Ofrax. For Princess Rosalyn. For herself.
The Emperor¡¯s right arm jerked and a sharp pain lanced through her abdomen once, then again. While she had found it hard to breathe before, suddenly the simple act made her want to scream with agony.
No. She couldn¡¯t lose now! Not when she was so close!
Through sheer willpower more than anything else, Arlette moved her left arm in, shunting aside her shoulder¡¯s constant protests, and grabbed the Emperor¡¯s right arm just as she felt something stab into her gut a third time. This was an old man. Even with a busted shoulder, she could pin down his arm and prevent him from dealing further damage.
However, plenty of damage had already been dealt. She could feel the sticky wetness of blood on her stomach as blood oozed out with shocking speed, probably due to the force pressing them down. Her chances of victory grew slimmer with each drop of blood that left her body.
This had become a war of attrition. The Emperor couldn¡¯t release his power, because without the force holding her down, they both knew she¡¯d win. She had the positioning, and his best option now was to hold on as long as possible and let her bleed until she passed out, a prospect she hated to admit was getting more likely by the moment. She needed to end this quickly, and her hand alone wasn¡¯t enough to do the job. She needed something better. But what?
The weapon in his right hand¡ªprobably her last throwing knife¡ªwasn¡¯t an option. She had the strength to keep his arm down, but she had no way to take the knife from his grip.
Arlette¡¯s eyes fell upon a long chain running along the ground. The chain emerged from a slit in the Emperor¡¯s clothes and traveled away from them to the large book he¡¯d been carrying until now. Dislodged when she¡¯d barreled into him, the tome sat on the ground a good five paces away, its pages open to the world.
Releasing her right hand from her hated enemy¡¯s throat, she grabbed the chain and pulled it towards her. The book slid closer, apparently outside the field of crushing force. Re-grabbing the chain farther up so she had more to work with, she fought against the crushing force and dragged the chain over the Emperor¡¯s neck. Her arm shook uncontrollably from the strain, but she refused to falter as she let go of the chain and pulled her arm back, then flattened her hand and shoved it beneath his neck.
The force on her doubled, and she felt her ribs creaking. Even just moving her right arm now felt like lifting a garoph, but she pushed herself onward anyway. Gritting her teeth, she pushed her hand with all her might beneath the hated man¡¯s neck, wriggling her fingers in the dirt to get every little bit of extra leverage she could manage.
Part of her mind could hear the old man¡¯s screams, could feel his empty left hand clawing at her side, could see the veins in his neck clearly through his skin as he struggled against her overbearing weight, but none of it mattered. Her entire existence was this moment, every last drop of herself being poured into this one final act of vengeance. The rest was meaningless.
She could feel herself weakening as she panted and struggled, the weight of the world bearing down on her in more ways than one, but she could not allow herself to fail. Too much relied on this. Digging deep, she pulled forth every ounce of hate and anger she could find, from the Emperor to Sebastian to Supreme General Astalaria to Tehlmar Esmae. The thought about all the things she¡¯d been through, the litany of injustices and slights, and how every last bit of it, in the end, was this man¡¯s fault. With a growl of defiance, she gave it one last push. Her hand slipped through. She allowed herself a malicious smile as she wound the chain around her finger and pulled with absolutely everything she had.
The chain wrapped itself tightly around the old man¡¯s neck, its thin but strong links pressing into his flesh far tighter than her hand could ever manage. The body beneath her shook and the force upon them both increased even more. Arlette felt one rib crack, and then another. Her left shoulder sent such pain through her that she felt tears pouring from her eyes unbidden. Still, she held on through it all. If this was how she was to die, then so be it. But she would not go alone.
A third rib cracked, but she kept pulling. Then a fourth, bringing forth an unbidden cough, the act enough to send waves of pain through her abdomen and expel the air from her lungs. She tried to breathe in but found it impossible. Still, she pulled with all her might. The world spun as her lungs screamed at her to inhale, the fatigue blanketing her body and mind now almost unbearable, but she continued to pull and pull and pull until the end. And then, just as she felt the world leaving her, that end finally came.
Air rushed back into Arlette¡¯s lungs as the crushing weight on top of them suddenly dissipated. The Emperor¡¯s body convulsed for a few moments and then went still, his eyes staring blankly up at the mid-morning sky. Arlette didn¡¯t stop pulling. He might just be faking it, or just unconscious. She took slow, laborious, pain-riddled breaths until she reached thirty. Then she let go.
He didn¡¯t move.
For a moment that felt like forever, Arlette didn¡¯t move. There was something inside of her that feared that she would break the spell, that she¡¯d just wake up in her converted room in the old, abandoned inn and this would all be just a silly, wild dream. But the moment continued, as did the incredible pain that came with every breath, and nothing changed. She finally released her grip on the chain. The Emperor was dead. It was finally, mercifully over.
Except it wasn¡¯t. This wasn¡¯t enough. People needed to know. She had to show the people out there the truth. But how?
She wouldn¡¯t make it all the way back through the tunnel, and even if she did, who would notice? No, it had to be here. Luckily, the ruined ring stood atop a small hill on the northwest edge of the camp. All she had to do was take the Emperor¡¯s body outside and show it off where everybody could see it.
However, she didn¡¯t have the strength, or working limbs, to move the old man¡¯s body. She¡¯d have to do the next best thing: cut off his head.
Gingerly, she pushed herself off of the corpse below her, letting out agonized whimpers as her gut spasmed with every movement. She ignored it as best she could, but had only slight success. She¡¯d lost far too much blood. Already, she could feel what little strength her body still had leaking away.
Kneeling over the old man made her want to scream. It was like the position was expressly designed to exacerbate every injury she had. The pressure on her leg drew forth constant suffering from the wrapped wound, while she had to prop up her upper body using her shattered left shoulder and stabilize it all using her abdomen. But she didn¡¯t care. She was working against a fast-approaching deadline, and a little more pain didn¡¯t matter so much anymore.
She seized the Emperor¡¯s weapon, still clutched in his right hand. She¡¯d been right, it was, in fact, the knife she¡¯d missed him with. If only she hadn¡¯t thrown the knife in the first place in a panic, she could have killed him with so much ease. She had nobody to blame but herself for the wounds on her side.
Gripping it with her trembling right hand, she got to work. The knife dug into the still-warm flesh, puncturing the man¡¯s windpipe with a single stab. He didn¡¯t move. He truly was dead. Even now it didn¡¯t feel real.
Arlette had never had to cut off a head before. The process was messy and exhausting, especially the act of cutting between the vertebrae, but it went quickly, at least. Soon enough, she found herself staring at the Emperor¡¯s vacant eyes as she held his detached head up to her face. She tucked her knife away, its job over.
Pushing herself to her feet with the help of a nearby toppled column, she hobbled her way around the area and came to a distressing realization. Every entrance to the ring had been destroyed in the initial strike. The arches had collapsed in on themselves and were now large piles of rubble. She found some cracks between the rocks, but they were too thin for her to squeeze through.
That left only one other option. She¡¯d have to climb her way out. The very thought itself struck her as absurd, but she didn¡¯t see much of a choice. In fact, looking around, it seemed almost feasible. There happened to be one rock as tall as she was nearby. Resting against that rock was another rock about half her height taller than the first, and leaning beside that was another long, thin boulder whose top side resembled a ramp leading up to the capsized outer ring. If she could just get up onto the first rock, she would be able to follow up the rest and make her way to the top of the stones. That would not only get her out, it would make her even more visible for her final revelation.
Placing the head down atop the rock and making sure it wouldn¡¯t roll, she put her right arm up upon the rock and jumped as best she could with her right leg. The result, which could be charitably described as a hop at best, proved nowhere near enough to get her where she needed to go. Taking a deep breath, she tried again with both legs and got a little higher, but she couldn¡¯t get enough grip on the top of the rock to pull herself up and instead just ended up leaving a bloody streak running down the boulder¡¯s side.
Her wooziness grew stronger with every heartbeat, telling her she was nearly out of time. She looked around for other avenues up onto the rocks but found nothing.
The sound of shuffling feet graced her ears, and she wearily turned about, pulling her last knife back out and clutching it in her right hand. She steadied herself and stood using waning strength that threatened to give out at any moment, ready to take on whatever Ubrans showed themselves as best she could. But what emerged from the tunnel entrance was not an Ubran, but an elf.
Tehlmar staggered into sight, looking as bad as Arlette felt, or perhaps worse. Blood dripped off him from all over his body, most of it his. She could see cuts and stab wounds peeking through holes in every part of his armor, and the right side of his neck and shoulder was covered by blackened, charred flesh.
¡°Letty?¡± he called out weakly.
Arlette didn¡¯t have the reserves to correct him this time. She let out a soft grunt, and he slowly turned her way, revealing his dull, unfocused gaze. He managed a small smile, blood dripping from his mouth.
¡°You... did it?¡± he asked, slowly approaching her with unsteady steps. His eyes spotted the head staring down from the rock by her head and his gaze sharpened momentarily. ¡°You did... you got him...¡±
He let out a half-laugh half-cough and leaned against a nearby boulder. ¡°Quick... go show everybody...¡±
¡°There¡¯s no way out except up this-¡± Arlette let out a strangled wheezing gasp as her abdomen protested the act of speaking. ¡°-and I can¡¯t climb it.¡±
¡°Ah... well then...¡± He tottered towards her and came to a stop beside the rock. Putting his hands together in front of him, palms up, he gave her the ghost of a smile. ¡°Once more... for old time¡¯s sake...¡±
¡°You¡¯re kidding-¡± she coughed. There was no way that he could lift her in his condition.
¡°Letty, there¡¯s no time... It has to be now...¡± His body was trembling already, she saw, and she thought she could hear a wet sound in his breath.
He was right. Neither of them had any more time to search for better answers. With a forlorn sigh, she stepped between him and the rock, putting her right foot up into the cradle of his small hands and reaching up with both her arms to the top of the rock.
¡°On three. One, two, threeeaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhh!¡±
Arlette screamed as she pushed off as hard as she could, powering through the pain coming from all over her body as she clawed desperately with both her arms for purchase on the rock. Tehlmar¡¯s cradle shook like a branch in a windstorm, but somehow it held just long enough for her to get her torso up on top and pull herself forward.
The world spun as she gasped for air. She could feel her heart pounding desperately in her chest, trying to push what little blood she still had in her through her body. Her limbs felt numb and weak. But still, she pressed on, pulling her legs fully onto the boulder.
¡°You know, Letty...¡± Tehlmar said as she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees while favoring her right side. He took a long, labored breath, and Arlette could clearly hear the wetness in it this time. She stopped to look back down at him. Red bubbles spotted the corners of his mouth. He looked back up with a fading gaze, in which she saw only regret. ¡°...back then... when I said ¡®Live well¡¯... this wasn¡¯t what I meant.¡±
Eyes glazing over, the elven prince slowly tilted to the left. His body twisted and fell as his legs gave in, landing on the ground chest first with an audible thud. No movement followed, save the slight movement of blood gently pooling beneath him.
Arlette forced herself to look away. She couldn¡¯t waste any more time. Struggling to her feet, she awkwardly clambered up the next rock, now only waist-high. Her balance felt off, so from there she crawled her way up the sloped boulder that followed until she found herself on the remains of the outer ring, looking out at the ongoing strife.
Everything looked even more chaotic than before. Half of the Ubran camp was completely missing, now replaced by huge smoking craters from Pari¡¯s bombs. Much of what remained now burned. Far out to the east of the camp, large metal machines were laying waste to the Ubran forces and pushing their way west, that Otharian bastard finally showing up to the party. The Ubrans were close to breaking, she realized. And she had just what the occasion needed.
Pushing herself to her feet once more, she shifted her grip on the Emperor¡¯s head from his hair to her base of his skull and raised it high above her head. Small drops of blood fell onto her, but she ignored it. Then, doing her best Many impersonation, she summoned forth every last bit of power she had within her.
A huge recreation of her hand and the head held within it flashed into being above her, its size hundreds of times her own, wreathed in flame. And with it, a voice rang out. Her voice.
¡°THE EMPEROR IS DEAD! THE EMPEROR IS DEAD!¡± it roared over the din, the illusory sound boosted as loud as she could manage it. The sound echoed across the battlefield, and she saw people turning her way. But that was all she saw; just that act had taken everything. She felt herself toppling backward, and the world faded away.
Chapter 87
The glow of sunlight filtered through canvas greeted Arlette¡¯s eyelids. They fluttered and opened weakly, and she found herself looking up at the roof of a tent that she didn¡¯t recognize. The muted bustle of many assorted people could be heard coming from all directions, though nothing nearby. A soothing feeling of familiarity washed over her. She knew these sounds; she¡¯d heard them hundreds of times before. They were the sounds of camp.
She took a deep breath, only to shudder as the act hurt for some unknown reason. Her vision blurry, she rubbed her eyes with her hands, or at least she tried to. Moving her left arm sent a burning pain running through her left shoulder and she immediately dropped it back down as memories of the battle finally came rushing back to her slowly waking mind.
She was alive. Arlette had not expected to live. Not by the end, at least. But here she was, wherever that would be, still breathing and notably free of restraints. They must have won.
A fountain of questions surged into her mind. Where was she? Whose tent was this? How had the battle ended? Were the Ubrans completely defeated or had they just retreated temporarily? How long had she been out? Most of them she couldn¡¯t answer easily, but at least that last one she could puzzle out some.
Gritting her teeth for the potential upcoming agony, she lifted her left leg so she could see her thigh, pulling away with her right hand the blanket covering her. She shivered as much of her warmth escaped but felt none of the pain she¡¯d expected. The muscle ached slightly, but that was all. With her right hand, she felt for the large wound but found only a long thin scar.
Muscle injuries usually healed in about four days. This wound had been a bit more brutal and worse than the normal such injury, which might have stretched the time out another day or two. And that estimate was only accurate if there was nothing else that needed to heal at the same time. She had plenty of other problems, like her shoulder, her ribs, her diaphragm...
Placing her hand on her stomach, she found several thin scars there as well, but breathing didn¡¯t hurt down there. Only her ribs hurt from that. Bones fully healed on their own in about ten days. Since her ribs and shoulder didn¡¯t seem fully healed yet, her estimate fell between five to ten days. That was how long she¡¯d been out this time.
Even just five days was a lot of time to lose, especially at such a critical moment. She had a lot of stuff she¡¯d need to take care of once she was mobile again, including one specific alcohol-related debt that she really didn¡¯t want to- no! She mentally grabbed every thought related to that asshole and shoved it all into a corner in the far reaches of her mind to be dealt with at a much later time. She wasn¡¯t in the mood to even tangentially think about him and she wouldn¡¯t be for a while.
Arlette¡¯s hearing picked up the sound of soft, quick footsteps drawing closer. The rustle of fabric and a temporary increase in the ambient noise outside told her somebody had entered but she couldn¡¯t see who. A small gasp followed.
¡°Arly-sis woke up!¡±
Arlette tensed up immediately and raised her right arm over her chest just in time to stop one of Pari¡¯s patented pounce-hugs from crashing down on her rib cage. The beastgirl seized on her arm instead, wrapping her own arms around it and purring up a storm while Arlette patted her head between her ears.
¡°Hey there, kiddo,¡± she wheezed. ¡°What are you doing here?¡±
Pari was too busy purring to answer, but the joy on her face was bright enough to light up the night sky. This wasn¡¯t bad, as far as the first person to see after coming out of a coma went.
¡°Pari, what¡¯s taking you so long?¡± another familiar voice called as they approached the tent. The cloth ruffled again. ¡°I asked you to bring me more cloth like ten- Arlette!¡±
She left out a relieved sigh.
¡°Thank goodness you finally opened your eyes again! I was so worried, you were even worse off this time than the last time!¡±
¡°How long?¡± Arlette croaked.
¡°About seven days,¡± Sofie replied.
¡°What happened?¡±
¡°With the battle?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°Well, I only saw the end of it, but the Ubrans retreated to the north. From what I¡¯ve heard, they¡¯ve been falling back to the west, maybe to Gustil. The Stragmans and Drayhadans who fought in the battle aren¡¯t the only armies those nations sent, apparently, and those other armies are currently chasing down the Ubrans. The Stragmans seem very enthusiastic about it.¡±
Arlette grunted at the news. The overall picture was better than she¡¯d thought. Still, she wondered how the Masked Battalion had managed to figure out that the defenders had been planning a final battle when they¡¯d tried to keep it as quiet as possible. Not that she minded, given the result.
¡°Pari, stop rubbing her arm for a minute and go fetch her some water,¡± Sofie instructed. ¡°Her throat sounds dryer than the Sahara right now.¡±
The beastkin scurried out into the cold, leaving the two of them alone.
¡°Where are we?¡± Arlette asked. The fact that the roof above was made of fabric confused her. Why weren¡¯t they in one of the buildings in the city? It would surely be warmer in there.
¡°We¡¯re in the camp outside the city. Well, kind of. The Drayhadans are camped to the south and the Stragmans to the north. Trying to avoid any fighting between them, probably. We¡¯re kinda in the middle. The Eterians don¡¯t want any of us camping in the city. Something about ¡®territorial sovereignty¡¯ or something like that.¡±
So some Eterians had survived. The news warmed her heart.
¡°What about the Kutradians?¡±
¡°In the city too, I think. If there are any left, I mean. I haven¡¯t seen any of those bear cats but I haven¡¯t been looking.¡±
¡°Hmmm. But we¡¯re outside the walls? Why aren¡¯t we in that old inn like before?¡±
Sofie fidgeted. ¡°Yeah, well... I¡¯m kinda an Otharian now, and they sorta hate us, soooo...¡±
¡°Of course they hate you. Your fellow Earthling fucked us all over, Sofie,¡± Arlette rasped, giving her a hard stare. ¡°You said we could rely on him.¡±
¡°Look, it...¡±
She stopped for a moment, biting her bottom lip. As she did, Pari came streaking back into the tent, a small bucket of water in her hands. Sofie took out a cup and filled it, handing it to Arlette. The water felt sublime as she swished it around her mouth and slowly gulped it down.
¡°That woman, the one people call ¡®The Monster¡¯? She appeared out of nowhere to kill Blake and that kinda ruined the whole plan,¡± the Earthling explained. ¡°The two of them made a huge mess of everything.¡±
¡°Oh yeah? Who won?¡± Arlette couldn¡¯t help but wish she could have witnessed that battle. At least she¡¯d caught a glimpse of the fight between the Chos and Taras.
¡°I... I guess it depends on how you define winning. She won the fight. Blake¡¯s in real bad shape right now¡ªworse than you were, I¡¯d say¡ªthough Sam says he¡¯s been slowly improving since I came out here. He¡¯s apparently running the country from his bed and making loads of annoying demands, so I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll be alright eventually.¡±
¡°So she won.¡±
¡°Welllllllll...¡± She rubbed her jaw with one hand as she thought over how to explain it. ¡°So when I made it to where they were, I interrupted them just as she was going to kill him, and-¡±
¡°You did what?!¡± Arlette choked.
¡°Well it just made me angry, you know?¡± Sofie huffed, crossing her arms defensively. ¡°The two of them had never met in person before. They¡¯d never actually talked to each other at all. But like, he was shooting at her when she was still kilometers away from the city and she was rushing at him with that giant sword of hers and I was just like, at least fucking try to see if you can work something out before you try to kill each other, you know? There¡¯s probably only, like, four or five people from Earth on this entire world, and the two of them just skipped over everything and went straight to murder. It was stupid and wasteful. So I tried to talk some sense into them a little. And that¡¯s when Blake won.
¡°It turns out she was working with the Ubrans because she thought they could send her back home with the machine that brought her here. But Blake¡¯s the expert when it comes to the ancient stuff that brought us here, and he¡¯s told me several times that they can¡¯t send us back. So he seized on that and just... absolutely ripped her heart out and crushed it. Metaphorically, I mean. Physically, she would have been fine.¡±
¡°And... how is that winning, exactly?¡±
¡°She has children. Young children, I think. And they didn¡¯t get transported here with her. I¡¯m not sure, but the way she talked makes me think she is a single mother, too.¡±
¡°Oh, wow...¡±
¡°I think that goal was what she was using to keep pushing herself forward this whole time. And once she realized that it was all pointless, it was like the flame inside her that kept her going just went out like a candle in a hurricane. She hasn¡¯t moved since.¡±
¡°Wait, what?¡±
¡°She slumped down onto the floor, kinda bent over and staring down at the ground between her legs, and hasn¡¯t moved ever since.¡±
¡°So, she died?¡±
Sofie shook her head. ¡°No, it¡¯s more like she¡¯s... stopped. She doesn¡¯t respond to sound, touch, scent, or anything else we tried, but her body is still as warm as a living person. Blake put up walls dozens of meters thick around her and won¡¯t let anybody near her but has cameras and stuff monitoring her constantly.¡±
¡°Why not just try to kill her since she¡¯s vulnerable?¡±
¡°He¡¯s afraid that she¡¯ll wake up if he tries. Blake won¡¯t admit it, but he¡¯s absolutely terrified of her. He knows now that if she really wants to kill him, it¡¯s not a matter of if he¡¯ll survive but rather how long. So he¡¯s decided to just not poke the bear and hope everything goes alright.¡±
¡°...I see.¡±
¡°So yeah... that¡¯s what happened,¡± Sofie finished with a content nod.
Arlette found herself frowning at her friend¡¯s attitude.
The Earthling stared back at her, confused. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°Do you know how many people died because of Otharia?¡± Arlette reminded her. ¡°We all needed those bombs to fall when they were supposed to. We needed those machines you have fighting along side us when we struck the Ubran forces. But you weren¡¯t there, and now there are thousands of children missing a father or a mother that wouldn¡¯t have to if you¡¯d held up your end.¡±
¡°But The Monster-¡±
¡°No buts. All the excuses in the world won¡¯t bring those people back. Your side messed up, but we paid the price.¡±
¡°It wasn¡¯t our fault!¡± Sofie protested.
¡°Tell that to all the new orphans out there and see if they care about your reasons.¡±
The two fell into a tense, awkward silence for a moment. Arlette¡¯s disposition had soured dramatically from the last part of their conversation.
¡°I think I need some time alone,¡± she finally said. Looking at the younger woman was making bad feelings well up in Arlette¡¯s heart. ¡°Please leave.¡±
¡°Wha...¡± The rejection cast a pall on the younger woman. Arlette understood that Sofie was excited to spend time with her after so long apart, but she wasn¡¯t in the mood anymore. ¡°Arlette, you¡¯re not healed yet. Somebody has to take care of you.¡±
¡°Let Pari do it then. At least she kept her part of the deal.¡±
Sofie let out a dejected sigh and slowly walked out of the tent. Pari looked on, a confused expression on her face. Arlette beckoned her forward and scratched her behind the ears, reviving the purrs from before. For a while, she just laid there, patting the head of the adorable tyke and trying to soak in as much joy from her as she could. Her body was still in pretty rough shape, but right now she needed healing of a different kind.
Later that day, Arlette was already sick of her view of the cloth above. The desire to get up, leave the tent, and wander the camps outside beat strongly within her, but she didn¡¯t feel physically up to it just yet. Tomorrow, perhaps. For now, she mostly just lay on the cot she¡¯d woken up on, occasionally sitting up and, if she was feeling daring, walking slowly around the enclosure. She¡¯d been in the process of sitting up when she heard voices outside her tent.
¡°Ah, hello again,¡± Sofie said, seemingly a little nervous.
¡°She back with us yet?¡± the unmistakable voice of Akhustal Palebane asked.
¡°She woke up this morning,¡± Sofie replied, ¡°but she¡¯s not in any condition- hey, wait! Stop, she needs rest! And leave that thing outside!¡±
The Chos grunted in annoyance and Arlette heard an extremely weighty thump as something fell to the ground outside the tent. Just as Arlette became upright, the tent flap flipped aside and the distinctive silhouette of the Stragman ruler presented itself before her. The giant took several steps into the relative gloom, Sofie hot on her heels. As the tent flap closed and the light became more palatable for Arlette¡¯s eyes, she got an up-close look at the Chos and blinked.
Just days after taking on one of the deadliest people in the world, somebody who could bring terror to all but a handful of people before he was boosted to absurd levels through chimirin, the massive woman looked almost normal. Arlette could see an array of long scars, freshly healed, running all across her body, but the only real, permanent damage she could see were the last two fingers on her left hand, each missing the last knuckle, and her completely absent left ear. The ear was the most notable, with skin having healed over the exposed skull and sliced-off scalp but only a light fuzz of white hair covering the area.
The Scyrian body was very good at putting itself back together again. The only time when an injury would be permanent was when a part of the body was lost and there was nothing left to put back together. A crushed finger could heal to the point where it worked as good as it ever had, but a severed finger was gone for good. The Chos would never have those parts back. Still... to come out of that battle with only those two small losses stood as one of the most impressive feats she¡¯d ever seen.
¡°You want this?¡± the Stragman asked, dispensing with all formalities as she held up a large tome with a chain hanging from its spine. Arlette immediately recognized it for what it was: the large book the Ubran ruler always held.
¡°Why are you offering me that?¡± Arlette asked.
¡°One of the Chos¡¯s duties is to divy up the spoils for a conquest as significant as an Emperor. You were there when he died, yes? Since you helped, you get dibs on the book if you want it.¡±
Palebane eyed her with what Arlette could only call skeptical hostility. Arlette returned her gaze with her own icy stare. The sight of the beastwoman caused a second round of sourness that day to well up inside her, and the Chos¡¯s attitude wasn¡¯t helping.
¡°Help? I killed him all on my own,¡± Arlette frostily replied. ¡°Strangled him to death with that very chain.¡±
The Chos raised a single eyebrow at her statement.
¡°It¡¯s the truth.¡±
¡°Whatever,¡± came the curt reply. ¡°Do you want it or not?¡±
Arlette studied the tome in the larger woman¡¯s hand, its spine so wide that even the giant¡¯s fingers were having a bit of difficulty wrapping around it. If she had to be honest, she didn¡¯t want it one bit. The book held no real value to her. It would serve as a trophy at best, a constant reminder of her past at worst. But then again, there was somebody else who she was sure would adore it.
¡°Yeah, sure. I¡¯ll take it,¡± she answered.
¡°Here,¡± the Stragman said, shoving the text into Arlette¡¯s chest. Relieved of her burden, she turned and headed for the exit.
¡°That¡¯s it?¡± Arlette called after her, her temper failing as she steadied herself. ¡°You just walk in here like you own the place, shove a book in my hand, and leave?¡±
Palebane halted for a moment, looking back at Arlette with dangerous eyes, but Arlette was beyond caring. Neither the fact that the Chos was essentially a king nor that she was likely the strongest person on the continent mattered.
¡°What do you have to say to all the people who died because you people didn¡¯t honor the treaty when you were supposed to?¡± Arlette continued. ¡°What do you have to say to all of us who suffered and starved for days on end while we fought for our lives while you sat in your forest and watched?¡±
¡°Listen up, because I¡¯m only going to say this once,¡± the Chos growled. ¡°We Stragmans are not Eterium¡¯s Shells; we don¡¯t exist solely to come running to your rescue whenever the big bad meanies show up. We have our own problems to deal with. Got it? Talk to me like that ever again and I¡¯ll bash your head in.¡±
With those chilling words echoing through Arlette¡¯s mind, Akhustal Palebane made her exit. ¡°Good luck, ¡®Slayer of Emperors¡¯,¡± she called sarcastically as she left.
¡°What in the world was that about?!¡± Sofie gasped once they were alone in the tent once more.
¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Arlette said. ¡°They¡¯re gone now.¡±
Sofie shook her head. ¡°No, it¡¯s weird. She¡¯s been in a great mood ever since I got here. She kept walking around their camp telling anybody who would listen about some fight she had with some guy named ¡°Taras¡± in the last battle. She was so pumped that she told me all about it twice when she came by each day to check if you were awake. I don¡¯t know why she treated you that way. It was like she didn¡¯t want to be in here with you a second more than she had to.¡±
Arlette frowned. ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t want her in here any more than necessary either. Let¡¯s talk about something else. You want the book, right?¡±
Sofie¡¯s eyes lit up. Arlette hadn¡¯t missed how Sofie kept glancing at the prize in her arms. ¡°Yes, please!¡± she chirped, practically ripping the tome from Arlette¡¯s grip and hugging it to her chest. However, instead of opening it immediately, the Earth woman looked pensive and distracted, as if she were busy pondering over something.
¡°Hey Arlette,¡± she said after a while, ¡°what do you want to do, now that this is finally over? I mean, Sebastian is dead, right? The Emperor too. You don¡¯t have anything tying you down anymore.¡±
Sofie was the one person still alive who knew the story of Arlette¡¯s past with Sebastian and the rest. After the whole incident on that fateful foggy night, she¡¯d demanded to know what had gone down and bugged the weak, bedridden Arlette until Arlette had finally cracked. Honestly, Arlette had been glad afterward. It had felt good to confide in somebody she liked on her own free will instead of being forced to explain to General Astalaria.
The question was a good one. Back during the siege, when the odds of survival had been so slim, she¡¯d thought it a waste of time to even consider such a question. But now, she needed an answer but found that she had none.
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she confessed as she went through her options. ¡°I guess... just find another job as a guard, maybe join a mercenary band if somebody will have me... Can¡¯t realistically start my own again, don¡¯t have the money for that now...¡±
¡°Is that all? Just... the same thing you¡¯ve always done? Aren¡¯t you sick of it by now?¡±
¡°What else is there? My family is stuck on the other side of The Divide and I haven¡¯t seen them since I was a small child, my adoptive parents died in an accident five years ago, the Ivory Tears is gone... all I have is myself now. What else could I do?¡±
¡°...I know of a job you could take,¡± Sofie informed her after a moment of contemplative silence.
¡°No,¡± Arlette immediately replied.
¡°What? But-¡±
Arlette¡¯s mouth twisted into a bitter scowl. ¡°I¡¯m not working for him. Not after what just happened.¡±
¡°But listen! It¡¯s perfect for you! And us!¡± the younger woman pressed. ¡°Look, Blake¡¯s hurt, he¡¯s tired, and he¡¯s sick of having to deal with military matters, so he¡¯s looking for somebody to be his head... general or whatever to let him focus on building things and whatnot.¡±
¡°Sounds great. I bet there¡¯s a whole crowd of people who would gladly take his coin to do that.¡±
¡°But he doesn¡¯t want those people. The biggest reason he didn¡¯t offload this stuff to somebody already is that he¡¯s paranoid and he doesn¡¯t like the idea of giving control to somebody with existing allegiances. In his mind, anybody with a family or a home country is suspect. They¡¯d be tempted to use the power he gives them to free Otharia or help their homeland, or their family could be held hostage to force them to do things against his interests.
¡°Believe it or not, he actually was the one who asked me, not the other way around. He thinks you¡¯re competent and that you ¡®have your head on straight¡¯, as he put it. The fact that you managed to survive what you just went through and killed the Emperor to boot probably impressed him too. When he found out that you don¡¯t have a home or a family to go back to, he asked me to offer you the job. You¡¯re the perfect candidate in his mind.
¡°Think about the advantages compared to just being some guard or mercenary. You wouldn¡¯t have to live payday to payday; you could sleep in a nice, fancy set of rooms made custom just for you inside a giant fortress instead of laying on some shoddy straw mattress in a cheap inn; you¡¯d get to spend time with Pari and me as much as you want; you could probably name whatever salary you wanted and he¡¯d take it... There¡¯s no reason not to jump at this opportunity!¡±
¡°Yeah, it sure seems there¡¯s a lot to like. Still no.¡±
¡°Wh-why?!¡±
¡°Tell me the truth, Sofie,¡± Arlette requested. ¡°Does Lord Ferros care about any of our lives? When his fight with the Monster was over, was he upset that his fuck-up had caused the death of thousands of people?¡±
Sofie bit her lip again.
¡°...well?¡± Arlette insisted.
Her companion sighed. ¡°He... was more upset that his zeppelin had almost crashed into the city wall,¡± she reluctantly admitted.
¡°That¡¯s why.¡±
¡°Look, he¡¯s... it¡¯s more complicated than that. Could you just... think it over for a bit at least? Sleep on it for a bit.¡±
¡°Alright, fine, I¡¯ll think about it,¡± Arlette lied. She wasn¡¯t going to waste even a moment doing anything of the sort.
¡°Thanks.¡± With a soft groan, Sofie rose to her feet. ¡°Well, uh, I should probably... um-¡±
¡°Just go read your stupid book, it¡¯s fine,¡± Arlette snorted with a roll of her eyes.
¡°Okaythanksbye!¡± Sofie called as she practically blurred through the tent flap.
Arlette gave silent thanks to the fact that they didn¡¯t have to share a tent. She had a feeling that her Earthling friend wouldn¡¯t be sleeping much tonight.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
¡°You seem a lot stronger than the last time you woke up after nearly dying,¡± Sofie noted a day later. ¡°I had to feed you with a spoon like a baby for a little, remember? You could barely even lift your arm.¡±
¡°Better food,¡± Arlette replied as she chewed enthusiastically on some hearty bread topped with garoph cheese. After the siege, even this simple meal tasted like paradise. She decided she would never take real food for granted ever again. ¡°Sleeping more helps too. Speaking of which, you look beat. Did you stay up all night?¡±
There was a startling contrast between the younger woman¡¯s physical appearance and her body language. Dark semicircles rimmed the lower half of her eyes, her skin had a pallid, greasy quality to it, and her eyes lacked their usual sharpness. And yet, her whole body seemed to buzz with more energy than Arlette had seen in her in a long time, maybe ever.
¡°The Emperor¡¯s book, it¡¯s... it¡¯s amazing! It¡¯s almost perfect!¡± Sofie gushed. ¡°You know how to read the Ubran language, right?¡±
Arlette frowned. ¡°Maybe. Most writing on the other continent is done in ¡®Ubran Common¡¯,¡± she said with distaste. ¡°That might not be what¡¯s in there, I¡¯d have to see it. Even if it is, I haven¡¯t read Ubran Common since I was a child so I¡¯d be very rusty.¡±
¡°But you can read it,¡± Sofie reiterated.
¡°Probably. Why?¡±
¡°Because,¡± Sofie said in a near whisper, leaning in close with a sudden sparkle in her eyes like she was sharing some deep secret, ¡°the first part is written in the old script like my other book, but on the opposite pages, somebody translated it! It¡¯s exactly what I need to finally really crack this wide open! This is my Rosetta Stone!¡±
¡°Your what?¡±
¡°Rosetta Stone! It¡¯s this old stone from... it¡¯ll help me translate faster and better.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
¡°So how are you feeling? Do you think you¡¯ll be feeling good enough to start tonight?¡± the younger woman chirped enthusiastically.
With mounting dread, Arlette realized that her prospects of quiet, relaxing, evenings with a nice, calming drink were one poorly thought-out answer away from completely disappearing for a long time.
¡°Are you sure you want to translate so loosely?¡± she asked after several moments of desperate thought. ¡°Relying on my rusty understanding could lead to mistakes. Why not just learn the language yourself? That way you¡¯ll know that your translations are consistent and correct.¡±
¡°But that would take months! I don¡¯t want to wait that long.¡±
¡°What do you mean? Didn¡¯t it only take you a matter of days to learn Eterian Common once you finally got a chance to sit down and study it?¡±
¡°That¡¯s only because Mister Salvide was nice enough to teach me. He was a great teacher too.¡±
¡°Sofie, it takes other people years to learn a written language, even with a great teacher. You were more fluent in Eterian Common than most scribes and you only started learning the language after we got here less than half a year ago.¡±
¡°Well, I mean...¡± the younger woman scratched her head with embarrassment. ¡°For some reason, I always can remember a word once I learn it, even if I¡¯ve only seen it once. So that helps a whole lot.¡±
¡°Really? Have you always been able to do that?¡±
¡°No... I was always pretty good with other languages¡ªthat¡¯s why I started focusing on them when I went to college¡ªbut it¡¯s only been like this since I came to this world, and I didn¡¯t even realize it until a little while ago.¡±
¡°Well, you always wanted a power like the other Earthlings, right? Now we know what it is.¡±
¡°This power sucks. Compared to the others, it¡¯s worthless. Reading well doesn¡¯t help you when people are trying to capture or kill you.¡±
Arlette shook her head. ¡°Not everybody has to be an amazing fighter to be worth something. To be honest, I¡¯m incredibly jealous. I¡¯ve had to learn many written languages in my life, and it¡¯s always been a pain in the butt. And who says that¡¯s all it is? Maybe it¡¯s deeper and you just haven¡¯t realized what you can really do with it yet.¡±
¡°If you say so...¡±
¡°I do say so. Hey, I just thought of something. Do you need somebody to teach you, or would a book be enough?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, why?¡±
¡°I think I know something that could teach you Ubran Common faster than I ever could. I¡¯m feeling good enough to head into the city. I¡¯ll pick it up while I¡¯m in there.¡±
¡°Really? That sounds great! How are you feeling? Are you all healed?¡±
Arlette stood up and flexed her legs. They responded with no pain. ¡°Close. My shoulder still hurts, but the rest of me seems mostly intact now.¡±
Sofie gave her a tired but relieved smile. ¡°I¡¯m glad.¡±
¡°Thanks for taking care of me again.¡±
¡°What else are friends for but spending time together and taking care of one another?¡± she laughed. ¡°Speaking of which, have you given any more thought to Blake¡¯s offer?¡±
¡°Still thinking,¡± Arlette dodged, quickly heading for the exit before Sofie could press the subject. ¡°I¡¯m going to head into Crirada for a bit. See you later.¡±
With a brisk gait, Arlette made her way towards the walls of the city where she¡¯d fought and bled for so long, her head busy trying to figure out a way to let her friend down easy while she still could.
Arlette had worried for a moment, as she approached the west archway entrance to the city, that the Eterians had closed off the city completely in a bid to keep the vastly superior forces of the Stragmans or Drayhadans from marching in and declaring the city theirs. It would have been a futile gesture as, without the Otharian machines to guard the entrance as they had against the Ubrans, the Eterians would have held against the armies outside like a wet piece of paper. Still, she would have understood the fear. The Eterian army had been a shadow of its former might before this final battle, and now was a not even a fraction of that. Living with two predators outside your door would be terrifying, even when those predators had saved you the day prior.
Her worries proved unfounded, however, as she saw an elf pass by the guards posted at the entrance, with a beastman following not long after pulling a cart loaded with food. Of course. The Eterians had no choice, they had nothing to eat if they shut themselves inside.
The guards saw her coming and straightened. Arlette noticed several of the guards slide a hand towards the swords hanging on their hips. Well, if that wasn¡¯t a good sign, she didn¡¯t know what was.
¡°Halt,¡± the closest guard ordered as he approached. She couldn¡¯t help but worry about the situation. Not only was her arm still not fully healed, but she also had no weapons on her, having not had the chance to replace her sword or knives.
The guard eyed her suspiciously. ¡°You came from the Otharian camp,¡± he said, pointing to the small group of tents surrounded by skitters for protection. The way he said it sounded less like an observation and more like an accusation.
¡°Yeah? What of it?¡± she asked in return.
¡°Turn your ass around and go somewhere else. We don¡¯t let filth through here.¡±
¡°I just gotta take care of some business,¡± she stated. ¡°Won¡¯t take long.¡±
¡°The only business you¡¯ll get around here is the business end of my spear,¡± another guard chimed in.
Arlette¡¯s ire kept rising, and she fought to keep it in check. These asshats were letting the other two camps in, but not her. Either they were too stupid to realize that the Stragmans and Drayhadans abandoning their responsibilities and sitting by the wayside while Eterians died was just as bad or worse than what the Otharians did, or they did realize it but knew they couldn¡¯t stand up to the forces outside their city and were letting their anger out by bullying her instead.
¡°Enough of this. I fought on the wall just as much as any of you,¡± she reminded them. ¡°I even killed the Emperor with my own hands! I don¡¯t have all day. Move aside.¡±
The guard burst into laughter.
¡°I never thought an elf prince would look so plain,¡± one remarked in jest. ¡°Such round ears as well!¡±
¡°What are you talking about?¡± she asked, getting more confused and irritated by the heartbeat.
¡°You been living under a rock, woman?¡± another replied. ¡°Everybody knows that Prince Tehlmar slew the Emperor.¡±
Arlette froze for a moment as those words slowly processed in her mind. Now she understood the Chos¡¯s mocking parting words. That son of a bitch stole her kill! Oh, she was going to absolutely beat the living daylights out of him. As if she didn¡¯t have enough reasons to want to murder the bastard.
But no, that needed to wait. She needed to accomplish what she¡¯d come to do first, and elf punching could come later. Right now, she needed to enter the city. Luckily for her, infiltration was a specialty of hers.
Holding in her anger as the guard jeered at her retreating back, she made her way north to the Stragman camp. Blending in with the crowds for a little, she donned an illusion based on a nearby beastkin sporting perky triangular red-brown ears and a bushy tail of the same color. Then, a few moments later, clad in a different face and body than the last time, she sauntered back to the guards and almost snickered as they let her through with a smile and several not-so-subtle glances as her rear.
Losers.
Dropping the disguise not long after, she continued to the citadel in the city center. As she went, she took note of the people she passed by, trying to get an estimate of how many Eterians had survived. Her unscientific answer: depressingly few.
Word of the Nocend victory was surely spreading already. Soon the news would reach all across the continent, and the many refugees who¡¯d fled east would come back and return this dead city to the lively metropolis it had been before. But they wouldn¡¯t arrive back at Crirada for at least another few days. For the moment, the streets were largely barren, save for a few small groups of weary soldiers every few intersections.
As she went, Arlette noticed that every so often one of the Eterians would notice her and scowl. They would watch her as she passed, and sometimes say things in low tones to others nearby, who would then also scowl. The realization troubled her. She understood the current loathing the Eterians had for Otharia, but there should have been no way for them to connect her to Otharia on sight. This was something else.
Once inside the citadel, she made her way to the rooms of the now-deceased Supreme General. That was where she¡¯d find what she was looking for. Normally, there¡¯d be guards posted outside the chambers, but at this point, there just didn¡¯t seem to be enough people left to waste on something like that. She strode inside.
¡°Who are you and what are you doing... you? You¡¯re Arlette Demirt, aren¡¯t you? You have a lot of guts, walking in here.¡±
Arlette froze. In retrospect, she should have expected somebody in the room, but she was still caught off-guard by the man sitting behind the desk as she walked in. She was even more unprepared for how he had recognized her when she¡¯d never seen him before.
¡°How do you know who I am?¡± she asked warily.
¡°The general left many instructions before he died,¡± the man replied, picking up several sheets of parchment off to the side, ¡°including specific notes concerning you.¡±
He glanced at the parchment and began to read from it. ¡°Not to be trusted. While allowing Demirt to board the Otharian ship is the best option for the plan to succeed, should something fail on the Otharian side, she is surely the reason why. She has some sort of connection with Otharia. Watch for treachery.¡±
No way. That arrogant, stuck-up waste of space was trying to bury her from beyond the grave? And to think she¡¯d actually felt some small bit of respect for him before the battle, and had even felt a slight bit sad when he died!
¡°Oh, no. Nonono. Don¡¯t you put that shit on me,¡± she growled. ¡°For that entire star-blighted season, I fought and bled and killed just as much as you or anybody else on that gods-forsaken wall. I foiled a plot to open the gates once, all on my own! I even killed the fucking Emperor, no matter how many of you fools think that elven dipshit did it! I pulled my fucking weight! And that asswipe has the gall to say that I might be a traitor?! Fuck him, and if you believe him over me, fuck you too.¡±
The man stared back at her, his eyes narrowed. ¡°Supreme General Astalaria was a great man. He warned that you might try something with the Otharians, and then you left us without support as the Ubrans tore us to pieces. What happened seems obvious to me and the rest of the surviving officers, and we¡¯re going to let the rest of the nation know of your actions. Now, I suggest you leave before things get any more serious.¡±
¡°You fucking pieces of shit!¡± she snapped, turning and marching over to the bookshelf standing against the side wall. ¡°I put everything on the line every day and this is how I get treated! It wasn¡¯t my fault, but you don¡¯t care! You just want somebody to blame!¡±
The deceased general had always been interested in the Obura continent and the Ubrans in particular, which was probably where his initial suspicions of her as a child had come from. As such, he had an entire section of his bookshelf dedicated to books about the Empire. Pulling out a book with the words ¡°Ubran Common Dictionary¡± written on the spine, she tucked it under her arm.
¡°Don¡¯t touch those, unless you wish to be a thief as well as a traitor!¡± the man said, rising to his feet in anger.
¡°I¡¯m just taking what I¡¯m owed for all the suffering that dead bastard put me through,¡± Arlette shot back. ¡°What are you going to do about it? If I¡¯m in cahoots with the Otharians, do you dare touch me? You saw what those bombs did. It would be a shame if one fell onto this place.¡±
The man stopped in his tracks, sputtering indignantly. Arlette took a small amount of satisfaction in his impotent anger. If they were going to smear her as a villain and make it hard for her to find work in Eterium no matter what she did, she might as well get a little for herself out of it. Her eyes fell on an unopened bottle of Drayhadan wine on the desk between them, something he¡¯d likely traded for just recently.
¡°I¡¯m taking this too,¡± she said, scooping the drink off the desk. With a derisive sniff, she marched out into the hallway before the Eterian could say any more.
Popping another disguise over herself as soon as she was alone, Arlette left the citadel in a hurry. If rumors and stories had already spread around some of the Eterians, she needed to get out as soon as possible.
The whole situation threatened to send her spiraling into depression. Already, everything was falling apart. She¡¯d planned on asking around for possible work while in the city, but now it felt like she had little hope of finding anything here, and even if she did, there was little to guarantee the employment wouldn¡¯t be suddenly terminated when word got around that she was some backstabber who contributed to the death of thousands of loyal Eterian soldiers. Back in the day, the Mercenary Guild would have protected her, but after the invasion, the guild was surely as dead as its members.
A mercenary¡¯s reputation mattered, and General Astalaria had taken hers with him. It would take a long time for her to recover some semblance of what she¡¯d had before, if she ever could. One thing that could really help her was if people knew she¡¯d killed the Emperor, but now that seemed taken from her as well.
The truth of the matter was that, before this sudden character assassination, she hadn¡¯t even cared much about taking credit for the Emperor¡¯s death. She hadn¡¯t killed him for fame, she¡¯d killed him for personal reasons. The benefits of being the one to kill the most powerful man in the world hadn¡¯t even been on her mind when she¡¯d killed him. In general, she felt mostly fine with somebody else taking the fame. The part that pissed her off was Tehlmar being the one to steal her credit. It felt like a second betrayal.
As she walked out of the city, she pulled the cork from the bottle of wine and took a large gulp. He¡¯d wanted one last drink with her, hadn¡¯t he? Maybe it was time to go settle it once and for all.
After stopping by her tent to drop off the book, Arlette approached the Drayhadan camp, half-empty wine bottle in hand. She could feel the alcohol boosting her courage as she closed in.
Looking around the camp, she couldn¡¯t help but notice how different it was from the others. The area seemed sectioned off into four large and distinct groups instead of one large, cohesive unit like the Stragmans and the Ubrans before. Not only that, but everybody she could see was male and an elf.
Three soldiers stationed to the south of the camp stopped her, bored expressions on their faces.
¡°No barbarians allowed in the camp,¡± the lead one stated.
¡°I am here on an invitation from Prince Tehlmar. Please inform him that ¡®Arlette¡¯ is here to see him,¡± she informed the elves, taking another swig before popping the cork back into the bottle.
The trio shared a look that Arlette couldn¡¯t interpret. After a moment of quiet discussion, one ran towards the camp while the other two turned back to her.
¡°Please come with us,¡± the lead guard said, his voice much more polite.
¡°That easy?¡± she wondered aloud as she followed them. ¡°You¡¯re very trusting for Drayhadans.¡±
¡°We were told that an ¡®Arlette¡¯ might show up,¡± the elf explained. ¡°Though after so many days, we¡¯d mostly figured you weren¡¯t coming.¡±
The elves led her through the camp to a tent about fifteen paces wide and ten paces long. Even if the size wasn¡¯t a tipoff that this was a special tent, the way it was almost like an island isolated from the rest of the camp by a large ring of empty ground where no other tents were pitched told her all she needed to know. There they found the third soldier and another elf waiting for them. The new elf carried himself with authority, and the others clearly deferred to him.
¡°I am Artiermius, aide de camp to Prince Tehlmar. You are Arlette?¡± he asked, somehow seeming to look down his nose at her even though she was slightly taller than him.
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°And you wish to see the prince?¡±
She didn¡¯t, really, except maybe to repeatedly ram her knee into his face, but... ¡°I do. I promised him I would, and I pay my debts.¡±
¡°Very well,¡± the elf replied. He nodded dismissively to the two elves that had brought her into the camp and they saluted and left. The third one stayed.
¡°The prince is inside,¡± the elf informed her, lifting the nearby flap. He turned to the remaining soldier. ¡°I must fetch something. Watch her for now.¡±
Arlette took a deep breath, steeled herself emotionally, and strode inside, the soldier following behind and taking a place by the entrance. The tent¡¯s interior was mostly what she was expecting: a much more lavish, but still sensible, take on an officer¡¯s tent. No crazy furniture or anything like some of the Ubrans had.
¡°I¡¯m here, you bastard,¡± she said, spotting a form lying on a cot near the back of the tent. ¡°I¡¯m here for that fucking drink you wanted so desperately.¡±
There came no response.
¡°Hey, wake up,¡± she continued, stepping closer. ¡°You have some explaining to do about the Emp...¡±
Arlette¡¯s voice trailed off as she got a better view of the figure. Tehlmar laid on the cot, except it wasn¡¯t Tehlmar anymore. It was just his corpse.
For some reason, it didn¡¯t seem real. Jaquet couldn¡¯t die. He just couldn¡¯t. He¡¯d always been this dynamic, powerful presence, a demigod of battle, hard to stop and impossible to kill. Never, in the entire time she¡¯d shared with him, had she ever worried for his survival.
And yet, there he was, his state undeniable. Large gashes covered his exposed torso and arms. She could still remember the hazy sight of the blood leaking out of him when he¡¯d finally collapsed. His left ear was also missing, sliced off near the base. Had it been missing when she¡¯d last seen him?
Suddenly, a lot of the last two days became much clearer. The Chos¡¯s behavior made more sense. She¡¯d always been a fan of Jaquet and had seemingly been cooperating with the elf version of him in some way. Perhaps seeing Arlette had sparked unwanted thoughts and memories in the Stragman woman. The story of his valorous victory over the Emperor made more sense as well. The part about that which had hurt the most was that the man she¡¯d known would never have done such a thing as steal valor from another and would not have allowed others to do it for him. Now she realized that it had come about precisely because he wasn¡¯t there to stop it. The Drayhadans wanted a reason to hold their head high.
All of that was easy to understand. What she didn¡¯t understand were the feelings inside her, or rather, the lack thereof. She¡¯d expected to feel anger at the sight of him, and then sadness and sorrow, but instead she just felt... hollow.
¡°So this is it, huh?¡± she said to him, or maybe to herself. ¡°This is how it ends...¡±
The entrance flap rustled and the self-important elf entered, holding a cube-shaped cloth-wrapped package about half a pace large. He presented it to her, saying, ¡°Prince Tehlmar wanted you to have this.¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
The elf shook his head. ¡°He would not say. Only that it was for you.¡±
Arlette reluctantly accepted the item, tucking it under her arm with the wine bottle gripped between her fingers. For several moments, she just stared at the prince¡¯s body in silence, trying to wrap her head around Tehlmar, her, the moment, and everything in between.
¡°...what¡¯s going to happen to him?¡± she finally asked.
¡°Normally, when members of the Masked Battalion pass, their bodies are enshrined within the Battalion¡¯s halls to honor their service. However, Princess Pyria insists upon a full royal funeral befitting his station as a prince and a war hero, followed by his cremation. We will transport him south tomorrow morning at first light.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
Looking at the lifeless form before her, his glassy eyes staring blankly upward, she couldn¡¯t keep up her denial any longer. She couldn¡¯t pretend that he was somebody else. She couldn¡¯t keep compartmentalizing the pain and the happiness, shunting all her anger at Tehlmar while keeping her memories of Jaquet unaffected. Her mind kept returning to the elf¡¯s eyes the last time she¡¯d seen him alive. They¡¯d been a different color and a different shape on a different face, but somehow, she¡¯d still seen Jaquet¡¯s gaze within them.
This was her friend. This was the final, true form of that loud, boisterous, drunken companion. The man who¡¯d always been there for her... until he hadn¡¯t.
¡°The Stragmans found him and the Emperor¡¯s body lying near each other, along with an unknown, mostly-dead woman,¡± the elf said after a little. ¡°That woman was you, was it not?¡±
¡°What makes you say that?¡±
¡°There was a large illusion that caught the attention of both sides. It is but a guess, but I would venture that to be the work of Arlette Demirt, illusion genius.¡±
Arlette couldn¡¯t help but let out a laugh at the last bit. ¡°You seem to know a lot about me for somebody I¡¯ve never met.¡±
¡°He would speak of you from time to time when he became highly inebriated. But only then.¡±
He paused to consider his words.
¡°You were there, were you not? You saw the battle. Did it go as the story says? Did he vanquish the Emperor? Or was it you who did the deed, or perhaps another out there somewhere?¡±
After another long moment of thought, Arlette brought the bottle up to her mouth and bit down on the cork, pulling it free with a loud pop. Spitting the cork into her left hand, she put the container to her lips and took several large gulps of wine.
¡°It was all him,¡± she told Artiermius. ¡°He killed the Emperor, and then I told the world. He was the muscle, I was the face. That¡¯s how we always were, all the way to the end.¡±
Reaching forward and grabbing the ex-prince¡¯s chin, she opened his lips and poured the rest of the bottle into his mouth and throat.
¡°What are you doing?¡± the elf beside her demanded with a start.
¡°Fulfilling my promise,¡± she replied. She took one long, final look at the corpse. ¡°Goodbye, Jaquet.¡±
Without another word, she turned and left.
¡°Hey, Sofie, would you mind keeping Pari busy for a while?¡± Arlette asked, taking the last bites of her dinner. The meal was just as good as the rest, but she found herself unable to enjoy the taste as she had before. ¡°I need a little time to deal with some stuff.¡±
¡°Hey sweetie,¡± Sofie called out to Pari, who was busy messing with her candlemaking equipment as she so often did. ¡°What do you say we go test some of your new candles?¡±
Pari perked up. ¡°But Sofie-sis said not to test in the camp,¡± she replied.
¡°We¡¯ll take some skitters and go out to the battlefield,¡± Sofie explained.
¡°Okay!¡± The beastkin child hurriedly rounded up some candles of dubious function, threw them in a sack, and rushed excitedly out of the tent with Sofie hot on her heels yelling for her to slow down.
A stillness descended upon the tent as Arlette took a deep breath and slowly let it out. She¡¯d avoided opening the package for the last few hours, but its presence kept slowly eating away at her state of mind. It was time to stop avoiding it.
Unwrapping the cloth tied around the cube, she found herself staring at a wooden box with a folded envelope on top. The shiny, polished surface of the wood and the exquisite carvings adorning the top lent it an aura of significance, but she put it to the side for now and picked up the envelope. It, too, looked fancy. It was paper instead of parchment and the quality was some of the best she¡¯d ever seen.
Her name was written on the outside of the envelope. With trepidation coursing through her veins, she opened it. An equally fancy piece of paper could be found inside. She couldn¡¯t help but chuckle at Jaquet¡¯s familiar, messy scrawl on both the envelope and the note inside, several sheets long. It felt so out of place on the immaculate paper, like it was almost defacing the stationary. There were even sections that were scribbled out, leaving the whole thing feeling rather rushed and sloppy. How very like him. She began to read.
Hello, Arlette. I love you. I feel it is important to state this right out front, because if there¡¯s one thing I want you to know, this is it.
Arlette balked immediately. What? Was this a joke? It was like being confessed to by your uncle. Brow furrowed, she read on.
This is my backup, in case I don¡¯t live through the upcoming battles. Back when I was Jaquet, I would never have considered writing something like this, but things are different now. I¡¯m not as strong as I used to be, meaning the odds of my survival are lower than I¡¯d like to admit. If you¡¯re reading this, then I didn¡¯t make it. But it also means you did, so overall, a worthwhile result.
I hope you can understand that I never wanted it to happen that way. Not any of this, but especially that one time. You know the one. It was the regrettable outcome from the hole I¡¯d dug myself over the years. I never intended to hurt you like that, but I will not deny that I did. For that, I am deeply sorry.
I feel like I should take a moment to explain myself, if you are charitable enough to allow it. My role as a member of the Masked Battalion was to travel around Nocend and provide updates on the continent as I went. For years, I did that, drifting around and working with various mercenary bands but never staying with one group for long. Due to my past and many other things I won¡¯t get into, I felt miserable the entire time.
Then I found you, a bright-eyed young upstart looking to start your own band. I saw an opportunity to make my life simpler. By helping you start the Ivory Tears, I¡¯d have more control over my activities. Instead of always having to find new work on my own, making and breaking relationships each time, I¡¯d be able to steer the band around Nocend and reap the benefits while you did all the actual work of leadership and administration.
In the beginning, you were nothing but a means to an end. But as time went on, you became more than that. At first, it was great; I felt happy for the first time in decades.
Yet by the time I realized what you meant to me, I¡¯d also realized the problem. There was no way you would love ¡°Jaquet¡±. Jaquet was ugly, he was fat, he was far too old. You would say so yourself sometimes after a few hours of drinking, and each time it was like a dagger to my heart. But most of all, Jaquet was a lie. If I wanted to be with you, I had to tell you the truth. The same truth that would make you hate me.
There were so many times when I almost let you know, but I never could take that last step. I had my duty to my homeland, and to the Battalion, to stay hidden as long as possible. That¡¯s what I told myself, at least. But when I look back at it now, it¡¯s so clear that I was just afraid of what you would think. The thought of you hating me kept me frozen, unable to do what I now know I should have done, and every day that I kept lying to you only made it worse.
It¡¯s almost funny, when I think about it. I¡¯ve lived on the battlefield for so long now, and nearly died so many times, but the fear I feel for my life barely registers. And yet the prospect of revealing my true self to you scared me more than the thought of facing down thirty enemies all on my lonesome. When the time finally came and I reverted against my will, I couldn¡¯t even bring myself to look your way. Just the thought of seeing the betrayal in your eyes terrified me more than any blade ever could.
I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m going to say or do when I find you. I¡¯ve worried over it these past days, fretting to the point of distraction. What do I say? Do I just beg for your forgiveness at the first moment we meet again? Do I try to bring back the dynamic we used to have to show you that I¡¯m still the same person that spent all those years with you, and then apologize with everything I have later on? Maybe you¡¯ll be happy to see me. Maybe I¡¯ll end up a hero rushing in to save you at the last second. Or maybe you won¡¯t recognize me, or maybe you will, and you¡¯ll decide to let your blade do the talking. Or maybe, worst of all, I¡¯ll never find you no matter how I try. Whatever ends up happening, I hope it goes well for both of us.
These last few days, I¡¯ve been working on something to properly convey my thoughts. I know you have trouble believing only words from somebody who misled you for so long, so perhaps this will show how serious I am. I¡¯m sorry it¡¯s incomplete, but I won¡¯t have time to finish it properly with this sudden increase in pace. I hope you will accept it anyway.
Live well, Arlette. And please, remember us as we were, not how we are.
Jaquet Delon
Tehlmar Esmae, First Prince of Esmaeyae
Arlette¡¯s hands were trembling by the end, though whether with rage or something else she wasn¡¯t sure. Even now, this all felt like some terrible prank. Her gaze fell back onto the box by her side. Did she even want to open it? No. But she had to anyway.
Heart racing, she undid the latch and raised the lid. Inside, resting between soft cushions, was a small wooden carving of a bird, parts of it much more detailed than others. She let out an involuntary gasp at the sight. She¡¯d never seen one before, but she immediately knew what it was.
An ertani.
Also known colloquially as a ¡°spirit carving¡±, an ertani was not a joke. No, it was the farthest thing from a joke. An ertani was the formal Drayhadan means of proposing courtship. No Drayhadan would ever make an ertani if they didn¡¯t mean it.
That stupid man. That stupid, boneheaded, infuriating man. What was she supposed to do about a proposal from a dead person? How was she supposed to feel about this?
She stood up and lifted the box over her head, ready to smash it to the ground. She could hear the blood rushing through her ears, feel her jaw clenched shut, her arm shaking. All she had to do was hurl the box downward. That was it. A rotation of the shoulder, followed by the elbow and the wrist for maximum velocity. A simple motion she¡¯d done countless times before.
She couldn¡¯t do it. Why couldn¡¯t she do it?
Because this was Jaquet. As much as she didn¡¯t want to admit it, as much as she hated it, she couldn¡¯t deny the truth anymore. The man she¡¯d spent so much time with, drinking, fighting, arguing; the man who¡¯d used her and abandoned her with little more than a weak apology; the man who¡¯d fought side by side with her for years. This one object was all she had left of those times. If she were to throw this away, she would be rejecting him forever. Not just his lying, not just his betrayal, but also his warmth, his laughter, and his steadfast presence, or all those times he¡¯d taken an arrow for her, or blocked a blade coming at her, or pulled her out of the way of an incoming fireball.
Was that what she wanted? She¡¯d had so few true friends in her life. Did she really want to throw away the memory of the one who in many ways had been her best? Did she really want to make herself even more alone?
No, she didn¡¯t. She was already almost alone, and even though she claimed that she didn¡¯t want such solitude, she kept working to isolate herself from the only friends she had left. Why was she pushing them away?
She sat back down, closing the box and setting it to the side.
The epiphany was like a ray of sunshine peeking through the clouds, casting her current actions in a whole new light. She could keep on her current course and find a job in Kutrad, or maybe the remains of Gustil. The situation there was surely chaos, and mercenaries could prosper in such an environment if they got lucky. But she¡¯d be intentionally putting thousands of leagues between her and the only people left on this continent¡ªor maybe even the world¡ªwho still cared about her. For what? Less pay and worse living conditions?
She still felt sincere anger at Lord Ferros, Sofie¡¯s Earthling comrade, excuses about the Monster or no. But it wasn¡¯t like she¡¯d never worked for people she hated before. She¡¯d taken contracts from plenty of arrogant, selfish, spoiled aristocrats and the like throughout her career as a mercenary. Many had done things just as bad, if not worse, than the stories she¡¯d heard about Blake, and that hadn¡¯t stopped her then. Why should it stop her now?
It wouldn¡¯t, she decided. She¡¯d been a fool, disregarding the importance of friendship in her life, but Jaquet¡¯s death had shown her the truth. So, Arlette decided to keep her friends close, while she still had the power to do so. She¡¯d accept the offer of employment, or she¡¯d give it a try, at least. She¡¯d heard tales of Otharia for decades, all of them bad, but if Sofie could stand living there, then it surely couldn¡¯t be that terrible, right? What was the worst that could happen?
¡°Pari, no!¡±
A sharp boom echoed across the camp.
Not a chapter: Cities Map
A reader asked me to post an updated map, so here it is. This doesn''t have all the major cities in the world, just the ones that have been relevant in the story so far (except Zamery and Zlamery, which I kept in there because it amuses me). Hope this helps you all understand better.
Old Map (for countries):
New Map for cities (will probably merge the two later):
I don''t really have much else to say, but I have to write another 450 words to be allowed to post this so here we go! And no I am not going to spellcheck this shit. Ain''t nobody got time for that!
I''ve been on a real synthwave kick recently, which is weird because I genuinely hate the 1980''s. But for some reason I''ve found myself really liking certain subgenres of 80''s-inspired music, especially synthwave. Maybe it''s just my overall love of synths coming through. Perturbator is great, truly menacing vibes, but my favorite right now has to be Starcadian. My favorites are their songs Ultralove (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbCwvuHOwoA) and Interspace (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csYjk5m4_PY).
Oh man, still 350 words to go? Okay...
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I''ve bought Animal Crossing: New Horizons two days ago. I never really got into the Animal Crossing franchise before, even though I tried. This time, however, I really like it. The Nook Miles program really incentivises me to do a bunch of stuff that I might not otherwise do and the random side island stuff is way better than the single island from New Leaf. There''s no farming that one island over and over again now.
Overall, I think AC:NH is a good video game so far. I was kinda worried and didn''t really know if I wanted to buy it and now I''m glad I did. If you''re feeling all cooped up inside like me and you have a switch, I recommend it.
Uhhhhh...... What else?!
Work on ARc 3 continues. I''m planning out the chapters, figuring out what plot points go into which chapters, who the Point of View is per chapter, and all the rest. It''s a lot of wrok because I''m figuring out all the content of chapters I won''t even write for another 9 months, which means in a way I''m writing them halfway right now. This was supposed to be my off time...
Working from home has been both nice and a bother. It''s hard to get work done when your cats just want to cuddle all the time. Alos I have to work on a Mac, which is the worst. Tiny Mac laptops and all that. Ugh. I hate macs with a firey passion. Of course, everybody at my work uses them. I have never been so happy for Bootcamp in my life.
That''s about all I have off the top of my head, really. Got stuck watching Samsora play Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney for days. He''s hilarious, watching him bumble his way through the cases (and the English language as a whole) is amazing. He gets stuck on the simplest shit for like an hour. It''s unbelievable that this man is maybe the second best Smash Ultimate player in the world. If you have time to kill, go to his twitch stream and watch the vods.
April Fools Chapter
¡ª Sophie PoV ¡ª
¡ª¡ªAmazing! Who would have thought that just by grinding the meat you could make such a delightful experience? How did nobody ever think of this in the thousands of years of our existence?! [Cook 1]
¡ª¡ªMy mouth won¡¯t stop watering! So juicy and delicious, please teach us more of your secrets! [Cook 2]
¡ª¡ªFufufufu! [me]
I bask in the adoration of the locals. Just a single dish is all it takes to blow their minds. It is all just step 1 for my ¡°Curry favor with the Otharian common folk¡± plan. It seems to be working.
I note to myself how it sure is convenient that all the ingredients work just like Earth ingredients, even though they come from completely different plants and animals than those found on Earth. Garoph steak is basically beef, their local grains are equivalent to wheat, etc. It¡¯s almost like the author didn¡¯t bother to put any real thought into the details, even though all the animals and plants are different than Earth¡¯s life. Except humans for some reason which is really lazy and shoddy worldbuilding and no I will not shut up about it, maybe if you weren¡¯t a hack and spent more than 15 minutes thinking about these thigns then people would actually read your rambling screed and-
My ears catch the sound of sniffing over the sizzle of the garoph steak patties on the grill in front of me. I turn to find a curious Pari, that cutie patootie, here to find the source of the smell.
¡ª¡ªPari would you like to try one? [me]
¡ª¡ªNya? [Pari]
I slide the spatula under a freshly grilled patty, the meat smoothered with still-melting cheese. Picking it up and placing it on a bun, I set it on a nearby plate and present it to the nekomimi anime child. The eyes it with merry befuddlement before picking it up and biting into it.
¡ª¡ªNom nom nom! Wuh!? [Pari]
¡ª¡ªHehe you like it? Its called a cheeseburger. [Me]
¡ª¡ªCheezburger? [Pari]
¡ª¡ªDont talk with your mouthful [me]
Pari¡¯s eyes sparkled as she took bite after bite. I haven¡¯t seen her eat like this in a long time.
I think she likes it! Look at the way that tail hooks! No, Sofie! Don¡¯t scratch her while she¡¯s eating or she¡¯ll make a mess!
In mere seconds, the burger is gone.
¡ª¡ªDo you want another? [Sofie]
¡ª¡ªYes! Pari wants lots and lots of cheezburgers! [PAri]
¡ª¡ªIt¡¯s ¡°cheeseburgers¡±. [me]
¡ª¡ªCheezburgers! [Pari]
¡ª¡ª... [me]
¡ª¡ªWhatever. [me]
I hand her a second one and she scarfs it down just as quickly. I notice the way her eye slits seem to open and close almost randomly. She looks up at me, one of her eyes more dialated than the other.
¡ª¡ªMoremoremore! [Pari]
I probably shouldn¡¯t give her anymore, it¡¯s like she¡¯s addicted already.
¡ª¡ªSory, sweetie, these last ones are for the others. I¡¯ll make you more some other time. [Me]
¡ª¡ªBut Pari want cheezburger NOW! [Pari]
I look at Pari¡¯s adorable pouting face, and it took everything I had to to not just give the rest of them to her then and there.
¡ª¡ªPari, no! Your already full, you just don¡¯t know it yet. [me]
¡ª¡ªPari hates Sofie-sis! Sofie-sis isn¡¯t even Pari¡¯s real sister! [Pari]
Nuclear feels bomb dropped, Pari sprinted from the room. I swayed from the child¡¯s most brutal assault, unable to handle such viciousness.
I¡¯m sorry, Pari, but I can¡¯t let you become addicted to cheeseburgers, no matter what. Meth or heroin, maybe, but not cheeseburgers. At least meth addicts are thin.
***
After cleaning up and ushering everybody out of the fortress, I stand up straight and take a deep breath, the scent of wet paint invades my nostrils. I hear a sound to my right and go to follow it. Soon I find 1 of Blake¡¯s dumb robots spraying the side of a nearyb wall with white paint, the spray nozzle in its robo-hand connected to a large tank in another hand. There are dozens of these robots ahead of me. Blake is also ahead of me, his arms are crossed as he watches the machines spray their tankfuls of white stuff all over the place. He nods to me as I approach.
¡ª¡ªFelt like we needed a little color. [Blake]
¡ª¡ªYeah? [Sofie]
¡ª¡ªYeah, I mean, I¡¯ve been thinking that this fortress is a landmark like the World¡¯s Largest Twine Ball or Carhenge, you know? So it needs a little pizzazz [Blake]
I shake my head.
¡ª¡ªI have no idea what you are talking about. [me[
¡ª¡ªI just think it needs a name. A landmark name. So I¡¯m painting it white and naming it the ¡°White Fortress.¡± [Blake]
¡ª¡ªthe White Fortress? Why that, of all things? [me]
¡ª¡ªI don¡¯t know, the name just... calls to me [Blake]
Blake shrugs, the metal shoulders of his metal suit that is reminiscent of BUT LEGALLY DISTINCT FROM a certain Marvel superhero rising and falling.
¡ª¡ªSo you have enough white paint for the whole fortress? [me]
¡ª¡ªYep. Have a whole vat of it down in the basement. Actually, I have a bunch of other colors too. A whole rainbow of color down there. [Blake]
¡ª¡ªWhere did you get it all in this medieval world? I mean, pre-mixed paints didn¡¯t even show up until the 1870¡¯s, and that¡¯s not even considering the quantity you¡¯d need to properly cover- [me]
¡ª¡ªSofie, stop pointing out plot holes! Our reviews are bad enough as it is! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªOk. [me]
***
A day later, I stand outside the now-white fortress, waiting for Arlette to return from her latest trip. Since taking Blakes offer, she¡¯s been running around the nation doing all sorts of tasks, so many that I can¡¯t keep up. At this point, I have no idea what she¡¯s up to. The whole place still smells of drying paint. I shiver in the cold. Maybe I should go back and get a coat. Yes, I¡¯m going to do that now.
As I walk through the halls, I run across Samanta. The girl had a look of concern in her eyes but she kept walking past me. It is obvious that she doesn¡¯t want to talk but I am written as a nosy, prying character who helps move the plot forward so that¡¯s what I¡¯m going to do! I stop her.
¡ª¡ªWhat¡¯s wrong? [Me]
Sam looks away, her face scrunched up like that brooding teenage boy in that one anime that everybody seemed to like for some reason I never understood.
¡ª¡ªNothing. [Samanta]
I bend down to get closer to her level and meet her gaze.
¡ª¡ªListen, Sam, you need to stop being all sad and depressed and angry. [me]
¡ª¡ªIt¡¯s because you act like this and hold everything in that you¡¯re not popular with the readers and the author is going to write you out of the story [me]
Samanta¡¯s eyes go wide with shock and panic.
¡ª¡ªB-but they can¡¯t do that! Without me, how would they show Blake¡¯s growth and character development!? [Sam]
I let out a sigh and tell her the hard truth.
¡ª¡ªLook, Sam, do you know how many people pay the author a dollar a month to get early chapters? There¡¯s like, a whole seventeen of them or something! Now, I don¡¯t know about you, but if somebody tells me to do something and pays me seventeen dollars, I¡¯m gonna do it. I don¡¯t care if they want me to kill a man or skydive without a parachute, seventeen dollars is a lot of money! You could buy 4 whole 4 for 4 meals at a participating Wendy¡¯s? franchise location! So you better shape up now and start causing more drama while you have a chance. [me]
Samantha looks up at me with worried eyes.
¡ª¡ªPari has been acting weird since yesterday. She started obsessing about some thing called a cheezburger- [Sam]
¡ª¡ªIt¡¯s ¡°cheeseburger.¡± [Me]
¡ª¡ªThat¡¯s what I said. [Samanta]
¡ª¡ª... [me]
¡ª¡ªSo she wouldn¡¯t stop talking about them and how she needed more and that was bad enough, but then things started getting worse. I think she¡¯s hallucinating now because she keeps acting like she can see invisible things. [Samanta]
¡ª¡ªSo she¡¯s seeing things that aren¡¯t there? [me]
¡ª¡ªNo, it¡¯s not that she¡¯s seeing something that isn¡¯t there. She¡¯s not seeing something that isn¡¯t there, because it¡¯s invisible to her too. First, she said she was riding an ¡°invisible bike,¡± whatever that is. Then it was an ¡°invisible piano¡±. Now I- [Sam]
We both pause as we hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet heading our way. Samanta pales.
¡ª¡ªShe¡¯s coming! [Sam]
She runs away as Pari rounds the corner, a wild, almost unhinged look in her eyes.
¡ª¡ªPari can has cheezburger?!?!?!?! [Pari]
How did she manage so many question marks and exclamation points?!?! I wonder in stupefaction.
I prop my arms up on my hips like an angry schoolteacher.
¡ª¡ªI said no, Pari! I¡¯m hearing bad things about your behavior and even your grammar is getting worse somehow! [me]
The tiny catgirl¡¯s face twists into a snarl of incoherent rage. She jumps up and down, throwing a tantrum that somehow manages to be both adorable and aggrevating.
¡ª¡ªCHEEZBURGER CHEEZBURGER CHEEZBURGER! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªNo!
¡ª¡ªPari never loved Sofie-sis at all! [Pari]
I rock back as if struck as the little catchild runs away, her teardrops falling to the floor. Or was that drool? Hard to tell, really.
I walk in a daze, wandering aimlessly back outside. Arlette is there. She returned from her mission I guess and it standing atop the fortress wall, looking off into the distance as the sun sets behind her and dramatic orchestral music plays. Or at least that is what would be happening if this were some story in a movie. But it¡¯s not, it¡¯s real life.
¡ª¡ªYou¡¯re finally back. [Sofie]
¡ª¡ªYeah. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªWhat are you doing? [me]
¡ª¡ªNot much, just brooding about my tragic past. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªSo, same as always?? [me]
¡ª¡ªPretty much. What¡¯s wrong with you? You look terrible. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªArlette, am I a monster just because I don¡¯t want to let Pari get fat? [Me]
¡ª¡ªWhat? [Arlette]
I explain the events of the last few days to her. She nods sagely.
¡ª¡ªMaybe you need to introduce her to other foods. Stuff she can eat in moderation. Anything come to mind? [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªHmmmmm... maybe she would like salami? Yes, Pari can have a few slices of salami as a treat. [me]
¡ª¡ª...I meant something more like a salad. You know, something healthy. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªYeah, I guess that works too So, what did Blake have you doing these last few days? [me]
Arlette sighs.
¡ª¡ªHe sent me around the country looking for places to build hot springs. ]Arlette]
¡ª¡ªWhat? [me]
She snorts.
¡ª¡ªYEah, I don¡¯t get it either. He said something about it ¡®not being a proper isekai without a hotsprings chapter¡¯, whatever that means. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªMaybe we should just go ask him. I bet I could get him to talk some sense. [me]
¡ª¡ªSure, why not. I finished my daily brooding anyway. [Arlette]
Together, we head for Blake¡¯s workshop. That¡¯s the place we¡¯re most likely to find him. And that¡¯s where he is when we enter.
I shiver at the low temperature in the workshop
¡ª¡ªIt¡¯s cold in here. Can you do something about that, please?! [me]
¡ª¡ªWhat are you talking about? It¡¯s not cold at all. It¡¯s perfectly nice, [Blake]
¡ª¡ªYour a large man though. People like you never want to turn up the thermostat. Us thin wome-AAAAAAAAAHHHHH! [me]
| Sophy Ramaut |
| Level |
4 |
Experience |
3985/4000 |
| Age |
20 |
Class |
Freshman |
| Attributes |
| Strength |
10 |
Intelligence |
20 |
| Dexterity |
15 |
Wisdom |
17 |
| Hardiness |
10 |
Intuition |
30 |
| Gumption |
50 |
Perspicacity |
16 |
| Bellicosity |
6 |
Truculence |
3 |
| Odor |
12 |
Opacity |
100 |
| Mana |
2954 |
Qi |
394 |
| Titles |
| Commenters'' Favorite; Shiva¡¯s Right Hand; Ravager of Realms |
| Skills |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Walking |
Boron |
17 |
262487 |
| Putting one foot in front of the other: you can do it! And you rarely even fall over anymore! Decades of practice, finally bearing fruit! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Talking |
Selenium |
22 |
185774 |
| You are well-versed in the basest form of communication. That''s it. Congrats. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Sistering |
Manganese |
8 |
90489 |
| You know what? I¡¯ll give you this one. Pari still has all her limbs. That''s actually kind of impressive. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Head Petting |
Platinum |
7 |
89609 |
| All that practice scritching kitties behind the ears finally paid off! Man, how convenient that Pari is a catgirl, huh? You really lucked out, didn''t you? Ever stop to consider what your relationship would be like if she were a platypusgirl or a porcupinegirl or something like that instead? How strong would your bond be then? Not so great, I''d bet. Yep, suuuure is convenient. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Fighting - Knife |
Tungsten |
0 |
1 |
| All you had to do was stab the farmer in the cellar. That was all you had to do, and yet you couldn''t fucking do it. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker, Sofie! How are you supposed to go from weak to strong when you can''t even find the power within yourself to kill even a single one-off bit character? I mean, the author didn''t even bother naming the guy at first, because he thought that you could handle something as simple as murder in self defense but noooooooooo, you had to get all stuck in your morals and shit. THE READERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT YOU, SOFIE! YOU''RE A TRASH CHARACTER! AN UTTER WASTE OF WORDS! NOBODY LIKES YOU, SOFIE! NOBODY, YOU HEAR ME?! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Soul Sense |
Argon |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Reach Fifth Level Qi Condescension Realm to unlock |
| You can "sense" things with your soul. How do you do that? Beats me. What does your soul sense let you discern? Whatever the author wants, baybee! Plot-relevant details of basically any kind? Check! Hidden enemies that the author wants you to notice? Check! Hidden enemies that the author doesn''t want you to notice? Sorry, looks like they were too strong and able to hide from you with their more powerful souls! You know, like how a bonfire hides from a lit match by... you know what, you get the idea. Unlock this to let the author point out anything he wants, even if you can''t see it. It''s the ultimate descriptive tool! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Pocket Space |
Vanadium |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Crystalize Mana Pool to unlock |
| You know what sucks? Forgetting to bring something you need with you and not realizing it until you need it. You know what REALLY sucks? Forgetting to make sure that a character has a needed item and then writing an important scenario where that character needs that item and realizing that you will have to completely rewrite it to account for the fact that the MC or whoever left that one critical item with that nun two arcs ago. But fret not, with the incredible Pocket Space, you''ll never need to worry about your (or your character''s) inventory ever again! Just create your own dimension that ignores the rules of time and space and throw every little thing you own in there! It''s easy peasy! How big is it? However big you want it to be at the start. Don''t worry, if you need to, you can always justify some way to increase the size of it later. Those worried about the potential mana costs of use can always try space rings instead. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Acid Immunity |
Antimony |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Defeat 500 acid slimes to unlock |
| No acid, no matter how powerful, will be able to harm you. You know that acid blood that the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise have? The stuff that eats through everything? You could swim in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of the stuff and it wouldn''t do a thing to you! Well, you probably couldn''t because it would eat away at the swimming pool before you could jump in, but that just makes my point all the more! What makes you suddenly completely immune, you ask? What a stupid question! You''re immune because you have the Acid Immunity skill! It says it right there in your status window! That''s how all X Immunity skills work! You get the skill, and then the thing you''re immune to doesn''t work on you anymore. It''s that simple, so just stop thinking about it and move on, okay? Good. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Skill Steal |
Arsenic |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Switch to Asshole class to unlock |
| You know how skills often come through achievements? Through acts of bravery and might and cleverness? How there''s a feat and a story behind how somebody got the skill? Well, fuck those people. They might have worked for years to earn their skills, but why should you have to? Just take that skill the dude got for slaying an arch-demon and saving the world. What did he ever do to deserve such a skill anyway? It would be better if you had it. Accomplishments are for losers. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| ????? |
???? |
??? |
?? |
| ? |
W-w-w-what was this?!?! My mind spins as I try to read this weird blue thing that popped up in front of me.
Is this... me? Wait a minute! Odor 12?!? What are you trying to say, you fucking rectangles?!
¡ª¡ªHmmm... only a 3 for Truculence. That explains a lot. We¡¯re going to have to grind that up to at least an 8. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªBut a question mark skill! One that will reveal its OP self just at a critical moment in the plot, no doubt. How lucky! [Blake]
My flustered mind finally catches up with what the others are saying.
¡ª¡ªWait, wait, don¡¯t tell me both of you can see it too? [me]
¡ª¡ªYeah, the author decided it was simpler this way than having you explain it out loud to the rest of us every time something pops up. Less work. [Blake]
I focus on the weird boxes disappearing and they do. I breath a sigh of relief.
¡ª¡ªWhat even was that [Sofie]
¡ª¡ªIts a System interface for this world that mimics the exact behaviors of old-school JRPGs. [Blake]
¡ª¡ªWhat. Do you have one of these too? [me]
¡ª¡ªOh no I never saw one before. [Blake]
¡ª¡ªThen how to you know what it is? [me]
¡ª¡ªYou try reading a single manga made in the last 5 years and see what happens [Blake]
¡ª¡ªAnyway, why did that even show up in the first place? [Sofie]
¡ª¡ªIt might have been something you said? [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªLike what? Let¡¯s see... People like you never want to turn up the thermostat. Us thin- [me]
| Sophy Ramaut |
| Level |
4 |
Experience |
3985/4000 |
| Age |
20 |
Class |
Freshman |
| Attributes |
| Strength |
10 |
Intelligence |
20 |
| Dexterity |
15 |
Wisdom |
17 |
| Hardiness |
10 |
Intuition |
30 |
| Gumption |
50 |
Perspicacity |
16 |
| Bellicosity |
6 |
Truculence |
3 |
| Odor |
12 |
Opacity |
100 |
| Mana |
2954 |
Qi |
394 |
| Titles |
| Commenters'' Favorite; Shiva¡¯s Right Hand; Ravager of Realms |
| Skills |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Walking |
Boron |
17 |
262487 |
| Putting one foot in front of the other: you can do it! And you rarely even fall over anymore! Decades of practice, finally bearing fruit! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Talking |
Selenium |
22 |
185818 |
| You are well-versed in the basest form of communication. That''s it. Congrats. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Sistering |
Manganese |
8 |
90489 |
| You know what? I¡¯ll give you this one. Pari still has all her limbs. That''s actually kind of impressive. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Head Petting |
Platinum |
7 |
89609 |
| All that practice scritching kitties behind the ears finally paid off! Man, how convenient that Pari is a catgirl, huh? You really lucked out, didn''t you? Ever stop to consider what your relationship would be like if she were a platypusgirl or a porcupinegirl or something like that instead? How strong would your bond be then? Not so great, I''d bet. Yep, suuuure is convenient. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Fighting - Knife |
Tungsten |
0 |
1 |
| All you had to do was stab the farmer in the cellar. That was all you had to do, and yet you couldn''t fucking do it. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker, Sofie! How are you supposed to go from weak to strong when you can''t even find the power within yourself to kill even a single one-off bit character? I mean, the author didn''t even bother naming the guy at first, because he thought that you could handle something as simple as murder in self defense but noooooooooo, you had to get all stuck in your morals and shit. THE READERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT YOU, SOFIE! YOU''RE A TRASH CHARACTER! AN UTTER WASTE OF WORDS! NOBODY LIKES YOU, SOFIE! NOBODY, YOU HEAR ME?! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Soul Sense |
Argon |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Reach Fifth Level Qi Condescension Realm to unlock |
| You can "sense" things with your soul. How do you do that? Beats me. What does your soul sense let you discern? Whatever the author wants, baybee! Plot-relevant details of basically any kind? Check! Hidden enemies that the author wants you to notice? Check! Hidden enemies that the author doesn''t want you to notice? Sorry, looks like they were too strong and able to hide from you with their more powerful souls! You know, like how a bonfire hides from a lit match by... you know what, you get the idea. Unlock this to let the author point out anything he wants, even if you can''t see it. It''s the ultimate descriptive tool! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Pocket Space |
Vanadium |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Crystalize Mana Pool to unlock |
| You know what sucks? Forgetting to bring something you need with you and not realizing it until you need it. You know what REALLY sucks? Forgetting to make sure that a character has a needed item and then writing an important scenario where that character needs that item and realizing that you will have to completely rewrite it to account for the fact that the MC or whoever left that one critical item with that nun two arcs ago. But fret not, with the incredible Pocket Space, you''ll never need to worry about your (or your character''s) inventory ever again! Just create your own dimension that ignores the rules of time and space and throw every little thing you own in there! It''s easy peasy! How big is it? However big you want it to be at the start. Don''t worry, if you need to, you can always justify some way to increase the size of it later. Those worried about the potential mana costs of use can always try space rings instead. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Acid Immunity |
Antimony |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Defeat 500 acid slimes to unlock |
| No acid, no matter how powerful, will be able to harm you. You know that acid blood that the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise have? The stuff that eats through everything? You could swim in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of the stuff and it wouldn''t do a thing to you! Well, you probably couldn''t because it would eat away at the swimming pool before you could jump in, but that just makes my point all the more! What makes you suddenly completely immune, you ask? What a stupid question! You''re immune because you have the Acid Immunity skill! It says it right there in your status window! That''s how all X Immunity skills work! You get the skill, and then the thing you''re immune to doesn''t work on you anymore. It''s that simple, so just stop thinking about it and move on, okay? Good. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Skill Steal |
Arsenic |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Switch to Asshole class to unlock |
| You know how skills often come through achievements? Through acts of bravery and might and cleverness? How there''s a feat and a story behind how somebody got the skill? Well, fuck those people. They might have worked for years to earn their skills, but why should you have to? Just take that skill the dude got for slaying an arch-demon and saving the world. What did he ever do to deserve such a skill anyway? It would be better if you had it. Accomplishments are for losers. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| ????? |
???? |
??? |
?? |
| ? |
I will the blue crap away again.
¡ª¡ªOh, I know. I should have realized immediately. You said ¡®status¡¯. [Blake]
¡ª¡ªNo I didn¡¯t. When did I say ¡®status¡¯? [me]
| Sophy Ramaut |
| Level |
4 |
Experience |
3985/4000 |
| Age |
20 |
Class |
Freshman |
| Attributes |
| Strength |
10 |
Intelligence |
20 |
| Dexterity |
15 |
Wisdom |
17 |
| Hardiness |
10 |
Intuition |
30 |
| Gumption |
50 |
Perspicacity |
16 |
| Bellicosity |
6 |
Truculence |
3 |
| Odor |
12 |
Opacity |
100 |
| Mana |
2954 |
Qi |
394 |
| Titles |
| Commenters'' Favorite; Shiva¡¯s Right Hand; Ravager of Realms |
| Skills |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Walking |
Boron |
17 |
262487 |
| Putting one foot in front of the other: you can do it! And you rarely even fall over anymore! Decades of practice, finally bearing fruit! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Talking |
Selenium |
22 |
185826 |
| You are well-versed in the basest form of communication. That''s it. Congrats. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Sistering |
Manganese |
8 |
90489 |
| You know what? I¡¯ll give you this one. Pari still has all her limbs. That''s actually kind of impressive. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Head Petting |
Platinum |
7 |
89609 |
| All that practice scritching kitties behind the ears finally paid off! Man, how convenient that Pari is a catgirl, huh? You really lucked out, didn''t you? Ever stop to consider what your relationship would be like if she were a platypusgirl or a porcupinegirl or something like that instead? How strong would your bond be then? Not so great, I''d bet. Yep, suuuure is convenient. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Fighting - Knife |
Tungsten |
0 |
1 |
| All you had to do was stab the farmer in the cellar. That was all you had to do, and yet you couldn''t fucking do it. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker, Sofie! How are you supposed to go from weak to strong when you can''t even find the power within yourself to kill even a single one-off bit character? I mean, the author didn''t even bother naming the guy at first, because he thought that you could handle something as simple as murder in self defense but noooooooooo, you had to get all stuck in your morals and shit. THE READERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT YOU, SOFIE! YOU''RE A TRASH CHARACTER! AN UTTER WASTE OF WORDS! NOBODY LIKES YOU, SOFIE! NOBODY, YOU HEAR ME?! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Soul Sense |
Argon |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Reach Fifth Level Qi Condescension Realm to unlock |
| You can "sense" things with your soul. How do you do that? Beats me. What does your soul sense let you discern? Whatever the author wants, baybee! Plot-relevant details of basically any kind? Check! Hidden enemies that the author wants you to notice? Check! Hidden enemies that the author doesn''t want you to notice? Sorry, looks like they were too strong and able to hide from you with their more powerful souls! You know, like how a bonfire hides from a lit match by... you know what, you get the idea. Unlock this to let the author point out anything he wants, even if you can''t see it. It''s the ultimate descriptive tool! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Pocket Space |
Vanadium |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Crystalize Mana Pool to unlock |
| You know what sucks? Forgetting to bring something you need with you and not realizing it until you need it. You know what REALLY sucks? Forgetting to make sure that a character has a needed item and then writing an important scenario where that character needs that item and realizing that you will have to completely rewrite it to account for the fact that the MC or whoever left that one critical item with that nun two arcs ago. But fret not, with the incredible Pocket Space, you''ll never need to worry about your (or your character''s) inventory ever again! Just create your own dimension that ignores the rules of time and space and throw every little thing you own in there! It''s easy peasy! How big is it? However big you want it to be at the start. Don''t worry, if you need to, you can always justify some way to increase the size of it later. Those worried about the potential mana costs of use can always try space rings instead. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Acid Immunity |
Antimony |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Defeat 500 acid slimes to unlock |
| No acid, no matter how powerful, will be able to harm you. You know that acid blood that the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise have? The stuff that eats through everything? You could swim in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of the stuff and it wouldn''t do a thing to you! Well, you probably couldn''t because it would eat away at the swimming pool before you could jump in, but that just makes my point all the more! What makes you suddenly completely immune, you ask? What a stupid question! You''re immune because you have the Acid Immunity skill! It says it right there in your status window! That''s how all X Immunity skills work! You get the skill, and then the thing you''re immune to doesn''t work on you anymore. It''s that simple, so just stop thinking about it and move on, okay? Good. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Skill Steal |
Arsenic |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Switch to Asshole class to unlock |
| You know how skills often come through achievements? Through acts of bravery and might and cleverness? How there''s a feat and a story behind how somebody got the skill? Well, fuck those people. They might have worked for years to earn their skills, but why should you have to? Just take that skill the dude got for slaying an arch-demon and saving the world. What did he ever do to deserve such a skill anyway? It would be better if you had it. Accomplishments are for losers. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| ????? |
???? |
??? |
?? |
| ? |
Go away, dumb things!
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
¡ª¡ªYou said ¡°thermostat. Us women¡±. [Blake]
¡ª¡ªThat¡¯s preposterous! Do you really think that in the more than a year in this place, in this entire long-ass story, I¡¯ve never once said the word ¡°status¡±? [Sofie]
| Sophy Ramaut |
| Level |
4 |
Experience |
3985/4000 |
| Age |
20 |
Class |
Freshman |
| Attributes |
| Strength |
10 |
Intelligence |
20 |
| Dexterity |
15 |
Wisdom |
17 |
| Hardiness |
10 |
Intuition |
30 |
| Gumption |
50 |
Perspicacity |
16 |
| Bellicosity |
6 |
Truculence |
3 |
| Odor |
12 |
Opacity |
100 |
| Mana |
2954 |
Qi |
394 |
| Titles |
| Commenters'' Favorite; Shiva¡¯s Right Hand; Ravager of Realms |
| Skills |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Walking |
Boron |
17 |
262487 |
| Putting one foot in front of the other: you can do it! And you rarely even fall over anymore! Decades of practice, finally bearing fruit! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Talking |
Selenium |
22 |
185855 |
| You are well-versed in the basest form of communication. That''s it. Congrats. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Sistering |
Manganese |
8 |
90489 |
| You know what? I¡¯ll give you this one. Pari still has all her limbs. That''s actually kind of impressive. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Head Petting |
Platinum |
7 |
89609 |
| All that practice scritching kitties behind the ears finally paid off! Man, how convenient that Pari is a catgirl, huh? You really lucked out, didn''t you? Ever stop to consider what your relationship would be like if she were a platypusgirl or a porcupinegirl or something like that instead? How strong would your bond be then? Not so great, I''d bet. Yep, suuuure is convenient. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Fighting - Knife |
Tungsten |
0 |
1 |
| All you had to do was stab the farmer in the cellar. That was all you had to do, and yet you couldn''t fucking do it. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker, Sofie! How are you supposed to go from weak to strong when you can''t even find the power within yourself to kill even a single one-off bit character? I mean, the author didn''t even bother naming the guy at first, because he thought that you could handle something as simple as murder in self defense but noooooooooo, you had to get all stuck in your morals and shit. THE READERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT YOU, SOFIE! YOU''RE A TRASH CHARACTER! AN UTTER WASTE OF WORDS! NOBODY LIKES YOU, SOFIE! NOBODY, YOU HEAR ME?! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Soul Sense |
Argon |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Reach Fifth Level Qi Condescension Realm to unlock |
| You can "sense" things with your soul. How do you do that? Beats me. What does your soul sense let you discern? Whatever the author wants, baybee! Plot-relevant details of basically any kind? Check! Hidden enemies that the author wants you to notice? Check! Hidden enemies that the author doesn''t want you to notice? Sorry, looks like they were too strong and able to hide from you with their more powerful souls! You know, like how a bonfire hides from a lit match by... you know what, you get the idea. Unlock this to let the author point out anything he wants, even if you can''t see it. It''s the ultimate descriptive tool! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Pocket Space |
Vanadium |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Crystalize Mana Pool to unlock |
| You know what sucks? Forgetting to bring something you need with you and not realizing it until you need it. You know what REALLY sucks? Forgetting to make sure that a character has a needed item and then writing an important scenario where that character needs that item and realizing that you will have to completely rewrite it to account for the fact that the MC or whoever left that one critical item with that nun two arcs ago. But fret not, with the incredible Pocket Space, you''ll never need to worry about your (or your character''s) inventory ever again! Just create your own dimension that ignores the rules of time and space and throw every little thing you own in there! It''s easy peasy! How big is it? However big you want it to be at the start. Don''t worry, if you need to, you can always justify some way to increase the size of it later. Those worried about the potential mana costs of use can always try space rings instead. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Acid Immunity |
Antimony |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Defeat 500 acid slimes to unlock |
| No acid, no matter how powerful, will be able to harm you. You know that acid blood that the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise have? The stuff that eats through everything? You could swim in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of the stuff and it wouldn''t do a thing to you! Well, you probably couldn''t because it would eat away at the swimming pool before you could jump in, but that just makes my point all the more! What makes you suddenly completely immune, you ask? What a stupid question! You''re immune because you have the Acid Immunity skill! It says it right there in your status window! That''s how all X Immunity skills work! You get the skill, and then the thing you''re immune to doesn''t work on you anymore. It''s that simple, so just stop thinking about it and move on, okay? Good. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Skill Steal |
Arsenic |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Switch to Asshole class to unlock |
| You know how skills often come through achievements? Through acts of bravery and might and cleverness? How there''s a feat and a story behind how somebody got the skill? Well, fuck those people. They might have worked for years to earn their skills, but why should you have to? Just take that skill the dude got for slaying an arch-demon and saving the world. What did he ever do to deserve such a skill anyway? It would be better if you had it. Accomplishments are for losers. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| ????? |
???? |
??? |
?? |
| ? |
GAHHHHHHH!!!!
¡ª¡ªYou sure you have an Int of 20? Because you keep stepping on that rake over and over and over and- [Blake]
¡ª¡ªYou wanna get a nother fist to the face, Blake? Because I am NOT in the mood right now. [me]
¡ª¡ªCalm down, Sofie, he¡¯s just baiting you for his own twisted amusement. Just don¡¯t let it get to you. [Arlette]
Blake laughs.
¡ª¡ªHahaha! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªShe can¡¯t help it, for I have mastered the art of baiting her! One could say that I am a master ba- [Blake]
A series of loud echo-y bangs from up above interrupt us.
¡ª¡ªNya! [???]
I look up and see a pair of glowing golden eyes peering out at us from the air vent above, their deranged gaze staring deep into my soul.
¡ª¡ªWha? Hey is somebody in the airvents? [Blake]
¡ª¡ªCeiling Pari is watching Blake master bait! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªPari, get out of the air vents this instant! [me]
¡ª¡ªCan has cheezburger? [Pari]
I sigh.
I guess its time I tell her the full truth about the world.
¡ª¡ªListen, sweetie... I understand that you like cheeseburgers, but they¡¯re just too high-calorie! You¡¯ve already gotten chubbier since we got here, and if you keep going your going to end up fat and we can¡¯t ever let that happen. You see, Pari, fat people are barely people. They¡¯re wastes of space whose only purpose is to inconvenience real people like me on long plane trips, forcing me to squeeze between their blubber folds to get in and out of the middle seat... [me]
I shudder at the thought of having to share armrests with their greasy arms.
¡ª¡ªDon¡¯t let the thicc lobby fool you, fat people are a plague upon all worlds! Just thinking about them jiggling down sidewalks and taking up too much space, or sweating up a storm when it¡¯s not even hot out and stinking up the place, or being the funny sidekick character in movies makes me sick! They¡¯re wrong! Abominations against God! Anyway, that¡¯s why I can¡¯t let you have any more cheeseburgers. [me]
Pari¡¯s face morphs into a demented snarl. I know what¡¯s coming now, and my soul quivers in fear. I brace myself for the most terrible of words, though I know not what they will be.
¡ª¡ªPARI READS THE YOUTUBE COMMENTS... AND ENJOYS THEM!!! [pARI]
It feels like a kick the face, but I am not the one most damaged.
¡ª¡ªGGGUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHH! [Blake]
I watch as Blake staggers to the side, barely catching himself before he topples over by reaching out and grabbing a nearby wall. He is sweating profusely and panting heavily. He looks forward with glazed, bloodshot eyes, as if terrible memories are pouring back into his consciousness. Suddenly he bends over and pukes all over the floor.
¡ª¡ªM-m-monster! Devil! Demon! You let Satan into this house! She must be purged before it is too late! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªHey! Don¡¯t you dare! Pari is my problem, and if anybody is going to purge her, it¡¯s me! [me]
To punctuate my proclaimation, I grab a nearby crystal sitting on a workbench and prepare to hurl it as this infuriating character who does terrible things but all the readers love for some reason.
| Entity 485AN%#Jf4 is deactivated. Activate? Y/N |
We all stare at the popup dialog box for a moment in confusion.
Uhhhhhh... yes?
The crystal flashes and zips from my hand, and floats over to the center of the room. It pulsates and suddenly the room itself begins to shift. The metal walls shift to stone and mortar while the lights change into burning torches. I watch in horror as the shift spreads slowly through the room and then down the hall.
¡ª¡ªDamnit, one of these... looks like everything just went seriously downhill. [Blake]
¡ª¡ªYou mean our situation? [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªNo, I meant this fiction. But yeah, that too. [Blake]
***
Arlette and I stand by the table, watching Pari sit in the chair at the table and fidgit.
It¡¯s been a day since I accidentally triggered the phenomina. After beating a tactical retreat, we¡¯d watched as the transformation slowed and eventually stopped about four rooms from the workshop. A quick servey of the area showed that the transformation had spread in all directions equally, including above and below.
We¡¯d gone back inside and Blake had stayed to study everything. Meanwhile, Arlette and I had gone to bed and now the next day are working on O-Pari-ation Veggies. It isn¡¯t going well.
Pari sits on the high-backed chair, her head poking just above the table. She stares at the exquisite salad I set in front of her with open disgust, her mouth slightly open.
¡ª¡ªPari not want to eat green things. Pari wants delicious juicy meat and cheez! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªPari, listen to you sister. It¡¯s important to learn to eat healthy. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªNo! Pari not eating if not cheezburger! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªThat¡¯s ENOUGHT! [me]
After so long, my anger finally flares up. I raise my right hand up in front of me, pointing it at the little beast while Arlette watches over my left shoulder, and I open my mouth real big and yell.
¡ª¡ªPARI! YOU WILL EAT THE SALAD AND THATS FINAL! [me]
¡ª¡ªNO NO NO PARI HATES SALAD!
¡ª¡ªPARI, YOU START EATING THAT SALAD BEFORE I COUNT TO FIVE OR... OR... [me]
I work up my courage. It hurts to have to lay down the law like this but...
¡ª¡ªOR YOUR GROUNDED FOR... FOR A WHOLE WEEK! AND YOU HAVE TO VACUUM AND DO ALL THE DISHES! [me]
A stunned silence fills the room. Pari¡¯s eyes dialate in shock and she stares at me with disbelief. I can see her emotions writhing beneath the surface as she trembles with what I assume is terror.
It quickly becomes clear that I am wrong. With one hand, Pari grabs the salad and throws it off the table. She hops off the chair, her whole body still quaking with what I now understand to be fury, and takes a deep breathe.
Oh no! I brace my soul for impact. What terrible thing is she going to tell me now? What fact will she throw at me to shatter even further the mental picture of my cute little sweetie I¡¯ve treasured inside me for so long? That she was the one who¡¯d actually kidnapped the Lindbergh baby? That she¡¯s a mass murderer with a collection of heads strung up in some hidden basement? That she was actually the one who wrote the last seasons of Game of Thrones?
¡ª¡ªPARI POURS THE MILK IN THE BOWL BEFORE THE CEREAL!!! [Pari]
The words slam into me like a freight train, knocking me to the floor. I cough as blood spews from my mouth in great spurts. Milk... before the cereal?! Before?! Impossible! Unthinkable!
¡ª¡ªPARI WILL HAS CHEEZBURGER IF ITS THE LAST THING PARI DOES! [Pari]
The girl scampers out of the room while I hack up more blood. Tears fall, and they won¡¯t stop. I¡¯d thought I was ready, but nobody could be ready for such horror. I sob and wail at the unbarable nature of the truth.
¡ª¡ªWHY?! WHYYYY?! Where did I go wrong?![me]
Arlette gets down on her knees and cradles my blubbering form in her arms. I can see that she is also in terrible, horrible pain.
¡ª¡ªI don¡¯t know... [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªI tried so hard to raise her right! I was nice, and loving, and caring and... Was that the problem? Should I have beaten her more? Would that have stopped her from becomming history¡¯s greatest monster?! [me]
¡ª¡ªMaybe.... [Arlete]
Arlette lets out a forlorn sigh.
¡ª¡ªBlake is right, Sofie. We have to put her down before she bites somebody else and infects them too. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªWhat?! No! This isn¡¯t rabies! I can still fix her! I know it! [Sofie]
A hand smacks me across the mouth with vigerous force. I cry out.
¡ª¡ªAAAHhH!! [me]
Arlette eyes me with determined eyes.
¡ª¡ªListen! We can¡¯t take that risk! What are you going to do when Samanta walks up to you tomorrow and says ¡°a hotdog is a sandwich¡± as if it¡¯s the most rational thing in the world!? Or if Leo starts putting pineapple on his pizza?! Do you really want that on your conscience?! DO YOU?! [Arlette]
An involuntary shudder runs down my spine. She¡¯s right. I hate to admit it, but she¡¯s right. I take a long, wet sniff.
¡ª¡ª...okay. Which way did she go? [Me]
¡ª¡ªI think she got into the air vents again. [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªHow does she even keep getting up there? [me]
¡ª¡ªI think we should go get Blake¡¯s help to track her down [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªYeah, good idea. [me]
Together, we head towards the newly transformed area, which I have decided to call a dungeon because it looks so much like the dungeons I was stuck in for much of this story.
As we enter we see a small blob slinking along the hallway. It looks like a translucent sack of green goo slowly oozing along the stone floor.
¡ª¡ªWhat is this? [me]
| Basic Slime - Level 1 |
| It¡¯s one of those. You know the drill. Make good jello shots when chilled. |
| Skill Unlocked: Observe Examine Inspect |
| OMG why didn¡¯t I think of this before?!?! It¡¯s the perfect way to infodump stuff at the reader without making it seem like too much of an infodump, because it¡¯s a skill and you the character are doing it! And it¡¯s broken as fuck too! I can literally explain anything about the world and I don¡¯t need a single bit of context! No side characters needed to explain it, no having to learn things beforehand to understand it, the boxes just explain it all to everybody! Man... writing LitRPG is easy mode... |
Before I can say anything, Arlette thrusts her sword into the slime. The long sharp metal pierces its outer coating and stabs into the goo. It writhes slightly but seems largely unaffected as it slowly begins to crawl up her weapon.
¡ª¡ªWhen I first saw this slime creature, I thought it the weakest creature I¡¯d ever seen. But now I see that it is adaptable to the extreme, and if allowed to grow, capable of being the strongest. I find the thought inspiring! [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªYes, I could see how that would be inspiring. I know! You should write a story about it to inspire the children of Otharia! [me]
Arlette beams.
¡ª¡ªYes! I should write a story about somebody who is turned into a lowly slime and must survive in a dangerous world against all odds! I could even incorporate those strange boxes of yours! I would bet all my money that nobody has ever before written a story with blue boxes where the main character is a slime! It¡¯s truly a unique and original concept! [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªBut seriously, kill it. It¡¯s fucking gross. [me]
Arlette splats it against the wall and it dies, probably.
We soon find Blake standing in the former workshop, dozens of pieces of equipment placed around the crystal. It glows with an omenous, pulsating light.
¡ª¡ªBlake, we need- [me]
¡ª¡ªNot right now! This is too important! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªWhat is? [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªThis! This changes everything! This explains everything! [Blake]
¡ª¡ª...the rock? [me]
¡ª¡ªYes! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªwhat is it? [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªIt¡¯s an ancient construct that exists to sieze control of an area of space and modify it into a dungeon. From there, it manifests various things to protect itself and expands its territory. Since the stone is the core controling the dungeon, I¡¯ve dubbed it a ¡°labyrinth heart¡±.
¡ª¡ªYou sure you shouldn¡¯t call it a- [me[
¡ª¡ªPSSSH! [Blake]
Blake interrupts and waves a hand dismissively.
¡ª¡ªSofie, pls. I think I know a bit more about labyrinth hearts than you. [Blake]
I roll my eyes.
¡ª¡ªYou were saying something about it changing everything? [me]
¡ª¡ªYes! Look, ever since I discovered cantacrenyx crystals, I¡¯ve wondered where the energy they had came from. They seems to refill themself natrually without expending any energy, so I always thought they were absorbing it from the world or something. But no! They generate the energy themselves! And what¡¯s more, that is just what they generate when deactivated! Now that you activated this, it¡¯s creating much, much more energy. Energy we can weild for the betterment of society! Finally, I¡¯ll be able to introduce invaluable devices like the panini press and smart fridges to this world! [Blake]
I applaud.
¡ª¡ªClapclapclap! Amazing! [me]
¡ª¡ªIsn¡¯t it truly?! I mean- [Blake]
¡ª¡ªShhhh! [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªDo either of you hear that? [Arlette]
¡ª¡ªHear that? Hear what? [Blake]
I focus my ears and pick up a strange high pitched voice. The voice is singing a looping song that I find to be overly hyper and manic but still strangely catchy in a ¡°torture your subconscious nonstop for 5 hours¡± sort of way.
~~nyan nyan nyan nyanyanyanyanyan nyan nyanyanyan nyanyanyan nyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyanyan nyanyan nyan nyan nyannyannyannayn... [???]
BOOOM!
The wall on the other side of the workshop exploded inward, sending shards of stone flying dangerously. Through the new hole stepped one Pari Clansnarl, resplendent in all her terrible glory. By which I mean she¡¯d painted herself like a rainbow.
¡ª¡ªHey! She got into my paints! Those were expensive! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªShe¡¯s gotten even worse... [ARlette]
Pari runs over to the crystal.
¡ª¡ªPari, get away from that dungeon core- [me]
¡ª¡ªLabyrinth heart [Blake]
¡ª¡ªlabyrinth heart this insta... [me]
My voice trails off as I notice the large candle in her hands.
¡ª¡ªPari, is that a bomb?!? [me]
The girl hold up a hand, a small flame hovering between her fingers, and brings it just centimeters away from the candle¡¯s wick.
¡ª¡ªPari can has cheezburgers NOW or Pari make machines go BOOM! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªPari, now is not the time for jokes! [Sofie]
¡ª¡ªPari not joke! Pari are serious cat! This is serious threat! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªSofie, give her what she wants... [Blake]
I notice the tension in Blake¡¯s voice.
¡ª¡ªI can¡¯t! [me]
¡ª¡ªSofie, you don¡¯t understand. This whole area isn¡¯t the world anymore. It¡¯s a pocket dimension created by the labyrinth heart! If the heart breaks, the dimension vanishes and we all die! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªBut I have no more Scyrian beef equivalent! I didn¡¯t want to make any more cheeseburgers so I threw it away! [Sofie]
¡ª¡ªThen improvise! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªPari, I, uh, I can¡¯t make you more cheeseburgers- [me]
The flame starts drifts closer to the wick.
¡ª¡ªBUTBUTBUTBUT! I can make you something even better! [me]
¡ª¡ªNothing better than cheezburger! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªAh, but that¡¯s where you¡¯re wrong! There is something even tastier than a cheeseburger: chicken tenders! [me]
The flame¡¯s motion suddenly comes to a halt.
¡ª¡ª.......chicken tendies? What are chicken tendies? [Pari]
¡ª¡ªNo not chicken tendies, chic-... you know what? Sure. Chicken tendies. You know how you like the way the cheeseburger meat is all ground up nice and soft? [me]
¡ª¡ªUh huh! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªWell, chicken tendie meat is ground up so fine that it turns into a pink slurry! [me]
Pari¡¯s eyes sparkle at the thought.
¡ª¡ªAnd you know how you like the greasy fat of the burger? [me]
¡ª¡ªUh huh uh huh! [Pari]
¡ª¡ªWell chicken tendies are so greasy that they¡¯re literally left to swim in tubs of oil for minutes until they¡¯re completely soaked in fat! [me]
¡ª¡ªOooohhhhh!!! [PAri]
She is drooling now. I can tell I almost have her.
¡ª¡ªbut that¡¯s not enough, is it? You know how you like the creamy, heart-clogging cheese? [me]
¡ª¡ªYeahyeahyeah! [Pari]
Pari is practically hopping up and down at this point.
¡ª¡ªWell, to make the chicken tendies even better, you dip them in greasy sauces so thick that they¡¯ll clog your arteries in a single bite! All you have to do is put the bomb down and come over here and I¡¯ll make all the chicken tendies you could ever eat! [me]
Pari drops the candle like it¡¯s a vegan cookie and sprints into my waiting arms, purring up a storm and covering my clothes in still-wet paint.
¡ª¡ªPRRRRRRRRRRR! [Pari]
I look at the multicolored hair in my hands and sigh.
¡ª¡ªPari, you¡¯re shedding again. We need to brush you mo- Sam, no! STop! [me]
Samanta stood beside the glowing labyrinth heart, a large sledgehammer in her small hands.
¡ª¡ªSamanta?! When did you get here?! [Blake]
¡ª¡ªI¡¯ve been here this whole time, asshole! I dragged this hammer on the floor all the way across the room! I walked RIGHT BY ALL OF YOU and none of you even noticed I was even present! And it¡¯s my fault that the readers don¡¯t care about me?!?! ¡°Write me out¡±?!? ¡°Not causing enough drama¡±?!? Here¡¯s your fucking drama!!! [Samanta]
She brings the sledgehammer crashing down onto the crystal, shattering it. The world breaks with it, and all is finally nothing once again.
***
¡ª Blake PoV ¡ª
¡°Uuuuuuugggghhhhh...¡±
Blake let out a soft groan and coughed. He could feel the bile in this throat, the acid wearing at his esophagus.
He found himself in his bathroom, lying on his chest on his bathroom floor. Both he and the floor were covered in vomit and semi-liquid fecal matter.
Just one glance around told him everything he needed to know. He¡¯d gorged himself on semi-edible faux-meat mini-hamburgers to the point that he¡¯d fallen into a fast-food-fueled bender filled with semi-lucid hallucinations while he peed, puked, and shat all over himself.
Again.
He really needed to find a better way to spend his Friday nights.
¡°Fuck... White Castle...¡± he mumbled to nobody in particular as his eyes rolled back and he lost consciousness once more.
| Sophy Ramaut |
| Level |
4 |
Experience |
3985/4000 |
| Age |
20 |
Class |
Freshman |
| Attributes |
| Strength |
10 |
Intelligence |
20 |
| Dexterity |
15 |
Wisdom |
17 |
| Hardiness |
10 |
Intuition |
30 |
| Gumption |
50 |
Perspicacity |
16 |
| Bellicosity |
6 |
Truculence |
3 |
| Odor |
12 |
Opacity |
100 |
| Mana |
2954 |
Qi |
394 |
| Titles |
| Commenters'' Favorite; Shiva¡¯s Right Hand; Ravager of Realms |
| Skills |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Walking |
Boron |
17 |
263298 |
| Putting one foot in front of the other: you can do it! And you rarely even fall over anymore! Decades of practice, finally bearing fruit! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Talking |
Selenium |
22 |
186437 |
| You are well-versed in the basest form of communication. That''s it. Congrats. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Inspect |
Copper |
1 |
22 |
| OMG why didn¡¯t I think of this before?!?! It¡¯s the perfect way to infodump stuff at the reader without making it seem like too much of an infodump, because it¡¯s a skill and you the character are doing it! And it¡¯s broken as fuck too! I can literally explain anything about the world and I don¡¯t need a single bit of context! No side characters needed to explain it, no having to learn things beforehand to understand it, the boxes just explain it all to everybody! Man... writing LitRPG is easy mode... |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Sistering |
Manganese |
8 |
90489 |
| You know what? I¡¯ll give you this one. Pari still has all her limbs. That''s actually kind of impressive. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Head Petting |
Platinum |
7 |
89615 |
| All that practice scritching kitties behind the ears finally paid off! Man, how convenient that Pari is a catgirl, huh? You really lucked out, didn''t you? Ever stop to consider what your relationship would be like if she were a platypusgirl or a porcupinegirl or something like that instead? How strong would your bond be then? Not so great, I''d bet. Yep, suuuure is convenient. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Fighting - Knife |
Tungsten |
0 |
1 |
| All you had to do was stab the farmer in the cellar. That was all you had to do, and yet you couldn''t fucking do it. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker, Sofie! How are you supposed to go from weak to strong when you can''t even find the power within yourself to kill even a single one-off bit character? I mean, the author didn''t even bother naming the guy at first, because he thought that you could handle something as simple as murder in self defense but noooooooooo, you had to get all stuck in your morals and shit. THE READERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT YOU, SOFIE! YOU''RE A TRASH CHARACTER! AN UTTER WASTE OF WORDS! NOBODY LIKES YOU, SOFIE! NOBODY, YOU HEAR ME?! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Soul Sense |
Argon |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Reach Fifth Level Qi Condescension Realm to unlock |
| You can "sense" things with your soul. How do you do that? Beats me. What does your soul sense let you discern? Whatever the author wants, baybee! Plot-relevant details of basically any kind? Check! Hidden enemies that the author wants you to notice? Check! Hidden enemies that the author doesn''t want you to notice? Sorry, looks like they were too strong and able to hide from you with their more powerful souls! You know, like how a bonfire hides from a lit match by... you know what, you get the idea. Unlock this to let the author point out anything he wants, even if you can''t see it. It''s the ultimate descriptive tool! |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Pocket Space |
Vanadium |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Crystalize Mana Pool to unlock |
| You know what sucks? Forgetting to bring something you need with you and not realizing it until you need it. You know what REALLY sucks? Forgetting to make sure that a character has a needed item and then writing an important scenario where that character needs that item and realizing that you will have to completely rewrite it to account for the fact that the MC or whoever left that one critical item with that nun two arcs ago. But fret not, with the incredible Pocket Space, you''ll never need to worry about your (or your character''s) inventory ever again! Just create your own dimension that ignores the rules of time and space and throw every little thing you own in there! It''s easy peasy! How big is it? However big you want it to be at the start. Don''t worry, if you need to, you can always justify some way to increase the size of it later. Those worried about the potential mana costs of use can always try space rings instead. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Acid Immunity |
Antimony |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Defeat 500 acid slimes to unlock |
| No acid, no matter how powerful, will be able to harm you. You know that acid blood that the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise have? The stuff that eats through everything? You could swim in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of the stuff and it wouldn''t do a thing to you! Well, you probably couldn''t because it would eat away at the swimming pool before you could jump in, but that just makes my point all the more! What makes you suddenly completely immune, you ask? What a stupid question! You''re immune because you have the Acid Immunity skill! It says it right there in your status window! That''s how all X Immunity skills work! You get the skill, and then the thing you''re immune to doesn''t work on you anymore. It''s that simple, so just stop thinking about it and move on, okay? Good. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| Skill Steal |
Arsenic |
[LOCKED] |
[LOCKED] - Switch to Asshole class to unlock |
| You know how skills often come through achievements? Through acts of bravery and might and cleverness? How there''s a feat and a story behind how somebody got the skill? Well, fuck those people. They might have worked for years to earn their skills, but why should you have to? Just take that skill the dude got for slaying an arch-demon and saving the world. What did he ever do to deserve such a skill anyway? It would be better if you had it. Accomplishments are for losers. |
| Skill Name |
Skill Rank |
Skill Level |
Skill Experience |
| ????? |
???? |
??? |
?? |
| ? |
Chapter 88
¡°Quite something, isn¡¯t it?¡± Sofie asked as she glanced out the window at the growing Otharian capital below. The glow of the crystal street lamps lit the strange metropolis against the night sky, highlighting the strange fusion of future and feudal that the city had become. Only, it wasn¡¯t so much a seamless blend of the two as it was two towns from different times occupying the same space. Railroad tracks and smooth, paved streets with light posts and public bathrooms dotting the way stood right beside old, archaic wooden and stone buildings that looked to be ripped right from the Middle Ages, with little to bring the two together. And in the middle of it all towered Blake¡¯s fortress, gleaming in the light of the moons. ¡°Not what you were expecting?¡±
¡°Not exactly, no,¡± Arlette admitted as she stared at the cityscape beneath them, the zeppelin slowly approaching the city center. ¡°I thought I knew what to expect after riding in this thing, but I guess I was wrong.¡±
The mercenary, or now perhaps former-mercenary, continued to peer down from the flight deck with interest.
¡°So those long lines are the ¡°railways¡± you were talking about?¡± she asked a few moments later, pointing down at several well-lit tracks running through the city, including a new series that ran a circuit around the city itself. ¡°Do people use them?¡±
¡°Some do. More every day,¡± Sofie replied with some happiness. She didn¡¯t feel the pride in the train system that Blake did, but she couldn¡¯t deny she enjoyed watching progress unfold.
Arlette frowned. ¡°What are you doing about the crossroad towns?¡±
Sofie returned the frown with a puzzled one of her own. ¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Many small towns rely on travelers making their way from one city to another, providing lodging and food to merchants and whatnot,¡± Arlette explained. ¡°It¡¯s that extra income that, when combined with farming, pushes them into the realm of livability. At least, that¡¯s how it is elsewhere, and I see no reason why it would be any different here. But now, you¡¯ve gone and reduced a many-day trip into a single day excursion that bypasses all these places. So what are you doing to stop these towns from collapsing from the sudden loss of income?¡±
¡°Uhh...¡±
Arlette¡¯s frown deepened. ¡°It never even occurred to you, did it? You were too blinded by the shiny light of progress to even see the downsides.¡±
¡°Well, I mean, it¡¯s not like any of this is my job...¡± Sofie deflected, scratching her head self-consciously.
¡°Whose job is it? Lord Ferros¡¯s? Has he put any amount of thought into this problem? What about all the other ¡®improvements¡¯ he¡¯s championed?¡± She let out a tired sigh. ¡°I¡¯ll have to bring this up with him then...¡±
¡°A word of advice: don¡¯t. At least, not until he hires you,¡± Sofie warned. ¡°He¡¯s very... protective of his inventions. Short of just straight-up attacking him, telling him his projects are problematic is the surest way to not get the job.¡±
Arlette grunted. ¡°If the two of us can¡¯t work together, it might be better to cut it off before it can even begin.¡±
¡°Arlette, are you having second thoughts about this again?¡±
The Scyrian shook her head. ¡°Not entirely. I just need to have a real conversation with him before I can commit wholeheartedly to a contract. I need to see who he is for myself. Is he simply the man who told me and the Eterians that he couldn¡¯t care less if we died, or is there more to him than that?¡±
Sofie chuckled softly at that. ¡°He¡¯s... he¡¯s quite a character, that¡¯s for sure. I doubt he¡¯s what you¡¯re expecting.¡±
¡°And what, exactly, do you think that I¡¯m expecting?¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t help but laugh and roll her eyes. ¡°I have no idea. But whatever it is, I know without a doubt that he isn¡¯t that. You¡¯ll see.¡±
Sofie tossed and turned atop the metal bench outside of Blake¡¯s expanded quarters, waiting for Arlette to emerge. Both Arlette and Blake had insisted that she leave them alone for a private conversation, much to her irritation. Though Sofie knew she could always go do something else while she waited, she found herself nervously hovering outside the door instead, too nervous to distract herself with some other activity. That meant all she could do was lie there on the profoundly hard and uncomfortable bench beside the door until the others were done.
Blake was many things, but a furniture designer he was most definitely not. And yet, to her constant dismay, he insisted on creating the vast majority of the chairs, tables, etc. found in the fortress out of the fortress itself rather than use actual, real furniture with stuffing and whatnot. Something about it being ¡°easier to redecorate when I shake things up¡±. The end result was hard furniture and an aching back for her this evening.
Luckily, her long wait appeared to be over, as the nearby door opened with a soft hiss, revealing her friend. Sofie waited as Arlette stepped through the doorway and the door hissed back shut before asking the all-important question.
¡°Well? How¡¯d it go?¡±
Arlette paused for a moment, an unfocused gaze in her eyes.
¡°What an utterly bizarre individual,¡± she finally replied.
¡°You don¡¯t say?¡± Sofie said with a smirk as she pushed herself to her feet. The two of them headed down the hallway and away from Blake¡¯s rooms.
¡°An absolute tangled mess of contradictory attitudes and opinions. Willing to cede to others on some things, yet completely entrenched on others, even when the issues are similar. Simultaneously reasonable and unreasonable.¡±
¡°Welcome to the Blake Experience,¡± Sofie stated with knowing amusement.
Together, the two of them emerged onto an outside walkway and stopped for a moment, letting the cool air wash over them and whisk away the fatigue.
¡°I think the part that bothers me the most is his perspective on his subjects and their lives. He seems to care for them in the abstract, perhaps, but more as an idea than as actual people. Their actual suffering seems to have little impact, as if he views them as something different than how he views himself. It¡¯s almost as if he sees this country as a shanlet beetle colony trapped in a box, where he can watch and tinker to improve their efficiency, but he has little investment in the lives of the individual beetles inside. And if they were to bite him, he¡¯s more than ready to shake the box as hard as he feels necessary.¡±
¡°Is that a dealbreaker?¡± Sofie inquired worriedly. She wished she could argue with her friend¡¯s assessment, but deep down she found the analogy too true to contest.
Arlette paused for a moment and stared up at the moons, basking in their pale radiance.
¡°I find it incredible how, even now, you¡¯re still so...¡± She faded off.
¡°Wonderful? Special? Caring?¡± Sofie playfully prodded.
¡°...naive.¡±
¡°Wha?¡±
¡°It doesn¡¯t matter who you are or what you believe in, this world drags us down into the muck all the same. After everything you¡¯ve seen and everything you¡¯ve been through, you should have realized by now that even the best-hearted people have blackened spirits. Yet, you still hold everybody to this insane, impossible ideal.¡±
¡°What¡¯s insane about high standards?¡± Sofie shot back. ¡°Improvement can only happen if you refuse to accept that which is wrong. Earth used to be like this Scyria for centuries and centuries. The only reason we managed to pull ourselves from the ¡®muck¡¯ is that people had the courage and convictions to say ¡®this is wrong¡¯ and to stand up for their beliefs. Progress only happens when people are willing to say ¡®this isn¡¯t right¡¯ and refuse to compromise on it!¡±
¡°But you¡¯re being absurd about it! Nobody can pass your test! I sure as fuck can¡¯t! After all the terrible things I¡¯ve done in my life, I¡¯m amazed you¡¯re willing to even talk to me!¡±
¡°But you¡¯re... I know you¡¯re a good person! You could have left me to die back when we first met, but you didn¡¯t! You helped me when I was nothing but dead weight! You put your life on the line to protect me. You care about people!¡±
¡°So does Blake, in his own way! I¡¯m not saying he¡¯s perfect, or right, or even good. There¡¯s much that you¡¯ve told me about his actions that I strongly disagree with. But it¡¯s clear to me now that he does care about more than just himself. And you know what? That¡¯s enough for me. Believe it or not, I¡¯ve had worse clients than him. I¡¯ve served people who viewed all those beneath them as nothing more than resources to plunder and ruin for their personal enrichment and entertainment. He¡¯s not like that, at least. He cares. That¡¯s good enough for me right now. That, and the pay is absurd. He even agreed to do something about that crazy diplomat lady who tried to kill me during the battle. So yes, I guess I¡¯ll stick around.¡±
¡°Yaayyyy!¡± Sofie exclaimed, wrapping the other woman into an enthusiastic hug. ¡°Things are looking up for all of us. I can feel it!¡±
¡°I hope you¡¯re right...¡± Arlette muttered as she gently disengaged. ¡°I¡¯m beat, so I¡¯m going to go find my room and get some rest. You think you could help me navigate my way around this place?¡±
¡°Sure! I-¡± Sofie hesitated. ¡°Actually, I needed to go talk to Blake before he falls asleep. I can ask Sam to show you if she¡¯s still awake.¡±
¡°Nah, forget it. I¡¯ll find my way, don¡¯t worry. Go do what you need to do.¡±
¡°Alright. See you!¡±
In a better mood than she¡¯d been in a long time, Sofie retraced her steps back to Blake¡¯s door. She rang the doorbell and waited.
¡°I¡¯m going to bed, come back tomorrow,¡± a voice said through the intercom in the panel by the door. The words came in English, and Sofie, always eager to practice her languages, responded in kind.
¡°You¡¯re always busy with something in the mornings,¡± she replied. ¡°I don¡¯t want to wait.¡±
After a pause, the speaker crackled to life again, the weariness in the voice on the other end quite apparent. ¡°Fine, make it quick.¡±
The door slid open and Sofie walked in to find Blake sitting in a large motorized ¡°wheelchair¡± of his own design. Sofie mentally put ¡±wheelchair¡± in quotes because, much like most of Blake¡¯s designs, it did not have any actual wheels. Instead, it was basically a small skitter with the abdomen converted into a chair for the man to sit in during the day.
¡°You¡¯re looking a bit better since I left,¡± Sofie observed. ¡°Your face has some color to it now. How goes wearing the suit again?¡±
Blake let out a short, frustrated grunt. ¡°Not yet. Soon, I think. The pain has mostly gone now, down to a dull roar. So what do you want? I¡¯ve had a long day and I need my beauty sleep.¡±
¡°Right, beauty sleep. That reminds me, did you wear your mask when you talked to Arlette?¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t see the point. The mask and armor exist to exude strength. It hiding my face is just a bonus. But no helmet is going to make this exude strength.¡± He gestured to his battered form, his crippled lower body hidden under a blanket.
¡°Still, you¡¯re giving her more trust than anybody else I know other than me, Samanta, Pari, and... does Leo even know what you look like?¡±
Blake shook his head. ¡°Leo is Otharian, and I never appear before Otharians without my full suit. Have to show strength at all times with them.¡±
¡°But... it¡¯s Leo! After all the work he¡¯s done for you, you still don¡¯t trust him?¡±
¡°I trust him more than any other Otharian, but he¡¯s still Otharian. There¡¯s a limit. Now, did you come in here to waste my time or did you actually have something worth bothering me for?¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes. Blake was feeling extra-snarky today, it seemed, likely from being cooped up for so long. ¡°I want you to let me into that vault you built downstairs. Enough is enough. Let me talk to her.¡±
Blake stared at her like she¡¯d grown another head. ¡°What, are you crazy?! No fucking way!¡±
¡°How long do you plan to keep her down there? Forever?¡±
¡°Yes! Absolutely!¡±
¡°Blake...¡±
¡°What?! I¡¯m sick of you acting like I¡¯m the bad guy here! She nearly killed me!¡±
¡°And now she won¡¯t!¡±
¡°You don¡¯t know that!¡±
¡°Blake, you won! Why can¡¯t you get that?! She has no reason to want you dead anymore. All she wants to do is go home!¡±
¡°And she can¡¯t! So you don¡¯t know what she¡¯s going to do! It¡¯s safer if we just leave her as she is!¡±
¡°And what if she wakes up on her own? Look, Blake, for all we know, this isn¡¯t the first time she¡¯s done this. You wouldn¡¯t know this, but back during the invasion, there was a long time when she just disappeared and nobody knew what happened to her. Then she just reappeared without any warning. If she went into a fugue like this before, then that means she came out of it then and she can come out of it now, even if you never bother her again. Are you ready for whatever she does after waking up to find herself enclosed by ten meters of metal and no doors out? I sure wouldn¡¯t take that well, so why should she?¡±
Sofie caught a flicker of doubt and worry in Blake¡¯s eyes and pressed the issue. ¡°Let me try to talk to her. If I greet her with compassion, I think there¡¯s a great chance that we can nip this problem in the bud and even turn it into a blessing. Bring her to our side.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think I want her on our side,¡± he muttered. ¡°I don¡¯t really want her even on the same continent.¡±
¡°Well, I don¡¯t know if you have a choice here. You keep talking about how you need to project strength to the Otharians, right? Well, the last thing the people of Wroetin saw was a woman wrecking the same robots that scare them to death, followed by you vanishing for the next ten days. You¡¯ve spread the word that you¡¯re alright, but you haven¡¯t shown up in public and people are going to talk, if they aren¡¯t already. So when you finally are ready to put that suit on again, you¡¯re going to need something to show. Something more than just you. And what could be better than displaying the mighty warrior who fought you, now working for you?¡±
Paused at that, his mind working over her argument.
¡°Didn¡¯t I just hire the best illusionist in the world?¡± he eventually responded. ¡°I can just have her fake it. Nobody will be able to tell the difference.¡±
¡°That will only last until you need to demonstrate her power. Which could happen anytime in this place.¡± She leaned in, putting extra emphasis on her words as she drove her case home. ¡°Blake, don¡¯t treat this like we all treated climate change. This is not something that will go away on its own, and the longer we ignore it, the worse it¡¯s likely to get.¡±
¡°Fine,¡± he grumbled, his voice sour. ¡°But good luck getting anything out of her.¡±
A screen on the wall to Sofie¡¯s left flashed on, revealing an image of the woman, illuminated by a single soft light overhead. Her body remained in the same position as it had been in when Sofie had last seen her all those days ago, her upper body slouched forward over her knees and her hair hanging down obscuring her face.
¡°Has she moved at all?¡± Sofie inquired.
¡°Not a bit. If she did, an alarm would go off. I have her monitored every second of every day. The only movement you¡¯ll ever see is that she sheds a tear maybe once every three or four hours. That¡¯s how I know she¡¯s not dead.¡±
¡°So, best-case scenario, we get a new ally. Worst case, I can¡¯t wake her and nothing changes.¡±
¡°No, worst case is that talking to you makes her decide to kill us all.¡±
¡°Very funny,¡± Sofie sniffed. ¡°I¡¯ll have you know I am the pinnacle of charm and charisma. All the Pari¡¯s say so.¡±
¡°You have obviously never spoken to yourself,¡± Blake snorted. ¡°I¡¯ll make you an entrance tomorrow. Don¡¯t fuck this up, for all of our sakes.¡±
Sofie studied the woman slumped down on the cold metal floor in front of her, gazing at her with interest and no small amount of pity. She found it impossible to not feel the sadness flowing from the forlorn figure, who looked almost like a tragic character in a play, marked by a single spotlight shining down from directly overhead.
Sofie had stood there for what felt like a good ten minutes, looking for a single change but finding none. In the interest of self-preservation, she wanted to avoid going too far and only do the least required to wake the other woman up. Something told her that the woman wouldn¡¯t be too happy if Sofie could wake her with a rough jostle but stabbed her with a knife instead.
¡°Hello! Can you hear me?¡± she began.
The woman didn¡¯t move.
¡°I¡¯m sorry to interrupt your... whatever this is, but we need to talk.¡±
Still, the woman didn¡¯t move.
Sofie stepped forward and leaned over, pulling the black hair aside so she could see the woman¡¯s face and letting light shine in for perhaps the first time since that chaotic day over a week ago. The eyes she found within unnerved her, their gaze empty and soulless. Sofie waved her hand in front of those eyes, but, as before, got no response. Snapping her fingers in front of the woman¡¯s face brought the same result.
A poke to the cheek. A wicked pinch on the arm. A whack to the head. Yelling directly into her ear. Shaking her roughly. No matter what Sofie tried, nothing worked. After more than fifteen minutes of failed attempts, all she could do was lean against the wall of the small enclosure and sigh in defeat.
Sofie knew full well that nobody could be truly condensed down to a single descriptor¡ªSofie was more than just a college student, Arlette was more than just a mercenary, Blake was more than just a jerk¡ªand so it hurt her to reduce the sad figure before her down to the word ¡°mother¡±. But that was all Sofie knew of her. She didn¡¯t even know the woman¡¯s name. So, having run out of other ideas, Sofie decided it was time to leverage the one bit of knowledge she did possess. It was time for the nuclear option. It was time for Pari.
Finding Pari was as easy as it always was; Sofie just had to follow the noise. For once, however, the noise was not the bangs and booms of homemade explosives, but rather high-pitched squeals and protests and even-higher-pitched laughter.
In a way, Pari found Sofie more than the other way around. As Sofie walked down the hallway towards the voices, suddenly Samanta hurtled around an upcoming corner and headed her way, flying as fast as her adolescent legs could move her. Sure enough, Pari emerged just a moment later hot on her heels, her hands reaching out after her fleeing friend as some unknown fluid dripped from them.
Sofie couldn¡¯t help but notice how much shorter the catgirl stood than the Otharian child. Though Sofie and the others believed Pari to be roughly nine years old, putting her at most a year younger than Samanta, it was clear now in contrast that Pari was much closer to a six-year-old than a nine-year-old in stature. That didn¡¯t stop the beastkin child from keeping pace with the taller girl. Perhaps her growth was normal for a beastgirl, or perhaps Samanta was simply slow for a ten-year-old thanks to a year of sedentary life with Blake; Sofie couldn¡¯t be sure.
Samanta spotted Sofie immediately and made a beeline towards her, ducking behind her body to shield her from the incoming catkin menace.
¡°Makeherstopmakeherstopmakeherstop!¡± the young Otharian pleaded.
With practiced motions born from far too much experience, Sofie bent down and snatched Pari¡¯s arms by the elbows, deftly halting her attack while avoiding getting any of the foul-smelling substance on her skin or clothes.
¡°Pari, stop chasing Samanta around when your hands are covered in... what is this stuff?¡±
¡°Icky juice!¡± Pari giggled happily.
Icky juice? Half of all the crap the minuscule munitions expert messed with could qualify as such.
¡°Well, whatever it is, I need you to come wash it off, okay? I need your help with something important.¡±
¡°Okay,¡± Pari replied. Together, they left a relieved Samanta and headed for the closest restroom.
As Pari stood upon a step stool in front of the sink, merrily humming to herself as she cleansed her fingers of whatever godforsaken substance she¡¯d gotten her clutches on this time, Sofie decided it was time for a quick talk, sister to sister.
¡°Pari, it¡¯s about time you stop chasing people around with goop on your hands. Especially Samanta. She really doesn¡¯t like it.¡±
¡°Ah!?¡± Pari gasped in shock and confusion. ¡°B-but-¡±
¡°I know you think it¡¯s fun and funny, but most of us just find it gross.¡±
¡°Pari make Sammy-friend sad?¡± the child sniffed, her ears and tail drooping as tears began to form in her eyes.
Sofie rushed forward to pull the tyke into a comforting hug before things could snowball into sob and sadness. ¡°There there, it¡¯s okay,¡± she reassured the small girl. ¡°It¡¯s not always easy to be a good friend.¡±
¡°Pari never had friend before...¡± the beastchild bemoaned as she buried her face in Sofie¡¯s shirt. ¡°Pari wants to be good friend, but Pari not know what good friend is!¡±
¡°It¡¯s not about what good friends are, it¡¯s what good friends do,¡± Sofie explained.
¡°Ha?¡± Pari unburied her face and looked up in confusion.
¡°Good friends cheer their friends up when their friends are sad. Good friends help their friends face their fears. Good friends protect each other from danger. But most of all, good friends treat their friends with respect and love, and they¡¯re always there to support each other. If you can do that, then I know you can be a good friend.¡±
¡°Really? Pari can be good friend?!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sure, if you try, you could be the best good friend the world has ever seen!¡±
¡°Pari will! Pari will be the best friend!¡± the girl declared, a renewed fire in her eyes.
¡°That¡¯s the spirit!¡± Sofie chuckled. ¡°Now sweetie, do you have all that gunk off your hands? I still need your help.¡±
¡°Pari all clean!¡± Pari announced, raising her spotless palms toward the ceiling for Sofie to see.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s go.¡±
As Sofie walked down the hall, she couldn¡¯t help but smile as she watched Pari skipping happily along, humming a merry tune to herself. Sofie couldn¡¯t deny the blessing that Pari had been for her this past year. Had the adorable little tyke not stumbled into her life, Sofie thought it likely that she would have given in to despair many times during her terrible ordeal. Pari had been a constant source of joy and delight ever since they¡¯d met. If she truly could never go back to Earth, as long as Pari was with her then she knew she would be alright.
Several minutes later, Sofie led her adopted sister into the absurdly thick vault-prison hybrid, leaned back, and watched the magic happen. Pari approached the woman¡¯s fallen form, cuteness dialed to max, and let out a curious ¡°nya?¡± that could melt the heart of the evilest person to ever live.
Nothing happened.
¡°Wha?¡± Sofie muttered in shock and alarm. It couldn¡¯t be! Was it true? Could nothing wake the warrior woman? Was her mission truly impossible?
¡°Nya? Lady sleeping?¡±
Just like Sofie, Pari went through the steps. She prodded and tapped and spoke, but every attempt ended in the same result.
¡°Sofie-sis, what¡¯s wrong with lady?¡± Pari finally asked, sticking her head under the woman¡¯s face and staring up at it quizzically. She gasped and recoiled in surprise as a single drop of liquid fell onto her face. ¡°Lady sad!? Sofie-sis, why lady sad?¡±
¡°I think she misses her family,¡± Sofie offered.
Sofie¡¯s conjecture seemed to put a charge of determination in the young girl. Wiggling about, Pari wormed her way under the woman¡¯s arms. ¡°Don¡¯t cry, lady, Pari here now!¡± she told the unmoving form as she snuggled into the woman¡¯s chest and wrapped her tiny arms around the woman¡¯s torso. ¡°Pari will make all better!¡±
Maybe it was the hug, maybe it was the nuzzle, maybe the words finally reached her; Sofie couldn¡¯t say one way or the other. Whatever it may have been, it worked. The woman¡¯s body shuddered seemingly involuntarily and she violently gasped for air as if she¡¯d been holding her breath for days, which was actually fairly close to reality. Pari let out a surprised ¡°Nya?!¡± as the woman¡¯s arms constricted around her and locked her in an inescapably tight embrace.
Before Sofie could even say a word, the woman began to sob loudly while rocking forward and backward, tears streaming down her face. Any words of comfort or encouragement died inside Sofie¡¯s throat. Instead, she stood still, waiting for the woman¡¯s emotions to calm a bit.
Soon, as the rocking and weeping continued without any signs of weakening, it became clear that the woman wouldn¡¯t be calming down anytime soon. Sofie wasn¡¯t even sure if the other Earthling knew she was even standing nearby. She decided to change tactics.
¡°Pari, sweetie,¡± she said to the trapped little girl, who, judging by the waving of her tail, was not having the greatest time, ¡°could you stay with her for a little longer? I¡¯m going to go get her some food.¡±
Pari let out a soft whine.
¡°Please, Pari. I¡¯ll buy you a delicious meal as thanks for helping me out. Whatever you want.¡±
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¡°...Pari want Kozak,¡± the child replied. Kozak¡¯s Tavern was a fairly average example of an Otharian ¡°restaurant¡±, situated a few minutes walk away from the fortress. Sofie didn¡¯t much like Otharian cuisine, nor did she think Kozak¡¯s Tavern was the best example of it. However, Pari absolutely adored their food, especially their meat pies, and seemed to want to eat nothing else anymore. Sofie found her obsession quite frustrating, but today she would leverage it for everything it was worth.
¡°Alright, you be nice and stay with the sad lady here, and I¡¯ll get you all the meat pies you can eat.¡±
¡°Okay...¡± came the subdued response.
Sofie left the ¡°prison¡± and slowly made her way to the fortress¡¯s small cafeteria, where the clerks, administrators, and other assorted government workers who weren¡¯t allowed inside the middle half of the fortress ate their lunches. There, she asked for a bunch of bread and other foods that could be eaten by hand and didn¡¯t need a plate. The cook there gave her everything she asked for and more, all the while trying his best not to look her in the eyes. The way the lower-level people in the fortress treated her like she was some terrifying demon who might chop their heads off at any moment if they were to accidentally insult her often left her feeling depressed. It was all because of her connection to Blake, she knew, but that still worried her, especially given her future plans.
It had always bothered her that Blake spent time teaching one child and leaving the other thousands and thousands of kids to rot in ignorance, but he hadn¡¯t seemed to care too much. So, as she did whenever she knew something had to be done but Blake didn¡¯t care, she began to bother him about it. A lot. Recently, after some serious nagging, Sofie had finally made progress on the educational front.
Blake didn¡¯t have the time or energy to deal with setting up an entire school system from scratch, and to be totally honest, neither did she. But there were other ways to spread knowledge, one of which would be starting in just a few days. Hopefully, her undeserved reputation with the workers here wouldn¡¯t sabotage this endeavor.
She returned to a much quieter place than the one she¡¯d left. The woman and Pari were still there, but the tears seemed to have finally dried up. Now, she just slowly rocked back and forth, while Pari hummed a nameless tune into her chest.
¡°I thought you might be hungry,¡± Sofie said, offering the woman a small loaf of bread. The woman took it in silence and stared at it a bit before taking a small bite. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m Sofie Ramaut, from Belgium. This angel¡¯s name is Pari; we don¡¯t know where she came from. Would you mind telling us your name?¡±
A long silence fell upon them as the woman slowly chewed, her eyes still not really looking at anything in front of her. ¡°Gabriela Carreno,¡± she finally said. ¡°...from Mexico.¡±
¡°Gabriela... that¡¯s a nice name,¡± Sofie offered.
Gabriela didn¡¯t reply.
Sofie coughed. ¡°So, Gabriela, um-¡±
¡°Why did you bring me back?¡±
Sofie paused for a moment, completely taken aback by the question. ¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡±
¡°It would have been better for everybody if you¡¯d just left me alone.¡±
¡°What... you can¡¯t actually believe that!¡±
¡°All the death and pain and suffering I¡¯ve caused, all for my own misguided selfishness...¡± Gabriela said, less to Sofie than to herself. ¡°I don¡¯t deserve to live, but I can¡¯t bring myself to die.¡±
¡°That¡¯s... come on now, I know what Blake said was really harsh, but that¡¯s just how he is. You can¡¯t take what he said to heart.¡±
¡°No, he was right. Some part of me knew from the beginning. It was too easy. They promised me the only thing I wanted, and all that I needed to do was help them get everything they wanted. I¡¯m not the smartest person ever made, but I¡¯m not a fool. But... I wanted to believe. And they kept showing me enough ¡®proof¡¯ to let me throw away that disbelieving part of me. So I did.¡±
¡°What do you mean they kept showing you proof?¡±
¡°They told me that I needed to get the Eyes to power the machine and that they could be found in the other countries. That was the hardest part for me to believe. Even though I wanted to believe it, I couldn¡¯t at first.¡±
¡°Well, yeah, that sounds awfully convenient for them.¡±
¡°Then, they conquered the Droajan Federation, and in the capital¡¯s vault, hidden in a secret compartment, was an Eye.¡±
¡°Wait, so the Eyes are real?¡±
¡°Do you believe your friend when he says they aren¡¯t?¡±
¡°He¡¯s not my friend. But no, he wouldn¡¯t lie about that. He was telling the truth.¡±
¡°Then the Ubrans must have created one and somehow planted it inside the Droajan vault. And we went immediately there, so it must have happened before they even conquered the city. And then again in Gustil, we found an Eye there as well. Between those and the demonstration of the machine, that was enough for me to push that doubting voice aside and hope. I needed that hope more than anything. So I threw it all away. My beliefs, my morals, the Lord¡¯s teachings, all of it... I threw it all away so I could cling to that hope with everything I had. And everybody died because I did that.¡±
¡°You are... more distraught about this than I thought you would be, to be honest.¡±
Gabriela did not respond for a moment, her one hand slowly caressing Pari¡¯s hair.
¡°¡®Thou shalt not kill¡¯ means something,¡± she answered. ¡°Commandments are Commandments, and breaking them is to go against the Lord. When I realized what I would have to do to go home, I found that I had a choice: was it worth it to damn my eternal soul and reject the word of the Lord for the chance to save my family? I found that my answer is yes, and if it would get me back to them I would do it again. But I knew what I was doing was horrible. I knew it was a terrible sin. I did it anyway. I just told myself it was worth it. But it wasn¡¯t.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry that-¡±
¡°Please don¡¯t tell me you forgive me. I don¡¯t deserve forgiveness.¡±
Sofie let out an amused snort. First Arlette told her that she held everybody to an impossible standard, and now she was being told to hold somebody to an impossible standard.
¡°Fine, I won¡¯t forgive you,¡± she informed her. ¡°Other people around here might. And I understand what you went through. I know how confusing and scary it was to show up in this world with no warning. But you knew the consequences of your choices and you went through with them. So... now what?¡±
¡°Now...?¡±
¡°We¡¯ve established that you¡¯re a foolish, evil, no-good, terrible individual who slaughtered hundreds or thousands of people. An utterly irredeemable, pond scum sort of person. The question is, what should be done about that? Do you want to be locked up for the rest of eternity? Do you want us to find a way to kill you for good? What if, instead, you follow in Blake¡¯s footsteps?¡±
¡°...huh?¡±
¡°Do you think Blake¡¯s a saint or something? He¡¯s brought just as much death to this world as anybody. Maybe more even than you. But he¡¯s not sitting in a tiny room, stuck thinking about how terrible he is or how much evil he¡¯s committed. No, he runs an entire country. I don¡¯t agree with the majority of his decisions, but you know what? I can¡¯t deny he¡¯s trying to improve this hellhole in his own way. And maybe, given enough time, he¡¯ll do enough good to offset the bad. The important part, though, is that at least he¡¯s trying.
¡°There¡¯s nothing stopping you from doing the same. Are you just going to mope for the rest of your life? Or are you going to go back out there and help us better this world, one day at a time?¡±
¡°What¡¯s the point?¡± Gabriela sighed. ¡°None of this matters to me anymore.¡±
Sofie clenched her jaw shut before she said something she would regret. She understood just how deep in the abyss the other Earthling¡¯s psyche was at the moment, but the depressed, ¡®woe is me¡¯ routine was really starting to grate on her nerves. She forced herself to calm down and think, looking for a way to get through to the morose figure still holding onto Pari like a shipwrecked sailor clutching at flotsam.
¡°Do you believe you¡¯ll live forever?¡± she finally asked.
¡°I don¡¯t really know anymore,¡± her counterpart replied. ¡°I might.¡±
¡°Nothing lives forever. I doubt you will either.¡±
¡°I hope you¡¯re right.¡±
¡°So... when you die,¡± Sofie wondered, ¡°where will you go?¡±
¡°Hell, surely.¡±
¡°But, like... Earth Hell? Is there only one Heaven and Hell? Because, if so, then you will eventually leave this place. And that means, if you got into Heaven, you would be able to meet your family again one day.¡±
Gabriela blinked.
¡°That¡¯s how I see it, anyway,¡± Sofie continued. ¡°So, if you could do enough good from now on to offset the bad from the past, you could see your children again. Even though we can¡¯t leave this world alive, there¡¯s a way for you to get what you want in the end.¡±
¡°I... never thought of it like that,¡± Gabriela admitted. ¡°But there¡¯s no way I could ever be forgiven for my sins.¡±
¡°Says who? I¡¯m no theologian, but if God is powerful enough to send you here, then God is powerful enough to know the misery you¡¯ve had to endure because of that. Yours is the most special of special cases. And with your abilities, if you tried hard enough, I think you might even be able to do it. And when the day finally comes when you meet, you¡¯ll be able to face them with pride.¡±
¡°Could... could that actually happen?¡±
Sofie shrugged. ¡°Who can say? But why not give it a try? What¡¯s the worst that could happen? You do loads of good, make thousands of peoples¡¯ lives better, and atone for your past deeds? Ugh, how terrible!¡± She walked up beside the older woman and extended a hand. ¡°You¡¯ll never pull yourself out of this hole by being a mopey lump all day and night. Let¡¯s get out there and brighten somebody¡¯s day. Come on. It¡¯ll work wonders.¡±
Gabriela seemed to mentally sink into herself for a few moments before slowly untangling herself from Pari and taking Sofie¡¯s hand.
¡°I can try, I guess...¡± she muttered, her tone conflicted and unsure. ¡°I don¡¯t really know what to do, though...¡±
¡°Leave that to me. We¡¯ll start small,¡± Sofie told her. She had a pretty simple idea that, hopefully, would allow for Gabriela to find what she needed to stay sane in this world.
¡°Lady not sad anymore?¡± Pari inquired.
¡°Call me Gabby, darling,¡± Gabriela replied, patting the catkin softly on the head. ¡°Thank you for helping.¡±
¡°Pari always helpful!¡± the child boasted, the audacity¡ªand sheer incorrectness¡ªof the statement nearly causing Sofie to choke on her own saliva. Pari joyfully headed towards the exit, blissfully unaware that Gabby had not actually answered the question.
¡°Come with me,¡± Sofie instructed, following Pari out.
The two Earthlings walked for a few moments in silence, with only Pari¡¯s jaunty tune to fill the void.
¡°So... she is...¡± Gabby haltingly began, searching for the right words.
¡°She¡¯s my adopted younger sister,¡± Sofie informed her.
¡°You adopted her?¡±
Sofie chuckled. ¡°Oh, no. She adopted me.¡±
¡°I... see...¡± Gabby replied in the sort of tone that said that she didn¡¯t see at all. ¡°Can... uh... would it be possible if...¡±
¡°You want to hold her some more, don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°...yeah...¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t help but laugh. ¡°Emotional Support Pari is a hell of a drug,¡± she giggled. ¡°If you want to hold her, you can work it out with her yourself. She takes payment in meat pies.¡±
Pari eventually split off and went her separate way, hopefully to go apologize to Samanta. Sofie and Gabby, on the other hand, kept heading north towards the outer ring of the fortress.
¡°What happened to the Blade of Eternity?¡± the Mexican asked.
Sofie tensed up at the question. Blake had mentioned several times just how stubbornly Gabriela had refused to release that massive sword in the past. Would she care that Blake had taken it for study? ¡°It¡¯s... uh... elsewhere. We kind of... took it.¡±
¡°Please keep it away from me,¡± Gabby thankfully replied. ¡°I never want to see that thing ever again.¡±
¡°Well, uh, we might need you to hold it one more time for, um, public relations reasons. But we¡¯ll never ask you to use it for bloodshed ever again, I promise. You¡¯re not the only one who doesn¡¯t want it in your hands. You don¡¯t need that thing, anyway. There are a million ways you can help the world without it.¡±
¡°You said you had an idea?¡± Gabby prodded after another moment.
¡°Yeah,¡± she replied as the pair came to a door leading to the outside of the fortress and walked out into the fresh morning air. ¡°I¡¯ll get you hooked up with...¡±
She coughed as the acrid smell of smoke filled her nostrils. ¡°What in the world is going on out here?¡±
Thick plumes of smoke rose from pockets around the city. One, two, three... counting swiftly, Sofie spotted at least seven large fires from her vantage point, their smoke billowing up into the sky and forming a thick haze over the northern quarter of the city.
Wroetin burned.
¡°-and, as always, the modifier comes after the verb, so ¡®run swiftly¡¯, not ¡®swiftly run¡¯,¡± Sofie explained, making sure to write the Eterian Common as large and legible as possible on the oversized blackboard. Turning back to the sea of young faces projected around the hall, she smiled warmly. ¡°That¡¯s all for today, children! Thank you all for your good behavior today! I will see you all in three days, as always. Lastly, don¡¯t forget...¡±
¡°Always care for your fellow people, no matter what!¡± she intoned, thousands of children saying it together with her.
Giving the Many handlers the cut-off signal, she teetered on her feet as the illusions around her winked out of existence one by one, before finally collapsing onto her rear end when none of the children were left to see her. Letting out a long breath, she wiped the sweat from her brow.
These educational ¡°shows¡± she ran now really sucked the energy right out of her. All the pressure of the thousands of children watching through Manys around Otharia really wore her down. She would start out so strong, but the weariness would build slowly over time like drops of water from a leaky faucet. Still, she was generally fine until the sign-off, when she no longer had something else to focus on. That was when the exhaustion would just slam into her like a large bucket of sports drink being dumped on an unsuspecting coach and leave her momentarily wiped out.
She wiped away the sweat on her brow with her sleeve. Spring was in full swing these days, and the House of Manys was starting to get a little uncomfortable during the mid-afternoon. Perhaps it was time to switch to short-sleeves.
Today¡¯s show had gone quite well, she believed. First created the rough equivalent of two Earth months ago, after a suggestion from Gabby the day of her reawakening, the children¡¯s show was her first step towards a full-fledged nation-wide educational system, or at least so she hoped. But for now, the Divide-level mountain of work such an endeavor would entail was far more than Sofie or Blake or anybody else was ready for. Still, this was a good start.
Each broadcast focused on teaching basic literacy and math skills to the young children of Otharia, who by and large received no education whatsoever. There was only so much she could do on her own, isolated physically from her actual audience, but she believed she was making progress.
Unexpectedly, there was far less unrest over the mandatory nature of the lectures than she¡¯d expected. It seemed that all but the most pious and patriotic wanted their children to be able to read. Not unexpectedly, the biggest topic of complaints was that she¡¯d chosen to teach the children Eterian Common, rather than Otharian. Sofie didn¡¯t care; she knew she¡¯d made the right choice. One day, Otharia was going to truly open up to the rest of the world, and when they did, they would need to know how to read and write Nocend¡¯s default written language.
Stretching her tired body, Sofie left the House of Manys and headed for the offices of the Ministry of Security, the newest department added to the fortress¡¯s collection. It had been a few days since Sofie had been able to catch up with her busy friend, and she had extra reason to seek Arlette out this time. Arlette would be taking a short break soon, if Sofie¡¯s timing was correct. The newly-minted Minister of Security usually took a break in the mid-afternoon, sitting outside to bask in the warmth of the sun for a few minutes before getting back to work.
As she¡¯d hoped, Sofie found the former mercenary leaning against a railing up atop the wall, gazing out into the distance. Her hand held a small drink, which Sofie found unusual. Arlette had a penchant for drinking heavily when alcohol could be had, a habit picked up from her years as a mercenary. But as far as Sofie knew, she saved her alcohol for when she was off duty.
¡°Drinking on the job?¡± she joked as she approached. ¡°Has working under Blake driven you to alcohol so quickly?¡±
¡°Har har,¡± Arlette responded. She took a sip of the brew. ¡°I¡¯m just stressed, that¡¯s all.¡±
Sofie frowned. ¡°The terrorists?¡±
Arlette just nodded and took another sip.
Sofie let out an aggravated grunt. ¡°I¡¯m so sick of those evil bastards. Setting fire to innocent people. Sick, sick people.¡±
Arlette took one last large gulp and downed the remnants of her drink. ¡°They hit Nont last night. Burned down a whole city block. Killed at least forty people. And yet... no leads.¡±
With a sudden burst of anger, she hurled her empty cup against the walkway. Thankfully, the cup was metal, and so it merely bounced wildly off the walkway and plummeted down to the ground below instead of shattering. Still, going down to get it was going to be quite a walk.
¡°Are you... feeling alright?¡± Sofie hesitantly inquired, worried about her friend¡¯s sudden outburst.
¡°I¡¯m fine, it¡¯s just...¡± Arlette growled, her hands balled into tight fists. ¡°Protect Otharia from threats both within and without; that¡¯s my job, and I¡¯m failing at it. I can¡¯t catch even one of these fuckers. It¡¯s like they¡¯re fucking taunting me.¡±
¡°There¡¯s no need to take this so personally. That¡¯s only going to make it worse.¡±
¡°I know, I know. It just feels personal. That day when they first hit, the day after we arrived from Crirada, that was my first day on the job. They had their little coming-out party on my very first day like they were throwing down a challenge at my feet and daring me to try to answer it. Like they were saying ¡®Welcome to Otharia, outsider. You don¡¯t have what it takes to stop us.¡¯ And what kills me is that, so far, they¡¯ve been right. After all this time, we still know nothing about them. How many people they have, where they¡¯re based, who leads them, we don¡¯t even know what they fucking call themselves! You would think, with the fleet of surveillance drones we have up there, that we¡¯d be able to make some headway by now. But no, all we know is that they burn down places they view as being too cooperative with the new regime. That¡¯s it. And that¡¯s not good enough.¡±
¡°Hold on, back up. You aren¡¯t seriously saying that the terrorists set all those fires that day to personally send you a message, are you?¡±
Arlette shook her head. ¡°No, I¡¯m not saying that is the case in reality. There¡¯s no reason for that and there¡¯s no way they would even know I was here. But it¡¯s not about what it is, it¡¯s about how it feels. And it feels like a slap in the face.¡±
¡°Do you think that the Empire has anything to do with this?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t see how. The Ubrans have been beaten all the way back to Redwater Castle, according to the last report. Took tremendous losses the whole way, too. Those bastards won¡¯t be bothering us again for a long while. Shame Redwater will be so hard to retake, though. But that¡¯s somebody else¡¯s problem. I have too much on my plate as it is.¡±
¡°You know what?¡± Sofie said with a smile. ¡°It sounds to me like you need to relax and unwind a little. What do you say you join Pari and me for dinner tonight? We¡¯re going out as a reward for Pari being so well-behaved lately.¡±
Arlette arched an eyebrow. ¡°Kozak¡¯s again?¡±
¡°Yeah, well, you know how she is...¡± Sofie sighed. ¡°And it¡¯s for her so she gets to pick...¡±
¡°I think they¡¯re pretty good, actually,¡± the Scyrian informed her. ¡°Especially the meat pies.¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t help but let out a pained laugh. ¡°Nooooo, not you too!¡±
¡°What can I say? The crusts are wonderfully flaky. They kind of remind me of the bakery from my childhood. Sure, I¡¯ll come. Is it just going to be the three of us?¡±
¡°Samanta is probably going to come as well, and maybe one other person if I can convince them.¡±
¡°Sounds good. I¡¯ll see you there later,¡± the older woman said, turning to go back inside. ¡°I have to get back to work.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t forget your cup.¡±
Arlette just grumbled back.
That evening, Sofie approached a large building on the western side of Wroetin, Pari in tow and a skitter... skittering alongside for protection. The sounds of yelling and playing children serenaded them as they grew closer to the walled yard in front of the building. Sofie directed the skitter to stay outside as they crossed through the open gate and entered pure bedlam. Kids of all ages ran about, chasing each other, throwing balls and other things, and generally just being kids. Pari¡¯s eyes sparkled at the sight, and Sofie could tell from her body language that she wanted to run off and join the mess, but she didn¡¯t. Yes, Pari was a good girl.
Several children waved to the catchild and Sofie let her go play for a minute, with the instructions that she needed to be ready to leave fairly soon. Pari didn¡¯t have any friends here at the orphanage just yet, but she had managed during her past visits to move past ¡°weird kid with the animal ears and tail¡± status and into ¡°acquaintance¡± status. This fact warmed Sofie¡¯s heart. It felt like she was watching the child grow before her eyes.
This institution, Wroetin Orphanage Four, was the site of step one of Gabriela¡¯s rehabilitation. The hope was that Gabby would be able to find an outlet for her pent-up emotions and form some bonds with people here on Scyria. If she had more connections, maybe every day she spent here would be a bit more bearable and it would help her get back on her feet. Besides, there was a shit ton of work to do here that would occupy her time, and the orphanages all needed more people to take care of the children anyway.
¡°Hey, kid, come here,¡± Sofie instructed, leading a random nearby child who looked to be about eight years old over to the corner of the yard for a moment of privacy.
The child looked about with some worry but didn¡¯t fight her. She visited this orphanage once every few days to check in on Gabby, and the kids all knew who she was at this point.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I just want to talk,¡± she mollified the child. She squatted down to his height to be less intimidating. ¡°Are they treating you well here?¡±
The child looked down at the dirt as he scuffed his feet and ground the sole of his one shoe against the ground nervously. ¡°Yeah...¡±
¡°What about Gabriela? Is she treating everybody well?¡±
¡°Yeah...¡± the boy said tentatively. ¡°Her cooking is weird. I like it though...¡±
¡°Is that all? Don¡¯t hold back for my sake. It sounds like you want to say ¡®but¡¯.¡±
The boy ground the sole on his shoe harder. ¡°But sometimes she cries a lot when she thinks she¡¯s alone. And she gets really mad when somebody gets hurt. Barlo hit Orzel with a stick and she got really scary.¡±
¡°I see...¡± Sofie replied, fishing a small piece of candy out of a pocket and handing it to the child. ¡°Thank you. You can go now.¡±
The child popped the candy into his mouth¡ªclearly, nobody had told him to never take candy from strangers¡ªand ran off. Sofie straightened up and made her way towards the orphanage¡¯s front door. What the child told her pretty much lined up with what she¡¯d heard before from other children. It seemed like progress would be slow, but she had faith that it would come with time.
¡°Pari! Come along!¡± she called into the crowd. A moment later, a slightly disappointed-looking beastkin girl emerged from the ruckus and followed her into the building proper.
The pair found Gabriela with a fifty-something woman in the orphanage¡¯s kitchen, slaving over a pot large enough to classify as a cauldron in Sofie¡¯s mind. A rather pleasant smell of boiling meat and vegetables wafted from the massive thing.
The other woman noticed them first and called out a greeting, startling Gabby for a moment. After realizing who it was, the Earthling put on a smile.
¡°Hello, Sofie, hello Pari,¡± she said, bending down with her arms open wide.
Pari approached Gabby and halted just out of reach, seeming to be thinking about something.
¡°Pari wants two meat pies this time,¡± she stated.
¡°What?¡± Gabby laughed. ¡°That¡¯s double your normal rate, you rascal!¡±
¡°Pari extra hungry today!¡± she declared.
¡°Oh, alright. Two pies. Now come here.¡±
¡°Okay!¡± Pari stepped forward and was immediately scooped up into a smothering embrace. She nuzzled her face into Gabby¡¯s chest and began to purr. As always, the older woman seemed to nearly melt from the cuteness assault.
The sight brought a smile to Sofie¡¯s face. Back on that first day, she¡¯d been joking when she suggested Gabby pay Pari with meat pies for long hugs, but somehow it had turned into a real thing. For Gabby¡¯s sake, she hoped Pari never caught on to the true demand for Pari hugs. Pari could demand a hundred meat pies and the woman would agree. That was how much she valued these times.
¡°Speaking of meat pies, we¡¯re going to Kozak¡¯s Tavern for a meal. We stopped by to invite you along.¡±
¡°Ah, I can¡¯t,¡± Gabby declined. ¡°There¡¯s just so much to do here...¡±
¡°Oh, enough of that,¡± the other woman interjected. ¡°We held this place together before you came, we¡¯ll survive without you for a few hours. Go have a nice time. You never leave this place as it is.¡±
¡°Think of it this way: you¡¯re just acquiring what you owe Pari,¡± Sofie joked.
¡°Alright, alright,¡± Gabriela relented. She picked up her hug-partner, drawing a surprised ¡®nya¡¯, and held her against her chest and shoulder. ¡°But if I¡¯m going, I¡¯m going like this. I¡¯m getting my two pies¡¯ worth.¡±
Sofie had a feeling that Pari wouldn¡¯t be touching the ground again for a good while.
¡°So Sofie, you still working on that ancient book?¡± Arlette asked between mouthfuls of meat pie.
¡°Book? What is this book?¡± Gabby interjected.
Sofie put down her spoon for a moment and leaned back on the wooden bench where she, Pari, and Samanta sat, with Gabby and Arlette occupying the other bench on the opposite side of the rough wooden table. Kozak¡¯s was many things, but fancy was not one of them.
The place had a somewhat rustic charm, she had to admit. Outside of the stone floor¡ªand the assumed basement beneath it¡ªthe building was built entirely from large wooden logs that left a bit of a rugged, intentionally unrefined look. Wood was not an uncommon building material in Wroetin¡ªas the recent terrorist arson attacks sadly proved¡ªbut many buildings, especially successful establishments like this one, were at least half stone with wood filling in the gaps, not almost all wood like Kozak¡¯s.
And successful the tavern most definitely was. Almost every table was full of people eating their fill... except the few closest to them. Sofie figured that her presence must be intimidating everybody else around them. Now that she was the closest thing Otharia had to a TV star, everybody would associate her with Blake and the regime to some degree. She understood everybody keeping their distance.
The clandestine glances, however, were starting to bother her, though in an ¡°unwanted center of attention¡± way rather than a ¡°fear for your life¡± sort of way. Sofie felt perfectly safe where she was. Arlette, a capable fighter, and Gabby, a monster with or without her weapon, sat just a meter away. Not only that, but her ¡°bodyguard¡± skitter, as well as the two that arrived with Arlette, were stationed to the side of the tavern in a nearby alley. If anything were to happen, all Arlette or she had to do was hit the panic button in their pockets and all three robots would come storming in to their rescue.
¡°I found a book in an old ruin last year. It¡¯s sort of a combination diary and research notebook, and it¡¯s written in this ancient language that nobody knows how to read. I¡¯ve been slowly translating it ever since, though it¡¯s gone a lot faster since Arlette found me another book that has some translated ancient writing in it, which is why she¡¯s asking because she¡¯s fishing for praise.¡±
Arlette smirked.
¡°Though actually, I haven¡¯t been able to get much done recently,¡± Sofie admitted. ¡°I¡¯ve been so busy with stuff like the children¡¯s show that I haven¡¯t had much of a chance to really bunker down for a few days and chip away at it.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a shame,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°I¡¯m kind of curious what the final result will be like.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll let you know when-¡±
The front entrance violently burst open and two dozen people rushed into the establishment, bringing the commotion in the restaurant to a sudden halt. A shiver of panic ran down Sofie¡¯s spine as she realized they were each carrying swords or other weapons. Terrorists!
Slowly, so as not to catch anybody¡¯s attention, Sofie reached into her pocket and pressed the panic button several times for good measure.
¡°This den of corruption dares to accommodate the Tyrant¡¯s regime! For that, we, Othar¡¯s Devoted, have decreed that all who patronize this rotten place shall be put to the sword and the corruption cleansed with fire! So says Othar!¡± one of the terrorists proclaimed. He raised his hand and summoned a ball of flame, only to suddenly slide to the floor with a throwing knife in his chest and a look of shock upon his face, the flame now extinguished.
That was all it took to trigger outright chaos in the room as everybody suddenly began to scream and try to escape. The rest of the terrorists rushed forward, their weapons striking out at the frightened customers. Only one or two other people seemed to have brought any weapons into the building, and even they didn¡¯t seem too eager to fight.
Arlette, on the other hand, had weapons galore. After the zeppelin incident during the final Battle of Crirada, she never went anywhere without both her sword and an abundance of throwing knives on her person. Sofie had thought her overly paranoid, but now she felt glad as she watched the other woman pull another knife from beneath her outfit, sword already unsheathed and in hand.
Where were the robots? They were right outside, shouldn¡¯t they have crashed through the wall or something by now?
¡°Arlette! Did you hit the button?!¡± Sofie asked hurriedly.
¡°Yes, something¡¯s not right. Get behind us,¡± Arlette commanded Sofie and the children. She turned to Gabby and asked, ¡°Can I count on you to watch my back?¡±
¡°I... I¡¯ll try,¡± came the unsure reply. ¡°I don¡¯t want to...¡±
¡°Just do your best,¡± Arlette told her.
The two of them stepped forward, intercepting several oncoming terrorists. Sofie watched as Arlette and her doppelgangers danced through the pandemonium, her blade lashing out to slice a throat or a tendon. It seemed to Sofie that Arlette was very comfortable in the chaos of what was, in some aspects, an overgrown bar fight. Sofie had little doubt the ex-mercenary had ample experience in such situations.
Gabriela, on the other hand, seemed very out of place. Judging by the awkwardness of her movements, she didn¡¯t appear very trained in bare-handed combat. Nor did it appear like she wanted to involve herself in violence. Sofie watched as she raised an arm to block a sword slashing down at her. The blade embedded itself deep into her flesh, carving all the way to the bone. Almost hesitantly, she shoved her other arm out, striking her assailant in the chest with her palm. Sofie could almost hear bones break as the terrorist flew backward and crashed into the side of a table, no longer able to fight.
Things were looking manageable. Five of the two dozen terrorists were down, leaving nineteen against Sofie¡¯s side¡¯s two, but those nineteen were spread out and distracted with attacking other fleeing patrons.
But then, a voice cried out.
¡°The Tyrant¡¯s Pet! She¡¯s here!¡± one of the nearer terrorists shouted loud enough for the others to hear. All at once, the remaining attackers turned and focused on Samanta cowering next to Sofie.
Sofie¡¯s blood ran cold. What a fool she¡¯d been. She¡¯d thought that her fame was to blame for the buffer zone that had been around them, but she¡¯d forgotten about Samanta. It was easy to forget, but outside of Blake, Samanta was actually the most famous person in Otharia. After all, she was the one person who had always appeared with him, including his first introduction which he¡¯d started by dragging the dead body of Otharia¡¯s leader in front of the whole nation. Blake had even mentioned once that in some circles, Samanta was even more reviled than he. It was one thing to be an Elseling, it was another to be Otharian and aid and conspire with an Elseling. The fact that she¡¯d basically been forced into it by Blake didn¡¯t seem to change their minds.
All this boiled down to the fact that the terrorists wanted Samanta dead more than anybody in the world not named Blake Myers. What had been a disorganized collection of attackers was now a focused collective hellbent on killing a girl who hadn¡¯t even hit puberty yet. Suddenly, two people seemed like a little too few to have on their side, even if those two were Arlette and Gabriela.
¡°Sofie, get them out of here!¡± Arlette hollered, repositioning herself to better intercept the incoming enemies.
Sofie didn¡¯t need to be told twice. With Samanta first, Pari in the middle and Sofie taking up the rear to best block anybody who got through, the three of them rushed for the door to the kitchens, hoping to find a back way out. Instead, they found another terrorist, a large middle-aged man with a bushy beard and a large beer gut.
Emerging from the kitchen just as they reached it, a short sword in hand, the man¡¯s eyes lit up with malicious glee as he spotted the Otharian girl. Samanta froze in terror as he raised his arm to strike.
¡°Look out!¡± Sofie cried, rushing forward to pull Samanta out of the way, but Pari was faster.
¡°No kill Sammy-friend!¡± the child cried as she hopped up on a nearby table and leaped onto the man¡¯s shoulder from the side without the sword, grabbing hold with one hand and locking her legs around his free arm. Sofie spied a metallic glint in her other hand, a sharp knife that she must have grabbed from the table when the fighting started. Caught off-guard, the man wasn¡¯t ready for her flanking attack and was unable to fend her off in time to stop her blade as she sent it plunging down and forward from above her head, heading straight for the side of his unprotected neck.
But then Pari froze, the knife coming to a sudden halt just centimeters from the man¡¯s vulnerable flesh. Pari stared at the knife with wide eyes, a tremor coursing through her body.
That was all the opportunity the man needed. Instead of striking forward at Samanta, he brought his blade around on the unmoving catchild.
Sofie watched in utter horror as the world seemed to slow down to a crawl. The sword entered Pari¡¯s side at the height of her belly button and sliced clean through her intestines from one side to the other. Like a ripped bag of groceries, the child¡¯s innards spilled out onto the man and the surroundings below, covering the area with her blood.
¡°No! Pari!¡± Sofie shrieked in shock and despair. She dropped Samanta on the spot and rushed forward, only to stop after a single step as an iridescent light burst forth, nearly blinding her.
The man began to scream.
Sofie¡¯s eyes adjusted quickly, giving her an up-close view of the carnage as it unfolded. Everything that her dear sister¡¯s blood touched blazed with an unearthly multicolored illumination that seemed to consume all that it came into contact with, the matter it touched seeming to evaporate up into thousands of motes of radiant rainbow light that drifted through the air like dandelion seeds on a warm summer day.
In any other scenario, Sofie would have stopped and stared in awe at the heavenly beauty of it all, for it truly was the most beautiful thing she¡¯d ever seen, but beauty meant nothing to her right now. She rushed around the screaming, spasming, half-vaporized terrorist, avoiding the quickly growing luminescent hole in the floor, and grabbed her sister¡¯s prone form by the armpits, being sure to avoid touching the startlingly corrosive blood leaking from her torso at an alarming rate. With a heave, she dragged Pari away from the kitchen entrance as quickly as she could, leaving a wide trail of blood that immediately began to disintegrate everything it touched, other than the girl herself, into more brilliant rainbow sparkles.
¡°Nonononononono, don¡¯t die, Pari, please don¡¯t die!¡± Sofie begged.
She turned back to the action to find that the battle had shifted dramatically. Pari¡¯s injury seemed to have caused something to snap inside of Gabriela. Instead of the careful, almost skittish way she¡¯d fought just a minute ago, she was instead brutally ripping limbs and even heads from bodies left and right as she ignored the dozen blades sticking from her body, a snarl of wild fury on her face. With this new Gabby on their side, the fight was as good as over.
¡°Arlette! Get a doctor!¡± Sofie cried to her friend, was already a step ahead and sprinting for the exit.
¡°Stay with me, sweetie,¡± she pleaded as she turned back to her beloved little sister, the words pouring from her mouth as fast as the blood poured from Pari¡¯s torso. ¡°We¡¯ll get you healed up somehow! It¡¯s going to be okay! Just don¡¯t die! Please! Please don¡¯t go! Please don¡¯t leave me!¡±
Her words had no effect. Sofie could see now that it was already far too late. A trail of Pari¡¯s guts tracing the path she¡¯d been dragged lay scattered along the floor. Opalescent blood shined all around her as she stared up from the floor and met Sofie¡¯s tear-filled gaze, the child¡¯s eyes filled with pain and confusion. Pari¡¯s lips moved weakly, her voice swallowed by the din, but Scyria¡¯s workings meant that Sofie understood the child all the same, whether she wanted to or not.
¡°Was Pari good friend?¡± her sister asked with her final breath.
And then she was gone.
Chapter 89
The sound of Blake¡¯s footsteps echoing through the hallways of his fortress rang out with a solitude that Blake wasn¡¯t used to anymore. Back in the day, when it had just been him and Samanta, this feeling was the norm. Then, as the place slowly filled over time, first with Leo, then the day workers, then Sofie and Pari, and now with Arlette and Gabriela, the atmosphere of isolation had long faded away.
Now, though the castle remained inhabited, that lonely atmosphere had returned. He¡¯d been in funeral homes livelier than this. It was as if the fortress itself mourned the loss of a universally beloved figure, which, by certain definitions, was the case.
Blake had never really loved or adored Pari the way the others¡ªespecially Sofie, Gabriela, and to some extent Arlette¡ªhad. He found kids to be annoying and Pari was no exception. The girl had been loud and annoying and... well... childish. He would miss the way she giggled when she was about to do something naughty that would give Sofie a headache, and he did find the whole thing sad and depressing overall, but he wasn¡¯t distraught the way certain others were.
Perhaps that was good. Somebody needed to keep their hands on the reins, and few of the denizens here seemed interested in governance right now. Largely, it seemed it was down to just him and the person he was headed to see.
A minute later, Blake strode into Leo¡¯s office to find him where he always seemed to find him, regardless of the time of day: behind his desk, surrounded by work. Blake used to preach at Leo about how work-life balance was important and how Leo was going to grind himself down into a figurative stub of a human being, and Leo would sagely nod and reply that he would take Blake¡¯s words under advisement. Then, the next day, he¡¯d work deep into the night anyway. He¡¯d even shot down Blake¡¯s offer of more underlings, saying that some things needed to be handled personally. At this point, Blake had long given up trying to chase the Otharian back to his quarters, even at such a late hour. Leo was going to do what Leo was going to do.
¡°Hey Leo, how are you holding up?¡± Blake said in greeting, plopping down into a chair situated in the corner of Leo¡¯s fairly spacious office.
¡°Well enough, given the circumstances,¡± the administrator replied, giving him a solemn glance. ¡°I think that question would be better sent your way than mine.¡±
¡°I¡¯m holding up alright. Bummed, I guess, but not like the others. Sofie hasn¡¯t left the room where we put Pari¡¯s body in over a day. She wouldn¡¯t stop crying the whole time and I¡¯d bet my life she hasn¡¯t slept a wink. Arlette¡¯s thrown herself into interrogating the survivors of the group that attacked. And that woman walked into my armory, turned half of the skitters inside into scrap metal, and then went off to who-knows-where. I don¡¯t even want to bother trying to find her, to be frank.¡±
¡°What about Samanta?¡±
¡°Sam¡¯s... well, you know how Sam is. Keeping it all inside, whatever it may be.¡±
¡°Given the loss of her family, I¡¯m sure this has only reopened some very painful wounds inside of her, whether she is showing it or not,¡± Leo opined. ¡°As her caretaker, I hope you are doing what you can to help her overcome this terrible loss.¡±
Blake let out a groan as he leaned back and stared at the ceiling. ¡°It¡¯s just that I¡¯m so bad with all this feelings bullshit. And given my connection to her family, I don¡¯t know if I wouldn¡¯t even make anything better, you know? It would probably be better to have somebody else do it...¡±
¡°No, when you decided to become her caretaker and guardian, you accepted that responsibility. Others might be able to help, but this is your job,¡± Leo stressed, his expression serious and uncompromising. ¡°I know that it is not my place to tell you what to do, but I feel that this time I must insist. Try your best. You owe her that much, at least.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll just make everything worse. That¡¯s why I usually just try to avoid this kind of thing.¡±
¡°Have you never lost somebody you deeply cared about?¡± Leo asked with a frown.
Blake gave the question a moment of thought. ¡°Not really? My parents are still alive, my grandparents are still alive¡ªother than my maternal grandfather, but he died when I was two...¡±
¡°Then you would not understand. Sometimes, just the attempt can make all the difference in the world.¡±
¡°Oh? What, did you lose somebo-¡± Blake froze as he noticed the man¡¯s frown deepen into scowl territory. He¡¯d momentarily forgotten Leo¡¯s plight. The man had been happily married to a loving wife before his incarceration. But something had happened to his partner while he was behind bars: she¡¯d disappeared, and even after a year of searching, Leo could find no sign of her. Not even a grave. In some ways, the uncertainty made it all worse, because it prevented him from moving on. ¡°Right... sorry. Still no sign of her?¡±
Leo let out a mournful sigh. ¡°I continue to hold out hope, no matter how slim. One never knows what the future will hold. Perhaps I¡¯ll receive a mysterious message from her out of the blue when I least expect it.¡±
¡°Ha, if only,¡± Blake remarked.
¡°I assume there is to be a funeral?¡± the Otharian wondered, steering the conversation back to the first unpleasant topic. ¡°Have you planned the details? Will she be given an Otharian style ceremony or something else?¡±
¡°There won¡¯t be a funeral,¡± Blake informed him with a shake of his head. ¡°She¡¯s too special of a resource to waste. Maybe when I¡¯ve learned all I can from her body.¡±
For the first time in a long time, Leo looked completely taken aback.
¡°What?¡± Blake huffed defensively. ¡°Did you see what her blood did?! It ate a massive hole in that tavern¡¯s floor, fell into the basement, ate through that, fell into the sewers, ate through that, and kept going down for nearly a mile! It¡¯s absurd! I¡¯ve never heard of anything that corrosive, and it seems to eat literally everything other than her own flesh! I can¡¯t even run tests on it yet because it eats through any container I put it in! I had to encase the girl¡¯s body in a pod on an incline so all her remaining fluids stay in her upper half, because if I didn¡¯t, she¡¯d eat her way through the fucking floor! You want me to just put her into the ground?! For what?! She¡¯d just end up sinking herself into the middle of the planet!¡±
The administrator paused for a long while, seeming to struggle to figure out how to respond. ¡°If somebody were to go against your wishes to help somebody dear to them, what would you do?¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
Leo steepled his fingers and met Blake¡¯s gaze with a grave one of his own.
¡°Sofie loves Pari. That is undeniable. Arlette as well. Perhaps even Madam Carreno. I cannot imagine any of them agreeing to let you treat that child¡¯s corpse as a piece of meat for study. If you continue to insist on it, they will act against you. Not out of hatred or enmity towards you, but out of love for the child. So I ask you again: what will you do in that sort of scenario?¡±
To Blake, the answer was obvious. ¡°I don¡¯t care if they do it out of love or anger or hatred or whatever the fuck; motivations don¡¯t matter to me. If somebody is going against me, they¡¯re going against me, period. And I¡¯m going to bring the hammer down on them hard. End of story.¡±
¡°...I see...¡± Leo replied. ¡°I must get back to my work. Is there anything you require, or did you just stop by to chat?¡±
¡°Kind of both? I wanted to talk to somebody for a little who wasn¡¯t bawling their eyes out, but I also wanted your opinion on something. You know how Stragma and Drayhadal joined the war at the last moment and pushed the Ubrans back to the Divide? It seems that Drayhadal is demanding payment for their services from the Eterians, while Stragma basically just pillaged Gustil as they swept through under the guise of ¡®looting Ubran supply chains¡¯. Now, I can¡¯t help but notice that we did far more work than either of those two countries. We lost a lot of valuable crystals, nearly stalled out the technological development of Otharia for months, and gave me a never-ending headache. Yet, we haven¡¯t demanded jack squat from anybody. Seems like an oversight on my part. If they get to be jerks, I want to be a total megajerk.¡±
¡°Hmmmmm... perhaps you are correct.¡±
¡°Of course I am correct. The question is, if I¡¯m gonna flex some, how should I be flexing?¡±
¡°Trade deals,¡± Leo responded after a moment¡¯s pondering.
¡°Trade deals? That seems a little tame compared to what the other two are doing.¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t be so sure. Their actions seem harsh, but they are one-time events. Trade deals last for a long time. You have the power right now to force Eterium, and perhaps even Kutrad, to sign pretty much any trade agreement you desire. Over time, that will gain us more than any single act of pillage or extortion could ever hope to provide. And it will help Otharia grow. Even with your works, there are many things we still have trouble acquiring,¡± he explained, indicating all the documents piled high. ¡°Paper, for one. Sofie tells me she needs mountains of it for her teaching, but even if you were to boost our limited paper industry with better machines, we still would not have the wood we need in the quantity we need. But Eterium and Kutrad have more than enough.¡±
¡°I see, that makes sense,¡± Blake admitted. ¡°See, this is why I come to you. You always know what to do.¡±
For a moment, a worn out and defeated look flashed across the Otharian¡¯s face. ¡°Oh, if only that were true.¡±
Blake paused for a moment outside of Samanta¡¯s room and took a deep breath. He could do this, he told himself.
Leo was right. Blake hated to admit it, but he was the closest thing the kid had to a parent right now, and this sort of thing unfortunately came with the territory.
Sam had always been a largely withdrawn child ever since he¡¯d first met her. The rare outburst aside, she kept her emotions bottled up. Blake had always been grateful for that. It made her so much easier to handle than some child who was always throwing fits or something. Still, he reminded himself that not showing emotion wasn¡¯t the same as not feeling emotion. She was probably suffering just as much as the rest of them.
Taking his helmet off for maximum empathy, he knocked lightly on the door. The hour was fairly late, but he¡¯d checked Alpha a moment ago and he¡¯d reported that she was not yet asleep. However, no answer came.
¡°I¡¯m coming in,¡± he announced, waiting a second and then opening the door. It slid aside to reveal Samanta¡¯s spacious bedroom. Blake¡¯s gaze swept across the room and found the child lying on her side on the bed, her face covered with tears and mucus.
Tears. Fuck.
The girl saw him standing in the doorway and blanched, burying her face in a nearby pillow and shouting ¡°GO AWAY!¡±.
In pretty much any other situation, Blake¡¯s response would have been to do exactly as she demanded and get out as quickly as possible. He hated dealing with this sort of thing, and had found long ago that the simplest solution to that was simply to abandon ship and not deal with it at all. But he couldn¡¯t do that this time.
With a deep breath, he walked into the room and sat down onto the mattress near her feet, drawing a strained cry of protest from the furniture.
¡°You want to talk about it?¡± Blake asked, doing his best TV-dad impression.
¡°No, go away...¡± she muttered through the pillow.
¡°Look, I know we all feel bad about Pari, but-¡±
¡°S-shut up!¡± Sam cried out, finally removing her face from the pillow to give him a heated glare. ¡°You didn¡¯t e-even l-l-like her! Don¡¯t p-pretend you care!¡±
¡°Hoo boy,¡± Blake muttered under his breath. Why couldn¡¯t this sort of thing be easy for him like it was for everybody else?
¡°I don¡¯t have to love somebody to care if they die,¡± he asserted. ¡°I¡¯m sad just like everybody else. But this isn¡¯t about me. This is about you. I just want you to know that I¡¯m here for you if you need me, alright?¡±
¡°Like you w-would ever understand...¡± she sniffed.
¡°Try me,¡± he offered. ¡°I will never understand unless you tell me.¡±
¡°I-I... i-i-it¡¯s...¡± she choked out. ¡°WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!¡±
Blake shifted uncomfortably as Samanta burst out into full-blown bawling.
¡°It¡¯s my fault! She died b-because of me!¡± she cried out. ¡°F-first my family, then P-P-Pari... e-everybody I care about d-dies! If I... i-if I hadn¡¯t been there, if I h-hadn¡¯t th-thought of her as my f-f-friend, i-if...¡±
Blake was not the most emotionally adept person in the world, but even he knew there were ways you were and were not supposed to handle a situation like this. You were supposed to address a grieving child with comfort and caring and all that jazz. Yet, upon hearing her words, Blake couldn¡¯t help himself. He laughed. Hard.
Perhaps because of his inappropriate outburst, Sam¡¯s weeping stilled for a moment as she watched him cackle. After a few moments, Blake¡¯s mirth finally subsided enough to let him catch his breath and regain his composure somewhat.
¡°Oh, Sam, Sam, Sam,¡± he chuckled as he wiped away a tear of laughter. ¡°I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but you are not that important. Reality doesn¡¯t care about who you like.¡±
¡°B-b-but-¡±
¡°No buts. If we want to have a serious discussion about blame here, then let¡¯s start with that. You didn¡¯t kill Pari, just like how you didn¡¯t kill your family. The fault lies, first and foremost, with the people who did the deeds. Don¡¯t try to take their guilt for yourself. Especially since you¡¯re just a child. Let us grownups deal with that bullshit.¡±
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
¡°I-if they hadn¡¯t noticed me, then-¡±
¡°Sam, what did I just say? You can apply that kind of thinking to all different parts of this. If the tavern had bothered to hire a few bouncers, then maybe this wouldn¡¯t have happened. If Sofie and Arlette had hit their panic buttons properly, then maybe this wouldn¡¯t have happened. If Gabriela had brought her sword, this definitely wouldn¡¯t have happened. There¡¯s a thousand ifs involved in any tragedy, and this one is no different.¡±
He let out a heavy sigh.
¡°Let¡¯s be honest, Sam. If you really need to throw more blame around, throw it on me. I should have been able to stomp those terrorists into the ground long ago, and they wouldn¡¯t even exist if I wasn¡¯t here in the first place. I¡¯ve done a poor job on this front, and this is the result. So if you have to blame anybody, blame me and not yourself, alright?¡±
Sam didn¡¯t respond. Instead, she just stared forward towards the wall without blinking. Blake took solace in the fact that she at least wasn¡¯t openly weeping anymore. Perhaps he had done his job successfully after all?
¡°I had a friend once say that nobody is truly dead if people still remember them,¡± Blake continued. ¡°So, let¡¯s try that, huh? I think you¡¯ll agree that Pari is somebody that will be very hard to forget.¡±
Sam snorted, which he took to mean success.
Blake decided that was about all he could manage. His time here was up. His mind was already screaming at him to go anywhere else and leave this emotional bullcrap for some other person at some other time, and he felt a little proud that he¡¯d managed to fight the urge for this long already.
As he went to stand up and leave, Blake paused. There was one thing he needed to tell her. Something that he had never said to her before, but which she deserved to hear.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, by the way. About your family. If I had been a little better, I probably could have saved your mother. But I wasn¡¯t. I was hesitant, and skittish, and I made poor decisions. The final blame will always lie with those terrible men who killed the people you cared for, but still... I¡¯m sorry. Now get some sleep.¡±
He clicked his tongue in disgust as he rose and walked out of Samanta¡¯s room. What was he even saying? Not even half a year ago, he would have never even considered uttering such a thing. He was getting soft.
This was all Sofie¡¯s fault.
¡°You gotta be kidding me...¡± Blake mumbled to himself as he passed by the ¡°morgue¡± the next morning and noticed a certain figure still sitting in the same place beside the slanted pod as she¡¯d been since two nights ago. ¡°Alright, enough. Out!¡±
¡°Wha?¡± Sofie lucidly replied as Blake marched in. Looking at her red, puffy eyes, pale white skin, matted and tangled hair, and generally disheveled appearance, Blake could tell instantly that she hadn¡¯t slept a single moment in more than two days. She even appeared thinner than before, though Blake wasn¡¯t sure if that was real or just a product of the light and his imagination.
¡°Jesus Christ, Sofie,¡± he growled in aggravation. ¡°I get that you¡¯re upset that Pari died, but at the rate you¡¯re going, you¡¯ll be joining her any day now. Go get some sleep!¡±
¡°I¡¯ll... I¡¯ll sleep here,¡± she said, her speech slurring slightly with exhaustion.
¡°No, you won¡¯t. Go!¡± Without waiting for her to cooperate, Blake grabbed her by the upper arms and half-lifted, half-dragged her towards the doorway. ¡°Out! I¡¯m not dealing with this anymore today! Out!¡±
¡°No! Stop!¡± Sofie cried, fighting his robotic grip with a sudden spurt of manic energy. ¡°I¡¯m not going! You can¡¯t make me-¡±
Unceremoniously tossing her into the hallway, he shut the door in her face mid-protest, sealed it, and breathed a contented sigh. Much better. Even the dead deserved their alone time.
Taking a moment, Blake glanced around the room to make sure Sofie hadn¡¯t left something behind. He didn¡¯t need to give her legitimate excuses to come back inside. The chamber was a rather small and sparse one, with only a few chairs set against the walls. The only notable feature was Pari¡¯s ¡°coffin¡± or ¡°tube¡± or ¡°pod¡± or... he wasn¡¯t really sure what to call it.
Its design entirely influenced by various science fiction movies he¡¯d watched throughout his life, the container sported a largely cylindrical shape oriented length-wise to the floor, with a wedge-shaped base attached to the bottom to prop it up at a thirty-degree angle. The half of the cylinder facing upward was actually a set of curved double doors that could recede into the rest of the cylinder, revealing a mesh metal screen. This allowed for viewing without risking physical contact and was the current arrangement. Should it be desired, the screen could also recede into the rest of the cylinder.
Taking a glance at Pari¡¯s body in the tilted tube, Blake noted with amusement that, giant hole in her torso aside, the dead child looked healthier than her living sister. The corpse remained as it had been that day, still covered in what little clothing she¡¯d worn to the tavern, or at least what remained of said clothing after contact with Pari¡¯s blood.
While most of the cloth had been eaten away, one article remained notably intact: the girl¡¯s arm sleeve. Made out of some unknown red organic material, the sleeve was at most a quarter inch thick and covered the entirety of her left forearm. A dark stone could be seen embedded in the center at the top of her arm, its purpose unknown. Blake had noticed the sleeve rather early when they¡¯d first met, as it stuck out against the rest of her outfit. According to Sofie, the child had been wearing the covering as long as they¡¯d known each other, and she refused to take it off for any reason, not even when bathing. Apparently it was a gift from her beloved ¡°grandfather¡±, and that was all she would say about it. When it came to ¡°grandfather¡±, Pari rarely said much at all, other than talking about how amazing he was.
Blake slid the screen out of the way, exposing the body. He wanted to know more about this item. The fact that it was the only thing other than Pari herself to survive her all-consuming blood had to mean something. Reaching down with his right hand, Blake gingerly touched the sleeve and the hand sticking out of it with metal-clad fingers, making sure that nothing was going to eat away at him. Satisfied he was safe, he willed the metal to flow up his arm, revealing his flesh to the air. Using his nails, he tried to pry up the edge of the sleeve, but to no avail. No matter how hard he tried, the sleeve seemed adhered to her skin, almost as if they were one and the same.
¡°What the hell?¡± he muttered in frustration and confusion. His failure to pry the sleeve from Pari¡¯s arm bothered him, but something else was bothering him more. Something was wrong. He just couldn¡¯t put his finger on it. He touched the arm and hand again, and suddenly it clicked.
The hand felt warm.
Blake was no forensics expert, but he knew that two-day-old bodies were not supposed to feel warm. To make sure, he reached out and touched the child¡¯s foot sticking up at the raised end of the tube. It too felt warm. No, no, this would not do. This would not do at all.
Creating a scalpel and small dish from the nearby wall, he carefully sliced off a small piece of the toe¡ªa thin square perhaps a half-inch each long and wide¡ªonce more making sure that no technicolor light show started up. He needed to look into this further. Adjusting the thermostat for the room to funnel as much of the chilly morning air as possible into the room before the day heated up¡ªhe would figure out air conditioning one day, he swore¡ªhe stopped just before heading back outside. Though he couldn¡¯t hear any noise coming from the other side of the door, Blake figured the odds of Sofie being there were too high for him to risk walking out holding a piece of Pari in his hand. Making a temporary doorway in a different wall instead, he made his way to his quarters for some investigatory experiments.
Several hours later, a persistent buzzing broke Blake away from his observations. Perhaps that was good, he allowed. His biology knowledge going no farther than what he¡¯d learned in high school, he¡¯d found himself frustrated as he first stumbled through creating the necessary equipment and then stumbled even harder trying to figure out what was going on with the Pari sample. He needed a reason to take a break.
Checking the screen, Blake found Arlette standing there waiting patiently for him. The former mercenary appeared not much better off than Sofie had, showing just how fervently busy she¡¯d been since the incident. Still, he knew Arlette was pragmatic enough to know when to sleep, unlike a certain other person. He could tell from the way she carried herself after Pari¡¯s death that this wasn¡¯t the first person she cared about to die an untimely death.
Miss Demirt¡¯s performance as his head of national security had been, by and large, fairly good so far¡ªbetter in some aspects than he¡¯d dared hope, even. She¡¯d taken to using his skitters almost as if she¡¯d grown up in a work with technology, leveraging his forces with skill and an eye for logistics that he had not expected. In almost all aspects, everything was going great. Sadly, almost all was not all.
The guerrilla terrorist movement that had sprung up several months ago remained a problem that neither she nor he was able to solve. Arlette seemed outright ashamed of her inability and kept pushing herself harder to try to tackle this mysterious group. On one hand, he liked that she refused to simply accept her failure. On the other, well, he¡¯d worked in the tech industry. He knew what burnout could do to a person, and he thought he could see it approaching with her. Perhaps, with what she came to tell him, that would soon change.
Resuiting, he hurried out to the private meeting room located near the outside of his quarters. Several terrorists had survived that woman¡¯s rampage, and Arlette had scooped them up and carted them back to the fortress dungeon for interrogation quickly after the attack. Her presence could only mean she was finally finished. Eager to finally pluck out this thorn in his reign¡¯s side, he opened the door and allowed her inside. She entered and sat down stiffly, a look of worn-down resignation on her face. Blake didn¡¯t like what that meant. Still, he allowed himself some room for hope.
¡°Well? Done squeezing everything you could out of them, I presume? Did you find out who their leader is? Where they¡¯re hiding?¡±
Arlette shook her head. ¡°It wasn¡¯t them.¡±
¡°...what?!¡±
¡°No training, no organization, just a bunch of idiots with weapons who looked at the real terrorist movement and said ¡®let¡¯s do that too¡¯,¡± she moaned, putting her face in her hands and massaging it wearily. ¡°Part of the reason I took so long is that I had to be sure this wasn¡¯t some ruse designed to throw us off the trail of the real rebel movement, but unfortunately I¡¯m convinced now that it¡¯s real.¡±
¡°Seriously?! These assholes are just copycats?!¡± Blake blurted out in irate astonishment.
Arlette nodded. ¡°That is, sadly, exactly what this is. They all got it in their heads that now was the time to ¡®fight the good fight¡¯ and slaughter a bunch of people in a tavern. What bothers me the most is that this probably won¡¯t be the last group to get such ideas.¡±
¡°Ugh, that¡¯s just going to be more noise for us to have to sort through. This is such a fucking mess...¡±
¡°I...¡± Arlette hesitated, unsure if she should continue her thought.
¡°Yeah? What¡¯s on your mind?¡±
¡°I keep coming back to the question of why didn¡¯t the skitters activate?¡±
¡°We went over this,¡± Blake reminded her. ¡°You didn¡¯t hit the panic buttons properly. That¡¯s the only explanation.¡±
¡°Both of us?¡±
¡°If a signal had been sent, not only would the nearby skitters have activated, an alarm would have gone off back here. A very loud alarm. I would not have missed it. So obviously, no signal fired, so you must not have activated the button properly.¡± He glared at her through his mask. ¡°Or are you saying my technology failed?¡±
¡°Ah- no, no,¡± Arlette rushed to add, ¡°I just meant, if somebody else-¡±
¡°There is nobody else,¡± Blake shot back. ¡°The only other people who could make crystal tech have been dead for a long, long time. I can only do it because of my powers; I tried to make a machine to create the circuit channels, but even I couldn¡¯t figure out a way to generate them outside of my own special abilities. So are you suggesting that one of these people, who you yourself referred to as ¡®idiots¡¯, was able to figure out something I could not? Come on. Look, I pay you in part to be paranoid, but there¡¯s a point where you¡¯re just getting scared of your own shadow and you seem to have crossed past that point a while ago.¡±
¡°I apologize, sir, I-¡±
¡°Don¡¯t apologize, just get your head on straight. I¡¯ve seen you tearing your hair out over this before, and Pari dying just makes it all that much worse, but you can¡¯t let this become your white whale or-¡±
Blake¡¯s sermon cut off mid-sentence as an ear-splitting screech of metal being ripped apart interrupted the conference. Arlette jumped, looking up at the ceiling in the direction of the terrible noise.
¡°Shit...¡± he grumbled.
¡°What was that?¡± Arlette asked.
¡°She¡¯s back. I think we need to get up there, now.¡±
His underling trailing behind him, Blake strode quickly out of his personal quarters and made his way up to the room housing Pari¡¯s corpse. There he found a ragged, gaping hole where the door was supposed to be and a loose ball of crushed metal lying on the other side of the hallway. Peeking inside, he found himself staring back at two blazingly furious pairs of eyes. He had just enough time to notice Sam sitting in the corner, looking somewhat shell-shocked with her eyes glazed over, before that woman roughly grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him inside.
¡°What are you trying to do?¡± Gabriela fumed, her grip tightening to the point that his shoulder armor began to dent.
¡°Madam Gabriela, please release my employer,¡± Arlette said as she emerged from behind his armored form.
¡°Arlette!¡± Sofie cried out. ¡°He wants to keep Pari for himself and use her to make bombs and stuff!¡±
¡°What part of ¡®go fucking sleep¡¯ are you unable to understand?!¡± Blake shot back.
¡°Shut up! You don¡¯t understand anything!¡± the exhausted woman snapped, her eyes wet with tears. ¡°You weren¡¯t there! You don¡¯t see her dying gaze every time you close your eyes!¡±
¡°Sofie, calm yourself,¡± Arlette said, stepping between the two. She turned back to him and, with traces of danger in her tone, asked, ¡°Sir, is what she says true?¡±
¡°No!¡± Blake exclaimed. ¡°I don¡¯t want to use her to make bombs!¡±
¡°And you have no thoughts of keeping her corpse for other experiments, yes? We will bury her with the dignity any child deserves?¡±
¡°I mean, uh, look, I think-¡±
¡°Part of her toe is missing!¡± Sofie gasped. ¡°It wasn¡¯t like that before! Somebody cut it off!¡±
Those words were all it took to ignite the tension in the room as three separate voices made their outrage known to him at thunderous volume.
¡°How dare you-¡±
¡°-no respect for the dead-¡±
¡°-might have been wrong in my assessment-¡±
¡°Hey, I took that sample for a reason!¡± Blake argued into the noise.
¡°-complete human garbage-¡±
¡°-utterly sinful-¡±
¡°-might have to reconsider our arrangement-¡±
¡°Goddammit! Will you people just listen to me?! Look! LOOK!¡± he hollered over the din, grabbing Sofie¡¯s hand and pulling her over to Pari¡¯s container and shoving her hand against the dead child¡¯s toes. Everybody stopped for a moment, looking at them both in confusion.
Sofie¡¯s went wide as she slowly wrapped her whole hand around the dainty foot. ¡°It¡¯s... warm?¡± she asked. ¡°Dead bodies shouldn¡¯t be warm.¡±
¡°Right! That¡¯s why I took the sample, so I could look into this! And that¡¯s why I turned the temperature in here down, too. I wanted to make sure the warmth was coming from inside her and not because you were doing something to her while I wasn¡¯t around.¡±
¡°You... why didn¡¯t you tell us?!¡± Sofie demanded accusingly.
¡°Because I wanted to try to get some answers first without you all piling on me like this! I just discovered it myself only a few hours ago!¡±
¡°And?¡± This time is was Arlette. ¡°Did you find anything?¡±
Blake cleared his throat. ¡°Okay, look, biology is not my field of expertise, but... I don¡¯t think she¡¯s dead.¡±
¡°She¡¯s alive?!¡± Gabriela gasped.
¡°No, at least by my definition of alive, she is not,¡± he quickly corrected with a shake of his head. ¡°She¡¯s not breathing, her heart isn¡¯t beating, her brain probably isn¡¯t firing, and I don¡¯t see any sign that she¡¯s healing. She¡¯s not alive. But somehow, almost two days after all of this, her cells aren¡¯t dead. Her individual cells, on their own, are still functioning.¡±
¡°B-but how?¡± Sofie stuttered.
Blake shrugged. ¡°No idea. With no blood to nourish them, they should have shut down long ago. But they haven¡¯t.¡±
¡°The poor thing,¡± Gabby said so softly that Blake almost didn¡¯t hear it. ¡°Trapped in limbo, stuck between life and death.¡±
¡°This is terrible! Her spirit cannot pass on if she is not truly dead!¡± Arlette bemoaned.
¡°Um...¡± a small voice said.
¡°But this doesn¡¯t change anything,¡± Sofie stated.
¡°I agree,¡± Arlette added. ¡°Alive, dead, or in between, it doesn¡¯t matter. Pari is not a test subject.¡±
¡°H-hey everybody...¡±
¡°What the hell is wrong with you people?!¡± Blake cried out in exasperation. ¡°Her blood fucking destroys all matter it touches and you don¡¯t want to even look into it?!¡±
¡°Blake-¡±
¡°Sam, be quiet! The adults are talking,¡± Blake irritably scolded the child.
¡°But... her arm thing is being... weird,¡± she said, pointing into the tube.
¡°It¡¯s what?¡± Sofie asked as they all crowded around to look at what Sam was indicating.
Due to lack of space, Blake found himself standing behind Sofie and looking over her shoulder. When he did, he found that the sleeve he¡¯d tried to remove was slowly changing color. The crimson color was slowly draining away, leaving behind the familiar, soft pink of flesh. Blake¡¯s eyes went wide as he realized that he could see blood vessels winding this way and that through the sleeve, separate from Pari¡¯s darker skin beneath. Was this thing somehow alive?
¡°Has it ever done this before?¡± he asked Sofie. If anybody would know more about this thing, it was her.
¡°No, never,¡± Sofie said authoritatively.
Suddenly, a translucent blister nearly two inches in diameter sprouted up from the surface, growing up and around the small stone embedded in the center of the sleeve. The blister flooded with the crimson color that had suffused the entire sleeve just moments ago, and the stone¡ªnow fully encapsulated by the blister¡ªfloated free of its former position. Lurching to one side, the stone pressed up against one side of the blister¡¯s thick membrane.
¡°What the hell is going on?¡± he wondered aloud, his mind blown. This... this was biotechnology! This was science fiction-level shit right here! Sophistication far beyond anything that Earth was capable of!
¡°I don¡¯t have a clue,¡± Arlette admitted.
¡°Wait, look!¡± Sofie gasped. ¡°Is that-!¡±
Blake quickly spotted the cause of Sofie¡¯s outburst. Both above and below the newly formed blister, certain blood vessels were starting to bloat and darken, causing them to become easily visible to everybody. Blake watched in complete shock and amazement as the blood vessels finished darkening, leaving a series of clear lines that Blake recognized. Though he couldn¡¯t read the language, he had seen enough Eterian Common to know what it looked like.
¡°What does it say?¡± he wondered.
¡°It says...¡± Sofie leaned in to get a better look. ¡°No way...¡±
¡°It says ¡®no way¡¯?¡± he replied, puzzled.
¡°No,¡± Arlette explained, a look of concern on her face. ¡°It says ¡®follow bubble, bring body for great reward¡¯. Now that Pari¡¯s dead, somebody wants her back.¡±
Chapter 90
¡°Grandfather. This has to be him,¡± Sofie said, voicing the thoughts of everybody in the room.
¡°What does it mean by bubble?¡± Gabby wondered.
¡°The blister that swallowed the stone, probably,¡± Blake said, pointing at the translucent pocket of crimson liquid poking out about an inch from the rest of the fleshy arm wrapping.
¡°But how do you follow it?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°I think it¡¯s the stone,¡± Blake explained, indicating the stone floating inside the blister. As he spoke, it could be seen pressed against the blister¡¯s membrane on one side, about a third of the way up the hemisphere. Carefully grabbing the dead child¡¯s hand, he lifted the arm up and turned it this way and that. ¡°Yeah, look. See how it points in the same direction no matter which way you orient it?¡±
¡°How strange,¡± Sofie commented.
¡°Which direction is it pointing?¡± Sam inquired.
Blake called forth his mental map of the fortress. The room in which they stood was located on the 4th floor, near the center of the fortress. Given the direction of the door, and the way they were standing in the room-
¡°North,¡± Arlette said easily. ¡°It points north.¡±
¡°Haaaahhhhh,¡± Sofie sighed with exhaustion. ¡°Well, time to go pack for the trip...¡±
¡°Trip?¡± Gabby asked, confused. ¡°You want to follow some creepy instructions made out of blood vessels from somebody you¡¯ve never met? Even with how worn down you are?¡±
¡°Yes?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s at least wait until we¡¯ve rested and leave tomorrow morning,¡± Arlette suggested.
¡°No, I can¡¯t rest without some sort of closure. I¡¯ve been trying, but I just can¡¯t. Let¡¯s just go now. Besides, I want to meet the mythical man who shaped Pari¡¯s life so much. He deserves to know what happened.¡± Sofie turned to Blake, her eyes daring him to oppose this sudden new itinerary. ¡°Unless you still want to try to experiment on her?¡±
Blake couldn¡¯t help but scoff. ¡°You think I¡¯m going to pass up a chance to meet the man who made this?!¡± he asked in disbelief, waving his hand towards the pulsating covering. ¡°This is living technology! This is science fiction story stuff! What¡¯s the point of studying Pari when this person could surely explain it all to me in under five minutes?
¡°Besides, anybody who can do this can definitely create other powerful and dangerous things, like poison gas or maybe even viral agents. I don¡¯t like the idea of somebody hiding in the shadows when they might be able to make weapons of mass destruction. Why has nobody heard of anything like this before? Why hasn¡¯t ¡®grandfather¡¯ conquered the world already? I need answers to this shit, pronto.¡±
¡°Oh. Well then...¡±
¡°Everyone get ready,¡± Blake declared. ¡°We¡¯re leaving as soon as possible.¡±
¡°Hey Blake, stay here for a second, would you?¡± Sofie asked as everybody else, including Blake, made to leave the room.
Blake paused for a moment, thought about it, and decided to stick around for a moment to see what she wanted.
Sofie turned to face him with an angry scowl, her hands at her hips, causing Blake to immediately regret his choice. He knew this look and this pose, having seen it far too many times. He¡¯d done something wrong, or at least something she viewed as wrong, and how he was going to get scolded for it like he was an elementary school student sent to the principal''s office. The only question was what had gotten her so irate this time.
¡°Did you really laugh at Samanta while she was grieving?¡± she inquired, though her tone made it sound far more like an accusation than a question.
¡°Oh, here we go,¡± Blake groused back. ¡°Does she have you on speed dial or something? It¡¯s like she tells you every single thing I do.¡±
¡°Blake, I¡¯m too tired to deal with your crap today!¡±
He rolled his eyes in annoyance. ¡°¡®Blake, you¡¯re such an uncaring jerk! Have some empathy for once!¡¯ ¡®Blake, how dare you try to be empathetic!¡¯ Make up your goddamned mind, Sofie!¡±
¡°You don¡¯t laugh at a crying child, Blake!¡±
¡°I wasn¡¯t laughing at her, I was laughing at her idea!¡± he shot back. ¡°She seriously thought she caused the deaths of both Pari and her family like she was cursed or some shit. I was right to laugh! You can¡¯t coddle that sort of stupidity; you have to stomp it into the ground as brutally as you can. The sooner she realizes how stupid such thoughts are, the better off she will be.¡±
Though no longer glaring daggers at him, Sofie still did not appear entirely swayed by his brilliant argument. ¡°You¡¯re just saying that now to justify it after the fact.¡±
Blake folded his arms in front of his chest in defiance. She was mostly right, though he would never admit it. At the time, he¡¯d just found her bizarre assertion hilarious and the next thing he knew, he¡¯d found himself cackling at the thought. But his argument just now was true, and he was going to stick to it.
¡°She stopped crying, so it worked,¡± he stated factually. ¡°I helped. Admit it.¡±
Sofie sighed. ¡°I appreciate that you actually tried for once. Just... think about what you¡¯re saying a little more first.¡±
¡°Sorry, I couldn¡¯t hear you. Speak louder,¡± he prodded her.
Now it was Sofie¡¯s turn to roll her eyes. ¡°Fine, you helped! A bit! You also made her really confused and kinda lost.¡±
¡°But I helped.¡±
¡°Ugh, you¡¯re like a student being smug about getting a D on a test because you didn¡¯t fail.¡±
¡°Because-¡±
¡°I swear, Blake, if you say ¡®I-¡±
¡°-I helped!¡±
¡°You know what? I don¡¯t have the energy for this. I¡¯m going to go pack.¡±
¡°You want me to... help you with that?¡±
Sofie threw double middle fingers his way as she plodded from the room, leaving Blake all alone with a victorious smirk on his face. He headed for his quarters a few moments later after preparing Pari¡¯s pod for transport, that smug grin still there behind his mask. Sometimes, one had to revel in small victories.
The Flying Toaster¡¯s engines hummed powerfully as the craft pushed north through the winds of northern Eterium. Standing by a window and looking down at the scenery below, Blake felt a sense of peace that he hadn¡¯t felt in a while. He missed riding in his prized zeppelin. He¡¯d built it for his own use, but then his involvement in the invasion had stolen any opportunities to enjoy his creation. Now that things were less busy, he took every chance he could to enjoy the fruits of his labor, even in strange circumstances such as these. He never knew when he would suddenly be needed again, which was why Bernards and a Many were back in the cabin section, just in case Leo needed him for an emergency.
Luckily, they¡¯d been traveling for most of a full day and no such disaster had popped up yet. He, Arlette, Sofie, Sam, and Gabriela were taking turns monitoring the bubble on Pari¡¯s arm covering, switching every few hours. This was now more difficult than before. After creating the pod several days ago as a base to keep Pari¡¯s body from shifting and letting her remaining blood leak out, these new circumstances had forced Blake to create a base for the base to keep the entire thing from tipping too far one way or another. The resulting gimbal ring and gyroscopic design took up about seven feet of space in all directions, meaning it was now harder to see Pari¡¯s arm sleeve and the guiding bubble inside than before, even with the mirrors he¡¯d added.
So far, the biotech continued to point in the same direction as before, leading to a very dull, event-free ride. That suited Blake just fine. After the last few days, it felt nice to have a few moments of stillness. It let him let his guard down just a little and unwind.
He wasn¡¯t the only person to benefit from this, either. Perhaps because a resolution of sorts seemed nigh, Sofie had finally fallen asleep perhaps six hours prior. Her slumber was so deep that not even falling off her seat had woken her up. They¡¯d moved her to a cabin where she was probably still snoring away. Sam had gone off to rest as well, leaving Gabriela to watch the bubble while Blake and Arlette just chilled.
The Scyrian stood nearby, one hand tightly holding a drink and the other noticeably clutching at the fabric of her pants. Blake found it strange. She hadn¡¯t acted so high-strung during the many hours they¡¯d been up in the sky so far, so it was unlikely this was some sort of fear of heights suddenly manifesting.
Should he inquire about it? Blake waffled between curiosity and respect for privacy for a moment, but his boredom quickly joined curiosity¡¯s side and ended the contest. After so many hours just standing around, he needed to talk to somebody about something for a little while. Anything would do.
¡°Something wrong?¡±
Arlette stiffened in surprise as if he¡¯d suddenly and violently pulled her from her thoughts. He hadn¡¯t realized she had been so deep in her own thoughts and winced mentally.
¡°It¡¯s fine, I don¡¯t mean to pry too hard,¡± he assured her as she shuffled uncomfortably.
¡°No, it¡¯s alright,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°I was just caught up in some bad memories. If Pari¡¯s guidance doesn¡¯t change soon, we¡¯ll be heading into Kutrad. I have many memories of that place, the vast majority of them I would rather forget entirely.¡±
¡°Ah, I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± Blake said, looking down at the world far below. Several small points of light marked a small village to their west. ¡°At least you can take solace in the fact that they are all the way down there and we are all the way up here. There is nothing Kutrad or anybody in it can do to harm us now.¡±
¡°Hmm...¡± she grunted in reply. ¡°That is how you see the world, is it? I think I better understand now why you are how you are.¡±
¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡±
¡°It¡¯s so easy to reduce everybody else to little more than a speck in your mind from up here. Just a speck in a sea of other specks. Nameless, storyless, and without merit. As you said, they cannot touch you. So why even acknowledge their individual existence? The collective is all that matters.¡±
¡°Do you have a problem with how I view things?¡± Blake asked irritably.
¡°I think that your refusal to interact with those under your rule on a person-to-person basis could be considered a weakness of sorts. It leaves you blind to certain things.¡±
¡°Getting too close is what leaves you blind,¡± Blake argued. ¡°If you get too caught up in peoples¡¯ individual stories, you will become unable to see the larger picture.¡±
¡°Some would say that the larger picture is nothing more than those individual stories combined into a whole.¡±
¡°Some would, but I¡¯m not one of them,¡± Blake stated matter-of-factly. ¡°My goal has always been change, and accomplishing change means breaking things as much as it means building things. Get too invested in the individual and you risk losing the will to do what needs to be done.¡±
¡°Such an approach comes with its own downsides. As you are now, you will always be the invader no matter how long you rule. The underground rebellion manifesting now is just one facet of this.¡±
¡°I tried that before,¡± he reminded her irritably. ¡°That¡¯s how I ended up in the shape I am today. I¡¯m an Elseling. They will never accept me on their own.¡±
¡°The same could be said for Sofie, or even myself. And yet, I don¡¯t see anybody up in arms over her.¡±
¡°Sofie doesn¡¯t count,¡± Blake scoffed. ¡°She¡¯s so unthreatening that even Otharians don¡¯t feel fear when they meet her. One look at her and you immediately know she¡¯s so pathetic that she could never be a danger to anybody. That part of why I keep her around. That harmlessness can come in handy sometimes.¡±
Arlette chuckled. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t say that if you were there with me when we confronted King Morgan. I have seen few people more vindictive and ruthless than she was then.¡±
¡°The ruler of Kutrad?¡± Blake inquired, puzzled.
¡°Did she not tell you about it?¡±
¡°Well, she said that you and she escaped from the Xoginia¡¯s dungeons, but didn¡¯t really go into detail beyond that,¡± Blake explained. ¡°Why, what happened?¡±
¡°Well, escaping from the dungeon was a far more complicated escapade than she likely made it sound...¡±
She went on to describe how she¡¯d escaped and the variety of events that ended up with her, Pari, and Sofie alone in a room with the monarch of an entire nation. With every new step in the story, Blake¡¯s respect for the woman increased even more. He congratulated himself on his hire. Her ordeal showed just how determined and resourceful she was and highlighted her ability to make the best of a bad situation. He needed more subordinates like her.
¡°...and I just kept pounding away at his face, over and over. I think I broke every bone in his face. Or I hope I did, at least.¡±
¡°Wait, wait, are you the reason he still has most of his face wrapped in bandages?¡± Blake interrupted in disbelief.
¡°What?¡±
¡°I just saw him by Many like a week ago and he still has those bandages wrapped around his face and he never talks. He just writes something down and this other guy talks for him.¡±
¡°How strange. I did a lot of damage but he should have been able to heal in maybe twenty days or so. If he¡¯s still like that, then it must be for some other reason.¡±
Blake shrugged. ¡°So what does this have to do with Sofie again?¡±
¡°Oh, right. I was just getting to that. So, once I had vented my emotions on King Morgan¡¯s head, Sofie vented her own on his second head.¡±
Blake froze, a deep foreboding dread suddenly building inside of him. ¡°Wait, you don¡¯t mean-¡±
¡°With her foot,¡± Arlette clarified, a strangely proud smile on her face. ¡°Repeatedly. Until his balls were little more than paste.¡±
Blake couldn¡¯t even feel his equipment anymore and the thought still sent shivers of horror coursing down his spine. Never before had he ever been glad to have been punched in the face.
¡°Sofie is gentle, to a fault even,¡± Arlette continued. ¡°But I am glad that she is the way she is, because I shudder to consider what she might be capable of without that to hold her back. People who are convinced of their own righteousness as strongly as she is are often the most dangerous people of all.¡±
¡°Hey, don¡¯t look at me that way when you say that,¡± Blake grumbled in protest.
Arlette merely raised her eyebrows without comment and took a drink.
¡°What do you mean, it still points north?!¡± Blake complained as he stared in consternation at the mountains standing in the way of the Flying Toaster. The mid-morning sunlight shining off their towering peaks, they presented a significant and unexpected problem. ¡°Isn¡¯t this the end of Kutrad?¡±
Arlette cleared her throat. ¡°Technically, Kutrad claims the mountains and all land beyond it as their territory as well, but they have never been able to develop the mountain range. All they¡¯ve been able to do is mine some of the closer mountains. I¡¯ve heard rumors that anybody who tried to explore deeper into the mountains would just disappear, but that¡¯s probably just a rumor caused by the violent winds and snow.¡±
¡°Maybe we misunderstood how to read the bubble?¡± Gabriela offered.
Blake shook his head. ¡°We already tried going laterally and it shifted. It¡¯s definitely pointing somewhere in these mountains or past them.¡±
¡°Doesn¡¯t this make sense, though?¡± Sofie pointed out. ¡°You were wondering how nobody knew about the organic technology on Pari¡¯s arm. What if there¡¯s a secret society of people hidden in these mountains or beyond?¡±
¡°That¡¯s... actually a good point,¡± Blake allowed. He turned to face all the rest of the group. ¡°Is there anybody who objects to continuing forward?¡±
Nobody objected, leaving Blake nodding in satisfaction. This whole unplanned adventure was getting more intriguing by the minute!
Looking at the peaks rising even higher than the Flying Toaster¡¯s maximum altitude, Blake imagined the thin spaces and strong winds lurking within the range and decided that it would be better to proceed on the ground from this point forward. Thankfully, he had a whole bay full of battle skitters for protection, as well as two transport skitters, loaded in the back of the airship because of course he did. This was the first time he¡¯d left the confines of Otharia. There was no way his paranoia would let him leave without maximum protection. There was no telling what they would find, after all.
¡°Very well, then!¡± he said as he clapped his hands together. ¡°We¡¯re going to have to get off and continue on the ground. Everybody take a shit now while you still can.¡±
Three hours later, as the group¡¯s skitter convoy wound its way deeper and deeper into the mountain range, Blake felt glad he¡¯d decided to anchor the Flying Toaster at the range¡¯s edge instead of trying to take the zeppelin further north. Given how heavily the winds swirled and whipped about as they battered his face with snow-chilled gusts, his beloved aircraft would have been blown into a mountainside within the first half-hour.
Not everybody was as happy about it as he was, however.
¡°Ahhhhhh, why does it have to be so COLD!?¡± Sofie hollered impotently into the wind as she huddled in the back of the skitter¡¯s cabin, trying to avoid the brunt of the cold with little success.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
¡°Well, maybe you should have packed cold weather clothes?¡± Blake returned with a shrug. ¡°You knew we were going north.¡±
¡°Not this far north!¡± she shot back.
Blake silently admitted that she had a point. Nobody had expected them to be where they were now, not even Blake. He¡¯d expected their destination to be hidden, yes, but hidden somewhere in known territory, not the little of Scyria that remained uncharted lands. Hadn¡¯t Sofie said that they¡¯d found her in a rocky desert? There were no rocky deserts here.
¡°Arlette and Sam brought warm clothes,¡± he pointed out with barely disguised amusement, leaving out the fact that Gabriela had not. Unlike Blake¡¯s gadfly, she seemed intent on just weathering the cold as silently as she could.
¡°Always be prepared,¡± Arlette remarked with a shrug, ignoring Sofie¡¯s glare.
Blake understood Sofie¡¯s mistake. The weather in Scyria was far less extreme than that on Earth, with far milder winters and summers than those found on the equivalent latitudes. What was really making it so cold here, cold enough that there was still snow covering large patches of the ground, was the elevation.
Blake hadn¡¯t expected to be climbing through mountain passes any more than Sofie had, but he wasn¡¯t about to admit that. This was a contest of wills, and he wasn¡¯t going to give in before she did. He knew he could put up a metal covering around either of them to block the wind chill, but he wanted her to have to be the one to ask him for help. Though she remained her highly vocal self, that was one thing she refused to say. For now, at least; give it another hour and her tune would probably change.
Unlike the zeppelin ride, Blake had found the last few hours tedious in the worst way¡ªwhich was another reason to get what jollies he could from Sofie¡¯s discomfort. Blake¡¯s skitters were not especially nimble on the treacherous and unstable mountain, so the convoy had to proceed slowly. Even then, he still had to manage the ten autonomous battle skitters and make sure none of them got stuck or fell down an incline. Most of all, though, he had to take care with the second transport skitter, the one filled by Pari¡¯s pod and the contraptions keeping it stable in this uneven terrain. The last thing they needed right now was to have super acid dripping through his skitters in the middle of nowhere.
They were still making much faster progress than they would have on foot, but he was getting sick of the constant bumps, the stops and starts, the blustering winds, and the brown, gray, and white landscape. At this point, his only source of amusement was trying to spot the rare speck of green poking through the snow. Perhaps these mountains were beautiful in the summer, but they were simply ugly now.
¡°We¡¯ve gone so far that I haven¡¯t been able to see the end of the mountains for more than an hour,¡± Gabriela observed after a while. ¡°What did you say the name of these mountains was? How far north do they go?¡±
¡°The Krekard Mountains,¡± Arlette replied stiffly, staring out at the featureless peaks, her eyes darting about. ¡°And nobody knows how far they go.¡±
¡°Is something the matter?¡± Sofie inquired anxiously. ¡°You¡¯ve been extra tense ever since we got off the ship.¡±
Arlette opened her mouth to answer, but something else answered first: a low, rumbling roar off in the distance, loud enough to echo across mountains. Blake immediately felt the hairs on his skin stand on end and his heartbeat quicken, as if ancient instincts were suddenly manifesting for the first time.
¡°T-that sound! We need to leave! Now!¡± Arlette cried immediately, clutching the side of the transport skitter with white-knuckled panic.
¡°Why?! What the fuck was that?!¡± he asked, looking around for the source of the noise.
¡°Oh, no no no! Not another one!¡± Sofie shouted, backing further into the corner.
¡°What?! Another what?!¡± Blake hollered back as another roar sounded out, this one loud enough that it seemed to shake the very rock beneath them.
¡°A god!¡± Arlette cried out.
¡°A dragon!¡± Sofie answered at the same time.
¡°Run! Turn around now, while we still can!¡± Arlette shouted, her eyes wide with terror.
Blake couldn¡¯t believe what he was hearing. A god? A dragon? A real live dragon? Sure, he knew all about Othar the so-called ¡°Dragon Slayer¡±, and Sofie had told him some story about how a dragon had shown up out of nowhere and turned a Kutrad city into rubble, but he¡¯d never been able to fully believe any of it. If dragons existed, where had they been since Othar¡¯s time? And then they just suddenly appeared again thousands of years later, ruined a city, and then vanished once more into thin air for no reason? It didn¡¯t make any sense and had led him to doubt that any of it was truly real.
But this was all too real. He could feel it in his bones. Something was coming. Something huge.
Blake turned the convoy around as quickly as he could, reorganizing the battle skitters to better cover them with three on each flank and four at their rear, with the two transport skitters in the center. They only made it a few steps before Gabriela pointed up into the sky.
¡°I see it!¡± she called out. ¡°It¡¯s coming this way!¡±
Blake risked a look back and paled at the sight. A real, honest-to-god dragon of the western fantasy variety, with massive reptilian wings, four legs, a long tail, and an extended neck ending in a large head featuring a mouth large enough to swallow a battle skitter whole. Tan scales covered the behemoth, the mid-day light reflecting off them all across its more than eighty-foot-long body as it soared through the skies far up above them, growing larger and larger by the second as it descended rapidly. A beast of pure fury and teeth and claws and death, its giant eyes shone with malevolence as it opened its gaping maw, a foreboding glow gleaming from behind those deadly oversized teeth.
¡°Shit shit shit!¡± Blake swore to himself as he directed every battle skitter to open fire upon the incoming monstrosity. A hail of metal shot up into the sky, streaking towards the dragon, but it paid the barrage no mind. The glow within its mouth intensified, and then the beast let loose a beam of blinding light which swept across the right side of their battle formation faster than he could react in real-time. A blast of scorching wind and debris followed just a split second later, rocking the transport skitters and eliciting a cry of fear from somebody behind him.
The dragon released another deafening roar, this one of pain and anger, as the rounds fired by Blake¡¯s skitters hit home, the metal digging into its flesh, but it kept coming all the same. The bullets seemed to cause it pain but little else. So far, they were doing little more than making it angrier.
Blake was barely paying attention to the dragon at that moment. He was too busy looking at the burning, melted line in the ground and the bisected remains of the three skitters on their right flank, his brain trying to keep up with what he¡¯d just witnessed. A third of his fighting strength had vanished in less than a second.
They were so fucked.
The dragon¡¯s dive towards them continued unabated, the distance between them shrinking at an alarming rate. The seven remaining battle skitters kept firing as the beast closed in, the decreased distance meaning less time for gravity and air drag to weaken their shots. The bullets left lines of wounds in the great animal¡¯s body, but even now they seemed to do little more than superficial damage.
BOOM!
Then it was upon them, its many-ton body slamming down onto the three skitters on their left flank and crushing them into scrap with a mighty crash. The land shook from the massive impact, the transport skitters swaying wildly as they tried to keep from tipping over. Blake thanked his own skill as they managed to stay on their feet, but that was about the only good development. They were down to four battle skitters now, though given their lack of punch, they might as well have had none.
¡°Move! Run!¡± shouted a voice behind him, but it barely even registered in Blake¡¯s mind. He was too preoccupied with the hulking menace of rage and malice in front of him to process anything else.
The dragon turned its head to look at him with a single giant eye larger than Blake¡¯s entire body just as a shape zipped past him and shot towards the gargantuan beast at great speed. Gabriela had decided to enter the fight, a half-skitter clutched by the leg in her hands. The dragon roared out a challenge as she streaked for its face, then roared louder in pain as she slammed the improvised blunt weapon against the side of its skull with her great strength. The monster¡¯s head and neck were flung to the side by the strike, causing the mammoth creature to list to the side for a moment.
The dragon struck back hard and swift, its long tail whipping around and battering the final battle skitters aside like a bowling ball plowing through pins. Blake¡¯s blood went cold as he realized that the tail wasn¡¯t stopping there. With a mighty crash, it smashed into Blake¡¯s skitter, buckling the legs and sending him sailing uncontrollably through the air. As he tumbled, he caught a glimpse of Sofie, Sam, and Arlette hightailing it away perhaps two hundred feet from the transport skitter. He¡¯d been so caught up with the dragon that he hadn¡¯t noticed them jumping ship behind him. Well, that was good. They would probably live a few minutes longer than the rest of them.
Entering Hyper Mode, Blake puffed out his armor to create a crumple zone in the hopes of absorbing as much of the landing impact as possible, as he¡¯d done before when fighting Gabriela. This go around, however, he had more than a few milliseconds to work with, and the force was far less than a full-force strike from an absurdly amped superpowered madwoman. It still hurt as he landed in a heap against the rocky ground, just nowhere near as much as the last time. He was fairly certain nothing had broken, though he¡¯d have some wicked bruises should he somehow survive.
Speaking of which, the battle between Gabriela and the dragon was in full swing. Gabriela leaped for the beast¡¯s face once more, ready to deliver another heavy whack, but this time her opponent was ready. With a speed Blake didn¡¯t expect, it opened its mouth wide and chomped down onto her with teeth larger than most swords, catching her around the torso and sending her improvised weapon flying out of reach. Yet, in that way that he¡¯d always found so infuriating before but now delighted in, that woman refused to die. Crimson smoke flowed into the beast¡¯s mouth, and suddenly, the shocked animal found its own jaw being forced open from within. It tried its best to clench down, but Gabriela was having none of it.
Bigger and bigger the gap grew as the two titans of strength strained against one another. Slowly, Gabriela pushed herself up, first to her knees and then to her feet, her hands wrapped around one of the giant¡¯s oversized teeth. Apparently having had enough, the dragon reached out with a claw-clad hand several times Gabriela¡¯s full size and wrenched her from its maw. Gabriela ripped the tooth she¡¯d been gripping from its socket as it pulled her free, but her hard-won gains soon proved useless.
Wrapping its crushing claws around her, it squeezed with its immense might. Gabriela pushed back, slowly prying away one finger, then the next, but it was too late. In the time it took for her to even partially free herself, the dragon had taken a single massive breath. It wasn¡¯t a laser beam that emerged from the dragon¡¯s throat this time, but rather fire, a blast of scorching blue flame ten feet wide that washed over the dragon¡¯s entire hand, cooking the surroundings so intensely that Blake felt his armor heating to dangerous levels even dozens of feet away.
Gabriela shrieked in agony and then went silent as her body burned alive under the beast¡¯s incinerating assault. But the dragon did not relent. No, it kept going, pouring more and more power into the inferno until it had exhausted every last bit of its breath. When it had finished, all that was left in its palm was a small pile of ashes and an undamaged sword-sized tooth.
Letting the tooth and ashes fall to the ground, the dragon sat back for a moment and surveyed the scene. The area around it had turned into a wasteland after the sudden baking, with the half-melted skitter wreckage littering the area really completing the look. Only one robot that remained functional, funnily enough, was the transport skitter that held the pod with Pari¡¯s corpse inside. Given the lack of instructions from Blake, it was just idling not far from Blake, completely untouched.
The dragon¡¯s eye fell upon Blake as he climbed to his feet, causing a shiver of dread to run down Blake¡¯s spine. Blake looked about for something he could use as a weapon but found little to work with. Everything was too far away.
The dragon took a long step towards him, the action covering multiple yards with ease. Then it took another, and another, and suddenly it was nearly on top of him, staring down at him like a bird stares at a worm. Within that eye, he saw only his demise.
Until the eye burst open.
Both hands gripping the dislodged tooth, Gabriela flashed into the picture and plunged the dragon¡¯s dislodged tooth deep into the beast¡¯s eye.
Blake scrambled back as the dragon thrashed about in suffering. The roar it unleashed this time shook him down to his very soul, and he found it amazing that his eardrums didn¡¯t pop from the sonic abuse. He stumbled about and fell back to the ground as the dragon managed to viciously bat Gabriela into a nearby boulder, smashing her head and body into pulp.
Smoke the color of blood flowed from the aether, reconstructing the destroyed flesh, but the dragon was already prepared. A bright light formed in its mouth and a laser several feet in diameter lanced out, burning a large hole in the woman, the boulder behind her, and the mountainside behind that. But Blake knew that wouldn¡¯t be enough. The smoke reconvened and began to fill in the missing flesh once more.
Seeing this, the dragon let out another bone-shaking cry, one of frustration perhaps. Now half-blind, it stumbled about for a moment before spreading its wings wide. With a mighty gust, it leaped into the air, and in just moments disappeared behind a nearby peak.
Blake let out a breath and let himself just lay on the ground for a few moments as his armor slowly reverted to its normal form. He felt utterly exhausted, and he¡¯d barely done anything. So instead, he just stared up at the cloudless sky until the sounds of footfalls approached. Soon enough, the three others entered his vision, all looking some variation of shell shocked. Arlette, especially, had become extremely fidgety, constantly checking every last inch of the sky for threats.
¡°Hey, Sam. If I ever say anything disrespectful about Othar again, you have my permission to give me a smack, alright?¡± he joked as he finally pushed himself up into a seated position. Narrowly escaping death had left him feeling strangely giddy. ¡°To think that he was fighting those things all the time... Jesus H. Christ on a cracker.¡±
¡°Can you rebuild any of this?¡± Arlette inquired of him. ¡°We need to get out of this place as fast as we can before it decides to come back.¡±
¡°Well, we can always just squeeze into the hearse,¡± he replied.
Sofie let out a shocked gasp. ¡°It¡¯s gone!¡± she cried out.
¡°Huh? What¡¯s gone?¡± Blake asked, climbing to his feet, only to realize immediately what she meant. The transport skitter, coffin pod and all, was nowhere to be seen.
¡°What happened?!¡± Arlette wondered. ¡°It was here just a moment ago.¡±
¡°The dragon took it! Maybe because it was shiny?¡± Sofie supposed. She twirled back around to face the rest of them, a desperate determination in her eyes. ¡°We have to go get her back.¡±
¡°Are you out of your MIND?!¡± Arlette exploded at her. ¡°Did you somehow forget what just happened here?!¡±
¡°So we came all this way only to give up at the end and let some ravenous beast eat her? Is that it? We just run home in defeat?¡± Sofie demanded to know, tears forming in her eyes.
¡°I¡¯m not running. Not yet,¡± another voice chimed in. Gabriela stood nearby, naked as a jaybird, her clothes now nothing more than ashes on the ground.
¡°Gabby!¡± an appreciative Sofie called out, rushing over to embrace the older woman in solidarity. ¡°Aren¡¯t you cold?! Here, we can share our clothes-¡±
¡°No, you¡¯re under-dressed enough as it is,¡± Gabriela replied firmly.
¡°But you¡¯ll freeze!¡± Sofie protested.
¡°Then I¡¯ll unfreeze myself. I can do that, you can¡¯t.¡±
¡°At least... Blake, make her some clothes out of metal or something!¡±
¡°Fine, fine, follow me,¡± he told Gabriela as he turned towards the nearest destroyed skitter.
Together, the two of them walked over to the pile of metal. As the metal began to flow across the ground towards her, Blake turned back to study the woman who had been his nemesis for months.
¡°You look... tired,¡± he remarked as the liquid metal began climbing up her feet and ankles.
¡°I am tired,¡± she told him. ¡°Do you know how hard it is to bring yourself back from the dead?¡±
¡°I can¡¯t imagine.¡±
¡°It¡¯s like trying to lift the entire world. It takes everything I have inside to do it, and these days it leaves me... feeling empty afterward.¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t seem too empty that day we fought,¡± he reminded her bitterly as the metal continued past her torso. He still felt pain sometimes from the wounds she¡¯d given him that day.
¡°I had drive back then. Back then, I would have been able to rip that thing¡¯s jaw right off. It wouldn¡¯t even have been that hard. But now... now I can¡¯t seem to get more than a fraction of what I used to have. It¡¯s just not there anymore.¡±
¡°Are you sure you want to fight the dragon again in that case?¡±
The metal now fully encasing her arms, legs, and torso, Blake focused and willed the liquefied metal to form into tiny microscopic chains, forming an incredibly fine chain mail of a sort, much like what he wore underneath his armor.
¡°We don¡¯t need to fight it again, we just need to steal Pari back, right? I can manage that,¡± she stated assuredly. Touching the ¡®fabric¡¯ she now wore, her eyes widened in surprise. ¡°How strange. This actually feels rather nice. I didn¡¯t know you could make something like this.¡±
¡°I can do a lot of things,¡± Blake replied.
¡°You have no idea how often I wished I had your power instead of mine,¡± Gabriela told him.
¡°If we could trade, I would do it in a heartbeat,¡± Blake returned. ¡°I would give anything to get my body back.¡±
¡°You all done over there?¡± Sofie called impatiently, pulling them from their conversation.
¡°So, what¡¯s the plan?¡± Arlette prompted them impatiently. She was ready to leave and making no effort to hide it.
¡°Well, give me a minute and I¡¯ll have our transport repaired. I think you three should take it and head back to the airship. You¡¯ll just get in the way,¡± Blake began. He paused, expecting some sort of retort or argument from Sofie, but she didn¡¯t even glare at him. She knew the truth as well as he did. ¡°Then, I¡¯m going to build a new transport, one far faster and more agile than anything I¡¯ve ever built before. After that, we¡¯re going to track down that dragon, steal Pari¡¯s body back, and run. Gabriela may or may not end up having to ¡®distract¡¯ it for a while so I can get away.¡±
Gabriela nodded solemnly in understanding and agreement. Seeing her consent, Blake began to repair the remaining transport¡¯s smashed legs. Luckily, the body of the skitter had avoided major damage, so there wasn¡¯t too much he needed to fix before it could work again. Soon enough, it was finished.
¡°Why not just have her go alone?¡± Arlette asked, climbing into the newly repaired transport with Sam. ¡°And how are you even going to find it? It could have flown anywhere.¡±
¡°Because I can track it,¡± he said, answering both questions at once.
¡°You can? How?¡± came Sofie¡¯s bewildered reply.
¡°A few days ago, when I realized you all might try to take Pari¡¯s body somewhere when I wasn¡¯t looking, I put a tracking beacon on the pod,¡± Blake answered with a hint of pride.
¡°You did wh-¡± Sofie began.
¡°Sounds good,¡± Arlette interrupted, pulling Sofie into the transport and shutting the door behind her. ¡°I think you¡¯re crazy for even trying this, but good luck.¡±
With that said, she turned the skitter around and left as fast as she could make the skitter go.
¡°Let¡¯s get going before the daylight runs out,¡± Gabriela said.
Blake nodded and headed back to the wrecked skitters to create his new speedy transport. Luckily for him, Sofie had been too outraged and Arlette too scared to bother to think about what he¡¯d said, while Gabriela didn¡¯t seem to care. There was another reason he wanted to stick around, a thought that he couldn¡¯t banish from his mind, but one so strange that he didn¡¯t dare voice it to the others. He¡¯d know for certain soon enough.
The trip took far less time than he¡¯d expected. Following the signal from the casket, Blake and Gabriela headed north over two more mountains. As they crossed the second mountain, the signal changed and they encountered a massive cave opening on the northern side, one large enough for even a beast of the dragon¡¯s size to enter with ease.
¡°I think this is it,¡± Blake said, peering into the murky darkness. The ground inside seemed smooth and solid as it strangely rose slightly instead of going down the deeper in it went. It was almost like the cave was man-made.
Slowly, Blake steered the skitter into the cavern. There was no point in hopping off; his footfalls would make just as much noise, if not more. At least while in the skitter, they¡¯d be able to skedaddle immediately if they needed to.
The wide tunnel curved left, the area slowly darkening as they moved deeper. Just as Blake was about to modify the skitter to add a light to the front, he saw a soft glow in the distance. The tunnel curved right again, and he could see light reflecting off the tunnel¡¯s side.
As they slowly drew closer and rounded the bend, they came to a stop beneath a fleshy sac hanging from the tunnel¡¯s ceiling. The liquid in the membrane glowed a warm blue light. Looking closer, Blake could see several small spherical objects floating around inside the sac, and realized these were the actual sources of the light, which then diffused through the liquid.
¡°Is it just me, or does that remind you of...¡± Gabriela whispered.
¡°Yeah...¡± Blake whispered back, his mind whirling. There was no way that his wild thought was... He shook his head. No, it was too early to say.
They continued onward, the tunnel winding deeper into the mountain. Each section had its own set of bioluminescent growths to light the way in a rainbow of colors. Some sacs dangled from the ceiling, some more blister-like protrusions provided light from membranes growing along the walls. Then suddenly, the tunnel opened into its final destination, and Blake¡¯s jaw dropped to the floor.
A magnificent cavern stood before them, its contents illuminated by hundreds of glowing installations littering the walls and ceiling. All the way at the far end, Blake could spy a flat area covered in various pelts¡ªa sleeping area, perhaps. To the left, he found several large translucent tanks growing out from the walls, almost like giant see-through stomachs or bladders. The liquid inside of the tanks swirled about in an ever-changing rainbow of color as he watched.
To the right, Blake found more tanks, but ones that were much smaller than those on the left, with the largest being perhaps ten or twelve feet tall. These did not glow or shine like the others but were filled instead with a clear liquid of unknown origin. And within those tanks floated... parts. Body parts. One held the hind legs of some sort of large herbivore, judging by the shape and the hooves, while another held what looked to be a jaglioth head. The tank that stood out the most, however, was the one containing a mostly-intact humanoid, a male in his late thirties if Blake had to guess. He was too far away to be able to make out more detail.
But one thing dominated the cavern more than anything else. Near the center of the massive chamber stood one equally massive ivory table, seemingly grown from massive bones larger than Blake¡¯s entire body. Like many of the objects in the cave, the table itself seemed almost alive, with what looked like blood vessels winding in and around the bone like ivy on a stone column. Atop that table, bathed in the glow of a dozen bioluminescent sacs mounted with reflectors to focus the light downward, laid Pari. And above her...
Leaning over a massive series of oversized lenses and tilting its head to use its one good eye, the dragon looked intently at the corpse below as it manipulated a series of large levers and dials, its movements seeming to manipulate an array of fleshy human-sized arms with small ivory implements and instruments attached to their ends. These implements were currently busy slowly cutting into the tiny corpse below.
So intent was the beast on its actions that it didn¡¯t seem to notice Blake and Gabriela, nor the drops of multi-hued blood slowly dripping from the multitude of small holes inflicted by Blake¡¯s robots during their battle. Only one thing seemed on its mind, and that was the beastgirl on the table over which it towered.
¡°No way... this is...¡± Blake whispered to himself in disbelief, looking around at the vast collection of objects¡ªsome alive, others made from metal or stone¡ªthat filled the cavern. He didn¡¯t know the function of any of the equipment he could see, but he could tell just from experience that they were, in fact, equipment of some sort. This was a laboratory. One of the mad scientist variety, if he could be so bold.
Somehow, even from hundreds of yards away, the dragon heard his whisper loud and clear. Its head whipped around to face them, its mouth opening wide to reveal those vicious, terrifying teeth.
Blake threw the skitter into reverse and they retreated into the tunnel at full speed as the dragon let out another deafening roar, but this roar was different. Unlike the ones before, this one contained meaning, meaning so powerful that it slammed into Blake¡¯s mind like a cudgel. Unlike the gentle understanding that came from normal conversation, the roar battered at his brain as it conveyed one very simple, furious question that confirmed Blake¡¯s suspicions in their entirety: ¡°WHAT DID CRAWLER DO TO PARI-CHILD?!¡±
Chapter 91
¡°Mama! Mama!¡± Pari Clansnarl pestered, tugging on Mother¡¯s tail. ¡°I want to eat!¡±
¡°Pari, what did I tell you about pulling on other people¡¯s tails?¡± Mother scolded, her voice weary from a long day of housework. ¡°Dinner¡¯s almost ready. We will eat once your father comes home from work.¡±
¡°But I¡¯m hungry!¡± Pari whined.
¡°You can hold on a little longer,¡± Mother assured her. ¡°Erdi, play with your sister for a while.¡±
¡°Wha-! Do I have to?¡± Now it was Brother¡¯s turn to whine.
¡°Yes,¡± Mother said sternly. ¡°Go try the candle-making equipment your father brought home for you 3 days ago. He¡¯s going to be very upset if he comes back and finds you haven¡¯t used it even once.¡±
¡°Fine...¡±
Brother went into the storage room and returned dragging a large sealed wooden box with smooth lacquered sides. The contents let out a series of clanks and clangs as he set the box down rather indelicately.
¡°Hey!¡± Mother called angrily from the kitchen. ¡°Be careful with that, your father spent a lot of money on it!¡±
¡°Mama, what¡¯s money?¡± Pari asked. She¡¯d heard that word before, but the fuzzy understanding that came with it only made her more confused. Why would people give up good things like food when given stupid circles?
¡°You don¡¯t even know what money is?¡± Brother scoffed. ¡°You¡¯re so dumb!¡±
Pari¡¯s face went red with embarrassment after being called out so suddenly. Why did Brother have to always be such a big meanie?! She sniffed.
¡°Erdi, what did I tell you? Don¡¯t be mean to your sister, she¡¯s only three,¡± Mother called again, wearier this time. ¡°You were just like her once, you know.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not three, I¡¯m almost four!¡± Pari declared hotly. There was a big difference and it was important that they know!
¡°Of course you are, sweetie,¡± Mother replied. ¡°Just like how Erdi is almost nine.¡±
Brother just rolled his eyes.
Still, Pari¡¯s confusion remained. ¡°Why does Papa say that we moved to Zuk... Zuk...¡±
¡°Zrukhora,¡± Brother prompted her.
¡°Zukhora! Why does Papa say that we moved to Zukhora for money?¡±
¡°Because he can make much more money here than he could back in Lita. The people here want to open lots of mines in the mountains to the north, and they need good prospectors like your father to find the ore.¡±
¡°But I don¡¯t like it here,¡± Pari complained. ¡°I miss home.¡±
¡°This is home now,¡± Mother told her. ¡°We need this money to pay off the last of our debts and put Erdi and you through school. Think about it like this: with all that extra money, we¡¯ll be able to buy lots and lots of toys for you!¡±
Pari gasped. Lots of toys?! She didn¡¯t really like Zukhora; compared to Lita, it was cold and it smelled weird. But she loved toys! If being here meant more toys, then maybe she liked this place after all.
¡°Whatever, let¡¯s just do this stupid thing,¡± Brother muttered, opening the box.
Peering inside, Pari found it full of pieces of string, metal containers, and blocks of some white substance, none of which made any sense to her young mind. But before she could even ask about any of it, the sound of a key being inserted into the front lock caught their ears.
Pari spun around in excitement as Father opened the door and stepped inside for the first time in six days.
¡°Papa!¡± she cried, rushing for the doorway and jumping into his waiting arms.
¡°Heeeeeyyyy, how¡¯s my little dumpling doing?¡± he asked as he wrapped her up into a strong hug. ¡°You too, Erdi, you miss me?¡±
Brother arrived just a moment after Pari and joined in with the hug party.
¡°What¡¯s that you were messing with when I came in?¡± Father wondered, glancing over at the open box. ¡°Is that the candle kit I bought you two before I left? You haven¡¯t even opened it until now?¡±
¡°We were saving it for when you came home, of course,¡± Mother replied. ¡°So we could do it together, as a family.¡±
¡°Awww...¡± Father sniffed, his hug intensifying. ¡°The spirits have blessed me with such a wonderful family! That sounds great! Let¡¯s make dozens of candles! But first, that smells delicious and I¡¯m starving!¡±
Together, Pari sat down around the table with Mother, Father, and Brother and ate a delicious meal. Pari was happy. She had the best family, and yummy food, and lots of toys coming soon as well! What more could anybody want?
Yes, Pari loved her family. She loved Mother, with her long golden hair and olive skin. The way the sunlight reflected off her ears and tail struck Pari as incredibly pretty. Pari wanted to be pretty just like Mother, but she was dark as the night just like Father instead, which wasn¡¯t nearly as good. When she¡¯d told Mother this, Mother had just laughed softly and said something about finding Father¡¯s dark appearance pretty in a different way.
Pari didn¡¯t know what was so pretty about Father. His skin was such a dark brown that it was nearly black. His short hair, his ears, and his tail were actually black, the color so dark that they seemed to absorb the light itself. Pari loved Father, especially the way he smiled and the quality of his headpats, but there was no prettiness to be found there.
Brother, on the other hand, took after Mother. Pari couldn¡¯t help but be jealous. He got to look pretty while she didn¡¯t! It was so unfair! And he was also a big meanie all of the time, always calling her stupid and other bad things! But she loved him anyway, because he was Brother, and he¡¯d been around as long as she could remember.
They were all a big happy family, and they would be together forever.
Dip.
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Dip.
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Pari sat in the corner of the family room near the hearth, making candles with the candle kit while basking in the warmth of the fire. Ever since that first night making candles with the whole family, Pari had fallen in love with the activity. She made candles so often now that she¡¯d exhausted the large supply of wicks and wax that had come with the equipment, so Father had to buy more.
Pari loved everything about candle making. She loved the slow, calming routine of dipping and removing the wicks over and over again. She loved to watch the candles grow with each dip, slowly and steadily. She loved the colorful candles that came out at the end of the process. But more than anything, she loved the scents. The warm fragrances of the melted wax especially tickled her fancy.
The morning had only just begun, the sun still low in the sky. Pari had woken up early as she often did, while Brother slept in as he often did. Meanwhile, Mother and Father were both up as well. Pari couldn¡¯t help but hear their conversation at the other end of the room.
¡°Do you really have to leave again already?¡± Mother sighed in frustration. ¡°You just got back a few days ago!¡±
¡°I know, I know, but I agreed to this as part of the conditions for the job. Just hold on a little longer. A few more excursions and we¡¯ll be able to completely pay off the debt and the bank loan in less than a year! Then I can lower the frequency of my trips, or even get a job here in the city if that¡¯s what you need.¡±
¡°Just promise me you¡¯ll be safe. It¡¯s hard sitting here every day not knowing if you¡¯re alright.¡±
¡°I will, I promise,¡± he said, embracing Mother and giving her a quick kiss. ¡°Tell Erdi when he wakes up that I said goodbye.¡±
¡°You could just wake him up, you know,¡± she returned.
¡°Nah, kids his age need their sleep. This is a short trip anyway, I¡¯ll be back before he even knows I¡¯m gone.¡± Father turned towards Pari, bending down and spreading his arms wide and his smile wider. ¡°Pari, give me a goodbye hug.¡±
Pari put her half-formed candle down for a moment and sprinted over with her stubby little legs, reaching up towards him as best she could. Father scooped her up and spun her around playfully as Pari giggled like crazy, before pulling her in for a strong hug against his well-muscled chest. Pari did her best to return the favor, but her arms came up short.
¡°Come back soon, Papa!¡± she said. ¡°Bring me more toys!¡±
Father chuckled as he put her back down and ruffled her hair affectionately before turning and opening the front door. ¡°I will, I will,¡± he said as he stepped out into the street. ¡°I¡¯ll see you in a few days! Be a good girl and behave for your mother and brother, alright?¡±
¡°Okay! Bye-bye, Papa!¡± she said with an energetic wave.
He waved back as he started jogging down the street before turning a corner and leaving Pari¡¯s sight.
Pari never saw Father again.
Dip.
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Pari sat in the corner of the family room, making a candle beside the cold, empty hearth. The house was quiet now, as it often was these days. Ever since Father stopped coming home, Mother no longer smiled the way she used to. She always seemed tired and distracted. Before, Mother spent much of her day taking care of the house, cooking food, doing laundry, and other Mother activities. She still did those things, but these days she would also put on a pretty dress and leave after it became dark. She would not come back until late in the night, haggard and weary for reasons Pari didn¡¯t understand. Pari had tried to ask Mother what she was doing every night, but all Mother would say was that she was taking care of Pari and Brother.
Everything was weird and strange. The house felt empty, especially now after all the times that Mother had taken items from the house and returned later with nothing more than a small bag of metal discs called ¡®coins¡¯. Pari didn¡¯t like it.
Several nights ago, Pari had woken up to the sound of sobs and walked out of the bedroom to find Mother covered in bruises all over her visible body except her face. Mother didn¡¯t go out at night the nights after that. Today, however, looked to be different. Today she was putting on the pretty dress again.
Pari didn¡¯t know why, but she felt afraid every time Mother left. Father had never come back, what if Mother also never came back one of these nights? Ever since the thought had first come to her, it had persisted, a gnawing worry in her gut that never left.
¡°Mama, don¡¯t go!¡± she pleaded as her mother finished putting on her night outfit. ¡°I¡¯m scared!¡±
¡°I¡¯m so sorry, Pari, but I have no choice,¡± Mother answered.
¡°But Mama! I... I...¡±
Still almost four years of age, Pari found it hard to transform her vague feelings of distress into words. It frustrated her and only made her feel worse. Luckily, Brother was there to help her.
¡°Do you really have to keep doing this? It scares us, and I know it scares you too!¡± Brother asked, tears in his eyes. ¡°Why can¡¯t you do something else?¡±
Mother seemed to wilt because of Brother¡¯s words, but she reluctantly shook her head. ¡°There is no time. You saw the collectors that came five days ago. Without your father, we don¡¯t have the money to pay off the debt. Soon they will come again. We must be gone before that happens, and so I must get as much money as I can as fast as I can. Don¡¯t worry, in just another day or two I¡¯ll have enough money for us to escape this place and make our way to Eterium. Trust me.¡±
She gave them each a quick kiss on the forehead.
¡°Erdi, please watch over Pari until I return,¡± she said as she headed for the door.
¡°I know, you always say that,¡± Erdi groused.
¡°That¡¯s because I know I can trust you. You¡¯re a wonderful son and you made me very proud,¡± she told him with a soft smile. ¡°Don¡¯t stay up too late. I¡¯ll see you tomorrow.¡±
With that, she turned towards the door, took a deep breath, and left the house.
Pari never saw Mother again.
Dip.
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Pari shivered as a chill draft flowed through the orphanage bedroom. The weather had turned cold recently as winter fast approached, and the building¡¯s crack-lined walls did a poor job keeping the warmth in. Not that there was much warmth to begin with. The only truly warm place here was the warden¡¯s rooms on the other side of the building. There, he drank and smoked in the glow of a warm fire all by himself. None of the orphans were allowed into that side of the orphanage, especially not her or Brother.
From the first day she and Brother had arrived at the orphanage a season and a half ago, the warden had taken a strong dislike to them. He would call them ¡°mongrels¡±, whatever that meant, and she was sure that they got fed less food than the others. Pari didn¡¯t understand why the man hated them so much. They tried their best to beg for money every day like they were told, but even on the days when they came home with a better amount than normal he would still be really mean to both of them.
Stolen novel; please report.
Today, however, had not been one of the good days. For some reason, Pari had been unable to get even a single one of the coins the warden liked so much. He had taken her failure poorly.
Pari momentarily brushed fingers across her swollen right eye, the flesh around her eye socket so inflamed that she couldn¡¯t open her eyelid, but the pain that flared up put an immediate stop to that. She sniffed heavily, trying to stop the flow of snot dripping from her nostrils, but neither that nor her tears would stop this time. So instead, she just sank her mind into her task.
Dip.
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Yuck.
The odor was driving her nose crazy. All of the nice wax and wicks from Father¡¯s gifts had run out long ago. Now, she was dipping thin slices of cloth into a small vat of gross liquid. Brother said it was some sort of animal fat and some other words she didn¡¯t really understand, but she didn¡¯t need to understand them to know how bad it smelled. Still, it was all she had to work with now. Brother had been kind enough to beg for a little from a butcher, and she couldn¡¯t let his kindness go to waste.
¡°Pari...¡± a voice whispered. ¡°Pari!¡±
Pari gave a start as the voice dragged her from her thoughts. She looked up to see Brother crouching down in front of her, a furious look on his face.
¡°Pari, I need you to concentrate,¡± he told her as he grabbed the vat, the candle still inside, and pulled it away from her.
¡°Ah!¡± she cried out, grabbing onto the lip of the container. ¡°M-my candle!¡±
¡°Pari, stop! This is important!¡± he hissed as he wrested it from her grasp and lugged it across the large room, ignoring her protests and the gazes of the other orphans. Pari chased after him but he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away, leading her forcibly back to her original position in the opposite corner. Clamping his hands onto her shoulders, he looked at her with a seriousness that reminded her of the face Father would make when she¡¯d done something bad.
¡°How much alcohol is the warden drinking tonight?¡± Brother asked. ¡°How strong is the smell?¡±
Pari took a deep sniff, letting the wide bouquet of aromas fill her nostrils. Mother had always said that women from her family had a great sense of smell, but Pari¡¯s nose was the best. She could smell so many things if she really tried: the musty aroma of the moldy floor, the unique signature of one of Amor¡¯s farts let out about half an hour ago two rooms away, the acrid stench of the urine somebody had peed onto a building in the alleyway across the street, and, very notably, the pungent smell of alcohol coming from the other end of the orphanage. That side always smelled of booze¡ªthe warden liked to drink heavily no matter the time of day¡ªbut right now the stench was so strong that it almost reached out and smacked her across the face.
¡°It¡¯s super stinky,¡± she replied.
¡°Alright, thank you,¡± Brother replied. He glanced around the room. ¡°Go to sleep. You don¡¯t want to be tired tomorrow.¡±
¡°But I¡¯m not tired!¡±
¡°Pari, please, just go to bed,¡± Brother pleaded.
¡°Okay...¡± she acquiesced, going over the middle of the wide room and lying down on the cushions. Pari wished there were real beds here instead of the lumpy mats on the floor that everybody shared at night to keep warm. It didn¡¯t help that the other kids had bugs that would get on her and make her itchy.
Even though she¡¯d just complained about not being tired, she found herself losing consciousness quickly, and she soon faded into the land of dreams.
¡°Pari, wake up,¡± a voice hissed in her ear, pulling her back into the waking world.
Pari opened her eyes¡ªwell, eye, since her other one still wouldn¡¯t open properly¡ªto find herself surrounded in darkness. She let out a ¡°nya?¡± of confusion.
¡°Shhh!¡± the voice¡ªBrother, she quickly realized¡ªwhispered.
¡°What is it?¡± she wondered quietly as Brother pulled her to her feet and led her from the room.
¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± Brother told her.
¡°Where are we going?¡±
¡°Away. Anywhere but here.¡±
¡°B-but the warden-¡±
¡°The warden is so drunk that he wouldn¡¯t wake up if I jumped on his face,¡± Brother told her. ¡°This is our chance to run away.¡±
¡°R-run...!?¡± Pari gasped. She was only four, but she knew how big a thing it was to run away from home, even if it was a home you didn¡¯t like. The idea scared her.
¡°Look, Pari...¡± Brother lowered himself down to her height and looked her in the eyes with a grave expression. ¡°I promised Mom that I would take care of you, and what kind of brother would I be if I let you stay in a place where this happens?¡±
He lightly brushed her swollen eye, causing her to flinch involuntarily.
¡°Now come on,¡± he said, grabbing her with one hand and a large burlap sack filled with unknown items with the other.
Pari followed along behind him, pushing her fears away for the moment. She could trust Brother. Brother was smart and good. Everything would be okay.
If any place in Scyria could be correctly labeled a boomtown, it would be Zrukhora. With its explosive growth came one of the side effects of every boomtown: architectural anarchy. The layout of the city was only several steps above complete chaos, with a maze of winding alleyways, buildings encroaching on other buildings, and the like. With that came a plethora of unfinished and scrapped buildings in various stages of construction.
It was in these half-finished shelters that Pari and Brother now lived, moving from place to place to avoid the city watch as they searched for someplace that they could use to keep the cold away just a little longer. Today¡¯s shelter was an unfinished house, its roof collapsed into a large, jagged pile of wooden debris a good fifteen paces wide and six paces deep. The jagged mass of wooden planks and other assorted construction materials was impossible to get into as an adult without slowly moving the pieces away, but a child could still squeeze into several holes and climb deep inside.
Here, in the small spaces amidst the rubble, Pari huddled, tucking her legs up against her chest in a fruitless attempt to lessen the bite of the chilled air. Cupping her hands together, she concentrated on the space between her palms, watching as a small flame, no larger than a candle¡¯s, sputtered to life. The fire eased her suffering for a few moments before Pari¡¯s strength gave out and it evaporated into nothingness.
This little flame was all Pari could manage right now. Brother said that her abilities would grow stronger as she grew and as she practiced, but he also forbade her from making fire while in the rubble at the same time, saying that she could burn herself to death. Pari felt bad about disobeying him, but the few moments of relief the flame brought were too good for her to stop.
For the hundredth time in the last hour, Pari¡¯s stomach groaned, protesting the fact that it had received no food for nearly two days now. Sometimes it felt like the hunger inside of her was eating her alive, and at that point, she grew so desperate that she even wished to be back at that terrible orphanage. There, at least, they got some food every day.
Brother was out trying to get some food for the two of them, which generally meant he would try to steal something. He wasn¡¯t very good at it, unfortunately; his bright hair, ears, and tail caused him to stand out too much, or so he said. Pari knew that Brother was trying his best, though, so she waited patiently for him to return. She had faith he would have something to eat this time.
¡°This is it, that¡¯s where I saw him hide last night,¡± an old female voice said not too far away. ¡°Now where¡¯s my fee?¡±
¡°You¡¯ll get your fee if and when we have him in our hands,¡± a gruff male responded.
Pari went silent and still as she listened to the footsteps grow closer. One person walked around the mass of rubble and stopped just outside the hole she used to enter and leave the pile. Ducking down, he shined a light inside the pile, illuminating Pari within the depths of the debris. She froze as the light washed over her, staring back at the man with wide, fearful eyes.
Pari scooted back as far as she could. The man stank of sweat and smoke, with a whiff of stale alcohol somewhere in the background. Her nose said that this man was a bad man, one not to be trusted.
¡°Well what do we have here?¡± the man asked. He looked off somewhere to the side, towards somebody she couldn¡¯t see. ¡°Pay her.¡±
¡°...you sure?¡± another man replied. ¡°He¡¯s in there?¡±
¡°No, but something close enough.¡± The man turned back to face her, his light still shining into the hole. ¡°Hey there, little girl, are you cold? Come on out and I can take you to a nice warm place.¡±
¡°N-no...¡± she replied. As if to add in its own response, her stomach let out a loud growl.
¡°Somebody sounds hungry,¡± the man chuckled to himself. He reached into a pouch on his side and pulled out a fried dough pocket. Breaking it open to reveal the still steaming-hot ground meat inside, he extended his hand with the food into the hole. ¡°Look what I just bought. Doesn¡¯t it look delicious? If you come out, you can have it.¡±
Pari shivered with desire as the scrumptious aroma washed over her. The savory oil of the meat mixing with the delectable spices, all wrapped up in a buttery crust... she could smell it all. It was, without a doubt, the greatest smell she¡¯d ever experienced. And it was coming from that hand right here, just paces away...
But no, the man was a bad man! But was he? Would a bad man offer her food?
She sniffed deeply once more, luxuriating in the divine scent. Part of her mind realized she was drooling so heavily that it was almost pouring down her chin, but the rest of it was too busy focusing on the meal just out of reach.
No, this man couldn¡¯t be bad. He had food and was offering to give it to her. How could he be a bad person?
Food. It was right there! All she had to do was crawl forward a few paces.
Slowly she crept forward. One pace. Two. Three. It was right in front of her now. She reached out and-
¡°Who are y-AAAHHH! LET ME GO!¡±
Pari froze, her hand half-extended towards the proffered treat as Brother¡¯s voice woke her from her stupor and sent alarm bells ringing in her mind, but it was too late. The man¡¯s other hand shot forward with uncanny speed, his hand latching onto her wrist with brutal strength and dragging her from the pile like she would drag a small doll.
Pari screamed and struggled, but she could do nothing to stop the man as he pressed her against the ground and tied her hands behind her back with strong, thick rope.
¡°Think they¡¯ll pay for a kid that tiny?¡± the other man asked.
¡°A body¡¯s a body, and she¡¯ll grow soon enough,¡± the man laughed. ¡°I¡¯m sure they can find some use for her up north until then.¡±
Half an hour later, the two mean, terrible people dragged Pari and Brother into a large building near the outskirts of the city. There, Pari saw hundreds of other thin, feeble people shackled to each other and the walls, their bodies slumped over in defeat and despair. She didn¡¯t really understand the meaning of the sight, but she didn¡¯t have to in order to feel a chill of dread rush through her. She didn¡¯t know what these people were doing, but this was surely a bad place.
A woman sitting at a small table looked up from her paperwork to inspect Pari and Brother. Her mouth tilted slightly in wry amusement as she asked, ¡°Picked up some strays this time?¡±
The men laughed.
Pari resumed her struggles, but she was a small girl, barely four years old. She would have been at the mercy of her captors even at full strength, and she was far from that now. Her body, malnourished for over a season and subjected to the harsh elements, couldn¡¯t even manage half of her normally paltry power. She felt so weak, so tired, so empty.
The men dragged her to a long, thin table and roughly heaved her up onto it, holding her face-down against the wood and pulling her hair back. Pari barely had time to wonder what was going on before something searing hot pressed down hard against the back of her neck, filling her mind with agony.
Pari barely had the energy to scream.
¡°Hurry up, you little shit! Get in there!¡± the mine foreman barked, his boot against her back shoving her forward. Causing Pari to stumble and bump her head against the rough rock. The mean, brutal man kicked her again and she cried out in pain and fear as she scrambled into the crack in the tunnel wall. There, momentarily free from the man¡¯s anger, she paused and let out a long, exhausted breath.
Hands shaking, Pari fished out the candle given to her that morning and held it in her stick-thin fingers. Closing her eyes for a moment to steady her mind, she willed a tiny flame into existence, holding its form just long enough to light the candle. As soon as the soft glow of the candle flame appeared, she released the conjured fire with a violent shudder. She felt so tired these days that even the tiniest Observation was like lifting a house.
Holding the now-lit candle before her, Pari slowly crawled deeper into the tight opening, her eyes sweeping all across the sides for the telltale glint or signs of rust she was hoping for. Sadly, she quickly came to the end having found nothing but stone. Pari couldn¡¯t help but tremble. The foreman would be angry because there was no metal here. That meant more beatings.
Slowly, hesitantly, she pulled herself back to the mine tunnel. She wanted to stay in the crack where the foreman couldn¡¯t reach her, but that would just make the beatings worse when she finally got hungry enough that she needed to come out to eat. There was no escaping his anger here.
¡°Well?!¡± he snarled as she crawled out.
Pari shook her head silently, bracing herself for the whack to the head. Instead, she got a kick to her side that sent her tumbling awkwardly down the tunnel. She coughed heavily in agony, spraying the tunnel floor with blood.
¡°Fuck!¡± the foreman snarled. ¡°How am I supposed to increase production if the fucking mountain is so fucking barren?!¡±
Luckily for Pari, he proceeded to storm off elsewhere while muttering to himself, seemingly having forgotten all about her existence. He didn¡¯t need to concern himself with the wellbeing of a slave like her, after all.
A moment later, Pari pulled herself to her shaky feet and headed up the tunnel. Lit by the occasional lantern hanging from the ceiling, the passageway rose and rose, joining with other tunnels as it grew until it finally ended at the mine entrance, the door to the outside. As she shuffled along, she passed by other slaves chipping away at the walls, their bodies frail from malnourishment, ill-treatment, and overwork just like hers. They avoided looking her way as she stumbled past them.
Shivering as she approached the mine entrance, she slowly made her way past the guards stationed there and headed towards her shack as the bell signaling the end of the workday finally rang. The other miners followed behind her, their steps kept short by the tucrenyx shackles connecting their ankles with a chain. Pari didn¡¯t have to deal with that sort of thing just yet. Apparently, making shackles for somebody so small would cost too much, so they were just waiting for her to grow big enough for what they already had. Plus, they needed her to be able to light her candle in the cracks. What was she going to do, run away with her tiny legs?
Staggering into the shack that she shared with nine others, she sank into a corner, leaning her back against the splinter-filled wood. The cracks between the boards were so large that it might as well have been a fence. Only a few tattered blankets were on hand to protect against the cold, and did it ever get freezing cold up in the mountains north of Zrukhora, especially now during the winter season. The ground outside was covered in snow that went halfway up her shins and had been ever since she¡¯d arrived. Even the mines, deep in the mountain core, were chilly enough to make Pari shiver.
She was largely numb to the omnipresent cold, having spent most of a season here. She was numb to a lot of things at this point. She wanted to cry, to sob, to wail, to do all the things a terribly upset four-year-old girl was supposed to do, but she couldn¡¯t. She¡¯d already done all that until there was nothing left inside. No tears remained in her anymore, no matter how much she wanted or needed them.
Instead, Pari looked down at the candle from before, still clutched in her tiny, bony hands. With great effort, she brought forth a speck of flame once more and re-lit the wick.
Staring into the tiny flame, she felt the rest of the world melt away until there was nothing but her and the dancing glow. The pain, the misery, it faded to nothingness as she entered a world of happiness and joy. Nothing could hurt her here. Here, she had everything she ever wanted. Father was here; Mother too. Together with Brother, they made candles and laughed and played and loved each other forever. They would never leave her again. Not in here. Never in here.
¡°Pari... are you alright?¡± Brother asked as he entered the shack. He looked just as weary as she felt. Perhaps worse. Unlike Pari, who was mainly used to explore cracks in the mine and find out where the precious minerals were, Brother had to help pull the carts full of ore back up to the surface. If they caught him¡ªor anybody else for that matter¡ªresting for more than a few moments, they¡¯d whip him until his back was covered in bloody gashes. The one time that had happened to him, they¡¯d made her watch. That was the last time she¡¯d been able to cry.
Pari barely nodded her head in response to Brother¡¯s question, her eyes never leaving the flame. He let out a sigh and sat down next to her, wrapping them both up with a blanket. Together they just sat for a little, no words being exchanged. None were needed anymore. There was nothing left to say.
In a few moments, the bell would ring again, signaling meal time. They would trudge over to the food tent, receive their bowl of flavorless gruel, and eat it in silence like always. They would need to save all their strength for the coming day.
At least, that was what she¡¯d expected. Instead, they heard a loud series of crashes outside the shack, followed by full-throated screams. The cacophony broke Pari from her trance, and the two siblings crept up to the shack¡¯s door, opened it a crack, and peeped outside.
The chaos Pari found shocked her. Something had happened to the huge carts used to transport the ore from the mine down to the city. Each cart was twice the height of a man, and four of the ten carts had tipped over onto their side, spilling countless amounts of ore onto the mountainside and sending the pieces scattering down the slope.
To make matters worse, the tipped carts seemed to have fallen onto people, crushing them beneath their weight. With the way the guards rushed to rescue the people, Pari knew the victims were not slaves but other guards. The third day after her arrival here, she¡¯d witnessed a slave get crushed beneath some falling rock and the guards hadn¡¯t even bothered to try to save them.
¡°This is our chance! Let¡¯s run!¡± Brother said as he grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the shack. Running as quickly as he could with the chains on his ankles, he led her away from the accident and towards the edge of the mining camp while the guards were too distracted to notice their escape.
Or at least, too distracted for a little while. Between Brother¡¯s bindings and the uneven, snow-covered ground, their progress was slower than they hoped. They only made it perhaps seven hundred paces past the edge of the camp when a shout went up behind them.
¡°Runaways!¡±
Mere moments later, Brother jerked violently and fell, an arrow sticking from his leg.
¡°Brother!¡± Pari cried in despair as he let go of her hand.
¡°Run! Get out of their sight and hide! I¡¯ll try to slow them down!¡± he gasped.
¡°But-¡±
¡°Go!¡±
Tears in her eyes for the first time in nearly a season, Pari turned and ran as fast as her tiny legs could carry her. Unfortunately, that wasn¡¯t very fast. She heard a whistle in the air behind her, and suddenly a cold, sharp pain shot through her chest, sending her tumbling to the ground.
Pari tried to cough, but all that came out was a pain-wracked wheeze. Something had pierced through her right lung, driving in through the back and going all the way through to poke out of her chest. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to everything. The red splotch on the snow beneath grew with every moment as her life quickly ebbed away.
So cold. She felt what little warmth she had left leaking from her body, but she couldn¡¯t find the energy to stop it. The pain... it burned inside her, yet with every shallow breath, it became more and more covered by the numbness. So very cold.
The last thing her mind registered was a large, sudden shadow passing over her momentarily. Then, at long last, she entered the eternal sleep.
Chapter 92
Bazzalth leaned in close, watching with rapt attention as the crawler writhed, the blood that filled the vat slowly consuming the crawler¡¯s temporarily reanimated flesh. He could not be sure if the thing suffered in agony, or if the spasms were merely the last acts of decayed nerves and muscles firing haphazardly as the transcendent liquid dissolved them into nothingness, though the state of its soul suggested the latter. The ethereal sphere hovering above the body had taken on only a momentary hint of blue, the vast majority of it still the grey of death. Then, the last dots of blue vanished and the soul returned to its fully-grey state, marking the moment this experiment became a failure. Soon, the soul faded from existence as all evidence of the crawler ever being in the vat vanished, leaving nothing left inside but Bazzalth¡¯s own specially-processed blood.
Pushing away the initial frustration, Bazzalth reminded himself that there was no such thing as failure in the hunt for Knowledge. Every test, no matter the outcome, provided more data, and data was the most precious of all things. Yes, the results were suboptimal, but he had only spent the last fifteen years studying the mystery of his people¡¯s blood. The field was still in its infancy! He would figure it out given time, as he had with everything else. Time was something he had in abundance, after all.
For several thousand years, Bazzalth had endeavored to fill his hoard with all manners of Knowledge. At first his efforts had been scattershot, his attention jumping from subject to subject, but after several hundred years, he¡¯d come to realize the benefits of concentrating on a specific area of study. With a more focused approach, he could build a broad understanding of the subject and then use that initial knowledge to identify the most intriguing mysteries and build the path to solving said mysteries. By the time he had exhausted every question, he found he had achieved a true understanding of the field as a whole.
Bazzalth¡¯s latest subject of academic interest was bioscience. After over five hundred and twelve years of diligent study, he¡¯d decided fifteen years ago that he was proficient enough in the field to begin investigating perhaps the greatest mystery of bioscience: the blood inside him and his brethren. The multi-hued liquid was so unlike the blood of crawlers and other animals that Bazzalth hesitated to even use the same nomenclature for the two.
In his eyes, a person¡¯s blood could be considered the ultimate miracle substance, one capable of disproving the very laws of reality that he¡¯d spent so many decades uncovering. For example, a person¡¯s blood completely invalidated the Laws of Persistent Matter:
One, matter cannot be created or destroyed except through Observation.
Two, matter created through Observation will persist after creation indefinitely. Once its full existence has been established, it is no different than any other matter and will persist indefinitely even after the Observation ends. This did not apply, of course, to reaction-based Observations such as fire, which needed either available fuel or continued soulforce to maintain their existence.
A person¡¯s blood, however, invalidated these laws. Matter that came into contact with unprocessed blood would be slowly destroyed over the course of hours until it literally ceased to exist. The matter did not corrode, it did not become dissolved into the blood, and it did not turn into a gas and float away. It simply ceased to be.
How such a phenomenon could even be possible was just one of the many questions about the blood that he still had to solve. Like the rest of the questions in this case, Bazzalth had a theory but lacked the evidence to come to a hard conclusion. His current belief was that it was related to the astounding level of lifeforce found in each drop of blood, which was somehow able to overwhelm reality itself to such a degree that absolute destruction of matter without Observation became possible. That belief was little more than an educated guess at this point, however, as he didn¡¯t have the data to support such a claim; that would change soon, as his experiments continued.
The destructive power of a person¡¯s blood was so great that only one thing was able to contain it: a person¡¯s flesh. The question as to how the flesh of people resisted the blood, when all else succumbed to it, remained half-answered at best. His working assumption, which went hand in hand with the previous one, was that blood¡¯s huge lifeforce was balanced by the equally strong power found in each and every cell in a person¡¯s body. One day, he would deduce the definitive truth to both these mysteries. Until then, he utilized what he already knew to his advantage, leveraging his centuries of expertise in biology and his people¡¯s unparalleled regenerative ability to grow vats and other equipment from his own cells to contain and study the incredible liquid.
Much to his delight, his study had branched in multiple directions since he first began his experiments. It had all started with the discovery that his blood had different properties when altered in certain ways. While raw blood destroyed matter, processed blood often behaved completely differently depending on how it was altered.
He¡¯d already devoted several years to the exploration of several varieties and found numerous applications. One variety could be turned into a sort of glue that bonded with anything solid on a molecular level with a seemingly unbreakable strength, another became a gas which converted organic matter into stone, but none showed the stunning potency of the variant ¡°Phase-shift 4¡± which he had dubbed ¡°Ichor of Life¡±.
A thick, translucent blue sludge, Ichor of Life reanimated the dead tissue of crawlers and other animals, perhaps by imbuing the flesh with some of its abundant lifeforce. There were a few catches, however. The bodies would lose their life the moment they were removed from the liquid. Yet, leaving them in the vats was also unfeasible. Given that the blood was merely phase-shifted, it still retained potent matter-eating properties. The reanimated flesh would be broken down almost as quickly as it returned to life, rendering this miracle rather meaningless. But Bazzalth was not perturbed. He knew that, with enough study, data, and experimentation, he would find a way around these problems.
Right now, he was still in the early data-gathering phase, which meant a lot of dunking dead animals in vats filled with Ichor to see what happened. He would alter the formula slightly every so often to see if it produced different results. So far, while minute details might be different, the end result remained the same.
Turning to the side to fetch more samples, he realized, to his dismay, that he only had enough for one more round of tests. He needed more corpses but had no way to get them. Drat!
Well, that wasn¡¯t technically true. He was quite capable, physically at least, of leaving his peoples¡¯ territory and heading south to the place where thousands of crawlers congregated. There, he would have his pick of experimental material. The problem lay in the Accord.
Given that people were beings of immense power, they naturally chafed at the idea of submitting to a higher authority. What higher authority could there be but themselves? As such, mandating a code of behavior or instituting such things as ¡°laws¡± was nearly essentially impossible. People did what they wanted, living their lives as they chose while endeavoring to amass their hoard to greater and greater heights. Getting the entire populace to engage in some sort of mass action would only be possible through one thing: overwhelming force, enough that all those opposed combined would not be able to overcome your collected might. Even if two-thirds of all people wanted something, there was nothing that could be done if the third opposed was stronger. When the ensuing violence ended, they would emerge victorious and their word would be final.
Might made right. This simple truth was the way of the world and always had been.
With myriad conflicting opinions and dispositions among the community, there was no topic that everybody agreed upon... except one. It was known as the Accord and it boiled down to the following: ¡°No person shall do anything that would reveal the community¡¯s existence to the crawlers. To break this rule is punishable by death.¡±
Like the rest of the people alive today, Bazzalth was too young to know life before the Great Cataclysm. Only four people had even hatched before that terrible day. That was why, when they had all grown enough to begin exploring the world outside their sanctuary, the people had decided as a whole to ensure that their existence remained a secret to the crawlers. Being seen by a crawler was forbidden, which meant that nobody dared live or fly anywhere near the southern area of the mountains. Nobody but him, that is.
A azure bonfire of power winked into existence at the edge of Bazzalth¡¯s soulsight. Though still more than two mountains away, he recognized the soul immediately, letting out of huff of amusement. What fortuitous timing.
Bazzalth put away his observation equipment and headed into the tunnel leading to the outside as his visitor swiftly approached. Just as he finished squeezing his way through, she landed nearby, her massive dark blue body sending tremors through the earth.
¡°Clear skies, Bazzalth-brother,¡± Bazzalth¡¯s sister greeted him.
¡°Calm skies, Tavreth-sister,¡± he replied, regarding her with no small amount of envy. At over one and a half times Bazzalth¡¯s size, Tavreth was one of the largest people and also perhaps the most powerful. Not like him, the smallest and weakest person there was.
¡°Crawlers once more have crossed line. Bazzalth-brother knows what to do,¡± she informed him.
¡°Where?¡±
¡°Crawlers return to Yrim¡¯s Summit.¡±
Ah, yes. Bazzalth remembered that one. To think that the crawlers would return to that place after how he¡¯d cleansed it about a year ago. Did they not know what would happen? Was one extermination not enough? Were they truly that stupid?
¡°Bazzalth will remove crawlers, as always,¡± he told her. ¡°Does Tavreth-sister require anything else?¡±
His sister paused for a breath to consider the question, making him immediately regret asking it. It was apparent that she had no other business with him at this time, but because he¡¯d asked, now she felt like she needed to come up with something.
¡°Bazzalth-brother¡¯s tunnel is too skinny,¡± she finally answered. ¡°Tunnel has not been widened in millennia. Tavreth misses days when Tavreth could enter to see Bazzalth-brother¡¯s home. Bazzalth will widen tunnel.¡±
¡°Bazzalth likes small tunnel. Small tunnel controls airflow,¡± he argued back. Of course, he was too smart to say the real reason he kept the tunnel so thin that even he, the smallest person, had trouble getting through it. Bazzalth did not want his elder sister in his home. Bazzalth did not want any other person in his home. Given the way others treated him, he saw no reason to make access to him any easier. All that ever happened when others saw the results of his hoard was that they began to treat him as even more of a pariah than usual. He hated it. It wasn¡¯t like he could change his hoard any more than they could change theirs, but that didn¡¯t stop them.
¡°Bazzalth-brother, Tavreth was not suggesting,¡± his sister growled. A heavy pressure slammed into his mind, causing him to reel back in shock. Then, the pressure vanished as quickly as it came, a warning of what she could do to him if he ever dared oppose her. ¡°Tavreth will return in half-year. Tavreth looks forward to seeing how Bazzalth-brother¡¯s hoard has grown these last centuries.¡±
With that said, Bazzalth¡¯s imposing sister turned away and took flight, heading north towards her cave and the caves of the others. Now alone again, Bazzalth headed back into his abode to get ready. Proper pest extermination required certain special preparations. Yes, fortuitous timing indeed. Now he would be able to stock up on experimental materials just as he was running out.
Not long after, Bazzalth soared south, ready to do his task, a task he was uniquely suited for. Bazzalth lived to the south of the others for several reasons. One was, admittedly, his desire to be left alone. But the other, arguably more important reason was that he was the guardian of the southern border.
Every person could be largely defined by three things: their hoard, their flame augment, and their unique talent. Bazzalth¡¯s talent let him see the souls of other sapients through solid objects and at a great distance. With such an ability, he could make sure that no crawler, no matter how well they hid, lived to tell the tale of the people hidden to the north.
Every day, he swept through the entire southern mountains, keeping low and using his soulsight to see through the mountains themselves and find crawlers who had made their way too far north to be allowed to live. His talent meant that nobody had to worry about a crawler getting away to spread word of their existence. It was something that no other person could boast, which, for all his weakness, made him invaluable.
People couldn¡¯t go all the way to the southernmost mountains of the mountain range, as they would be visible to crawlers on the hills past the range. Yet, everybody¡¯s homes were still far, far to the north, at least five days of travel for a physically-gifted crawler. This meant that Bazzalth could allow crawlers to explore a decent amount of the southern part of the range and only strike when he knew that nobody would be able to spot him.
However, that was only for small groups of crawlers exploring the mountains. His people¡¯s tolerance for organized crawler operations like mines was far lower than that for a few crawlers on their own. Mines meant development, and development meant crawler civilization slowly but inevitably encroaching upon his people¡¯s sanctuary like a slowly rising tide. This could never be allowed to happen, so any mine that sprang up more than a few mountains deep into the range had to be wiped from the mountainside with extreme prejudice. This was when Bazzalth¡¯s talent went from ¡°extremely useful¡± to ¡°absolutely vital¡±. Only he could exterminate every crawler while ensuring that none lived to tell the tale, not even a crawler a mountain away. No chances could be taken with something this crucial.
The mine at Yrim¡¯s Summit was a mine he had already cleared out once before, massacring hundreds of the tiny crawlers with ease, and yet they had already returned after just a year. Bazzalth wondered what could drive them to their death so readily. Was it hunger? Greed? Or were these crawlers simply considered expendable? Perhaps those sent to these mines were valued less than the ore they dug out.
As he neared Yrim¡¯s Summit, he swooped down until he flew just above the rocky ground, keeping out of view from watching eyes. Landing on the north side of the mountain, he gazed through the rock with his soulsight to find what appeared to be some sort of mild chaos happening on the mountain¡¯s south side near the mine. Had they spotted him somehow? After observing for several breaths, he decided that they had not. Well, their chaos was about to increase a thousandfold.
Placing down his material bag and pair of acid bombs for later, he leaped back into the sky and soared around the mighty peak, coming in upon the crawlers from the east. Several of them noticed his approach and let out a cry of warning, but it was too late. It had been too late long, long ago, back when they had been born crawlers. This was just the natural conclusion.
A number of tipped-over crawler transportation devices lay near the southern end of the crawlers¡¯ camp, their cargo of ore spilled all across the mountainside. The largest number of crawlers congregated around them, feverishly working to right the transports and dig beneath the spilled ore towards something¡ªmore crawlers, his soulsight revealed to him. He silently thanked the crawlers for making his task easier.
Breathing in, he roared out a large cone of white-hot flame, the fire incinerating the crawlers and their transports. Having arrived with authority, he reveled in the sight of the remaining crawlers scattering like the vermin they were. Using his soulsight, he surveyed the area to find all the crawlers on the periphery first. Those near him could wait for a breath or two; they wouldn¡¯t be able to get far.
The mountainside around him was littered with the grey souls of the departed, remnants of the first cleansing a year prior which would not fully disappear for another seventy years or so. Bazzalth ignored those. Instead, he searched for the bright blue spheres of live crawlers and spotted only two, a pair on the north face of the mountain to the south of the mine. They were standing on the single path that led away from the mine, their mouths open in shock and their eyes wide with fear. One of them saw him looking at them and turned to run, the other quickly following.
No matter.
Taking another deep breath, Bazzalth concentrated on the flames building inside him, infusing them with his incredible power, willing them to change as he always had. Once he felt the power reach peak capacity, he opened his jaw wide and unleashed it all in a single blast. A concentrated, focused beam of light lanced forth from his throat, covering the distance between him and the two fleeing crawlers with a speed that only light possessed. The beam tore through the pair¡¯s bodies, slicing away their torsos and leaving just burning heads and legs to tumble down the mountainside.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Bazzalth¡¯s light augment was widely mocked by the others for its low power, its blast unable to leave more than a large welt on another person¡¯s hide. He couldn¡¯t deny that it paled in comparison to some others, such as his sister¡¯s mighty lightning augment, but he liked his. It was different, and it came in handy for solving long-distance issues like the one just now.
Turning to the rest of the crawlers, Bazzalth began to mercilessly slaughter them one by one, using his superior size, speed, and strength to keep them contained as he carefully created more materials for his experiments. It was a lot more work than just roasting the lot of them¡ªhe had to use his claws and tail while being careful not to crush their bodies too severely¡ªbut such was the life of one seeking knowledge.
Some of the crawlers were silly enough to try to attack him, sending arrows, fireballs, and other such projectiles his way, or doing their desperate best to stab and slice him with various bladed weapons. He ignored them, as the vast majority of their attacks were too weak to even take notice of. Only one of the crawlers seemed strong enough to even cause him pain, and that pain was little more than a slight itch. He flicked that particular crawler into a nearby boulder.
Soon enough, dead crawlers littered the ground around the camp. No crawler within the camp still breathed, the entire mountainside covered in newly created grey spheres. There were, however, a large number of crawlers who had decided from the beginning to hide inside the mine. Their thin tunnels were far too constricting even for him, the smallest person, to fit inside.
This would not be a problem.
First, Bazzalth flew back around to the north side of the mountain and collected his prepared supplies. Then, after returning to the crawler camp, he placed his twin bombs on the ground and proceeded to collect his materials, loading them into the large sack for transport back to his home. Finally, he pried open the entrance to the mine, activated the bomb, and rolled it inside.
These bombs were filled with a special acid. The product of another person known as Maylanth and her flame augment, this strange acid rendered most organic substances into pools of sludge and gas while having no effect on non-organic matter. He would trade for a vat-full of it from her every decade or so. The acid did not decay if kept in a sealed container and had no effect on something as strong as a person¡¯s flesh, so he could keep it stored away and use it to make bombs such as these for just these sorts of occasions.
The bomb burst open inside the tunnel, the vaporized acid spreading throughout the mine. Bazzalth watched with his soulsight as the acid reached the huddling crawlers and began to do its work. The gas would eat away at a crawler¡¯s entire body, even the bone, until there was nothing left that could be recognized as a crawler¡¯s remains. Slowly, the colors of the souls began to change, each going from the bright blue of life to the muted grey of death.
Death did not mean the extinguishing of the soul. The soul lingered for a long time, clinging to the matter that was once its vessel for many years. Previous experiments had shown that only the complete annihilation of the matter itself through a person¡¯s blood was capable of erasing a soul before its time.
Once the last of the crawlers inside the mine had perished, Bazzalth set the other bomb to release its contents in another twenty breaths, picked up his bag of experiment components, and took flight. Soon, the acid would wash over the mountainside and its adjacent mountainsides, wiping clean the last traces of the crawlers that had once been here, and he couldn¡¯t allow it to touch his precious materials.
Easy, as always. Too easy, even. Though he was the weakest of all the people, he was still a person. He was one who soared high above those pathetic, insignificant ground-bound animals. Not even a thousand crawlers could pose a threat to him. This was not a challenge, it was merely a chore.
Just a wing-beat later, however, he noticed two grey souls lying in the snow some distance from the now-destroyed mine camp. These weren¡¯t the only grey souls out on the mountains, of course; the mountain was littered with the dead souls of those who had died both today and in his last purge. He had just ignored all the grey before because the bright blue of the living was the only thing he needed to care about when cleansing this place.
These two, however stood out among the rest because of two things. The first was that they were clinging to fresh bodies collapsed in snow dyed crimson with crawler blood. The second was that their souls were noticably dimmer than the rest¡ªso dim, in fact, that he¡¯d almost missed them entirely. This could only mean that these were crawlers that had yet to reach adulthood. The soulforce of an infant crawler was negligible even by crawler standards and would slowly grow in power as the crawler matured until reaching its peak at the crawler became an adult.
The first body, however, turned out to be unusable. The head had been nearly completely severed from the body, rendering it useless for his needs. It was a shame, really. This body seemed quite unique. Bazzalth devoted very little of his memory to the appearance of crawlers; he preferred to focus on things that mattered. Still, this sort of crawler was rare, so he took notice. He had probably only seen four or five crawlers with fur-covered tails and triangular ears protruding from the tops of their skulls in the last thousand years. He had never before seen one with such golden hair. A shame, really. He would have liked to see what difference, if any, there would be with the Ichor, but the body was just too damaged.
The other body turned out to be nearly as unique. The dark coloration of the skin, hair, ears, and tail was rare as well, though he was sure that he¡¯d seen another with the same features recently. Yes, now he remembered. An adult male, the crawler had been a member of an exploration team that he¡¯d encountered two seasons ago. The dark one with the tail and triangular ears had vanished into the Ichor just as unremarkably as the rest.
This one looked much the same, only a fifth of the size. Even smaller than the one before, it only had a single long arrow poking through its chest. As a bonus, both children had died just a few breaths before his arrival judging by the state of the bodies and blood, meaning this child was as good as the materials he¡¯d just gathered himself. Most excellent. He gently picked up the body, being careful not to accidentally crush the tiny bones. Though the integrity of the body was excellent due to the timing and nature of its death, the body itself was not in great shape. He could see its bones poking out against its skin all over its form, from its face to its ribs to its arms and legs. Hopefully that would not impact the results.
A fog of acid was quickly making its way down the slope towards him, so, collection complete, Bazzalth took to the skies. One more check for sapient life turned up nothing within his large range, so he proceeded north, towards his home and towards Knowledge. All that remained at the mine was a wasteland of death, one barren of clues for any future crawlers who would come to investigate the sudden lack of contact. Hopefully, they would learn from this what they had not learned the last time: that to mine this far north was to die a mysterious, terrible death.
Sometime later, after squeezing himself into his home, Bazzalth prepared the next round of experiments. He refreshed the Ichor in the vat, replacing the somewhat depleted liquid with a freshly processed batch, prepared his note-taking equipment, and removed the gathered materials from his sack. Opening the vat¡¯s lid, he picked up a body from the pile. This body belonged to one of the better fed crawlers, a female one who had been foolish enough to attack him. Bazzalth appreciated such foolishness because it had allowed him to grab the female and snap her neck without damaging all her fragile organs.
Gently dropping the corpse into the Ichor, he watched the action begin. The body immediately convulsed, its limbs thrashing as the Ichor not only made contact with its skin but rushed into its mouth and nose. The woman¡¯s garments started to disintegrate almost immediately, dispersing about the vat as a sort of brown cloud that soon vanished entirely, eaten by the blue slime.
Bazzalth watched with his soulsight as well, observing how the grey soul began to change, speckles of blue appearing across the dull sphere, slowly growing larger and larger and... fading away into nothingness. Bazzalth held back a sigh as he reminded himself that this was still valuable data. He watched as the Ichor devoured the crawler¡¯s skin and then her muscles from the outside and from within at the same time, taking note of the time the decomposition started as well as its speed and other details.
This body had lasted only half as long as average, only sixteen-and-a-quarter breaths. Why? Was it the age? The gender? The time since death? What it had last eaten for breakfast? Even with all the data he had already accumulated, he could not find a correlation. He needed more data.
Taking a second body, he repeated the process. This one, unlike the previous body, didn¡¯t decompose for a good fifty breaths. Was it because this one was a male?
Two more corpses, and then he would have to replace the Ichor. He dropped the next body in, noting that it was the small child he¡¯d found when leaving the mine.
The child¡¯s ragged clothes broke down immediately, their integrity far weaker than that of the previous two subjects. As the tiny being wildly spasmed about, he kept an eye on the soul, watching the familiar blue speckles grow on the spectral grey sphere like bacteria on a dish and waiting to record the moment the growth faltered and fell apart. But it didn¡¯t.
Bazzalth¡¯s heart pounded in his chest, his body tensing up so hard that his toe-claws dug trenches into the stone beneath him as he watched the azure speckles grow and grow. His breathing quickened as the blue continued its conquest of the grey sphere, the color spreading faster and faster and faster until...
A living soul glowed weakly within his soulsight, floating above a tiny body suspended in Ichor. The body¡¯s chest weakly rose and fell, autonomically breathing the translucent liquid in and out. Alive.
Flinging his head back, Bazzalth unleashed a powerful roar of triumph. Success! Finally, success!
For a long while, Bazzalth did nothing but observe, taking down every last detail of the creature in the vat. He recorded everything from its breathing patterns to the way it held its body to how its eyes remained forever closed but he could see subtle flutters in its eyelids. Was it blinking? Perhaps dreaming?
Eventually, however, it was time for more invasive measures. Removing the lid, Bazzalth set down his ¡°delicate instrument¡± assembly beside the vat. One of his more useful creations, he¡¯d grown the tool to allow him to better operate with detailed precision on his subjects, given how crawlers and other animals were often smaller than a single finger on his hand. The assembly came in two parts: the main setup which displayed a variety of tools, and a control panel that connected to the main assembly through a cable of nerves. By manipulating the controls, he would send instructions through the nerves that told the muscles in each tool what to do.
Taking great care to avoid damage to the subject, he took control of the assembly¡¯s smallest syringe arm and had it dip down into the vat needle first. Like most every tool and container he used now, this tool had been grown from his own flesh, allowing it to shrug off the corrosive nature of the Ichor with ease. The tiny needle, crafted from his bone, poked into the diminutive child¡¯s flesh and began to draw its blood.
Bazzalth reeled back slightly in surprise as a multi-hued phosphorescence blossomed before his eyes. What was this? Something inside the vat was emitting a bright, shining light along every spectrum of the rainbow. Pulling the syringe tool out of the Ichor, he lifted it up in the palm of his left hand and inspected it closely. As he suspected, the light came from the blood he¡¯d drawn from the child.
After getting a closer look, Bazzalth realized why it appeared so strangely familiar. This looked almost like the blood of a person! It shared the same multicolored appearance, though a person¡¯s blood did not glow robustly as this did. But what was this doing inside the crawler child? It made no-
With an audible hiss, the syringe split open without warning, dropping its contents onto his finger. Bazzalth let loose a loud growl as the blood lit up even brighter upon contact with his flesh. What was this terrible pain? Why did it hurt!?
Overriding through sheer will his instinct to move his hand and wipe away the pain, Bazzalth kept his hand still and inspected the area that hurt with a critical eye. To his utter shock, he found that the crawler¡¯s blood that had somehow spilled free from its container was eating away at his hand! The sight baffled him utterly, but it could not be denied. This iridescent liquid was destroying the flesh of his hand, a feat not even a person¡¯s blood could accomplish! Spellbound despite the pain, Bazzalth watched the mesmerizing light show of shining rainbow sparkles the blood emitted, each one of the hundreds cast off every moment floating up into the air for just a breath before winking out of existence.
The blood ate deeper and deeper into his hand until eventually it broke through to the bottom and fell to the stone floor below, whereupon it continued its rampage by sinking into the rock itself. Upon inspecting his wound, Bazzalth found no sign of acidic burns or chemical reactions. The flesh had simply been destroyed.
Impossible! Ludicrous! And yet... utterly undeniable.
How fascinating!
Not even bothering to treat his wound, Bazzalth threw himself into his work. His regenerative abilities would close the gap quickly enough without him needing to waste time treating it, not when he could be using that time to crack open this mystery! He studied the child in the vat throughout the night, the next day, and the next night without rest. By the end of the second night, he had concluded, as definitively as he could, that the child somehow carried the blood of a person within her. It carried all the same hallmarks as his own blood did, or the blood of his sister.
There was, however, one critical difference: this child¡¯s blood was far more potent than any person¡¯s blood Bazzalth had ever studied. Thousands of times more concentrated and powerful, in fact, far more than every other living person combined. So saturated with lifeforce and destructive power was this substance that it could even accomplish what a person¡¯s blood could not and destroy a person¡¯s flesh! How did it not eat through her own body? He had no answer... yet.
That was just one of the many questions this discovery had raised, questions he craved answers to. Where had the blood come from? Had the Ichor reacted with her body somehow, changing it as it reanimated her so it produced this new ultra-potent blood? Was that how she resisted the destruction of the Ichor?
For that matter, what even was she now? Was this child still a mere crawler? Though other people would disagree, Bazzalth believed two criteria separated people from crawlers: blood and flight. Crawler blood was just like the blood of any other animal. It lacked the transcendent qualities of a person¡¯s blood. The other criterion was rather self-explanatory. People ruled the skies, while crawlers could only, well, crawl pitifully along the ground. Bazzalth saw no wings protruding from this tiny creature, but her impossible blood was so remarkable that he couldn¡¯t help but feel that she was halfway to being a person. A half-person? A crawler-person hybrid? He would need to come up with a new taxonomy for this, oh yes! This was so exciting!
As the day went on, Bazzalth kept studying the creature with a single-minded focus. By the end of the day, he had come to understand the sheer magnitude of the being he¡¯d created, and he could not help but be in awe of its absurdity. The lifeforce contained within this tiny form outclassed the combined lifeforce of every known person in the world combined! And it was being generated by the child herself, not simply absorbed or borrowed from the surrounding Ichor. There was no way the Ichor could manage such things, anyway; while the lifeforce found within it was indeed formidable, it was little more than a drop compared to the ocean of energy this child possessed. The impossible blood that flowed within her veins was also something her body manufactured, not something converted from the Ichor.
For the longest time, Bazzalth had believed it possible¡ªmaybe even likely¡ªthat the temporarily reanimated bodies he submerged in the Ichor were not even momentarily alive once more, but rather in some form of ¡°undeath¡±. The thought was that it was simply the lifeforce of the Ichor providing an external fuel that drove the flesh to move once more, an empty vessel that could not sustain itself or generate its own lifeforce. The way the corpses were erased had always prevented him from determining the truth of this theory with certainty.
Now, he knew that this possibility was not the case, at least in this instance. The child suspended within the vat was alive in every sense of the word. He had taken her deceased form and transformed her into something new. This crawler was no longer a crawler, but rather something new. Something greater. Something amazing.
Bazzalth rejoiced. He had done it! He had returned the dead to the land of the living! No, he had created life itself! He had accomplished something that nobody, not even his great ancestors in their shining palaces, had been able to accomplish!
After two full days of studying the body in the tank, Bazzalth decided he had discovered all that he could discover with the current arrangement. If he wanted more answers, he would need to remove the child from the tank. He glanced at the floating body as he lifted the lid. The girl¡¯s flesh had filled out over the last two days, changing her form into what he imagined a healthy crawler child would look like. No longer could he see bones pushing against skin. As a strange side effect, the child¡¯s hair had grown at a rapid pace. Now over seven times the length of her body, her long strands of hair filled much of the large vat.
Grabbing that hair with his left hand, Bazzalth used it to pull the child up to the top of the vat and scooped up her body with his right hand, letting it lie in his wide palm. For a few breaths, the body lay still, unmoving. Then, just as Bazzalth felt his worries come to a crescendo, the tiny body spasmed violently and began to cough, spewing blue slime onto his hand.
He raised his palm up to just beside his right eye to better take in the details as the crawler child¡¯s coughing fit finally abated, the last remnants of the Ichor removed from its lungs. He wanted to observe how the crawler would react. Would it scream, or scramble back, or even try to run like all crawlers did when confronted by a being of such overwhelming power as himself?
Slowly pushing herself into an unsteady sitting position, the child opened her eyes sluggishly, almost lethargically, and looked up at him. Her gaze unfocused, she took in everything before her but seemed to process little to none of it.
¡°Ahh?¡± her tiny, high-pitched voice squeaked out as she ponderously slid her hands across the smooth scales of Bazzalth¡¯s hand.
¡°Ahh...¡± she said again as she reached out to touch the side of Bazzalth¡¯s face, her palms and fingers slowly caressing the sleek hide just below his eye. ¡°Mmmm... warm...¡±
Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, the child leaned her upper body against his cheek, nuzzled it with her face, and went to sleep.
Bazzalth blinked in utter befuddlement, finding himself at a complete loss. Whatever he¡¯d expected, that had not been it. The thought tickled him. In truth, nothing about this child had gone according to his expectations. What a perplexing little thing she was! What a treasure trove of data!
His ears picked up a tiny rumble as the child began to release a series of small vibrations with each inward and outward breath, the minute tremors barely detectable against his skin. How odd, and strangely pleasant. What was the purpose of such a noise? Just another question to add to the list!
Yes, he would keep this one and study it with great interest in the years to come. There was so much to do! He needed to prepare a living space and new equipment that could withstand her impossible blood and food! What was he going to do about food? People only needed to eat a few times each season, but this creature would probably need a much more steady supply of... of what? He didn¡¯t even know what she ate! There were so many questions to consider!
It was at this point that Bazzalth realized that he couldn¡¯t move his hand without waking the child and possibly dropping her onto the hard stone floor below, meaning he would have to carry out his preparations with only his other hand. He sighed as he slowly returned the unused bodies to his sack with his free hand and carried the sack to his storage area in the back of the cave. The things he did for Knowledge...
Chapter 93
Consciousness returned to Pari slowly, her thoughts little more than vague feelings and impressions gently drifting through her mind. All she cared about was this feeling of warmth. Warmth and safety. With each slow breath, her nostrils filled with an indescribable plethora of scents, enough to normally overwhelm her sleep-addled brain. But instead, she found herself focused on one particular scent, the strongest one of all by far. It smelled of strength and power¡ªincredible and overwhelming¡ªand yet she felt no fear. Instead, the scent gave her a feeling of great peace. Everything was good and right.
Her bed shifted slightly beneath her, jolting Pari just enough to cause her to open her eyes. Stretching out her arms, back, and tail, she let out a soft yawn and looked around. She sat on the edge of a tan platform up against an equally tan wall, both of which were slightly soft and incredibly warm and comfortable. Beyond the platform, however, she found a massive cavern lit by the soft light of hundreds of glowing things¡ªbags, perhaps?¡ªstuck to the walls and ceilings. Down below, she saw a row of thin and tall containers with lids on them and a giant table and dozens of strange devices she couldn¡¯t even begin to understand.
Crawling towards the other side of the platform to get a closer look, Pari stopped mid-crawl as she felt an unusual tug on her head. Turning around, she found, to her befuddlement, that her hair had somehow grown out to be incredibly long, so long that it had piled up into a large heap and was dragging along the floor behind her for many body-lengths. How strange. Why was her hair so long all of a sudden? It hadn¡¯t been like this when... when...
When what?
What had she been doing before waking up here? She could feel something there, as if she knew the answer to this question but, for some reason, the knowledge wouldn¡¯t come to her. All she could remember was a feeling of incredible cold, a cold that had filled her to the point of numbness. This situation seemed the case with the vast majority of her memory: vague feelings and bits of general knowledge, but specifics strangely out of reach.
Before she could think too hard about this unusual discovery, Pari found herself off balance as the floor beneath her suddenly moved. Steadying herself with her hand as the platform shifted, she watched in awe as it moved away from the wall. Pari¡¯s gaze rose up the wall to find a giant eyeball staring back at her. Wait, that wasn¡¯t a wall at all! And the floor she sat on, it wasn¡¯t a floor, either!
Pari couldn¡¯t believe her eyes. A lizard! The biggest lizard she had ever seen, and it was holding her in the palm of its hand! Try as she might, she couldn¡¯t wrap her young brain around the sheer size of the tan beast. It was bigger than a house! No, it was bigger than three houses! No, it was bigger than five-
¡°CHILD HAS FINALLY AWOKEN.¡±
Pari let out a scream and clutched at her head as something seemed to connect to her mind, an unstoppable torrent of meaning blasting into her head. What she felt wasn¡¯t pain in the usual sense, but more of a complete overwhelming of her mind, like being thrown into deep water when you don¡¯t know how to swim and drowning in it. The foreign meaning engulfed her and, like deep water pouring down her throat, she found her mind unable to hold it back. Her heart raced uncontrollably. She couldn¡¯t think. She couldn¡¯t breathe.
Before she could regain herself, she felt the floor beneath her shift again as the hand lifted her up beside the giant eyeball. The huge slit pupil contracted as the lizard focused in on her.
¡°CHILD HURT?¡±
Pari screamed again as a second wave battered at her soul. It still threatened to suck her under, but for some reason, it didn¡¯t feel as bad as the first time.
¡°WHAT WRONG WITH CHILD?¡±
A third surge, this one even easier to tolerate than the last. Pari found herself on her back, her lungs huffing and puffing as she desperately drew air. Her heart was still racing and her body was slick with sweat, but it felt like she had finally made it to the surface of the water and was coming up for air.
¡°INTRIGUING.¡±
The lizard. It was talking to her. That was where the voice came from, the one that bellowed in her head. She could finally keep her head above water well enough to understand what was happening. Weakly, she pushed herself up onto her hands and knees and stared back into the massive orb.
It was strange, but she felt no fear from the lizard¡¯s gaze. She knew that it would not hurt her; she could smell it. Its scent... it was the same scent she had smelled before, the one that made her feel relaxed and safe. Nor did she see anything but curiosity in its gigantic eye.
¡°IS CHILD STILL HURT?¡±
Pari barely felt the torrent this time, the onrushing knowledge flowing through her like water through newly-constructed plumbing. ¡°N-no...¡± she replied before letting out a cough.
¡°HMMMM...¡± it growled thoughtfully. ¡°THIS ONE IS CALLED BAZZALTH. DOES CHILD HAVE NAME?¡±
Pari thought about her name, her blurry memory still almost entirely unusable. But within it, she could feel a name, her name. Pari. Yes, it felt right. That was her name. But was that all of her name? She couldn¡¯t help but feel like there was more to it, but try as she might, no answer came.
¡°Pari,¡± she finally informed him. Bazzalth was a ¡°him¡±, she knew now. She¡¯d felt it in his name.
¡°I SEE. PARI-CHILD SLEPT TWELVE DAYS. IS PARI-CHILD HUNGRY?¡±
Now that he mentioned it, Pari realized that she was, in fact, extremely hungry. Seeing the look in her eyes, Bazzalth reached down somewhere with his other hand and brought up what looked like a large leg from an animal she didn¡¯t recognize. Suddenly a large flame sprung up from nowhere beneath the leg as Bazzalth held the meat in front of Pari. Soon the leg began to sizzle and drip hot fat onto his skin, but the lizard didn¡¯t seem to mind it nor the flame just above his palm.
¡°UNABLE TO EAT RAW MEAT... HMPH!¡± the gigantic creature snorted derisively. ¡°CRAWLERS ARE SO WEAK.¡±
A few moments later, Pari found herself chowing down on the greatest meal she¡¯d ever eaten. She took bite after bite until she felt like she could barely move, whereupon she laid back down on her backside to digest and let out a groan.
¡°PARI-CHILD HURT?¡± Bazzalth immediately inquired as he removed the remaining meat.
¡°I... I... I...¡±
Each time she tried to speak, something within Pari seemed to get in the way. It was like there was a battle happening between the fuzzy part of her that was sure this was how everybody talked and a much more concrete part that insisted that it was incorrect.
¡°Pari is alright, Pari is just full,¡± she told him, the mental battle coming to a close. This felt much better. No, not just better. It felt right and natural. This was how normal people talked.
Her words seemed to mollify him for the moment, and he slowly lowered his palm down to the floor below and set her on more solid ground. Her curiosity returning now that she felt satisfied, Pari took in Bazzalth¡¯s full form for the first time. She couldn¡¯t get over just how big he was. From his massive claws to his giant teeth to his humongous wings, he was by far the biggest lizard, no, the biggest living thing that she had ever seen. But was he really a lizard? She had never seen lizards with wings before.
¡°Are you...¡±
There it was again, that strange dissonance inside her telling her that the way she was speaking was wrong.
¡°Is Bazzalth a...¡±
There, that was better. But still, something felt off. Not incorrect but perhaps... incomplete?
Fortunately, Bazzalth seemed to understand her troubles and told her, ¡°PARI-CHILD WILL CALL BAZZALTH ¡®BAZZALTH-FATHER¡¯ BECAUSE BAZZALTH GAVE PARI-CHILD LIFE.¡±
Pari shook her head. ¡°No! Pari already has father!¡± She knew in her bones that she¡¯d had a father, who had been much older than her and big and strong and nice and probably not a giant winged lizard. She couldn¡¯t remember anything in particular about him, but she was sure she already had one. She didn¡¯t need a second one.
The giant being stared down at her in disbelief. ¡°PARI-CHILD DARES TO DISOBEY BAZZALTH?¡± he growled.
¡°Pari already has father like Pari. Pari does not need lizard father too.¡±
¡°LIZARD?!¡± the lizard roared. ¡°PARI-CHILD DARES CALL BAZZALTH LIZARD?!¡±
Pari tilted her head in puzzlement. ¡°Not lizard?¡±
¡°BAZZALTH IS PERSON!¡± thundered the giant creature. Pari immediately knew that ¡®person¡¯ meant a very different thing than what she knew. There was a weight there, with far more significance than the concept she was used to, almost like it was more ¡®Person¡¯ than ¡®person¡¯. ¡°BAZZALTH WILL NOT TOLERATE SUCH THOUGHTS! LIZARDS ARE WEAK! BAZZALTH IS MIGHTY! LIZARDS DIE EVEN QUICKER THAN CRAWLERS! BAZZALTH HAS LIVED FOR MILLENNIA!¡±
Pari frowned as Bazzalth continued to rage. He really didn¡¯t seem to like being called a lizard, but she couldn¡¯t call him a father either. What to do? Suddenly her ears perked up as the answer came to her.
¡°Grandfather!¡±
Bazzalth¡¯s tirade came to a confused halt. ¡°GRANDFATHER?¡±
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather is bigger and stronger and older than father, so Bazzalth-grandfather is grandfather!¡± she happily declared, nodding her head at her own smartness. It made the best, most perfect sense.
Bazzalth blinked.
¡°THAT IS...¡± He let out what felt like a Person¡¯s equivalent of a sigh. ¡°...ACCEPTABLE.¡±
Pari smiled in satisfaction. Now that this issue was out of the way, she could move on to the important things.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather, Pari is bored. Pari wants to make candles!¡±
Pari watched as a single drop of her blood fell from the tiny cut on her arm and landed on the large bone plate below. Hundreds of tiny rainbow dots, brilliant in their resplendence, spritzed into the air as the drop traveled through it, only to increase a hundredfold when the drop splattered onto the flat bone by her feet. Backing away, she looked up at her grandfather as he studied a variety of instruments, each pointed towards the reaction happening on the plate.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather need more blood?¡± she asked the massive Person as he leaned over one of the instruments, studying something she couldn¡¯t see. Something about light? And ¡°phase-shift vibrations¡±? She didn¡¯t understand, but that was okay because she was just a kid!
¡°NO, THIS IS ENOUGH. PARI-CHILD LET OUT JUST ENOUGH. PARI-CHILD IS GOOD CHILD.¡±
Her smile as wide as a mountain, Pari let out a delighted giggle as a blast of happiness surged through her. She loved it when Bazzalth-grandfather complimented her. It made her feel warm and fuzzy inside like a happy tickle, and she could never get enough of it.
¡°HMMM... YES... I SEE...¡± he muttered as he took a closer look at the instrument readings.
After living with Bazzalth-grandfather for about a year, Pari knew full well that he went into his own little world whenever he started mumbling to himself. That meant we wouldn¡¯t need her for at least an hour, and that meant that she had time for her favorite activity.
First, however, she needed to make sure that the cut on her arm had stopped bleeding. Her blood was very special, after all. Bazzalth-grandfather had been very insistent that she understand this, and that she couldn¡¯t go around bleeding on things. Pari was a little confused since his blood was multicolored just like hers, but she listened because she was a good child. Listening and obeying made Bazzalth-grandfather happy, and she wanted to make him happy because she loved Bazzalth-grandfather with all her heart. Bazzalth-grandfather was the Person who took care of her. He fed her, washed her, played with her, and even slept with her. Yes, Bazzalth-grandfather made the best bed in the world. When she drifted off to sleep every night atop his giant back, she felt like she was in the warmest, coziest, and safest place in the world. She couldn¡¯t be happier and she felt impossibly grateful that he was her grandfather.
Luckily, the tiny cut had stopped bleeding almost immediately. Pari had become very good at bloodletting by now, given that she did it so often. Bazzalth-grandfather loved to study her. He would poke her and prod her and run all sorts of tests on her body, but more than anything, he liked to study her blood. By now, she could poke herself just enough to let out a drop or two for him and that was all. It hurt slightly, but Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s praise more than made up for it.
Hopping down the large steps built into the side of the massive table upon which she stood, her twenty-pace-long hair sliding along behind her, Pari made her way towards the back of the cave. There sat her greatest possession: a set of candlemaking equipment created just for her.
When she¡¯d first awoken in Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s home, she¡¯d asked to make candles. Why she had wanted to do that, she still couldn¡¯t say; it had just felt like something she badly wanted to do. After several days of badgering, he¡¯d finally given in and built something for her. At first, the new set had felt wrong to use, as it hadn¡¯t been designed for dipping¡ªa method that had just felt natural to her. But Bazzalth-grandfather insisted that his design was far more efficient and versatile. The containers were actually molds that would let her create candles of many different shapes and sizes, and now she would even be able to add her own ingredients to the melted wax to change to aromas to her liking! She liked to add flower petals from the flowers that grew outside the cave during the summertime, as well as leaves and other plant parts. Sometimes she would grind them up for extra aromafication.
Pulling out the pieces and setting them up with a practiced hand, Pari hummed a little tune as she placed out the different ingredients she planned to use today, only for that tune to falter when she realized that she was out of wax. Well, that wasn¡¯t a big problem. Wax was easy to get.
Standing back up, she ran back to Bazzalth-grandfather and jumped onto his tail. With a steady grace born of ample practice, she ran and climbed up the tail and onto his rear. From there, she made her way along his broad back until she was crouching atop his head. Slowly and carefully¡ªso as not to bother him while he worked¡ªshe clambered down the side of his head to one of his ear holes and crawled inside. There, she found her bounty.
Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s earwax made the best candles. It lasted a very long time when burning, was hard as a rock at room temperature but was incredibly malleable when heated up, flowed easily when melted, and didn¡¯t stick to the mold when the candle was finished. It was such a blessing that she had such a ready supply here whenever she needed it.
Slowly, she collected a large lump of the wax, making sure to be as quiet as possible¡ªPeople supposedly had great hearing and she didn¡¯t want to hurt him. Then, prize acquired, she made her way back down to the ground. Bazzalth-grandfather continued his inspection of the instruments, his behavior showing no signs that he¡¯d even noticed her actions. That was good. He was happiest when he had something to study, and she wanted him to be happy just like how he made her happy.
¡°PARI-CHILD!¡±
Pari jumped at the sudden exclamation. Oh no, had she bothered him after all? He wasn¡¯t looking at his devices anymore, but rather at the side of the cave near her.
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¡°TAKE CANDLE EQUIPMENT AND HIDE UNDER PELT PILE!¡±
What was he talking about? Was he mad at her? Maybe she should apologize. ¡°Pari sorry-¡±
¡°NOW!¡± he barked. ¡°DO NOT COME OUT NO MATTER WHAT UNTIL BAZZALTH SAYS PARI-CHILD CAN COME OUT!¡±
Pari didn¡¯t understand what was happening, but she did as she was told. Quickly scooping up all equipment and ingredients and throwing them into the sack she kept them in, she ran to the giant pile of pelts in the very back of the cave. A large mound of treated animal skins from Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s hunts, it served as his preferred sleeping place. She¡¯d lain atop it many a time as well, but only tried hiding inside it once. It hadn¡¯t worked; somehow, he¡¯d spotted her immediately even beneath so many pelts.
Scurrying deep beneath the hundreds of furs while dragging the sack behind her, Pari finally stopped when she felt she was absolutely, completely hidden. Grabbing her hair trailing behind her, she pulled it arm by arm into the pile and held the resulting ball of hair tightly against her chest. The soft, silky feeling against her skin soothed her, but only a little.
Pari didn¡¯t understand why Bazzalth-grandfather had told her to hide here, but the urgency in his voice worried her. He had seemed almost... afraid. But that was impossible! Bazzalth-grandfather was so incredibly strong; surely nothing could scare him, right?
¡°BAZZALTH-BROTHER,¡± a low voice, even lower than Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s, growled from outside the cave, ¡°TAVRETH HAS ARRIVED.¡±
¡°ENTER, TAVRETH-SISTER. BAZZALTH WELCOMES YOU,¡± he replied from within.
Pari almost let out a squeak of excitement. Bazzalth-grandfather had a sister?! Would that make her Tavreth-grandmother?! Pari badly wanted to run out and meet her, but she reminded herself of Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s instructions and stayed still. She would be a good girl.
Pari felt the stone beneath her tremble with each approaching step as Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s sister entered the cave. Though she couldn¡¯t see, Pari knew that Tavreth-maybe-grandmother had to be even larger than Bazzalth-grandfather, for while Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s steps shook the floor, they never did so this heavily.
Then Pari caught a whiff of her, and her entire body shivered involuntarily. She¡¯d never smelled something so powerful before! Tavreth-maybe-grandmother¡¯s power dwarfed Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s with ease, to the point that it made Pari afraid. If Tavreth-maybe-grandmother got mad at Bazzalth-grandfather, things would be very bad for him!
¡°TAVRETH-SISTER IS LATE. TAVRETH-SISTER SAID SHE WOULD ARRIVE HALF-YEAR AGO.¡±
¡°TAVRETH HAD OTHER ITEMS OF IMPORTANCE TO ATTEND TO.¡±
¡°SUCH AS?¡±
¡°ITEMS THAT ARE NOT OF BAZZALTH-BROTHER¡¯S CONCERN. BAZZALTH-BROTHER¡¯S LAIR HAS CHANGED MUCH.¡±
¡°NOT SURPRISING. TAVRETH-SISTER HAS NOT ENTERED FOR MANY YEARS.¡±
¡°INDEED. HOW GROWS BAZZALTH-BROTHER¡¯S HOARD?¡±
¡°VERY WELL. BAZZALTH HAS MADE MANY ENLIGHTENING DISCOVERIES THESE LAST DECADES AND LEARNED MUCH.¡±
¡°TAVRETH CAN SEE THIS. BAZZALTH-BROTHER IS FAR MORE CONTENT THAN CENTURIES PAST. THIS PLEASES TAVRETH.¡±
¡°WHAT OF TAVRETH-SISTER? BAZZALTH FEELS THAT TAVRETH-SISTER¡¯S STRENGTH RISES GREATLY WITH EACH PASSING YEAR.¡±
¡°INDEED, TAVRETH¡¯S HOARD HAS GROWN TREMENDOUSLY AS OF LATE. BUT ENOUGH TIME WASTING. CRAWLERS HAVE OPENED ANOTHER MINE.¡±
¡°THEY NEVER CEASE. TRULY STUPID BEASTS, UNABLE TO LEARN FROM PAST EVENTS.¡±
¡°MINE WAS FOUND IN VALLEY BETWEEN ARGAS PEAK AND VINERA PEAK.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH WILL TAKE CARE OF PROBLEM.¡±
¡°TAVRETH KNOWS BAZZALTH-BROTHER WILL. HOWEVER, TAVRETH CAME FOR OTHER REASON.¡±
¡°WHAT REASON?¡±
¡°THIS REASON.¡±
¡°THIS-! KAERSHA! TAVRETH-SISTER!¡±
A low, rumbling laugh shook the cave.
¡°BAZZALTH-BROTHER CAN FEEL KAERSHA AURA, YES? BAZZALTH-BROTHER WISHES TO BURN FLOWERS TO CINDERS, YES?¡±
Pari wished she could be out there with them to see and understand what would make Bazzalth-grandfather so appalled, but she could not leave hiding. She could only lie beneath the soft furs and wait when he told her to come back out. But then her nose picked up on a new scent, something unlike anything she¡¯d ever sensed before.
It would have been hard for her to properly describe the aroma in normal terms. On the one hand, it smelled like a flower, with all the adjectives that came with that. But what mattered was that it also smelled... wrong. Like something that needed to be crushed and eradicated on sight. She could feel her heart begin to race inside her tiny chest, her blood seeming to heat up from nothing more than smelling the scent. Something in the back of her mind screamed that whatever it was that this other Person had brought was an atrocity that needed to be wiped from existence immediately. In fact, just the act of bringing such a thing was enough for Pari to downgrade Tavreth-maybe-grandmother to Tavreth-not-grandmother. Judging from Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s aghast tone, he agreed with Pari¡¯s loathing.
¡°WHY HAS TAVRETH-SISTER NOT PURGED KAERSHA ON SIGHT?¡±
¡°BECAUSE TAVRETH IS STRONG. TAVRETH WILL NOT BOW TO SUCH PETTY INSTINCT. NOR SHALL BAZZALTH-BROTHER. BAZZALTH-BROTHER SHARES TAVRETH¡¯S PROUD AND STRONG ANCESTRY.¡±
¡°WHAT? TAVRETH-SISTER CANNOT MEAN-¡±
¡°BAZZALTH-BROTHER WILL FIND SECRETS OF KAERSHA FLOWERS FOR TAVRETH.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH CANNOT! EVEN IF TAVRETH-SISTER REQUESTS-¡±
¡°BAZZALTH-BROTHER, TAVRETH DOES NOT REQUEST.¡±
The final word hit Pari like a brick to the face and she involuntarily gasped. Horrified, she covered her mouth with her hands, but it was too late. The damage had already been done. Pari¡¯s sensitive ears picked up the sound of the powerful being sniffing the air.
¡°TAVRETH SMELLS CRAWLER,¡± Tavreth-not-grandmother growled, her deep voice dripping with chilling menace. ¡°WHY DOES BAZZALTH-BROTHER¡¯S LAIR SMELL OF CRAWLERS?¡±
¡°SMELL COMES FROM CRAWLER CORPSES NEEDED FOR EXPERIMENTS,¡± came the calm reply. ¡°CRAWLER EXPERIMENTS HAVE YIELDED MUCH DATA OVER PAST YEAR AND GREATLY INCREASED HOARD.¡±
Pari held her breath as a chilling silence filled the cave for a moment that seemed to go on for eternity.
¡°VERY WELL, DEAD CRAWLERS ARE ACCEPTABLE,¡± Tavreth-not-grandmother finally replied, her voice still cold and dangerous. ¡°BUT BAZZALTH-BROTHER KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF LIVE CRAWLERS ARE FOUND.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH KNOWS. BAZZALTH WOULD NEVER DO SOMETHING FORBIDDEN.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH-BROTHER WILL STUDY THE PLANTS. TAVRETH WILL RETURN IN SEVERAL YEARS TO SEE WHAT BAZZALTH-BROTHER HAS FOUND. DO NOT DISAPPOINT TAVRETH OR ELSE.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH WILL DO AS TAVRETH SISTER DEMANDS.¡±
¡°GOOD.¡±
Pari heard and felt the other Person¡¯s heavy footsteps turning and leaving the cave and she let out that long-held breath. Stirring for a moment, she made to get out from under the bedding but halted when she realized that Bazzalth-grandfather had not yet told her to come out. So she waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, after what felt like nearly an hour, she heard him tell her to come forth.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather, who was that?¡± she asked, looking around for the source of that terrible aroma but finding nothing immediately.
¡°TAVRETH-SISTER IS BAZZALTH¡¯S OLDER SISTER. TAVRETH-SISTER RAISED BAZZALTH FROM HATCHING MANY CENTURIES AGO.¡±
¡°Does that mean Pari must say ¡®Tavreth-grandmother¡¯? Because Pari doesn¡¯t want to do that. Tavreth-not-grandmother is very mean to Bazzalth-grandfather.¡±
With a massive hand, her grandfather carefully scooped her up and raised her to his eye level. ¡°LISTEN CAREFULLY, PARI-CHILD. PARI-CHILD CAN REFER TO TAVRETH-SISTER AS ¡®TAVRETH-PERSON¡¯, BUT PARI-CHILD MUST NEVER ALLOW TAVRETH-SISTER TO SEE PARI-CHILD. IF TAVRETH-SISTER FINDS PARI-CHILD, TAVRETH-SISTER WILL KILL PARI-CHILD WITHOUT QUESTION.¡±
¡°Tavreth-Person scares Pari,¡± she admitted glumly. ¡°Pari felt like Tavreth-Person did not even care about Bazzalth-grandfather at all.¡±
Her grandfather let out a long hiss that she recognized as his version of a sigh.
¡°TAVRETH-SISTER DOES CARE ABOUT BAZZALTH-BROTHER, JUST AS TAVRETH-SISTER CARES ABOUT ALL OF TAVRETH-SISTER¡¯S BROTHERS AND SISTERS. BUT BAZZALTH DOES BELIEVE THAT DEEP DOWN, TAVRETH-SISTER TRULY CARES ONLY ABOUT TWO THINGS: HER HOARD AND... ONE OTHER THING.¡±
¡°What¡¯s that?¡±
¡°BETTER THAT PARI-CHILD NOT KNOW.¡±
¡°But-¡±
¡°NO.¡±
Pari¡¯s tail waved back and forth intermittently as her grandfather¡¯s refusal sent her into a pout. But unlike normal, her antics did little to sway her beloved companion and she quickly found herself losing steam and moving to other topics.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather, what is ¡®Kaersha¡¯?¡± When she¡¯d head the word uttered by Bazzalth-grandfather, she¡¯d felt with it a raw, violent disgust.
¡°THAT WHICH MUST NOT EXIST,¡± he answered.
¡°So Kaersha is bad thing? If Kaersha bad, then why not destroy like Bazzalth-grandfather wants to?¡±
¡°BECAUSE TAVRETH-SISTER IS TOO STRONG. BAZZALTH CANNOT DISOBEY,¡± he growled. He twisted his head back and forth forcefully as if trying to dislodge a particularly nasty thought from within. ¡°THAT IS ALL BAZZALTH WILL SPEAK OF KAERSHA.¡±
¡°What about ¡®Hoard¡¯? What is ¡®Hoard¡¯?¡± she asked. Like with ¡®Kaersha¡¯, Pari felt a feeling that she had trouble comprehending, but this one was quite different. If she had to describe it, the word she would use was ¡®hunger¡¯, but that did not fully encapsulate the true meaning contained within the word.
¡°HMMM, PERHAPS NOW IS GOOD TIME TO TEACH PARI-CHILD.¡±
¡°Yay!¡± Pari chirped, plopping down onto the palm beneath her.
¡°EVERY PERSON DESIRES SOMETHING WITH GREAT NEED. DESIRE IS LIKE HOLE INSIDE THAT MUST BE FILLED AT ALL COSTS, BUT NO MATTER HOW MUCH IS PUT IN HOLE, HOLE NEVER FILLED. NEED TO FILL HOLE DRIVES PERSON, GUIDES WAY PERSON LIVES. IN MANY WAYS, PERSON¡¯S HOARD DEFINES THEM.¡±
¡°What kind of things do People desire so much?¡± Pari wondered.
¡°DIFFERENT FOR EACH PERSON. CAN BE ANY THING, LIKE GOLD, TREES, OR EVEN FIRE. BUT CAN ALSO BE ABSTRACT THINGS INSTEAD.¡±
¡°Pari doesn¡¯t understand what ¡®abstract thing¡¯ is,¡± she told him as she rubbed her head in confusion.
¡°ABSTRACT THINGS ARE CONCEPTS. ABSTRACTS THINGS CANNOT BE TOUCHED, BUT STILL EXIST.¡±
¡°What does Bazzalth-grandfather hoard?¡± Pari wondered, looking around. He sure had a lot of stuff, but it was all different stuff. Well, except... ¡°Does Bazzalth-grandfather hoard pelts?¡±
The giant Person chuffed in amusement.
¡°NO, PARI-CHILD. BAZZALTH¡¯S HOARD IS ABSTRACT. BAZZALTH HOARDS KNOWLEDGE.¡±
¡°Ah?¡± Once more, like with ¡®Person¡¯, Pari felt that the way he said ¡®Knowledge¡¯ carried more significance than a normal ¡®knowledge¡¯.
¡°BAZZALTH FEELS NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING THAT CAN BE KNOWN. HOARD DRIVES ALL THAT BAZZALTH DOES. HOARD IS REASON WHY PARI-CHILD LIVES.¡±
¡°Really?¡± In that case, Hoards were surely good things. ¡°Can Pari have Hoard?¡±
¡°PERHAPS. DOES PARI-CHILD FEEL TREMENDOUS NEED FOR THING?¡±
¡°Ummmm...¡± Pari thought about it for a good while. Was there something she felt she needed? Something she desired with incredible intensity? ¡°Candles?¡±
Bazzalth-grandfather chuffed again, louder this time. ¡°PARI-CHILD IS STILL VERY YOUNG. HOARD IS NOT ALWAYS CLEAR UNTIL PERSON HAS GROWN. THINK ABOUT HOARD, AND NATURE OF PARI-CHILD¡¯S HOARD WILL BECOME CLEAR WITH TIME.¡±
¡°What is Tavreth-Person¡¯s Hoard?¡±
Bazzalth-grandfather went still for a moment. He blinked slowly as if recalling an unwanted memory.
¡°POWER.¡±
Pari stared at the flowers growing in their sealed terrarium with hatred. At first, she had hated them due to the way their scent seemed to set something off deep inside her. Now, two years later, she hated them for an entirely different reason: ever since Tavreth-Person had arrived that fateful day, Bazzalth-grandfather had started paying more attention to those stupid plants than to her!
Yes, sometimes he would still study her, but those times were few and far between. Instead, he spent the vast majority of his time growing and researching the plants that Tavreth-Person had forced upon him.
Pari hated those stupid flowers with a boundless passion. She loathed their stupid nine lavender petals speckled with pitch-black dots. She despised the way the petals rose and twisted around each other in a complex multi-petal spiral. She detested their smell, their shape, and the feeling she felt whenever she got too close to them. She hated everything about them and wished she could burn them all.
But she couldn¡¯t. Bazzalth-grandfather would get in trouble if she did. She didn¡¯t want that to happen because of her, even if she felt like he would be happier with those evil things gone. Even though his efforts to study the flowers increased his Hoard, the Knowledge he gained didn¡¯t seem to improve his spirits in the same way that studying other things had.
Speaking of Hoards, even after pondering for two years, Pari remained at a loss over what her Hoard should be. The thought distressed her. What if she didn¡¯t have a Hoard at all? How would she be able to be like Bazzalth-grandfather without a Hoard? It was impossible!
Pari shook her head to clear her thoughts. She wasn¡¯t supposed to be worrying about that sort of thing right now. Right now, she was supposed to be training her Observations as Bazzalth-grandfather had instructed.
Sitting with her back against the warm stone cave wall, Pari snapped her fingers in her right hand, summoning a small flame the size of a candle flame at best. For a moment, she watched the fire dance above her fingertips. Then, she concentrated, willing the fire to grow. The flame expanded, reaching twice its original size, then three times, before suddenly vanishing from existence.
Pari gasped as she felt the now-familiar cold, tired, empty sensation spread from her core throughout her body. Tears of failure and disappointment filled her eyes. Even after two years, she couldn¡¯t do it no matter how hard she tried. She sniffed loudly, rubbing away the mucus threatening to drip from her nose.
¡°PARI-CHILD SAD?¡± Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s voice asked from nearby, causing Pari to jump in surprise. She¡¯d been so wrapped up in her feelings that she hadn¡¯t even noticed him approaching.
¡°Pari tried so hard, but Pari still can¡¯t get stronger,¡± she sniffed.
¡°HMMMM, YES,¡± Bazzalth-grandfather replied, looking at her in this way he sometimes did where he looked at her but it didn¡¯t feel like he was seeing her. ¡°PARI-CHILD¡¯S SOUL HAS NOT GROWN SINCE DAY BAZZALTH GAVE PARI-CHILD LIFE, AND PARI-CHILD¡¯S BODY GROWS MUCH SLOWER THAN NORMAL. PARI-CHILD IS UNIQUE. PARI-CHILD IS SPECIAL.¡±
Pari¡¯s spirits sank. For once, being told she was special didn¡¯t feel good at all.
¡°IF TRAINING AND PRACTICE WILL NOT MAKE PARI-CHILD STRONGER, THEN BAZZALTH WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY. PARI-CHILD MUST GET STRONG QUICKLY.¡±
¡°But why? Why must Pari get strong?¡± she asked him, not for the first time.
¡°BAZZALTH WILL TELL PARI-CHILD WHEN-¡± Bazzalth-grandfather froze, his gaze taking on a far-off look. Then he blinked and his gaze returned to normal, but Pari could see the tension in his massive frame. ¡°HIDE.¡±
Pari didn¡¯t need to be told twice. Sprinting over to her candlemaking set¡ªthankfully already stored in its sack¡ªshe grabbed it and carried it to the pelt bed. Like she had several years ago, she crawled into the mound of hundreds and hundreds of pelts while pulling her equipment along behind her. This time, however, her curiosity got the better of her and she repositioned herself so that she could see out of one eye through a tiny hole in the pile of furs.
Soon enough, another Person¡ªclearly Tavreth-Person¡ªentered the chamber, her dark blue form towering over Pari¡¯s already gigantic tan grandfather. After the two exchanged greetings, Tavreth-Person immediately got down to business.
¡°SHOW TAVRETH BAZZALTH-BROTHER¡¯S PROGRESS,¡± she ordered. ¡°WHAT HAS BAZZALTH LEARNED? WHAT HAS BAZZALTH CREATED?¡±
In response, Bazzalth-grandfather pulled out a vial filled with a liquid as black as the blackest night, so dark that it seemed to swallow the light around it. Pari recognized the liquid as one she¡¯d seen before, though only in glimpses. Her grandfather seemed intent on keeping her away from anything related to those terrible plants, and given the way they made her feel, she didn¡¯t disagree with his decision.
¡°BAZZALTH CREATED SUBSTANCE MOST VILE. PURE, CONCENTRATED KAERSHA. TAKE. BAZZALTH DESIRES TO NEVER SEE LIQUID AGAIN.¡±
Carefully, Tavreth-Person took the proffered container in one oversized hand, careful to not break it with her giant, deadly claws. She looked at it with wonder and delight. ¡°TELL TAVRETH OF BLACK LIQUID¡¯S PROPERTIES.¡±
¡°LIQUID CORRUPTS, TWISTS LIFEFORCE INTO SOULFORCE, EATS AWAY AT BEING UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS.¡±
¡°INCREDIBLE. BAZZALTH HAS TESTED SUBSTANCE?¡±
Her grandfather grumbled. ¡°TESTED ON CRAWLERS DURING PATROLS.¡±
¡°WHAT OF PEOPLE?¡±
¡°NO.¡± He took a deep breath to gather his courage. ¡°BAZZALTH WILL NOT TEST ON PEOPLE, EVEN IF TAVRETH-SISTER COMMANDS. VILE SUBSTANCE IS ANATHEMA TO PEOPLE, WOULD LIKELY CAUSE GREAT REACTION.¡±
¡°OH?¡± his sister replied with a chuckle. ¡°THEN TAVRETH KNOWS PERFECT TEST SUBJECT. BAZZALTH HAS DONE WELL.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH THANKS TAVRETH-SISTER. BAZZALTH HAS DONE AS TAVRETH-SISTER ORDERED. BAZZALTH IS FINISHED STUDYING KAERSHA FLOWERS.¡±
¡°NO. MORE CAN BE DISCOVERED. BAZZALTH WILL CONTINUE STUDIES.¡±
¡°BUT-¡±
Faster than Pari could blink, Tavreth-Person struck. Her body moving like lightning, far faster than anything that large should ever be able to move, she grabbed Bazzalth-grandfather by the throat and slammed him into the nearby wall as easily as Bazzalth-grandfather lifted Pari into the air. The wall cracked and the cave quaked violently, with several large rocks breaking off of the ceiling and crashing down upon the unlucky devices beneath them.
¡°TAVRETH TIRES OF BAZZALTH-BROTHER¡¯S INSUBORDINATION,¡± she growled, her deep voice causing the air to tremble with sheer menace. ¡°DOES TAVRETH HAVE TO REMIND BAZZALTH-BROTHER OF HIS PLACE?¡±
Bazzalth¡¯s body shook as he struggled against her grip, but his efforts were pointless against her overwhelming strength. He coughed and gagged as her clawed hand slowly crushed his windpipe bit by bit.
¡°BAZZALTH UNDERSTANDS,¡± he gasped out. ¡°BAZZALTH WILL DO AS TAVRETH-SISTER SAYS, SO RELEASE BAZZALTH.¡±
¡°NO, NOT YET,¡± she hissed, her hand clenching with even greater strength to draw another round of pained spasms from her brother. ¡°TAVRETH CAN SMELL IT. TAVRETH CAN SMELL CRAWLERS HERE AGAIN. LIVE CRAWLERS.¡±
¡°NO-¡±
¡°TAVRETH REMINDS BAZZALTH-BROTHER THAT TAVRETH CAN TELL IF BAZZALTH BROTHER LIES.¡±
Pari clutched desperately at her hair and the surrounding pelts as she watched her grandfather twitch once more and let out another strangled cough, her heart beating fearfully in her chest. This big, terrible meanie kept hurting her beloved companion!
¡°SPEAK!¡± Tavreth-meanie snarled, her wrathful gaze boring down onto her brother.
¡°...BAZZALTH HAS... KEPT NO... LIVE CRAWLERS...¡± he slowly wheezed.
Tavreth-meanie¡¯s grip tightened once more, her eyes narrowing as she glared at him with alarming intensity for several long moments. Then, to Pari¡¯s relief, she dropped Bazzalth-grandfather to the ground and turned towards the cave entrance.
¡°BAZZALTH WILL STUDY KAERSHA FLOWERS MORE AND PRODUCE MORE RESULTS,¡± she stated as nonchalantly as if she were talking about the weather. ¡°TAVRETH WILL RETURN ONCE MORE IN SEVERAL YEARS. DO NOT DISAPPOINT TAVRETH.¡±
And with that, she entered the tunnel and was gone.
Pari knew that she was not supposed to leave until her grandfather said she could, but this time she couldn¡¯t help herself. She remained beneath the pelts as long as she could force herself to, but eventually, she couldn¡¯t take it anymore. Pulling herself free, she ran across the cavern to her beloved companion as fast as her tiny legs could manage. For his part, Bazzalth-grandfather had not moved since being released, outside of the slow rise and fall of his chest. He laid still on his back, wings tucked beneath him, as Pari ran up to his side.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather!¡± she cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks. She wanted to see where he was hurt, but she was so small in comparison that she couldn¡¯t even see the top of his throat.
Her grandfather let out a hearty cough. ¡°CALM, PARI-CHILD,¡± he said, his voice lacking the strength that she was used to hearing in it. ¡°BAZZALTH WILL RECOVER QUICKLY. BAZZALTH HAS LIVED THROUGH WORSE. MUCH WORSE.¡±
¡°Pari was so scared!¡± she sobbed, the tears not stopping. ¡°Bazzalth-grandfather lied and Pari thought that Tavreth-meanie would hurt Bazzalth-grandfather!¡±
¡°HMMMM... TAVRETH-SISTER DID NOT HURT BAZZALTH BECAUSE BAZZALTH DID NOT LIE.¡±
¡°But Pari is crawler!¡±
¡°PARI-CHILD IS NOT CRAWLER.¡±
¡°B-but Pari looks like crawler! Pari is small like crawler! Pari has no wings, like crawler!¡±
¡°NO, PARI-CHILD IS WRONG. PARI-CHILD IS NOT CRAWLER, PARI-CHILD IS BAZZALTH¡¯S IMPORTANT DATA.¡±
Pari gasped, the flow of her tears quickly drying up as she processed the meaning of her grandfather¡¯s statement. ¡°Pari fills Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s Hoard?!¡±
¡°BETTER THAN ANY OTHER.¡±
¡°Really?!¡±
¡°INDEED.¡±
Unable to contain herself, Pari jumped forward and latched onto the side of her grandfather¡¯s face, rubbing her face against his hide and purring up a storm. To say that she filled his Hoard was to say that she helped complete him. It was the nicest thing that anybody had ever said to her.
¡°Pari loves Bazzalth-grandfather very much!¡± she declared.
Bazzalth-grandfather grumbled to himself and let out a hissing sigh. ¡°PARI-CHILD, LISTEN WELL,¡± he finally told her. ¡°PARI-CHILD MUST TRAIN EXTRA HARD NOW. LITTLE TIME REMAINS.¡±
¡°Ah? Pari does not understand.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH CANNOT PROTECT PARI-CHILD FOR MUCH LONGER. PARI-CHILD MUST GET STRONGER, SO PARI-CHILD CAN SURVIVE WHEN PARI-CHILD MUST LEAVE THIS PLACE.¡±
Chapter 94
With a careful eye, Bazzalth watched the uptick in his readings as the kaersha came into contact with the small piece of his own flesh. Having already tested the substance multiple times with crawlers, this was the only thing left he could do to broaden his dataset. Testing on small pieces of his flesh, however, was as far as he would go no matter what. He would never test it on a person and not even Tavreth¡¯s threats would be able to dissuade him from that.
Luckily, she seemed to understand... for the moment at least. There was no telling how long that would last; the drive of her hoard seemed to push her further and further every time he saw her. There was no way the Tavreth of the past would have ever considered tolerating a kaersha existence.
¡°Nnnnnnn!¡±
This method had its advantages to his previous method, at least. Bazzalth had been caught off guard the first time he¡¯d exposed a crawler to his concentrated kaersha liquid. He hadn¡¯t expected the sudden, almost blinding spike of soulforce from the subject, the magnitude of the spike large enough to suddenly turn the crawler into something close to a threat. In the end, however, he¡¯d won by default when the crawler had suddenly perished in a rather disgusting display of black, rotted flesh.
Since then, he¡¯d taken to anesthetizing the subject before administering the substance. Even without his instrument, he had been able to watch with his soulsight as the crawler¡¯s soulforce increased exponentially. However, the new soulforce would slowly lose stability until it eventually lost all cohesion and the crawler burst apart.
¡°Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!¡±
Now, however, with both better materials and a better setting for observation, Bazzalth could glean far more data than what his senses had already revealed to him. Though the incoming measurements were a collective boon to his hoard, the metric that stood out against the rest was none other than durbidian harmonic frequency. He could observe in real-time how the soulforce generated by the lifeforce conversion process would manifest with the proper frequency, only to be slowly corrupted by the kaersha as the black liquid dragged the harmonic closer and closer to its own. The constantly generating new soulforce would counterbalance the shift, keeping the overall frequency barely within tolerable bounds, but nothing could stop the harmonic collapse as soon as the replenishment ran out. It was almost as if-
¡°NnnnnnnNNNNNnnNNNnnnnNNNNNNNNNNNN!¡±
¡°Pari-child! Enough whining!¡± Bazzalth growled, reluctantly pulling his attention away from the dials and readouts to turn and face the source of the annoying noise. There, to his frustration and dismay, he found his priceless data half-naked, her bottoms on the floor and her top in the process of being removed right then and there. ¡°Pari-child! For last time, put clothing back on!¡±
¡°NNNNNNNNNNNNN!¡± the child whined, stomping her tiny feet as she threw yet another tantrum. ¡°Pari hates clothing!¡±
Bazzalth couldn¡¯t help but sigh. This again. Pari had been such a nice, cooperative source of Knowledge until now, cheerfully helping him in his studies and providing endless amounts of data. But now, she had become something far more exhausting.
¡°Bazzalth worked hard to create clothing for Pari-child. Pari-child must wear clothing.¡±
¡°No! Clothing itchy and scratchy! Clothing bad!¡±
Given that any single one of the claws on the ends of his fingers were larger than Pari¡¯s entire body, creating clothing for her had been an incredibly frustrating experience. Yet it had also been a very edifying one that contributed to his hoard. As a person, he had little use for fabrics and even less experience with them. Even his collection sack was made of the hide of animals instead of fabric. Given this, he¡¯d been forced to make use of the bits and pieces left over from his experiments with dead crawlers, patching together a crude set of clothing fashioned after the standard configuration he¡¯d witnessed many times. The process left him wishing he¡¯d bothered to strip all the crawlers he¡¯d submerged within the Ichor these last few years instead of simply letting the liquid eat away at the fabrics.
The end result was... mediocre at best. The proportions were a bit off, with one side of the bottom being slightly larger than the other and the arm coverings being different lengths, but clothing was clothing. It still fit her form better than any of the remnants he still had in his possession, all of which had been worn by adult crawlers, so he considered it a success.
¡°Pari-child must be good child for Bazzalth now,¡± he tried reasoning with her. ¡°Pari-child must become used to clothing for when Pari-child soon leaves Bazzalth¡¯s lair. Pari must be convincing crawler.¡±
¡°Why crawlers wear clothing, anyway?! Clothing stupid!¡±
¡°Crawlers wear clothing for warmth and as mating plumage,¡± Bazzalth informed her. ¡°Now put back on all clothing, now! Bazzalth will not tell Pari-child again!¡±
¡°NNNNnnnnn...¡±
Bazzalth watched as Pari slowly donned the fabric coverings once more, pouting the entire time. On an academic level, he understood her discomfort. She had never worn clothing before¡ªsafe and warm in his lair, she had never needed to¡ªand her soft hide reacted to the oppressive touch of the fabrics in a way that his tough hide did not. But that didn¡¯t change the fact that she had no choice but to become accustomed to the feeling if she were to survive in the world of crawlers until it was safe for her to return to him. He just needed to find some way to get her to keep her clothing on long enough for that to happen.
Suddenly, the answer came to him. All he had to do was adjust his plans a little.
¡°Pari-child, listen closely,¡± he instructed the tiny being as she finished re-donning her outfit. ¡°If Pari-child wears clothing for three full days, Bazzalth will share piece of his hoard with Pari-child.¡±
Pari gasped in delight, which he could discern from her tail and ears. When she¡¯d been upset just a moment ago, her tail had been whipping back and forth and her ears were flattened against her head. Now, her tail stood largely straight with a small hook at the end, while her ears stood tall and perky. Bazzalth continued to thank fortune that Pari had such features. He found reading the emotional state of a crawler based on their tiny, flat faces alone to be an exercise in frustration and failure.
¡°R-really? Bazzalth-grandfather will?¡± Pari asked in disbelief.
¡°Only if Pari-child is good child who wears her clothing,¡± Bazzalth told her. He had already planned on teaching her some of the alchemy knowledge he¡¯d learned over his many years, but she didn¡¯t need to know that.
¡°Pari will!¡± the small child claimed.
¡°Does Pari-child promise?¡±
¡°...promise?¡±
¡°Promise is oath. Person must always keep promise no matter what, or person is not true person. Pari-child promise to wear clothing for three full days?¡±
¡°Pari promise!¡±
¡°Good. Now return to training.¡±
That problem solved, Bazzalth turned back to his equipment and loaded in another piece of his flesh and blood, releasing a long, hissing sigh. There was so much more he had to do, so much more he had to study, but time was running out.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather, Pari is bored! Pari wants to make candles!¡± the small child complained as she used her stone pestle to slowly grind the ingredients within the metal bowl in her lap. The hemispheric container, about as wide as the child¡¯s chest with high vertical sides, was just one part of the new equipment set he¡¯d created for her use.
¡°Pari-child must learn. Formulas important. Now, Pari-child must add in the moisture.¡±
¡°Moisture?¡±
¡°Pari-child¡¯s saliva.¡±
¡°Pwah!¡±
¡°More.¡±
¡°PWAH! PWAH! PWAH!¡±
¡°Excellent. Now mix again.¡±
¡°NnnnnnnnNNNnnnn! Pari hates! So boring!¡± Bazzalth couldn¡¯t help but notice just how proficient she had become at whining since his sister¡¯s last visit a year ago. He ignored her.
When he¡¯d first started amassing his hoard, one of Bazzalth¡¯s first areas of study had been the local plants and their properties. At first, he¡¯d been astounded at the incredible utility of the various concoctions he¡¯d experimented with, not expecting that combining seemingly mild and inert materials could create substances that burned for hours, released clouds of smoke, or other notable effects. It wasn¡¯t until later that he¡¯d discovered that there was more to it. These organic materials wouldn¡¯t react under just any circumstances. Mixing the inert compounds with water or oil just resulted in wet or oily inert compounds.
The secret had turned out to be him. Without a ready source of water within reach, he had taken to using his saliva as a way to moisten the mixes, and a person¡¯s saliva acted as an incredible catalyst that facilitated and enhanced chemical reactions. The most interesting detail, however, was that the mixtures usually remained stable until exposed to flame. Bazzalth theorized that this had to be related to how a person¡¯s saliva came into contact with their flame regularly. It likely had something to do with how clean peoples¡¯ mouths were, given their diet of raw flesh.
The question was, would Pari¡¯s saliva work in the same way? He believed so. The abundant lifeforce found in his saliva¡ªnowhere close to the levels found in his blood but still high enough to be remarked upon¡ªhad something to do with it. That meant that Pari¡¯s spit would work as well. At least, that was the hope.
This first formula was a prime example. With little more than the crushed stems of several local plants and some dollops of drool, Bazzalth could create a pulpy slurry that would burn steadily with a small flame for half a day, even in a steady wind. Such a recipe would be highly useful to her, be it for campfires or lighting her way in the dark.
¡°Well done,¡± he told her once he was happy with the level of mixture. ¡°Put bowl on floor and light with stick.¡±
Taking a long branch easily twice as long as Pari was tall, he puffed out a small gout of the weakest flame he could manage onto its end. Then, after backing the child away from the bowl, he placed the burning stick into her hands. As the one to do the work, she deserved to be the one to light the result.
He¡¯d given her a long stick just to be safe. If the formula worked, given the altered source of the one key ingredient, it would probably burn as calmly as it did for him. But Pari was always full of surprises. He couldn¡¯t silence the fear that it would instead burst out with flames higher than the height of an adult crawler.
The moment Pari touched the burning end of the branch to the bowl¡¯s contents, Bazzalth¡¯s fear was proven inaccurate. Bazzalth had feared a flame several times Pari¡¯s height, not flames so powerful that they licked the cavern ceiling above his head.
Luckily, Bazzalth¡¯s lightning-fast reactions¡ªjust another feature of a person¡¯s superior physique¡ªallowed him to interpose his hand between Pari and the inferno. He¡¯d been able to push her away before anything too bad could happen to her. Now, drenched in sweat but largely alright, the child leaned her face around Bazzalth¡¯s claw-tipped fingers, staring in awe at the white-hot flames as they shot skyward. Powerful heat blazed through the cavern for more than twenty breaths, raising the temperature of the air inside considerably. Then, the conflagration died as quickly as it began, leaving nothing behind but the melted remains of its metal container.
Perhaps he should have seen this coming, but more than anything, he felt relieved. If she had proven incapable of creating the reaction on her own, he would have had to supply her with a vial of his saliva. That would put a cap on her ability to make use of what he was teaching her, and what he was teaching her was too useful to her daily survival for her to use sparingly.
¡°Waaaahhh!!!¡± Pari gasped, her eyes wide and shining with wonder. ¡°Bazzalth-grandfather can make super flame from just plants?!¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Bazzalth lied. He¡¯d been walking a fine line with this from the beginning. The idea had been to teach Pari these formulas, but in a way that would have her think that her saliva was just a normal part of the process. If she knew that her or Bazzalth¡¯s saliva was crucial to everything, then she might let that fact slip sometime later. That would bring up questions as to why their spit was different than that of a crawler. And that would bring up more questions... He knew from testing a century ago that saliva from normal crawlers had no such properties. No, it was better to keep her in the dark.
The small child began jumping up and down excitedly. ¡°Bazzalth-grandfather is so cool! Teach Pari! Teach Pari! Pari wants to learn!¡±
Bazzalth considered his options, trying his best to mentally adjust his plans to take into account the child¡¯s immense alchemical potential. If he could figure out a way for her to turn this potential into something that could be used regularly in the future, then that would more than make up for her deficient soulforce. But how? Storing the mixtures would be hard. And how would she be able to keep them away from open flame, except for when she needed to light them? It wasn¡¯t like she would be able to light a bowl and throw it at her enemies.
Bazzalth¡¯s gaze fell upon the candlemaking equipment sitting off to the side of the cave and an idea came to him. A perfect idea, one that would solve almost all of his problems at once. And, for once, the child wouldn¡¯t even be able to whine about how boring it was.
¡°Pari-child, come,¡± Bazzalth called for the third time, his irritation reaching a boiling point. The youngling had been acting much more rebellious recently, but this sort of disregard for his authority was a new low. Thanks to his dueling concerns of studying the kaersha and working on preparations for Pari¡¯s upcoming departure, he¡¯d found his ability to keep an eye on the child lacking. This seemed to be the inevitable result.
¡°Pari-child! Enough!¡± he roared, approaching the recently added alchemy cove located in the rear of the cavern. Hollowed out to provide a place for Pari to experiment¡ªBazzalth couldn¡¯t help but notice the way she copied him; perhaps he could glean some Knowledge concerning the learning and development process of crawler children?¡ªthe alcove was large enough to fit a hundred Pari¡¯s, though the entrance was barely wide enough for his arm to fit through.
Peering inside, he spotted Pari lying on the ground near her candlemaking equipment.
She wasn¡¯t moving.
Bazzalth¡¯s heart seized up in panic. His data! His irreplaceable data!
Reaching inside, he scooped up his bespoke data source and inspected her for malfunctions. Fortunately, she still breathed, her chest rising and falling slowly in the familiar rhythm of slumber. However, the child would normally have awoken from his call. How strange.
A foul odor drifted into his nostrils, causing him to back away from the alcove while holding back a cough. What was this? He shook his head to clear the sudden hint of wooziness.
Placing Pari on the inspection platform in the center of the cave, he went back to work, waiting for the child to awaken. It wasn¡¯t until the sun had already set that she finally sat up with a loud, high-pitched yawn.
¡°Nya?¡± she asked nobody in particular as she looked around. ¡°Why Pari here?¡±
¡°Bazzalth found Pari unconscious. What happened to Pari-child?¡±
¡°Pari was making candles and Pari smelled new scent from special roots Bazzalth-grandfather found and Pari thought that roots would work with red sap seed and yellow string flower juice and purple bunchberry and Pari made candle and Pari burned candle and candle went ¡®whoosh!¡¯ with smoke and Pari felt sleepy and Pari fell asleep.¡±
Teaching Pari how to make alchemical candles had turned out to be the best decision he¡¯d had in a long time. She loved it, as it combined her two favorite things: candlemaking and dangerous chemical reactions. The child was almost preternaturally gifted in the craft, able to create new, never-before-seen combinations that not even Bazzalth would have thought of, all thanks to her nose.
Bazzalth had long known that Pari¡¯s sense of smell outshone even a person¡¯s, but he had not realized just how powerful and specific it could be. With a single sniff, she was able to isolate specific trace chemicals within an ingredient. After building up enough experience, she could now predict with an uncanny level of accuracy the result of combining substances she had never seen before simply by the trace scents she found within them. Not for the first time, he found himself in awe of the child¡¯s abnormal capabilities¡ªat least, as in awe as a mighty person such as himself could be.
But now wasn¡¯t the time for such thoughts.
¡°Pari-child slept through new practice. Pari-child must practice now instead,¡± he informed her.
¡°Nya?¡±
¡°For Pari-child to live near crawler, Pari-child must learn to act like crawler. To speak like crawler. To think like crawler.¡±
¡°But Pari doesn¡¯t want to act like crawler!¡± she protested. ¡°Pari wants to act like Bazzalth-grandfather!¡±
¡°Pari-child, enough! Listen to Bazzalth and behave!¡±
¡°Nnnnn!¡± The small child squirmed, her tail whipping back and forth again, but she eventually acquiesced.
¡°Good, practice now with Bazzalth,¡± he instructed her. Sadly, he had run out of crawler corpses to use as puppets, so instead, he had taken some dyes and painted a rendition of one on the back of his hand, with two of his claw-tipped fingers for the legs.
¡°Greetings, Pari-child!¡± he said, making his voice as high pitched and crawler-like as he could.
Pari just stared in bewilderment at him.
¡°Pari-child, talk with Bazzalth-crawler.¡±
¡°Talk with hand?¡± she asked. ¡°But hand not crawler. Hand is Bazzalth-grandfather.¡±
Bazzalth let out a long sigh. This was going to be a long night. ¡°Is game. Pretend that hand is crawler and talk with crawler.¡±
¡°Okay, Pari will try...¡±
¡°Good. Greetings, Pari-child!¡±
¡°Greetings, Bazzalth-crawler!¡±
¡°Where did Pari-child come from?¡±
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
¡°Pari came from cave in mountains where Bazzalth-grandfather lives!¡±
¡°Pari-child, wrong!¡± Bazzalth cut in with his normal voice. ¡°Pari-child must never tell of Bazzalth¡¯s home.¡±
¡°Nya? But why?¡±
¡°Is rules. Very important.¡±
¡°Nnnnn!¡± Pari pouted.
¡°What does Pari-child like to do?¡± ¡®Bazzalth-crawler¡¯ inquired.
¡°Pari likes to make candles! Bazzalth-grandfather taught Pari how to make candles!¡±
¡°Wrong!¡± Bazzalth cut in again. ¡°Pari child must never tell others Bazzalth¡¯s name.¡±
¡°Nya? Pari not understand.¡±
¡°Is important that crawlers not hear any person¡¯s name.¡±
¡°Then what Pari call Bazzalth-grandfather?¡±
Bazzalth thought about it for a moment. ¡°Pari-child may call Bazzalth just ¡®grandfather¡¯ instead.¡±
¡°Grandfather? But saying just ¡®grandfather¡¯ feels weird and bad and stupid.¡±
¡°Yes, crawler speak is weird and bad and stupid,¡± Bazzalth agreed. ¡°Now how would Pari-child say answer this time?¡±
¡°Grandfather taught Pari how to make candles...¡± Pari replied, making a scrunched up face as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. ¡°Pari feels gross.¡±
¡°Feeling will pass with practice,¡± he assured her, though he didn¡¯t have any actual proof that was the case.
¡°Pari-child, where did Pari-child live again?¡± asked ¡®Bazzalth-crawler¡¯ once more.
¡°Pari lived in- uh- Pari...¡±
Bazzalth wanted to help as he watched the child¡¯s little brain puzzle over how to answer his question, but he knew it was important that she figure out what to say on her own. He wouldn¡¯t be around to help her in the future, after all.
¡°...Pari lived with grandfather!¡± she finally declared, a proud smile on her face.
¡°Oh? Tell Bazzalth-crawler about grandfather.¡±
¡°Grandfather is super great! Grandfather takes care of Pari and plays with Pari and feeds Pari and is best! Grandfather has big giant body and huge wings and breathes fire and is super neat and-¡±
¡°Stop!¡± Bazzalth sighed once more. ¡°Pari-child must not tell others that Bazzalth is person. Pari must pretend that Bazzalth is crawler too.¡±
¡°But why? Pari not want to!¡±
¡°Is rules.¡±
¡°Rules stupid! Pari hates rules! Pari wants to tell crawlers all about Bazzalth-grandfather! Pari wants to tell how great Bazzalth-grandfather is!¡±
¡°Pari-child, listen well. Is most important that Pari not tell of Bazzalth or any other person in any way. If crawlers find out about Bazzalth, crawlers will come in great numbers and attack Bazzalth.¡±
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather will just kill all crawlers because Bazzalth-grandfather is super strong!¡±
Another sigh escaped his lips. Oh, if only that were the case. The real truth was that if he and every other person combined forces and attacked the crawlers, they would eventually lose. They would be able to inflict great devastation in the process, yes, but the end result would be the death of every last person alive. This was the ultimate reason the Accord existed: the one thing everybody agreed on was that they could not let people vanish from the world.
¡°Pari-child is wrong. Every person has limit. Even Tavreth-sister has limit. Crawlers too many.¡±
¡°No! Bazzalth-grandfather would never lose!¡± Pari shouted, jumping to her feet in anger, tears in her eyes. ¡°Bazzalth-grandfather is lying! Bazzalth-grandfather is meanie!¡±
Sobbing loudly, the child turned and ran away as fast as she could, her long hair trailing along the ground behind her as she sprinted away from him and into the alchemy alcove in the back. Before Bazzalth could even process what was happening, he heard a series of coughs and the soft thump of Pari¡¯s body hitting the stone floor.
Peering in again, Bazzalth found Pari lying on the ground, fast asleep once more. The floor of the alcove sank as one went in deeper, until it leveled out at about two Pari-heights lower than the floor of the main cavern. It seemed that her sleeping gas was heavier than air and still lingered inside the smaller room. He would have to figure out a way to better ventilate it.
That, however, was a task for later. He had more immediate tasks on hand. Grabbing the tiny child from the alcove for the second time today, Bazzalth deposited her on the bedding in the back of the cave, leaving her to sleep off the drug.
In the meantime, he went to his main experiment table and began to craft. The process of creating using his flesh and bones as the base material was something he¡¯d mastered long ago. Given enough time, he could grow most any framework he desired using bits he kept in a nutrient tank in the far corner of his lair.
One thing this ¡°game¡± with Pari had shown him was that he did not possess the perspective, attitude, and¡ªloath as he was to admit it¡ªKnowledge to effectively teach the child how to blend in with the crawlers. So, with that in mind, Bazzalth began to create a cage. It was time to bring in some ¡°outside assistance¡±.
¡°-spiritsthiscan¡¯tberealthisisalljustadreamyesadream-¡±
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather, why is crawler in cage?¡± Pari inquired, glancing between Bazzalth and the cowering red-haired male crawler within the bone enclosure. She frowned. ¡°Crawler smell like poop and pee.¡±
¡°-I¡¯mjustdreamingandI¡¯llwakeupanymomentnowifIjust-¡±
¡°Crawler is teacher for Pari-child,¡± he informed her. He¡¯d picked up this crawler after slaying the rest of the crawler¡¯s small exploring group. This one had seemed like the best choice because, of all the crawlers there, this one had talked the most. He needed a crawler that could talk well, and judging by the endless stream of babbling coming from the cage, this one fit the requirements quite well.
¡°But Tavreth-meanie said that Bazzalth-grandfather will get in trouble if Bazzalth-grandfather keeps living crawler,¡± she protested, seeming to forget that he¡¯d crossed that line already.
¡°Worry not,¡± he assured her, ¡°crawler will be gone before Tavreth-sister returns.¡±
¡°Crawler!¡± he growled, causing the caged being to flinch. ¡°Listen well! Crawler will teach Pari-child to be crawler!¡±
¡°Crawler...?¡± the pathetic creature replied, his wide eyes staring up at Bazzalth and seemingly searching for something.
Oh, right. Crawlers were creatures of greed. He probably wanted something as a reward for teaching Pari. Luckily, he knew just the thing.
¡°Heed Bazzalth¡¯s words, crawler! If crawler teaches Pari-child to Bazzalth¡¯s satisfaction and does not hurt Pari-child, Bazzalth will allow crawler to leave Bazzalth¡¯s lair alive. This is Bazzalth¡¯s promise to crawler. Crawler understands?¡±
¡°Wha? Teach?¡±
¡°CRAWLER UNDERSTANDS?¡±
¡°Y-y-yes!¡± the insignificant thing stammered. ¡°I u-understand!¡±
¡°Crawler will begin now.¡±
With that said, Bazzalth turned away to partake in some kaersha research on which he had reluctantly fallen behind. Still, just in case, he kept his hearing focused on Pari and her new instructor.
¡°Greetings, crawler!¡± Pari chirped. ¡°Pari¡¯s name is Pari! Does crawler have name?¡±
¡°Ah...? What in the name of the spirits are you?¡±
¡°Nya? Pari is Pari.¡±
¡°Is that thing keeping you prisoner, too?¡±
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather is not ¡®thing¡¯! Bazzalth-grandfather is Bazzalth-grandfather!¡± Pari huffed in outrage. ¡°Bazzalth-grandfather is super great and wonderful!¡±
¡°R-right, of course...¡± the crawler replied. ¡°I¡¯m, uh, Pyr.¡±
¡°Pyr stinky.¡±
¡°Yeah, would it be possible to have some water to wash myself? Please, Pari!¡±
¡°No! Not until Pyr-crawler says sorry for calling Bazzalth-grandfather ¡®thing¡¯!¡± the child declared.
¡°Please! I kind of shat myself... several times.¡±
¡°Nnnnno!¡±
After listening to Pari properly establish dominance, Bazzalth turned his full focus to his research and let the rest of the banter fade into the background. She had the situation under control.
¡°No, no, no! For the last time, you can¡¯t say ¡®crawler¡¯! It¡¯s ¡®person¡¯! And stop putting other things after names!¡±
¡°Hehehehee,¡± Pari giggled in return, ¡°Pyr-teacher is funny!¡±
Waiting for the end product of his kaersha refinement process, Bazzalth idly eavesdropped on the conversation going on across the cave, holding back a chuckle when he heard the crawler say ¡°people¡±. He found the way they used the same basic concept of an individual as a person would amusing, in part because of the staggering difference in the meaning imparted within the concept. A person¡¯s use of ¡®person¡¯ carried with it the full, enormous weight of the peoples¡¯ profound and majestic existence, the meaning behind the word imparting the recipient with an understanding of each person¡¯s undeniable, overwhelming significance. Meanwhile, the crawler version hit like a piece of dust blown by a slight breeze. One couldn¡¯t help but feel that even crawlers considered other crawlers as puny, insignificant beings unworthy of one¡¯s notice. Yet at the same time, the very idea that they conceptualized themselves in the same way as a person was almost an insult to people. To be compared as such would surely have driven other people, especially Tavreth, into an endless fury.
¡°Locked in a cage and forced to ¡®teach¡¯ a mad beast child,¡± the crawler lamented. ¡°This is a new low...¡±
¡°Pyr-teacher!¡±
¡°What now?¡±
¡°Why crawlers not have pointy ears like Pari?¡±
¡°What? Do you not know what a beastkin is?¡±
¡°Nya? What beastkin?¡±
¡°It¡¯s what you are. They¡¯re rare here in Kutrad, but there¡¯s more of them as you go south, or so I¡¯ve heard. I¡¯ve been told that lots of them live in a giant forest to the south, but I can¡¯t say for sure. Never been out of Kutrad, myself.¡±
¡°Why Pari beastkin?¡±
¡°What is this, philosophy time with a five-year-old?¡± he muttered wearily to himself.
¡°Eight!¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Pari is eight!¡±
¡°Little small for an eight-year-old.¡±
¡°Pari always small,¡± the child huffed. ¡°Bazzalth-grandfather says Pari grow very slow.¡±
¡°Sure, whatever. I don¡¯t care anymore.¡±
¡°How old is Pyr-teacher?¡±
¡°Thirty-two. That¡¯s why you should stop arguing and listen to me for once. I¡¯m an adult.¡±
¡°Pfft! Thirty-two is tiny number! Bazzalth-grandfather is much older than Pyr-teacher!¡±
¡°Spirits above, what did I do to deserve this?¡±
¡°Pteh! Yuck! Pari not understand! Why craw-¡±
¡°Focus!¡±
¡°Why... people... care about stupid tiny metal pieces? Pieces not tasty at all!¡±
¡°Listen, kiddo, money runs the world. People will do almost anything to get it. Why do you think I was up here exploring in the first place?¡±
¡°Because mountains pretty?¡±
¡°No, you dolt! It was because the King would pay us lots and lots of money to find more locations for mines. Of course, if I had known what would happen, I would have just stayed home.¡±
¡°Why King want mines?¡±
¡°Because he can make lots of money with them, why else?¡±
¡°Pfft! King stupid! People stupid! Pyr-teacher stupid! Money stupid!¡±
Bazzalth laughed to himself at the realization that crawlers had their own sort of hoard. It figured that crawlers would all hoard the exact same thing. They couldn¡¯t do anything right. If two people were ever to hoard the same thing, the situation could only end in the death of one of the two people. There would be no way around it; the jealousy and envy would drive them to each other¡¯s throats. How many crawlers had died because they all hoarded the same small pieces of metal? What simpletons!
¡°Money is not stupid! Money is how you pay for stuff!¡± the crawler refuted.
¡°Pay?¡± Pari repeated.
¡°Yes! If you want something that somebody is selling, you have to pay for it. That¡¯s how it works.¡±
¡°Foolish crawler!¡± Bazzalth laughed again, his booming voice making the crawler flinch slightly. ¡°Simply take what is desired, as people do! Strong people take from weak people, because strong people are strong and weak people are weak! Strength is what matters!¡±
¡°But Bazzalth-grandfather, Tavreth-meanie takes from Bazzalth-grandfather every time Tavreth-meanie visits,¡± Pari reminded him. ¡°Is Bazzalth-grandfather weak?¡±
¡°Hmph! Of course not! Bazzalth is very strong!¡± Bazzalth snorted derisively, turning back to his experiment to hide the sudden wave of shame that washed over him. For him to lose perspective and stumble so...
One day he would become strong enough to not be known as the weakest person... right? Once he had matured into a full-grown adult, surely. Then others wouldn¡¯t be able to push him around so easily, and he might even be able to impose his will upon another person! He only needed to wait another six or seven thousand years. The time couldn¡¯t come soon enough.
¡°N-No! Pari likes hair!¡±
¡°You stand out enough as it is. There¡¯s no way anybody would ever have hair this long. I don¡¯t even understand how you have hair this long!¡±
¡°B-but-¡±
¡°It¡¯s gotta go!¡±
¡°NNNnnnnnNNNNNNNNNN!¡±
¡°Whine all you want. It won¡¯t change the facts,¡± Pyr stated matter-of-factly. ¡°Go get a knife and cut your hair.¡±
Pari sulkily stomped across the lair and returned with a small bone knife, a piece from her candlemaking equipment. Her ears plastered to her skull and her tail waving back and forth endlessly, she grabbed her long, flowing hair and pulled it towards her. The knife in one hand and her hair bunched up in her other arm, she began to saw at it about two-and-a-half Pari-lengths down.
¡°Not like that,¡± Pyr-crawler tut-tutted. ¡°You have to cut it much higher up.¡±
¡°But-¡±
Pyr-crawler simply crossed his arms across his chest and gave Pari a disapproving look, causing Pari to wilt a little. She moved the knife to the two Pari-lengths point, but he just shook his head. One-and-a-half Pari-lengths brought another shake. So did one Pari-length. The child¡¯s hand shook slightly as it moved up to the hair hanging beside her knees.
¡°Higher,¡± Pyr-crawler insisted.
Pari¡¯s lips trembled as tears formed in her eyes. She sniffled loudly.
¡°Higher!¡±
¡°NNNNNNNNN Bazzalth-grandfatherrrrrrrrr!¡±
¡°Alrightalrightalright! Cut it at your knees!¡± the crawler cried out immediately, bringing a swift and sudden end to Pari¡¯s oncoming fit. ¡°I don¡¯t understand why you are so upset anyway. It will just grow back eventually if you let it.¡±
¡°Nya?¡± Pari replied with a tilt of her head. ¡°Hair grows?¡±
Bazzalth glared down at the crawler in the cage below him, trying to decide what to do.
¡°Time for teaching is over,¡± he told the puny, quivering thing. ¡°Pari-child still speaks like Pari-child and not crawler.¡±
¡°I-I did my best!¡± the crawler protested. ¡°I managed to fix most of it, at least! I even got it so she only adds stuff after names for people closest to her instead of everybody! It¡¯s not my fault that it¡¯s like she can¡¯t progress past that point!¡±
¡°Excuses.¡±
¡°No really! It¡¯s like something inside her is holding her back! There¡¯s nothing I can do about it! I¡¯m just a person!¡±
Bazzalth considered the crawler¡¯s panicked arguments for a moment, weighing their merit. Picking up Pari¡ªwho, days later, still wouldn¡¯t stop complaining about her hair, which now merely fell to her knees¡ªhe brought her closer and peered at her soul with his soulsight. Yes, the slight warping remained.
Bazzalth had been rather concerned, way back on the day of Pari¡¯s reawakening. He still remembered the way her weak, immature soul had deformed under the assault of his words. After a bit, her soul had seemed to adjust to his pressure and the deformations that occurred with each of Bazzalth¡¯s words had ceased. But the warping never receded.
Since that day, Bazzalth had kept an eye on the shape of the child¡¯s soul and observed her for anything wrong. The soul was, after all, a vital component of each and every sapient being. It was part of what made them who they were. But up until now, he found himself unable to detect anything wrong with the child herself.
But the crawler¡¯s protestations brought a new thought to his mind. What if he was the problem? Had he accidentally reprogrammed her that day, rewriting and hardwiring the way she thought and spoke to match his own? It would explain why he had never noticed anything worrisome, and it would explain her trouble with speaking like a crawler. It would explain a lot, actually.
¡°Hmmmm... Bazzalth has concluded that crawler completed task to Bazzalth¡¯s satisfaction. Crawler will leave Bazzalth¡¯s lair alive.¡±
Picking up the entire cage, he carried it through the tunnel and set it down outside with the door facing away from the cave.
¡°You¡¯re really not going to kill me?¡± the stunned crawler blurted out.
¡°Promises must be honored,¡± he replied, opening the cage door. ¡°Crawler fulfilled condition, so Bazzalth keeps promise. Go.¡±
The crawler didn¡¯t need to be told twice, taking off in a dead sprint toward the south. Bazzalth noted how he moved faster than his biology should be capable of, meaning the crawler was one of the body-enhancement types.
¡°Bye-bye, Pyr-teacher!¡± Pari called after him as he leaped over a large boulder and disappeared from sight.
Carrying the cage back inside, Bazzalth began to count. As Bazzalth had told both the crawler and Pari, keeping one¡¯s promises was a vital part of being a person. That was why he¡¯d promised to let the crawler leave the lair, but never said a thing about what would happen after that. In a few hundred breaths, he would leave the lair once more, this time to go hunting. The Accord said that the crawler could not be allowed to live, and the Accord was the most important promise of all.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather bad! Bazzalth-grandfather broke promise to Pyr-teacher!¡± sobbed an inconsolable Pari. ¡°Bring Pyr-teacher back!¡±
Bazzalth didn¡¯t know what to do. Out of consideration for the child¡¯s feelings, he¡¯d tried to hide the crawler¡¯s body when returning with the freshly-neck-snapped corpse, but Pari¡¯s nose was just too powerful. She¡¯d smelled him immediately and had been throwing a tantrum since. With hindsight, he obviously should have just incinerated the corpse into unrecognizable ashes on the spot, but at the time, the thought of wasting such quality research material had been too much to bear.
The nuances of Bazzalth¡¯s promise were lost on Pari. She had understood his oath differently, and she refused to change her mind on it now even when he explained it to her. That fact that everything about the crawler had been done for her survival seemed lost on her. Eventually, he found his patience running low.
¡°Pari-child, enough!¡± he roared. ¡°Bazzalth did what Bazzalth had to do!¡±
¡°B-b-but Pari liked Pyr-teacher...¡± she sniffed.
Bazzalth sighed. Perhaps there was one thing he could try to make her stop. ¡°Listen well, Pari-child. Bazzalth can bring crawler back.¡±
She gasped. ¡°R-really?¡±
¡°Yes, but crawler will only come back if crawler wants to come back. Understand? If crawler does not come back, then crawler did not want to return and it is not Bazzalth¡¯s fault.¡±
¡°...o-okay...¡± At least the child had calmed down a bit.
Pari following along beside him, Bazzalth walked over to one vat in the corner of the cave. This vat contained what remained of his last batch of Ichor of Life. He¡¯d put his research into that aside after Pari¡¯s resurrection and hadn¡¯t expected to return to it in any capacity for another few years at least.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather put Pyr-teacher in slime water?¡± Pari asked.
¡°Yes,¡± he merely said as he removed the lid.
¡°Wait!¡± the child cried out. ¡°Let Pari take off clothes! Clothes feel icky when wet.¡±
Bazzalth paused to let Pari remove the crawler¡¯s clothing. Once the dead body was fully naked, he dropped it into the Ichor.
Just like all the bodies he¡¯d observed before, the corpse began to spasm wildly. Bazzalth watched the crawler¡¯s soul with a dispassionate eye, waiting for the spreading blue¡¯s growth to die off and return to a lifeless gray. But it didn¡¯t.
¡°It cannot be!¡± he muttered in shock as he watched the blue continue its conquest of the crawler¡¯s soul.
¡°Pyr-teacher¡¯s hair grows!¡± Pari noted with excitement. ¡°Pyr-teacher¡¯s hair long like Pari¡¯s was!¡±
Bazzalth couldn¡¯t believe it. The one time he wanted failure, he¡¯d succeeded.
One day later, Bazzalth watched as used Ichor gushed from the gagging man¡¯s lungs.
¡°Pyr-teacher!¡± Pari squealed as she rushed towards the sputtering and coughing figure, unable to wait until the crawler¡ªno, Bazzalth¡¯s new data source¡ªcould properly breathe.
¡°Ah?¡± The man seemed surprised as Pari wrapped him in a sudden embrace. ¡°Who are you?¡±
¡°Pari is Pari?¡± the child replied, evidently confused. ¡°Pyr-teacher not remember?¡±
¡°I...¡± He looked up at Bazzalth and leaned back in shock. ¡°What are you?! Where... where am I? Who am I?¡±
¡°Pyr-teacher not remember!¡± Pari mourned.
¡°What are those?¡± he asked, spotting the pile of clothes he¡¯d worn before his revival. ¡°Are those for me?¡±
¡°Uh-huh!¡±
¡°Pyr-adult, listen well,¡± Bazzalth instructed. ¡°Pyr-adult has returned to life through Bazzalth¡¯s doing. Pyr-adult will repay debt by caring for Pari-child until time comes when both can return to Bazzalth.¡±
¡°Ummmm... I sorry, Mister giant whatever-you-are, I¡¯m very confused,¡± Pyr admitted.
¡°Pari will teach!¡± the girl declared, jumping up and down with glee. ¡°Pari will be Pari-teacher for Pyr-teacher!¡±
¡°Thanks, I guess,¡± he replied as he finished donning everything from his shirt to his boots. He ran his hand through his long hair that fell in a large pile on the ground behind him. ¡°Say, uh, Pari, could you get me something to cut this hair?¡±
¡°Okay!¡±
A few moments later, the child returned with the same small bone knife she¡¯d used to cut her own hair many days ago.
¡°Thanks!¡± Pyr said, taking the small blade, bunching up his hair behind his head with one hand and slicing it away with the other. ¡°You made this nice and easy for me.¡±
In a flash, Pyr grabbed Pari, pulled the child in front of him, and held the knife to her neck.
¡°N-nya?!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t move!¡± he shouted as he began slowly dragging Pari towards the lair entrance. ¡°Try anything and she¡¯s dead!¡±
¡°Pyr-crawler dares to threaten Bazzalth?!¡± Bazzalth roared.
¡°Don¡¯t think I don¡¯t know how much you care about this freak¡¯s safety!¡± he replied, his tone dangerous. ¡°I¡¯m taking her with me! Move a single muscle and I¡¯ll bleed her dry!¡±
¡°Pari doesn¡¯t understand! Why Pyr-teacher grab Pari! Let Pari go!¡±
¡°Shut up, you dimwit! I know some people in the slave trade that would love to get their hands on you! I¡¯m going to sell you for loads of cash, and then we¡¯ll come back with an army and kill your ¡®grandpa¡¯ over there and take everything!¡± He laughed. ¡°Do you have any idea how much a king would pay to be able to come back to life?¡±
¡°S-slave?!¡± Pari stuttered, going stiff. It was as if the word triggered something inside of her as she began to thrash around like a wild animal. ¡°Pari not slave! No!¡±
¡°Hold still, you little runt!¡± Pyr snarled. He tried to keep the blade just a hair¡¯s width from her neck, but, thanks to the child¡¯s squirming, accidentally pricking the skin and drawing blood.
A bright cloud of iridescent motes of light sprang forth, throwing Pyr for a loop.
¡°What?!¡± he cried, blinking as the light rendered him semi-blind.
Bazzalth felt conflicted. Part of him thought that now was the time to strike, but the other part still saw the glowing blade by the child¡¯s neck. If he acted, that might still put Pari¡¯s life at risk. And so he hesitated.
Pari, on the other hand, did not. With her captor confused and discombobulated, she pulled out a small candle from her pocket and lit it. A thick plume of smoke jetted forth, engulfing them both. Bazzalth heard them both cough and wheeze, followed by two soft thumps as their bodies hit the floor, fast asleep.
Grabbing the still-spewing candle, Bazzalth threw it into an empty vat and closed the lid. Then, after blowing away the gas from around the unconscious pair, he gently picked up Pari and placed her on the observation table just as he had twice before. Then, he grabbed Pyr and snapped his neck for the second time.
Pari let out a sigh as she dangled her tiny legs off the observation table. It had been half a day since she¡¯d woken from her drug-induced slumber, and Bazzalth had yet to see her ears perk up even once.
¡°Why Pari-child upset?¡± he finally asked.
The child let out a whimper. ¡°Pyr-teacher was nice to Pari, but then Pyr-teacher became meanie and hurt Pari! Pari not understand!¡±
¡°Bazzalth told Pari-child: crawlers cannot be trusted, not even crawlers Pari-child likes,¡± he grunted. ¡°Crawlers are greedy and sneaky, so Accord was made to keep crawlers from learning of Bazzalth and other people. Does Pari-child now understand? Does Pari-child still want to tell crawlers about Bazzalth?¡±
Pari shook her head. ¡°...no, Pari will not tell.¡±
¡°Good child.¡±
He gently patted her head with a finger, but his action did not seem to entirely mollify her.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather... is Pari also greedy and sneaky and untrustworthy?¡±
¡°Bazzalth told Pari-child before, Pari-child is not crawler. Pari-child is Bazzalth¡¯s data.¡±
¡°But... if Pari leaves, then Pari is not Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s data anymore. Then what is Pari? Pari does not want to be greedy, sneaky crawler. What should Pari do?¡±
Bazzalth thought for a moment about the best way to answer such a large question from such a small being but found little that leaped to the forefront of his mind. So, eventually, he told her what he would have told another person.
¡°Pari must become strong and find Pari¡¯s hoard. Then, Pari will not need be sneaky or greedy.¡±
¡°Okay! Pari will!¡± she chirped before sprinting down from the table and into her alchemy alcove.
With the child suitably distracted, Bazzalth turned to the twice-dead body of the crawler named Pyr. Though his death had robbed Bazzalth of a source of data, his corpse could still be used for an experiment that Bazzalth had been contemplating ever since Pari¡¯s resurrection.
Taking the body, he made his way back to the vat filled with the Ichor of Life and, his mind buzzing with curiosity, deposited the body within. How would an already-resurrected being fare within the Ichor?
Immediately, the Ichor did what it always did, eating away at the rough, handmade clothes that Pyr had created for himself. However, Bazzalth was quick to notice that the body did not spasm as it usually would, nor were there any changes to Pyr¡¯s grey soul.
A moment passed. Then two. After more than twenty breaths of inactivity, Bazzalth accepted what he saw. There was no reaction here, the body and Ichor both inert. He would leave the crawler in the vat and come back to it over time, just to be sure, but for now, the conclusion seemed obvious: the Ichor only worked on a crawler once.
Chapter 95
Quickly, hands moving with practiced precision, Pari spread the warm, pliable wax around the inner surface of the small cylindrical container, making sure that the wax lined the sides evenly and without even the tiniest gap. The outer shell of each candle had to be made with care, as its integrity ensured that the contents sealed within stayed fresh. Once she felt satisfied with her handiwork, she placed the tiny wick into the center of the wax pocket and poured the last of the sleepcandle mixture around it. Finally, she covered the whole thing with a bit of extra wax so that only the wick still touched the outside air. With a snap of her fingers¡ªa trick that Bazzalth-grandfather had taught her; he said that repeatable motions might help her with her Observations, and he was right, as always, because he was her grandfather and he was always right¡ªshe created a tiny flame and carefully melted the top to the rest of the candle, sealing it up properly.
Picking up her cloak from the floor by her feet, she proceeded to tie the candle by the wick to one of the many thin strings that hung from the inside of the cloak. A patchwork creation made out of the scraps of clothing that Bazzalth-grandfather had lying around, the cloak covered her whole body and head and could be used to hold her arsenal of various candles. She¡¯d added the strings from which the candles hung all by herself with her new sewing skills, but the cloak itself had been created by Pyr-teacher before... before that time.
Pari didn¡¯t like to think about that time if she could help it. It made her feel bad inside, like something tiny was chewing away at her tummy. Pari had liked Pyr-teacher. She had found the way he would get angry to be very silly. But at the end, he¡¯d said things that confused her and even frightened her. When he¡¯d said the word ¡°slave¡±, she¡¯d felt a sudden surge of sheer terror spring forth from somewhere deep inside her. She had no idea where that feeling had come from, but it had thrown her into a frenzied panic, and the next thing she knew she was waking up much later. Pyr-teacher was dead again, and he couldn¡¯t come back this time.
Pari missed Pyr-teacher¡ªthe original Pyr-teacher that is, the one before that time. He had helped her a lot. She¡¯d learned many things from him, from useful things like how to sew to weird, silly things like something called ¡°table manners¡±. Why would crawlers wait to eat their food when it was right there in front of them? Food was meant to be eaten, not looked at!
This cloak was the last thing she had to remember him by. So she would keep it and use it to hold her candles for the journey ahead. She had accepted by now the fact that she had to leave this place, this cavern that had been her home for her entire life.
She didn¡¯t want to go. It was warm here, much warmer than the world outside. She¡¯d ventured outside a few times when Bazzalth-grandfather had left to go do some task. It was cold outside. Cold and bright and so very open. She liked the inside better. Bazzalth-grandfather lived here. But she had no choice. She would have to leave. Soon.
Pari didn¡¯t know for a definitive fact that her journey on her own would begin soon¡ªBazzalth-grandfather had yet to tell her such¡ªbut she could see how he had changed since returning home just a few days ago. She¡¯d noticed stress weighing him down and slowly building up over the last few seasons, but the difference between the grandfather that had left that day and the one that had returned just half a day later had been like night and day. Something had happened that day. Something that meant her time here was almost up.
So, as she waited for her grandfather to return from another of his patrols, Pari crafted candles. So far, she¡¯d created enough bangcandles to fill the entire right side of her cloak, as well as nine smokecandles and now two sleepcandles.
The different candles did exactly as their names suggested. The bangcandles exploded with a violent bang; though the range and power left a bit to be desired, her and Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s tests on crawler bodies suggested that they were still strong enough to dismember and kill crawlers close enough to the blast. The smokecandles would burst forth with thick grey smoke that would make it hard for anybody to see and would be useful if she needed to run away. The sleepcandles put anybody who breathed the smoke to sleep and had already saved her once. They were her greatest surprise. Unfortunately, they were also her most uncommon candle.
The ingredients for the sleepcandle formula required ingredients that, according to her grandfather, only grew in the hunting ground to the north of the mountains. That meant that, unlike the bangcandles and smokecandles which used more common materials and could be replenished later, she could only make these two sleepcandles with the materials she had on hand. Hopefully, Bazzalth-grandfather would have more when he returned¡ªwhenever that was; he normally would have been back several hours ago.
There were other sorts of candles she knew how to make, like stickycandles for example, but Bazzalth-grandfather said that those were ¡°not efficient enough¡± for her limited carrying capacity and that she should focus on making as many bang, smoke, and sleepcandles as she could. So she did. She could always make other candles later, once she¡¯d used up some of these. With the new materials she would surely find, she might even be able to create new types of candles that did things she¡¯d never seen before! How exciting!
Pari¡¯s tail twitched as her sensitive ears picked up a shift in the wind outside, one she¡¯d come to recognize after hearing it for years. Her grandfather had returned! Eager to see what goodies he¡¯d brought back with him, she ran through the cavern¡¯s entrance tunnel and emerged into the bright sunshine just as Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s tan and gold body landed feet first with a mighty thump. Her eyes widened at the sight of the enormous sack he carried with him, her thoughts running wild with the cornucopia of new materials that could lie within, only for her excitement to stall as she took a closer look. She could see various large, somewhat familiar lumpy shapes pressing against the inside of the sack, and she was pretty sure she could see an arm sticking out of the top.
Crawlers, many of them. Dozens of crawlers¡ªor maybe even hundreds¡ªwere in that sack. Where had they all come from, and why had Bazzalth-grandfather taken them back to their home?
¡°PARI-CHILD, RETURN INSIDE,¡± he told her as he dragged the sack of crawlers into the tunnel.
Pari dutifully followed behind. ¡°Where so many crawlers come from?¡± she inquired once they were back inside.
¡°CRAWLERS DETERMINED TO PUSH NORTH. DEATHS AND DISAPPEARANCES NOT ENOUGH TO OVERCOME GREED. CRAWLERS SEND FORCE OF SEVEN HUNDRED.¡±
Pari gasped. She had never heard of so many crawlers in one place before! ¡°Bazzalth-grandfather killed all crawlers?¡± she asked. Others might have instead asked if he was injured, but she knew that no amount of crawlers could hurt her super amazing grandfather. He was super-duper-extra strong, after all.
¡°YES,¡± he answered. ¡°BUT MORE WILL COME, IN GREATER NUMBERS THAN EVER. BAZZALTH MUST CALL GATHERING, MUST-¡±
He froze, his eyes turning up towards the ceiling and following something that only he could see. His jaw fell open, revealing rows of sharp, massive teeth as he focused on something else somewhere far away.
¡°KAERSHA...¡± he muttered to himself, his voice filled with a mix of shock and something she¡¯d never heard from him before: horror.
At the start, his gaze pointed north, slightly east, and up. Slowly, it tracked across the ceiling, moving further and further south until he stared off into the southeast. Then he blinked, and his gaze returned to the cavern wherein they stood.
¡°PARI-CHILD, PACK SUPPLIES. PARI-CHILD MUST LEAVE. NOW.¡±
¡°N-Nya? W-Why now?¡± she asked, her heart sinking through the floor at his words, even though she¡¯d known they would come eventually. She had thought she was ready, but her trembling lip proved that she¡¯d been wrong.
¡°SOMETHING WRONG. SOMETHING THAT MUST NEVER HAPPEN NOW HAPPENING. PARI-CHILD MUST GO NOW WHILE PARI-CHILD STILL CAN. PACK QUICKLY.¡±
Pari did as Bazzalth-grandfather instructed. She wanted to cry, but she was a good girl so she held it in as best she could and focused instead on grabbing everything she had and putting it in her little sack. She packed up her candlemaking equipment, her materials, some food, and especially her giant mound of earwax and put them all into the sack until the sack looked about to burst. That, plus her clothes and patchwork cloak, was everything that she possessed. With a grunt, she swung it up over her shoulder and stumbled towards her grandfather. Though the bag was quite heavy, she found that if she balanced it just right, she could move fairly easily. It would just take a little practice.
¡°PARI-CHILD IS FINISHED?¡±
Pari nodded. She¡¯d been mostly packed already, waiting for this dreaded day.
¡°GOOD CHILD. NOW, BAZZALTH HAS GIFT FOR PARI-CHILD.¡± He held out a hand, a thin crimson membrane of flesh held within. Pari stared curiously at the small strip. It looked to be about half the length of her arm at best. What was it for? ¡°TAKE GIFT, PUT ON ARM.¡±
Pari climbed onto his hand¡ªa task she found much more difficult with a giant sack over her shoulder¡ªand picked up the strange object. As instructed, she put down the sack and placed the slim membrane on her left forearm.
Almost immediately, the membrane reacted to her touch. Wrapping around her forearm, it quickly melded together where the two sides touched at the bottom of her arm, forming a single skin-tight tube around her arm.
¡°Nya?¡± she squeaked in confusion, tugging on it with her fingers. It wouldn¡¯t budge even a tiny bit, as if it were sealed to her flesh.
¡°GIFT IS IMPORTANT. PARI-CHILD MUST NEVER TAKE OFF.¡±
¡°Why?¡± she wondered, rubbing her right hand along the somewhat-rubbery red surface. It felt unnatural and uncomfortable against her skin.
¡°GIFT WILL HELP PARI-CHILD COME BACK TO BAZZALTH WHEN PARI-CHILD DIES,¡± he told her, a hint of pride in his voice. He must have been working on it in secret. She had never seen him studying anything like this before, and she¡¯d watched him work for many days. ¡°GIFT WILL GET CRAWLERS TO RETURN PARI-CHILD TO BAZZALTH THROUGH GREED. CRAWLERS WILL SURELY RESPOND TO OFFER OF TREASURE.¡±
¡°B-but then-!¡± Pari blurted out in a panic.
¡°WORRY NOT, BAZZALTH WILL KILL CRAWLERS WHO RETURN WITH PARI-CHILD.¡±
Pari let out a breath of relief. She understood just how important it was to keep her grandfather¡¯s secret. She¡¯d promised to protect that secret. The last thing she wanted was to betray her promise, not even after death.
She rubbed the arm sleeve again, more affectionately this time. The thought that she would return to help expand her grandfather¡¯s hoard even after her life had ended filled her with happiness. Plus, this was just one more thing she could remember him by.
¡°Pari loves Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s gift!¡± she told him with a wide smile.
¡°BAZZALTH IS PLEASED.¡± His fingers curled up around her, forming a cage. ¡°TIME RUNS SHORT. PARI AND BAZZALTH MUST LEAVE NOW.¡±
The next thing Pari knew, her grandfather had carried her from his lair. Then he spread his wings and, for the first time in her life, Pari flew.
Pari had never seen a forest before. Looking down at the bouquet of colors that covered the foothills to the south and stretched as far as her eyes could see, she felt herself standing before a foreign land. This openness, these hues, these aromas on the wind... together they filled her with equal parts curiosity and dread. Who knew what lurked beneath those leaves and needles?
But still, Pari could not get her feet to take a step forward. Turning her head, she looked back at the hulking person behind her. He stared back.
¡°BAZZALTH CAN GO NO FURTHER,¡± he stated. ¡°PARI-CHILD¡¯S JOURNEY BEGINS HERE.¡±
¡°B-but... Pari...¡± she stammered. Her body trembled, her eyes welling with tears, as seasons of pent up emotion welled up within her, moments away from bursting forth. ¡°Pari wants to stay! Pari wants to live with Bazzalth-grandfather forever!¡±
¡°NO. PARI-CHILD MUST LEAVE NOW,¡± her grandfather insisted.
¡°But whyyyyy?!¡± she wailed, latching onto his front leg and burying her face into his side as teardrops fell from her face and flowed down his skin. ¡°Pari was good! Pari tried real hard!¡±
¡°KAERSHA WAS USED. OTHERS WILL COME FOR BAZZALTH SOON. PARI-CHILD WILL NOT GO UNNOTICED THIS TIME. PARI-CHILD CANNOT STAY.¡±
¡°Kaersha was used? Pari not understand!¡±
¡°BAZZALTH CANNOT EXPLA-¡±
Pari looked up at her grandfather, confused by the sudden halt in his words. Something looked off with him as he stared off into the distance, his gaze resting upon something far off to the east and slightly to the south. Yes, something was wrong: the lighting. The sun hung in the western side of the sky, on the other side of his body, so why did this side look so bright? Pari turned to follow his gaze and quickly became as still and silent as he.
Something off in the distance shone with a bright white light, a light so bright that it made her squint even in this sunny mid-afternoon day. Pari watched in fascination as the light bloomed, growing brighter and brighter with startling speed until she had no choice but to close her eyes. Suddenly, tremors shook the mountain beneath them, causing her to latch only her grandfather¡¯s hide to stay upright. The shaking subsided fairly quickly but was followed not long after by a low, howling roar that seemed to shake the world itself. Then, there was naught but silence.
¡°BAZZALTH MUST RETURN TO LAIR,¡± he stated, gently but firmly prying her from his side and depositing her by her sack. He turned away from her, his wings spreading out to take flight.
¡°Wait!¡± Pari cried out.
The Person paused, his head swiveling back to look at her with one massive eye.
¡°When...¡±
Pari hesitated, her mind initially unable to find the words to the question that her heart had refused to ask since Tavreth-meanie¡¯s fateful visit several years before.
¡°When can... Pari come back?¡±
¡°PARI-CHILD CANNOT.¡±
¡°C-c-cannot?!¡±
¡°AS LONG AS TAVRETH-SISTER LIVES, PARI-CHILD MUST NEVER RETURN.¡±
With that said, he leaped into the sky, his voice calling back one final message:
¡°BE STRONG, PARI-CHILD.¡±
In just a few moments, her grandfather banked and flew behind another mountain, and then Pari was alone.
Pari didn¡¯t know what to do. She knew what she was supposed to do, but that was different. Her being here, alone on a mountainside, just felt wrong, like it was a cruel joke or something. Part of her, a small, childish, desperate part, clung to the hope that this was some sort of test or mistake and that Bazzalth-grandfather would return in just a few moments. So she waited there, on that mountainside overlooking the foothills on the southwestern edge of the mountains. She waited and waited. It wasn¡¯t until the moons hung high in the sky that she finally accepted that he wasn¡¯t coming back.
With a tiny grunt, Pari pulled her sack free from yet another branch¡¯s grasp. In the two days since her descent from the mountains, she¡¯d caught her supplies on countless branches, shrubs, bushes, and all sorts of other foliage. Who knew that forests could be so hard to travel through? She¡¯d made far less progress over these two days than might be expected, though she had to admit that much of that was her own doing. Whenever she found a new ingredient, she couldn¡¯t help but rush over to inspect it, study it, sniff it, and collect it. Now her already-stuffed sack felt close to bursting. She¡¯d have to craft a few experiments soon to make space.
For now, though, she did the best she could, pushing her way farther and farther south. For a second, she glanced back and caught a glimpse of the mountains through a gap in the trees, bringing forth a twinge of sadness. Her gaze immediately went to the sleeve on her left arm and she reached out to run her fingers along its ruby-shaded surface.
The sleeve still felt awkward and uncomfortable to her, though now it carried with it a bevy of heavy emotions as well. This sleeve was a promise, but also a warning. She felt that it was her grandfather¡¯s way of saying that she actually could return one day... but not alive. Still, she considered it a sign of his love and had already vowed to never take it off... not that she could if she wanted to. It seemed to be almost one with her own skin.
She shook her head and continued forth.
The sun was approaching the horizon, bringing a swift darkness to her surroundings, when Pari stumbled upon a thin, winding animal trail. By following the trail, she found herself able to move much more easily, bringing a hopeful smile to her face. Maybe this night she would be able to find a proper place to sleep. A cave, if she could find one. The night before, lacking any better options, she¡¯d slept beneath a batch of intertwined roots sticking out of the ground. It just hadn¡¯t felt right; too many gaps, most likely.
A little while later, just as she was beginning to give up hope, her nose caught a whiff that made her halt in her tracks. Fire, smoke, charred meat... and two crawlers. No, not crawlers, ¡°people¡±. Even after all those days of learning and practicing, she still had trouble keeping that straight. But that wasn¡¯t important right now. What mattered was what she was going to do about this.
On the one hand, Pari didn¡¯t really want to meet any people, not even with all her training to help her act like one. After Pyr-teacher¡¯s betrayal, she couldn¡¯t help but be wary of their actions. On the other hand, beside a fire would be a warm place to sleep, no doubt warmer than anything else she would find tonight. Plus, the meat roasting over the fire sure smelled tasty. She¡¯d much rather eat whatever they were having than some of her stored rations. But still...
She needed more information, she decided. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to take a closer look, right?
After gently setting her sack down so as not to make any noise, Pari carefully crept through the underbrush as silently as possible. Soon, she was able to make out a small clearing about a hundred large Pari-sized steps away. In that clearing, sitting on two logs and facing each other, were a man and a woman. Because the woman¡¯s back was turned to her, Pari could only see her yellow hair hanging down her back in a ponytail. As for the man, she could make out his thick, bushy beard and dark, vigilant eyes. She knew for sure that the other person was a woman, however, because of the smell. Male and female people each had a distinctive musk that Pari¡¯s astoundingly sensitive nose could detect with ease.
The two talked sparingly, their voices too low for even her excellent hearing to make out over the sound of the crackling fire. Deciding she needed to be able to hear what they were saying to tell if they were good or bad people, Pari crept closer. One step. Two steps. Three-
The sound of a stick snapping beneath her foot broke the relative silence. Pari crouched down as low as possible behind a nearby bush and went as still as possible. Risking a peek through the budding leaves, she saw that neither of the people had moved. The woman was saying something, her arms moving, but her chest kept Pari from seeing what her hands were doing. She hadn¡¯t been moving her arms before, but that was the only thing different. Her tone of voice remained the same. Meanwhile, the man seemed to be agreeing with what she was saying. A normal conversation, nothing too different than before.
Just as Pari breathed a sigh of relief, the woman, in one quick and smooth motion, picked up a bow, turned towards Pari while drawing it, and fired. Pari froze in shock for a moment as the arrow zipped by her, missing by a step. The man, meanwhile, was already rushing towards her, a large axe in his hands.
These were bad people. Very bad.
Pari turned and ran, her hands fumbling inside her cloak as she tried to figure out if she should use a bangcandle or a smokecandle. Her indecision cost her, as the man, his long legs propelling him far faster than Pari could hope to run, had already covered half the distance between them. Pari heard a whirling sound quickly approaching from behind and tried to duck, but it was too late. A cord of some kind wrapped around her torso, two heavy balls spinning around her and tightening the cord, tying her arms to her sides.
Pari stumbled and fell to the ground. Trying to grab a bangcandle, she found that she couldn¡¯t move her arms!
¡°Did you get it?¡± the female called from a distance.
Pari heard the footfalls of the man just behind her.
¡°Uhhh... yeah,¡± he called back, a trace of confusion and worry in his voice.
¡°What is it?¡±
Pari felt large, rough hands grab her cloak and turn her prone body to face the treetops. She caught a glimpse of the man¡¯s face as he squatted over her, his eyes going wide before he stood up and she lost him again.
¡°Parlo? What is it?¡± the woman called again, closer this time.
¡°A beastkin child, Erini.¡±
¡°...a what?!¡±
Pari eyed the two people warily as she took another bite of meat. Her body shivered with pleasure as the juices filled her mouth, bringing with them flavors she¡¯d never before experienced. She didn¡¯t know what sort of meat it was; she only knew she wanted more.
Loathe as she was to admit it, perhaps Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s cooking skills were not as great as she¡¯d once thought. It wasn¡¯t like he needed to eat cooked meat. He¡¯d only done it for her in the first place, so he hadn¡¯t had much practice. Yeah, that was it. These people just had more practice.
¡°Oh, you poor thing,¡± the woman named Erini cooed as she sat down on the log beside Pari. ¡°You must have been so hungry.¡±
Maybe these people weren¡¯t bad people after all? They had given her delicious food, but they¡¯d also attacked her. She would need more time to deliberate. Pari scooted to the farthest end of the log, just to be sure.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, nobody¡¯s going to hurt you,¡± Erini-person said softly. ¡°We¡¯re very sorry about what happened, but we thought a dangerous beast was stalking us. These woods are filled with dangerous animals. We never thought a young child like you would be out here.¡±
¡°She shouldn¡¯t be out here,¡± the man named Parlo grumbled. ¡°This is no place for a five-year-old. Something¡¯s not right.¡±
¡°Pari not five, Pari eight,¡± she informed him through a mouthful of half-chewed meat. They had to know that she was a grown-up child, not a measly five-year-old. It was important!
¡°Pari? Is that your name?¡± Erini-person asked.
Pari froze for a moment, the realization of what she¡¯d inadvertently given away finally hitting home. Could she trust these people? These maybe-not-bad, possibly-good, tasty-food people? Maybe. Just a little. She slowly nodded.
¡°What a nice name!¡± Erini-person said, flashing a wide smile. ¡°I¡¯m Erini, and this is Parlo. We capture baby jaglioths for the army, though right now we¡¯re simply scouting for jaglioth dens. Then we¡¯ll come back with more people once we¡¯ve found them. Do you know what a jaglioth is?¡±
Pari nodded again. ¡°Meat tastes okay but very tough to chew. This meat much better.¡±
The woman blinked. ¡°Are you saying you¡¯ve eaten jaglioth meat?¡±
Pari just tilted her head and returned her gaze as she took another bite.
¡°Don¡¯t listen to the wild claims of a child,¡± Parlo-person snorted. ¡°Nobody hunts jaglioth for food. There¡¯s no way she has eaten anything of the sort.¡±
¡°Nuh-uh!¡± Pari protested. ¡°Baz- ah... grandfather hunted jaglioth lots. Pari ate lots of jaglioth meat before!¡±
The pair blinked.
¡°Your grandfather hunted the strongest beast in the nation?¡± Parlo-person laughed.
Pari felt her ire rising over such mockery. ¡°Grandfather is much stronger than stupid jaglioth!¡±
¡°Parlo, don¡¯t argue with a child,¡± Erini-person scolded him. ¡°That isn¡¯t important right now.¡±
Slowly, the woman turned back to her and gently asked, ¡°Pari, what are you doing here? This place is at least four full days of hiking from the nearest village.¡±
Pari tensed at the question and kept her lips sealed. She didn¡¯t have a good answer.
¡°We found your bag full of things out back behind the trees,¡± Erini-person continued. ¡°Were you running away from home?¡±
Pari went as stiff as a rock. ¡°N-no,¡± she replied. Technically, she hadn¡¯t run away from home, though she imagined that it would have felt fairly similar.
¡°Pari, don¡¯t lie,¡± Erini-person sternly told her. ¡°Where is your home?¡±
Pari¡¯s eyes involuntarily flickered towards the mountain peaks, the moon behind them rendering them as dark outlines of jagged teeth blocking the pale white light. She turned around and pointed away from them.
¡°Your home is that way?¡± Erini-person asked. ¡°Is it a village?¡±
¡°Uh-huh,¡± she lied.
¡°What¡¯s the name of this village?¡± Parlo-person butted in.
Pari went silent. She didn¡¯t know any village names! Now what was she supposed to do?!
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Erini-person frowned. ¡°Parlo and I need to have a chat by ourselves for a moment, okay?¡± she said.
Pari tensed again, ready to bolt at a moment¡¯s notice.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, you¡¯re not in trouble,¡± Erini-person assured her with another soft smile. ¡°Just stay here and have some more meat, alright?¡±
Pari felt her worries ease a little as the nice lady handed her another leg. She now felt that Erini-person was a good person. Parlo-person was a little more complicated. He seemed intent on questioning Pari, but he also listened to Erini-person, so maybe he was not a bad person? Either way, Erini-person said she wasn¡¯t in trouble, so maybe it was all going to be alright in the end.
Pari focused on her hearing as the two people walked a little bit away and started talking to each other in hushed tones. Perhaps they didn¡¯t understand just how good Pari¡¯s hearing could be, because they stopped much, much closer to Pari than they had been when Pari had first snuck towards them. Because of this, she could hear everything they said.
¡°She¡¯s lying,¡± Parlo-person began.
¡°Of course she is,¡± Erini-person replied. ¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious what¡¯s going on here? Look at her clothing, and that ratty cloak she¡¯s wearing. Nobody would give that to their children to wear. And her body, it¡¯s far too small for an eight-year-old unless she¡¯s been underfed for a long time. She ran away from home because they were mistreating her, and she¡¯s terrified that we¡¯ll take her back there.¡±
Pari took a big bite, savoring the juicy flavor and letting herself relax a little. If Erini-person thought that, then maybe things could work out after all.
¡°Even then, things don¡¯t add up,¡± Parlo-person insisted. ¡°Judging by the condition of her clothes, she hasn¡¯t been in the forest for more than two, maybe three days. But there¡¯s no village close enough for her to have run away from.¡±
Pari tensed up again.
¡°Maybe there¡¯s a new village, one we don¡¯t know about.¡±
¡°I highly doubt that. Villages don¡¯t spring up overnight. We would have heard about it by now as we were making our way up here.¡±
¡°Did you see how her eyes kept glancing towards the mountains whenever we asked about her home? What if she lives to the north?¡±
Pari froze, a sinking feeling in her gut growing stronger with each word spoken. Had she really done that?
¡°I was up north just half a season ago,¡± Parlo-person answered, shaking his head. ¡°Went all over, all the way up to the Krekards themselves. There¡¯s nothing there but trees.¡±
Phew! For once, she was glad that Parlo-person was here.
¡°But you yourself said she can¡¯t have been in these woods for very long. So where did she come from? What if... no, never mind.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°I just had a stupid thought, is all.¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°Well, you know the rumors about the disappearances up north? How people go up into the mountains and just never return?¡±
Uh-oh.
¡°What nonsense are you spewing?¡± Parlo-person snorted. ¡°You think there¡¯s a village of beastkins hidden up in the mountains? And they¡¯re killing everybody? That¡¯s stupid, and you¡¯re stupid for even thinking it.¡±
Oh no. Pari could hear her heart hammering in her chest. This was bad.
¡°It explains everything,¡± Erini-person countered. ¡°If she hasn¡¯t been in the forest for more than a few days, then she can¡¯t have come from the south, east, or west. She could only have come from the north. There has to be something up there.¡±
This was really bad. This was terrible. She¡¯d broken her promise to Bazzalth-grandfather already, on her very first contact, no less! Sure, Erini-person wasn¡¯t exactly correct, but it was close enough that it didn¡¯t really matter. The resulting armies marching into the mountains would be the same.
¡°I... there has to be another explanation,¡± Parlo-person stated.
Pari¡¯s mind whirled as she tried to figure out what to do. They would probably catch her again if she tried to run, and it wouldn¡¯t change the fact that they knew. If only there was a way for Pari to make them forget! The three of them were alone. If she could make them forget, then it would be the same as if nobody had known in the first place! But... she had never found a formula for a ¡°forgetcandle¡±...
¡°Look, forget where she came from, it doesn¡¯t really matter. What matters is that she¡¯s here now,¡± Erini-person returned. ¡°Do we continue the job and take her with us, or do we call it quits for now and head back, maybe return in a few days?¡±
But there was one way, Pari realized. One way that she could make everybody forget.
¡°You know we can¡¯t return now with nothing to show after all the investments we made in this effort,¡± Parlo-person shot back. Otherwise, we¡¯d have turned around when that light and roar came from Zrukhora¡¯s direction. But there¡¯s no way I¡¯m going to consent to taking a child with us for the rest of this. She¡¯ll only slow us down.¡±
Pari slowly reached into her cloak and felt around on her side until she found one of her two sleepcandles. Hopping off the log, she approached the two arguing woodspeople.
¡°Well I¡¯m not leaving a small child in the middle of the most dangerous forest in Kutrad,¡± Erini-person hissed. ¡°I don¡¯t care how she got this far. Leaving her here is a death sentence. What would my ancestors think of me if I-¡± She halted mid-sentence as she noticed Pari just a few steps away. ¡°Is something wrong, Pari? What¡¯s that in your hands?¡±
Pari lit the candle, held it up towards the both of them, and held her breath.
A little while later, once the breeze had cleared out the sleep gas, Pari stood over the unconscious forms of the two hunters. They seemed so harmless while asleep, but they knew. And Pari couldn¡¯t let them know. She¡¯d promised.
Placing a bangcandle upon each of their skulls, she lit the wicks and ran back. Moments later, two loud, wet bangs told her everything she needed to know.
It was a shame, really. They hadn¡¯t been bad people, especially Erini-person, but this was what happened to the weak. Grandfather had said so many times. She would not be upset over the simple way of the world.
Yes, they¡¯d been faster than her, and bigger than her, and physically stronger than her, but she¡¯d won. It had been easy, too. That meant she was stronger than them, and they were people who hunted jaglioth cubs.
Pari had seen jaglioth corpses before. Their bodies were huge; while nowhere close to the size of a Person, jaglioths were still easily the largest beast she¡¯d ever seen. If those two people hunted jaglioth cubs, then they had to be pretty strong themselves. Which meant only one thing: Pari was very strong. Super strong, even!
Maybe she didn¡¯t need to worry so much after all. If she accidentally let slip her secret again, everything would be alright as long as she was stronger. Though, she figured she should still avoid people when possible, and try to do better keeping her secret when she did run into some. She had a lot of bangcandles, but possibly not enough for all the people in the world.
Content with her decision, Pari curled up beside the fire and went to sleep.
Pari blinked as a sunbeam peeked through the forest canopy and flashed across her eyes. Even after a handful of days out of the cave, she still wasn¡¯t used to the light of the outdoors. Bazzalth-grandfather had not let her go out of the cave very often, and even in those rare cases, she didn¡¯t stay out for long. Even in this place, where the light was filtered by the myriad leaves and branches above, she found everything to be too bright.
Closing her eyes to that light for a moment, Pari sniffed deeply, taking in the scents from all around her. She smelled a variety of plants and insects, all of which she¡¯d already harvested, as well as several small animals, though they all seemed to be rather far away from her. The gentle wind shifted slightly and she sniffed again and paused. Just on the edge of her perception, she smelled two new things: a plant she didn¡¯t recognize, and jaglioths. Giddy at the chance to harvest new material, she headed towards the smell.
It had been three days since she¡¯d left Erini-person and Parlo-person at the campfire, and she¡¯d made good progress on her journey. Journey to where? She wasn¡¯t entirely sure. Absent a clear destination, Pari¡¯s mind kept coming back to what Pyr-teacher had said once: that there was a big forest with other people who looked like her somewhere to the south. Clearly, this was not the right forest, so she decided to keep moving south in the hopes that she would soon find it. Perhaps she would find a better destination along the way. But those were long-term concerns. What mattered now was this plant.
Not too long later, Pari spotted a bush with wide yellow triangular leaves. Giddy as could be, she dropped her sack, opened it up, pulled out some tools, and got to work. She was so happy with her discovery, in fact, that she almost didn¡¯t notice the growl.
Just up a nearby hill stood a jaglioth, the first live one that Pari had ever seen. It glared at her and bared its large teeth as it growled even louder, taking several steps down the hill towards her with malicious intent.
Pari didn¡¯t feel even a hint of fear. After all, not only was she stronger than the jaglioth hunters, making her also stronger than a jaglioth, but Bazzalth-grandfather had also taught her just what to do.
Rearing up, Pari let out a growl of her own, one fashioned after the powerful growls of her grandfather. His growls always terrified Pyr-teacher, and Bazzalth had told her how important it was to instill fear in one¡¯s foes.
The jaglioth growled back, taking more steps forward.
Pari growled again, louder this time, and the jaglioth stopped in its tracks. It stared at her and sniffed once, and then again. Then, letting out a small, pitiful whimper, it turned tail and fled as fast as it could.
Pari laughed as she went back to harvesting her materials. Of course she was stronger than a jaglioth¡ªso strong that it didn¡¯t even dare face her. It simply made sense.
As she watched the third lizard in three tries scurry beneath the rocks and out of her reach, Pari couldn¡¯t help but gnash her teeth in mounting frustration. She just couldn¡¯t understand. She was strong. Very strong, in fact. This was not even conjecture at this point; it was established fact. So why couldn¡¯t she seem to hunt anything, no matter how hard she tried?
Hunting should have been easy. With her sense of smell, she should have been able to track down the tastiest of morsels, but almost all of them ran away before she could even see them. She had no idea how they knew she was coming. Most of the time, even being quiet and sneaky didn¡¯t help much.
But then there were the times when being quiet and sneaky did help, the times when she¡¯d be able to get less than thirty steps from her prey. Those times were the worst. Despite trying for days, she had yet to successfully hunt even a single animal. They always seemed to sense her coming and get away at the last moment before she pounced on them. How? Why? She didn¡¯t know. All she knew is that she was very hungry and that there were only so many plant stems and leaves she could eat before she never wanted to eat them ever again.
The prey that stuck around, the ones she seemed to almost catch, largely consisted of lizards ranging from the size of her hand to the length of her arm. She¡¯d never caught a single lizard. She¡¯d killed several with some well-timed bangcandles, timing the wick and throwing them just before they went off, but that had proven too effective at slaying her prey. A bangcandled lizard was little more than a stain on the surrounding area. There was nothing left to eat.
Grandfather made it sound so easy: just swoop in and grab your prey. Simple! But it seemed that Pari was deficient somehow. And her deficiency was getting worse the hungrier she got.
She¡¯d looked for alternate food sources, but so far she¡¯d found little luck. The few dead animals she¡¯d come across had already been stripped of their flesh, with few remaining intact bones from which to harvest marrow. Eggs would have been another, very convenient option, had she started her journey a little later. According to what Bazzalth-grandfather had taught her, lizard mating season was just beginning and the eggs wouldn¡¯t be laid for another thirty or so days.
This was too hard! Giving up on this area, Pari moved on, continuing ever southward. She¡¯d been traveling for many days and many steps, moving through the forests and avoiding people as best she could. How much farther would she have to go? Surely she was close by now, right?
Pulling out some edible grass she¡¯d harvested that morning, she bit into it and fought back a gag. Her stomach groaned a dual protest of disgust and need. Her hunger was all that kept her chewing.
The sun was well on its way towards its bed when Pari halted in her tracks. She could smell another lizard upwind, a big one. It hadn¡¯t run off yet!
Her heart pumping with desperation, she quietly set her sack down and crept forward, moving so slowly that the sun touched the horizon by the time she spotted her target. But it had paid off. The lizard had yet to move.
Her mouth started to salivate at the thought of the creature¡¯s roasted flesh. What a big one it was, too! From head to tail the length of Pari¡¯s leg, it would provide her ample nourishment for days to come... if she could hunt it.
Pari hesitated. The lizard sat in a fairly open, rocky outcropping. Without anything large enough to hide behind, she couldn¡¯t see an easy way to sneak up on it. To make it worse, she could see a hole close by that the lizard would be able to flee into well before she got close enough to strike.
Would she be able to hit it with a bangcandle at this range? She doubted it. She wasn¡¯t that good a thrower, and most of her other ¡°successes¡± had been more luck than anything else. But there was one other option...
She¡¯d saved her last remaining sleepcandle for an emergency. Her sleepcandles had already helped her out of jams twice. The problem was, she couldn¡¯t make any more. Was this a big enough of an emergency to use her last one?
Pari¡¯s stomach gurgled as if to answer the question on its own. But it didn¡¯t have to, because the rest of Pari agreed with it. She wanted, nay, needed meat! No more eating these plants! If this wasn¡¯t an emergency, she didn¡¯t know what was! Besides, she hadn¡¯t run into anybody or anything dangerous in a long while, not since she¡¯d gotten good at staying in the woods and avoiding people. It would be fine.
The sleepcandle arced through the air and spewed forth its powerful contents. Though the lizard made a mad dash for its hideyhole, it fell unconscious before its full body made it inside. Success!
Pari ate well that night, and for several days after.
Rocks. Rocks, rocks, and more rocks. Staring out at the world below from her perch atop the small cliff, Pari searched the horizon for some semblance of a tree and found nothing of the sort. This was new.
Bazzalth-grandfather had deposited her in the southwest corner of the mountains she called her home. Since she¡¯d stayed put for that entire day, waiting for him to possibly return, Pari had been given plenty of time to get the lay of the land. To the south was another range of mountains¡ªmore like overgrown hills, really¡ªthat ran straight south along the coastline on the west, which also ran south. To the east, the land was much flatter. That was where most of the people lived.
Pari¡¯s journey has been a fairly straightforward one so far. She¡¯d headed as straight south as possible, using the stars and the sun like Bazzalth-grandfather had taught her to help her navigate, and stayed away from the flat land where the people lived as best she could. It had been a journey of trees and underbrush, of obscured vision and shadows, of myriad scents and sounds surrounding her.
But now, she found herself with no more mountains upon which to travel, and what lied ahead looked to be the complete opposite of her journey so far. Pari looked down at a vast desert of stone, a maze of cracks and chasms stretching as far as the eye could see, and sniffed deeply to take in the desert wind.
Dryness. Of all the scents she picked up, water was not among them. Not even a drop.
Pari¡¯s gut rumbled its concern and she took out her storage of leaves, pulling away the wax shell with disdain for the contents inside. She placed several choice bits in her mouth and began to chew as best she could, her jaw strength weaker than it had been days during those nice few days when she¡¯d had that lizard meat to eat. It had been almost eleven days since she¡¯d run out, and try as she had, she¡¯d utterly failed to acquire more. It had gotten to the point where she¡¯d even contemplated heading east and looking to take meat from a village somewhere, but she¡¯d decided against it. She didn¡¯t want to lose her path.
Hunger didn¡¯t make the leaves taste any better, but Pari did note the abundant water within them. Turning back to the mountain, she reentered the forest to harvest as much as she could. And hadn¡¯t there been a small stream about half a day back? Yes, she remembered hopping over with a giggle just that morning. She needed to stock up on as much water and food as she could now because it didn¡¯t look like there would be much for her to find for the next few days.
Not once did Pari consider turning back or averting her course. The mountain forests had been interesting to travel through, but they didn¡¯t appeal to her as a place to live. There just weren¡¯t any good caves. The people living to the east didn¡¯t hold much appeal either. The one destination that held her interest was the southern forest, the one where the people like her lived. She didn¡¯t know why, but she found herself enticed by the thought of others that looked like her. If she had to go somewhere, why not there?
Almost unconsciously, Pari¡¯s right hand brushed against the semi-rubbery sleeve on her left arm. Her grandfather¡¯s gift no longer felt awkward and uncomfortable, feeling instead like a natural part of her body. Touching it gave her courage, reminding her that a small piece of him was with her no matter where she went. If she had to travel through this desert to get to this great forest, then that was what she was going to do, and no stupid rocks were going to stop her.
Her arm shaking with strain, Pari grabbed the withered plant root and tugged it out from a small crack in the stone. Eagerly, she broke the root open and began to suck out the small amount of water within. The feeling of the liquid running down her throat soothed her disturbed spirit, though only for a moment. Then her thirst returned, just as strong as before. It was enough to make her cry, except she was too hungry to manage that.
This desert stretched further than she¡¯d thought possible... or maybe she¡¯d just gotten lost.
Navigating by the sun and the stars inside a forest had not been the easiest task, but she¡¯d found it fairly doable. Enough gaps existed where she had been able to check her heading from time to time, and then she had just traveled south. If she really needed to, she could always just climb a tree.
None of this was possible here in this terrible place. She could check her heading all she wanted when she could see the sky, but once she was within a cranny, all direction became meaningless. She could enter a crack in a massive stone slab and start heading south, only for the crack to turn west, then south again, then east, then north, and she would emerge on the same side she¡¯d entered! And those were the lucky ones. Most of the time, the cracks terminated in a dead-end, leaving her with the choice of climbing or turning back.
The choice was a difficult one every time. Climbing atop a rock let her make great progress for a short while, but it took a load of work and strength to clamber up these vertical walls without leaving her sack behind, and she refused to abandon her sack under any circumstances. Even when she did make it atop a boulder, that only lasted as long as the boulder lasted. Soon enough, she¡¯d have to make her way back down, which could be just as hard as climbing up in the first place.
Those choices were mostly gone now. She felt far too tired and weak now to climb anything with her sack anymore. Pari¡¯s food had run out three days ago and her water two days ago. The only thing that kept her alive was the water she found in trace amounts within the roots of the seemingly-dead plants that grew sparsely across this wasteland. These roots held onto their water dearly. Even her exceedingly powerful nose had barely detected any hint of moisture before she¡¯d broken one apart.
This night, Pari found herself sitting in a large hole she¡¯d stumbled upon inside a massive boulder. The hole reminded her of her grandfather¡¯s lair, only much smaller. It had four tall stone walls and a mostly flat stone floor, much like the cave she¡¯d called home for so many years. It had a crack which led to the outside, wide enough for two Paris to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, much like the exit to her old home. Only the lack of a ceiling kept this place from being a mini-lair.
Pari had originally felt attracted to this place because of the similarities between the two locales. Now, however, the similarities just left her with a feeling of loneliness and despair. Stuck in this place for the night, she found herself unable to push away thoughts that she¡¯d successfully kept out since her journey began.
Those thoughts all boiled down to some version of the question: was it her fault that Bazzalth-grandfather had sent her away? He had been very clear at all times that she had done nothing wrong, but no matter what she did, she could never shake the feeling that it was her fault and that if she had been better somehow then she would still be sleeping every night wrapped up in her grandfather¡¯s warm hide.
Maybe she was just too weak. Maybe she was just never a real Person, so she¡¯d needed to leave. Maybe, somehow, if she¡¯d found her Hoard, she would have been able to stay.
Bazzalth-grandfather had instructed her to become strong and to find her Hoard. She was strong now. But her Hoard still eluded her. Right now, she felt like she could Hoard water, but she knew that wasn¡¯t a real Hoard. She had taken his explanation to heart and had searched for a hole within herself, one that she felt the need to fill no matter what, but she always came up empty.
Pari sniffled, the dry air running up her parched nostrils and drying her out a little more with each breath. Her right hand wrapped itself around her arm sleeve, her fingers squeezing it tight. She missed Bazzalth-grandfather dearly. She missed him and the cave and the glow sacs and the mountains and everything more than she could imagine. She missed her home so much that she could almost smell the meat her grandfather would roast for her every day.
Pari¡¯s depressive spiral came to a screeching halt mid-plummet as she sniffed again, her nose picking up the smell of roast lizard and smoke more clearly with each successive sniff. This wasn¡¯t her imagination. Somebody was cooking food, and they were relatively close by.
She needed this food. She needed it desperately. Her entire body yearned to consume every last morsel of the source of this divine aroma. Before she was even aware of what she was doing, Pari found herself halfway through the crack that led outside. She stopped herself for a moment and looked back. Her sack sat in the stone hollow, where it would be safe. As for what she had on her, she had several smokecandles and a handful of bangcandles. She had been too weak and tired to spend energy replenishing her candle stock since entering the desert, but she knew that what she still had would be more than enough.
Pari kept track of the twists and turns as she made her way towards the scent of pure deliciousness. She would need to remember how to get back once she had obtained her food. Some of the natural crevices were fairly small, to the point where an adult-sized person would have to bend over to fit through, but she could make it through without issue.
It wasn¡¯t long before she found what she was looking for. Another large boulder had a big crack running vertically right through the center. She could smell the sizzling meat coming from within. With strength born of hope and hunger that she hadn¡¯t possessed in days, Pari scaled the outside of the boulder and approached the center of the crack from the top. Looking down, she spotted a small group of people clustered around a small flame. Above that flame was her prize.
Several warnings screamed at her in her mind, various non-food-related scents setting off alarms within her, but Pari didn¡¯t even notice them. Her mind was consumed by a desperate need to consume.
Quickly, Pari worked out a simple plan. It seemed clear, given that she¡¯d managed to get above them without them noticing, that her best bet was to drop some candles down onto these people. But which? Bangcandles would probably be the most effective way to get her hands on the meat, but images of lizard guts splattered across rocks and tree trunks¡ªthe end product of her attempts at hunting with the explosive cylinders so far¡ªflowed through her mind. No, she needed to go with her second option, smokecandles.
First, she would drop a smokecandle onto them, turning the space within the crack into a smoky haze and confusing the people below. Then she would jump down, seize her prize, and run before they had any idea of what had happened. If, by chance, they did manage to chase her, she would be able to easily lose them in the twisting pathways that led back to her little hideaway. Besides, why would they even bother? They¡¯d already demonstrated the ability to get their hands on these lizards¡ªhow, she had no idea; she hadn¡¯t even seen any in the desert this entire time¡ªso they could always just get more. It would be much easier than trying to chase her when she was long gone.
Pari pulled out a smokecandle and lit it, waited a moment, and dropped it down into the crack. Moments later, she was sprinting out of the crevice, weaving around and over smaller rocks as she retreated with her prize in hand.
Pari¡¯s ears picked up the sound of footsteps behind her. She glanced back to find a giant of a man gaining on her with startling speed. Nearing her first turn, she pulled out a smokecandle, lit it, and dropped it behind her as she ran as fast as her body could manage.
She heard the people yelling to each other behind her as she continued to run and she hoped that they were talking about halting their pursuit, but the giant came rushing through the smoke just a few moments later. He caught sight of her immediately as she sprinted toward the next turn in her escape route and sprinted towards her, his speed far faster than anybody that large should be capable of moving.
Worry gripped Pari. Why were these people still chasing her?! It was just a few lizards! How big a deal could that be?!
Apparently, she needed to dissuade them a bit. As she ducked to the left and entered another crevice, she lit another smokecandle and dropped it behind her, following that up almost immediately with a bangcandle just after that. The giant barged through the smoke as the bangcandle exploded, its blast showering her pursuer with bits of nearby rocks. She heard him grunt, but she kept going, not daring to peek. As she turned into another crack, she heard the sound of them moving forward again and despaired.
This whole situation was not just bad, it was super duper terrible! Why did everything have to go wrong now, when she was already so hungry, thirsty, and tired? She¡¯d never thought that the meanies behind her would keep chasing her forever over some food! If only she¡¯d made some stickycandles after all!
She dropped her last bangcandles behind her as she ran, her body fueled by little more than desperation at this point. Soon enough, she found herself back in her little almost-cave hideout, trying to figure out what to do. The smell of the still-warm lizards wafted into her nostrils and she bit into one, reveling in the warmth, the moistness, and the crunch of its tiny bones. It tasted so good that she almost forgot her circumstances as she gobbled up more and more.
Her body already feeling lighter, she swung her sack up and over her shoulder, preparing to tie it around her so she could scale the high stone walls, when her ears caught the sounds of footsteps. She turned to find three of her pursuers entering the enclosure. Blood dripped from all over their bodies, but they were very much still alive and, judging from the expressions, very, very angry.
Perhaps for the first time in her life, Pari felt fear. She didn¡¯t so much think as simply react, dropping everything in her hands and leaping up onto the wall behind her, her tiny hands grasping at tiny handholds that no adult could ever hope to grasp.
¡°Ya aren¡¯ gettin¡¯ away!¡± the giant cried out.
Pari turned back to see a massive spear rocketing towards her. She tried to jump away, but the weapon closed in too fast and she only managed to barely avoid it. Instead of piercing through her, it pierced through her cloak and embedded itself deep into the stone behind her, trapping her against the wall two Pari-heights above the ground.
Scrabbling to keep her purchase on the wall with this new impediment, she turned to face her attackers and let out a growl. Without any more bangcandles, her only hope was to scare these people away like she¡¯d scared away that jaglioth.
¡°Rawr!¡± she growled, just like Bazzalth-grandfather had taught her. ¡°Raaawwwwrrr!!¡±
It wasn¡¯t working. Why wasn¡¯t it working?! It had worked on the jaglioth, and that had been much larger than even this man¡¯s considerable size.
The female person pulled out a small blade and wound up for a throw. Pari squirmed and closed her eyes.
¡°STOP! DON¡¯T HURT HER!¡±
Pari let out an involuntary gasp as a new scent found her nostrils. No, it wasn¡¯t new, she realized; she¡¯d smelled it before when planning her food heist, but she¡¯d been so food-crazed at the time that its significance had failed to register on her. It was a familiar scent she¡¯d only smelled from two other beings in her short life: the smell of power. Pari¡¯s nose told her that the other three were relatively strong as far as people went, but this was on a whole other level. This reminded her of her grandfather... or maybe even Tavreth-meanie.
The smell came from the woman who¡¯d just appeared and started yelling at the others. Pari¡¯s head swam as she watched the others stop, especially the woman about to throw the knife. Yes, this made perfect sense. The strongest person was the boss, after all. It only made sense that the new woman would be the boss of the others and they would respect her.
After more yelling and arguing, the three others put down their weapons and the strong woman turned towards her. Pari stiffened as she moved closer and held out her arms with a smile.
¡°Hey, sweetie... come on down from there. Nobody is going to hurt you.¡±
¡°Rrrrrrarw!¡± Pari replied. Pari didn¡¯t trust this person just because she reminded her of Bazzalth-grandfather. It would take a lot more than a smile and a smell to sway Pari¡¯s iron conviction!
The woman reached into her pants and pulled out something. Pari¡¯s eyes went wide as her vision tunneled in on the dried meat in the woman¡¯s hand. Her nose picked up the salt and the smoke, causing Pari to hesitate. Maybe the woman was a nice woman?
No! She¡¯d fallen for this trap before, and then she¡¯d had to kill those people. She wouldn¡¯t fall for it again. Although... that piece of meat was bigger than Pari¡¯s whole hand. She could feel it calling to her...
No! Pari steeled her heart against her temptations. But she was still so very hungry. And even if this female person was good, food-giving person, there was still the matter of the three others behind her. But the smell of the meat...
¡°You don¡¯t have to worry about them, sweetie. They¡¯re a bunch of big meanies, but big sister Sofie will make sure they don¡¯t hurt you, okay?¡±
Sister.
The word struck her like a blow from Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s mighty tail, nearly knocking her senseless. She¡¯d heard her grandfather speak the word before, but never had she experienced such meaning behind it. There was a depth and breadth of caring and togetherness within the word that shook her to the core and left her nearly speechless. She felt like she¡¯d felt this before, but when? What was with this surge of familiarity so strong it threatened to sweep her away like an avalanche cascading down the mountain outside her grandfather¡¯s lair?
¡°B-big sis...?¡± she barely managed to say.
¡°Big sister Sofie will protect you from those meanies, okay? Now come down and have something to eat!¡±
Sister.
The word struck her again, hitting her soul with a ground-shaking surge of affection. This time, something gave. Her world inside her was like a cave, filled with all the joyous and sorrowful experiences of her young life. It always had been, as long as she¡¯d lived. Only now, one of the cave walls crumbled, revealing a whole other cavern of experiences hidden away seemingly forever. No longer bottled up, the experiences surged forth. The avalanche of memories crashed over her, and Pari remembered everything.
She remembered her father, how he was big, strong, and always so quick to laugh. She remembered the way he would kiss her forehead as he left for a job, and the way he would pick her up and swing her around with a wide smile on his face when he finally returned. She remembered the pain she¡¯d felt when she¡¯d finally realized that he wasn¡¯t ever coming back, the agony ripping through her now just as torturous as it had been then.
She remembered her mother, the calm, collected woman who¡¯d always been the first to hug her when she was sad. She remembered her mother¡¯s tasty meals, and the way she would conscript Pari to help clean the house while somehow always making it all into a fun activity for them to share together. She remembered the day when the men had come to tell her that her mother had been found dead in an alley with a dozen stab wounds and that she would have to go to an orphanage.
No, not she, they.
She remembered her brother. Erdi. The boy who¡¯d been there for her when nobody else had, who¡¯d protected her from the beginning to the very end. She remembered the desperation in his eyes as he pleaded with her to escape, to run away and be free, and how she¡¯d run and... and...
Mother, Father, Brother... She missed them and she wanted them and she needed them oh so desperately, but they were gone now. Gone forever.
What little desperate strength Pari still had evaporated into the night air. Her hands released their grip and she fell into Sofie-person¡¯s waiting arms. Tears she didn¡¯t know she had flowed like great rivers as she let out years of sadness all at once, bawling like there was no tomorrow.
Sofie-person pulled her in tight, smothering Pari in her embrace. She stroked Pari¡¯s matted hair and she whispered soothing words softly into Pari¡¯s ears.
¡°What¡¯s your name, sweetie?¡± the woman asked.
¡°P-P-Pari...¡± the girl managed to gasp out.
But no, that wasn¡¯t right. Clansnarl. Pari Clansnarl. That was her name. She just couldn¡¯t bring herself to say it, or anything more for that matter.
The woman didn¡¯t seem to mind, pulling her closer and burying Pari¡¯s face against her soft chest. ¡°Pari... that¡¯s such a nice name!¡± she said calmly, almost like how Mother would have said it. ¡°Now just let it all out, okay? Everything¡¯s going to be just fine.¡±
Pari didn¡¯t need to be told. She couldn¡¯t have stopped herself even if she wanted to. All she could manage to do was gush forth, a fountain of anguish accompanied by soft mutterings of the woman who held her so lovingly.
Sofie-person¡¯s scent filled her world as she sobbed. She liked this scent, she realized. It held not only the power found in Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s scent but also the warm, reassuring feeling of safety and security that told the terrified, despairing child inside her that everything was going to be alright.
This woman, this Sofie... she¡¯d declared herself Pari¡¯s sister. Pari had never had a sister before, but now she realized that she wanted one more than anything. She wanted Sofie-person¡¯s warmth, her companionship, her love. She wanted Sofie-person to be Sofie-sister, and so, much like how Bazzalth had become Bazzalth-grandfather, Sofie-sister she became.
Something inside Pari clicked into place. It was like there was a hole inside her, one that cried out to be filled at any cost. The hole felt just as ravenous as before, endless in its insatiable hunger, and yet at the same time, it felt fuller. The need remained, and yet simultaneously it had been mollified.
Pari rubbed her head against Sofie-sister¡¯s shoulder and breathed in more of her scent, luxuriating in the peace that her sister¡¯s presence gave to her soul. Of course. It was all so clear now, so obvious, that she couldn¡¯t believe she hadn¡¯t realized it from the very beginning.
She would hoard Family.
Chapter 96
As she sat on the main deck of the Flying Toaster, her gaze through the windows glued on the jagged mountains to the north, Arlette didn¡¯t know what was worse: the long uncertain wait for Blake and Gabby, the low hum of the ¡°propellers¡±, or...
¡°Sofie, I¡¯m going to lock you in a cabin if you don¡¯t stop that pacing,¡± she told the restless Earthling.
¡°I... I¡¯m sorry,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°I¡¯m just...¡±
¡°I know, this sort of thing is always hard. But you can¡¯t let the worry overtake you. You¡¯re driving Samanta and me crazy.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve dealt with this sort of thing a lot, haven¡¯t you?¡±
¡°You know I have.¡±
¡°Can you teach me?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not really something you teach. Everybody deals with it differently,¡± Arlette hedged. She didn¡¯t really feel like having a talk about dealing with grief and loss right now.
¡°Well, how do you do it? How do you handle this feeling of helplessness and uncertainty that just twists everything inside you into knots? Not knowing what happened after we left is tearing me apart. I feel like I need to be doing something, but all I can do is wait!¡±
Oh, was that what she was talking about? Maybe Arlette could give her a few pointers. ¡°For me it comes down to trusting in others.¡±
¡°That¡¯s it?¡±
¡°That¡¯s it. I led a mercenary band, remember? I had to send people off on important tasks all the time. It¡¯s easy afterward to start questioning if you did everything you could, or if they would be okay on their own. But you can¡¯t let that feeling overwhelm you. You have to put your trust in them to do what they set out to do. They can handle themselves.¡±
¡°I know they can, but I just... ¡±
¡°Look, Sofie, those two might be the strongest people I have ever seen. If anybody can take on a god and live, it would be them.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not worried about them, I¡¯m worried about Pari. What if it does something to her?¡±
¡°What more could it do to her that would make any difference? She¡¯s already dead.¡±
¡°Half dead,¡± came the immediate correction.
Arlette shook her head. ¡°Whatever. I don¡¯t entirely understand what Blake was talking about when he said Pari wasn¡¯t entirely dead, but from what I got, she¡¯s not about to start running around again, is she? She doesn¡¯t even breathe. There¡¯s no real difference between this and death.¡±
¡°Hey, you don¡¯t know! All sorts of crazy things happen in this world! There might be a way to bring her back!¡± Sofie argued, though she sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than Arlette.
¡°I see something,¡± Sam remarked from a nearby window.
Their conversation forgotten in the blink of an eye, Sofie rushed to Sam¡¯s side, her gaze following the girl¡¯s pointed finger.
Arlette wasn¡¯t too far behind, though her gaze went to the skies instead. It wasn¡¯t until she was sure that there was no monstrous beast headed right for them that she breathed a sigh of relief and glanced down at the insectoid figure quickly skittering closer.
The multi-legged vehicle appeared much the worse for wear. One side of the cabin on top appeared half-melted and a bit of the back seemed to be entirely missing. But it still ran, carrying its two occupants towards the airship within which Arlette and the others waited.
Two occupants, not three.
Despite her reluctance to get her hopes up, Arlette¡¯s spirits fell. The other two went quiet as well as they each noticed the same thing and came to the same conclusion about what it meant.
¡°No...¡± Sofie whispered, sinking to the floor. She stared blankly at the featureless grey metal, her gaze hollow. Arlette couldn¡¯t help but notice just how terrible Sofie looked at this moment. Since the night of Pari¡¯s effective demise, her friend¡¯s appearance had grown worse and worse each day. Her hair had grown progressively more disheveled, her skin had lost its color, it even looked like she¡¯d lost considerable weight... it was like Sofie was wasting away before her very eyes. Which, given how she¡¯d basically stopped eating or sleeping, made sense.
Now, as Sofie set her head in her hands, her fingers covering the massive, dark bags beneath her eyes, Arlette worried that she was about to fall apart. Sofie had been running on hope, she realized. Now that was all gone.
Arlette placed her hand on Sofie¡¯s shoulder. She wanted to say something but she couldn¡¯t find the words.
Samanta didn¡¯t look much better, now that Arlette turned her gaze towards the child. Sofie had told Arlette that Pari had been Samanta¡¯s one and only friend. Now facing a lonelier existence, the poor child looked crushed. This whole endeavor was horribly cruel to everybody involved, Arlette decided. It had done little other than getting everybody¡¯s hopes up over an impossibility.
Everybody turned towards the back of the cabin as they heard the sound of metal boots on a metal deck. A moment later, Blake and Gabriela entered, their shoulders slumped in defeat.
¡°What happened?¡± Arlette asked.
¡°We found her grandfather,¡± Blake said from behind his mask, his voice tense. He quickly walked over to the controls at the front of the airship and began manipulating them. ¡°Now we¡¯re getting out of here.¡±
¡°R-really?¡± Samanta stammered in surprise.
¡°What? We can¡¯t head back now!¡± Sofie protested. ¡°What about Pari?! What about her grandfather?!¡±
¡°The dragon was the grandfather,¡± Gabriela clarified. ¡°Blake and I decided it was best to leave her with him.¡±
¡°We¡¯re getting out of here before he decides to chase us down,¡± Blake added.
¡°That... that murderous beast raised Pari? How?!¡± Arlette asked. She couldn¡¯t wrap her head around a walking natural disaster somehow raising a child. It made no sense.
¡°Yeah, well, he can talk,¡± Blake explained, ¡°and he¡¯s smart. We found him dissecting her with this crazy biological lab setup, and he was so pissed over what happened to Pari that the ground shook. Kept roaring about a ¡®crawler¡¯ and whatnot. Nearly wrecked my skitter, too; we almost didn¡¯t make it out alive. Gabby had to hold him off while we got away.¡±
¡°So that¡¯s it, huh?¡± Sofie huffed ¡°You saw a talking dragon and gave up? Did you even try to get Pari back?¡±
¡°Of course I tried,¡± Gabriela replied. ¡°The dragon put her body in this container of blue slime. I went in after her, but it started melting my body away. It was weird, the goo dissolved me and my outfit, but left Pari untouched. It was harder to regenerate from than normal, too. I¡¯m sorry, maybe if I had tried harder...¡±
¡°Maybe you should have!¡± Sofie shot back.
¡°Sofie, stop. I made the call to bail, not her,¡± Blake told them.
Gabriela sighed. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s for the best, anyway.¡±
¡°What are you talking about?! You said he was dissecting her!¡± Sofie snapped through clenched teeth, her hands clenched into tight, angry fists. ¡°How could it be for the best when that thing was cutting her apart?¡±
¡°He¡¯s her family, right?¡± Gabriela argued. ¡°Pari belongs with her family. He was pretty much all she ever talked about.¡±
¡°What about me? I¡¯m her sister, aren¡¯t I?¡± Sofie shot back.
¡°That¡¯s just what she calls you,¡± Blake said flatly. ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean anything.¡±
¡°How dare you say that! It meant something to her! It meant something to both of us!¡± Sofie spat. ¡°Don¡¯t tell me that she didn¡¯t do the same to that overgrown lizard, either! Or are you claiming she¡¯s at least a quarter dragon?¡±
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¡°Fine, I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m sorry,¡± Blake retreated, raising his palms to ward off Sofie¡¯s rage. ¡°The point is, her ¡®grandfather¡¯ has as much a claim on her as you do. If what you say she told you about him is true, then he spent a much longer time with her than you. So Gabriela¡¯s right. We did what we set out to do, in the end. We got her to her ¡®grandfather¡¯ and that¡¯s that.¡±
¡°What happened to that spiel you gave before about needing to find the person who made her sleeve and how they were dangerous and all that? You¡¯re just done?¡±
¡°Well, that person turns out to weigh fifty tons and has a mouth full of teeth bigger than me. Given the way he left us the first time and how he stopped chasing us fairly quickly once we ran, he seems to prioritize Pari more than killing us. I have decided to not poke him because I¡¯d rather he doesn¡¯t change his mind. But just in case, we¡¯re getting far, far away from him immediately.¡±
¡°Good idea,¡± Arlette chimed in. The sooner she was two countries away from that nightmare beast, the better.
¡°But- but-!¡±
Blake shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s over, Sofie. I¡¯m sorry. We¡¯re not miracle workers.¡±
Sofie¡¯s mouth clammed up and tears welled up in her eyes. Letting out a loud sob, she sprinted out of the room.
Blake grunted. ¡°I¡¯m not dealing with that.¡±
Arlette sighed and went to follow after. ¡°I¡¯m on it.¡±
Arlette found the Earth woman sobbing in her cabin, her door closed but not locked. She was sitting on her bed with her back against the wall, hugging her legs as she cried. Taking a seat beside her, Arlette stayed quiet. To her surprise, Sofie spoke first.
¡°I¡¯m such an idiot,¡± she said softly. ¡°This horrible world kills people every day, but I stopped thinking it would ever happen to the people I cared about.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a strange thing to think,¡± Arlette observed.
¡°It¡¯s just that... we always got out of trouble pretty much intact, you know? Like when the Stragmans rescued us from those bounty hunters, or when Jaquet freed us the day before our execution in Kutrad. I used to worry every day when you would go up that godforsaken wall and fight the Ubrans, but you always survived.¡±
¡°It wasn¡¯t as easy and carefree as you make it sound. I almost died countless times during the siege, you just weren¡¯t there to see it,¡± Arlette reminded her.
¡°But you never died, that¡¯s the point. It happened over and over and over. You would go out there, the odds worse every day, and then you¡¯d come back. You¡¯d be covered with wounds, but you¡¯d come back. Even when you were up against Sebastian or Gabby, you survived and everything went back to normal. Eventually, I started to think of death as something that happened to other people, people I didn¡¯t care about. Not you. Not her.¡± She laughed a small, pathetic laugh. ¡°How stupid and self-absorbed can you be, right? I didn¡¯t appreciate how precious every moment with you all really was, and now it¡¯s too late. Now I can¡¯t even say goodbye. I can¡¯t tell her I love her.¡±
Arlette put her arm around Sofie and pulled her closer so that their shoulders leaned against each other.
¡°She knew you loved her. You loved her every day. That¡¯s what matters, isn¡¯t it? Her spirit is joining those of her ancestors right now. I bet they¡¯re already sick about hearing about how wonderful her ¡®Sofie-sis¡¯ is.¡±
Sofie let out a small, empty laugh. ¡°Maybe. But I can¡¯t help but feel like it¡¯s my fault that she died in the first place. I keep thinking about that time. Could I have been faster? Could I have done something differently? Could I have saved her?¡±
¡°Sofie, you need to stop blaming yourself. Nobody can live a perfect life. Only a crazy person would think that possible. Especially weaker people like us. It¡¯s important to accept that you are not all-powerful. You can¡¯t save everybody and fix everything all on your own.¡±
¡°¡®Weaker people like us¡¯? Since when are you weak?¡± Sofie snorted. ¡°You constantly put your life on the line and live to tell the tale. I just cower in a corner, terrified.¡±
¡°Oh, come on. I seem to remember a certain terrified cowerer telling the ruler of a country that he was trash directly to his face. Even most of the strongest warriors in the world can¡¯t boast of doing that. That takes courage.¡±
¡°That wasn¡¯t courage, that was just stupidity, anger, and having nothing to lose.¡±
¡°Alright, alright. You¡¯re weaker than a wilted flower in a drought. Is that what you wanted to hear?¡±
¡°No. Yes. I don¡¯t know.¡±
The two of them drifted into silence for a while. Arlette let the silence carry, unwilling to be the one to break it. Sofie needed to take this at her own pace.
Eventually, the younger woman did.
¡°It¡¯s almost funny,¡± she chuckled. ¡°Looking back, I suddenly understand why she never seemed scared of danger that frightened you and me. It would be hard for anything to be scary if you lived with a killing machine every day.¡±
¡°Yeah, you¡¯re right,¡± Arlette snorted. ¡°I always did wonder about that. Really, when you think about it, this explains so many things about her.¡±
¡°Right. It answers so many questions but opens so many more. Like, where would a dragon get wax for candles?¡±
Sofie laughed again, a better, less empty one this time.
¡°You¡¯re the best, Arlette. I don¡¯t know where I would be without you. Actually, I do. I¡¯d be dead.¡±
¡°Glad I could help.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t you die on me too, alright? I don¡¯t know if I could handle being stuck with Blake all by myself.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll try my best. I would never want to inflict that on anyone,¡± she snickered.
¡°Thanks. Now, I¡¯d like to be alone for a while, please.¡±
¡°Of course.¡±
Arlette got up and left the room, her ears picking up the sounds of the door locking behind her and more sobs coming from behind it.
The journey back to Wroetin was a somber one. As they passed by the crater that once was Zrukhora, Arlette noticed the fires of civilization burning around the massive hole. A new city was already springing up around the grave of the old one. Progress marched relentlessly forward always, even when the path was littered with corpses.
Arlette talked with the others very little during the trip. An aura of failure hung over everyone involved. Yes, technically they¡¯d succeeded in their mission, at least in part, but it didn¡¯t feel like success to any of them.
The grey metal tower of home peeked over the horizon two mornings later. Home... it was funny, but Arlette realized then that she did think of that giant fortress as a home. When was the last time she¡¯d had somewhere that could legitimately be called that? Crirada sure hadn¡¯t felt such. Maybe not since the day she¡¯d left Gustil?
Half an hour later, she and the others trudged into the castle, weary and ready to have something, anything, to distract them from the events of the last few days. Arlette hadn¡¯t expected her distraction to come in the form of Gunta Izkapts, Minister of Justice, but she found the stern-looking woman waiting for her as she disembarked.
Arlette worked with Minister Izkapts more than any other high-level Otharian official, and their relationship could best be described as ¡°frosty, but functional¡±. She was not what Arlette would call a ¡°free-thinker¡±, her Otharian beliefs coloring her view of people like Arlette and the other non-natives. However, the woman was a professional above all else, and so she managed to keep her views to herself well enough for them to work with each other.
¡°How can I help you, Minister?¡± Arlette greeted her.
¡°There was a disturbance last night, a small bar fight that resulted in several arrests.¡±
¡°And this concerns me how?¡±
¡°Two of the detained individuals are Els-¡± She caught herself and frowned. ¡°-were not Otharian. Specifically, they are elves. One of them claims to know Madam Ramaut-¡±
The elf knew Sofie?
¡°-while the other wants to speak with you.¡±
Arlette couldn¡¯t help but blink. That was indeed something that fell within Arlette¡¯s purview. Otharia, as a country, was not a proponent of open borders. This had been the case before Blake¡¯s arrival and had not changed much since. As far as she knew, there was only one elf in Otharia: the man who¡¯d helped Sofie escape Crirada and make her way here without being caught by the Ubrans. If there was a second, that meant that there was another hole in Blake¡¯s border system. And for that elf to want to speak with her... Could it be Artiermius? She needed to check it out.
¡°Thank you, I¡¯ll investigate it shortly,¡± she told the Otharian, who simply nodded and left.
One meal, a wash, and a change of clothes later, Arlette left her room refreshed and headed down. Blake had built a small dungeon for holding people of interest beneath the fortress at her request. He called it a ¡°containment facility¡±, but Arlette knew a dungeon when she saw one. It was located just a few paces below the ground floor, with another larger ¡°facility¡± even deeper. Arlette didn¡¯t know what was in the deeper basement; she wasn¡¯t allowed anywhere near it. Neither was anybody else, as far as she could tell.
Arlette believed this dungeon to be the most inescapable dungeon she¡¯d ever seen. The outer door required her to press a series of buttons in a specific order, followed by a scan of her hand. Then later, there was a second door that looked at her eye and required a spoken password. Both were far too thick to break through. Anybody who tried would find themselves disabled by the many automated weapons systems that guarded the interior.
Arlette punched in the code in a rush, hoping to get in and out quickly. She understood the need for a place to hold people like the leaders of terrorist cells and the like for interrogation, which was why she had requested the prison in the first place, but after the last year, she would be happy if she never set foot in a dungeon ever again. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, the ¡°facility¡± had sat unoccupied until now.
The first door opened and Arlette stepped through, entering a chamber filled with guns pointed in her direction. She ignored them as best she could and approached the second door, letting it scan her eye. ¡°Rinemma,¡± she said softly.
The second door slid into the floor and she stepped into the dungeon proper.
There was only a single row of twenty cells within this space, ten on each side, as the dungeon had never been intended for mass-detention. That made finding the people she was looking for a simple task. The first elf met her gaze from within the first cell on her left, his eyes steady. Arlette recognized him as Jerithim, the elf who¡¯d helped Sofie make it all the way from Crirada to Wroetin. Arlette had met him several times since her arrival in Otharia, as Sofie considered him something of a friend. The Earth woman had even made a passing effort at getting the two of them acquainted, saying that elves were ¡°sexy and attractive¡±¡ªthey weren¡¯t¡ªand that the two of them would make a good pair¡ªthey wouldn¡¯t. He currently served as an informal representative of the Drayhadan regime. Jerithim was not who she had come to see. She¡¯d ask him a few questions and let him free in a bit.
Moving on, Arlette¡¯s ears picked up the sound of somebody humming a formless tune, the melody bright and unconcerned with these dour confines. The humming cut off as she approached the final cell on the right, and a few steps later, Arlette found herself staring in at the person of interest.
She froze.
No.
Arlette rubbed her eyes in disbelief, but when she looked again, she still saw that same face, those same eyes, and that same roguish grin.
This was impossible.
The man¡¯s grin widened as he saw her and he spoke, his words removing all doubt yet explaining nothing.
¡°Hey there, Letty!¡± the elf chuckled. ¡°We really need to stop meeting like this. It¡¯s bad for my health!¡±
Chapter 97
Tehlmar lurched to his left, just barely avoiding the tip of an Ubran spear coming toward him from his front. His right arm lashed out, the crimson blade in his hand batting the spear shaft away just as another spear came for him from the front-left. That one glanced off the small shield he managed to construct just in time from the blood flowing from his left palm, but the force of the hit was enough to send him staggering back and to the right. The other three Ubran royal guards pounced, forcing him to jump away, his constantly shifting blood barely keeping death at bay.
Tehlmar very much did not want to be here. His goals had been simple ones: find Arlette and get her out of this mess before she got herself killed. The former had turned out to be easier than expected; the latter... not so much. Though heavily injured, she insisted that they not leave the battle, claiming that she knew where the Emperor was hiding.
Tehlmar had given serious thought to just having his people carry her away unwilling, but like a fool, he¡¯d still held hope that they could patch things up and doing that to her would have surely widened the divide between them even more. So instead, he¡¯d gone along with her insane idea. After all, what were the odds that she not only truly knew the Emperor¡¯s location but that she¡¯d be able to find the specific tent within the sea of identical bland, unremarkable tents amidst this chaos?
The answer, against all expectations, was ¡°depressingly good¡±, and it presented a problem. Now that the elderly Ubran ruler stood literally just paces away, he couldn¡¯t just run. The opportunity to effectively end the Ubran invasion in a single stroke was just too important to pass up without at least taking a shot at it.
Arlette surely thought so. He knew that look in her eyes. He¡¯d seen it before from people willing to sacrifice anything, even their own lives, to accomplish a goal. Luckily, she was too injured to fight, so she was hiding nearby and letting the rest of them handle things. But if things got worse, he wouldn¡¯t put it past her to do something stupid instead of running away with him like a sensible person. He¡¯d always known Arlette to be a fairly sensible person, one who was willing to take some risks for what she felt was right, but never something so absurdly suicidal as this. Had the Ubran conquest of her homeland, Gustil, really hurt her that much?
In the moment, it didn¡¯t really matter. What mattered were the Ubran soldiers in front of him and his own troops, who were dropping like flies. The Emperor¡¯s attack had turned a hard but doable fight into a nightmarish one. The dead and dying from both his and the Emperor¡¯s guards littered the area, but one did not need to be a scholar to realize that more Drayhadans were down than Ubrans.
Not that each Ubran, royal guard or not, was equal to their elven counterparts. Tehlmar, especially, could take down all five of his opponents at once if he needed to, but to do so would use so much blood that it would tire him out to the point of uselessness afterward. For all its adaptability and lethality, the strain Tehlmar¡¯s fighting technique put on his body was a huge weakness that could not be ignored. Fighting with much of your blood outside of your body would wear down anybody, and it put a time limit on his effectiveness.
He needed Palebane¡¯s help to salvage this situation. The Chos was currently having the time of her life going one-on-one with the Emperor¡¯s powerful bodyguard, Taras. If she didn¡¯t finish her battle soon and come help, he¡¯d have to start looking for a way to give up and retreat safely with Arlette. Given Arlette¡¯s leg injury, escape would not be easy.
¡°The Emperor!¡± the farthest of his opponents cried out, causing all of his adversaries to screech to a halt. In a gap between them, Tehlmar spotted Arlette on the far side of the Emperor¡¯s hiding tent, standing over the presumably dead body of another royal guard.
A litany of questions flashed through his mind. What in the world was she thinking? How had she gotten over there without being noticed? Where had the Ubran Emperor disappeared to?
Those questions became largely irrelevant as four of his five foes turned and dashed towards the only woman he¡¯d ever loved. He could figure the answers out later. Right now, he needed to protect Arlette at all costs.
Spinning past the lone remaining enemy who stayed focused on him, Tehlmar crouched down and shot blood from his palms with as much strength as he could manage, expending much of his reserves to throw himself arcing high above and past the Ubrans before they could make it to Arlette. The ground rushed towards him as gravity did its thing and he twisted, lining up a semblance of a coordinated landing.
But then, in a flash, he wasn¡¯t within the Ubran camp outside the walls of Crirada anymore. Instead, he found himself staring at a wooden ceiling he didn¡¯t recognize with his body lying flat on his back. Though he couldn¡¯t see anybody, what felt like a large hand gripped his ear with firm strength.
Utterly discombobulated by the sudden and instantaneous change of venue, Tehlmar reacted without thinking, striking out against the mysterious person gripping his ear. His blow landed instead on something incredibly hard and unforgiving. The sound of bone hitting solid wood rang out as a spike of pain shot up his arm.
¡°Ah! Shit!¡± he swore as a low chuckle graced his ears.
¡°Idiot. I knew you would do something like that,¡± a familiar voice snickered. ¡°Trying to off my secret weapon immediately? Is that really how you thank somebody, you elf bastard?¡±
¡°Huh? Wha?¡± he sputtered as he pushed himself up with his non-throbbing hand and looked around. ¡°What¡¯s going-¡±
His eyes took in the chamber, with its starkly stylized Stragman modular architecture and ornamentation, as well as the grinning face of Akhustal Palebane standing beside a dark-skinned kneeling man whom Tehlmar had never before seen. The man¡¯s muscular body strained against his plain and worn clothes, almost as if they would burst his attire apart with the slightest effort. But Tehlmar¡¯s eyes were drawn to his weary face. The resigned sadness he saw in those eyes jumped out at him, refusing to be ignored.
¡°-oh... I see.¡±
It didn¡¯t take a genius to figure out what had happened. This sad giant had to be the man he¡¯d heard about but never seen in the flesh, the one capable of reviving the dead. Which meant he¡¯d died. And that meant...
¡°What happened?!¡± he demanded, shooting to his feet in desperation. ¡°Is she alright?! Did she survive?!¡±
¡°You¡¯re quite welcome,¡± the Chos replied with a roll of her eyes.
¡°Please-¡±
¡°Your crush survived, so stop acting like a wudrec pup who lost its mother and calm the fuck down,¡± she snorted.
¡°She did?¡± Tehlmar felt a thousand knots inside him untie all at once as his body went loose with relief. ¡°She did. She made it...¡± he mumbled to himself as he sank back down to the floor. Why did he feel so exhausted all of a sudden? ¡°How long since...?¡±
¡°A third of a season, give or take,¡± came the reply. She threw a large cloak at his feet, a nondescript garment made from various mostly brown furs sewn together. ¡°Now, get back up and put this on so we can get out of here. I¡¯m sick of this place.¡±
With great effort, Tehlmar climbed back to his feet and donned the cloak before following the large woman as she left the room. Taking a peek back as he left, he glanced at the man as four Stragman soldiers grabbed Tehlmar¡¯s bearded savior and led him towards another door on the other side of the room. What was his story? Not that Tehlmar cared beyond idle curiosity. Butting into the lives of sad people was more of a Sofie thing.
The cloak was one made for a much larger person than he, and so it not only completely covered his body but the hood hid his face so well that he had to use one cloak-covered hand to keep it open enough for him to see where he was walking. That was a good thing. If there were spies around¡ªand there likely was at least one tracking the Chos¡¯s movements and activities¡ªhe couldn¡¯t have them recognizing him. Not after he¡¯d taken advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
As the pair walked, Tehlmar found himself looking around through that small hole at the city they strode through, the area bustling with activity in the midday sun. This place had to be Kukego, the spring city site found in the west of the massive rainforest. Compared to the summer city of Krose, located beside and around the jagutepo tunnels of the northern mountain range; the autumn city of Pholis, built in and on the giant titan trees closer to the core on the eastern side of the forest; and the winter city of Hoxoni, located within massive underground caverns, Kukego looked downright normal.
From what he could tell, Kukego was located in an area with far fewer trees and overall foliage than the rest of the forest. The city seemed far less compact than the other locations, with buildings spread out as far as the eye could see. Not that he could see very far even with the wide berth the crowd of people were giving him and the Chos. Though less dense than the other cities, Kukego still was the home to millions of Stragmans.
¡°The wealth we took from the Ubrans has reinvigorated Stragman society,¡± the Stragman leader told him as they went. ¡°It was enough to recover that which we lost during the... troubles last year. But just as much, our victory served to remind us of our pride as warriors. We Stragmans hold our head high once more.¡±
¡°That¡¯s nice,¡± he replied.
Eventually, Tehlmar found himself in the Chos¡¯s private quarters, plopping into a large chair lined with soft fur. He sank into it and released a long, tired sigh.
¡°Hungry? Thirsty?¡± the woman asked, as she walked past, a tray of food in one hand and a large glass bottle of wine in the other. Tehlmar noted the Ubran script on the bottle as she ripped the cork off with her teeth and took a heavy swig.
¡°I could go with a little alcohol,¡± he admitted.
¡°Box in the corner,¡± she said, guiding him with a pointed finger. ¡°What¡¯s with you, anyway?¡± his companion wondered as she reclined upon a long sofa, stuffing a large handful of meat into her mouth. ¡°Why are you so glum? Isn¡¯t this exactly what you wanted?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he told her as he sat back down, his own bottle of wine in his hand. Using the still-open cut in his right palm, he drew forth some blood and created a corkscrew, then leveraged it to open the bottle before returning the blood to his body. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s just the confusion of all of this? One moment, I was fighting for my life, the next, I¡¯m lying on the floor in a completely different place. I¡¯m feeling rather disoriented. That, and my hand is killing me.¡±
He rubbed and gently squeezed the bones in his hand and fingers, wincing as he put pressure on his left middle finger and felt the bone within shift in ways it wasn¡¯t supposed to.
¡°Fuck, it¡¯s broken.¡±
Akhustal let out a loud laugh. ¡°That¡¯s what you get for attacking my club, you moron. But yeah, I get it. That musclebound pain-in-my-ass actually returns people to a time before their death, so for you, thirty-some days vanished in a blink.¡±
It was Tehlmar¡¯s turn to take a series of large gulps. He let out a soft sigh of contentment as the alcohol filled his stomach. He had to admit, all other things aside, the Ubrans made some damned good wine.
¡°So what happened, after I... you know...,¡± he inquired. ¡°The last I can remember, I was trying to stop the Ubrans from killing Arlette at the Emperor¡¯s tent.¡±
¡°Ah, I was pretty busy fighting that blind bastard. Was having a grand time, too, until he just sort of burst into this black, rotting flesh. Can you believe it? It¡¯s been so long since I¡¯ve had a good fight, and that jerk goes and dies before I¡¯ve had my fill! Ugh, life isn¡¯t fair...
¡°But anyway, when I turned back, you¡¯d killed the other Ubrans but were nearly dead yourself. I tried to stop you but you insisted on going after that woman even though it surely meant you would die. So you cut off your own ear, gave it to me to hold onto, and left. A giant image of the Emperor¡¯s decapitated head appeared later above some of the stone rubble to the west of the camp, and the declaration of their Emperor¡¯s death was the blow that broke those Ubran bastards once and for all.
¡°We spent days chasing them down and looting everything we could. Might have taken some supplies from Gustil while we were at it, heh. Some of the Ubrans made it to Redwater Castle and back to Obura, but they paid for every step with blood. Ahhh, that was a good time. I just got back yesterday.¡±
¡°So the war is over?¡±
¡°Just about, for now at least. The Ubrans still hold Redwater Castle and nobody in Nocend is happy about that. But neither side is really in a position to try to do anything about it right now. With the Emperor dead, I¡¯m sure the Ubran Empire is in for some fun times. Same thing is happening in Gustil since their entire royal line all got wiped out and the country itself fell. Those cowardly Eterian Council members came back out of their hidey-holes now that the Ubrans are gone and they¡¯re trying to re-establish control over their gutted nation, which I¡¯m sure the remaining Eterian soldiers are delighted with given how those puffed-up merchants basically ran and hid while they threw their armies into the fire. The Drayhadans are back to their own insular ways, Kutrad¡¯s licking their wounds, and who even knows what the Otharians are up to.¡±
¡°And what happened to Arlette? Where is she now?¡±
¡°How would I know? You think I care about that woman? She¡¯s your obsession, not mine. I have real shit to deal with.¡±
¡°You know anything?¡± he pleaded. He took another series of large gulps.
¡°When I met her a few days after the battle, she was with the Otharians. That¡¯s all I know. Now stop asking.¡± She shook her head dismissively. ¡°Still can¡¯t believe you¡¯d try to throw your life away for that.¡±
Tehlmar felt anger begin to bubble up from deep within. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, do you have a problem with my decisions? From what you told me, you sure did a lot of crap yourself to try to save your husband.¡±
¡°Caprakan is strong and capable. This Arlette, on the other hand, she¡¯s just so... so middling. She¡¯s clever, I¡¯ll give you that, but she¡¯s weak. Somebody like that isn¡¯t a good match for the man who once was the terror of bandits across the continent. You deserve somebody more on your level.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t you just say that she killed the Emperor?¡± he shot back through clenched teeth.
¡°An unguarded old man. I¡¯m not going to applaud her for something any Stragman over thirteen could accomplish.¡±
¡°That¡¯s the problem with you Stragmans; all you care about is how hard you can thump stuff.¡±
¡°Better that than you Drayhadans. How do you pick your mates again? Whichever woman can best recite pretty words somebody else wrote centuries ago? Or is it the woman who dances most daintily?¡± she asked snarkily, holding her bent arms out in front of her and pantomiming an awkward dance routine.
The image of the oversized woman, dressed in a traditional marchalna dress, trying to pull off any of the dozens of traditional dances that Drayhadan noblewomen practice for decades struck him as so hilarious that it overpowered all the anger and resentment her last statements had built up. He threw his head back and guffawed with all his might until a burp interrupted his mirth. Perhaps he needed to slow down the drinking a little.
¡°That¡¯s more like it!¡± the Chos roared, showing a massive, toothy grin. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be down right now! Hahaaa! Our plan worked! We won! That bitch Pyria thinks you¡¯re dead! I heard she had your body burned to ashes and scattered to the winds! But she didn¡¯t get all of it, AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA! Oh, this is too good!¡±
Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but smile. She was right. He¡¯d won.
The ¡°plan¡±, as Akhustal called it, was not something he¡¯d actively sought to accomplish so much as a contingency in the case that he did not survive the battle. It wasn¡¯t like he¡¯d planned to die, after all. But just in case, they had worked out a plan where she¡¯d keep a small part of his body if things looked grim and then revive him later. The Drayhadans knew of the existence of the Stragmans¡¯ superweapon and vice versa by now, so Tehlmar had fully expected Pyria to take steps to ensure he could never come back. Burning him to ashes was just the sort of thing he¡¯d thought she would try.
The point of the plan was simple: if he was going to die, then shouldn¡¯t he at least get something out of it? He¡¯d hated his life in Drayhadal and the way his lineage chained him to obligations and responsibilities that he neither wanted nor felt he could handle. So what better way to escape such a life than to die?
Now, many days later, everybody in the world thought Tehlmar Esmae was dead. If he had any choice in the matter, that was how things would stay forever. He was free. Finally, finally free. There were no shackles on him any longer.
Well... almost.
Tehlmar¡¯s ¡°obsession¡±, as the Stragman leader called it, still had an unshakable hold on his soul. He could still remember every spiteful word and venomous look Arlette had thrown in his face that day; for him, it was still fresh, only a few hours ago. She¡¯d rejected him ruthlessly, and it had been perhaps the most painful and humbling experience of his life.
Arlette had said, in no uncertain terms, that she preferred a life without him in it. He understood that fully. But even knowing that, Tehlmar found himself pondering ways to talk to her and try to convince her to change her mind. He knew full well what he was: a fool that couldn¡¯t take ¡®no¡¯ for an answer. To him, there was no point in coming back to life if that life was one devoid of the one person he loved.
A knock came from the entrance behind him. With a grumble about never getting a break, the Chos rose to her feet and went to answer the knock. His ears caught the sound of her conferring with somebody quietly, but he couldn¡¯t make out any of the words. He didn¡¯t really care, anyway.
¡°I have to go take care of something,¡± she told him a moment later. ¡°Relax and enjoy yourself here, I¡¯ll be back soon enough. And don¡¯t leave, unless you want your sister to find out just how deeply she¡¯s been tricked.¡±
Tehlmar didn¡¯t need the instructions, but he appreciated the concern nonetheless. With a nod, he shifted his body around to get comfy and closed his eyes. Once she¡¯d shut the door behind her, Tehlmar took another gulp of wine, luxuriating in its sweetness, and began mentally planning his route across the continent to Otharia.
Some indeterminate time later, distinct taps coming from behind the wall to his right broke Tehlmar¡¯s pondering. This room, deep within the Chos¡¯s chambers, had two exits: the one behind him from which they¡¯d entered and she¡¯d left, and one to his right. Tehlmar didn¡¯t know what lay on the other side of that door, but judging by the layout he¡¯d seen, his bet was the living quarters of her and her family.
The taps grew louder until they sounded like they were coming from just on the other side of the door. As if to confirm this, Tehlmar heard the sound of somebody fumbling with the door. It jostled slightly and then swung open.
A figure entered, struggling slowly forward. Tehlmar did a double-take. He¡¯d met the man who ¡°stood¡± before him before, but the difference between his memory and the present shocked him.
The Caprakan Bloodflower he¡¯d known was a strong, fit man full of vigor, quick with a lively smile and even quicker with a quip. This person, however, exuded an aura of gloom. His body no longer appeared as a picture of health, his pale, sickly skin and thin, sagging body suggesting a life spent indoors with little activity. The cause for this seemed rather apparent from the way his legs dangled limply from his waist, his ankles bent at awkward angles against the floor, as if he couldn¡¯t even move them into a more comfortable position.
That was because he couldn¡¯t. Tehlmar had seen this sort of thing before, back during his Masked Battalion training. Somebody had cut the tendons in his legs. Now all he could do to move around was hold himself up unsteadily on two large crutches, using nothing but upper body strength to move under his own power.
While tendons and ligaments injuries would eventually heal, they took far longer to recover than any other sorts¡ªscholars had spent centuries arguing over why and had yet to come to any sort of consensus. That meant Caprakan had at least several more seasons of this sort of life ahead of him.
Palebane had told him what his sister had done to her husband over the course of many days, but this was the first time he¡¯d seen the result of Pyria¡¯s handiwork firsthand. It was far worse than he¡¯d imagined. Tehlmar scowled as he took in the multitude of thin scars all across the beastman¡¯s body, his mind able to envision from the crisscrossing lines just how his sister had tormented the Stragman for days on end.
He disliked torture, as it made things too intimate and personal. He was the sort that preferred to just kill his enemies and be done with it. Pyria was the opposite. She relished that intimacy, and he knew she¡¯d delighted in the opportunity to inflict pain on not just her hated enemy¡¯s husband but on the Chos herself.
Caprakan looked with some confusion at the empty couch, where he¡¯d evidently expected to find his wife. Then, he finally noticed Tehlmar. The effect was immediate. Eyes going wide and terrified, like he¡¯d seen a ghost, Caprakan screamed a guttural shriek of terror.
¡°NO! NOOO!¡± he screamed, his body trembling so heavily that his crutches lost their purchase and he spilled to the ground in an awkward heap. One of the crutches broke free from his grip and skidded several paces away.
Concerned, Tehlmar stood up to help, but that seemed to only make the matter worse.
¡°Stay back!¡± General Bloodflower hollered, desperately scrambling with his hands to push himself back as far as he could. ¡°Stay back, you...!¡± The man blinked, a semblance of sanity returning to his gaze as he quivered uncontrollably on the floor some paces away. ¡°You¡¯re not... no, you¡¯re not... her... you¡¯re not...¡±
¡°Calm down, I¡¯m not Pyria,¡± Tehlmar said simply, keeping his voice as low and different from his sister¡¯s as he could.
The Stragman let out a deep breath, then a second, evidently struggling to calm himself.
¡°My name is Tehlmar,¡± Tehlmar said as he strode forward and picked up the free crutch from the floor. ¡°Normally, I would take offense when being confused with my sister, but your case deserves an exception.¡±
Caprakan tensed as Tehlmar held out a hand to help him up, but he eventually took it. ¡°I know who you are,¡± he stiffly informed him as Tehlmar pulled him upward and slid the second crutch under the cripple¡¯s arm.
¡°Are you alright?¡± Tehlmar inquired as the Stragman general steadied himself atop the crutches.
¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± came the gruff response. ¡°Where is the Chos?¡±
¡°She got called away on something. I don¡¯t know when she will return.¡±
¡°Hmph,¡± the other man sniffed.
An awkward silence settled between them as Caprakan stared coldly ahead, his mind consumed by some unknown thought. Tehlmar slowly returned to his seat, torn between leaving the man alone and trying to say something.
It was a struggle he¡¯d faced before, though never so directly. On the one hand, not only did he despise his sister and much of what she stood for, he hadn¡¯t even lived with her or interacted with her since the day the Masked Battalion had arrived to take him away. He hadn¡¯t even considered himself a member of the Esmae clan, so what did their actions have to do with him?
But now he was an Esmae again, at least in part. Against his desires, he¡¯d found himself working with the very person he loathed in order to engineer the outcome he needed to enter the war and save Arlette. Maybe that made him complicit again. Maybe he should feel guilty about what she¡¯d done.
Eventually, he reasoned that Akhustal Palebane was his most powerful and important friend, and so he should at least try to make good with her husband. While he didn¡¯t believe himself connected to Caprakan¡¯s current state, Caprakan surely didn¡¯t see it that way, so he should at least try to express some remorse.
¡°Hey, uh,¡± he began, drawing a stern look from the Stragman, ¡°I didn¡¯t have anything to do with it, but she¡¯s still my sister and so I guess I should just say-¡±
¡°Don¡¯t,¡± Caprakan growled, his gaze turning from cold to fierce.
¡°But-¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want your pity, and I don¡¯t want your apology. Unless you can heal my legs, your words are meaningless.¡±
¡°I...¡± Tehlmar stopped himself before he reflexively apologized for apologizing. ¡°Wait, you have somebody who can heal you, right? Why not just have him return you to back before Pyria ever got a hold of you? Why are you still like this?¡±
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¡°Because that method comes with a cost. I would lose as much as I have gained.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t care,¡± the Stragman said, slowly turning himself back towards the door. ¡°Tell her that I am asking for her.¡±
¡°You could just wait here for her,¡± Tehlmar offered.
¡°No, I don¡¯t want to see your face for even a single moment more,¡± the man replied.
Tehlmar sighed. Why did Pyria always have to complicate matters in his life? He had enough enemies already; he didn¡¯t need her throwing more into the mix.
A passing thought floated through his mind, and he leaned forward, glancing towards the Stragman as the cripple struggled to close the door to the room while remaining upright.
¡°Hey, one more thing,¡± Tehlmar called.
The man paused, directing a harsh, silent glare Tehlmar¡¯s way.
¡°I just wanted to know... do you think she¡¯s happy with her life?¡± Tehlmar inquired.
¡°The Chos?¡± Caprakan returned, eying Tehlmar with suspicion. ¡°What are you trying to say?¡±
¡°I just... don¡¯t you think she¡¯s unhappy like this? Surely you see it too?¡±
¡°She is the Chos, the most revered position in all of Stragma. To be the Chos is the highest honor imaginable.¡±
¡°And she hates it,¡± Tehlmar pointed out. ¡°It¡¯s stifling her, making her miserable. I bet she would rather do anything else. She isn¡¯t really suited to the role, either.¡±
¡°The title of Chos is given to the strongest person in Stragma, and she is that without a doubt. That is how it has always been. Do not make light of our traditions. They are what keep us alive, whole, and one with Ruresni.¡±
Tehlmar chuckled. ¡°I¡¯m Drayhadan. I know all about tradition. Let me tell you: those sorts of traditions are just your society¡¯s way of avoiding making hard decisions.¡± He took a quick swig as the other man scowled. ¡°All I¡¯m saying is... think about it. That¡¯s all. Somehow, someway, she¡¯s become something of a friend to me, and after everything she¡¯s done for me, I wouldn¡¯t mind seeing her be a little happier, you know? And let me tell you, nothing makes you happy quite like the feeling of being free.¡±
Caprakan Bloodflower grunted noncommittally, went to leave, then paused once more. ¡°Don¡¯t tell her how I reacted when I saw you,¡± he requested. ¡°It¡¯s better if she doesn¡¯t know.¡±
By the time Tehlmar knew how to respond, the door had already shut and Caprakan was gone.
Obosall looked worse than he remembered. He¡¯d visited it long ago, back in the early years as a mercenary for hire, before he¡¯d made a name for himself. He remembered it as an odd place, a town on a border in more ways than just geographically. Founded just north of the border between the Republic of Eterium and the Holy Empire of Otharia to serve as Eterium¡¯s gatekeeper city, its role for centuries had been very different than that of the other gatekeepers, and as such it was a very different sort of place.
Otharia¡¯s isolationist preferences meant that Obosall hadn¡¯t been able to flourish from the constant flow of trade in the way the other gatekeeper cities had. Instead, the bulk of its income was related to the relatively lush and fertile farmlands to its north. But agriculture alone could only take Obosall so far. Lacking an abundant resource to use for any sort of major industry, Obosall¡¯s economy suffered and its population, therefore, paled in comparison to that of its contemporaries. In truth, to call it a city had been generous. In reality, it had straddled the border between large town and city, its designation changing depending on one¡¯s charitableness.
That wasn¡¯t all. Back when he¡¯d been here last, there¡¯d been a fairly sizable contingent of Eterian troops quartered in the area¡ªnot enough to call it a fortress, but almost. Those troops had largely been stationed there to raid Otharian territory along their northern border for whatever they could loot.
Tehlmar had participated in one of those raids once during his stay in Obosall, and the level of cruelty he witnessed towards the Otharians had shocked him. Tehlmar was no delicate flower unable to handle the ruthless nature of the world; his beloved sister Pyria had forced him to confront this reality quite early in his life. Even so, the Otharians had appeared so thin and frail, and they¡¯d possessed so little even before the Eterians took much of what remained, that by the end of the raid he¡¯d felt more like a bandit than a mercenary.
Later on, Tehlmar had learned that most raids, including the one he¡¯d joined, were not orders from Crirada, but rather simply something the local soldiers did when they got bored or needed money. The moment his mercenary contract had expired, Tehlmar had left Obosall and never returned.
Until now.
The Obosall of today barely resembled the town he remembered. There was a wall around it now, for starters. It wasn¡¯t like there had been anything to fear back then¡ªthe local wildlife had been tame and the Otharians even tamer. Things were apparently different now.
Tehlmar wasn¡¯t sure what exactly had brought about the creation of a defensive wall around Obosall. Though he had yet to see the new Otharian regime¡¯s metal beasts in action, he¡¯d heard plenty of stories on his journey from Stragma to the Otharian border. If even a third of the rumors he¡¯d heard were true, a simple wall wouldn¡¯t do much of anything to stop them. Not that this would prevent a wall from being built; people tended to fall back on the techniques they knew, even when those techniques wouldn¡¯t do much good.
But still, as he gazed upon the city¡¯s surroundings, he got the impression that the Otharians weren¡¯t the reason the wall was there. No, that dubious distinction went to the teeming horde of refugees trying to get as far away from the Ubrans as they could. Now that the war seemed over, the vast majority of these desperate people had left to return home, but Tehlmar didn¡¯t need them to be here to be able to see just how large a group it had once been. A barren wasteland stretched as far as he could see. Nothing grew here now, and everything that had once grown here seemed to have been chopped down and burned for warmth in those dire nights.
Tehlmar didn¡¯t blame the Obosall population for protecting what was theirs. He understood how hard it was to acquire anything in this world and just how easy it was to lose it. Still, Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but grin slightly as he imagined how Arlette would have scowled at the sight. He could tell that she¡¯d been through her own share of hardships, but deep inside that hard shell she¡¯d constructed around herself hid a softness that he lacked. It was one of the many things that endeared her to him. Another thing was how, though she¡¯d scowl at the sight, she wouldn¡¯t have harped on and on about it¡ªnot like a certain other person he¡¯d come to know.
Getting inside proved easy, now that the throngs of hungry masses were no longer camped right outside the gates. Finding somebody who could get him into Otharia proved tougher¡ªOtharia had never really been a place people wanted to go, and that was before a legion of death machines patrolled the border. But the toughest proved to be convincing the people he finally found to help him.
¡°We don¡¯t do that anymore,¡± the man told him, the woman seated in the room behind him punctuating the dismissal with a solemn shake of the head.
¡°Why not?!¡± a frustrated and exhausted Tehlmar demanded to know. ¡°I need to get across the border no matter what. I don¡¯t care how dangerous it is!¡±
¡°Well, we care!¡± the woman shot back, standing up to join her partner at the door. ¡°The trip was dangerous enough before the Otharians increased their patrol range south. If you left the tunnel now, you¡¯d be killed within moments. It would just be suicide.¡±
¡°I appreciate your concern, but I can handle danger just fine, thank you,¡± Tehlmar argued, trying to avoid becoming miffed and failing. ¡°I¡¯ve been surviving deadly situations since you two were still sucking on your mothers¡¯ teats.¡±
¡°No, you haven¡¯t. Not like this,¡± the woman shot back.
¡°You¡¯ve never dealt with an Otharian deathbeast, have you?¡± the man piled on. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t be talking this way if you had.¡±
¡°A ¡®deathbeast¡¯?¡± Tehlmar scoffed. ¡°Really?¡±
¡°You¡¯d call them that too if you saw what they can do with your own eyes. We¡¯ve seen it firsthand. Everybody who lives here has. They know your every move, they come after you in the dozens, they run as fast as the fastest feeler, and they can kill you from a hill away with ease. If you try to cross the border, you won¡¯t make it three hundred steps. You¡¯d stand a better chance against a leviathan than against those deathbeasts. At least those aren¡¯t actively trying to hunt you down. Give up. I don¡¯t know why you want to get into that horrible place, but it¡¯s not worth your life.¡±
Tehlmar didn¡¯t know whether to laugh or cry, so he settled for a frustrated sigh instead. ¡°You said you made a tunnel, right? And the exit used to be alright before the Otharian... ¡®deathbeasts¡¯ started patrolling around it?¡±
¡°Yes, the last person we brought through was perhaps a good half a season ago,¡± the woman replied. ¡°If he had come to us even five days later, it would have been too late.¡±
¡°Well, couldn¡¯t you just push the tunnel farther?¡±
The man and woman just laughed, as if he¡¯d asked something humorous, which he most definitely had not.
¡°Are you going to pay us?¡± the man asked.
¡°And can you wait a season?¡± the woman tacked on.
Unfortunately, Tehlmar had neither time nor funds since his resurrection. He desired to get to Arlette as soon as possible, and all his money was tied up with his old identity in the Esmae clan. He couldn¡¯t claim any of it without revealing himself, and he would rather die again than do such a thing. With a growl, he turned and stalked off.
That night, Tehlmar crept through the brush to the south of Obosall, his body low to the ground. Those idiots had no idea what they were talking about. Stealth was one of the Masked Battalion¡¯s greatest masteries. He¡¯d learned from the best, and he¡¯d learned well. He would show those idiots. It would be easy. Even fortune smiled upon him, granting him an overcast sky to blunt the moons¡¯ revealing light.
Dressed in dark clothes and carrying little more than a sword and a small pack of food, he moved silently, one slow step at a time. Unfortunately, being sneaky did not work when you had a large pack of supplies with you, so he¡¯d buried most of his stuff off to the west of the city. He wouldn¡¯t need that stuff anymore, anyway. Anything more that he needed once he got into Otharia he could acquire through other means, thus the sword.
The blade had been a gift of sorts from the Chos as he¡¯d left Stragma. She¡¯d framed it as ¡°a real weapon, not that blood bullshit you rely on too much¡±, and though her words had been coarse, her true meaning had made it through. His blood weaponry was just too much of a burden on his body to be his go-to solution for every problem. He had to admit that she was right. He relied on it too often.
His well-tuned ears picked up the sound of something pushing through the underbrush up ahead and he ducked behind a large clump of bushes. Up ahead, perhaps five hundred paces away atop an upcoming hill, trudged a large four-legged... thing. Watching it move, Tehlmar¡¯s mind immediately leaped to memories of insects, especially the large ones he¡¯d had the ¡°pleasure¡± of experiencing while in the Stragman rainforest. But there was something slightly off in the way it moved, as if it lacked that last bit of coordination that one saw from living beings. As the Battalion¡¯s spies had reported from Crirada, the Otharian ¡°deathbeasts¡± were hardly beasts.
Still, as he peeked through the bushes at the huge metal machine, he couldn¡¯t help but wonder at just how it worked. To make something that moved under its own power was a legendary accomplishment in and of itself. To go further, creating something that could navigate uneven terrain without tripping over itself went beyond anything he¡¯d thought possible.
But it hadn¡¯t seen him, making all those aforementioned thoughts hilariously moot. It didn¡¯t matter how impossible these things were if he could just waltz right past them.
The ¡°deathbeast¡± crested a hill to the right and disappeared from view a few moments later. After counting to fifty, he continued forward, a wry, smug smile on his face. That grin stayed put until he made it another two hundred paces or so.
Tehlmar wasn¡¯t prepared when a sound erupted from somewhere beyond the hill to his right, the ridge the deathbeast had crossed. It reminded him of the call of a bird native to the northern coast of Gustil, a short, whooping cry starting with a mid-range pitch and quickly cresting higher and higher before cutting off abruptly, only to repeat a fraction of a moment later.
The metallic, artificial quality of the sound unnerved him, but not as much as how the one whooping cry quickly became two, another call a little further away to the left answering the first coming from the right. Then another from straight ahead, the furthest away of the three. Then another, and another, and another.
It was a hunting call, he realized with a spike of fear. The deathbeast was calling in its pack. And judging by the change in the calls and the sound of something large and heavy crashing through the underbrush... they were heading for him.
How did they know of his presence? He was sure he hadn¡¯t been seen by the machine as it passed, or it surely wouldn¡¯t have kept going. So, how?
Tehlmar¡¯s instincts screamed at him to bolt, and he hadn¡¯t survived on the battlefield for decades by ignoring those instincts. Turning tail, he sprinted back towards the way he came, ducking behind the bush he¡¯d hid behind the last time just moments before the deathbeast he¡¯d seen before came bursting into view. His blood ran cold as he realized that it was somehow heading straight for him, its alien cry continuing to echo off the hills.
Tehlmar fled, his years of training overwhelmed by pure, animalistic fear. It knew where he was. Even though it shouldn¡¯t have been able to see him, it definitely knew his exact location.
A second series of crunches, clangs, and whoops from what was now his right announced the arrival of the second deathbeast. That Obosall couple hadn¡¯t been lying, they were indeed fast¡ªfar faster than he could hope to be... in a straight line, at least. Could those heavy-looking creations keep up when they had to change direction? He was about to find out.
Tehlmar ripped the palms of his hands open and produced thick, animated strands of blood from each hand. With a level of desperation he¡¯d felt only a few times before, he used the two crimson cables to push off the ground and change direction with dangerous speed, sending waves of protest coursing up his arms with each wild shove. First, he shoved himself to the left with the rope in his right hand, then, with the one coming from his left hand, he threw himself forward and up into the air.
Tehlmar grunted as he felt something slice through his right side and a second something slam into his upper left arm, followed by three deafening booms going off all around him. The blows sent him spinning wildly through the air before crashing awkwardly and unpleasantly into the earth.
The wind knocked out of him, Tehlmar tried to get up but found himself unable to. His eyes closed, he waited for the incoming deathblow, but it didn¡¯t come. Everything had become almost deafeningly quiet at some point, he belatedly realized.
Opening his eyes, Tehlmar found three hulking metal machines standing a hundred paces away, silent and still. They seemed to stare at him for a few more moments before, without a word between them, they each turned and went their separate ways.
A chuckle escaped his lips, a little wheeze that had fought its way through the pain in his side and his arm all the way to his throat and beyond. A second laugh followed, and then a third, until Tehlmar found himself cackling so hard he felt like he was about to suffocate himself.
The deathbeasts had stopped because he was back in Eterium. He hadn¡¯t taken the deathbeasts seriously, thinking he could slip deep into their territory without issue, but the only reason he¡¯d lived to tell the tale was that they¡¯d caught him so close to the border. Had he made it any deeper, he wouldn¡¯t have made it back across the border alive.
Speaking of which, Tehlmar traced the gash in his right side with his right hand. It wasn¡¯t deep, luckily, just a grazing blow from... something. He wasn¡¯t actually sure what it was that had hit him, given the lack of any sort of projectile lodged in his flesh. Still, he¡¯d suffered much worse wounds in that area before. His left arm, on the literal other hand, was a different story. A large part of his bicep, from a finger¡¯s width above the bone all the way to the outer edge, was completely missing, causing his left arm to fall limp to his side. The wound was semi-circular in shape, getting wider the farther the away it went from the bone, implying that even this terrible wound could have been much, much worse.
It was still a disaster as it was. A wound like this would take days to heal well enough for him to be able to use his arm again, and even longer before it was fully back to normal. He reminded himself that at least his blood control meant he wouldn¡¯t bleed out, which was more than most anybody else could say.
With a pained grunt, Tehlmar pushed himself up onto his shaky feet and checked his supplies, only to find that his sword was missing. He must have lost it somewhere during his flight back across the Eterium border. Well, there was no way under the stars that he was going back to look for it. As much as he hated to admit it, that Obosall couple had been right. How had they put it again? He¡¯d stand a greater chance against leviathans than against those metal monstrosities?
The chuckle returned. He couldn¡¯t believe he was thinking this, but he had little choice now. He needed to reach Otharia before some new threat against Arlette presented itself, and that meant he had to hope that the couple were even more right than they knew. It was time to build a raft.
Once he was satisfied with the final knots, Tehlmar stepped back to admire the totality of his work and nodded in satisfaction. Little more than a collection of felled young trees stripped of everything but their trunks and tied together with the strongest rope he could afford, the raft wasn¡¯t much of a looker, but he felt confident it would float and hold together nicely. He didn¡¯t need it to do much else.
Grunting with effort, Tehlmar pushed his handmade raft over the rocky shore and into the nearby sea. The task proved difficult, the trees repeatedly catching on the rocky shore, requiring him to heave with all his might just to move it a pace or two. It didn¡¯t help that his left arm was still only half-healed; the skin and some of the muscle had regenerated, but the arm lacked the strength it once had and wouldn¡¯t be back to normal for at least several more days.
Tehlmar didn¡¯t have it in him to wait those several more days, and so, ignoring the voice of self-preservation in the back of his mind pointing out the absurdity of his actions, he gave one final heave and watched as the raft slid into the water. Picking up his hand-carved oar, he hopped on before the waves carried the fruits of his labor out of his reach.
About as wide as Tehlmar was tall and one and a half times as long, the collection of logs was just that: some logs and nothing else. He had no real knowledge or experience with this sort of thing¡ªthe Casm, not his Esmae, were the clan that liked to mess with water¡ªand so he¡¯d elected to not build a mast or sails or anything of the sort. Besides, he didn¡¯t even know if any of the techniques he¡¯d seen, all designed for smaller freshwater lakes, would even be useful on this choppy sea. That was because nobody dared to try anything like what he was about to try.
He¡¯d chosen his departure point with care. Near the western edge of the Otharian border, the land dipped eastward, curving in for leagues before turning back west and even returning north slightly. From here on the Eterian shore, he could just barely see the fuzzy hint of Otharian land lit beneath the three moons many leagues off to the southeast. That spot, the closest Otharian land that stood a chance of being outside the deathbeast search area, was his destination.
Hour after hour passed as Tehlmar paddled, pushing his raft ponderously closer to his goal, but progress came agonizingly slow. The sea proved far choppier than even the largest lake he¡¯d seen, its waves battering him and pushing him about, currents constantly threatening to pull him farther away from land, and perhaps most annoying of all, his raft liked to spin as he pushed it through the water, forcing him to keep moving about the craft as he paddled.
And yet, for as hard as it was for him to make any headway, as the sun rose above the horizon, Tehlmar found himself about two-thirds of the way to his destination. Though he¡¯d readied himself for his inevitable demise, the only thing to attack him through these many hours of nocturnal labor had been the sea itself, leading him to wonder if the tales of leviathans were overblown? He didn¡¯t doubt their existence; he¡¯d seen proof himself several times in his life. But perhaps they were far rarer than people thought, or perhaps they simply didn¡¯t find morsels as small as he worth eating?
It wasn¡¯t more than a quarter of an hour later that his hopeful musings were torn to shreds along with his raft.
The first sign was an almost imperceptible swell beneath him, his platform rising just ever so slightly in a way that did not match the waves. In almost any other situation, he wouldn¡¯t have even noticed it, but after hours upon the sea, his nerves had heightened to the point where even the smallest discrepancy was enough to set alarms blaring in his head. For the fifteenth time that hour, he tensed up, his eyes darting back and forth looking around the surface of the ocean for threats and his legs falling into a half-crouch, ready to move at a moment¡¯s notice. Like the other fourteen times, he found nothing and was about to go back to paddling. That was when the first tentacle emerged from beneath the waves.
Aquamarine blue with light green speckles, circles protruding from its hide, and easily five paces thick except for the short end where it tapered off, the tentacle flashed out of the briny drink with astounding speed and wrapped around one half of the raft with startling speed. Only the fact that he¡¯d already been on edge allowed Tehlmar to leap out of the way, barely avoiding both the first rubbery appendage and the second that shot forth from the opposite side to wrap around the other half of the raft.
Keeping an iron grip on his oar with his left hand, Tehlmar extruded a large crimson axe with a blade over three paces long from his right as he landed atop the second tentacle. He needed to save his floating platform before this creature¡ªwhatever it was¡ªdestroyed it! Otherwise, even if he survived this encounter, he¡¯d die anyway, trading a death in a monster¡¯s belly with drowning leagues away from the nearest shoreline.
As he swung his weapon down towards the tentacle upon which he tenuously perched, the entire mess of wood, sea beast appendage, and elf suddenly was pulled beneath the waves. Tehlmar¡¯s axe struck true just before he went under, the blood blade biting into the tentacle about halfway¡ªenough to hurt but not enough to get it to let go. The tentacle writhed in agony, throwing his half-submerged body up and off to the side, twirling through the air. Tehlmar had just enough time to pull his blood back within his body and take a large breath before he splashed into the ocean.
That was when Tehlmar first glimpsed the true form of his aquatic foe. More than a hundred paces long, with a bulbous and baggy body terminating in a massive, sharp-looking beak large enough to cleave him in two with a single chomp and six tentacles set in a circle around it to pull in its prey, the creature seemed like something out of a nightmare. An eye, larger than Tehlmar was tall, sat just above the beak. Its furious gaze pointed in his direction.
Tehlmar was not the world¡¯s best swimmer by a long shot, but he knew enough to move around. At the sight of two more tentacles heading his way, he churned through the water, shooting upward as fast as his hands, feet, and buoyancy could take him. It wasn¡¯t enough. He had just enough time to take a second breath before a tentacle curled around his lower legs, squeezing them with crushing, vise-like strength, and pulled him swiftly down.
His heartbeat pounding in his ears, Tehlmar tried to reform his axe to cut his way free, but found that, to his horror, he could not create anything! His control over his blood ended when the blood merged with the seawater all around him! If only he still had his sword!
Tehlmar glanced at the oar, which he had somehow managed to maintain a death grip on this whole time. Grabbing onto it with his right hand as well, he turned it so the thinner end pointed down towards the monster¡¯s body and stared back at the creature with a mix of determination and resignation. If he were going down for good, he was going to make sure that this fiend regretted it until the end.
By this point, the leviathan had pulled the raft down to its mouth. Opening its bird-like beak wide, it took a massive bite out of the mangled bunch of tree trunks, crushing the wood into splinters with relative ease. Perhaps deciding it didn¡¯t like the taste, however, it spit the pieces out and continued to pull him closer.
Tehlmar saw an opportunity. As he neared the leviathan¡¯s open mouth, he struck out with his oar, using the large flat side to bat a large splinter from his destroyed raft jagged and pointy side first into the bottom of the beast¡¯s nearby eye. The water fought him, so he couldn¡¯t get any real power behind his strike, but he managed to get just enough oomph into it to drive the wood hard enough into his foe¡¯s sclera to puncture the surface.
The thing released a pained, furious shriek as it thrashed about, the blast of sound striking him with such force that it nearly knocked him senseless. So discombobulated was he, in fact, that it took him a moment to realize that he¡¯d slipped free of his adversary¡¯s grasp during its wild flailing. With a grin, he turned towards the surface for another breath of air, and a chance to make a real weapon this time. Perhaps a spear, to blind it for good?
Amid this chaos, Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but feel a little underwhelmed. Yes, he would almost assuredly die here. Yes, this beast was a terrifying predator from beneath the waves. But he¡¯d met worse. As one of the survivors of Zrukhora, he was one of the very lucky¡ªor perhaps unlucky¡ªfew to find themselves face to face with a god who¡¯d destroyed a city and live to tell the tale.
Tehlmar still felt shivers run down his spine at just the memory of it. A being of fire and fury and death, the god had appeared to Tehlmar not as a mere beast enlarged to massive size but as something far beyond the realm of mortal beasts and people, an engine of unparalleled destruction. One glimpse of it had been all he¡¯d needed to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that any and all resistance would be completely and utterly futile. Even his strongest strike as Jaquet, a very powerful blow that could cleave ten men in two, would not have even scratched its hide.
This leviathan, on the other hand, bled. It reacted to him and treated him as something worth acknowledging. It felt like there was a small facsimile of a fighting chance, however incredibly tiny that might be. Given the right powers and the right team and the right timing and location, he could imagine this beast¡¯s death. He could not say the same for the god. Not even the combined power of all the soldiers in Zrukhora had been able to so much as inconvenience it.
As probably the only person to be able to compare the two greatest legendary beings of Scyria, he couldn¡¯t help but conclude that the leviathan was little more than a pale shadow of the god. Not even the fact that he¡¯d survived the god¡¯s attack on Zrukhora and he was going to die here in the middle of the ocean to this lesser legend changed this determination.
He wasn¡¯t moving, he realized. Try as Tehlmar did to swim up for air and a weapon, he realized after a moment that the light on the surface above him was not getting any closer, even though he could feel his body rising through the water. Confused, he looked down and blanched. Perhaps as a way for getting back at him for his disparaging thoughts, the leviathan had opened its beak wide once more and was sucking him in. He could see its huge body behind it inflating like a waterskin as it took in more and more water, slowly dragging him down into the whirlpool forming around its mouth.
Already, Tehlmar¡¯s breath was running low. He could feel his heart pounding in his head, his lungs getting closer and closer to exploding with each useless stroke. He wasn¡¯t going to make it to the surface, he realized. He had seen the sky for the final time. With this realization came renewed determination. He turned about, intent on inflicting as much bodily harm upon the sea beast as possible in retribution for claiming his life and his last chance at love. That was probably why he saw it before the leviathan did.
Rising from the murky depths beneath the leviathan came a darkness, a void that Tehlmar¡¯s mind had trouble comprehending. Though his brain was low on air, that wasn¡¯t the reason he couldn¡¯t understand what he was seeing. It was simply that it was so big that he couldn¡¯t even see it all at once. It was a maw, a gaping maw ready to swallow the world whole.
As teeth larger than the impenetrable gates of Crirada clamped down upon the leviathan¡¯s bloated body from behind, carving it into two pieces as if it were made of little more than soggy bread, Tehlmar¡¯s error in judgment became clear. This being, this massive, impossible creature so large that he could not see more than a small fraction of its body at once, was a true leviathan. The beast that had been about to eat him was a mere pretender, nothing more than a snack for this ruler of the sea.
Tehlmar found himself pushed back and up by the combined pressure of the true leviathan¡¯s jaws closing and the water pushed aside by its ascent. Desperate for air now, he swam upwards, though he found himself unable to take his eyes off the impossibly massive teeth as they opened and shut a second time to take in the other half of the false leviathan just paces beneath him. He stared with horror and wonder at the closest tooth, a mammoth triangle bigger than a four-story building. There was no escaping should this impossible being decide to open its mouth one more time, but it did not. Perhaps it didn¡¯t think him large enough to eat. Perhaps it didn¡¯t even know he was there at all. Either way, Tehlmar had been saved by his own insignificance.
Slowly, with the ease and nonchalance of a being living an unchallenged existence, the leviathan turned to the side. Just that simple act generated enough of a current to send Tehlmar reeling off to the side for dozens of paces, his body spinning wildly out of control. As he spun, the current pulling him along, he managed to catch glimpses of its titanic form as it passed.
A mouth large enough to engulf a small town in a single bite; an eye larger than the largest of the three moons hanging in the sky, one that seemed to take in all that could be seen; a body that seemed to go on forever, unimaginable strength rippling below the scales; a long, jagged fin that rose up like a mountain range from the leviathan¡¯s back... Tehlmar found himself unable to do anything but be in awe of what he witnessed as the behemoth¡¯s passing pulled him helplessly through the sea. It wasn¡¯t until the leviathan turned downward to dive back into the inky waters below that he remembered he needed air, and he needed it desperately.
Sadly, the sparkling surface above him was quickly fading out of reach as he found himself caught in the leviathan¡¯s wake, the strong, turbulent current pulling him deeper and deeper. He flailed about ineffectively, his body helpless against the force tugging him down. His vision dimmed, his mind started to cloud as air began to spew from his lungs. But then, the magnificent being before him casually flicked its tail fin, a gargantuan fan so large that he could not see its top and bottom at the same time, with a power inconceivable to his fragile mind.
The sea erupted, a towering wave blasting forth from the surface and rushing southeastward with tremendous speed. Trapped within the turbulent waters, Tehlmar spun and spun uncontrollably, swept along for the ride even as the last of his air escaped his lungs. His last thought, before he blacked out, was that he needed to rethink his opinions on gods versus leviathans.
Tehlmar came to with a hacking cough, salty brine spilling from his nose and mouth. His body convulsed and heaved as it fought to clear his lungs of the offending liquid, only for a wave to crash over him as he gasped, filling his mouth with seawater once more. Sputtering weakly, he pushed himself against the sand, barely getting his head above the froth coming and going all around him.
Blinking against the bright light of the sun beating down against his back, Tehlmar slowly crawled forward, one elbow at a time, until he could collapse against hot, rocky, and blessedly dry sand. There he lay for hours, his only movement the slow rise and fall of his chest, as he just took in the joy of solid ground and readily available air. Finally, as the sun laid down to sleep for the night, he managed to rise to his feet.
Before him, he found an unfamiliar shore, one that he knew was not a part of the Eterian coastline. Somehow, he¡¯d made it to Otharia, and, judging by the fact that he was still alive, he was far enough south to avoid the deathbeasts as well. Rolling his stiff shoulders, Tehlmar left the beach and headed south.
He¡¯d revived from the dead, crossed the continent in a matter of days, survived an attack from a pack of deathbeasts, crossed the sea, fought against a ravenous tentacled monstrosity, witnessed a true leviathan, and somehow made it to Otharia¡¯s shore intact. Now the only tasks he had left were to track down the woman he loved and then convince her to accept that love after years of lying to her face.
A wry, tired smile crossed Tehlmar¡¯s lips. Sadly enough, it felt like the hardest part of his journey was yet to come.
Chapter 98
Tehlmar Esmae stepped into the tavern located on the east side of Wroetin and looked for an empty seat. The current inhabitants of this half-filled saloon looked up from their drinks for a moment, their eyes taking in his small, fully-cloaked form, before going back to their own problems. Glancing around, he found a small table off to the side near the right wall, not so close to the center that he¡¯d be surrounded on all sides by xenophobic natives, but not so tucked into a corner that nobody would notice him. Truly, it was the perfect place for the first step of his plan.
Sitting down upon the rough wooden chair with a weary plop and a groan, he leaned back and let his body rest for a moment. The journey from the northwest shore of Otharia to the nation¡¯s quaint southeastern capital¡ª¡®quaint¡¯ being perhaps the most charitable word he could use for this podunk town¡ªhad taken a lot out of him. It would have been far easier on his tired body if he had given himself more time to rest and not pushed his pace so heavily, but Tehlmar had found the worry in his heart far harder to deal with than the fatigue in his muscles and bones. After so many decades living the hard lives he¡¯d lived, a little tiredness almost felt normal.
A boy, perhaps fourteen, came up to him to take his order. Clearly the proprietor¡¯s son pressed into service by his parent, Tehlmar forgave the kid for his sullen expression.
¡°Are you here for a drink, a meal, or both, miss?¡± the kid asked.
¡°Both, and make it your best brew,¡± Tehlmar responded, putting down a golden coin on the table. He¡¯d filled his pockets by pocketing a few coins from those that looked like they could afford the loss as he¡¯d wandered the streets earlier, looking for the best place to start his plan. ¡°I¡¯ve had what goes for cheap swill around here. Even my standards aren¡¯t that low.¡±
The boy looked at him oddly, perhaps because Tehlmar¡¯s voice hadn¡¯t sounded as he expected, but he took the coin all the same and made his way back towards the bartender to place the order.
Tehlmar completely understood the boy¡¯s assumption. His features concealed in a large cloak that he¡¯d swiped on his second morning in Otharia, the boy had little to go on but his height. Still, Tehlmar couldn¡¯t help but bristle at it. He hated being shorter than humans. He always got the impression that humans were looking down at him in more ways than just physically. And he wasn¡¯t even short for an elf!
It was his many years as Jaquet, he knew, that brought about this feeling. All those years as the tallest, largest man in the room, his voice and laugh booming over the din... he¡¯d hated it at first. He¡¯d wanted to transform into somebody dashing and inspiring, not a large, boorish, ugly, overweight oaf. Yet despite his wishes, that was what he¡¯d been ordered to become.
But he¡¯d come to love it. Jaquet¡¯s physical abilities, especially with his powerful Feeling-enhanced strength and speed, made him a juggernaut on the battlefield. What¡¯s more, he¡¯d realized over time that being somewhat ugly wasn¡¯t always a bad thing. People seemed to treat you differently when you weren¡¯t a looker. And the drinking! Oh, could he hold down his drink!
But those times were gone now, and he was back to his life as the much shorter¡ªand dare he say more handsome¡ªTehlmar. This life where a large mug was enough to make his world start to wobble, where stupid humans assumed he was a petite woman. Well, they wouldn¡¯t assume for much longer.
The boy returned several moments later with a flagon of frothing liquid, as well as a small loaf of bread and what appeared to be some sort of pot pie.
¡°Thanks, kid,¡± Tehlmar said, pulling the hood back to reveal his elven features to the room. Picking up the flagon, he took a large gulp and set it back down on the table with a loud thump. It tasted better than he¡¯d expected from a place like this. ¡°Hmmm! Not bad!¡±
The room fell silent. Tehlmar glanced at the boy to find that he¡¯d gone stiff with fright, his wide eyes glued to Tehlmar¡¯s long, pointed ears. The other patrons were all staring at him as well, shock and apprehension apparent on their faces. Several of them started to whisper fervently to each other, and one even left the establishment altogether.
¡°What, you yokels have never seen an elf before?¡± he called out with a smile as he leaned back, broke off a piece of bread, and shoved it in his mouth.
One decent meal and two more flagons of drink later, Tehlmar stumbled out into the evening streets in a jolly mood, his elven self exposed for all the city to see. He reveled in the stares and the chatter that follow him as he made his way around, looking for an inn through his mildly blurred vision. Step one had gone just about as splendidly as he could have hoped.
Oddly enough, this country was the only place he could be himself. As a former member of the Masked Battalion, he knew that there were no Masks here in Otharia. Drayhadans who were able to become Masks were very few, and those that survived the years of grueling training fewer still. The Battalion had far too few agents to waste any on a nation as irrelevant as Otharia had been for centuries. Then, once this new regime had popped up, the border had closed off to the point where Masks wouldn¡¯t have been able to get in if they even wanted to¡ªa fact that he could testify to, like it or not. Tehlmar had even checked the agent assignments not long before he¡¯d died. No agents had been tasked with infiltrating Otharia. The only Drayhadan here was the Many residing within the city¡¯s central fortress. That meant he didn¡¯t have to hide. Which was good, because the point of this whole exercise was to be found.
One of the benefits of a long journey on your own is that you have lots of time to think about things, meaning Tehlmar had plenty of opportunities to ponder just why his meeting with Arlette had gone so poorly. There had been a lot of reasons, he¡¯d concluded in the end, and many of them, like the fact that he¡¯d left her in Kutrad, had been things that couldn¡¯t have been undone. But there had also been some mistakes he¡¯d made that day, ones he could avoid this time.
The biggest mistake was simply the way they¡¯d met: suddenly and in the heat of battle. Her emotions had surely already been going full blast. Though at the time he¡¯d thought his timely arrival would prove heroic and endearing in her eyes, it seemed that it had caused her severe emotional whiplash instead. He didn¡¯t need to make the same mistake twice, especially since he was supposed to be dead now.
At this point, Tehlmar knew enough to make some fairly educated guesses about Arlette¡¯s whereabouts. Her boarding the Otharian¡¯s flying craft spoke volumes. After several days of interacting with the locals, he¡¯d come to understand that not just anybody got to ride that massive flying craft. You had to have connections.
Tehlmar could guess what Arlette¡¯s connection was: that worthless woman Sofie. Somehow, that stupid, naive creature had managed to carve out a role here. It seemed she gave lessons¡ªmandatory lessons¡ªto the children of Otharia using the country¡¯s Many network. He couldn¡¯t think of a more efficient way to bring about the downfall of a nation than to have an entire generation have their thoughts poisoned by her absurd notions.
If somebody as hopeless as Sofie could find a role with this regime, then Arlette surely had as well. Something having to do with security, if he had to guess. It wasn¡¯t like they needed to hire mercenaries to guard gates here.
Sofie lived inside that domineering fortress that towered over the rest of the city from its location in the city center. Arlette likely did as well. That meant there was a very large wall guarded by deathbeasts between him and her, and as mentioned before, he¡¯d already decided against just showing up at her doorstep unannounced. So if he couldn¡¯t go in, he¡¯d get her to come out.
As the only elf in the country, word of his presence would spread around the city quickly. The regime would notice and investigate. All he had to do was show up at a bar, have a few drinks, be a public presence, and then repeat it the next day and the day after that. Soon enough, either Arlette or some other authority would appear before him. Or they¡¯d just kill him. He found the odds of that to be very slim, however. They¡¯d never find out how he got across the border if they did that.
Yes, this go around, he would give her time. He would let her hear about an elf frequenting the watering holes of Wroetin, a city without elves. He would put out the word that he was looking for a ¡°Letty¡± and let her connect the dots herself. Then, when she was ready, she¡¯d make her move. Or she wouldn¡¯t, which would tell him a lot.
Spying an inn that looked acceptable, Tehlmar swayed through the open door and approached the innkeeper with a smile and a shiny coin. Tomorrow would be interesting, perhaps even momentous! He could just feel it.
¡°You¡¯re supposed to be dead,¡± the voice said behind him, a sudden hush falling over the dirty tavern¡¯s denizens.
Tehlmar froze mid-gulp, twisting the stein just in time to prevent the rest of the alcohol¡ªa much worse beverage than the bar he¡¯d visited the day before¡ªfrom spilling down his front. Those words, or something to that effect, were the words he¡¯d been waiting for for the last two days. But the voice that spoke them wasn¡¯t Arlette.
The room shifting subtly as he moved, a buzzed¡ªokay, more than buzzed¡ªTehlmar spun around on his stool to face the unknown voice. There, behind him, stood a man with brownish-red hair, green eyes, and most importantly, long pointed ears.
The sight caused Tehlmar to choke on the last of his drink sliding down his throat, bringing about an involuntary coughing fit. The man let him cough, and Tehlmar used that time to glance at the dual blades in the man¡¯s hands. He quickly recognized them as Chinkari knives, one of the more advanced weapon options for Masks who¡¯d undone their transformation¡ªnot as advanced as his blood weaponry, of course, but only a chosen few were privileged enough to learn those techniques.
A Mask? What was a Mask doing here?! And why one who¡¯d lost their disguise? Masks that couldn¡¯t maintain their false identity any longer were always recalled to Drayhadal! Wrong! This was all wrong!
¡°How¡¯re you here?! You shouldn¡¯t be here!¡± Tehlmar demanded in shock, his words slurring a tad.
¡°You¡¯re not the one who should be asking that, dead man.¡±
¡°Dead man? Me? You must be mistaking me for somebody else, friend. We¡¯ve never met before.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s deflections seemed to have little effect on the stern elf, who just smirked with some sort of amusement that Tehlmar didn¡¯t understand.
¡°You may have never seen me before, at least not in this form, but I¡¯ve seen you. We even spoke, don¡¯t you remember? When you asked my unit to track down that human woman in Crirada? How could I forget the face of a prince, especially one who asked me for a favor?¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s blood ran cold, his foggy memory able to cobble together enough for him to grasp what the other elf was getting at. This... this was disastrous!
¡°Look, friend, I don¡¯t want any trouble, alright? I¡¯m just a man who wants to live free, you know?¡± he said, hoping that he could still talk his way out of this. He normally wasn¡¯t one to beg, but... ¡°Surely you understand what it¡¯s like. I paid my time, I served for decades all over the continent. So maybe you could just forget you ever saw me, right? I¡¯m dead, after all. You and I can just leave it at that and go our separate ways. It would be better for both of us.¡±
¡°I already reported your presence to Command,¡± the other man informed him, his tone uncompromising. ¡°I¡¯m to take you back to the homeland, and they will deal with you from there.¡±
The news made him die inside. After all that work to be free of that blasted institution, why did there have to be a random non-incognito Mask in Wroetin of all places? And somehow he was here through some other reason than a mission? What a bunch of crock! Tehlmar had thought he was finally safe, only for his cover to be destroyed in only a few days. Well... he wasn¡¯t going to give up now.
¡°I¡¯d rather die again than go back to that place,¡± Tehlmar told him, meaning every word.
¡°So be it,¡± came the response. ¡°I, at least, still care about our duty.¡±
Tehlmar lurched wildly to his right as the new elf launched himself forward, his blades flashing towards Tehlmar¡¯s unprotected abdomen. Despite his attempts at avoidance, the tip of one still managed to leave a long, thin, shallow cut across his belly as he tumbled to the floor, his stool also upending beside him. Almost without looking, he lashed out with a leg, his foot managing to strike his opponent¡¯s strangely hard gut as he fell. The blow knocked the other elf backward, sending him stumbling back into a table full of Otharians.
Tehlmar staggered to his feet as chaos broke out within the seedy establishment. The Otharian promptly took a swing at Tehlmar¡¯s opponent as others seated around the table rose to their feet to join in. Others around the bar also stood to enter the fray. As Tehlmar barely ducked beneath an oncoming tankard, he took in the full scale of the mess he¡¯d stepped into and gulped.
The patrons of this tavern were, like most Otharians in his experience so far, not very happy with his presence. He had been able to feel the mix of fear and hostility since the moment he¡¯d walked in. It had built over time as he¡¯d lingered here, fueled by his presence and the further consumption of alcohol, but had never crystallized into action because to attack him would lead to consequences from the new regime¡ªor so he assumed; it was the only reason he could come up with for why nobody had tried anything yet. As much as these people feared him, they feared their new ruler more.
But now, they had an excuse, an incitement even, to crack his skull. The initial strikes had sundered the dam, except instead of people going at each other like in normal bar fights, everybody focused on him and the other Elseling in the room. Even in his inebriated state, he could feel the drunken menace surrounding him.
Oh, and this other elf was still going to try to kill him as well.
Blood leaked out from Tehlmar¡¯s torso wound into two thin strings which punched into his palms, opening up cuts in where he preferred them. Crimson life spewed forth, forming a small liquid sphere around each of his hands. Were he drunker, they would have formed into blades, but thankfully he was still present enough to realize that stabbing a bunch of natives wouldn¡¯t go over well with the authorities or with Arlette.
But the elf... well that was another story. Tehlmar was just defending himself, after all.
Two Otharians stood between him and the Mask. Creating two long tendrils from his palms, he wrapped them around the legs of his toppled stool and whipped it around to club one of them over the head. A moment later, the other elf toppled the second Otharian with a stab to the thigh.
Seeing that his enemy¡¯s guard was open, Tehlmar struck, pulling the blood tendrils in and turning them into twin spikes that thrust towards his target¡¯s heart. Alas, just before he felt the soft resistance that came with piercing flesh, a heavy shoulder slammed into his side, sending him tumbling wildly beneath and into a nearby table. The combination of the surprise, the force of the blow, and the impact against the hard wood was enough to cause the blood spikes to lose cohesion, sending the blood splattering against the floor.
In one moment, Tehlmar lost a good amount of his usable blood. The lost blood could not be recovered now that it had lost its connection with him, as it was no longer part of his body to control. The amount of time he could manage to fight had just shrunk greatly. Realizing this, he decided that perhaps the best option would be to get out of this place. He could kill the other elf later when he was recovered and not drunk.
Crawling beneath the table and emerging from the other side into a frenzy of bodies and limbs. Using his small stature, he stumbled and bumped his way towards the exit, throwing fists when he needed to and scrambling between legs when all else failed. The remaining usable blood showed its utility as he wrapped ropes around legs and caused several Otharians to trip, causing a chain reaction that sent enough people to the floor that he finally saw daylight¡ªliterally¡ªand rushed for the door.
The sound of hollow footfalls behind him made him look behind him just in time to see the other elf launch himself knives-first off the nearest table right at Tehlmar. Tehlmar twisted his upper body around and managed to get a blood shield between him and the blades just before they hit. The flying elf rammed into him and the pair tumbled through the doorway, a twisted mass of grunting limbs, thrashing limbs.
Tehlmar and his opponent rolled into the street as they wrestled for control while a multitude of onlookers watched. Eventually, they came to rest with Tehlmar flat on his back and the Mask elf atop him, his two blades pointed just finger-widths away from Tehlmar¡¯s chest. Tehlmar, for his part, had managed to get two small shields out to stop the knives just in time, but it was taking all of the blood he had left. Any more would start to get dangerous.
But he had to. The other elf was physically strong, stronger than he was, and Tehlmar couldn¡¯t hold the blades off for too long. A small blade of blood formed from the cut on his belly and shot upward, striking his adversary¡¯s chest... only to hit something hard and bounce off. Armor beneath his clothes. So that¡¯s why Tehlmar¡¯s initial kick had hurt his foot.
The elf smiled victoriously.
A collection of familiar whooping cries answered before Tehlmar could, drawing a smile across his face. The sounds of metal feet pounding on stone could be heard nearby from three, maybe four directions, and before the other elf could pull away, a small army of deathbeasts converged on the two of them.
¡°Still want to go through with this?¡± Tehlmar inquired as the man atop him looked around at the multitude of machines surrounding them.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
An Otharian in a uniform stepped into view, a grim look on his face.
The elf spat on Tehlmar¡¯s face and climbed off him. ¡°Traitor,¡± he growled.
Tehlmar let out a sigh of relief as the last of his blood flowed back into his body. But too much had been lost. The world was already fading.
Tehlmar didn¡¯t even bother to get up. He just looked at the scowling Otharian peacekeeper, told him ¡°please don¡¯t put me in the same cell as him¡±, and passed out.
Tehlmar stared absentmindedly at the blank grey walls on the sides of the small cell, his mind trying to cope with just how quickly his plans had fallen apart. Just the night before, Tehlmar had been filled with anticipation for his future. Now, everything he¡¯d managed to set up for himself was gone, shattered by absurd, once-in-a-millennia circumstances. Now the Masked Battalion knew he¡¯d deserted. That meant Pyria likely knew as well, and if not, she would soon enough. His freedom was essentially over. The Battalion would hunt him across the continent and beyond the moment the Otharians kicked him out of the country, assuming the powers that be here didn¡¯t just kill him outright.
Even killing the other elf wouldn¡¯t accomplish much at this point other than making him feel better. Not that he could do so right now anyway. Even if he were at full strength, which he very much was not, the other elf was locked up in a different cell far away from him. They¡¯d put the other guy in a cell closest to the dungeon door and him in the cell farthest from the door, creating enough distance between them that Tehlmar couldn¡¯t even clearly hear the other elf, let alone talk to him or kill him with blood shenanigans. He took a small amount of solace in the fact that the Otharians had been accommodating enough at least to listen to his request and separate the two of them, but that was the only glimmer of light in the vast darkness that was his current humor.
The cell around him matched his mood. The only light came from the hall outside the cell, the glow dim and dreary. The cell itself was equally dismal. Other than the bowl protruding from the side wall to his right, there wasn¡¯t much to write home about. It reminded him of other dungeons, actually, only with metal instead of stone.
Given Lord Ferros¡¯s mechanical wizardry, he¡¯d expected something a little more impressive. Instead, the configuration was largely the same as elsewhere. He sat chained to the back wall by shackles around his arms and legs, looking out through the thick bars to the hallway beyond. Other than the toilet, the only other major difference was the metal rope that held him to the back wall instead of the normal chains. Thicker than two fingers, the rope possessed the immense strength and durability of tucrenyx but somehow had a flexibility that he¡¯d never seen in metal before. He didn¡¯t really understand how they bent as they did without breaking, but it didn¡¯t matter in the end; they still served the same purpose as the chains elsewhere, just like the tucrenyx shackles at the end of the ropes, which clamped tightly to his limbs and kept him from using his ability.
Another similarity was that there was no real passage of time. With no windows, and now even torches that needed to be regularly replaced, he had no realistic idea of how long he¡¯d been down here. All he knew was that it had been much longer than he¡¯d hoped. He¡¯d told the woman who¡¯d interrogated him when he¡¯d been first locked away that he knew Arlette, and she¡¯d recognized the name. But nobody had come to see him.
Tehlmar shook his head. She¡¯d come, for sure. He couldn¡¯t let himself sink into depression now!
Starting to hum a jaunty tune, one that may or may not have been horribly off-key depending on who you asked, he diverted his thinking towards sunnier topics. He imagined himself shoving the entire Casm clan one at a time into a massive pile of garoph dung and felt a hint of a smile creep onto his lips. Those haughty bastards deserved a good beating, especially that Prince Fatoro. He imagined meeting that sniveling fop alone in a dark alley somewhere. Oh, the things he¡¯d do to that arrogant prick. First, he¡¯d start with the knees so he couldn¡¯t escape, then he¡¯d start breaking fingers...
A new sound came to his ears as he envisioned his glorious, cathartic revenge, the sound of an Otharian metal door opening. The doors here didn¡¯t swing open, they slid into a wall, ceiling, or floor. The speed and silence with which they did this slightly unnerved Tehlmar if he had to be honest. Especially the huge, thick doors like the ones at the entrance to this dungeon. Nothing that heavy had the right to move so quietly.
Soon after, he picked up the sound of footsteps, slowly coming closer. Was this it? Continuing to hum his pleasant tune to himself, he put on a face of steady confidence and prepped his preplanned opening line. He wanted to appear confident and unperturbed; the last thing he needed was to seem desperate. She wouldn¡¯t want desperate Tehlmar, even though that was how he really felt inside.
A figure came to a stop outside his cell. Though the lighting wasn¡¯t great, he would recognize Arlette Demirt¡¯s figure anywhere. Arlette stared in at him and he grinned back. Her eyes went wide and she froze, staring at him for a few moments. Tehlmar just kept grinning. She rubbed her eyes in disbelief and looked again, and Tehlmar¡¯s grin widened.
¡°Hey there, Letty!¡± he chuckled. ¡°We really need to stop meeting like this. It¡¯s bad for my health!¡±
Arlette blinked. ¡°But... you...¡± She shook her head, her eyes lighting up with anger. ¡°Who are you?!¡±
Now it was Tehlmar¡¯s turn to blink. ¡°What are you talking about? It¡¯s me, Tehlmar!¡±
¡°You¡¯re not Tehlmar,¡± she replied, turning to press something out in the hall that he couldn¡¯t see.
Suddenly, the ropes connected to the shackles on his arms and legs went taut, pulling Tehlmar forcefully back against the wall until he hung pressed against the cold metal, spread-eagle off the ground. ¡°H-hey! What are-¡±
¡°I watched that bastard die. I visited his corpse,¡± Arlette told him as the cell door slid silently open and she stepped through it. ¡°I don¡¯t know who you really are or why you¡¯re pretending to be a dead man, but you¡¯re going to tell me everything.¡±
¡°Wait a moment, Letty, just calm down! It¡¯s really me, I swear!¡±
She snorted in a mix of fury and amusement as she slowly drew closer. ¡°Yeah? Prove it.¡±
¡°Prove it?!¡± This wasn¡¯t going how he¡¯d hoped at all! ¡°Letty, come on now! What, do you think I¡¯m a Mask taking on the form of a dead man? A dead man who was hailed as a hero and given a public funeral? What¡¯s the logic in it? The point is not to stick out!¡±
¡°Perhaps,¡± she replied, ¡°but then why would one of you pose as a mercenary named ¡®Jaquet¡¯ in a middling mercenary band and spend years doing guard duty and bandit hunting? What¡¯s the logic in that, huh? What valuable intelligence could that ever uncover? No, I¡¯m not going to try to understand why you creeps do what you do.¡± A knife appeared in her left hand. ¡°Better start talking, I¡¯m almost out of patience.¡±
¡°Okay, okay, uhhh...¡± His mind scrambled to come up with something that would convince her, but he found himself coming up empty in the heat of the moment. ¡°We first met at the Gold Tail Inn in Nevin, when I bumped into you on the stairs and you said-¡±
¡°I¡¯ve told that story dozens of times. Anybody who knows me would know it and could have told you.¡± The knife crept upward, slowly moving towards his throat.
¡°Ah, right... umm... What about that one time outside Agosa when we got in a fight with an entire tavern because that one guy grabbed your ass and I punched his lights out? You didn¡¯t tell anybody about that, did you?¡±
¡°We had to spend part of the band¡¯s funds to bail us out, of course I did. I complained to everybody in the band. And with the Eterians¡¯ love of record-keeping, there¡¯s surely records of that time left in Agosa that a well-connected spy organization could find.¡± The knife went to his throat. ¡°Maybe you are him after all. You have the slow-wittedness down pat. Last chance.¡±
Why did his mind have to go blank now of all times? She wouldn¡¯t actually kill him, could she? What about interrogating and all that?
¡°Uh... uh... You talk in your sleep?¡±
¡°...I talk in my sleep? Is that the best you could come up with? Well, do go on! What do I say?¡±
¡°I dunno, lots of stuff. Ummm, calling out to your parents, stuff about me, stuff about food, somebody named ¡®Peko¡¯, all sorts of-¡±
Arlette stiffened at his words. ¡°How do you know that name?!¡± she hissed.
Tehlmar paused, confused. ¡°What, Peko? Don¡¯t ask me, you¡¯re the one that used to mumble it. ¡®Peko, where are you?¡¯ ¡®Where did you go, Peko?¡¯ Stuff like that. You¡¯ve always been so prickly about your past so I just never asked.¡±
Arlette stepped back, seemingly rattled from some realization. ¡°You¡¯re... it¡¯s really you! It¡¯s...¡± Suddenly, her face contorted with fury, only this time the anger in her eyes struck him as far deeper and more personal than that of a few moments before. ¡°You manipulative son of a bitch!¡±
Tehlmar let out a pained wheeze as Arlette drove a fist into his abdomen once, twice, a third time. The cut across his belly, now mostly healed, broke open and blood began to slowly drip down onto his pants.
¡°Faking your own fucking death?! What, did you figure that if you made it look like you¡¯d died that I¡¯d forgive you or something?! What in the world made you think that playing with my feelings like that would be a good idea, huh?! Stars above, to think I actually felt a hint of grief over your sorry ass!¡±
¡°Letty, please stop, it¡¯s not like that!¡± he implored her, but she kept punching anyway.
¡°How could you do that to me?! Do you have any idea what it felt like to read that letter after I thought you were dead?! I should fucking lock you up in here for the rest of eternity for that alone!¡±
¡°Letter? Wait, hold on, what letter?¡± Tehlmar inquired, as he desperately gasped for breath. He hadn¡¯t asked anybody to give her any letters. In fact, he¡¯d only written a single letter since heading out for war and... Tehlmar paled as he put two and two together. ¡°...he gave you the letter. Ohhhhhhh, that fucker. I¡¯m going to rip his limbs off.¡±
¡°What are you going on about?¡± she snarled, her fist finally pausing their assault on his poor diaphragm.
¡°I... you weren¡¯t... supposed to get that...¡± Tehlmar admitted, looking off to the side to avoid meeting her scalding gaze.
¡°I ¡®wasn¡¯t supposed to get that¡¯?! You mean the fucking MARRIAGE PROPOSAL?!¡±
¡°Look, I... I thought I wanted to tell you my true thoughts, you know? But it became too much and I wasn¡¯t happy with how it came out so I told my ¡®assistant¡¯ to burn it all. That was probably his way of getting revenge against me for treating him like crap.¡±
¡°Then why even fake your death at all? Why put me through all of this? Did you even consider how I would feel?!¡±
¡°Letty, I¡¯m trying to tell you! I didn¡¯t fake anything! I actually died!¡±
Arlette frowned at him, her brow furrowing. ¡°But then... how are you...¡±
Tehlmar shrugged, or the closest he could given his bindings. ¡°What can I say? I got better.¡±
¡°Tehlmar, don¡¯t fucking play games with me right now,¡± Arlette growled.
¡°I can¡¯t tell you, sorry,¡± he informed her. He¡¯d promised the Chos he wouldn¡¯t reveal the secret to his revival. The knowledge of their superweapon was limited to Stragma and a small number of Drayhadans, and Akhustal didn¡¯t want it spreading far and wide.
¡°Why, is this another of your stupid Masked Battalion secrets?¡±
If he could have crossed his arms, he would have. ¡°I can neither confirm nor deny anything about this.¡±
¡°You!¡± Her hands balled back into fists.
¡°What? Why do you even care, anyway?¡± he asked.
Arlette faltered, her angry scowl shifting into something more mournful. ¡°...Pari¡¯s dead.¡±
¡°...oh, I see.¡± Gazing upon Arlette¡¯s sorrowful visage, that was all he could manage. Pari Clansnarl, much like Sofie, had just shown up one day and become a member of their little group. However, unlike the Earth girl, the little tyke had actually carried her weight and more, providing them with odd but usable weapons and helping them escape danger. He¡¯d grown to like the tiny child.
¡°Look, Tehlmar, Sofie¡¯s crumbling into pieces and everybody¡¯s miserable and I... I miss her. Please, if there¡¯s any way to bring her back...¡± Arlette pleaded.
Tehlmar¡¯s thoughts warred within his head. On the one hand, he¡¯d sworn an oath to the woman who¡¯d somehow turned into his greatest friend and ally. Sure, their bond was based largely on their mutual dislike of his sister and the Chos¡¯s admiration for the man he¡¯d once been, but he couldn¡¯t deny that she¡¯d done him multiple incredible, life-changing favors. He owed her an immense debt.
On the other hand, the woman he loved was grieving, and it made him feel like he was going to fall to pieces. He¡¯d seen her once like this before, after Zrukhora. The sudden loss of their mercenary comrades had gutted her, and as he¡¯d looked on, unable to help her with anything more than empty words, he¡¯d never felt so powerless. But this time, he could do something. All he had to do was break his oath and throw what little of his honor he had remaining out the window.
It wasn¡¯t worth it. He wanted to make her happy, but he hadn¡¯t come all the way here and thrown away his whole life just to make her feel better one time. He wanted his own happiness too, one linked to hers for a lifetime, not just for a moment. But what if he could get what he wanted by giving her what she wanted? Yes, he¡¯d break an oath for that.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll tell you,¡± he said, drawing a start of surprise from his interrogator. ¡°But I want a date first. One date and then I¡¯ll tell you everything.¡±
Her face swiftly darkened. ¡°A date?¡±
¡°Yeah, one of those things Sofie used to talk about. A romantic night out on the town, just you and me. Dinner, dancing, all of it. I want one shot. Just one. But it has to be real. You have to give me an honest chance.¡±
Even in the dim light, he could see Arlette¡¯s face flush with fury. ¡°You... you unbelievably selfish, boorish, asinine piece of shit! How could you even think of holding her life hostage like that?!¡±
¡°Oh come on, Letty, give me a break! It¡¯s not like I¡¯m saying you have to accept me if you want the kid back. All I¡¯m asking is for an evening of your time, just you and me with no interruptions. Are you saying that Pari is not worth even a single evening? You still owe me a drink, I might add.¡±
¡°It¡¯s... it¡¯s not about that, you boneheaded puddle of puke!¡± she fumed.
¡°Well, that¡¯s my offer,¡± he stubbornly replied. ¡°A very generous one, I might add.¡±
¡°You... you...!¡± Arlette¡¯s fists were trembling, and Tehlmar braced himself for a second, more brutal beating. But instead, she turned her back on him and stormed out without saying another word, the sliding door locking into place with quiet finality.
¡°Uh, Letty? Could you let me down please?¡± he called after her. A moment later, the metal ropes went slack, dumping him rudely on his rear. He let out a sigh as he leaned back against the cold metal and listened to her footsteps fade away until they were gone.
¡°Well, that could have gone better,¡± he muttered to himself. He settled down to wait. Man, he was hungry.
Tehlmar perked up as his ears caught the sound of the dungeon door opening again. He hadn¡¯t expected her to return so soon¡ªjust a few hours, according to his internal clock. Putting on a bright, confident smile, he called out to her as she approached.
¡°Back so soon? I¡¯m glad you-¡±
The figure that arrived at the door wasn¡¯t Arlette.
¡°-oh, it¡¯s you. What do you want?¡±
For the second time, the metal ropes slid into the wall, smacking his backside against the wall. The cell door slid away and Sofie stepped inside, her body swaying slightly with each step. Tehlmar recognized the movements from decades of experience: she was drunk, though not heavily. A bottle hung from her left hand, gripped loosely by the neck. Tehlmar found it strange; Sofie had never been much of a drinker during their time together. And a bottle of beer? Glass-bottled alcohol was expensive outside of Otharia, a luxury reserved for the richest of the rich. He could only imagine its cost here. How had she of all people gotten her hands on some?
¡°Tell me how to save her,¡± she said, her voice low and threatening.
¡°I¡¯ve made my conditions quite clear,¡± he stated.
¡°I¡¯m not asking. Tell me how to save Pari. Now.¡±
¡°Or what?¡± he sneered.
Sofie stepped closer, close enough for Tehlmar to get his first good look at her. He was shocked at what he saw. Was this really the same girl he¡¯d spent more than a season interacting with? Her body had thinned considerably from the last he¡¯d seen her, and the last he¡¯d seen her had been in a dungeon after days of brutal travel and malnourishment. Massive black bags beneath her eyes stood out against her pallid, sunken face. Arlette hadn¡¯t been kidding when she¡¯d said that Sofie was breaking down over Pari¡¯s death. It was enough to almost make him feel sorry for her. Almost.
¡°Remember that time you lifted me off the ground by my neck and strangled me, told me you¡¯d kill me if I got in your way, then threw me into a cart?¡±
Tehlmar thought back to the many days they¡¯d spent together but he came up blank. ¡°Can¡¯t say I do,¡± he replied casually.
¡°Well, I remember. I remember very clearly,¡± Sofie told him. With a quick swing, she slammed the glass bottle against the nearby wall, shattering it and spilling shards all over the floor. Her hand still grasping the neck, she lifted the remaining third to her eye level and inspected the sharp-looking jagged edge that remained. ¡°I remember all the terrible ways you treated me back then. Looking at you now, all those memories give me the urge to use this bottle to slice off your manhood. Not that much would be lost, I¡¯m sure.¡± She stepped closer, leaning in and holding the improvised knife out for him to see. ¡°Or you can tell me how to bring my sister back. Your choice.¡±
Looking into Sofie¡¯s desperate¡ªno, unhinged¡ªgaze while tied to a wall and helpless, most people might have cracked under the pressure. Not Tehlmar. He knew the woman standing before him, and he didn¡¯t believe a word of it.
¡°Go ahead,¡± he told her.
Sofie paused. ¡°I¡¯m serious! I¡¯ll do it!¡± she insisted.
¡°No, you won¡¯t. You¡¯re the softest person I¡¯ve ever known. You don¡¯t have it in you to do what needs to be done, and you never have.¡±
¡°Shut up! I¡¯m not some naive girl anymore! I¡¯ve survived just as much as the rest of you!¡± She put the edge of the broken bottle by his crotch.
¡°Yeah?¡± Tehlmar thrust out his groin as best he could from his hanging position. ¡°Make sure you stab downward and a bit inward from right above the base of the penis, or it¡¯s going to take you a while and get quite messy.¡±
Sofie blanched, her breath beginning to quicken.
¡°Blood all over the place, you know? Just dripping and squirting everywhere, all over you, me, this wonderful cell... Have to slice as much of it off in the first stab as you can.¡±
The hand holding the broken bottle trembled as it hovered above his privates. Sofie¡¯s breathing continued to increase, her breaths getting shallower with every word he spoke.
¡°But I do hope you have something to cauterize it all after you¡¯re done, or I¡¯ll be taking my secret to the grave for the second time. Shame you don¡¯t seem to have any torches around. Those work great, just hold it up and smell the burning flesh get all nice and crispy. Mmmm, smells great!¡±
With a loud ¡°HURK!¡±, Sofie¡¯s whole body spasmed and she doubled over and fell to her hands and knees, whereupon she proceeded to empty the contents of her stomach onto the floor below him.
¡°Hey, come on! Now I¡¯m gonna fall into your puke!¡± he protested as her heaves slowly transitioned into dry sobs. ¡°Fucking lightweight, can¡¯t even hold down your drink...¡±
¡°Why?! Why can¡¯t you just have a heart?¡± she asked through a cascade of tears.
¡°Because I came here with a purpose, and I¡¯m not going to just give away the only thing I have to work with just to be nice,¡± he responded. ¡°And because I don¡¯t like you. You¡¯re a coward, Sofie. You¡¯re soft and weak and stupidly naive. You don¡¯t belong in this world, and you don¡¯t belong anywhere near Arlette where all you can do is put her in danger. I knew it from the moment I saw you, and nothing you¡¯ve done has shown otherwise.¡±
The girl hung her head but didn¡¯t say anything. A few silent moments later, she swayed to her feet, turned away from him, and headed for the exit, never once meeting his eyes.
¡°You don¡¯t deserve her,¡± she told him just before she left the cell.
Tehlmar let out a somber laugh. ¡°I don¡¯t. But love doesn¡¯t care about who deserves what, does it?¡±
The only reply that came was the soft click of the door sliding closed, followed by the distant sound of the Earthling leaving the dungeon.
Several moments later, Tehlmar realized that nobody was left to let him down. The room stank of alcohol and vomit.
¡°Well this just keeps getting better and better,¡± he mumbled to himself.
Chapter 99
Arlette reclined in her seat in her office, her feet propped up on her desk, and took another swig of beer from an earthen jug. The liquid stung as it went down her throat and it tasted like garoph puke, but she didn¡¯t care. She was well past the point of caring about anything at all, which meant the booze was doing its job and doing it well; so well, in fact, that she didn¡¯t even react when the nearby door slid open without warning and a large armored and masked man marched inside. Well, two of them marched in through two doors, but who was counting?
¡°Yo, what¡¯s this I hear about an elf getting past the border?¡± Blake huffed. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you tell me about this?¡±
Arlette hiccuped, her gaze going back to the jug in her hand as she wished for Lord Ferros to go away. She didn¡¯t want to deal with him right now. She didn¡¯t want to deal with anything; that was why she was already on her third jug. All she wanted was to recline in her office and enjoy the mental quiet under an alcohol-induced haze, a mental fog so thick that she couldn¡¯t put two thoughts together if she tried.
Her employer sniffed and took an instinctive step back, waving his metal-clad hand in front of his mask. ¡°Oh, wonderful,¡± he said. Arlette could hear the frown in his voice, though she couldn¡¯t imagine it; he¡¯d never once let her see his face in all the time she¡¯d worked for him. ¡°Just how drunk are you, anyway?¡±
¡°Not enough,¡± she replied, taking another gulp. ¡°Come back tomorrow.¡±
¡°No. I want to know now. Tell me what you know,¡± he demanded.
¡°It¡¯s Tehlmar,¡± she slurred.
¡°Who the fuck is Tehlmar?¡±
¡°He¡¯s a guy I knew,¡± she helpfully informed him. ¡°He died though.¡±
¡°He what? But...¡± He took a slow, deep breath. ¡°So he¡¯s a ¡®guy you knew¡¯ who ¡®died¡¯ but is now somehow locked up in my dungeon, alive.¡±
Arlette nodded slowly, the room drifting with every movement.
¡°So he didn¡¯t die after all.¡±
¡°I watched it happen. It was real.¡±
¡°So what are you saying, that he somehow came back to life?¡± he asked with obvious disbelief.
Arlette took another large swig and let the silence do the answering.
¡°Okay... okay okay okay...¡± Blake muttered to himself, putting his metal head in his hands. ¡°We have an elf that not only got through my border security somehow, but also is apparently back from the dead. So, as my head of security, WHY ARE YOU HERE GETTING WASTED INSTEAD OF DOWN THERE GETTING ANSWERS!?!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t want to see him right now. Don¡¯t want to see him ever.¡± She put a hand on her stomach and a hand over her mouth as she felt something begin to traverse her food tube in the wrong direction. Puke? Nope. A large belch erupted from her mouth and nose, with a hint of bile found within. Yum.
Blake clenched his fists and looked up towards the ceiling in aggravation. ¡°Ahhh, I hate drunk people so much!¡± he said to the lights above. Arlette didn¡¯t comment, hoping that this meant that he would go away. Unfortunately, he did not.
¡°Do you know anything?! What do I even pay you for?!¡±
¡°You do it, Mister Smarts,¡± she slurred at him. ¡°Mister I¡¯m The Smartest Person Here. Go be smart at Tehlmar and leave me alone. I¡¯m done. Tired.¡±
And she was. So very, very tired. Of everything.
¡°You know what?¡± Blake huffed a few moments later. ¡°Fine. Looks like, as always, I have to do everything myself. Be ready for a long talk about your professionalism tomorrow.¡±
Turning about sharply, he marched back out through the newly reopened door, only to come to a sudden halt just paces outside the room, his head turned towards something down the hallway that she couldn¡¯t see. ¡°Oh great, now what are you crying about-¡±
¡°BLAKEHEWON¡¯TTELLUSHOWTOBRINGPARIBACKANDITRIEDBUTICOULDN¡¯TDOITAND-¡±
Thankfully, the door shut and returned the room to blissful silence. Arlette¡¯s hand fumbled with the control panel embedded in her desk until one of her three right hands hit one of the three buttons to lock the door, after which she leaned back even more and proceeded to stare at the ceiling and not think about anything at all. It felt nice, not thinking. She burped again.
Arlette wasn¡¯t sure how much time passed after that. Time seemed to slip away when she got drunk; that was one of the reasons she did it. At some point, she thought she heard the door open again and some sort of background noises, but she paid them no mind. At least, she did until there came a massive WHAM from the desk beside her, causing her to jerk wildly and fall off her chair.
¡°Got your attention now?¡±
Arlette clutched at the side of the desk as she tried to get up, the world spinning around her. The best she could manage was to prop herself up on her knees, leaning against her desk. She looked up and saw Blakes. A lot of Blakes. Far too many Blakes.
¡°Alright, listen up,¡± the metal man said, his words forceful and stern. ¡°You¡¯re going on that date. Tomorrow. If you have a problem with that, go complain to the HR Department. Oh wait, those don¡¯t exist here, so tough shit! As your employer, as your boss, and as the ruler of this fucking country, I order you to do whatever you have to do until you get some fucking answers. I want to know both how he got in and how he¡¯s alive at all. Period, no if¡¯s, and¡¯s, or but¡¯s. Capiche?¡±
¡°Ugh...¡± she moaned.
¡°Great. Glad we could have this talk.¡± He turned towards the door and made his way out, but stopped just before he passed through the doorway and looked back. ¡°Oh, and I¡¯m letting the other elf go. He¡¯s basically their Ambassador and I don¡¯t want to start shit with the Drayhadans right now. I stripped him of his protections for a while, so he won¡¯t be causing any more trouble.¡±
With that said, he stormed out, leaving Arlette to sink back down to the ground and become a human puddle.
It was okay, Arlette told herself; she was so hammered that there was no chance she¡¯d remember any of this the next morning, and everybody knew that you didn¡¯t have to carry out orders you can¡¯t remember. It was a rule or something, right? Or was it just something she¡¯d made up right now? Whatever. She¡¯d remember in the morning.
The tightness in her stomach was back. This time, it wasn¡¯t just a burp.
¡°You know, my nanny told me as a child that your face will get stuck like that if you scowl for so long,¡± the accursed elf across from Arlette told her before taking a bite of bread.
Arlette refused to take the bait and continued scowling, letting her meal sit untouched on the ornate table before her. The only action she took was to bring a hand up to her temple and give it a short massage. Remnants of that morning¡¯s hangover still lingered, especially the headache, though the pain in her head was likely less alcohol-induced and more Tehlmar-induced.
¡°How nice of this place to give us a private room,¡± the elf continued, taking another large, slovenly bite. ¡°You think it¡¯s because they didn¡¯t want the rest of the patrons to know I was here? Wouldn¡¯t do for such a fancy place to be serving Elselings like us; a restaurant¡¯s reputation is a cherished thing, after all. Or do you think the Lord sent word ahead of time?¡±
Arlette crossed her arms and glared at him in the candlelight. The two of them were at a restaurant known as ¡°The Gilded Vine¡±, named after an old Otharian legend about a king before the time of Othar who demanded that everything, from his furniture to the vines growing up his castle walls, be coated with gold leaf to properly show off his power and wealth. The place had been in business for over a century and was known as one of the most popular dining locations for the Wroetin elite.
¡°Yeah,¡± he conceded, ¡°you¡¯re right. It¡¯s probably both.¡±
Picking up an ornate, delicate fork in one hand and a shining silver knife in the other, Tehlmar sliced off a piece of his meal, a large cut of meat from something called a ¡®quellon¡¯, a large waterfowl that lived only in southern Otharia. The rare birds were apparently a delicacy among the richest strata in Wroetin, though she¡¯d never had one nor even heard of one before.
Putting the piece in his mouth, the elf¡¯s eyebrows rose. ¡°Hey, this is pretty great!¡± he observed. ¡°Reminds me of the refalca back home, but with a saltier flavor.¡±
He chewed a bit more before swallowing, whereupon he leaned forward and stared her in the eyes from across the table.
¡°So, are you going to say anything or are you committed to ensuring this goes down in history as the most awkward outing of all time?¡±
Before Arlette could ignore the question, the door to her right leading to the main dining area opened, filling the room momentarily with the soft murmur of public conversation. Then the attendant closed the door and the chamber returned to its previous icy state.
¡°Is everything satisfactory?¡± the man asked. He seemed to be trying to keep the anxiety out of his voice and was doing a better than average job at it, but Arlette could still hear the fear hidden within. She¡¯d had ample experience with such things since she started living here. She also noticed the way he subtly eyed their outfits, barely hiding his disapproval. Neither of them were wearing the fancy dress that other diners here would be required to wear¡ªher because she didn¡¯t want to honor this waste of time, and him because he literally only had one outfit to his name. ¡°Can this servant provide you with anything else?¡±
¡°Alcohol,¡± they both said at the same time.
¡°Lots of it,¡± she added, sending Tehlmar a venomous glare.
The attendant glanced at the sword in its scabbard hanging from her hip with a wary glance but wisely chose not to comment on it. ¡°Of course, of course. We have several wines, as well as-¡±
¡°Don¡¯t care,¡± she interrupted. ¡°Just pick something.¡±
The man nodded and beat a hasty retreat, once more flooding the room with sound before returning it to silence. Arlette had to give the architects and builders of this establishment credit: these private rooms were incredibly soundproofed, providing great privacy. The windowless walls were thick and solid stone. The door, though wood, was equally thick, with a sort of velvet around the edges to muffle any sound that might come through the cracks.
This sort of place seemed perfect for conspiratorial gatherings. Was this where the Otharian elite used to meet to broker decisions? Did she need to start keeping an eye on the people who entered these rooms?
¡°I was starting to think you¡¯d lost your voice,¡± he chuckled.
¡°It would be better if you lost yours,¡± she replied.
¡°Aww, come now, Letty. I¡¯m just trying to make conversation.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want to talk to you. Just tell me what I need to know so this can be over and done with.¡±
¡°No!¡± he objected. ¡°You have to give me a fair shake, or it doesn¡¯t count. That¡¯s the rule.¡±
¡°I¡¯m giving you the fairest shake you¡¯re going to get out of me, ¡®Prince¡¯,¡± she shot back.
¡°That¡¯s ¡®ex-Prince¡¯,¡± he corrected her with a cheeky grin.
¡°Shut up.¡±
The crushing silence returned as Arlette turned her gaze down to her meal sitting in front of her. It smelled delicious, but being forced to sit across from Tehlmar ruined her appetite. Seeing his face brought forth so many roiling emotions that she didn¡¯t know how to handle. This was the man who¡¯d abandoned her, who¡¯d nearly crushed her ability to trust others after she¡¯d finally recovered from the trauma Sebastian had inflicted on her as a child. For a long time, Tehlmar and Jaquet had been two separate people in her mind¡ªan attempt to hold on to the joyous times she¡¯d spent with the loud, boisterous mercenary. Then, when she¡¯d read his postmortem confession letter after the final battle at Crirada, she¡¯d found herself unable to maintain that partition any longer. They were the same person, and she¡¯d come to accept that.
But, as she¡¯d learned the night before, there was a massive difference between accepting this in the abstract, where ¡°Tehlmar¡± and ¡°Jaquet¡± were merely names and memories, and accepting it right in front of you. Just staring at his face as he chewed on his meal made anger flare up inside her, but at the same time, she kept seeing enough glimmers of Jaquet in the elf¡¯s mannerisms to trigger feelings of nostalgia and even a bit of joy. These warring emotions twisted her insides up and she hated every moment of it. She didn¡¯t know what to feel. She didn¡¯t know what to do. All she knew was that she wanted to be anywhere but here.
A whisper of a sound graced her ears, and she looked over to the door. Had that been a scream?
Tehlmar glanced at her, then the door, and then back at her. ¡°What? Did you hear something?¡±
Arlette¡¯s scowl deepened. Shouldn¡¯t her alcohol have arrived a while ago? What was taking so long? ¡°Just going to check...¡± she said as she rose to her feet and made her way to the door. Gripping the long, ornate handle, she turned it and pulled.
Cries of terror filled the room, accompanied by the roar of fire.
In a flash, Tehlmar was out of his seat and standing beside her, looking around at the chaos. ¡°What in blazes?¡± he muttered.
Smoke filled the air as people pressed towards the back of the main dining room, everybody¡¯s attention on the large fire making its way across the large chamber with alarming speed. Unlike a lower-class restaurant, such as Kozak¡¯s Tavern, The Gilded Vine was built almost entirely out of solid, fireproof stone crafted by a stone Observer, but unlike places of lower repute, it also contained a plethora of highly flammable furnishings. Flames crept along the high, plush wall-to-wall carpet, catching on curtains and licking soft, cushioned chairs.
For a moment, Arlette wondered how such a blaze had come to be, but then, through the flames and the smoke, she spotted the front double doors of the establishment wide open, a pile of blazing logs high and wide enough to cover the entire opening blocking the exit. Her hands curled into fists as she realized this was another terrorist attack. However, unlike the last time, there were no actual terrorists around to fight.
¡°We need to get out of here,¡± Tehlmar stated. Arlette agreed, but so did everybody else at just around the same time. The panic of the diners reached a crescendo and people began shoving and trampling each other to get out of the dining room through the kitchen entrance.
As they passed through the kitchen and out into the cool spring night air, Arlette¡¯s instincts sent alarms blaring in her head. There were far too many people here in this alley; the exiting patrons should have spread out, leaving the alley for the more open streets nearby, but instead, everybody was still crowded close together, almost as if their way out was... blocked. Her eyes caught the silhouette of a person perched lit by the three moons on the rooftop of the building across the alley, the telltale outline of a bow in their hands. Then she spotted a second.
¡°AMBUSH!¡± she cried out, just as shrieks of terror began to ring out from both ends of the alleyway.
Arlette¡¯s hand shot into her pocket, her fingers wrapping around the panic button used to summon her bodyguard skitters. Since the last ¡°incident¡± where the skitters tasked with protecting her well-being had quite decidedly not done so despite her pushing the button, Blake had installed a new extra feature to the buttons to make her feel better. Now, when she pressed the button a small crystal would shine green, meaning the signal had been received and the robots were activated.
Her bodyguard skitters were stationed out by the front of the restaurant, set to not respond unless she pressed the button. All she had to do was press it and they would come swooping in to save the day.
She pressed the button. The crystal lit up red.
She pressed it again. Red.
She was going to kill that metal bastard.
It looked like she and Tehlmar were on their own, though not forever. The smoke and fire would draw more robots soon enough. But until then, they¡¯d have to survive without her employer¡¯s assistance. Well, she reasoned to herself, she needed to vent her frustrations anyway.
The archers began to fire into the crowd, so Arlette concentrated and conjured an illusion of thick fog to block their sight. She couldn¡¯t stop the archer from firing, but she could at least make them do it blind.
From what she could see, the alleyway was as barren as could be; no crates, barrels, or other random assorted items normally found in trash heaps deep in alleys were conspicuously missing. Try as she might, Arlette couldn¡¯t spot any easy way up to the roof where archers stood.
¡°We need to get up there,¡± she told Tehlmar, who nodded in agreement. ¡°Shame you can¡¯t just throw me like we used to do.¡±
Tehlmar quickly sized up the two-story distance. ¡°I think I can do it. Probably.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°We have to do it fast before they choose us as targets. Squat down.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Arlette, I need you to trust me.¡±
Fighting down her unsurety, Arlette bent down into a low squat, keeping her eyes on the enemies above as they blindly shot down into the alley. Her ears picked up the sound of somebody, surely Tehlmar, moving on the ground behind her. Then, two hands placed themselves squarely on her buttocks and squeezed, sending a gout of murderous rage flaring up inside her.
¡°What are you doing?!¡± she squealed furiously.
Through her anger, she thought she heard him say that something would hurt. Before she could fully process what that might mean, twin painful impacts slammed into her butt cheeks and threw her wildly into the air.
Arlette let out a loud, involuntary yelp as she flew skyward. It hurt like a motherfucker, like getting kicked by an angry garoph square in the ass, but it did the job. She shot towards the roof opposite of the restaurant, her arms and legs flailing as she tried desperately to keep from rotating upside down. It worked, sort of.
Arlette crashed flat into the sloped roof, her left leg hanging dangerously off the edge. She scrambled desperately to gain purchase before gravity pulled her over the side and barely managed to get herself fully lying face-down atop the slanted surface.
The archers recovered from their surprise quickly, drawing their bows in her direction. She pushed off with her left arm and leg, rolling up the roof just as an arrow zipped through her last position. Pushing her upper body up so she was balanced on her knees, she leaned wildly to the side to avoid a second arrow. The second shot went low, slamming into the roof in front of her and splintering into pieces. Sharp wooden shrapnel sprayed in her direction, but thanks to her dodge, she only took a few pieces in her right arm.
The two archers stood by the roof¡¯s edge, about ten and thirty paces in front of her respectively. The closer one, a woman, was drawing a second time, and Arlette knew she wouldn¡¯t live long if she let them both keep taking shots at her. Pulling out a knife, she whipped it towards the female archer as best she could from her compromised position. Caught off-guard, the woman tried to dodge but still took the blade to her thigh just above her right knee.
Arlette launched herself onto her feet and rushed the archer as the woman stumbled. Arlette hadn¡¯t been aiming for the leg, but like any good warrior, she was ready to take advantage of the opening regardless. The alarmed archer redrew and fired off a shot at Arlette, but thanks to the archer¡¯s unsteady stance caused by the slope and their injured leg, the shot went wide. Arlette was upon her a beat later. The archer tried to pull out something¡ªa knife maybe¡ªbut Arlette was far too swift. The mercenary¡¯s right arm swung and with malice and fury, driving another knife deep into the archer¡¯s neck.
The woman¡¯s body jerked and went limp just as an arrow drove itself into and through her body from behind, emerging from her chest with a sickening ¡®ptch¡¯! Sticking out of the archer¡¯s chest by nearly the width of a hand, the arrow would have punctured Arlette as well had she been just a little closer.
Releasing the dying body, Arlette drew her sword and charged the other archer with a snarl, her path arcing up and back down the roof¡¯s slope like a crescent moon so she would have the height advantage and more room to maneuver. Her already poor disposition soured even further now as she bore down upon the second archer. That shot had been no accident. He¡¯d pierced his own comrade to try to kill her, a scummy move that only pissed her off more.
The man in her sights backed away with a frightful grimace on his face as two copies of Arlette appeared, presenting him with three indistinguishable, side-by-side targets closing in fast. He drew and fired on the middle one, but the arrow passed right through. Then it was too late for anything else. He put his bow up to try to block an overhead slash from the right-most Arlette, only to take a sword to the knee from the real Arlette on the left instead. His legs buckled and he toppled backward and over the edge to his demise.
Skidding to a stop just before she followed the archer off the roof, Arlette paused for a moment to survey the scene below. The flames of the burning Gilded Vine lit the scene. It was a largely windless night, and so the fire sent massive plumes of smoke straight up, covering the area with a haze. What she saw in the light of those flames was a massacre in progress. Five terrorists blocked each side of the alley, penning in the rich patrons of The Gilded Vine like farm animals ready for slaughter. And slaughter they did. Their victims were not exactly fighters, rather the type to hire others to do such ¡°dirty business¡± for them when the need arose.
The terrorists on the left were quickly killing their way towards the center, leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. The group on the right, however, were advancing much slower, thanks to one infuriating elf. Facing down all five on his own, Tehlmar was putting up a great fight. In fact, in the short moment she stopped to watch, the ¡°ex-prince¡± managed to take one down by catching the terrorists with a small sickle on the end of a chain. Swinging in from the left, it sank into the side of the woman¡¯s gut. Tehlmar gave the chain a hearty tug, violently ripping the blade out of the terrorist¡¯s torso and taking much of her intestines with it.
That settled things for Arlette. Better for her to help Tehlmar, making it a two-on-four, instead of taking on the opposite five on her own. Once the right goons were taken care of, the two of them could turn back against the rest. Looking around, she considered her options. The first archer¡¯s bow and arrows were still up atop the roof with her, but she didn¡¯t trust herself to use it safely. She had never been much of a talent with a bow, much to her adoptive archer father¡¯s dismay. She also didn¡¯t have many throwing knives left and she wanted to save them for more crucial moments. That left getting down to help in a more up-close manner. But how?
Sprinting along the edge of the roof towards Tehlmar¡¯s end, she looked for some safe way back to the ground but found nothing. But a fall from this height was dangerous. Even if she were to land with a roll, she was likely to severely injure herself or worse if she landed on the hard, unforgiving stone surface. Then a bad idea came to her. There were several ¡°soft¡± targets right where she wanted to be.
Arlette didn¡¯t have the luxury of waiting, so, sadly, a bad idea was still much better than no idea at the present moment. Moving further to her right to line it all up properly, she sheathed her blade, took a running start, and jumped.
The terrorist never saw her coming. Arlette collided feet first with the top back of his left shoulder, the force of her fall sending him crashing face-first to the ground. Arlette followed, her flailing body spinning the opposite way so that she landed flat on top of him with her butt atop his head and her head atop his butt.
With a groan, she immediately rolled off the man¡¯s twitching form. Even through the high of battle, she¡¯d felt that. When that high wore off, she was sure to be in for some major aches and pains. But that was for later. Right now, there were more important things to worry about.
¡°Ha!¡± Tehlmar chortled as Arlette drew her sword and took up a position beside him. ¡°Good one, Letty! Really got the drop on him!¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t dignify that with more than a grunt as the three remaining terrorists pressed forward. Without a single word spoken between the two, Tehlmar engaged with the two on the left, leaving Arlette to take the one on the right.
Her opponent struck immediately and quickly, lashing out at her with a stab from his spear. Arlette barely spun around the powerful thrust, the spearhead barely missing her throat as it shot by her. She turned her spin into a rush forward, quickly closing the gap between her and her opponent.
The spearman had bet too much on his attack, his body badly off balance. Arlette capitalized on this, grabbing the shaft with her left hand to hold it still while she thrust her blade deep between the ribs on his right side with her other arm.
¡°Bull!¡± she called out as she continued with her momentum, throwing her shoulder into the side of her dying enemy¡¯s rigid form and sending him toppling as she yanked her weapon free.
Tehlmar reacted immediately, his right blood weapon forming into a whip that wrapped around his right adversary¡¯s leg as he smacked his left adversary hard in the face with a small shield. The left terrorist stumbled back, woozy from the blow to the head, while the right one was held in place as Arlette¡¯s dying enemy bowled into her, knocking them both to the ground. Before any of the three remaining terrorists could recover, Tehlmar¡¯s two blood streams merged into the form of an axe with a massive head. That head came crashing down on the two prone terrorists with deadly force, the long blade bisecting them both. Arlette threw one of her three remaining knives at the last enemy, who didn¡¯t see it coming until it was already embedded in his eye. He slumped over, dead as all the rest.
Amateurs. These were amateurs. Just thugs with little training and nothing more, not anybody who could hold for even a moment against seasoned fighters. But then, one didn¡¯t need much training to butcher non-combatants. Had they not expected the two of them to be here?
As if an invisible dam had broken, the remaining diners began to pour past them, running for their lives. Arlette and Tehlmar turned around to find the other five terrorists, having witnessed the end of the first group, were already turning tail and making a break for the other end of the alley.
¡°Oh no, you don¡¯t!¡± Tehlmar growled, fighting against the flow of the diners to chase after their fleeing foes.
Arlette hesitated for a moment and then joined him in pushing against the rush. She needed to take those terrorists alive, so she could finally wring some information out of somebody who knew something... assuming they weren¡¯t more copycats. Her little pause made all the difference, as it was why she saw the figure plummeting towards Tehlmar¡¯s back and he didn¡¯t.
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¡°Look out!¡± she shouted, reaching out as far as she could and just barely shoving Tehlmar forward.
The figure landed forcefully beside Arlette, two oversized knives lashing out and down towards Tehlmar¡¯s back as the sudden ambusher¡¯s fall came to an end. The shove made all the difference. Instead of diving deep into his back and lungs, the blades barely scraped him and drew two thin cuts below his shoulder blades.
Tehlmar reacted with reflexive speed, using the force of Arlette¡¯s shove to drop and roll into a crouch with a large, flat crimson shield between him and his attacker. Said attacker wasted no time, launching forward with a flurry of swift strikes that put Tehlmar immediately on the defensive.
Arlette paused momentarily to stare at the sudden new arrival. Once she got over the shock of his sudden intrusion, she recognized him as Jerithim, the other elf who¡¯d been locked up beneath the fortress the night before. What was he doing here?
The new elf out-sized Tehlmar by more than a hand¡¯s width and looked beefier overall to boot. Arlette noticed what looked to be some sort of light armor underneath his tunic, as well as a strange-looking metal canister hanging from his waist.
¡°Stay back, Letty!¡± Tehlmar shouted as Jerithim pushed him backward with blow after blow. ¡°This is Mask business!¡±
Arlette ignored him, rushing forward for an open stab at Jerithim¡¯s unguarded back. Meanwhile, Tehlmar let out a growl and pushed forward, even more crimson blood pouring from his hands to envelop the larger elf¡¯s blades.
¡°Got you, you son of a whore!¡± Tehlmar snarled as his blood hardened around the attacker¡¯s weapons.
Instead of pulling desperately to free his knives, as Arlette had expected him to do, Jerithim growled and lifted, using the new solid connection with Tehlmar to drag him around into the path of Arlette¡¯s sword.
Arlette pulled her blade up and tried to spin around the sudden obstacle, though it came so quickly and suddenly that she found only moderate success. Her shoulder clipped Tehlmar and knocked her off her path, while Tehlmar quickly released his hold on Jerithim¡¯s weapons and rolled away.
Jerithim took a step back as Arlette charged him, two new Arlettes stepping out to either side. Each Arlette went for a strike at a different height, one at the knees, another at the waist, and the third at the throat. With two blades, the elf could choose to defend two of the three strikes. How many would he be able to handle before he chose wrongly? Most never made it past the third move.
However, Jerithim didn¡¯t do what she¡¯d expected. Instead of blocking, he jumped. It was a mighty leap, the sort that only a feeler could manage. Arlette desperately skidded to a stop as he flipped right over her head and landed by Tehlmar, knives out and ready.
Luckily for Tehlmar, he had already climbed back to his feet and was ready when the next series of strikes came. The two exchanged blows in a flurry of swings and thrusts, Tehlmar still working at maximum as Jerithim spun, swerved, and ducked wildly, striking like a snake from various unpredictable angles.
By now she knew what they were dealing with: an agility Feeler, the sort that used their enhanced strength and coordination to move quickly around the battlefield, dodging blows instead of blocking them. She hated fighting agility Feelers. Her greatest physical advantage had always been her agility over her opponent, which she used to avoid many strikes that she, as an Observer, would not be able to block. But agility Feelers were a different category altogether, and just touching them was a pain in the ass. At least, when she was alone.
But she was not alone this time.
¡°Fence!¡± she called out as she came within range, bending low to slash horizontally at her opponent¡¯s ankles. The elf seemed to have a sixth sense for danger, as he immediately leaped into the air.
Arlette smirked.
Over years of fighting, the Ivory Tears had developed a long list of call words used to signal specific multi-person maneuvers during battle. ¡°Bull¡± was one, where the caller would let their cohorts know that they were about to send their opponent reeling off-balance. Others could use that to their advantage to cause enemies to trip over each other, as Tehlmar had immediately done when they had fought the terrorists just moments before.
¡°Fence¡± was another signal, a tactic to use in a two-on-one situation. The caller would go low, trying to force the opponent to jump. And when they did...
Tehlmar thrust his hands up, a long, thin spike shooting quickly up after the leaping Jerithim. The enemy elf twisted as best he could, but could do little in midair to keep the crimson lance from piercing straight through his thigh.
Arlette couldn¡¯t keep a small smile from peeking through her battle face.
With a hiss, Jerithim chopped at the thin pole with his blades, breaking off the blood that had pierced him from the rest connected to Tehlmar. Tehlmar immediately drew the rest of the blood back inside with a hiss of his own.
As he fell, Jerithim¡¯s free hand flashed inside of his coat, pulling out a small unadorned bag. Before either of them could react, he hurled it at the ground and a large plume of smoke erupted, blocking their view of him. An improvised smoke bomb of sorts; Pari would not have approved of its construction, but it did the job well enough.
Both Arlette and Tehlmar took defensive positions, wary of anything that might come through the smoke. Without even having to say anything, the two of them split up, circling the smoke from opposite sides.
Arlette¡¯s ears heard a metallic clang from somewhere up high but further down the alley. Her circular path finally led her to a point where she could see Jerithim¡¯s previous position. To her surprise, he was still there, but his arm was extended outward in the direction of the clang from before. In that hand, he held the canister that had been attached to his waist.
The elf pressed a button on the canister and shot down the alley, his body flying up into the air as if pulled by an invisible giant. Only then did Arlette see the thin wire leading to the hook latched onto the corner of the roof where she¡¯d fought the archers earlier.
¡°Shit! He¡¯s getting away!¡± Tehlmar shouted, lashing out with a whip of blood, but the other elf was already too far away. With a moment, he was pulling himself up onto the rooftop.
Arlette pulled out her last knife and reared back, but before she could-
Crackcrackcrackcrackcrack!
Just as he climbed to his feet, Jerithim spasmed, fountains of blood and gore erupting from his chest. His body tumbled off the roof and landed with a resounding thump of finality. The elf had died before he¡¯d hit the ground.
Tehlmar made to rush forward, but Arlette grabbed onto him and pulled him back as hard as she could. ¡°Stay behind me,¡± she ordered, her tone uncompromising. ¡°Don¡¯t move.¡±
As if on cue, the first of Lord Ferros¡¯s robots turned the corner and entered the back alley, its gun trained on her. Arlette held still as it approached, its long legs somehow deftly avoiding all the corpses littering the ground. A second robot came around the bend behind the first as it stopped just a few paces in front of her, its forward eye pointing straight at her upper body and face. She stared back, unflinching, and spoke the words her employer had required she speak into something called a ¡®microphone¡¯ on the first day of her employment.
¡°Arlette Demirt, access blue quilt seven, situation resolved. Cordon area.¡±
The robot released a series of beeps, turned around, and started to head back down the alley. The second one joined it and they headed back out to set up a perimeter. More robots would be arriving soon, along with members of the Ministry of Justice.
Arlette let out a shuddering breath once they¡¯d left. She had no idea how those things worked, and in all honesty, she still didn¡¯t trust them to not shoot her head off.
The spell now broken, Tehlmar grabbing her roughly by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. ¡°Letty, what was that!?¡± he growled. ¡°I told you to stay back! He was only here for me!¡±
Arlette grabbed his hands and threw them off her. ¡°You idiot! He would have come for me the second you went down! He wouldn¡¯t leave witnesses.¡±
¡°Ah... true, I hadn¡¯t thought of that,¡± he replied, properly chastened. ¡°That¡¯s why you¡¯re better than me at this whole cloak and dagger crap.¡±
¡°Tehlmar, you¡¯re an actual spy.¡±
¡°Yeah, but all I had to do was wander around, keep my eyes and ears open, and not run my mouth,¡± he admitted. ¡°Never had to care much about the plotting side of things, really. There weren¡¯t many problems I couldn¡¯t solve with my strength and my halberd.¡±
Arlette harrumphed and turned to look at the aftermath of the ambush, a dull, caustic self-loathing rising up to fill the hole left by the quickly fading rush of battle. Dead bodies lay strewn across the alley, dark blood from the corpses flowing together to form large puddles of sticky red failure. Her failure. Dozens of people were dead again on her watch, and she¡¯d been unable to do anything to stop it. She hadn¡¯t even managed to take any of the attackers alive for questioning!
Or had she? Quickly, she ran over to the man she¡¯d fallen upon when she¡¯d jumped from the roof, hopeful that she¡¯d just knocked him out. The hole in his cranium, likely from his impact with the rock-hard ground, quickly dashed all hope. Unless...
She whirled back towards Tehlmar. ¡°Can we bring these people back!? I need to interrogate them!¡±
The elf shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s not that simple.¡±
Of course it fucking wasn¡¯t. It never was. Impotent rage howling inside her, she slammed her foot into the corpse¡¯s side.
¡°Gods-¡±
Her foot slammed into the terrorist once more, her body trembling with futile anger.
¡°-mother-¡±
And again. Her vision began to blur as tears formed in her eyes.
¡°-fucking-¡±
And again. Her voice quavered.
¡°-damn it!¡±
Fighting just to keep on her feet, Arlette staggered over to the nearby wall and sank down against it with her head in her hands. The tears started flowing and she couldn¡¯t get them to stop.
What had she been thinking, taking a job like this? What had possessed her to believe that she, somebody who¡¯d never done anything more complex than lead a small mercenary band, could handle something as complicated and important as the security of an entire nation? She was a nobody, a nothing, a miserable failure.
For more than a season, she¡¯d been powerless to stop these attacks. They came without warning, striking quickly before fading back amongst the general population before her forces could react. Somehow, not even Lord Ferros¡¯s omnipresent surveillance operation could track them for long. They¡¯d enter seemingly random buildings nearby and just vanish like spirits, leaving no trace they had ever been there. What few terrorists she did manage to corner before they could disappear would kill themselves rather than be taken in, leaving her once more without leads.
This ambush was just the last in a long line of failure. The blood pooling on the ground was just more blood on her hands.
¡°Tears aren¡¯t like you, Letty,¡± Tehlmar¡¯s said from nearby, his voice interrupting her spiraling thoughts. ¡°After all the death we¡¯ve seen, this is what does it?¡±
¡°You don¡¯t get it. I¡¯m supposed to be able to stop this, but I can¡¯t!¡± she sobbed. ¡°These people are gone because I¡¯m not good enough. I¡¯m supposed to be protecting them from danger and I can¡¯t even make the slightest difference. If I was worth anything, I¡¯d be able to do something and these people would still be alive. If I was worth it... if I was worth it, Pari wouldn¡¯t have died.¡± Her body shook as she vented her deeply-held inner thoughts aloud for the first time. ¡°I should quit. I don¡¯t deserve to be here. I¡¯m just making everything worse for everybody.¡±
¡°Bullshit,¡± came the immediate response. ¡°Since the moment I first met you, I¡¯ve never seen you quit at anything. You¡¯ve made it through much worse stuff than this. Are you really willing to let this be the end?¡±
¡°What does that matter? All that matters is that people are dying and I can¡¯t do anything.¡±
¡°That¡¯s bullshit, too. People lived today because you were here. Everyone in there would have died without you.¡±
¡°A few. I barely saved anybody.¡±
A hand wrapped around hers, its touch soft and warm. ¡°You saved me,¡± Tehlmar softly reminded her.
The words sent a small tremor through her and she looked up towards him with tear-filled eyes. He was right. She¡¯d saved him. If she hadn¡¯t acted in that last moment, he would have died, his lungs perforated by Jerithim¡¯s blades.
All this time, she¡¯d felt adrift in a stormy emotional sea, unable to resolve the questions Tehlmar brought out from within her with his mere presence. Her spur of the moment actions were all the answers she needed. When faced with the prospect of losing him twice, she¡¯d acted without hesitation. Deep down, she¡¯d forgiven him long ago.
Arlette sniffed deeply, sending gobs of mucus dripping down her throat and forcing her to cough. She wiped her face and nose on her sleeve.
¡°I can¡¯t believe I¡¯m saying this, but I¡¯m glad you¡¯re back,¡± she told him.
¡°Me too,¡± he said with a large smile. Pulling her to her feet, he threw his arm around her shoulder and led her towards the alley exit. ¡°Now, I think it¡¯s time we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and started celebrating our continued survival the proper mercenary way, the cheaper the booze, the better. That¡¯s the kind of ¡®date¡¯ I was talking about. This place was far too stuffy for the likes of us, anyway. Come on, I know a better place.¡±
¡°I had to make sure I had my hands placed properly, or you would have gone flying into the wall,¡± Tehlmar explained, taking a sip from the large tankard in his hand.
¡°And that required you to take a squeeze, did it?¡± Arlette inquired, arching an eyebrow. She took a gulp from her own tankard, enjoying the soothingly familiar experience as it trickled down her throat.
¡°Well, I couldn¡¯t have you moving right before you launched, now, could I? I only had the energy to do that once, so I had to get it right.¡±
¡°Uh-huh.¡±
¡°It¡¯s true! My techniques take a heavy toll, especially something like that. I¡¯m feeling pretty beat just from that short fight. I bet that¡¯s why that bastard waited until the fight was nearly over and I was the most worn out. He would know I¡¯d be worn down at that point.¡±
¡°Why, exactly, was Jerithim trying to kill you, anyway?¡± Arlette inquired. ¡°You¡¯re both masks, right?¡±
¡°Jerithim? That¡¯s his name?¡±
¡°You didn¡¯t even know that? Yeah, he got Sofie and Pari out of Crirada and snuck them into Otharia, so Sofie kind of considers him a friend of sorts. He¡¯s been living here ever since as a sort of pseudo-ambassador until the Drayhadan government sends over a real ambassador to replace him. Until tonight, I guess. Sofie¡¯s going to be very upset when she finds out what happened.¡±
¡°Feh. Let him rot,¡± Tehlmar spat.
¡°You haven¡¯t answered my question,¡± she reminded him.
¡°Well... simply put, I deserted. Nobody joins the Masked Battalion because they want to, and it¡¯s a lifetime conscription to boot. So they take a hard line to keep people from bolting. Anyone who leaves is killed,¡± he informed her. ¡°You desert, you die.¡±
¡°And you decided to desert even knowing that?¡±
¡°My resurrection brought with it the opportunity to start over. Since the Battalion and my family thought I was dead, for the first time in my existence I had real freedom to carve out a life that I wanted for myself. No more spy crap, no more etiquette lessons, none of that shit. So I came here.¡±
¡°But then Jerithim found you,¡± Arlette chimed in, starting to put the pieces together.
¡°There hasn¡¯t been a Mask in Otharia in centuries. We don¡¯t grow on trees, you know? So the higher-ups chose to use us to keep tabs on places that actually matter. By the time it became clear that this place mattered, your lord already had his border in place, so getting in was deemed too risky until they could come up with a safer way in. I thought this was the only place in the world I could safely expose myself.¡±
¡°Whoops.¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± he glumly agreed. ¡°Now they know I¡¯m alive, which means I¡¯m a deserter who needs to die. My clan knows too. So much for freedom.¡± He tipped his tankard back and chugged the remaining half of the container in one shot.
¡°The ironic part is that he wouldn¡¯t have even been here if it weren¡¯t for you,¡± she told him. ¡°Sofie only convinced them to help us by using your name.¡±
¡°Of course she did,¡± Tehlmar groaned. ¡°I swear, that girl exists only to cause me headaches.¡±
¡°Well, she stayed by my side through thick and thin, even when I tried to get her to leave, which is more than I can say about certain people.¡±
Tehlmar at least had the decency to look abashed.
¡°Besides,¡± she continued, ¡°by coming here, she kept us all alive. Without her here on the Eterians¡¯ behalf, Lord Ferros wouldn¡¯t have cared enough towards the end of the siege to help us as much as he did, holding off the Monster and all that. So if she didn¡¯t bring Jerithim here, I and the others probably would have died when the Ubrans swarmed over Crirada with the Monster leading the way. Then they would have had days to prepare for you and the Stragmans. You wouldn¡¯t have even stood a chance.¡±
¡°If you say so...¡± he shrugged, though her arguments seemed to have little impact on his morose disposition. He flagged down a server who brought over another tankard, from which he immediately took a large gulp. ¡°Well, what¡¯s done is done. Do me a favor, would you? Let me stay here. Otharia¡¯s pretty much the only place I can sleep safely now that my cover¡¯s been blown.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll think about it,¡± she replied. ¡°Keep in mind that if Lord Ferros decides to throw you out, there¡¯s nothing I can do about it. So perhaps consider making yourself useful and telling us what we want to know, hmmm?¡±
¡°We¡¯re getting there, we¡¯re getting there...¡± he said, leaning back in his chair with a contemplative look in his eye.
The two of them settled into a short silence as they each retreated into their own heads to deal with their own worries. Arlette finished her beer and ordered another. Just as the server retreated¡ªthough the staff had been polite so far, Arlette couldn¡¯t help but notice the speed at which they left the pair¡¯s proximity¡ªTehlmar spoke up again.
¡°You know, you talk about the Earthlings like they¡¯re gods,¡± he observed. ¡°I don¡¯t think you should.¡±
¡°It¡¯s the truth though, isn¡¯t it?¡± Arlette shot back. ¡°You know just as much as I what they are capable of. Do you still have the nightmares?¡±
Tehlmar nodded. ¡°It¡¯s pretty rare nowadays, but every so often it happens. You?¡±
¡°Same.¡±
¡°You know, I¡¯ve actually met the Mother of Nightmares a few times now. She wasn¡¯t what I expected.¡±
¡°Really? What was she like?¡±
¡°Old. Impossibly old. You can just feel it, looking at her, like she¡¯s lived a thousand years. She¡¯s surprisingly somewhat nice if you get to know her. Her servants adore her too, or so I hear. But mainly, she¡¯s just this tiny old human woman. Nothing terrifying, and most definitely nothing like a god.¡±
¡°That tiny old woman who took down an army of thousands all on her own,¡± Arlette pointed out.
¡°I know, but I just...¡± His face scrunched up as he fought through his buzz to find the words he was looking for. ¡°They don¡¯t scare me, I guess is the best way to put it. I¡¯ve seen a god, and now I¡¯m maybe the only person to have seen a leviathan up close as well. I cannot properly describe how absolutely insignificant I felt to both of them. Those are the beings to be feared. To elevate a person to that level seems... wrong.¡±
Arlette¡¯s face grew grim. ¡°Then you don¡¯t understand just how powerful Earthlings are. I get it. The Mother of Nightmares is one thing. The Monster and Lord Ferros are another. Honestly, I think that, if they wanted to, Lord Ferros and the Monster on their own could conquer the entire world in a matter of seasons, just the two of them,¡± she admitted.
¡°You can¡¯t be serious. Those deathbeasts are terrifying, but-¡±
¡°Take one of those two out of the siege of Crirada and it ends in an hour.¡±
Tehlmar still didn¡¯t seem convinced, but Arlette knew how to properly explain just how terrifying the Earthlings were. ¡°I encountered a god a few days ago,¡± she told him quietly, the memories bringing an unbidden frown to her face.
Tehlmar¡¯s eye went wide and he stared at her, mouth agog. ¡°Another one?¡±
¡°Yes. This one wasn¡¯t as big as the one in Zrukhora, but it was still a god.¡±
¡°Spirits¡¯ mercy upon us,¡± he muttered. ¡°But you got away, at least.¡±
¡°The Monster beat it so hard that it fled.¡±
Tehlmar blinked and Arlette leaned in.
¡°She ripped out one of its teeth and jammed the tooth into its eye. And you know she can¡¯t be killed, right? The god burned her to ash and she came back within moments, good as new. Are you starting to get it yet? Even gods fear these people. We Scyrians are nothing in comparison. We¡¯re insects just hoping to not get stepped on as they pass by.
¡°Luckily for us, the Monster isn¡¯t interested in conquest anymore; it doesn¡¯t seem like she¡¯s interested in doing much of anything, really. And as for Lord Ferros...¡± She looked around warily, making sure nobody was close enough to hear. ¡°...this is just a feeling I get, but I think he regrets conquering Otharia. I think that, deep down, he feels he made a mistake but he can¡¯t admit it to anybody, not even to himself. But that¡¯s it. We are safe only by their whims, not by our own power.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s face looked like he¡¯d taken a bite of something rotten. ¡°There¡¯s nothing I hate more than the feeling of powerlessness.¡± He paused for a moment as if an idea had just popped into his head. ¡°I bet that¡¯s why you¡¯re feeling so down, Letty. These days, you¡¯re comparing yourself to Earthlings instead of to us normal people. It¡¯s warping your expectations for yourself, setting up an impossible standard.¡±
Now it was Arlette¡¯s turn to blink. ¡°You know, you¡¯re probably right.¡±
¡°Drop your expectations down to at least Mother of Nightmare levels,¡± he said with a smirk. ¡°Or better yet, Sofie levels.¡±
Arlette couldn¡¯t help but laugh. ¡°I forget, sometimes, that she¡¯s one of them. At least until she opens her mouth.¡±
Tehlmar raised his tankard towards her. ¡°A toast to Sofie, for so generously serving as a reminder that even Earthlings can be underwhelming.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll toast to that,¡± Arlette chuckled, clanking tankards with his.
Together, they laughed and downed their drinks and ordered more, and more, and even more still, until the tavern threw them out at closing time. It was, truly, a proper mercenary celebration.
Arlette dropped her sword on the small table by the door, flopped down onto the bed¡ªher drunken coordination unable to manage anything more graceful¡ªand stared up at the inn room¡¯s wooden ceiling. How had she gotten here? The last few hours had passed like a blur, filled with laughter and emotion and lots and lots of booze, and one thing had led to another and now here she was. Arlette tried to recall the details but the alcohol left her memory jumbled.
A moment later, Tehlmar plopped down beside her, the impact causing him to release a loud belch.
¡°How regal,¡± Arlette giggled. ¡°You sure you¡¯re really a prince?¡±
¡°Not anymore, thank the stars,¡± Tehlmar replied.
¡°How did it all happen, anyway? An elven prince clomping around Nocend with a gut and a halberd, not to mention that horrid mustache?¡±
¡°Oh, come now, it wasn¡¯t that bad!¡± he protested.
¡°Yes, it was!¡± she laughed. ¡°All the women thought so!¡±
Tehlmar went quiet for a moment, his gaze lost in the past. ¡°Letty, want to make a deal?¡±
¡°What kind of deal?¡±
¡°Just for tonight, no secrets. I¡¯ll answer anything you ask, and you do the same for me.¡±
¡°That¡¯s...¡± Arlette hesitated. She habitually, perhaps even instinctively, kept as tight a lid as possible on her past. The thought of just completely opening up scared her, but at the same time, it beckoned to her seductively with promises of freedom from her burdens, at least for a little while. ¡°Are you sure you¡¯re willing to do that? You¡¯re a spy, after all.¡±
¡°I hate secrets, Letty. All they¡¯ve ever done is make my life worse.¡±
¡°Says the man who won¡¯t tell me how he came back to life.¡±
¡°Well, here¡¯s an easy way to get the answer.¡±
¡°Ha, ¡®easy¡¯ you say? Alright. I accept. Just for tonight.¡±
¡°Alright. Well, it all started when I was a young child...¡±
Arlette listened as the elf beside her stared blankly up towards the ceiling and recounted the tale of his childhood, of the discovery of his powers, of his father¡¯s attempt to hide them, of his sister¡¯s betrayal. He talked about the horrible years of training, of the beatings, the punishments, the immense physical and emotional pain inflicted upon him. He spoke of his life on the road, wandering from contract to contract, looking for something, anything to give some sort of meaning to his life.
Arlette listened, not saying a word lest she break the spell. She found herself tearing up slightly as he went, shocked to discover just how much pain he¡¯d been through. She would never have suspected it, given the man she¡¯d come to know over the course of more than five years. Speaking of which...
¡°-and then I met you, and you know the rest of the story.¡±
¡°How much of Jaquet was real?¡± she asked.
¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°The man I knew... How much of him was you, and how much was made up?¡±
¡°All of it was me. Almost all of it, at least. Maybe a few people have the talent to take on a whole new persona, but I¡¯m not one. People can feel inauthenticity. You might be able to get away with it with people you only meet once or twice, but the people you interact with often will start to sniff it out pretty quickly. So what they taught us was just to be ourselves, with a bit of a twist if necessary. So that¡¯s what I did.¡±
So that was why tonight felt so refreshingly familiar. She found comfort in the fact that the person she¡¯d become such good friends with wasn¡¯t just a facade.
¡°Alright, my turn,¡± Tehlmar continued, turning his head towards her on the soft straw mattress. ¡°I have so many questions.¡±
¡°I¡¯m regretting this already,¡± Arlette returned.
¡°Let¡¯s start with this: who is this Peko person you used to talk to in your sleep?¡±
¡°Of all the things you could ask, that¡¯s what you¡¯re going with?¡± she replied.
¡°Consider it a warm-up then. And why not? I¡¯ve always been curious, and I wasn¡¯t the only one. The others and I had a betting pool going over who he turned out to be.¡±
Arlette sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. ¡°...Peko is my... imaginary friend,¡± she mumbled.
¡°Are you serious?! Ahaha, looks we all would have lost!¡± Tehlmar guffawed. ¡°Wait a moment, ¡®is¡¯? As in you still have an imaginary friend? How old are you again?¡±
¡°Shut up! I... He...¡± She curled up on the bed, hugging herself. ¡°He helps me. When I think I¡¯m going to fall apart, he helps me. Without him, I would have lost myself so many times, maybe even ended my own life...¡±
¡°Okay, okay, I¡¯m sorry for making fun of your imaginary friend,¡± he apologized, placing a hand on her shoulder. ¡°So, is he handsome?¡±
¡°Why, are you jealous?¡±
¡°Maybe.¡±
¡°Then yes, he¡¯s far better looking than you could ever hope to be,¡± she retorted, sticking her tongue out at him.
Tehlmar laughed again, this time loud and boisterous. ¡°Looks like I¡¯ll have to work harder, then,¡± he chuckled.
¡°Good luck. Not only is he prettier, he¡¯s known me for longer too.¡±
¡°Then maybe it¡¯s time I got to know you better. The real you. Who are you, Arlette? You would never talk about your past. You would get angry whenever the Ubran Empire came up in conversation, though you tried to hide it. The leader of a group powerful and well-connected enough to ambush us as we left Drayhadan territory called you ¡®princess¡¯, but the King of Gustil only ever had sons and the King of Kutrad is without heirs. You seem to have at least a passing education in subjects that no daughter of a mid-rank soldier would ever need to be taught. Nothing about you adds up. Who are you, really?¡±
Arlette gulped. ¡°I was born in the Kingdom of Ofrax with the name Arlette Faredin, all the way on the other side of the Divide...¡± she began, her words coming slowly at first but picking up speed over time. Unlike the last time, this didn¡¯t feel like an interrogation. This time, she was telling it willingly, and with each word it felt like the burden of her past became just a little lighter.
She told him about the death of her father, of the arrival of Sebastian, and of meeting the royal family and the terrible news that came with it. She told him about the fall of her homeland and her fearful escape from the Ubran invaders. She told him about her arrival at Redwater Castle and her adoption by a kind soldier stationed there and his wife. She told him everything, and she found it liberating. At some point, she realized he was squeezing her hand, but she couldn¡¯t recall when he¡¯d first grabbed it.
¡°Why did you choose to go by Demirt instead of your Faredin when you struck out on your own?¡± Tehlmar wondered.
¡°I didn¡¯t want to bring light to my past, for one. Also, my second father knew a good number of people in Gustil and they would have found it strange if I had a different surname,¡± she told him. ¡°But really, I did it because I loved my second parents. They were my parents for longer than my original, and even though I was not their true daughter, they always treated me with love and patience... which, looking back, is more than I deserved for a good while. I was an absolute nightmare of a child for the first couple of years, but they never let it bother them. I felt like the least I could do was keep their name.¡±
She let out a sad, self-demeaning laugh. ¡°So yeah, that¡¯s my story. Not exactly a mesmerizing tale of adventure.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, I think it¡¯s poetic,¡± the elf replied. ¡°That the woman who pretended to be a princess would gain the love of the prince trying to be anything but.¡±
Arlette hummed a non-committal acknowledgment and looked away again, a question forming in her throat. The question, really, the one that had been bubbling away in the back of her mind for over a season. The one she wanted an answer to more than any other but was terrified to ask. Without the assistance of alcohol, she would not have found the courage.
¡°Why do you...¡± Arlette felt her face heat up as she stumbled over the words, finding them hard to say them aloud. ¡°...love me?¡±
Tehlmar blinked and looked her way. ¡°I don¡¯t understand.¡±
¡°When you went back to Drayhadal and were a prince, I¡¯m sure you could have your pick of all the women in Drayhadal. Beautiful women with grace and power I will never have who would do anything to be your partner.¡±
¡°Letty, stop.¡±
¡°Women with smooth, flawless skin and long, flowing hair and a face that takes your breath away,-¡±
¡°Stop.¡±
¡°-not somebody like me with my boring looks-¡±
¡°Stop!¡±
¡°-and a body covered in ugly scars. I¡¯m not like them, I¡¯m not special. I¡¯m just a woman who grew up a fraud and-¡±
¡°Will you just-!¡± Tehlmar lunged towards her, losing his balance and falling atop her right hip, whereupon he began to vigorously tug at her pants.
¡°W-wha!¡± Arlette cried out, repeatedly whacking him in the back and head with her palm. ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing, you pervert?!¡±
Tehlmar powered through her drunken blows, working the right side of her pants lower and lower as she fought and squirmed until he suddenly stopped and touched her bare upper leg with his finger.
¡°Look!¡± he said, tracing his finger along something on her skin. Looking closer through her fuzzy vision, Arlette realized he was gently brushing a thin scar the width of about three fingers. ¡°What is this? Do you remember?¡±
¡°Uh?¡± she bleated, confused by his actions.
¡°We were up past Olenset, saving those village kids from those slavers who were pillaging the locals with the noble¡¯s support. You were fighting somebody while this kid cowered behind you, and you saw an arrow coming your way... and you realized it was going to miss you, but it would hit the kid instead. So you kicked your leg out to the side and blocked it to save him. Remember?¡±
¡°Uhhh...¡± His story kind of rang a bell, though the memory was still pretty hazy. She¡¯d taken a lot of injuries over her career and she was still fairly inebriated.
Tehlmar shifted his gaze up her body. Quickly, he crawled forward and grabbed the bottom of her shirt, pulling it up to expose an abdomen covered in blemishes from years of battle.
¡°What about this?¡± he asked, his palm rubbing a burn scar above her left kidney.
¡°No, not really,¡± she replied.
¡°We were hired to hunt down those bandits hiding in the Red Mist marshes in eastern Eterium. So we went into the marshes and it rained and rained and rained. I don¡¯t think we saw the sun once in ten days.¡±
¡°Oh, yeah.¡± It was starting to come back to her now.
¡°Everything was wet. Water up to our knees more often than not. Nasty critters everywhere, and the less said about the insects the better. On the tenth day, we finally found their hideout, and instead of scoping them out, we all just charged in and caught them by surprise. The leader was holding a torch and you went after him when he ran. You caught up to him just before he made it to the waters. He tried to hold you off with the torch for just a moment so he could dive in, but you just let him burn you as you tackled him and beat him unconscious with your sheathed sword. When I asked you why you hadn¡¯t just avoided the torch, you said to me-¡±
¡°¡®If I had, he might have escaped, and I would rather take a mace to the head than stay one more day in this star-forsaken swamp¡¯,¡± Arlette finished with a giggle. ¡°It was true, the food went bad within two days, everything grew mold and rot... I hated it there. Those local merchants afterward even offered us a contract twice as good as what we could have found anywhere else to hire us as their local militia longterm and I still turned them down.¡±
¡°And it¡¯s a wise thing you did, too, because if you had taken the contract, the band would have gone from sixteen members to two overnight.¡±
¡°Tehlmar, I-¡± she mumbled as he pulled himself up even farther until his face and hers were aligned.
¡°Surely you remember this?¡± he asked, his fingertips lightly caressing the back right part of her neck, where an ugly, mostly circular scar the size of a large coin could be found.
¡°Yeah...¡± There was no forgetting this one. She, Jaquet, and several other members of the Ivory Tears had left a tavern late one winter night. During the trip back to the local barracks, she¡¯d slipped on a patch of ice she hadn¡¯t noticed because of her less-than-sober state and toppled sideways onto a low, rough wooden fence at her side. Her neck had slammed into the jagged end of a fencepost and the wood first stabbed into the side of her neck. Then, as she continued to fall, the weight of the rest of her body had pulled her head and neck further down so that the wood ripped out a large chunk of her flesh. She¡¯d been lucky to survive. The only reason she still breathed today was that the wood had pierced the part of the side of her neck closest to the back. If the wood had penetrated just a little further towards her front, she could have died on the spot. Instead, she ¡®merely¡¯ lost a large amount of blood and had to spend several days in bed to recover. Ever since, she¡¯d never forgotten how carelessness, alcohol, and chance had conspired to almost accomplish what hundreds of enemies never had.
¡°When that happened, for the first time since my training, I completely lost my cool and panicked. If you had died that night, I don¡¯t know what I would have done. I thank the stars every night that you made it through.¡±
¡°Tehlmar, why are you...¡±
¡°Letty, please, just listen to me. Yes, there were many beautiful women back in Drayhadal, girls who can sing and dance and recite entire volumes of poetry, but I didn¡¯t want them. I never did. They¡¯re nothing but vapid creatures who have spent their whole lives barely ever stepping outside their courtyards. They know a sonnet, but they don¡¯t know the world. They¡¯re just little flowers raised in little glass cases, a pretty view and nothing more. You¡¯re not like them. You¡¯re not empty. You¡¯re real.¡± His thin thumbs caressed the old scars running across her cheeks as his desperately pleading gaze bored into her soul. ¡°These scars... they¡¯re not blemishes, they¡¯re proof that you¡¯ve lived a life worth living! I don¡¯t want just a pretty face. I want a woman I can be proud to call my wife, somebody who¡¯s seen the world and survived against everything life could throw at them. That¡¯s you. I want you. And there¡¯s nothing anybody in the world could ever say or do to change that.¡±
Arlette looked up at him as he gazed back down at her with shining eyes, his hand placed on the bed by her armpit as he propped himself up over her.
¡°The Stragmans,¡± he said.
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°They have an Earthling too, one who can bring back the dead with as little as a toe, or, in my case, an ear. He reverses your time and takes you back to a point before you died. That¡¯s how I came back.¡±
¡°Oh,¡± she said, sheepishly. She¡¯d forgotten all about the initial reason behind all of this. ¡°Why are you telling me when I didn¡¯t ask?¡±
¡°Because if we¡¯re going to go any further, I want it to be because you want to, not because you think you need to.¡±
The flush on Arlette¡¯s face deepened as she locked eyes with his earnest gaze. Maybe Sofie was right; maybe elves could be attractive. Or maybe it was just the alcohol. As she reached out and pulled him close, Arlette found that, at least for one night, she didn¡¯t much care either way.
Chapter 100
¡°Looks like somebody had a late night,¡± Sofie observed to the already seated Arlette a moment after entering the meeting room. ¡°So, did you go all the way?¡±
Arlette cocked an eyebrow, clearly unamused as she sipped her tea. ¡°This is the most upbeat I¡¯ve seen you in a good while,¡± Arlette observed in return, pointedly not addressing the Earthling¡¯s provocation.
Sofie sat down in the chair beside Arlette and scooted the seat closer, propping her head up in her palms with a mischievous glint in her eyes as she grinned back at the ex-mercenary. ¡°Heh! Nice try changing the subject, but it¡¯s not going to work. It¡¯s my job as your female friend to gossip with you about men. I mustn''t be derelict in my duties. So, was he good?¡±
Arlette sighed and rolled her eyes. ¡°Can you not? I haven¡¯t even had my morning tea yet; I don¡¯t have the energy for whatever torture this is,¡± she groaned.
¡°How big is his dick? I bet, with his blood manipulation abilities, he can do some wild stuff with it.¡±
Gabriela Carreno couldn¡¯t hold back her smirk as tea sprayed from the Scyrian¡¯s mouth all over the table as Sofie cackled like a madwoman, her mirth so great that she nearly fell out of her chair. Gabby couldn¡¯t help but feel a twinge of jealousy as the two continued their friendly bickering, Sofie gleefully getting raunchier and raunchier the more embarrassed Arlette became. She¡¯d never really had a friendship like that. She¡¯d had very few friendships at all, really. Just being an orphan was enough to make her an outcast of sorts, and she¡¯d never really gotten along with the other girls her age at the orphanage either.
Part of her, the part that wasn¡¯t trapped in the mire of her sorrows, wanted to try to interact with them more and perhaps forge her own small facsimile of the bond they shared, but she could never get very comfortable around either of them. Arlette always tensed whenever Gabby spoke to her or even when Gabby just focused on her. The soldier tried to hide her nervousness, but Gabby could still see it. It was clear to her that Arlette didn¡¯t feel safe with her around.
Gabriela didn¡¯t try to overcome the Scyrian¡¯s skittishness, however, because of its source. The two of them had never talked about it, but Sofie had told her once that Arlette had been at Crirada during the war. To make it even worse, Gabby had apparently been just a moment away from killing the ex-mercenary at one point in the siege, not that she remembered seeing Arlette while there. Faced with this knowledge and the shame it brought to her now, Gabby just didn¡¯t have it in her to face a survivor of her deeds face to face.
Sofie, on the other hand, didn¡¯t fear Gabby one bit. She always treated her with a warm smile and plenty of kindness, but she treated everybody with a warm smile and plenty of kindness¡ªwith the notable exception of Blake for some reason. Though Sofie probably didn¡¯t mean for it to be this way, it reminded Gabby of the way retail employees back on Earth would greet customers when they opened the door.
What really bothered her, though, was the pity hiding behind that smile. Gabriela didn¡¯t want to be pitied. It just made her feel worse and dragged her back to the underlying misery that was the core of her current existence.
Gabby didn¡¯t know which was worse: to be pitied or to be feared.
Strangely enough, the only person living in this fortress that she felt comfortable around was Blake. Perhaps it was because he didn¡¯t bother hiding his opinion of her. To say the two of them had gotten off on the wrong foot was the understatement of the century, but the inferno of hatred she¡¯d felt about him before, back when he¡¯d represented everything keeping her from going home to her children, had disappeared a long time ago. Now, after interacting with him for a few months, their relationship had settled into an equilibrium that only two equally miserable people could maintain. She still didn¡¯t much like him and vice versa, but at least they could be honest with each other about it.
All this meant that Gabriela found herself alone even among what should be people who could understand her. When was the last time she could say otherwise? The closest she¡¯d come to having a true friend since her husband¡¯s tragic death had been Chitra, but the Batranala had always struggled under dual loyalties. Looking back now, with the clarity of hindsight, she could remember multiple events and occasions where Chitra had placed the Emperor¡¯s needs and desires over her own. While she had done so reluctantly, she had still done so. Gabby had felt utterly delighted when Chitra had finally broken from her loyalties to that wretched old man, but directly after that, they¡¯d split apart and Gabby had never seen her friend again.
So here she sat, alone and friendless. Only her guilt and her work at the orphanage, where she was slowly growing accustomed to the shouts and cries of children not her own, kept her from leaving this place. Not that she had a better place to go. At least here, she wouldn¡¯t run into many people who she¡¯d hurt, directly or indirectly, in the war.
She¡¯d tried her best to keep her casualties to a minimum by only killing members of the opposing army, and even then, only those that actively stood in her way and tried to stop her. No civilians, nobody running away. It had been the least she could do to avoid needless slaughter. But that still added up to a lot of people. Too many people. All to desperately chase after something that had never existed in the first place.
She knew that she¡¯d been in a bad place at the time, her sudden involuntary transportation pulling her not just from her life but ripping her mental stability away in the process. That didn¡¯t excuse her decisions. But what bothered her the most wasn¡¯t the poor choices of her past. It was the knowledge that, if a real way home presented itself and to get it she would need to do everything she¡¯d done a second time, she very well might choose to go down that road again.
Gabby¡¯s grip tightened around the Sword of Eternity¡¯s handle and she fought the urge to glare at it. Gabriela hated the thing. It served as little more than a reminder of her weakness, her folly, and her sins. Still, she carried it with her at all times these days. She¡¯d tried to avoid the accursed thing by leaving it in Blake¡¯s fortress and a sweet, innocent child had died. If she¡¯d had it on her that night, Pari would still be with them today.
She missed that cherubic kid almost as much as she missed Javier and Anahi. Pari had been a beacon in her darkness. The children at the orphanage were nice, and that place was the one place she¡¯d prefer to be over any other here on this world right now, but Pari had been special. When that angel had smiled for her, hugged her, told her to feel better, or most of all, when she¡¯d purred in Gabby¡¯s lap like a blissful little kitten, Gabby had felt more than just warm and fuzzy. For just a few precious moments, she¡¯d felt forgiven. Pari Clansnarl had been the closest thing to her children that she¡¯d found in this world. Now she was gone, and it was Gabriela¡¯s fault.
But that was exactly why she was sitting in this chair this morning, instead of helping out at the orphanage. It seemed that, somehow, through some miracle, there might be a way to bring her back. Gabriela wouldn¡¯t miss that for anything. It felt like she was being given a second chance, perhaps even by God himself, though she hesitated to consider herself somebody worthy of His grace anymore.
The door opened again and Blake stomped in, bringing an abrupt end to her spiraling stream of consciousness. As usual, he wore his armor and helmet, making it hard to read his mood. Gabriela had only ever seen him without his helmet on that first day, the day she¡¯d beaten him near the brink of death.
¡°Thanks for coming. I just got done talking with the Stragmans,¡± he informed the rest of them. ¡°I¡¯m preparing the Flying Toaster for a trip west, departing in a few hours.¡±
¡°So it¡¯s real? Really real?¡± Sofie asked, gripping the table with a desperate intensity.
¡°I don¡¯t know if I believe this crap about rewinding time. The idea of rewinding ¡®personal time¡¯ doesn¡¯t make sense. Scyria is clearly a planet and so it¡¯s traveling through space, so if your time was reversed, then-¡± He shook his head. ¡°Never mind, not the point. The point is that the elf was definitely dead, right?¡±
Arlette nodded.
¡°And now he¡¯s clearly not. And when I asked the diplomat about reviving the dead, the guy got cagey as fuck. Something¡¯s up. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s time rewinding or something else, but they had something to do with this and I want to know what. So we¡¯re gonna go crash their party. If we can finagle a refurbished Pari out of this, all the better.¡±
¡°Crash their party?¡± Arlette butted in, ignoring Sofie doing a happy dance beside her. ¡°Is that your way of saying that you¡¯ll be arriving uninvited?¡±
¡°Those jerkoffs wouldn¡¯t tell me a single thing I wanted to know,¡± the armored man complained. ¡°If I asked if I could come, they¡¯d just refuse. So I¡¯m just not going to give them the chance. That¡¯s more my style, anyway.¡±
¡°What about Pari¡¯s body?¡± Arlette followed up. ¡°Tehlmar says you need part of the body, which, last I checked, we don¡¯t have. Wouldn¡¯t you need to go steal Pari¡¯s corpse back from the god first?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not going near that thing until I know for sure we even have a way to bring her back,¡± Blake replied. ¡°First, we work out the details, then we get the body, then we go back. It will take longer, but if it means we don¡¯t have to risk getting turned into a kabob for no reason, then it¡¯s worth it.¡±
His head turned to Gabby. ¡°I called you here to ask you to come on the trip. Not just potentially for the dragon. The Stragmans respect strength and I need a bodyguard for up-close dangers. Will you come?¡±
¡°I will,¡± Gabriela replied. She didn¡¯t need his reasons. Just helping bring the poor child back would be worth a hundred trips.
¡°Me too!¡± Sofie hopped up from her seat.
¡°It¡¯s too dangerous for you,¡± Gabby told her with a shake of her head.
¡°I agree, I don¡¯t need anybody holding us back when we¡¯re in a life-or-death situation,¡± Blake added.
¡°What?! Come on, I can be helpful!¡± Sofie protested. ¡°I can do like, negotiating or whatever!¡±
¡°Negotiate with who, the dragon?¡± Blake scoffed.
¡°Maybe!¡± she huffed as she crossed her arms in defiance. ¡°Besides, neither of you has been to Stragma before, right? You need at least one person who has been there.¡±
¡°We can just bring Arlette¡¯s new boyfriend,¡± Blake replied.
¡°He¡¯s not-¡± Arlette sputtered before catching herself. ¡°Tehlmar was breaking an oath he made to the Stragmans when he told us. If you bring him to Stragma, chances are the Chos turns him into paste.¡±
¡°See? You need me too!¡± Sofie chimed in.
¡°But what about the dragon?¡± Gabby interjected.
¡°Look, if something happens, I¡¯ll just run away like the last time, alright? The dragon didn¡¯t even notice me,¡± Sofie offered. ¡°You two can fight to your hearts¡¯ content and I¡¯ll just go hide. I just want to be there for Pari, okay? Please, don¡¯t leave me here so I can just spend every minute worrying until I fall apart!¡±
Blake sighed. ¡°Fine, but the moment things get hairy, you disappear, alright? We¡¯re going to have to go all out against that thing when we get to its lair or lab or whatever. We can¡¯t fight while also having to try to protect you.¡±
Sofie saluted. ¡°I¡¯ll become a ghost, I promise!¡±
¡°You¡¯re all crazy,¡± Arlette chimed in.
¡°I take it that means you¡¯re staying?¡± Blake inquired.
¡°I like being alive, thank you very much. There¡¯s no amount of money you could pay me to go back into those mountains again. Besides, there¡¯s too much for me to do here, with the attack last night and all that. Now that we know that the terrorists can interfere with your technology-¡±
¡°For the last time, nobody can interfere with my technology!¡± Blake hotly insisted.
¡°I told you, I pressed the fucking button multiple times and every press was red!¡± Arlette spat, slamming her palms against the table and pushing herself to her feet. ¡°They were right there on the other side of the fucking restaurant and they didn¡¯t even move!¡±
¡°Yes, because they were blind!¡± Blake shot back. ¡°I looked into it before the call. Somebody¡ªobviously the terrorists¡ªmanaged to cover their sensors with ink, rendering them unable to see. They¡¯re programmed to not move, because they were just as liable to crush some stupid bystanders as they were to do any good.¡±
¡°So your vaunted metal warriors can be taken out by a pot of ink?!¡± Arlette snorted.
¡°No, of course not, do you think I didn¡¯t think of something that obvious? I made it so the server could steer them using overhead imagery from the flitter network if something happened to their internal sensors. The problem was that there was so much smoke from the fire that the flitters overhead couldn¡¯t see the area around the restaurant! So stop saying that my tech¡¯s been hacked. I¡¯ll own this one, it¡¯s on me. But it¡¯s a simple issue of me not covering all my bases and that¡¯s all.¡±
Arlette grumbled but didn¡¯t argue. Then, her eyes went wide. ¡°Wait, you said ink?¡±
¡°Yeah? What of it?¡±
Arlette frantically cleaned up her area, picking up the teacup and the teapot that sat nearby, her mouth moving a kilometer a minute. ¡°Ink is is expensive and pretty rare, especially in that sort of quantity. If I can narrow down the type of ink, I might be able to trace it back to them!¡± she gushed, rushing past Blake and out the door. ¡°I need to look into this immediately!¡±
¡°Guess I should give her access to the skitters,¡± Blake muttered to himself.
¡°Oh, I almost forgot,¡± Arlette said sheepishly as she reappeared in the doorway behind Blake. ¡°I was hoping I could convince you to hire Tehlmar under my supervision. He has skills that would be useful to us.¡±
¡°The spy? The Drayhadan spy? The one who infiltrated my territory?¡± asked Blake with a snort. ¡°I get that I¡¯ve already talked to him and we¡¯re using his information, but employment is a very different thing.¡±
¡°He is a man who will honor his word, I promise. Sign him to a mercenary contract and he will honor it to the letter. If you want, make it a short one with restrictive terms. He¡¯ll sign it anyway to stay here with me. Then you can reevaluate his performance later.¡±
¡°Hmmmm... well he did tell us how he got past my border security, unlike a certain someone,¡± Blake stated, turning to glare at Sofie as she hopped and swayed around the meeting room.
Sofie stuck out her tongue in response but continued her happy dance. ¡°I already told you, don¡¯t ask because I¡¯m not telling!¡±
¡°Yeah, yeah...¡± he grumbled as he turned back to Arlette. ¡°We¡¯ll see how reliable his information is first. Work up a contract and I¡¯ll go over it when I return.¡±
¡°Yes, sir!¡± And then she was gone.
Blake let out another sigh, sharing a look with Gabby. ¡°You know, I never asked because I know it¡¯s going to hurt to hear, but you swam, didn¡¯t you? You swam across the sea, leviathans be damned.¡±
¡°Swam? No, I ran.¡±
¡°Huh? But your trajectory indicated you were coming from the western shore, not from the border-¡±
¡°I ran across the ocean. Just a matter of going fast enough.¡±
Gabriela could feel the heat of Blake¡¯s annoyance even through his mask. ¡°You¡¯re a goddamned walking cheat code and I hate it.¡±
Gabby couldn¡¯t help but agree on both parts.
Wroetin Orphanage Four¡ªor as Judina, the middle-aged matron of the orphanage, insisted on calling it, ¡°Guiding Light Orphanage¡±¡ªbubbled with energy, as it often did around noon. Gabby let the vibes soak into her as she entered, allowing the manic energy of the children frolicking about to bolster her already upbeat mood. It had been a good while since she¡¯d felt this good, this... hopeful. She had something to look forward to again, a concrete goal to work towards. She found it stunning how big of a difference that made.
¡°Chanz, be careful,¡± she told a young man as he sprinted past her. ¡°You¡¯re going to fall and hurt yourself.¡±
¡°Yes, Miss Gabby,¡± the kid replied, dutifully slowing down a little.
The ease with which he responded made her smile a little. Not too long ago, the children of the orphanage had obeyed her more out of fear than anything else. They¡¯d recognized the aura of danger about her immediately and had treated her as the terrifying monster that she was. But now, it seemed that she and the children were finally growing closer.
¡°Somebody came to see you,¡± the boy told her a moment later as he sprinted back, two other kids hot on his heels.
¡°Oh?¡± She continued through the yard, slowly making her way through the throngs of younglings towards the building proper. Who could be here to see her? She¡¯d just seen the others, though she hadn¡¯t exactly rushed back here. Had somebody forgotten something?
¡°She was super pretty,¡± he added on the third pass.
Gabby¡¯s thoughts came to a screeching halt. No, surely not. But who else could it be?
Her pace quickened and she found herself rushing the rest of the way, almost sprinting through the open doorway and down the hall, her body following the laughter coming from the kitchen. Her heart hammered in her chest and a lump was stuck in her throat. She knew those voices. One was Judina. The other... She practically skidded to a halt at the kitchen entrance, stopping her momentum by grabbing each side of the door frame with her hands.
It was like Gabby was looking at a living memory. The same beautiful face, makeup perfectly applied and spotless. The same flowing amber hair, each strand practically shining in the midday light, and not a single tangle, curl, or split end to be seen. The ornate, delicate dress that somehow never seemed to get a single speck of dirt on it. The same gorgeous smile.
Chitra.
¡°Gabby, dear, why didn¡¯t you tell me you knew such a delightful and charming young lady?¡± Judina laughed.
¡°Oh come now, as much as I appreciate the flattery, I am nowhere near ¡®young¡¯ at this point,¡± Chitra giggled. Her smile grew as she gave Gabriela a look-over. ¡°You look well, Gabby. I¡¯m glad.¡±
Gabby swallowed. ¡°Did you know?¡± she managed to croak out.
Chitra blinked. ¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡±
¡°Did you know?!¡± Gabby repeated, more forcefully this time.
Chitra¡¯s frown deepened. ¡°I beg your pardon,¡± she told the older lady with a small bow, ¡°but it seems that my friend and I must talk in private.¡±
¡°Of course,¡± the older lady replied with a smile. Her gaze then swept over to Gabby and the smile turned into a frown of concern. ¡°Gabby, dear, you¡¯re doing it again.¡±
Gabby looked to the right and found, to her surprise, that her hand had utterly crushed the wooden door frame where she¡¯d grabbed it, leaving a spiderweb of large cracks coursing through the wall. In the rush of her emotions, she hadn¡¯t noticed the noise, nor all the blood dripping from her palms from the large splinters piercing her flesh.
¡°Ah... I¡¯m sorry,¡± she told the matron.
¡°It¡¯s alright, that wall isn¡¯t load-bearing and it¡¯s not like this is the first time,¡± the woman told her, shooing them from the room. ¡°You can fix it later. Go talk.¡±
The trip to her bedroom was short and silent as Gabby fought down her roiling feelings of doubt and betrayal as best she could. The room was little more than a bed in a box, but it suited her just fine. It wasn¡¯t like she had anything of her own to fill a bigger room with anyway.
Chitra entered the tiny space and Gabby followed, shutting the door tight behind them and leaning the Sword of Eternity against the nearest corner.
¡°Well?¡± she prodded the Ubran.
¡°You¡¯re going to have to be much more specific, I¡¯m afraid,¡± Chitra replied with a small frown and a tilt of her head. ¡°I know a lot of things.¡±
¡°Did you know it was all a lie?!¡±
¡°Sending you back, you mean?¡±
¡°What else could I be talking about?!¡± Gabby snarled.
Chitra daintily sat down on the edge of the straw mattress and leaned back a little, placing her hands behind her for support as she stared up at the ceiling. ¡°No, I didn¡¯t know,¡± she answered after a while. ¡°But I suspected.¡±
¡°When? How early?¡±
¡°Right from the beginning. It was too convenient that the Emperor found a way to send you home so quickly. But only a handful of people had ever been inside that ancient room before that day, and I was not one of them. Their demonstration was hard to argue with, as well. I had no proof, nothing to back up my suspicions other than instincts honed by years of palace intrigue.¡±
¡°Then why didn¡¯t you tell me?! Maybe if... if you had warned me... maybe all those people...¡±
The tears came quickly this time, compliments of the guilt that never went away no matter how much she sometimes wished it would. She clutched at her chest as sobs wracked her body. Then suddenly, she found herself in a warm embrace, a familiar, calming scent filling her nostrils.
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Chitra whispered to her.
Gabby grabbed Chitra¡¯s hands and pulled them off her before pushing Chitra away. ¡°Don¡¯t! Not only did you not warn me, you pushed me to help the Emperor when you yourself had doubts! How could you do that?!¡±
Chitra gave a forlorn shake of her head. ¡°It¡¯s not that simple. Yes, I did what I could to get you to take the offer; as a Batranala, it was my purpose to advance the Emperor¡¯s desires as I understood them, even when they deemed it unnecessary to inform me of their plans. But even if that were not the case, I still would have pushed you to accept.¡±
¡°What? Why?¡±
¡°Because you needed it,¡± the Ubran answered. ¡°I could see just how fragile you were back then. You were barely holding yourself together by a single thread, and it was just a matter of days before you completely fell apart. The loss of your children was bad enough, but even more so, I could see how you were drowning in the helplessness of your situation. Your inability to do anything to help yourself or the people you cared about was going to eat away at you from the inside until you were nothing more than an empty husk, and I didn¡¯t want to see that happen. The Emperor¡¯s plan was exactly what you needed. It gave you hope, but just as importantly, it gave you a goal. So I steered you towards it as best I could.¡±
¡°Chitra, I¡¯m not worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of people! If you hadn¡¯t... if I hadn¡¯t... then the war-¡±
¡°-would have happened anyway, Gabby,¡± Chitra chimed in, her tone surprising Gabriela with its sudden forcefulness. ¡°Don¡¯t shoulder the blame for that old man¡¯s decisions. This was not your fault.¡±
¡°Huh? But without me, the Ubrans couldn¡¯t have invaded! Redwater Castle...¡±
¡°Would have fallen soon enough. Remember General Arrino¡¯s horrid creations? Those are the incomplete results of the Empire¡¯s program to create a weapon capable of destroying that fortress¡¯s famously unbreakable walls. I first heard rumors about them over seven years before you appeared!¡± She put her hand on Gabby¡¯s shoulder and lightly pulled her closer, gently but firmly holding Gabby¡¯s head up with her other hand so that their gazes locked. ¡°If you understand one thing, make it this: all your appearance did was move the invasion up two or perhaps three years, and your involvement in the war saved more lives than you realize. The invasion of Gustil alone would have brought about the same number of deaths as all of your war. By breaking the Gustilians so early and bringing about their surrender, you rescued countless people from a dreadful fate.¡±
¡°I... I can¡¯t accept that, I¡¯m sorry,¡± Gabby replied. ¡°I still have enough blood on my hands to fill a sea. I can¡¯t pretend otherwise...¡±
¡°I¡¯m not asking you to,¡± Chitra told her, taking her hand and leading her to the bed so they both sat down beside each other. ¡°But if you want to feel guilt, feel it for the right reasons. Let it be because of the people who died to your blade, not because of some false notion that every single death from the war was your doing. If you are going to torment yourself, at least do it for the right reasons.¡±
¡°I just... even if you say that... my actions... they cannot be forgiven so easily.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not saying that either. I¡¯m not saying that you should just toss your burdens aside, I¡¯m saying that you should not be so willing to carry burdens you do not deserve. And you don¡¯t have to carry them alone. You have friends now, don¡¯t you?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Sure you do, you have me.¡±
¡°But are we friends now?¡±
¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I be?¡± Chitra asked.
¡°Because being my friend was your job. You¡¯re not being tasked to be my friend anymore.¡±
¡°That just means that now I can be your friend of my own free will!¡± Chitra giggled. ¡°You realize that I could have gone pretty much anywhere other than here, right? Why do you think I came to Otharia?¡±
¡°Because I was here?¡±
Chitra pulled Gabby in for a warm hug. ¡°It wasn¡¯t because of the local cuisine, I can tell you that for sure,¡± she chuckled.
This time, Gabby hugged back. Her heart felt somewhat settled now. Knowing of Chitra¡¯s suspicions and motivations back during Gabby¡¯s first days in Scyria darkened her feelings, but one truth shone brightly through that darkness: Chitra had chosen her. She¡¯d defied her master¡¯s orders and chosen Gabby despite that it would cost her nearly everything. And for that, Gabby would always be happy to see her.
¡°Oh!¡± she gasped with a start. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I have to go! Do you have a place to stay?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I won¡¯t have issues with lodging,¡± the former Batranala assured her. ¡°Have somewhere to be?¡±
¡°I¡¯m leaving for Stragma in a few minutes,¡± Gabby explained as she quickly tucked several changes of clothes in a sack. ¡°I should be back in a few days, hopefully.¡±
¡°Are you running? Or taking that flying machine?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not up to running across entire continents anymore,¡± Gabby informed her with a sad chuckle.
¡°So you¡¯ve truly started working with Lord Ferros, hm? I must admit, I found the idea impossible when I first heard it. The look in your eyes when you left to kill him was one of incredible malice. I¡¯m amazed to find that he¡¯s not only still alive, but you¡¯re working with him too.¡±
¡°It¡¯s a long story. The people here are... strange. I¡¯ll have to introduce you when I get back. You¡¯re going to need a valid explanation for how you got past the border, though. How did you get in, actually?¡±
Chitra just smiled coyly. ¡°That¡¯s a secret,¡± she teased as she pulled Gabby in for a tighter, more intimate hug. ¡°It¡¯s good to see you again, Gabby. I was worried about you. I was hoping we could have a chance to catch up when I first came here.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry I ruined it.¡±
¡°No, this was something that needed to happen. I¡¯m glad we got through it. We can catch up when you get back.¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± Gabby agreed as Chitra released her. She bent back down to grab more stuff.
¡°Well then,¡± Chitra said as she sashayed to the door. ¡°I¡¯ll leave you to your packing. I hope you have a good trip.¡±
A moment later and she was gone. Gabby followed not long after, and after a short talk with the matron, made her way back to Blake¡¯s fortress.
Lying on her back in her cabin on the Flying Toaster, Gabby kept her eyes shut and focused on her breathing.
In.
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Out.
In.
Out.
Slowly, she felt the stress recede, the pounding in her mind fading to a manageable level but only that far. It never went away entirely while she was inside this blasted thing. Only solid ground could provide a true cure.
Gabby supposed it was humorous, in a dark and sad sort of way: Gabriela Carreno, the strongest person in the world by most metrics, able to stare death in the face but reduced to a whimpering puddle by a simple fear of heights. The realm¡¯s mightiest warrior, afraid of a simple fall, one she¡¯d be able to walk away from unharmed no less.
It was that last bit that stabbed at her the most. For anybody else, a fear of heights was understandable; fearing things that could kill you was only natural, after all. But she had nothing to fear from a fall of any height, and yet the fear, in its crippling intensity, remained.
She¡¯d overcome that fear through sheer determination before for short spurts, like each time she¡¯d needed to climb a cliffside while surmounting the Divide, but circumstances were different now. Back then she¡¯d possessed an unfailing drive to return home, and there¡¯d been valleys where she could relax for a while and build up her courage for the next cliff. She no longer had that powerful drive, and there was no resting up here on Blake¡¯s blimp. The closest thing to rest she could get was here in her small quarters, but the sway of the floor beneath her and the low hum of the propellers keeping the craft moving made sure she was aware of the large gap between her and the ground at all times.
She still tried her best, hoping that prolonged exposure would dull the bite, but had found little success so far. She could stay near the center of the main cabin for a few hours before the mounting panic became too much for her to handle and she needed to retreat back to her cabin, but the closer she got to the windows, the worse she felt. Only the fact that the main cabin was fully enclosed kept her from avoiding the place altogether.
A series of loud knocks brought her back to reality.
¡°Gaaabbbyyyyy! Come out and see this!¡± called Sofie¡¯s voice from the other side of the metal door.
Gabby held back a groan. One would think that, with only her, Sofie, and Blake aboard the airship, there would be enough room for her to be left alone. Apparently not. ¡°No thanks,¡± she called back.
¡°Come on, Gabby! You don¡¯t want to miss this, I promise! Just for a little!¡±
Grumbling to herself, she levered herself up off the bed and plodded to the door. The metal slid aside, and Gabby stared at Sofie¡¯s excited face with tired eyes. ¡°What is it?¡±
Sofie grabbed her hand and led her in a half-walk half-jog towards the front of the craft. Gabby could feel the stress bubbling up again just from the act of getting near those windows, growing stronger and stronger. Then they were in the main cabin. Her legs started feeling shaky as Sofie dragged her towards the left windows, where Blake was standing and staring out at something.
Then Gabby saw it and forgot all about her fears.
Off to the left of the airship stood a tree that defied logic. Utterly massive and mind-boggling in scale, it reached far up into the predawn sky, as if trying to touch the stars. With how tall it was, Gabby felt like it just might be able to.
¡°I just... how?!¡± Blake wondered.
¡°You¡¯ve said that at least 5 times already,¡± Sofie informed him with a smirk.
¡°But how?! How can a living thing be this big without collapsing on itself?! It¡¯s so tall that we can¡¯t even fly to the top! It¡¯s taller than the ship¡¯s maximum altitude!¡±
¡°What is that?¡± Gabby asked, preferring the simpler questions.
¡°That¡¯s Ruresni, the Mother Tree, heart of the forest,¡± Sofie told her. ¡°The Stragmans revere it as something akin to a god.¡±
The entire towering plant glowed with a soft, spectral blue light, lighting up the forest below. The glow came from all over the trunk, but it felt to Gabby like it truly emanated from somewhere within, beneath the bark. Looking closer, she could see patches of slightly brighter luminescence slowly flowing up the tree toward the colossal canopy far above, which itself had to be a dozen kilometers wide. That canopy was perhaps the prettiest of all, each of the thousands of leaves glowing on their own, their individual brightness spiking and fading, almost like they each had their own slow heartbeat. The way their independent beats created a sparkle effect reminded Gabby of Christmas lights back home.
¡°It¡¯s beautiful,¡± Gabby whispered as she took in the sight.
¡°Kutrad has dragons, Stragma has this...¡± Blake muttered. He let out an amused snort. ¡°I really picked the wrong place to conquer. No catgirls, no elves, nothing. Botched it big time.¡±
A large, dark shape buzzed across their vision, passing just a handful of meters from the airship. The three of them stared at the sudden distraction as it banked away, its pair of chitinous wings pushing it higher as it headed towards Ruresni.
¡°Was that a beetle the size of a bus?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°I think maybe we should get some distance,¡± Blake said as he strode towards the controls, the amazement in his voice now replaced by a sudden urgency. ¡°The Toaster does not have the lift to carry something like that if it lands on us.¡±
Seizing the controls, he kicked the motors into high gear, turning the craft north and accelerating at high speeds.
And with that, the magic vanished. The spell broken, Gabby fell to her hands and knees and vomited onto the cabin floor.
¡°Ugh, gross,¡± Blake whined.
¡°After Ruresni, this just seems so...,¡± Blake said as he and Sofie stared down at the city of Kukego below.
¡°Normal?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°Boring.¡± Blake corrected.
¡°Yeah, Kukego is definitely less... special than the others, I guess. It¡¯s nowhere near as cool as the one they use in the autumn, that¡¯s for sure,¡± Sofie elaborated.
Gabby, for her part, had risked a single peek a minute ago and now was stuck on her back in the center of the cabin, taking deep breaths and trying to not vomit twice on the same day.
What she¡¯d glimpsed in that short moment before vertigo had taken hold was a sprawling city that very much resembled the sort of city that could exist on Earth: thousands of buildings, few more than two stories tall, spreading out in all directions. Even the trees here were smaller than the rest of the forest.
¡°I¡¯m just glad they¡¯re still here,¡± Sofie remarked.
¡°What do you mean by that?¡± Blake inquired warily.
¡°Ah, nothing. It¡¯s just that last year they left Krose, their summer city, way earlier than they were supposed to because the ronutepos migrated early without warning. That sort of thing apparently had never happened before, but it did, so, you know...¡±
¡°So they move every season because of migrations?¡± Gabby wondered from the floor.
¡°Basically,¡± Sofie explained. ¡°I think it¡¯s a combination of the threat the migrating animals present and just a respect for the rhythms of the forest. Like, I bet if they really wanted to, the Stragmans could wipe out the ronutepos. Look how many people are down there.¡±
¡°What is going to chase them out of this place?¡± Blake asked.
¡°Well, assuming Tehlmar wasn¡¯t lying to freak me out, the reason is, uh...¡± She gulped. ¡°...a ravenous swarm of centipede-like bugs that eat every living thing, plant or animal. A swarm so big that it looks like a writhing sea.¡±
¡°Yeah, I¡¯d move too,¡± Blake said with a nod. He turned to Gabby, a look resembling concern on his face, though Gabby wasn¡¯t sure if he was worried about her or the possibility that she would puke on his floor again. ¡°Feeling ready yet?¡±
¡°Maybe,¡± she allowed. ¡°I¡¯m worried about the trip down, though.¡±
¡°Yeah, loading and unloading you is an adventure, that¡¯s for sure,¡± he sniffed. ¡°You squeezed the railing so hard on the way up this time that you¡¯d think it was made of aluminum foil. Actually... maybe we can use that to our advantage. Come on.¡±
His helmet forming around his head, he marched out of the room with a purpose. Gabby and Sofie followed, and the three of them split up to go to their respective cabins to fetch anything they might need below. For Gabby, that meant the Sword of Eternity. A moment later, she met the others in front of the door to the loading platform.
¡°Alright, everybody in,¡± Blake said, waving the others past as the door opened, holding what looked like a large skitter leg in one hand and an even larger chunk of metal and crystal in the other.
Gabby braced herself for a dizzying sight and a blast of wind but then remembered that the platform¡¯s dock was fully covered. The wind and the drop wouldn¡¯t show itself until the floor beneath them opened up.
¡°You stand closest to the elevator door,¡± Blake told her, holding the leg out in front of her horizontally. The metal shifted, lengthening into a bar that melded with the side of the compartment and formed a sort of rail about ten centimeters thick right at chest height. ¡°This is your anxiety bar.¡± Before she could say anything, the gate to the platform slid shut and the bottom opened to reveal the massive drop between them and the ground below.
Gabby let out an ¡°EEP!¡± and squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could as the elevator began its slow, swaying descent. Her hands involuntarily clenched around the bar, the metal quickly growing hot within her palms. She tried to control her breathing, keeping it slow and steady, but as the descent continued her control began to slip more and more. By the time the platform mercifully touched down on solid ground, she found herself nearly frothing at the mouth. Meanwhile, the metal within her grasp creaked and squealed as she squeezed it harder and harder.
Gabby¡¯s eyes shot open, her mind barely registering the thousands of battle-ready soldiers surrounding the elevator. Kicking the elevator door straight off its railing, she leapt out onto the hard, blissfully stable earth in front of her. Her breath rushing wildly in and out and her heart beating a thousand beats a minute, she unclenched her hands, releasing what remained of the ¡°anxiety bar¡±. The bar, twisted and mangled with ten newly-created finger-shaped grooves, clanged against the ground by her feet.
Her mind far more settled than a moment ago, Gabby took a look around again. The soldiers had taken on a more defensive stance, rows of spears pointing her way. Was it just her imagination, or had they all taken a step or two back?
¡°Stand down, Gabriela. We are not here to fight... for now,¡± Blake commanded as he stepped out of the elevator, his voice loud enough for the assembled Stragman soldiers to hear.
All of a sudden, Gabby¡¯s confusion shifted to understanding and anger as she realized Blake¡¯s whole purpose with the bar and the rest. He¡¯d used her, used her panic to his, or perhaps their, advantage. By the end of the descent, she¡¯d been just barely holding herself together and had rushed out in a near panic, not really thinking clearly.
The Stragmans, however, saw a wild-eyed, violent, and aggressive woman who¡¯d just crushed metal with her bare hands. Her misgivings aside, she couldn¡¯t deny that, as introductions went, it definitely served its purpose. She could see the newfound wariness in the eyes of the soldiers surrounding them, even the leaders.
¡°I am Ikal Fernfeather-hono, high general of Stragma!¡± the most important looking man proclaimed, holding his head high, though Gabby caught even him stealing a concerned glance at her and the Sword of Eternity strapped to her back. ¡°Who are you to arrive without notice and impose yourself upon our people?! State your business!¡±
Gabby heard soft snickering behind her. ¡°Oh man, I¡¯ve been waiting to say this for so long,¡± Blake muttered before clearing his throat. ¡°I am Lord Ferros, ruler of Otharia! Take me to your leader!¡±
¡°That little, scum-sucking, bottom-feeding, qirnaz-licking runt!¡± The table in the center of the meeting hall shattered, a large, rugged wooden club driven through its center. ¡°After all I did for him, he goes and blabs to the first person he sees! I thought spies were supposed to know how to keep their bloody mouths shut!¡±
To say that Akhustal Palebane, leader of Stragma by right of strength, was taking the news poorly was the understatement of the year. She strode back and forth, her movements filled with barely contained fury. The other Stragmans, which consisted of the general from earlier and two others who had not been introduced.
Blake had taken his large chunk of tucrenyx with cantacrenyx crystals and constructed a chair out of it, upon which he now lounged, seemingly unperturbed. For their part, Sofie sat atop a small pile of fur-lined cushions, her eyes not leaving the massive club in the Chos¡¯s hands as the giant of a woman paced around the room, while Gabby stood beside Blake, her eyes following the movements of all the assembled Stragmans, watching for anything that might mean the start of a fight.
The Stragman leader had made no mention of Gabby or Sofie¡¯s presence, seemingly too angry with the purpose of their visit to do much more than rant at Blake. The wisdom of leaving the elf back in Wroetin made itself more apparent with each passing moment.
¡°The people who know of this are but a handful and none of them will talk. I promise this with the utmost certainty,¡± Blake assured her as he glanced at Sofie and Gabriela. ¡°Furthermore, you have my word that nothing we speak of today will leave this room.¡±
The Chos rolled her eyes. ¡°Your word is worth less than you believe. And what of the person you wish to bring back? Because I know that is why you are here. Are you going to keep that person within this room forever too? Their presence alone is more than enough to reveal our secrets!¡±
¡°Perhaps not,¡± Blake replied. ¡°The person in question is a child, one whose exposure to the public was largely limited. And for those who do know of her, I have what I believe to be a simple and effective solution.¡±
¡°And what would that be?¡±
¡°I take credit for it.¡±
Gabby¡¯s gaze went toward Blake for the first time since they¡¯d entered the room, his suggestion throwing her into confusion. Luckily, she wasn¡¯t the only one.
¡°Explain,¡± the Chos commanded with a skeptical raise of an eyebrow.
¡°I am the man who commands hoards of metal beasts that somehow live without breathing and move without a pulse. I am the man who conquered an entire nation on my own and built an entire fortress within a mere few hours from which I rule. I am the man who can fly. Why could I not also be the man who brought a child back to life? The Otharians fear me, in part because they believe that I am capable of anything. If the rest of the world does not, then it is only because they are not yet familiar with my work.¡±
¡°Hmph. You think far too highly of yourself,¡± Palebane snorted. ¡°Let us say that I decide that your idea has merit. All that would mean is that I would consider it for the right price. But I doubt you can offer something worth that price.¡±
¡°I assured you that your words would not leave this room. Can you give me the same assurance?¡± Blake asked.
The giant woman grunted her assent.
¡°Very well,¡± he continued with a nod. ¡°I understand that the forest is a dangerous place. I am willing to offer several of my creations for protection and combat.¡±
The Chos laughed derisively. ¡°Stragma does not need your paltry ¡®protection¡¯. I have seen your creations, and they would be useless within the forest. They would become entangled within the vines within hours.¡±
¡°Then perhaps a small fleet of these,¡± Blake offered, pulling some metal from his chair to create one of his ¡®flitters¡¯, the small flying drones he used in Otharia. ¡°They can send images back to the user, allowing you to scout and monitor the forest from above without risking your people.¡±
¡°No device that size would last more than a week before being eaten. You underestimate the size and speed of those that dwell within Stragma.¡±
¡°Hmmmm. A tough problem, then. It seems then that I have no choice but to bring up your husband.¡±
The other Stragmans immediately tensed, their gazes shooting towards the Chos, who had frozen mid-step with her back turned to them. Gabby tensed as well as she saw the woman¡¯s grip on her club tighten.
¡°What did you say?¡± Palebane hissed.
¡°I said, let us talk of your crippled husband.¡±
Even though Gabriela was expecting it from the giant¡¯s body language, she barely managed to react fast enough to place herself and the Sword of Eternity between Blake and the massive club hurtling down towards his head. Crystal met wood and Gabby¡¯s eye shot open wide as the seemingly normal club hit her with a seemingly impossible force. Given how fast the Chos had struck, she would have thought the weapon as hollow and light as one of those plastic baseball bats children played with, but now it crashed down with the momentum of a freight train, threatening to drive her through the floor.
In that smallest fraction of a second, she felt the bones in her arms crack and her body begin to falter under the power. She wouldn¡¯t let that happen. With a pulse of her will, her bones healed and her body thrummed with strength. The sword and club came to a halt just two centimeters from where they¡¯re first struck.
¡°...oh hoooohhhhhh? And who is this?¡± the Chos wondered, curiosity pushing out her anger, at least temporarily.
¡°This is my associate,¡± Blake explained, seemingly unbothered by what had just happened. ¡°You may know her as ¡®The Monster¡¯, the woman who single-handedly brought Gustil to its knees.¡±
Pulling her club away, the Stragman stepped back, her eyes taking in Gabby¡¯s form from head to toe. ¡°I will give you one more chance,¡± she informed them. ¡°If you wish to live to see the sunrise tomorrow, I suggest you choose your following words with care this time.¡±
¡°My apologies. I was tactless,¡± Blake admitted. ¡°My knowledge of his situation is sadly limited to only what our mutual friend has told me. From what I understand, your husband was injured sometime back in such a way that he no longer has the use of his legs, and that it will be some time before the injuries heal and he returns to the man he once was. I was told that his mobility is very limited and that he is struggling. I can help.¡±
¡°You claim you can heal him?¡± the Chos scoffed.
¡°No, but I can create something that, with a bit of practice, will let him move around as before. He will be able to live a normal life until his body can fully recover.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t believe you,¡± came the response.
For the first time, Blake moved, his legs pulling in as he leaned forward, suddenly more serious. ¡°I ask again, nothing will leave this room, correct?¡±
The huge woman stared him in eyes, or at least the red glowing crystals on his mask that served as eyes.
¡°Fine, you have my word as the Chos,¡± the giant eventually told him.
¡°Well then, observe,¡± the Earthling told her. Lifting his left arm, he proceeded to do a series of complicated movements, bending the arm this way and that, thrusting it forward and back and swinging it around, all while moving the wrist, hand, and fingers. Just as it seemed that the Stragman was going to cut him off, he thrust his arm out once more at a forty-five-degree angle from his body, holding level with the floor.
A soft hiss emerged from the armor around the arm as tiny cracks revealed themselves and the armor opened up, the pieces lifting away like petals on a blooming flower. Within the armor, to the shock of the Stragmans, was not flesh but machinery. One by one, layer after layer of intricate circuitry expanded out, lifting away to reveal yet another layer beneath it until all that remained was a thin rod of metal where the bone would be. All of this machinery led back to a metal cap that represented the stump of Blake¡¯s left arm.
¡°Let¡¯s just say that overcoming injury is a specialty of mine.¡±
Akhustal Palebane stepped closer, staring intently at the meticulous mechanisms whirring about. She inspected the intricate workings, following their flow from the stump to the hand for several pregnant moments until finally, she smiled.
¡°Lord Ferros, I believe we have an agreement.¡±
¡°One mobility device for your husband in exchange for one resurrection.¡±
¡°And her,¡± the Chos replied, pointing at Gabby as a wicked, feral grin sprouted on her face. ¡°I want one good fight with her, no holding back.¡±
¡°Deal,¡± Blake immediately agreed. ¡°As long as it happens when we return.¡±
Gabby stiffened at the sudden addition to the bargain and shot Blake and aggrieved glare which he ignored. Didn¡¯t she have a say in this? Nobody seemed to care if she wanted to fight for no reason. But if she refused now, it might scuttle any hopes of bringing Pari back. She was stuck!
¡°Bring the body to us and you will get your child back,¡± Palebane stated. ¡°Now go, I have little time to waste with those who think they can show up at my doorstep unannounced.¡±
With that command, Gabby and the others found themselves ushered from the room and back outside. The Stragmans outside formed up around them and sped them to the spot where they¡¯d touched down less than an hour ago, and, one harrowing trip back up into the air, Gabby found herself back aboard the Flying Toaster. She let out a frazzled huff and grabbed Blake by the arm, throwing him against the hallway wall and pinning him there with a firm palm to the chest.
¡°What was that down there? Were you trying to get yourself killed?!¡± she growled as Sofie made herself scarce. ¡°And just volunteering me without my consent? What made you think that was acceptable?¡±
¡°Sorry, sorry,¡± Blake responded, holding his hands up in contrition. ¡°I didn¡¯t want it to seem too planned, so I thought to keep it to myself.¡±
¡°Keep what to yourself?¡±
¡°The truth is, my help with her husband¡¯s injuries was never the best thing we had to offer. That was always you.¡±
¡°What are you talking about?¡± she demanded, pushing him a little harder.
¡°Arlette¡¯s boyfriend told me something interesting, something I could kind of feel since I first met her but didn¡¯t really fully understand: she¡¯s bored.¡±
¡°Bored?!¡±
¡°Bored! She¡¯s almost definitely the strongest non-Earthling person alive, and she hates it. She¡¯s fought gigantic beasts, she¡¯s fought powerful warriors, she¡¯s done it all and none of it poses a challenge for her anymore. The thrill of life is gone. She craves an opponent that can make her try her hardest for once. That¡¯s you. You¡¯re the one person perfectly suited to give her what she wants.¡±
The gears in Gabby¡¯s head began spinning furiously. ¡°So, what, you purposely made her angry so she¡¯d try to hit you and I would get in the way?¡±
¡°Exactly. Gotta show off the goods, you know? Really get her attention in a way that words couldn¡¯t. Sell her on her overt desire to help her husband, while really appealing to the desire that¡¯s burned inside her longest of all.¡±
¡°And you didn¡¯t tell me ahead of time. You weren¡¯t even close to being honest with me at all.¡±
¡°Like I said, it couldn¡¯t feel like a setup. Just because these people are nomads living in a rainforest doesn¡¯t mean they¡¯re stupid.¡±
¡°You had no idea if I would save you. I could have just not moved fast enough. I could have not bothered at all.¡±
¡°You wouldn¡¯t have, because you want Pari back and you need me for that,¡± Blake said matter-of-factly. He placed a hand¡ªhis real one¡ªon her shoulder. ¡°You want honesty? Alright. For a long time, I hated you more than I¡¯ve ever hated somebody in my life. You drove me insane. No matter what I did, no matter how many times I blew your damned head right off, you kept coming back. You kept getting in my way and ruining my plans. Just the mention of you was enough to piss me off.
¡°But now that I¡¯ve come to know you more, I get it. You just refuse to give up, ever. As long as there¡¯s even the dimmest light at the end of the tunnel, nothing will stand in your way¡ªnot even death itself, no matter how many times you have to pull yourself back together. I¡¯ve never seen somebody with your level of determination, and you know what? As much as I hate to admit it, even when I was the one on the receiving end I couldn¡¯t help but respect the hell out of that.
¡°So no, I wasn¡¯t worried. I¡¯m still not. As long as you need me alive, I¡¯m the safest motherfucker in the world.¡±
With that said, he removed Gabby¡¯s now-listless palm from his chest and walked away, leaving her to stare blankly at his back.
"Are you sure that you don''t want to stay here?" Gabriela asked for the third time.
"Yes! I''ll be careful, so stop asking that!" Sofie huffed through her double scarfs. Between the scarfs and the thick coat and the hood, it seemed that, after the last trip into these mountains, she¡¯d decided she¡¯d rather melt than freeze.
"I''m ready," Blake called from within a crowd of skitters twenty meters away. The crowd was largely made up of the best, most powerful skitters that Blake had been able to fit on the Flying Toaster while still keeping the craft in the air. The one exception to this was the hulking behemoth in the middle of the pack, a massive six-legged machine that had to be at least ten meters tall.
It was this huge robot that had held them up long enough for Gabby to begin to fret. Without the room or lifting capacity for the materials, Blake had needed to build the thing from local materials here at the foot of the Krekard Mountains. Judging by all the grumbling he¡¯d done and how long it had taken, the area contained far less of the materials he needed than Otharia. But he¡¯d insisted on completing the machine, saying that they needed something big enough to go toe-to-toe with their adversary.
Gabby was no expert on robots, modern weaponry, or dragons for that matter, but she had to admit that the robot looked like it might be able to do the job. Like the other robots, this one sported two gatling cannons capable of spewing forth an unholy amount of metal, but the barrels on this one were each over a meter wide, wide enough that Gabby could fit inside them with room to spare. The metal monstrosity also featured two huge clamp-like claws at the end of two thick, reinforced metal arms, likely added by Blake to hold the dragon in place while a pair of ten-meter-long chainsaws on separate arms cut it to pieces. The entire machine shone with a bright white reflective finish, as did the smaller ones around it.
Blake was serious this time.
¡°You like my Super Mega Hyper Skitter Deluxe Mark Five?¡± he asked, the pride in his voice making her imagine the smug grin behind his mask.
Okay, maybe not as serious as she thought.
¡°What sort of name is that? Just call it a Super Skitter, nerd,¡± Sofie snorted. ¡°You must have the worst naming sense in the world.¡±
¡°What are you talking about? I¡¯m great at naming!¡± he protested.
¡°You named your zeppelin after a screensaver that was created years before I was born because you thought that naming it with a reference that literally nobody on this plane of existence other than yourself would understand was a great idea and now you end up having to explain the reference to everybody,¡± she pointed out. ¡°You do understand that references are only good if there¡¯s somebody out there who can get it, right?¡±
¡°Whatever,¡± he harrumphed. ¡°Let¡¯s just go before we lose too much daylight.¡±
This time, the three of them took separate transport skitters, the pack of gleaming protectors surrounding them all as they worked their way deeper into the mountains for most of the afternoon. They kept the chatter to a minimum, the prospect of a sudden attack hanging over all of their heads.
All of them remembered the last time, with the sudden appearance of the dragon high in the sky, its devastating approach, and the fight that followed. The memory kept them sharp and alert, their heads on swivels as they scanned the skies for the slightest hint of danger. They still weren¡¯t ready.
This time, the dragon didn¡¯t come from on high. It didn¡¯t let out a booming roar from miles away, announcing itself to the world. The first they knew of its presence was when the beam lanced in from the right, slicing through four skitters in a single moment. Then it was already upon them, charging towards their side, just meters away.
To her credit, Gabriela reacted quickly for somebody caught flatfooted, grabbing the Sword of Eternity and leaping from her transport towards their adversary. Blade raised high, she brought it down with powerful authority upon the dragon, who came to a halt and raised his left hand to block while his right reached into a pocket on a crude vest it wore around its torso. Gabby had just enough time to notice the vest and wonder as to its presence and purpose before her sword sliced into the dragon¡¯s left hand continuing down lengthwise deep into his wrist.
With a roar of anger mixed with pain, the dragon slammed his hand and arm into the ground below, smashing Gabriela into the hard rock with tremendous force. She felt her bones crush and organs mash, but her healing was already active and within a moment, just as her blade fully slid from the dragon¡¯s flesh, she was back to full health.
That was when the dragon threw what he¡¯d fetched with his right hand at her. The object, a capsule of some sort, struck the ground and split open, releasing a large cloud of rainbow-colored gas. Before Gabby could even react, the gas enveloped her, and her world devolved into one of nothing but pure agony.
Every part of Gabriela¡¯s body screamed as the gas consumed her flesh, eating away at her skin, her muscles, her bones. Her sight was one of the first things to go, her eyes taken with terrifying swiftness. Smell vanished just as quickly. The last thing she heard was a sucking sound, and then her eardrums were no more. All she was left with was touch. Terrible, horrible touch.
She recognized this pain. It resembled what she¡¯d felt when she¡¯d stuck her arm into the vat of goo in the dragon¡¯s lab, within which Pari¡¯s corpse had floated. At the time, it had felt like her arm was being ripped apart cell by cell, molecule by molecule. It had been easily the second most painful thing she¡¯d ever felt. This felt like that, only hundreds of times worse. It was like every atom in her body was being wiped from existence. Gabriela had thought that she would never again feel anything comparable to the torture she¡¯d felt during her transportation to Scyria. She knew now that she¡¯d been wrong.
Her mouth opened involuntarily to let out a cry of anguish but found that there was no air in her lungs with which to do so. Everything around her, within her, and of her was being eaten away by the rainbow death, and Gabby could feel that her very self would soon follow.
No! She couldn¡¯t die yet! She still needed to atone for her sins! She still needed to help save Pari! She still needed to reunite with her children! She couldn¡¯t give up now!
Crimson smoke sprung into being, fighting against the cloud surrounding her that she could only feel. But for the first time, her healing struggled to work, its gains battling the mist¡¯s damage to a standstill. Slowly, agonizingly, she crawled forward, the last of her muscles straining to move her more than a few centimeters at a time. Determination drove her, as it always did, but for the first time since the discovery of her powers, that determination was joined by a visceral fear. Fear not just of her death, but of utterly ceasing to be. That primal terror encompassed her, clinging to her in gaseous form, and it drove her desperately forward, centimeter by centimeter.
Time seemed without meaning within the deathly fog, with no way to experience it other than through the flow of pain and the feeling of the ground beneath her being eaten out from under her as she tried to escape. It felt like she was trapped forever in this terrible hell, a boundless dimension of suffering. Was this a preview of her future in the afterlife? Or had she already died and ended up in the place below? She didn¡¯t know anymore.
Then, after some indeterminate amount of time, she felt the pain in the tips of her fingers on her left hand subside. The pain lessened further as she pushed herself forward more until her entire hand didn¡¯t hurt anymore. She felt something grab her hand and tug and then the pain was gone as if it had never existed in the first place. That was always how it was with her healing; the pain lived on only in her memories. This was one she would never forget.
¡°Get up, quick!¡± she heard Blake say from beside her.
Gabriela opened her newly reformed eyes to find what looked like a war zone. Pieces of ruined skitters dotted the landscape, surrounded by small craters and random little fires still burning on bare rock. Blake¡¯s vaunted ¡°Super Duper¡± skitter laid crippled on the ground, its three left legs seemingly ripped from their sockets, if the torn metal was any indication. Strangely, apart from that and its guns being melted into slag, the machine appeared largely undamaged. What¡¯s more, eight of the more normal skitters were still walking around, seemingly untouched. Had the dragon forgone its rampage this time? In fact...
¡°Where is it?¡± she asked, looking frantically around for their adversary but finding nothing.
¡°There,¡± Blake pointed.
Gabby followed his indication, looking far off in the distance and spotting the massive beast, now tiny in her vision, flying low. The dragon banked and she lost sight of it.
¡°It¡¯s running away?¡± she wondered, confused.
¡°No, Sofie ran that way,¡± Blake told her. ¡°I need to fix my big bot¡¯s legs. You go after them, I¡¯ll catch up.¡±
Gabby looked back at the growing cloud of rainbow gas behind her. The cloud was getting lower and lower as it ate its way into the earth, digging a deeper and wider hole with every passing second. Wind pushed against her as it rushed towards the pit, the gas constantly eating away the air as well. She must have crawled up the sloped side, unable to tell that she was moving upward thanks to the destruction of her inner ear. With growing dismay, she realized that the Sword of Eternity was still down in the growing pit, if it even still existed at all.
The dragon was already out of sight. Her sword was gone, at least for the moment. Blake wouldn¡¯t have his giant robot ready in time. None of this would work.
Rushing over to the lopsided oversized machine, Gabby ripped off one of the remaining legs.
¡°HEY! What are you doing?!¡± Blake cried.
¡°Saving our butts,¡± she replied as she hefted the now legless war machine over her head. With a mighty push, she took off after the dragon, carrying the Super Skitter along for the ride.
She was naked again, she realized, but such things had stopped bothering her long ago. The rocks slicing into her bare feet would normally have bothered her, but after the torment she¡¯d just endured, the pain in her feet might as well have been tickles for all she cared. It was nothing now, her ability repairing each foot before it could even touch ground again.
Finding the dragon proved rather simple. All she had to do was follow the trail of bubbling puddles filled with multi-hued blood eating through the ground. The question wasn¡¯t if she would find the dragon, however, but if she could do so in time.
Several twists and turns later, she spotted the behemoth to the west, though at that point she didn¡¯t need the blood trail. All she had to do was follow the noise. From her vantage point, she could see several large holes in the beast¡¯s left flank, as well as a long but relatively shallow gash along its back. Both injuries appeared quite painful and possibly debilitating, but at least by the way the thing moved, Gabby saw no sign that they bothered him at all.
The dragon stood on a rocky mountain slope beside a crushed skitter, having come down to land at some point after she¡¯d lost sight of him. His body facing away from her, she didn¡¯t see Sofie anywhere. But then, as she steered around and over an inconveniently placed boulder, Gabby spotted Sofie¡¯s highly animated head sticking out of the top of his right fist.
The dragon roared in Sofie¡¯s face, his fury palpable.
¡°WRETCHED CRAWLER! ENOUGH!¡± The dragon raged, holding the fist up to mouth height.
Sofie, for her part, continued to cry and beg and do what just about anybody in the grasp of a hundred-meter-long biological killing machine would do. But her pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears. The very sight of the girl in his grasp seemed to be sending him into an incoherent rage. His wings spread out and he leapt back into the air, taking her with him.
Gabby couldn¡¯t afford to waste any more time getting closer. With a grunt, she reared back and hurled the Super Whatever Skitter through the air towards the dragon.
The beast didn¡¯t notice the incoming projectile until it was too late. The impact of the robot¡¯s weighty fuselage onto the dragon¡¯s back sent the creature reeling through the air. Still quite functional, the sensors of the Super Skitter detected the dragon it was crashing into, and it reacted with the sort of speed only machines could possess. First, its two powerful claw arms reached out and clamped down onto the bones at the top of the dragon¡¯s wings. Then, with an unholy whir, the Super Skitter¡¯s two gigantic chainsaws kicked into action, and, exacting revenge for its missing limbs, it absolutely went to town on the base of each wing.
The dragon howled as it crashed into the earth, its cry rebounding from mountainside to mountainside as it thrashed about trying to dislodge its attacker. The robot was not to be denied, however, and hung on as thick lines of rainbow blood sprayed out towards the dragon¡¯s rear, the durable and powerful saws digging deep into flesh and bone.
Gabby rushed forward as, in its desperate struggle, the dragon¡¯s grip on Sofie faltered and she fell toward the rocky ground and landed awkwardly. Gabby fought back a flinch as Sofie¡¯s head struck the hard ground. A fraction of a moment later, Gabby was beside her, picking her now limp body up to find the back of her head bleeding but the damage not as severe as feared. It looked bad, she couldn¡¯t deny, but at least not life-threatening. She¡¯d take that for the moment.
The sound of multiple guns firing brought her back to the battle still raging nearby. The eight remaining battle skitters had caught up with her. They began unloading their full power upon the preoccupied beast, causing it increasing agony. Another shape sped around the pack: Blake driving one of the transport skitters.
¡°Come on!¡± he shouted, though Gabby needed no such encouragement. She leapt up onto the boxy six-legged robot as it sped by, hopping down into the cabin beside Blake. Gently placing Sofie¡¯s unconscious body leaning against the back cabin wall, she sank down against a wall herself, her spirit drained.
She felt terrible. Not physically, but spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. What a disaster this had been.
They¡¯d fucked up. They¡¯d known the dragon was intelligent. They¡¯d known he was smart. And yet they¡¯d been blinded by his non-human appearance, as well as his rage and the brutal, almost animalistic way it had fought the last time. They¡¯d adjusted and planned for what they¡¯d fought, but never considered that he would adjust for them as well. As far as she was concerned, the dragon had done a better job.
They¡¯d come at him with better weapons. They¡¯d been on the lookout for his possible appearance. She¡¯d brought her sword. But none of that had mattered much. He¡¯d managed to successfully ambush them, closing in and striking before they even knew he was there. He¡¯d taken her out of the fight within a moment, sword and all. He¡¯d disabled Blake¡¯s weapon efficiently. They hadn¡¯t respected his intelligence enough, even though they¡¯d seen proof of it the last time.
¡°So what¡¯s the plan?¡± Gabby croaked as the skitter crested a ridge and headed down, her view of the battle behind them now blocked.
¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± Blake told her.
¡°You sure?¡± Gabby asked, listening to the pained roars of the dragon just over the ridge. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t now be the best time to get Pari, while it¡¯s busy fighting and injured? And what about my sword?¡±
¡°We¡¯ll come back for your sword later. Did you notice its eye was back? The one you ruined the last time.¡±
¡°Was it? I was a little distracted.¡±
¡°It was. That thing must be able to heal like crazy, almost like you maybe. Even my baby up on its back like that¡ªthat was a great idea, by the way¡ªwon¡¯t hold him for long. You saw how its blood was eating away at the ground, right? At some point, those saws are going to come apart, and then that will be the end of that. We probably won¡¯t beat him to his lair anyway. We¡¯d have to somehow get there, find Pari, and get out before he finds us again. He¡¯s too fast, even if my Super Skitter does manage to clip his wings. I¡¯m not risking my life any more today, not with the limited resources we have left,¡± Blake explained. ¡°Besides, we have something important we need to figure out before we even think about giving this another shot. You were on your last legs and he didn¡¯t even try to finish you off. I was giving him a hard time but he just plowed his way through and kept going.¡±
¡°He wanted her,¡± Gabby agreed.
¡°Right. The one person who didn¡¯t even try to fight him.¡±
¡°But why?¡±
Blake shook his head. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he admitted. ¡°But I think it¡¯s about time we found out.¡±
Chapter 101
Sofie sprinted through the darkness, her lungs burning, her heart quaking, her legs on the verge of giving out. The featureless void surrounding her continued onward endlessly no matter how far she went, but she didn¡¯t stop. She couldn¡¯t stop. Even without looking back, she could see the glow on the very periphery of her vision, the light cast by the baleful blaze of the dragon¡¯s anger. No matter how far she ran, no matter which way she went, it followed. And it grew closer and closer with every massive, ground-shaking step.
She was going to die. She could feel it, the inevitability of it only growing stronger with each shuddering breath she took. Still, she pushed on. Something inside her refused to just give up no matter what.
It didn¡¯t matter.
A clawed hand, each finger larger than her entire body, reached out from the fires behind her and wrapped her entire body in its scalding embrace. The fingers constricted around her, squeezing her entire body like a boa constrictor. She screamed as her skin sizzled from the heat within its grasp.
Wreathed in its wrathful flames, the dragon was more lava made flesh than a truly living being. Its skin crackled and hissed, breaking apart as it shifted to reveal the red glow of melted stone before the surface cooled to black.
The dragon lifted her towards its snout, its maw opening to roast her with a wave of heat. She could feel its deep anger washing over her with every breath, an anger deep-rooted and seemingly implacable. But this was not some grudge against humanity. This was personal, a fury directed at her and only her. The monster¡¯s gaze bore into her, the rage she found within it focused like a blowtorch upon her very soul.
She was burning. She was melting. She was dying.
A voice rumbled through her¡ªnay, through reality itself¡ªits words felt more than heard.
¡°RELEASE PARI-CHILD!¡± it demanded, its words so overflowing with violence and malice that she could not even consider ignoring or rejecting them. But she could not comply, even if she so desired.
She just didn¡¯t understand what it wanted.
The grip on her intensified, crushing out what little air remained inside her.
¡°RELEASE PARI-CHILD, VILE FIEND!¡± it roared again, its order even louder this time.
Sofie¡¯s lips moved and desperate sounds¡ªperhaps words, perhaps not¡ªcame out. But whatever she said was not what the dragon wanted to hear. Its jaw opened even wider, giving Sofie an unobstructed view of the back of the creature¡¯s throat, where she could see a new glow growing stronger and stronger with each passing moment.
¡°WRETCHED CRAWLER! ENOUGH!¡± it thundered.
Her death had arrived. She could feel it in her bones and in her soul as the stifling, oppressive heat spiked higher and higher and higher until in one final, massive blast-
Sofie shrieked as she shot upright, her body flailing about uncontrollably in her panic before she fell from her bed and landed awkwardly and painfully upon the hard metal floor.
It took her a good five minutes to calm down enough to get her mind in order. It had all been a terrible dream, yet the pain in the back of her head was all too real. Somebody had bandaged her head, wrapping the entire thing up tight like a mummy. Whoever it was, and she had a good guess, had chosen to err on the side of too much rather than too little and then kept going down that road for another dozen kilometers.
Letting herself cool down, she started unwrapping the cloth bandages as she pieced together her situation. She remembered turning her skitter around the moment that ¡°Grandfather¡± had appeared, sending the car-sized vehicle scurrying south as quickly as it could go while Gabby and Blake put up a fight. That had been the plan all along, so she¡¯d felt no guilt over her actions, only worry for their safety. But just minutes later, as her situation had spiraled uncontrollably downward, that worry had become the last thing on her mind.
Luckily, Gabby had shown up with a mostly-intact stupidly named robot to save her. She didn¡¯t know what had taken the superwoman so long, but she¡¯d never seen anything more beautiful in her life. And then the dragon had spread his wings and taken to the skies, and Gabby had thrown the skitter, and it had connected, and they¡¯d plummeted back to the ground, and she¡¯d fallen from Grandfather¡¯s grasp, and...
And then she¡¯d woken up, left with nothing but the echoing demands of a furious dragon.
Release Pari? From what? The poor child was dead! And it wasn¡¯t like she had possession of her corpse, either¡ªhe did! If anybody should be saying to release Pari, it was her!
She shook her head. Spinning her thoughts in circles wouldn¡¯t get her anywhere. There were other things to think about for the moment.
She¡¯d woken in her tiny cabin within the Flying Toaster. This of course meant that Blake had survived the battle as well. He was the only person who could control the ship in its full capacity, and being the paranoid man he was, he liked to limit access to as much of its functionality as possible when he was present to control the ship himself.
With her head finally free of the fibrous menace that had been squeezing it so, Sofie sat down on her bed and felt around the back of her head. She carefully felt around the area with her fingers, finding swelling and a large scab. It still hurt to touch, so after a cursory examination, she stopped messing with it.
Her stomach growled, its loud insistence pushing her to, reluctantly, stand up and exit her room. Nobody else seemed to be in the sleeping quarters, so she wandered towards the front. There, in the front cabin or whatever rooms on zeppelins were called, she found Blake relaxing beside the controls, the various sticks and levers and whatnot moving on their own accord.
¡°Ah, you¡¯re finally up,¡± Blake said as she walked in.
¡°Finally?¡±
¡°You¡¯ve been out for about two days or so,¡± he told her.
¡°Oh...¡± She could wait for a few more minutes for a meal. Anything down on the surface would be better than the food they kept up here. Blake had yet to discover the secret to air conditioning and refrigeration, so the food available was mostly just some fruits they¡¯d purchased before leaving Stragma and she was in the mood for something with more protein. ¡°Where¡¯s Gabby?¡±
Blake just pointed to something behind her and Sofie turned around to find the Mexican slumped against the back wall, dead asleep.
¡°She¡¯s been a zombie for most of the trip. She¡¯ll be fine for a bit, and then it¡¯s like somebody cuts the power and she just falls asleep.¡±
¡°Is she going to be okay?¡± Sofie worried.
¡°No idea. She told me before that she has felt noticeably weaker since our battle back in the fortress. Maybe cheating death takes a toll on you that doesn¡¯t hit until later. Maybe this is just all her chickens coming home to roost.¡±
¡°I hope she gets better,¡± Sofie said with concern.
¡°Me too,¡± Blake agreed.
¡°Since when?¡± she scoffed. ¡°I thought you couldn¡¯t stand her.¡±
¡°Well, we kind of need her now to fight the Chos, don¡¯t we?¡±
¡°Does it matter? Without Pari¡¯s body, none of that matters.¡±
She rubbed some lingering gunk from her eyes as she glanced out the window. A moment later, her half-asleep brain registered what she¡¯d seen: out on the horizon, shaded by the light of the evening sun, stood the tower of Blake¡¯s fortress.
¡°Wait, we¡¯re back in Otharia? Why?! What about Pari!?¡±
¡°Pari can wait. Right now, Gabriela and I have decided that we need to figure out your power, and I didn¡¯t want to be hovering around up there in the meantime if that murder-lizard ever decided to come after us. Gabriela said it sounded absolutely furious.¡±
Sofie blinked in incomprehension. ¡°I don¡¯t have a power, Blake. You know that.¡±
¡°Sure you do. We just don¡¯t know what it is,¡± he countered.
¡°I¡¯ve been here more than a year. If I had anything, we would have noticed it by now.¡±
¡°How often has anybody been looking out for it, though? Think about it this way. Every other Earthling we¡¯ve found has a power. Why should you be any different?¡±
¡°Even if you¡¯re right, this is a waste of time! We should be trying to get Pari back as soon as possible, not getting sidetracked!¡±
Blake shook his head. ¡°With Gabriela out like that, and you hurt, now isn¡¯t the time. And maybe your power could turn out to be useful! Don¡¯t you want to do more than just sit on the sidelines forever? Grandpa seemed to think you were the greatest threat of the three of us.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s why it went after me,¡± Sofie sighed. ¡°I think you¡¯re barking up the wrong tree here.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t care, we¡¯re doing it anyway,¡± he insisted.
¡°Since when do you get to tell me what to do?¡±
¡°Since you started mooching off me months ago.¡±
As they bickered, the tall spire of Blake¡¯s fortress came into view. Gabby woke up with a huge yawn just before they docked with the observation tower, seemingly alright to Sofie¡¯s relief. Not long after, the three of them set foot on the tower¡¯s platform to find Arlette there to greet them, the soft frown of disappointment on her face lit by the setting sun.
¡°You¡¯re back early. Too early,¡± Arlette remarked.
¡°Yeah, things got complicated,¡± Blake told her.
¡°I have some progress to report on the ink lead,¡± she told him as they all boarded the elevator.
¡°Later. Right now, we¡¯re going to figure out Sofie¡¯s power and I¡¯d like you there. I think we could use your perspective as the person who has been around her the longest,¡± Blake informed his employee.
¡°Sounds like a waste of time to me,¡± Arlette replied.
¡°See?! That¡¯s what I said!¡± Sofie chimed in.
¡°I¡¯m supposed to meet Minister Izkapts in under an hour, but if you insist...¡± Arlette continued.
¡°This is dumb! We need to recover Pari. We¡¯re just going to waste everybody¡¯s time,¡± Sofie objected.
¡°Why are you so convinced you don¡¯t have a power?¡± Gabby asked. ¡°Don¡¯t you want to have one?¡±
¡°I... I do, but...¡±
At first, when they¡¯d discovered that she couldn¡¯t even create a simple flame, something a Scyrian child could easily accomplish, she¡¯d simply assumed she had no power. Then, while being taken against her will back to Kutrad after the incident with the Mother of Nightmares, she¡¯d tried once more to discover something that could help her and her friends. After all, if the other Earth person had a crazy power, why couldn¡¯t she? But several weeks of trying hadn¡¯t accomplished anything more than convincing her that there was nothing to find. Eventually she¡¯d given up.
Secretly, deep down, a tiny spark of hope remained. She wanted to be special like the rest of them. But at the same time, if it turned out that she did actually have a potent ability, then it would mean that her time here was nothing more than a string of lost opportunities. If she had a power, then she wouldn¡¯t have been a burden. If she had a power, she could have helped people, possibly saved people. If she had a power, maybe Pari would be alive right now. She found herself dreading the possibility that she could have done so much more but hadn¡¯t.
Sofie turned away. ¡°Look, I don¡¯t know,¡± she said stiffly as the elevator opened and they all stepped out into the fortress proper. ¡°I¡¯m going to go eat something.¡±
As she took a step towards the cafeteria, a cold, metal hand wrapped around her upper left arm, its grip firm and unrelenting.
¡°Nuh-uh,¡± Blake said. ¡°No more avoiding this. We¡¯re getting it over with right now.¡±
¡°But-¡± Another loud growl from her stomach interrupted her protests.
¡°I¡¯ll go get her something to eat,¡± Arlette volunteered.
¡°Fine, meet us in sector E9,¡± Blake told her as she walked away.
¡°Sofie, please just work with us on this,¡± Gabby asked of her. ¡°You know I want Pari back just as much as anybody.¡±
¡°Yeah, stop being a fucking baby,¡± Blake added.
¡°Fuck off, Blake,¡± Sofie shot back. She sighed in resignation and turned back to Gabby. ¡°Alright. I¡¯ll try. But only because you asked nicely. Now, knock it off, Blake. Don¡¯t touch me,¡± she demanded, trying futilely to pry Blake¡¯s fingers off of her with her other hand.
¡°With pleasure,¡± Blake sniffed, releasing her arm.
The three of them proceeded through the fortress, Blake leading the way, followed by Sofie and then Gabby.
¡°So, as I told you before, Gabriela and I were talking about this while you were asleep,¡± Blake explained as they went. ¡°What we realized is that both of us came upon our powers in moments of incredible stress.¡±
Sofie didn¡¯t like the sound of that.
¡°So what we¡¯re going to do is... ah, here. This will work.¡± Blake came to a stop in the middle of a hallway beside an empty wall. Quickly, the wall flowed away to reveal a doorway that hadn¡¯t been there before. He proceeded in, and, with the help of an insistent prod from Gabby, Sofie followed. Inside, she found a large square room completely lacking in features.
¡°Has this always been here?¡± she wondered.
¡°No, I just made it now,¡± Blake admitted.
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°Ever read the X-Men?¡± he asked.
Sofie shook her head.
¡°Well,¡± he told her, ¡°let¡¯s just say that this place is based on something they have called the ¡®Danger Room.¡¯¡±
Sofie froze, her eyes flicking over to the doorway, which Gabby was strategically blocking. ¡°It¡¯s called the what?¡±
¡°Oh don¡¯t worry, the Danger Room is gonna be a grand old time, for me at least,¡± he assured her. ¡°Let¡¯s start with the buzz saws.¡±
¡°What in the world did I walk in on?¡±
The five buzz saws halted, their blades immediately coming to a stop with a loud ¡®chunk¡¯. Sofie on the other hand did not halt.
¡°Arlette, save me from these crazy people!¡± she cried, practically tackling the Scyrian in her desperation and nearly knocking over the tray of food the mercenary carried.
Arlette looked around the room, taking in the buzz saws wider than a human torso, the walls of spikes, the crystal-powered guns, and all the other dangerous implements that had chased Sofie around the room while she shrieked her head off for the last fifteen minutes.
¡°Surely there is a better way to do whatever it is that you¡¯re doing,¡± she said sternly to the others. ¡°This is beyond over the top.¡±
Blake shrugged. ¡°Maybe, but it sure wouldn¡¯t be as entertaining. It¡¯s not like she was actually going to get hurt. When I¡¯m in Hyper Mode, everything goes so slowly that I can react to anything she does. She could have jumped right into the spikes on her own and nothing would have happened to her.¡±
¡°Nothing would have happened?! Look what you did to my clothes!¡± Sofie hollered, pointing to the various parts of her outfit that had been sliced into shreds by the various deadly weapons she¡¯d had pointed her way recently.
¡°Are you cut?¡± Blake argued back. ¡°Are you hurt in any way whatsoever?¡±
Sofie could only scowl in return. She had to admit that while her clothes had taken a beating, her actual body remained unharmed.
¡°Exactly,¡± came Blake¡¯s smug response.
¡°She¡¯s right, though,¡± Gabby chimed in. ¡°It was worth a try but it didn¡¯t work.¡±
¡°No shit it didn¡¯t work, you lunatics! What did you think was going to happen?!¡± Sofie hissed, grabbing a sandwich from Arlette¡¯s tray and stuffing it into her mouth.
¡°My strength didn¡¯t become apparent to me until I had to fight off a mob of murderous villagers, and I discovered my metal control while bound by metal in a dungeon, waiting to be executed,¡± Blake said, causing Sofie to involuntarily wince. ¡°Gabby too; she stumbled upon her powers in moments of high stress and fear. It¡¯s not too out there to think that stress and pressure might bring out someone¡¯s abilities, or at least, give us a hint.¡±
¡°She¡¯s been in plenty of life-or-death situations and nothing has happened,¡± Arlette reminded them.
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¡°And that¡¯s why I wanted you here,¡± Blake informed her. ¡°Let¡¯s take a break while Sofie quells her munchies and you tell us all about your adventures with her.¡±
¡°Alright. Let¡¯s see...¡± Arlette said as she gave Sofie the tray and went to lean against a nearby wall. ¡°The first time I ever saw Sofie, I was fleeing Zrukhora, up in the north of Kutrad. The city had come under attack by a god, you see, and the city was burning to the ground, so I had to get out as quickly as I could before I became trapped inside its walls-¡±
¡°Was it the same dragon?¡± Gabby interrupted.
¡°Oh no, much bigger,¡± Arlette informed her. ¡°Twice its size, at least, with a red and black mottled coloring.¡±
¡°So there¡¯s two of them?¡± Gabby gasped.
¡°No, this one-, I¡¯ll get to it in a minute,¡± Arlette told her. ¡°Anyway, as I was passing by an alley, Sofie was hopping out of it, her arms and legs shackled so she couldn¡¯t walk. I didn¡¯t see her until she practically tackled me and said to me...¡±
She paused to clear her throat. ¡°¡®Please help me! Please! Don¡¯t leave me to die!¡¯¡± she squeaked in a high nasally voice.
Everybody but Sofie laughed at the impression.
¡°Now, I knew I shouldn¡¯t have, but she just looked so pathetic that I couldn¡¯t help but pull her along. That was when the god reappeared. Tehlmar, who was still masquerading as Jaquet at the time-¡±
¡°You mean your boyfriend,¡± Sofie interjected as revenge for the impression.
¡°Will you stop with that?! It wasn¡¯t funny the first time.¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue before taking another bite.
¡°As I was saying, he arrived with a cart he ¡®borrowed¡¯ just in time for me to throw Sofie inside, hop in after her, and get out. Even then, the god chased us for a moment before I caught it off guard with an illusion that took all my energy. Just before I lost consciousness, the god blew itself up and turned the entirety of Zrukhora into a crater.¡±
¡°Hold on, it blew itself up?¡± Blake interjected.
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Just like that?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what happened. It started crying out like it was in pain, and then it was gone. We barely outran the blast.¡±
¡°So that¡¯s what happened. Crazy.¡±
¡°Indeed. Now will you all let me continue or are we going to stop every three sentences?¡±
¡°Wow,¡± Gabby said after it was all over. ¡°That¡¯s a lot. I can¡¯t believe that you survived all that and without even losing an arm or anything.¡±
¡°Uncalled for shots aside, I agree,¡± Blake said. ¡°The odds are just astronomical.¡±
¡°Maybe that¡¯s it? Maybe she has luck powers?¡± Gabby suggested.
¡°How would that even work? And why would the dragon care about that?¡± Blake pointed out.
¡°Maybe she steals luck from other people,¡± Gabby continued. She frowned, shooting a sudden glare Sofie¡¯s way. ¡°Maybe she stole Pari¡¯s luck, and that¡¯s why Grandfather was so mad at her.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t be silly!¡± Blake snorted. ¡°Luck isn¡¯t a ¡®thing¡¯ that can be stolen! It¡¯s just an interpretation of past events.¡±
¡°Hold on,¡± Arlette interrupted. ¡°What¡¯s this about Grandfather?¡±
¡°The dragon thinks she did something to Pari,¡± Blake explained.
¡°What? How?¡± Arlette looked over to Sofie in surprise and confusion.
Sofie nervously scratched her head. ¡°He kept yelling at me about Pari. It didn¡¯t make any sense.¡±
¡°What did he say, exactly?¡± Blake asked. ¡°You heard actual words, right?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°What did he say?¡±
¡°He told me to ¡®release¡¯ Pari,¡± Sofie admitted, ¡°whatever that is supposed to mean.¡±
¡°¡®Release¡¯?¡± Blake repeated in disbelief. ¡°Release her how? From what? She¡¯s dead!¡±
¡°Exactly!¡± Sofie agreed.
¡°She¡¯s not, though,¡± Gabby pointed out. ¡°You said so yourself. She¡¯s not technically dead.¡±
¡°Shit, you¡¯re right...¡± Blake muttered.
Slowly all three of them turned their heads to stare Sofie¡¯s way, and all she could do was roll her eyes and scoff. ¡°So my power is that I can keep people from being ¡®technically dead¡¯? What kind of stupid power would that be?¡±
¡°Maybe you just aren¡¯t using it right? Maybe... maybe you can make zombies!¡± Blake suggested, his voice filling with sudden excitement.
¡°Blake, are you serious right now? Get real!¡± she protested.
¡°No, it makes sense!¡± he asserted, his enthusiasm growing with every word. ¡°The dragon is a scientist for sure! He has a laboratory and everything! He has better biochem knowledge than probably anybody on the planet! If anybody could tell what you did to Pari, it would be him! That¡¯s gotta be it! You¡¯re a necromancer!¡±
¡°Why are you getting so excited about something so unholy?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°Are you kidding me?! Imagine what you could do with an army of zombies!¡±
¡°It¡¯s perverse!¡±
¡°It¡¯s awesome!¡±
Sofie rubbed her eyes, the conversation giving her a massive headache. She didn¡¯t know what she would do if she were secretly a necromancer. Just the thought seemed horrifying and gross beyond description. Controlling undead bodies? Controlling an undead Pari? Unthinkable.
¡°Will you all just stop? You¡¯re all making stupid assumptions based on stupid interpretations of the stupid words of a being that probably doesn¡¯t even think the same way we do,¡± she sighed, her patience for this whole escapade quickly wearing thin. ¡°This is stupid. You¡¯re all stupid.¡±
¡°Well, there¡¯s an easy way to rule it out,¡± Blake replied. ¡°There¡¯s a cemetery past the south gate.¡±
¡°No! Why are you like this!?¡± Sofie cried, her irate voice overwhelming Gabby¡¯s protests about disturbing the dead. ¡°I¡¯m sick of this crap! I went along with your stupid bullshit and all you¡¯ve done this whole time is harass me and humiliate me! I¡¯m done! Just leave me alone!¡±
Stepping forward, she vented her frustrations towards the infuriating man with a classic two-handed push to the chest. Blake stepped back at the last moment, dodging her shove by millimeters. Undeterred, Sofie struck out again, this time using her knowledge of his weakness to her advantage. Given the state of his body, he was not exactly what one would call ¡°nimble¡± or ¡°fast on his feet¡±, so she kicked out at his legs. Surprisingly, he pulled his legs away as well, but he couldn¡¯t step away fast enough to dodge it completely¡ªthe edge of her shoe barely grazed the side of his leg.
That was when all hell broke loose.
With an unholy screech, Blake went stiff for a split second before he crumpled to the ground, spasms wracking his body. Sofie could feel the entire fortress shudder beneath her feet. She¡¯d felt something like this before, during his ¡°incidents¡± that were thankfully rare, but this was worse. Far worse.
¡°Hold him down! Quick, before he hurts himself!¡± Arlette yelled to Gabby before Sofie could even process what was happening. The two of them rushed forward to dampen Blake¡¯s spasms. Arlette sat down on his torso and legs, while Gabby leaned over the upper half, one hand holding down each of his flailing arms with her effortless strength. Sofie hovered fretfully nearby as the episode began to fade, and soon Blake¡¯s spasms downgraded to twitches.
¡°We need to get him to his quarters,¡± Arlette said to the rest of them.
Gabby sniffed and her nose wrinkled. ¡°I think he threw up in his helmet,¡± she said to Sofie. ¡°Can you take it off?¡±
Sofie crouched down beside Blake¡¯s head and inspected the mask and the helmet it was a part of. From this distance, she too could smell the puke, though she picked up another alarming scent as well.
Blood.
Quickly, she searched for some sort of latch or something that could unhook the mask from the rest of the armor but found nothing. Nor was she sure that the helmet could even detach from the rest of the armor.
¡°I don¡¯t think it can come off. With how he just makes it melt away, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s even designed to come off normally,¡± she said.
¡°Try anyway!¡± Gabby insisted.
Without a clear method of removal, Sofie decided to just grab the helmet on both sides of Blake¡¯s head and attempt to yank it off. She didn¡¯t even get to the pulling part before the screaming returned with a vengeance.
A new round of tremors, even harsher than before, threatened to collapse the ceiling down on top of them as tortured screams echoed across the chamber. Blake¡¯s entire upper body lurched upward with shocking force, throwing Sofie away and nearly dislodging Gabby from his chest.
With a growl, Gabby slammed his arms against the ground before releasing them for a moment. With both hands, she reached forward and grasped the sides of the shaking helmet. Her fingers bit into the metal and it let out a shriek of protest as she ripped the helmet into several pieces, revealing the man beneath.
Sofie released a horrified gasp as she saw Blake¡¯s face. His entire face contorted in agony, his teeth clenched together so hard that she worried he was going to crush them to pieces. A mix of blood and vomit, now mostly blood, dripped down both sides of his lips, his mouth foaming with each labored breath. His eyes were wild and unfocused, his pupils rapidly dilating in and out. But what struck Sofie the hardest were the copious amounts of blood leaking from his trembling eyes. Two streams of scarlet tears rolled down the sides of his face, creating small but growing crimson puddles on the glossy gray floor. The sight made Sofie¡¯s breath catch in the throat. What was going on?
Slowly but steadily, Blake¡¯s shaking, and the shaking of the world around them, began to subside. His breath became steadier, his body settled, and eventually, peace returned. Blake laid unmoving on the metal floor, unconscious but alive.
¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± an urgent voice asked from the doorway. The three of them looked up to find Leo standing there, his confused worry clear for all to see.
¡°We need to get Lord Ferros back to his room,¡± Arlette replied, immediately taking charge. ¡°Go get us a cart or something.¡±
¡°Understood,¡± he acknowledged before vanishing down the hallway.
¡°What the fuck just happened?¡± Sofie wondered aloud.
¡°Hmmmm,¡± Gabby hummed, her eyebrows furrowing in thought.
¡°We¡¯re probably going to need to take all his armor off once we get to his chambers. Let¡¯s at least clean him off a bit before Leo gets back,¡± Sofie said. Grabbing a bit of the bottom of her damaged shirt, she tore off a strip and reached forward to wipe the blood and vomit from his face before it could fully dry.
In a flash, Gabby grabbed her wrist, her grip harsh and unrelenting. ¡°Hold on,¡± Gabby told her. ¡°I don¡¯t think you should touch him.¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Both times, it happened when you touched him.¡±
¡°What are you talking about?¡± Sofie scoffed. ¡°I¡¯ve touched him hundreds of times and nothing has ever happened! Watch!¡±
She reached out with her other hand, only for Gabby to grab that hand too.
¡°Gabby!¡± she complained. ¡°This is nuts!¡±
¡°What if I¡¯m right though? I don¡¯t think he can survive another one of... whatever that was.¡±
¡°Why am I suddenly the bad guy!? Arlette, help me out here!¡±
Arlette gazed at them both suspiciously but didn¡¯t say anything, much to Sofie¡¯s frustration.
Sofie stood up with a grumble and pulled her hands free. Gabby didn¡¯t fight her, instead repositioning herself between her and Blake.
¡°Look, Gabby, I know we¡¯re all freaked out, but you¡¯re wildly jumping to conclusions and nothing good can come from that!¡± Sofie argued. ¡°Don¡¯t go thinking that I caused this based on no evidence other than a few coincidences!¡±
Gabby frowned, sorrowfully, and hung her head. ¡°Yeah, you¡¯re right.¡±
Sofie blinked. ¡°I am?¡±
¡°Yeah, I shouldn¡¯t accuse you of hurting somebody over nothing but a stupid feeling.¡±
¡°Oh, thanks!¡± Sofie replied with a wide smile. It was nice to have somebody listen to you for once.
¡°Wait, what just happened?¡± Arlette cut in. ¡°Gabby, what are you doing?¡±
¡°She has a good point,¡± Gabby explained.
¡°No, she doesn¡¯t!¡± Arlette turned back to Sofie. ¡°What did you just do?¡±
¡°What are you talking about?¡± Gabby asked, her brow furrowing.
¡°She barely said two sentences to you and you immediately changed your mind,¡± Arlette told her.
¡°Well, she¡¯s right,¡± Gabby insisted. ¡°I was accusing her without evidence.¡±
¡°No, you were right. This all started the moment she touched him, and then it happened again the moment she put her hands on his head. We both saw it.¡±
Gabby shook her head emphatically. ¡°But there¡¯s no proof-¡±
¡°It happened right before your eyes! You don¡¯t just completely flip on a position you feel is right in a fraction of a moment! Why are you acting completely different all of a sudden? It¡¯s starting to creep me out!¡±
¡°Arlette-¡± Sofie tried to interject, but her voice died thanks to Arlette¡¯s withering glare.
¡°Sofie, be quiet,¡± the Scyrian commanded.
Sofie let out a huff but chose to keep her objections to herself for the moment.
¡°Alright,¡± Arlette continued, ¡°let¡¯s think about this. She touched him and bad stuff happened. So why now? When was the last time they touched?¡±
¡°Uhhh...¡± Gabby muttered.
¡°Let¡¯s break it down. The last time I remember that they touched was when Blake grabbed her arm coming out of the elevator. Did they come into contact after that? Did I miss anything after I left?¡±
¡°I-I don¡¯t think so,¡± Gabby said with a shake of her head. ¡°They were just how they always are. Blake tried to drag her down here and was like ¡®stop being a baby¡¯ and she was like ¡®fine, let go of me¡¯ and then we came directly here.¡±
¡°Nothing at all happened after that?¡±
¡°Yeah, what are you getting at?¡±
¡°Did you see the way he moved when she tried to shove him? Wasn¡¯t it weird?¡±
¡°What about it?¡± Gabby asked, confused.
¡°Why would he bother to move out of the way from something like that? Between his armor and their size and weight difference, that would be like a mountain avoiding a gentle breeze. But he tried to avoid her not once, but twice.¡±
¡°What is the point of this?¡± Sofie asked, weary of this pointless banter.
¡°What if Blake didn¡¯t move away from you because he wanted to, but rather because he had to?¡± Arlette speculated.
¡°...that¡¯s a massive stretch, Arlette,¡± Gabby weighed in. ¡°You don¡¯t have any proof-¡±
¡°There you go with the proof crap again! First Blake acts strangely, now you! What was it again that Sofie said to you to make you change your mind so suddenly? ¡®Don¡¯t go thinking that I caused this¡¯? What did she say to Blake? In more detail, please.¡±
¡°Uh... well I asked her to cooperate and then Blake called her a baby and then she said... uh...¡±
¡°I told him to fuck off,¡± a miffed Sofie told them. ¡°I said I would try to help because Gabby asked nicely and then I said ¡®knock it off, Blake. Don¡¯t touch me¡¯ and that was it.¡±
Arlette froze, her eyes going wide as if struck across the face. Sofie could see something click together in Arlette¡¯s mind and a deep dread began to form in Sofie¡¯s gut as Arlette began to pace back and forth.
¡°Don¡¯t...¡± the mercenary muttered. ¡°No... that¡¯s... not possible...¡±
Sofie could feel sweat forming on her brow, her heart rate beginning to spike as she watched the Scyrian mutter to herself and clench her fists. Whatever was going on in Arlette¡¯s head, Sofie could see how worked up she was getting and it worried her.
¡°What is it?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°¡®Don¡¯t¡¯! She says ¡®don¡¯t touch me¡¯ and he avoids contact for no justifiable reason. And when he does touch her, that happens!¡± she ranted while gesturing towards Blake¡¯s prone form. ¡°She says ¡®don¡¯t go thinking that I caused this¡¯ to you after she clearly had something to do with it and boom, you go from suspecting her to defending her in an instant. Both times using ¡®don¡¯t¡¯. And that... that would mean...¡±
¡°That¡¯s... come on. Do you have any idea what you sound like right now?¡± Sofie objected. ¡°You sound like a crazy person! You¡¯re just making stuff up at this point!¡±
The glare returned and Sofie flinched slightly. She saw an anger there that hadn¡¯t existed even a few minutes ago, one that scared her in how strangely personal it seemed.
¡°Then it should be easy for you to prove me wrong,¡± Arlette snapped back. She stared Sofie straight in the eyes as she pointed at Gabby. ¡°Tell her that she can¡¯t do something,¡± she commanded. ¡°Something very minor.¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. ¡°Fine, only so you can see how stupid you¡¯re being.¡± She looked towards Gabby, who stood there with a hint of trepidation. What was something small that wouldn¡¯t be that bad, even though nothing was going to happen? Ah, she had something. ¡°Don¡¯t stand on two feet,¡± Sofie grumbled.
Gabby stared back with a hint of confusion, but that was all that happened.
¡°See? Happy now?¡±
¡°Mean it!¡± Arlette growled.
¡°Arlette, why are you so angry over th-¡±
¡°SHUT UP AND DO IT!¡± Arlette roared, causing Sofie to take an involuntary step back.
¡°Okay, okay!¡± Sofie turned back to Gabby and spoke with what little conviction she could muster. ¡°Don¡¯t stand on two feet.¡±
Gabby¡¯s left leg immediately bent upward. ¡°Wha?¡± she muttered, staring down at her traitorous limb. She lowered the foot back down, only for her leg to lock in place a few centimeters from the floor.
Sofie, for her part, just gaped at the sight as Gabby began hopping back and forth from her right foot to her left and back, unable to put both down at once. She didn¡¯t quite understand the meaning of what she was witnessing, but the ramifications were slowly worming their way into her mind. She glanced back to Arlette to find the mercenary looking at her with pure, cold fury.
¡°I was right! You little bitch! You little manipulative motherfucker!¡± her friend snarled, taking a step towards her with bloody murder in her eyes. ¡°You were using me the whole time, weren¡¯t you?! All this time, I was just a puppet dancing in your palm, wasn¡¯t I?!¡±
¡°W-w-what are you-¡± Sofie stammered as she backed away from the suddenly malevolent Scyrian.
¡°The very first thing you said to me! ¡®Don''t leave me to die!¡¯ That was what you said!¡± Arlette ground out from clenched teeth as tears began to form in her eyes. ¡°Everybody told me to ditch you. They said that you would drag us down, and they were right! You were a weak, naive, bumbling mess, and any competent leader in my situation would have dropped you on the side of a road without a second thought! But I couldn¡¯t! No matter how much Jaquet and Basilli argued with me about it, I couldn¡¯t do it no matter how much worse you made things! Something inside me wouldn¡¯t let me abandon you! That thing was you, wasn¡¯t it?!¡±
¡°A-Arlette, I didn¡¯t... I had no idea...¡± Sofie pleaded, angling towards the doorway. This was all coming too fast, she couldn¡¯t keep her mind above water! ¡°If I did anything, I didn¡¯t do it on purpose!¡±
¡°You just wanted a bodyguard,¡± Arlette continued, her hand reaching down and slowly pulling a knife out from a holster on her leg. ¡°Somebody to come to your rescue whenever something went bad, somebody to take the hits so you didn¡¯t have to. So you made one, from me, whether I wanted it or not. What happens to me if I refuse to save you, huh? Do I start bleeding out of my eyes too? And that was just from the first day! What else have you done to me since then, huh?!¡±
The panic inside Sofie was rising like a rocket ship heading for orbit as she continued to back away from Arlette¡¯s steady advance. ¡°Gabby, a little help here please?¡± Sofie begged, looking desperately toward the one person who could help her right now.
But Gabby just looked back with a chilling gaze of realization. ¡°I was going to kill him,¡± she said, hopping around to face Sofie. ¡°He was right there, lying there in front of me, and I was going to kill him, and nothing was going to stop me. And then you came.¡± She hopped forward, from one foot to the other, careful not to let both touch at the same time. ¡°¡®Don¡¯t kill him¡¯, you said. And then I didn¡¯t. I never even questioned it.¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t take it anymore. The panic rose to a crescendo and she broke, turning and sprinting for the door. Arlette burst forward, quickly catching up, a terrifying vengeful glint in her eye, just as Leo returned, pushing a large flat cart into the room. Sofie swerved around both it and him, the sudden intrusion enough to give her a small lead, one that would surely vanish in a matter of seconds.
Her mind whirled a mile a minute, grasping at what few straws remained. Why had it come to this? Maybe it was just a wild misunderstanding, or perhaps it was all an elaborate prank? Surely she couldn¡¯t have done what Arlette was accusing her of doing!
There was one way to find out, once and for all. If it didn¡¯t work, then all was forgiven and forgotten. If it did... well, at least her life would be safer for the moment. She twisted around as she reached the doorway to see Arlette just behind her and cried out, ¡°Don¡¯t hurt me! Don¡¯t chase me!¡±
Arlette skidded to a sudden halt as if a bottomless chasm had opened up just in front of her.
¡°No...¡± Sofie gasped in horror.
Arlette seethed with rage as she stared daggers Sofie¡¯s way. ¡°To think I trusted you,¡± she spat, her body beginning to tremble. ¡°To think I was foolish enough to call you a friend!¡±
¡°Arlette, please stop!¡± Sofie pleaded, but Arlette was too far gone.
The Scyrian¡¯s left leg twitched and spasmed even more than the rest of her, but she gritted her teeth, as if she was putting everything she had into this one action, and slid the foot slightly forward. The effect was instantaneous. Her eyes went wide as she seized up, letting out a choking, hacking cough. Blood splattered across the floor as she began to topple, only for Leo to catch her.
¡°No, please no!¡± Sofie sobbed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry! I¡¯m so sorry.¡±
She needed to get out, to run away to somewhere, anywhere but here. Looking in on this dreadful, disastrous scene, she knew she couldn¡¯t be a part of something like this ever again. But they would come after her, and this horrid occurrence would just happen again and again, unless...
¡°Don¡¯t try to find me,¡± Sofie told them all, her voice quavering. And then she turned down the hallway and ran as fast as she could.
Tears washed down her face, great big tears of horror and shame and a touch of self-pity. They fell to the ground with a pitter-patter, leaving a trail of wetness as she ran out of the fortress and into the city under the light of the three moons. Arlette was right. She was a monster.
Mind control. Geasa. Something so atrocious that she¡¯d never once even imagined it. It... it was like rape. Mind rape. And she¡¯d done it how many times? To how many people? ¡®Don¡¯t¡¯ was a horrifyingly common word, especially in her vocabulary. She said it often. How many of those times had she been unknowingly twisting somebody around her finger, leaving them warped on the inside with the possibility of suffering and death if they somehow disobeyed?
Her sorrow carried her through the largely empty city streets. What direction she headed did not matter. All that mattered was this new truth. A small group of revelers staggered out of a nearby tavern and she nearly collided with them before dodging out of the way at the last second. How many people like these had she cursed with a flippant sentence in the past year? It would have been so easy to just say ¡°don¡¯t get in my way¡± and not even think twice about it. Until now, she would have never even known what she¡¯d just done.
All this time, Sofie had believed that she had survived on her wits and her ability to sway others with potent, correct arguments. But now, as she looked back, she realized that she¡¯d been wrong. Conversation after conversation, jam after jam, she¡¯d been manipulating peoples¡¯ minds without even realizing it.
There was the time the Masked Battalion elves in Crirada should have just killed her, but instead, they had helped her escape the city and more. Or the time after Blake and Gabby¡¯s fight, when he¡¯d planned on killing her when she was at her weakest point. Or the time when she¡¯d kept Arlette from killing King Morgan of Kutrad. How many more? How many other times had she performed this terrible deed without even realizing it, and now she couldn¡¯t even remember?
She was barely looking where she was going, her tired legs carrying her out of the city and into the farmland surrounding it. She didn¡¯t stop. She couldn¡¯t stop.
Release Pari-child.
The dragon¡¯s anger, his rage, it all became clear. Somehow, Grandfather knew. He knew what she¡¯d done. Nobody in this world had been harmed by Sofie more than that poor sweet little girl. Telling her not to do things had practically been her job since the day they met!
But as she ran through the farmland towards the sparse forest further out, Sofie¡¯s mind kept returning to one single, horrible thing, one crime that made her want to just fall down, curl up into a ball, and die. No matter how far she ran she could not escape it, her mind going through it over and over and over.
Pari catching the man by surprise, managing to jump up upon his shoulder. The knife flashing down towards his neck, ready to end him once and for all before he could hurt Samanta. That knife coming to a sudden halt for no discernible reason just a hair¡¯s breadth from the man¡¯s skin. The man¡¯s sword embedding itself in Pari¡¯s torso just a second later.
The scene kept playing on a loop, followed each time by another scene, a scene from many seasons ago. A calm and quiet scene, where she and Pari had sat upon the lush grass of the Drayhadan countryside, making an anti-bacterial paste to go on bandages for the Stragmans who were getting injured in the battle taking place a few small, rolling hills away. A scene when she¡¯d talked to the child about good and evil, right and wrong. A scene where she¡¯d uttered those three fateful words.
¡°Don¡¯t kill people.¡±
Pari was dead.
And it was all her fault.
Chapter 102
Arlette¡¯s eyes opened wearily to blackness. With two claps, the crystals embedded in the ceiling began to glow, lighting the room with their soft radiance. Though the crystals were on their lowest setting, the light still made her eyes squeeze back shut. She rolled over and buried her aching head in her pillow, wishing that she didn¡¯t have to get up, but the chimes coming from across the room told her that it was already well past her normal wake-up time. She couldn¡¯t put off facing the world today any longer.
Slowly, grumpily, she pried herself off the bed and hobbled to the adjacent bathroom. Her body protested the injustice, but she¡¯d overcome such complaints many a time before, and this time would be no different. That is, until the coughing returned. Her arms trembling as she clung to the sides of the sink, her body hunched forward as she hacked and gagged. Soon enough, small flecks of blackened red speckled the basin. Arlette took comfort in how much smaller and drier the splotches were this time. Her healing had come a long way over the night.
That step forward the night before had been a mistake. She¡¯d known it was a mistake even in the moment. Her entire being had screamed at her not to do it. She¡¯d done it anyway; her fury, fueled by the knowledge of why her entire being was screaming at her in the first place, refused to allow any other course of action.
She couldn¡¯t put what happened next into the proper words. She¡¯d felt her body begin to break down at a level she couldn¡¯t understand. She knew what it felt like to take damage to an organ, and it was nothing like that. It was deeper, like every little tiny piece that made up her muscles and bones and skin and everything else had started to decompose all at once. And that was just her body.
She¡¯d felt the same feeling in her mind, and even in her soulforce. It was like her very self was being splintered into millions of tiny pieces and utterly destroyed. Just that one step had been more than enough to convince her that she could not overcome whatever it was that Sofie had done to her. Down that path lay death. No, more than death: annihilation.
Remembering that moment of existential agony brought another wave of utter revulsion washing through her and she sat down upon the toilet with her head in her hands. She felt so violated, so... so used. Again.
As soon as she¡¯d regained her wits and dealt with the massive pain in the ass that was the still-unconscious Blake with the help of Leo and Gabby, Arlette had retreated to her quarters and cried her eyes out. Why was it that every person she dared to put faith in ended up betraying her? Was it a curse? Punishment of some sort from a higher being? Or just fate? No, Arlette reminded herself, it wasn¡¯t everybody. Her second parents had never betrayed her from the moment they¡¯d brought her into their family to the day of their death. She could never allow herself to forget that. But their kindness just made everybody else¡¯s betrayals feel worse in comparison.
Most of the night she¡¯d spent on her knees clutching the sides of the toilet as she hacked up large amounts of blood and mentally went through every single conversation with Sofie that she could remember, looking for anything else that blasted girl might have done to her. Not counting the ones from last night, she¡¯d found only two instances, which worried her. That was far too few. How many was she forgetting? The thought made her gut twist in anxiety.
The two commands that she could recall, however, just left her confused and unsure. They weren¡¯t like the first command, the one that had locked Arlette into helping Sofie in the first place. They were more... benign, perhaps, and as such, they muddled her otherwise-pure anger, which almost made her angrier but didn¡¯t.
The first was a simple one: don¡¯t hurt Pari. The order was utterly pointless, of course; nothing in the world could have made her hurt that sweet child, so on the one hand, the resentment from the imposition was almost a formality. Except... she and the others had, in fact, been close to killing the beastkin on that first night when they¡¯d met. Really close. Sofie had saved her from that terrible mistake. Did the end justify the means? She didn¡¯t know.
The other thing she¡¯d remembered was something much more recent and much more befuddling. When the two of them had sat together on the Flying Toaster, making their way home after their first disastrous attempt at entering the Krekard Mountains to meet Grandfather, Sofie had said to her, ¡°Don¡¯t you die on me too, alright?¡± Arlette didn¡¯t know how to process this. What would happen if she did die? By dying, would she break the command, and thereby receive the backlash of... death? Or had Sofie simply doomed her spirit to obliteration upon her death?
There were too many questions, questions that she couldn¡¯t resolve right now or, perhaps, ever. Arlette was, after all, forbidden from trying to find the one person who might have the answers.
She could feel the mental block if she tried. She could walk towards the door right now without issue, but the moment she shifted her thoughts to trying to locate the missing Earthling, her body would refuse to move forward. She could still move away from the door with these thoughts, so it seemed to be some combination of intent and action, though Arlette was not sure if this applied to all of Sofie¡¯s commands or just this one. The way the command seemed to know her thoughts better than she did scared her. She couldn¡¯t even try to pretend or tell herself that she wasn¡¯t actually trying to find Sofie. Something inside her always knew.
The lack of control, this weakness, galled her. The fact that she had promised to help that Earthling witch find a way home just made it worse. But she had promised, so it wasn¡¯t like she could get out of it now. Arlette honored her commitments, even ones made under corrupted circumstances like this one. Holding on to her honor mattered to her.
But why did it matter? There was not even a single thought within her of dropping her promise to that conniving girl, even after everything she had done. Did she really care? Or was this just another one of Sofie¡¯s hidden manipulations, something she¡¯d carefully orchestrated in a way that Arlette couldn¡¯t recall?
The anger came roaring back once more. Arlette stumbled back to her bed and flopped down upon it. This uncertainty was slowly ripping her apart just as effectively as Sofie¡¯s power ever could. What were her true thoughts? What were the fake ones? She couldn¡¯t tell, and it made her want to scream.
In a fit of rage, Arlette grabbed one of her knives from the bed stand near her bed and plunged it deep into her pillow and the mattress beneath with as much force as her weakened body could manage. Then she ripped it back out and plunged it down again and again and again and again until she could no longer move her arm. Wheezing heavily, she plopped down face first, plunging her head into a pile of down and slashed fabric.
She¡¯d been used as an unwitting tool before, yes, but no matter how much others had twisted her words and deeds for their own purposes, she¡¯d found a small but crucial bit of solace in the fact that they could never twist her. Now she didn¡¯t even have that. Now she had nothing.
¡°Feeling better?¡± a familiar voice asked.
¡°No, Peko, I am not,¡± Arlette huffed as her alter-ego sat down on the bed beside her. She coughed again. ¡°I don¡¯t even know who I am anymore.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s not get carried away,¡± he chided. ¡°You¡¯re still you, and a touch of tampering isn¡¯t going to change that.¡±
¡°How do you know that it¡¯s just a ¡®touch¡¯ and not more? Not everything?¡±
Peko shrugged. ¡°Our soul doesn¡¯t feel very different to me. Not that I could tell there was anything wrong before the command triggered and hurt you. Real insidious, how subtle it is. I¡¯m impressed.¡±
¡°I need more than a feeling,¡± Arlette told him. ¡°Do you know how many things she¡¯s done to me?¡±
¡°No, I can only tell that they exist, not how many there are. But I really don¡¯t feel like she¡¯s got you too twisted into knots.¡±
¡°Hmph, what does it matter either way? It¡¯s not like I can do anything about it,¡± Arlette bemoaned.
¡°Oh, are we back on this again?¡± he sighed.
¡°Why not? It¡¯s not like anything really changed!¡± Arlette shot back. ¡°Yeah, my control is better and I can do more illusions simultaneously, but in the end, I¡¯m still just a person with a sword! If Blake, Gabby, Sofie, the Mother of Nightmares, or probably any of the other Earthlings out there decided to do something to me, what could I do about it? Nothing! The same is true for all of us Scyrians! We¡¯re just helpless victims, and I am so, so sick of feeling like a helpless victim all my life!¡±
¡°But what can you do about it?¡±
¡°I... I don¡¯t know. I think at this point that maybe there¡¯s just nothing I can do.¡±
Arlette expected Peko to say something encouraging, or perhaps sarcastic, but instead, he remained silent. After a few moments, Arlette lifted her head from her destroyed cushion to check that he was even still there and found him lost in thought.
¡°What is it,¡± she prodded.
¡°Have you given up on pushing your multitasking any further?¡± he eventually asked.
¡°I don¡¯t think I can push myself that much further. The jump from one to two copies was hard enough. I¡¯m not sure I¡¯d be able to handle much more,¡± she admitted. ¡°I don¡¯t really see the point, anyway. I have enough smoke and mirrors. The problem is that they¡¯re just distractions. I can¡¯t do much else with them.¡±
¡°But what if you could? Remember that book you read back in the castle library when you were a child? On the Mechanics of Personal Phenomena?¡±
¡°Which book was that?¡±
¡°The old one by Recturic Wallentin.¡±
¡°That kook? What would you care about the ramblings of an obscure and derided ancient philosopher? Nobody took him seriously even when he was alive.¡±
¡°Those passages he wrote about the nature of matter created through Observation¡ªis it real, where does it come from, what gives it existence, that sort of thing¡ªalways stuck with me,¡± Peko explained. ¡°And I was thinking, since that¡¯s about all I ever get to do, and I came up with a wild idea a little while ago. The problem is, it almost definitely wouldn¡¯t amount to anything and would just waste time you could use training, so I didn¡¯t mention it. But if you think you¡¯ve hit your limit, then all that would be lost is time you weren¡¯t going to get much out of anyway.¡±
¡°What¡¯s this crazy idea of yours?¡± she asked skeptically.
¡°If we can¡¯t improve the quantity or quality of your illusions, then what about changing how they work?¡±
¡°Change in what way?¡±
¡°What if, maybe, we could make them solid?¡±
¡°Solid illusions? They¡¯re illusions! If they were solid, they wouldn¡¯t be illusions!¡±
¡°But what if we could?¡± he asked again.
Memories of battles past flashed through Arlette¡¯s mind, moments where she¡¯d thrown a throwing knife and flanked it with two false knives, where she¡¯d made copies of herself to overwhelm her opponent¡¯s decision making, where she¡¯d once even created a fake god to distract an all-too-real one. What would her battles have been like if all of those knives had been real? If her doppelgangers¡¯ fake strikes could kill? If she could create her own god?
¡°Sounds far too good to be true, Peko,¡± she told him.
¡°And it most surely is,¡± he admitted with a smirk. ¡°All I¡¯m saying is if you¡¯re not going to train, meaning we¡¯ll have a lot more time on our hands, then why not experiment a little? If nothing comes out of it, we would at least have had some fun passing the time. Just think of this as time to spend with your old, neglected friend Peko, who you stuff into the back of your mind and forget about for years at a time and-¡±
¡°Alright, fine!¡± she said with a roll of her eyes, though she couldn¡¯t hide the slight smirk as well. ¡°So what would ¡®fun time with Peko¡¯ entail? How do we start?¡±
¡°We rest and recover is how we start,¡± her imaginary friend snorted. ¡°After that, well, it¡¯s simple. We-¡± Peko halted mid-sentence, his brow furrowing as his head turned to stare at the wall to Arlette¡¯s left, a scowl of concern growing on his face.
Arlette turned to check if something was on the wall but found the same featureless gray that had been there when she¡¯d come back from the bathroom. ¡°What is-¡± she began, turning back to Peko, only for the question to drop off as she found her imaginary friend had vanished.
¡°Peko?¡±
Nobody answered her call. She now sat alone.
Arlette couldn¡¯t help but be confused by her imaginary friend¡¯s sudden disappearance. He¡¯d never done something like that before. What had he been looking at?
A series of soft bells rang from beside the door, pulling her from her pondering. Somebody was here to see her, but she wasn¡¯t dressed, nor did she feel physically up for visitors.
After pushing herself to her feet, Arlette slowly making her way towards the door. Upon arrival, she pressed a large button beneath a small flat square beside the door. An image taken from outside the door lit up in the square, showing an angled overhead view of Gabby leaning against an absurdly gorgeous woman that Arlette had never seen before.
Arlette took an involuntary step back from the panel, her eyes going wide at the sight of the mysterious beauty. Her gaze immediately zeroed in on the new woman¡¯s alabaster skin and the almost exotic pinch on the inner edge of her eyes. That eye shape and skin combination were rare, except for a region in the northwest of the Obura continent. An Ubran!
What was an Ubran doing here? Just the sight of her dredged up terrible memories both old and new. Arlette took a deep breath¡ªno cough this time, thankfully¡ªand willed herself to calm down. With a quick double-tap of the door button, the door to her room slid open just a crack, enough for her voice to make it through but little else.
¡°What is it?¡± she croaked.
¡°Arlette! How are you feeling?¡± the Monster asked from beyond the door. ¡°Can we come in to talk for a moment?¡±
¡°I¡¯d rather not right now. Can it wait?¡±
¡°I... I think it would be best if we didn¡¯t delay this,¡± the Earthling said. ¡°We¡¯ll make it fast, I promise.¡±
Arlette sighed. ¡°Give me a moment.¡±
With another two presses, the door slid shut once more. Slowly and wearily, Arlette went to the bathroom and splashed some water on her face, then went to get dressed. After that laborious process was complete, she grabbed an extra blanket and threw it over the top half of her bed to cover her eviscerated pillow. She¡¯d prefer not to let anybody else see that.
Finally, after several more moments to collect herself, she opened the door. Gabby immediately hopped inside, closing in on Arlette with a face full of worry. The other woman, meanwhile, stayed a step behind, a look of polite amusement on her face.
¡°Are you alright? You look so pale!¡± Gabby commented, putting a hand on Arlette¡¯s forehead.
¡°I¡¯m getting better, thank you. I will be healed in a day or two, I have no doubt,¡± Arlette insisted, gently but firmly removing the Monster¡¯s hand and taking another step back.
She didn¡¯t like the feeling of having the Earthling so close all of a sudden. The woman¡¯s presence had always caused her to tense up a little thanks to her memories of Crirada, but now, Gabriela represented far more than that. She was a continued reminder of Arlette¡¯s helpless insignificance. This woman could kill both Arlette and the Ubran with nothing but her pinky finger, and it wouldn¡¯t even require effort. Arlette had long been aware that the only thing keeping her alive was the Earthling¡¯s benevolence, but her awareness of that fact had heightened now to the point where she could no longer push it aside. Yes, the Gabby before her at this moment had no intention of harm, but Arlette knew that all it would take was a change of heart.
The knowledge made her stomach churn. Having both an Earthling and an Ubran in her room at once was too much for her right now. She needed to get whatever this was over with and get them out as best she could.
¡°Do you mind if I...?¡± Gabby asked, hopping from one foot to the other and back as she headed for Arlette¡¯s desk and chair on the far side of her room.
¡°Huh? Oh, sure,¡± Arlette replied.
Without further delay, the Earthling plopped herself down into Arlette¡¯s chair and let out a sigh of relief.
¡°Both your feet are touching the floor,¡± Arlette noted with confusion.
¡°Because I¡¯m not standing,¡± Gabby explained. She stood up from the chair, her left leg immediately jumping away from the ground. Then she sat back down, her foot once more able to touch the floor. ¡°It¡¯s rather ridiculous, but that¡¯s the way it works.¡± She shook her head. ¡°But where are my manners? Arlette, this is Chitra, my good friend. I wanted to introduce her to everybody. She helped me greatly back when things were... less good.¡±
Chitra performed a low, elegant bow mixed with a curtsy, one that Arlette could tell took a high degree of balance and dexterity to pull off correctly. ¡°An honor and a pleasure,¡± the new woman said, her voice silky smooth and assured.
Arlette¡¯s hackles rose as she remembered where she¡¯d heard of this sort of greeting before. ¡°That was the formal greeting used by members of the Ubran inner palace,¡± Arlette said, her voice going ice cold. ¡°What is a member of the Emperor¡¯s inner circle doing in my lands?¡±
¡°You are correct, I am a Batranala. Or I was, at least,¡± the Ubran said with a soft smile. ¡°They no longer desire my presence in the lands of the Empire.¡±
¡°And so you ended up here,¡± Arlette deadpanned.
¡°So it would seem.¡±
¡°How convenient. Unfortunately, our border is closed. Your presence is not desired in the lands of Otharia, either.¡±
¡°Arlette!¡± Gabby protested. ¡°If nobody is allowed to enter, why do you get to keep your boyfriend and I don¡¯t get to keep my friend?¡±
¡°Tehlmar is not-¡± Arlette tamped down another objection about Tehlmar before it could fully escape her lips. Their relationship status was more complicated than what everybody liked to pretend. ¡°My preferences had little to do with it. Tehlmar proved his worth. He provided invaluable intelligence in return for being allowed to stay. He¡¯s told us everything, answered every question. He even told us how he got into Otharia in the first place. Is your friend here willing and able to do the same?¡±
Chitra chuckled. ¡°I have no allegiance to Ubrus anymore. There is no reason for me to keep what secrets I have. I¡¯ll even tell you one right now: the Ubrans found a way to ward off leviathans. That is how I made it to this country undetected.¡±
Arlette¡¯s blood chilled at the news, though Chitra maintained her steady smile as she continued.
¡°The method requires a specific alchemical concoction that you mix in the water as you go. It keeps leviathans away up until a certain concentration, whereafter it will actually attract them for reasons nobody yet understands. Therein lies the problem. You need a lot of it to cross even distances as short as the gap between Eterium and Otharia with a single small craft. The amount necessary to allow for a fleet to survive even a small journey is too much. Instead of warding off the leviathans, it would summon them. That is why this substance was only used once during the invasion.¡±
¡°When was that? I never heard of this before.¡± Gabby asked to Arlette¡¯s surprise. She had thought that the Earthling would have been privy to such things given her position in the Ubran forces.
¡°The Empire decided to send a smaller force to attack Nefin while they amassed their main army in Redwater Castle,¡± Chitra explained. ¡°They had hoped to take out several high-value targets there before Gustil discovered that the castle had fallen, so they sent them across the sea between Ofrax and Gustil, around the Divide. I believe their mission ended in failure, but I don¡¯t know much more.¡±
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
¡°See?¡± Gabby said to Arlette. ¡°Now can she stay?¡±
¡°That¡¯s a start, but ultimately a drop in the bucket. However, the final decision is not mine to make. Only Lord Ferros can decide,¡± Arlette told her.
Gabby frowned. ¡°Is he-¡±
¡°I will consult with him later,¡± Arlette interrupted, shooting the Earthling the hottest glare that she could manage that might still go unnoticed by the Ubran. Things were bad enough as it was, and they did not need word spreading about Blake¡¯s condition and making everything worse. ¡°I¡¯m not feeling all that well yet. Is there anything else you needed to discuss with me?¡±
¡°What do we do about Sofie?¡± Gabby asked, her expression grave. ¡°I can¡¯t spend the rest of my life like this.¡±
¡°What can we do?¡± Arlette sighed. ¡°Have you tried to find her? I can¡¯t even move if I think about it. I can¡¯t use the surveillance system with that in mind, either. The moment I do, I can feel it welling up inside, pushing back and warning me that I¡¯ll die if I resist.¡±
¡°Same. I can¡¯t even ask anybody to look for her,¡± Gabby bemoaned. ¡°I just wish I could get somebody to go search for her, but I can¡¯t even say the words.¡±
Arlette¡¯s gaze flashed between Gabby, slumped forward in her chair, and Chitra standing beside her. The Ubran hadn¡¯t spoken, but Arlette could see that she was paying complete attention to their conversation. Arlette blinked. Was Gabby going for something here? Arlette decided to float a test and see what happened.
Bracing herself for the feeling of her soul running headfirst into a wall, she said, ¡°But anybody who did try to find her would have to be careful. Sofie is incredibly dangerous and likely to be a threat to whoever might stumble upon her. They would probably have to wait for her to fall asleep before approaching, or she would forbid them from moving or something.¡±
Nothing happened. She let out a breath of relief.
¡°I agree, but it is also very likely that she is still very upset over all of this,¡± Gabby added. ¡°If anybody were to find her, I would hope that person would be somebody who is kind and has experience calming people who are going through horrible experiences.¡±
¡°Do you think that it would be hard to find her? There¡¯s a good number of thin women of average height in their early twenties with black hair here in this city.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t think she¡¯s even in the city,¡± Gabby disagreed. ¡°She¡¯s probably somewhere out in the farmland by now.¡±
¡°Very possible,¡± Arlette admitted. The two of them shared a small secret smile. ¡°Well, I need to rest some more, if you don¡¯t mind.¡±
¡°Of course, of course,¡± Gabby agreed, pushing herself up and onto one foot. Without a word, Chitra placed a well-manicured hand on Gabby¡¯s shoulder to keep her from toppling over. Then, once stabilized, Gabby hopped from one foot to another all the way to the door. ¡°I pray that you recover soon.¡±
Alone once more, Arlette sat down upon her bed and let herself tip backward onto her back with a smirk on her face. Perhaps Gabriela was more clever than she¡¯d given her credit for. While she had been busy feeling bad about her situation, Gabby had, perhaps by necessity, realized the truth about Sofie¡¯s power.
Sofie could lay down rules, even wide-ranging and flexible rules like the ones Arlette was currently burdened with, but all rules had limits. The trick was to find those limits and work around them. It felt good to know that, if it ever somehow came down to it, Arlette could kill Sofie as long as she didn¡¯t leave her to die afterward.
¡°Peko?¡± she called again. As before, her imaginary friend failed to reappear.
With a tired shrug, Arlette pulled herself fully onto her bed and plopped her head down upon her freshly destroyed pillow. She¡¯d get a new one later. For now, she was tired and she¡¯d slept on much worse than this many times before. Within moments she¡¯d drifted into sleep.
Arlette woke up much sooner than she wanted to. According to the clock, she¡¯d slept just under another hour, far less than she felt she needed. Her body still ached from head to toe, and her cough remained. But for some reason, she couldn¡¯t get herself to go back to sleep.
Perhaps she needed some air, she decided. Climbing out of bed, she went to get dressed before realizing she¡¯d fallen asleep already dressed. With that hassle already taken care of, she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
The innards of Blake¡¯s fortress were silent and still. Between Pari¡¯s death, Blake¡¯s current health, and Sofie¡¯s absence, an eerie pall had fallen over the place. Arlette found herself surprised at how much she missed the noise and the hubbub over the peace and quiet of the current moment.
Heading down the hallway that led towards the sunlight, Arlette paused outside an open door. Sofie¡¯s door. It was so like her, to leave her room unsecured like this. Sofie seemed so willing to see past the vulgarity of human existence, even now, that it made Arlette¡¯s head spin. But then again, with what she could do, perhaps she didn¡¯t need to worry in the same way others did.
Giving in to foolish curiosity for a moment, she stepped inside the open room and looked around. Arlette always found a person¡¯s room to be an extension of their true selves. You could learn a lot just with a single look into another person¡¯s room. Arlette, for example, kept her room neat, organized, and clean, reflecting her orderly, disciplined mind. Sofie¡¯s room, on the other hand, looked like a trash heap. The entire place was a mess, a chaotic jumble of assorted items strew across the floor, the bed, and every other flat surface available.
Except for the desk. Sofie¡¯s desk stood in the corner like a small, solitary island in a sea of disorder. Upon it laid two large tomes, each open to reveal pages covered in scribbles that she could not hope to understand. Arlette understood that, even with the Emperor¡¯s book to help with her translations, Sofie¡¯s progress had petered out in the last few months. Her decision to start teaching tens of thousands of children had, not surprisingly, eaten up all of her free time.
There was nothing to see here. Arlette didn¡¯t even know why she¡¯d bothered to step inside. With a shake of her head to clear her mind, she left the room and headed outside.
The sun felt good on her skin, the midday breeze whisking away the stickiness clinging to her skin. She sat outside for a good while, perhaps half of an hour, before the brightness of the sun, amplified by the reflective surfaces all around, started to bother her. That was one of the problems with a fortress made entirely out of metal. Sometimes it didn¡¯t take much before all the shining gave her a headache. Or perhaps she just needed to eat something.
A meal later, Arlette could definitively say that it hadn¡¯t been just hunger. With likely more than half of her healing still to come, her body still ached to its core, and she¡¯d been pushing it with all this walking. She needed to head back to her bed and sleep some more.
The detour to the fortress cafeteria had altered her route back to her chambers, the new path leading by her current employer¡¯s domicile. As she neared it, she decided to give Lord Ferros a quick check and see if his condition had improved.
To say that Blake had been in dire condition the night before was the understatement of the century. Arlette felt like death warmed over from just a single hit of Sofie¡¯s power; Blake had taken twice as much, and each attack might have been harsher than hers as well, judging from how much he¡¯d screamed. Combine that with the state of his body already¡ªsomething that Sofie had hinted at but Arlette had never fully understood until she¡¯d seen it firsthand¡ªand it was a miracle that he was still alive at all.
Arlette had no idea how long it would take for the ruler of Otharia to wake up, assuming he ever would. She could still remember how long it had taken for Sofie to heal from a single arrow wound, one that, were she Scyrian, would have been little more than a scar within a few days at most. For all their overwhelming power, Earthlings didn¡¯t seem to be able to heal like a Scyrian could, one notable exception notwithstanding. In general, it was a tiny light in the darkness as far as Arlette was concerned, but in this specific case, it was a nightmare. They needed Blake alive and awake as soon as possible. Too much of the structure of the nation relied directly upon him, thanks to his inability to trust others with his secrets. Not that she had a leg to stand on when it came to paranoia.
Arlette arrived at the entrance to Blake¡¯s large living quarters, which was located behind three incredibly thick security doors. Or at least, what had once been three incredibly thick security doors. When she, Leo, and Gabriela had tried to move the comatose Blake back to his rooms, they¡¯d found themselves stuck outside said doors with no way of getting them to open, as the only person who could control them laid unconscious right between them.
Eventually, Gabby had solved this problem by forcefully bashing, tearing, and bending the doors open, an impressive accomplishment made even more impressive by the fact that she did it on one foot. Of course, because Blake was Blake, Gabby¡¯s actions set off a series of alarms, defenses, and more. Gabriela, being the Monster that she was, had ripped through the defenses like a cyclone through the Erim Steppe, a feat which Arlette would have found terrifying if she hadn¡¯t seen the Monster in peak form back during the siege.
On second thought, she still found it terrifying. That was the problem with Earthlings. Even in a weakened state, they towered over Scyrians. If Gabriela ever returned to her full ability...
Arlette shook her head. There was no point in pondering that now.
Blissful silence filled the rooms, a far cry from the shrieking sirens the night before. Even after Gabriela¡¯s reign of destruction, the wailing had continued until Arlette and Leo had figured out how to turn it off. After taking a massive injury, the last thing she¡¯d needed was to waste time trying to disable blaring alarms, but such was her life these days.
Carefully stepping around the debris strewn across the floor, Arlette worked her way into Blake¡¯s ¡°inner sanctum¡±. There, she found Blake lying on the bed where they¡¯d left him, as expected. What she didn¡¯t expect to find was Samanta standing beside him, seemingly lost in thought.
¡°Hey, kiddo,¡± Arlette said from the doorway.
The child almost jumped in the air from the sound of Arlette¡¯s voice. ¡°Ah...¡± she bleated, trying to find words. ¡°M-Miss Arlette...¡±
Arlette fought to hide a frown. Her and Samanta¡¯s relationship was... odd at best. Samanta, or Sam as Blake always called her, kept everybody at an arm¡¯s length to some degree. Pari and Sofie had been able to get closer to her than anybody else, while her relationship with Blake was... complex for reasons that Arlette had no desire to pry into. But for some reason, perhaps because her and Sam¡¯s only connection came through her employment, neither of them had made any real effort to form a connection, even though they saw each other relatively frequently. Maybe it was just that Arlette didn¡¯t particularly love being around children, or something to do with her status as an outsider.
¡°What are you doing in here?¡± Arlette wondered.
¡°I-I... um... nothing,¡± Samanta stammered. ¡°Just... thinking.¡±
¡°Is that so?¡± Arlette replied, stepping into the room and walking up beside the child.
Together, they stared down at the battered form of Lord Ferros. Arlette felt thankful that he had a blanket covering his body now. The moment Gabriela had ripped off his armor was the first time that Arlette had seen the flesh that lied beneath. It had been hard to look at, to say the least. It amazed her that he had been able to function as well as he did, but then, stubbornness was one of his defining traits.
His face looked recently washed. Somebody was taking care of him. Leo? Normally she would have guessed Sofie would be the one to take care of an injured person in this situation, but, well... Regardless, Arlette breathed a little easier knowing that her employer was being looked after. In her sorry state the night before, she¡¯d never even thought about it.
Cleanliness aside, Blake¡¯s health sure didn¡¯t seem so hot. His face looked as white as his sheets, his breaths shallow and labored. She took solace in the fact that at least he wasn¡¯t bleeding anymore.
¡°He doesn¡¯t look so great, does he?¡± she said to the child by her side. ¡°It¡¯s like a stiff breeze is all it would take to push him over the edge. Or, if you wanted to be more sure, a knife would be more than enough.¡±
Samanta flinched. ¡°H-how did-¡±
¡°Please, kid. I¡¯m a mercenary. Checking for hidden weapons is practically instinct at this point.¡± She reached out her hand, palm upturned expectantly. ¡°Now hand it over. And don¡¯t give me that look. I¡¯m doing you a favor.¡±
¡°All you adults say stuff like that,¡± the kid grumbled bitterly as she drew a kitchen knife, likely pilfered from the same cafeteria in which Arlette had just eaten, from her sleeve and placed it reluctantly in Arlette¡¯s waiting hand.
¡°Come here,¡± Arlette said, grabbing Sam by the arm and pulling her to a pair of chairs placed across the room. She sat down in one and gestured for Sam to take a seat as well. Reluctantly, hanging her head in that way only a petulant child preparing to be scolded could, Sam lowered herself into the second chair. Arlette waited for a bit, but the kid kept her sullen gaze squarely on the floor.
Eventually, Arlette let out a sigh. ¡°I¡¯m going to be frank here. When I was young, the most my mother had to punish me for were things like sneaking too many honey buns from the bakery. Attempted murder is a few steps beyond childish hijinks, kiddo. I¡¯m almost at a loss over what to do about it.¡±
Samanta¡¯s face scrunched up in emotion, though Arlette wasn¡¯t sure if it was sorrow, anger, bitterness, or something else. ¡°Just get it over with,¡± she told Arlette, still not looking up from her shoes.
¡°Sam, look at me,¡± Arlette prodded.
¡°Don¡¯t call me that,¡± the kid grumbled.
¡°Why not?¡±
¡°I hate it.¡±
¡°What¡¯s wrong with ¡®Sam¡¯? It¡¯s a perfectly fine nickname. Doesn¡¯t Blake call you that all the time?¡±
Silence.
¡°Do you hate the name? Or do you hate it because he¡¯s the one calling you that?¡±
More silence, the kind that held plenty of answers. Arlette felt a bad vibe run through her, like she¡¯d stumbled upon something that she perhaps didn¡¯t actually want to know. But now that the door was right in front of her, she found that she couldn¡¯t turn away. She needed to open it and see what was inside.
Samanta¡¯s presence in the fortress had always been a bit of a mystery, but one that Arlette had felt little need to solve. She knew that Blake had taken the kid in well before Arlette or Sofie had arrived in Otharia. She knew that Blake spent time with her most days that he was home, teaching her a variety of things. It reminded her of her second parents. Like them, he¡¯d taken in a child and was raising her in his own way.
Arlette had asked Sofie once if she knew why Blake had decided to raise Samanta. Sofie had refused to give her the details, saying only that it was complicated. That Sofie ¡°Walking Rumor Mill¡± Ramaut didn¡¯t want to spill the beans meant that the story had to be intensely personal, so Arlette backed off. As somebody who understood the importance of privacy, she didn¡¯t want to pry into something like that. She had other things¡ªlike her job¡ªto focus on, things that were actually important. She didn¡¯t need to know, and she¡¯d seen nothing that would give her cause to change that decision.
From what Arlette could tell, Blake treated the girl very well. He kept her well fed, gave her a nice place to live, taught her things she would otherwise never get to learn, and more. Arlette had never once seen a single sign that he beat her or mistreated her, other than that sort of self-absorbed neglect that he inflicted on everybody when he was busy with something he cared about. That was all she really needed to know.
As for the girl herself, Arlette had always thought that Samanta was the sort of moody, anti-authority child that some kids became at her age. The sort that fought with their parents over every little thing, the sort that wanted their independence over everything, no matter the cost. The sort that Arlette had been for a while with her second parents. But not once had she thought that Samanta held something against Blake that ran deep enough for her to go this far.
Arlette leaned forward. ¡°Do you hate Blake, Samanta? Enough to want to kill him?¡±
Samanta clenched her jaw tight. Though her body trembled, she remained silent. Arlette grew more concerned.
¡°Did he do something to you? Please, if he did something to you, I need to know about it.¡± If there was some sort of hidden abuse going on here, then Arlette needed to reconsider her employment. Depending on how bad it was, she might just drive the knife into his chest herself.
Tears began to fall onto the smooth metal beneath the child¡¯s feet. ¡°Shut up! Just leave me alone!¡± she half-sobbed, half-snarled. ¡°You people always lecture me like you understand, but you don¡¯t!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re going through,¡± Arlette admitted. ¡°But I do know what it¡¯s like to grow up hating somebody so much that you wish with everything in your heart that you could kill them with your own two hands. I know that feeling maybe better than anybody else in the world.¡±
The girl¡¯s sniffling slowed as she glared Arlette¡¯s way. ¡°You¡¯re lying.¡±
¡°If only,¡± Arlette sighed. ¡°Tell you what, I¡¯ll tell you my story, and in return, you tell me yours. Sound like a fair trade?¡±
Samanta still looked skeptical, but she didn¡¯t shoot Arlette down.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll start,¡± Arlette began softly. ¡°Once, there was a kingdom known as Ofrax, a small country far away on the continent of Obura...¡±
Arlette laid out her childhood, from her ¡°recruitment¡± to her training to her betrayal to her escape. She kept it short, but even the abridged version seemed to leave Samanta enraptured. About halfway through, the child started to weep once more, though Arlette didn¡¯t yet know why.
The reasons became pretty clear soon enough. Almost before Arlette had finished, Sam began to gush, her own story flooding out between sobs and sniffles. It was clear to Arlette that this was something that she¡¯d been dying to tell somebody for a long time. She¡¯d probably told some version of this story to Sofie, but from the emotion Arlette could feel rolling off of her, this was probably the first time she was telling the whole story.
And what a story it was. The two of them shared even more similarities in their pasts than she could have imagined. They each had lost their home, they each had been used by somebody more powerful, they each had suffered under a cloud of guilt¡ªor, in Sam¡¯s case, still suffered. Things were more complicated in this tale, however. The good and the bad were clear in Arlette¡¯s tale; the same could not be said here. But one thing appeared very clear to Arlette, something she couldn¡¯t let alone.
¡°Samanta. I need you to listen to me. All of this isn¡¯t your fault. You must not blame yourself for something you had no control over. Blake made you help him, and if you weren¡¯t there, he would have just found somebody else.¡±
¡°But if I hadn¡¯t stabbed him, then-¡±
¡°Then who can say what would have happened? Think about who he is. With how hard it is for him to take no for an answer, everything probably ends up like this anyway.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t know that,¡± Samanta muttered.
¡°I don¡¯t,¡± Arlette admitted. ¡°But either way, you need to trust me on this. You have to find a way to forgive yourself, or it will eat away at you for a lifetime. That¡¯s what almost happened to me. If my second parents had not rescued me from my guilt, I would not be sitting here with you. I would likely be dead, perhaps even by my own hand.¡±
Arlette could see Samanta¡¯s reluctance to put any faith in her words, but she pressed on anyway.
¡°You are a child. Children make mistakes all the time. That is just the nature of things. If even the man you crippled can understand that, so can you.¡±
Sam¡¯s eyes went wide and she glanced for a moment over at the quiet third person in the room.
¡°Do you really think, if Blake blamed you for everything that happened to him, that he would be taking care of you like this? No, he might be angry at you. Furious, even. But he doesn¡¯t blame you.¡±
Arlette could see the wheels spinning inside the kid¡¯s head. She looked a little overwhelmed from it all, but Arlette knew it was for the best.
¡°But what about my home?¡± Sam finally asked. ¡°What about everything he did, all the people he killed? What about Othar¡¯s teachings? It is my duty to strike down the Elseling! This is what Othar warned about!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t compound one mistake with another. With the Church destroyed, killing Blake would lead to a power vacuum that could destroy the entire nation.¡±
¡°But... but...¡±
¡°Let me ask you this, then,¡± Arlette said to the conflicted child. ¡°If it is your sacred duty, why did you hesitate? What made you stop long enough for me to walk in?¡±
Sam¡¯s head drooped. ¡°I... I was standing there and I... Pari... might not come back.... and... never get another chance... I don¡¯t know if I wanted to... kill him anymore... and I got so scared and...¡±
¡°Good! Good! Be glad!¡±
¡°Why would it be good to feel like this?¡± Sam whispered.
¡°Because it means your wounds are healing, and that means you might not end up like me. Trust me, that¡¯s a good thing.¡± Arlette shifted forward. ¡°Let me tell you something. Remember those two men who ruined my life and took my home and all that? The two that I grew up wishing I could kill with my bare hands? Well, they¡¯re dead now. I watched Sebastian die and I killed the Emperor with my own hands like I¡¯d always dreamed. And you know what? All that anger, all that hate, all that pain... it¡¯s still there. That¡¯s the terrible truth about all this. I thought it would make me feel better. But it didn¡¯t help much at all.
¡°Don¡¯t be like me, Sam. Don¡¯t make the same mistakes that I did. If you can find it in yourself to let it go, do it and never look back. You¡¯ll thank me later.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what to think anymore,¡± Sam complained. ¡°It¡¯s all so confusing.¡±
¡°And that¡¯s perfectly fine. You¡¯re just a kid. You don¡¯t have to make up your mind any time soon. Let time help sort everything out, and one day you¡¯ll know.¡±
Sam went back to staring at the floor in silence. Arlette didn¡¯t push her. She knew the girl needed time to ponder. But there were better places for that than here.
¡°Come, let¡¯s go back to your room,¡± she said after a while.
Sam didn¡¯t fight her as Arlette took the girl¡¯s hand and stood up. The world spun slightly from the exertion and Arlette remembered that she was injured. She¡¯d only planned on checking in on Blake for a moment, not for whatever this was.
Slowly, they made their way out of Blake¡¯s chambers and over to the entrance to Samanta¡¯s rooms. The moment the door opened, Alpha, Sam¡¯s tiny skitter pet, bounded out into the hallway, jumping up and down and letting out little squeals of protest at being locked away.
¡°I¡¯ll leave her to you,¡± Arlette told the little robot.
The machine beeped back at her, and for some reason, Arlette felt like it was acknowledging her statement.
Finally, Arlette turned back towards her room. She¡¯d already spent far too much time away from her bed, much more than she¡¯d planned, and weakness descended upon her overtaxed body with a vengeance. She¡¯d pushed herself too far. Her steps quickly grew unsteady and the world began to sway. It wasn¡¯t long before she found herself leaning against the right wall, unable to continue further. She bent over as a large cough forced its way out of her mouth, followed by another even heavier one. She fell to her knees as the coughing fit grew worse and worse and the specks of blood spewing from her mouth grew into full-on drops of wet, sticky redness.
Just wonderful. Arlette tried to climb back onto her feet but found that willpower could only do so much. Her vision spun and grew fuzzy as she fell to the cold, hard floor. Perhaps she was going to have to sleep here instead...
¡°Arlette!¡± a voice said from somewhere. ¡°There you are!¡±
Arlette heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Small hands carefully turned her onto her back. Even with her fuzzy eyesight, she¡¯d recognize that distinctive elf-shaped blur anywhere.
¡°How did you get in here?¡± she mumbled.
¡°The lady with the huge sword let me in,¡± Tehlmar told her. ¡°She said something happened to you?!¡±
¡°Yeah...¡±
¡°What happened?¡±
Arlette coughed again.
¡°It¡¯s... complicated...¡± she managed to say.
¡°Well, let¡¯s get you to your room,¡± he said. ¡°Can you walk?¡±
¡°No,¡± she croaked.
¡°Well, guess there¡¯s no helping it then...¡± Tehlmar sighed.
Sliding one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her legs, he grunted and slowly lifted her off the floor.
¡°Oof, you¡¯re heavy,¡± he groaned.
¡°I¡¯m not... you¡¯re just tiny...¡± she grumbled back.
¡°So who did this to you?¡± Tehlmar panted as he staggered down the hallway.
¡°Sofie,¡± she told him. She didn¡¯t want to tell him, because she knew what his reaction was going to be, but if she didn¡¯t, he¡¯d just find out from somebody else. At least now, she could stop him from making a big mistake and getting himself killed.
¡°Now isn¡¯t the time to be joking, Letty,¡± Tehlmar scolded her, a half-amused smirk on his face.
Arlette watched as, when she didn¡¯t respond, his features progressively became more dour and serious.
¡°She... she really...?¡±
Arlette nodded.
¡°That little witch! I knew she was no good!¡± he snarled. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll take care of her.¡±
¡°No!¡± she wheezed, the exertion making her lightheaded. This was what she was afraid of. Why did he have to be so stupidly predictable? So... so willing to die for her? ¡°She¡¯ll... kill you... She can control... your mind... make you do things... or not do things...¡±
She swayed slightly as Tehlmar came to a stop in front of her rooms. She reached out and pressed a hand against the panel, unlocking the door.
¡°I told you we should have left her to die somewhere from the start, but you wouldn¡¯t do it,¡± Tehlmar huffed as the door slid aside. A moment later, he lowered her into her soft bed with a breath of relief.
¡°I couldn¡¯t do it...¡± she informed him. ¡°She made it so I couldn¡¯t...¡±
Tehlmar ruffled her hair affectionately.
¡°I don¡¯t know if I fully understand or believe what you¡¯re saying, but maybe you shouldn¡¯t worry about it. There was no way you were going to listen to me regardless. I knew it then and I know it now. You never could abandon somebody in need if they were in front of you. Especially not somebody as helpless as she was. I made the arguments anyway, but I knew it would end up the same as if I was talking to a stone wall.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not true...¡±
¡°It absolutely is. You¡¯ve always been too nice for your own good. Normal mercenary captains don¡¯t rescue children taken by slavers, Letty. But when those villagers came to you back then, you didn¡¯t even think twice. It¡¯s just who you are. If it makes you feel any better, that was a big reason a lot of the others stuck around in our middling little mercenary band. They liked having somebody like you calling the shots. It made them feel like more than just a bunch of losers killing for coin.¡±
¡°Hmph,¡± Arlette sniffed. She wanted to be irate over his absurdly baseless claims, but she just didn¡¯t have the energy for it at the moment. She could feel herself slipping away towards unconsciousness. Reaching out and grabbing his hand as hard as she could¡ªwhich, currently, was not very¡ªshe looked up at him pleadingly. ¡°Stay with me?¡±
¡°Of course, my love,¡± he replied, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. ¡°Not even a god could get me to move from this spot.¡±
Arlette smiled. Her last thought before she entered the lands of dreams was how nice it felt to finally have a somebody she could truly rely on.
Chapter 103
Sofie looked both ways, making sure that the road was fully empty as far as her eyes could see, before rushing across the flat paved surface and into the brush on the other side. She kept moving, as she had all through the night and into the day, memories of eyes filled with betrayal driving her forward.
She¡¯d fucked up. She¡¯d fucked up hard. Looking back now, she should have expected Arlette to fly off the handle. When confronted with a horrible truth like Sofie¡¯s unintended deeds, Arlette was the type of person who would explode in anger first, overreact, and then feel guilty about it later. If Sofie hadn¡¯t run, if she¡¯d just faced Arlette head-on, the Scyrian would have come to her begging for forgiveness a day or two later and everything would have gone back to the way they should be. But Arlette hadn¡¯t been empty-handed; she¡¯d come at Sofie with a knife in her hand and a menace in her eyes. And then there was Gabby, who¡¯d seemed rather upset, and an upset Gabby was perhaps the scariest thing in two universes.
So she¡¯d fled. That choice, and her panicked use of her ability in the process, had reinforced in the others¡¯ minds her guilt. The damage was done.
She couldn¡¯t go back. Not yet. She didn¡¯t have it inside her to face everyone now. She¡¯d grown used to others finding her annoying or overly opinionated years ago, well before her unwanted excursion to another dimension. But she¡¯d never faced outright hatred before, especially not the burning hatred that had helped send her running. She found herself recoiling from just the thought of it.
Maybe that hatred would pass with time. Maybe then, when they¡¯d all had time to think about everything with clearer heads, they¡¯d realize that this was all a huge mistake and find it in their hearts to forgive her.
But first, she had to forgive herself. She didn¡¯t know if she had it in her to manage such a feat. Even half a day later, she couldn¡¯t stop thinking about what she¡¯d done, the list of her sins running through her head over and over and getting longer each time as she remembered another terrible deed.
And so, Sofie continued on. She didn¡¯t have a plan, or even a goal, exactly. All she had was a need to get far, far away, from the people she¡¯d hurt so terribly. Perhaps, if she could do it, she could get away from all people entirely. Then she wouldn¡¯t have to worry about hurting anybody else. Nor would she have to face those that she¡¯d already hurt so gravely. It would be the best for everybody involved.
The land around Wroetin had been almost entirely farmland, the land around the city more fertile than most areas in Otharia¡ªa key reason for the city¡¯s location in the first place. Now, though, after half a day¡¯s travel, the farms had given way to nature in places, a patchwork of farms and brush with the occasional village thrown into the mix. It was good, then, that she¡¯d crossed so much of the most heavily developed area before the sun had risen. The last thing Sofie wanted right now was to be seen.
Barring Blake, Sofie Ramaut was, without a doubt, the most well-known person in the country. Weeks of regular nationwide educational broadcasts did that to you. She didn¡¯t want anybody recognizing her and helping people track her down.
That was, if anybody could even track her down. She¡¯d put a geas on Arlette, Gabby, and Leo that forbade them from trying to find her¡ªa choice she¡¯d made in the heat of the moment that she now half-regretted¡ªbut there was still Blake... assuming he woke up... assuming that he even could wake up. As much as he annoyed her, Sofie prayed she hadn¡¯t inadvertently killed him or injured him so gravely that he would be in a coma for the rest of this life.
But if¡ªno, not if, when¡ªhe did wake, would he be affected by the geas too? He¡¯d been there at the time, and she¡¯d wanted him included in the whole thing, but he¡¯d been unconscious and hadn¡¯t heard her. Would it matter?
That was part of the problem: even after thinking over everything, Sofie still knew so little about her own abilities. This terrified her.
She knew some likely facts. She knew that she could force people to not do things by using the word ¡°don¡¯t¡±, forming a sort of geas¡ªan Irish word she recalled from a folklore book she¡¯d read back on Earth meaning ¡°a prohibition magically imposed on a person¡±, which best fit her understanding of what she did to her victims. She knew that a person who broke a geas would get hurt in some horrible and painful way. She guessed, based on Blake¡¯s behavior and other inferences from other past events, that people who didn¡¯t know they were under a geas would avoid breaking them without even realizing it, like how Blake had tried to avoid contact with her even though he never normally would have cared. She knew that somebody could fight a geas if they knew it existed, but they would suffer just like any others who broke their geasa.
But that was it. That was all she knew. A mountain of unanswered questions remained. And the only way to find out was to experiment on somebody, and that was absolutely not an option.
Could she only create a geas using ¡°don¡¯t¡±, or did other words also work? Did she even need to speak aloud at all? Did distance matter? Were geasa eternal? Could she create compulsions to force somebody to do something, rather than forbid it? How did a geas even know when its condition had been broken?
All these unknowns formed into a massive boulder in her mind, a boulder chained to her foot and dragging her down to the bottom of the sea. How could she be anywhere near other people when she couldn¡¯t answer anything?
Panting and out of breath, Sofie slowed to a stop amid some chest-high bushes on a shallow hillside. Out ahead of her stretched more farmland and wilderness. She spotted a village of indeterminate size almost straight ahead, too far away to make out details.
To her right, she noticed something off in the distance, something she hadn¡¯t noticed until now. After a few moments of squinting, she realized that she was looking at the raised rail line of Blake¡¯s intercity train system, running roughly parallel with her current heading. That wouldn¡¯t do.
Resuming her trek, she turned away from the railway and continued on through the midday sun. The strong spring rays of the sun cascaded down onto Sofie¡¯s body, but no amount of sunlight seemed to drive away the chill inside her.
Fleeing from bounty hunters for days was not something Sofie would ever recommend to anybody, but as she greedily sucked at the stem of a oro bush, she couldn¡¯t deny she¡¯d learned a thing or two from the experience. After weeks of living on the run and living off the land with Arlette, Sofie¡¯s survivalist knowledge stood leaps and bounds above what it had been on her arrival. She was no expert, that was for damned sure, but she evidently knew enough to not die within the first few days of wilderness isolation.
Most of what she¡¯d learned didn¡¯t apply to the plants that grew down in Otharia. Its wilderness was more sparse, filled with low bushes and some small, light forests, as opposed to the oppressive jungles of Stragma or even the dense temperate forests of Kutrad. It reminded her of what she¡¯d seen of Greece back when she¡¯d gone there as a child to vacation with her parents. While Otharia¡¯s climate and environment differed enough from Kutrad to foster its own largely separate ecosystem, there were enough plants that grew across all of Nocend for her to survive for now.
She knew of weeds like the oro bush, which greedily sucked up water and could be used for hydration. She knew about mushrooms, like the showershadow which quickly appeared in the spring after rainstorms, that could be safely eaten, and others, like the one colloquially known as the dead man¡¯s knee, which could kill you with a single bite. She knew how to make a makeshift shelter and a fire to keep warm at night.
She knew enough to get her to where she sat now: in a small forest located somewhere a full day-and-a-half¡¯s travel south or southwest of Wroetin. At least, she believed that to be the case. It had been dark at the beginning and she¡¯d been far too distracted with life-shattering revelations to pay attention to which direction she¡¯d run. Seeing Blake¡¯s railway had helped orient her a bit better, but many hours had passed since she¡¯d moved away from that.
The small fire crackled near her aching feet, its warmth washing over her legs. She could feel it seeping into her, lulling her to sleep. She laid down and closed her eyes.
Iridescent golden eyes gleamed in the darkness behind her eyelids.
Sofie let out an audible gasp, her eyes shooting wide open. She looked around. No time had passed. She closed her eyes again.
The yellow eyes returned.
Sofie¡¯s eyes opened once more. She knew those eyes. She¡¯d seen those golden irises and slit pupils thousands of times before. They were Pari¡¯s eyes.
It would have been easier if Pari had looked at her in anger, but no, those eyes looked sad. She saw not accusation or fury in that gaze, but rather deep sadness and a single, terrible message.
¡°Why did you kill me, Sofie-sis?¡± they asked. ¡°I thought you loved me.¡±
Sofie had managed to hold back the waterworks for the last day, but now they returned with a vengeance. She did not sleep a single minute that night.
Sofie shivered as she knelt beside a small pile of damp wood she¡¯d gathered beneath a rocky overhang. A cold front had come through that afternoon, chilling her body and driving home once again the folly of running away without packing first. Now, as she struggled to get the wood to light, she found herself once more beating herself up over her endless stupidity. She could really use a thicker outfit right now, and a firestarter of some sort.
Not that firestarters really existed in Scyria, when every person could magic-up a candle flame at will. Not her, though. It bothered her that she couldn¡¯t accomplish what even the weakest Scyrians could do with ease. Even Pari had been able to make a flame.
Speaking of Pari, the child¡¯s questioning gaze remained, waiting for her to close her eyes again. The sight tormented her, keeping her from slumber. She had not slept since she¡¯d hit her head after falling from the dragon¡¯s hand, now a full three nights in a row.
The lack of sleep was starting to get to her. She even thought she was hearing voices now, as she frantically spun her stick against the wood, which stubbornly refused to do more than lightly smoke. She paused her futile efforts for a moment to take a breather and realized that the voices weren¡¯t in her head after all. Somebody, no, several people were nearby.
As quickly and silently as she could, Sofie crouched against the nearby stone. The rock jutted out into the air fairly low from the ground, creating a pocket of space about a meter high, three meters wide, and three meters deep. Thick brush covered the pocket¡¯s opening, the plants so thick that she¡¯d nearly missed it entirely. They were partly why she¡¯d chosen it as her resting place for the night. Hopefully, they would keep whoever was out there from finding her as well.
¡°You sure this is the right way?¡± a woman said, somewhere off in the distance.
¡°I am,¡± a male replied. ¡°Gertija said she saw a strange girl enter the woods. Said it looked like she was sneaking around, so that none of us farmers would notice her.¡±
¡°Wait, we¡¯re out here in the blighted dark because of Gertija?¡± the woman bemoaned. ¡°That old crone says she sees shit all the time and it¡¯s never real! Remember when she claimed she saw a woman with a bow hiding in the trees three seasons ago? Load of crap, that was! We spent hours looking. No sign of anything or anybody.¡±
¡°I know, I know,¡± the man reluctantly acknowledged. Their voices were louder now. They were close by. ¡°Still, let¡¯s just look around some, just to make sure. Wouldn¡¯t want to end up like Larenta.¡±
¡°What happened to Larenta?¡±
¡°Bandits. Killed half of the village, made off with a lot of food and the like.¡±
¡°Ah...¡± the woman muttered, before finding her voice again. ¡°But we¡¯re not tiny like Larenta. We can defend ourselves.¡±
Sofie held her breath as the pair walked by not more than five meters away.
¡°You¡¯re probably right,¡± the man agreed. ¡°But we should check anyway. Can¡¯t hurt to be prudent.¡±
¡°...Aye...¡±
Sofie kept still as the two villagers tromped around the nearby area for what felt like a millennium.
¡°See? Told you this was a waste of time,¡± the woman finally said.
¡°I know, I know,¡± the man relented.
¡°Old woman¡¯s half blind, I bet.¡±
The voices eventually faded, and Sofie let out a long-held breath. Reluctantly, she decided that she would have to forgo any fire tonight, lest it attract somebody.
She still did not want to be found yet. Or maybe not ever. She didn¡¯t know which anymore. She didn¡¯t know anything anymore.
She shivered as the cold seeped into her bones. Sleep eluded her that night, once again.
Sofie huddled from the rain inside a small copse out in the Otharian countryside, somewhere. Where, exactly, she didn¡¯t know anymore. Her route had meandered greatly as the days went by, and she could say with great authority that she was now thoroughly lost.
She¡¯d been lost once, back when she¡¯d been just five years old. She¡¯d wandered away from her parents in a park and had spent the next few hours wandering around looking for them and crying. She didn¡¯t mind being lost this time.
Sofie let out a sigh. What would her parents think of her now, wet and miserable, cowering from the rain? How would those thoughts change when they found out that she was a mind rapist?
No amount of rain could wash away the stain. All she could do now was vow to never use her terrible power ever again. Once more, she swore to herself, a dozen times, a hundred times, that she would never, ever use her powers again for any reason.
But was that a vow she could keep when she didn¡¯t even know exactly how her abilities even worked? If her powers activated to more than just ¡°don¡¯t¡±, then... then just how many victims had she already created? And who were they? She needed the answers to these questions just as much as she dreaded them.
After days spent reviewing her past while she traveled, Sofie could now remember many times when she had likely created a geas, but she knew that the number of times she couldn¡¯t remember had to greatly outnumber that already depressingly large amount. Every single one of the people close to her surely had at least one geas. Then there were the various people with whom she¡¯d interacted since her arrival. Just in her stay in Crirada alone, she must have affected dozens, if not hundreds, of people; the elves, the quartermasters¡ªthinking back now, it seemed weird how she¡¯d always managed to procure more food for the three of them than the standard allotment, even the now-dead General Astalaria. The man had released Arlette from his dungeon far too easily, in hindsight.
That just a small slice of her life. Her initial failure to geas Gabby when she hadn¡¯t really tried gave her hope that geasa only formed from when she spoke with clear intent and conviction; otherwise, the total geasa would surely be in the hundreds of thousands. Still, even if Sofie had to care for it to work, caring was what she was best at! She cared when she spoke to her friends, when she spoke to others she didn¡¯t know, when she was teaching-
The children! How had she forgotten about them?! A spike of frozen dread stabbed into her gut. Her powers were based on the mind or the soul in some way, and Manys served as bridges of the soul. Could she create a geas through a Many? Had she brainwashed tens of thousands of children several times a week? Just her sign-off alone...
¡°Don¡¯t forget¡±, her closing remarks had always begun. The children always repeated it. They had surely not forgotten. And the way she¡¯d suddenly felt so drained right after...
¡°No... no! When will it end?!¡± she sobbed, her tears blending in with the raindrops dripping down her face.
Sofie curled up even tighter and cried, as she had so much these last few days.
She hadn¡¯t slept a wink the last four nights. Tonight would prove to be no different.
Sofie¡¯s stomach groaned as she forced herself to swallow another chewed and pulped purple pipay leaf. She had always loved that the plants of Scyria grew leaves in a variety of colors, rather than just green. The rainbow of hues created by forests across the continent¡ªthe green-only Stragma notwithstanding¡ªlent the land an alien but pleasing beauty. That didn¡¯t make them any more appetizing, though. The violet leaves of the pipay bush were edible and had at least some semblance of nutrition inside them. They also tasted like moldy spinach.
Having a superpowered body helped. Sofie did not possess the immense physical talents of her counterparts, but normal people couldn¡¯t go through five days of movement while not sleeping and still move, let alone maintain some semblance of sanity. After everything she¡¯d gone through, she believed that her body was far tougher than a normal person¡¯s body on Earth. She could survive on less food and water, and she had truckloads more endurance than a bookworm like her would ever have had back home. Without that, there would have been no way for her to keep up with the Scyrians during their flight from Kutrad.
The others surely had similarly toughened bodies. The fact that Blake was still alive¡ªassuming he still was alive, given what she¡¯d just done to him¡ªafter all the punishment he¡¯d been through was testament to the toughness of an upgraded Earthling body. The stab through the spine alone should have been enough to kill a normal man.
Her stomach growled again, but the hunger pangs subsided for the moment. After harvesting more leaves and tucking them into her pockets, Sofie continued on. Where to, she didn¡¯t know. She just knew that she couldn¡¯t go back.
Not for the first time this journey, Sofie found herself wishing that she was actually the worthless, weak woman that everybody¡ªherself included¡ªhad thought her to be for so long. Everything would have been better if she had no powers. But she did have them, and there was nothing she could do about that... right?
A seed of an idea sprouted in Sofie¡¯s sleep-deprived mind. There was a small stream not too far back, where she¡¯d quenched her thirst for a spell. A strange desperate hope slowly filling her, she made her way back to the creek and found a small pool where the water ran slow enough to show her a clear reflection of her face.
Looking deep into her own eyes, with the greatest conviction she could humanly muster, she said aloud to herself, ¡°Don¡¯t say ¡®don¡¯t¡¯ ever again.¡±
Sofie didn¡¯t know if that single word was required for her to use her powers, or if it was just a mental trigger, or what, but all the terrible things she knew she¡¯d done so far had involved it. Maybe if she could shut that off, she could disable all of it.
She let a few moments pass in silence, afraid to lose the hope she¡¯d so unwisely allowed to bloom inside, before taking a small, nervous breath. ¡°Don¡¯t.¡±
Emptiness filled her and she sank to the ground. It had been worth a shot, but the spiraling sadness she felt now was her just desserts for letting herself get her hopes up. It would have been too easy if that had worked. Too nice. She didn¡¯t get to have nice things in her life.
A high-pitched whine in the distance caught Sofie¡¯s ears, and she turned towards the noise. The sound was far off, coming from somewhere on the other side of a nearby bluff. She didn¡¯t know what the sound was, but she knew it had to be man-made. Perhaps she wasn¡¯t in the middle of nowhere after all?
Curious and hoping to get her bearings, Sofie pushed herself to her feet and headed towards the sound. It turned out to be much farther than she¡¯d thought, but after clambering over three small-to-moderately sized ridges, she found herself peeking over a rock, surprised at what she saw.
The small valley before her was one of the more heavily wooded areas of Otharia that she¡¯d seen so far, or at least it had been. Half of the forest was gone, replaced with a graveyard of craters and tree stumps. A group of ten Otharians busily labored away at the far end of the valley, one team of five using a series of ropes to wrench stumps from the earth while another five half-dragged, half-carried fallen trees towards a large machine closer to her and the entrance to the valley. Though the machine¡¯s form didn¡¯t exactly fit that of what she was used to on Earth, with its large spider-like legs for locomotion, Sofie knew a wood chipper when she saw one. If the gaping maw at the front wasn¡¯t enough to tip her off, the cart mostly filled with mulch on the far side told her everything she needed to know.
At the moment she¡¯d first arrived, the second team had just been approaching the machine. She watched as they lifted the cut end of the downed tree, fed it into the chipper, and backed away with great haste and what seemed like a bit of fear. Something inside the machine latched onto the three-foot-wide trunk and began hauling it in with the gusto of a starving man at a buffet. A loud grinding noise filled the air as the chipper slowly reduced the once-proud tree into little more than a pile of tiny broken pieces.
Sofie continued her clandestine survey of the area. The grinding of the chipper wasn¡¯t the sound she¡¯d heard before, so what had that noise been? In a likely related question, if all ten of the Otharians working here were busy dealing with the aftermath of chopped trees, then who or what was actually cutting the trees?
Sofie spotted the second robot just as it took its oversized chainsaw to the side of another tree down on the far end of the valley. Yeah, that sounded much closer to what she¡¯d heard. She watched in awe at the speed with which the robot¡¯s weapon tore through the wood, the whole ordeal from start to end taking no more than a minute. Its work done, the robot skittered to the side, avoiding the plummeting timber, and then moved out of the way for the second team to come in and begin the process of transporting the tree to the wood chipper. Sofie didn¡¯t know why they didn¡¯t just move the chipper closer, but she also wasn¡¯t a landscaper or a lumberjack so she didn¡¯t want to judge.
This was not the first time Sofie had witnessed deforestation in Otharia; she¡¯d seen it in progress when she¡¯d first snuck in. But that time felt very different. Back then, the Otharians had still been using old-style axes and other manual implements, while one of Blake¡¯s giant tunnel borers had come up from the earth and consumed a large sequoia-sized tree in the farmers¡¯ midst. She remembered the panicked way the Otharians fled when the metal worm first appeared, as if they didn¡¯t know what was happening. There seemed to be much more organization and communication, and less fear than the last time.
Throughout her trek, even as she¡¯d tried to avoid people as much as she could, Sofie had witnessed many signs of change and improvement to the land. New roads, smooth and wide, crisscrossed the countryside. Shiny metal bridges spanned rivers and streams alike. She even spotted a few man-made aqueducts bringing much-needed water to otherwise infertile new farmland.
Minister Upeslacis, that old farmer, had told her once that during the last winter there¡¯d been more food and less starvation than any winter in memory. She¡¯d nodded then, but it wasn¡¯t until these last few days that she¡¯d come to understand the sheer amount of effort Blake, that old geezer, his department, and the Otharian farming community had put into improving the farms in this country. Given the wealth of changes since then, this winter would surely go even better for the people of Otharia.
At least when it came to agriculture, Sofie could not deny that Blake qualified as a net positive for the people here. She¡¯d criticized him on many of the ways he handled governing this land, as well as his act of seizing power here in the first place, but she couldn¡¯t deny that in this one field, he¡¯d done a great job. Food would likely no longer be a problem in Otharia, and that was worth celebrating.
Speaking of food, Sofie¡¯s nose caught wind of something delicious nearby. There was a small wagon not far from the chipper. Her fine eyes spotted, resting inside along with some other items, several sacks that likely contained the Otharians¡¯ lunches. The scent wafting through her nostrils smelled almost divine, conjuring up thoughts of delicious cheeses and exotic spices. Her body was halfway to the wagon, her body ducking behind trees and rocks to avoid being seen, before her mind even realized what was happening.
Sofie halted, crouching inside the nearby brush, as she tried to find her bearings. What was she even doing?! How could she think about stealing some poor laborer¡¯s lunch? Her stomach growled again. She was, admittedly, incredibly famished, having subsisted entirely off of foraging for days now. But still, to take the fruits of somebody else¡¯s hard-earned labor, she couldn¡¯t do that! Could she? It wasn¡¯t like she wanted to take all of their lunches. There would still be plenty left here for everybody to eat, right?
On another day, in different conditions, Sofie would never have even entertained such thoughts. But having not slept for five straight days and having eaten nothing but leaves and roots the entire time, Sofie¡¯s tired and weary mind ended up making a different decision. She resumed her sneaky path towards her first real food since she¡¯d left the gates of Wroetin.
She kept to the forest until the last few meters before sprinting out to the wagon when the time was right and ducking behind it. Nobody noticed her, likely because they were so busy working. Creeping higher, she reached into the nearest sack. The sack held a variety of items. On the top sat several small loaves of bread, with what looked like large pieces of some sort of soft cheese beneath them. Further beneath, she found some other things, like something that looked like a cluster of grapes, only instead of grapes, the fruits on the stems looked more like some sort of olive. The enticing aroma of the cheese from before, mixed with the olive-grapes, filled her mind with anticipation. What would these taste-
A shout in the distance pulled Sofie back into the moment. She looked out and realized she¡¯d been spotted, with two of the men rushing towards her. Grabbing a loaf and some cheese, Sofie took off into the woods as fast as she could. Much to her chagrin, the men chased after her.
Sofie sprinted through the wilderness as fast as her weakened and quickly tiring legs could drive her, clambering up hillsides, pushing through nettles, and dodging exposed roots with everything she had. It wasn¡¯t going to be enough. She could tell from the occasional glance back, as well as the random shouts growing louder, that they were gaining on her. The men had every advantage. They were well-rested, had eaten, had longer legs, and were almost definitely low-level Feelers at the least.
She rushed over another ridge and found herself slipping and sliding down a steep dirt slope a good eight to ten meters high. The dirt, soft and wet from the night¡¯s rain, got all over not just her shoes but also her rear and her back as she went. After skidding to a stop on her butt, she pushed herself up and turned back to see the two men arrive at the top of the slope. She started running again as the one growled and stepped forward, but the other grabbed him, saying, ¡°Stop!¡±
The man said something a little softer, and Sofie was already running through the trees once more, making plenty of noise herself. ¡°That¡¯s where-¡± was all she caught, the words and the understanding within tapering off after that. She didn¡¯t stick around to figure out what the rest of the message was. She kept going.
Once she was convinced she wasn¡¯t being followed, Sofie allowed herself to sink down against a tree, panting and wheezing. Some of the cheese had fallen off, but much of it still remained, and the bread looked largely untouched. Without reservation, she took a bite.
Bliss!
She¡¯d feel guilty about this again later, she knew. It was a lot harder to be carefree about theft when you could put a face to the victim. But for the moment, there was just her, the bread, and the cheese, and it was glorious.
Until it wasn¡¯t.
¡°Well what do we have here?¡± a voice asked from her left, its proximity disturbingly close.
Sofie let out a squeak, dropping her pilfered food as she scrambled to her feet to face the voice¡¯s source. A man leaned against a tree not more than ten meters away, an unkind smirk on his lips. He wore a set of rugged, worn leathers and had a short, semi-maintained beard. The man didn¡¯t look like he¡¯d been anywhere near a bathtub in months, dirt covering his clothes, his skin, even his long violet hair.
¡°What¡¯s a little thing like you doing in our territory?¡± he asked, taking several steps closer.
Between the way he moved and the way he stared at her, Sofie got a startling impression of a snake coming from the man. She backed away from him, her gaze flicking around to look for a place to run while trying to not take her eyes off the creepy snake-like man for a second more than she had to.
¡°Don¡¯t co-¡±
Sofie realized what she was doing halfway through and clamped her mouth shut, nearly biting off her tongue. She couldn¡¯t do it. She wouldn¡¯t! She¡¯d promised herself that she would never use her power again!
Sofie knew she was in deep trouble, but that didn¡¯t matter. She¡¯d sworn an oath to herself, and what sort of oath would it be if she broke it at the first real opportunity?
¡°Stay back!¡± she called out instead, trying to keep her voice firm and unwavering. ¡°Don¡¯t make me-¡±
No! Why did this keep happening!? Did she really use that damned word so often?!
¡°Don¡¯t make you what?¡± the man leered.
¡°I¡¯ll defend myself if I have to!¡± she warned, hoping she could at least bluff herself into a better situation. ¡°You won¡¯t like it if I do!¡±
¡°Oh no!¡± he laughed, stopped in his tracks. ¡°I guess I¡¯d better stand back!¡±
Sofie blinked. Was he... actually doing what she asked? With a moment of dread, she thought that, perhaps, her ability worked with other words as well. Then something hard hit on her on the back of her head, and everything went dark.
¡°It can¡¯t be her. She wouldn¡¯t be out in this bumfuck place,¡± a nasally male voice hissed not too far away.
¡°It¡¯s definitely her,¡± a female countered. ¡°I saw her on the Many during a recon trip, back when she first started. She didn¡¯t look so skin and bones back then, but it¡¯s definitely her.¡±
Sofie kept her eyes closed and her body still, listening intently. She didn¡¯t know much about what was going on, other than that her head hurt. It felt like she was sitting on something cold and hard, with the same sort of surface pressed against her back. She didn¡¯t feel anything binding her feet, but her wrists felt like they were bound by a strong, thick, rough rope of some sort. That rope seemed to be attached to something above her, leaving her arms to dangle in the air.
That was all she¡¯d sussed out with her eyes closed in the last minute since she¡¯d come to¡ªthat, and the fact that she had a killer headache from that whack on the head. Anything more would come when she opened her eyes. But first, she needed to listen while they still felt like talking about her within earshot.
¡°We shouldn¡¯t have anything to do with her,¡± a third, lower voice chimed in. ¡°The tyrant will have his beasts out in force hunting for her. We should have run hours ago. If they find us...¡±
¡°They won¡¯t find us. He¡¯s not looking for her at all,¡± snake-y man cut in. She mentally dubbed him Snake due to the feelings he gave her. ¡°If he was hunting for her, he would have taken her days ago. She never would have made it this far from Wroetin. You¡¯re all looking at this wrong. This is a blessing from Othar himself!¡±
¡°It¡¯s dangerous, is what it is,¡± the nasal voice shot back. ¡°Gonna put us in a shallow grave.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not thinking about this the right way,¡± Snake countered. ¡°This is our ticket out of here.¡±
¡°How so?¡± the female asked, her tone skeptical.
¡°Best case, if we could smuggle her into Wroetin, or even Keqont or Nont, a proper show and execution could stoke the fires of a true nation-wide uprising. Or, we use her as our way of getting into the resistance, so we could start doing some real damage. Worst case, she stays here while we take our anger out on her, let her feel the pain he¡¯s made us feel, then dump her dead body somewhere far away.¡±
Sofie barely kept still at the last bit. She fought down the urge to geas them all, reminding herself that she didn¡¯t need to add to her crimes. But still, she needed a plan, one that didn¡¯t end with her dead body lying in a ditch somewhere.
¡°Worst case, our hole-filled bodies are left to rot as scavengers pick us apart,¡± mister nasal voice cut in.
¡°I¡¯m sick of being a bandit, Visvars! I¡¯m not going to let this be how I live for the rest of my life!¡± Snake growled. ¡°Isn¡¯t that right, Scritt?¡±
¡°Y-yeah! Of course, sir!¡± a young voice stuttered.
Sofie hadn¡¯t expected to hear a voice like that, one that sounded like a teenager, and she found herself opening her eyes before she¡¯d planned to.
Five people sat or stood around a small fire nearby. Snake was one, obviously. Standing tall with his back to her, he faced the others with the swaggering confidence of somebody who knew they were in charge.
The one called ¡°Scritt¡± was a boy around sixteen, thin and short, not yet a man. He was easily the smallest of the five, and his meek and cowering body language matched the spark of understanding she¡¯d received when she¡¯d first heard the word ¡°Scritt¡±. Along with those feelings had come a flash of something small darting away at the first sign of danger. She easily saw how the kid got such a disparaging nickname.
A large, heavyset man in his forties sat beside Snake, gazing into the fire. That had to be the low voice from before. Sofie immediately named him ¡°Bull¡± for his size alone.
Sitting next to him was another man, a little younger, perhaps mid-thirties, who just screamed ¡°slimeball¡± to Sofie. She didn¡¯t know why, and she knew that judging people by their appearance was no good, but she immediately did not trust him. His eyes shifted about, as if looking for something to pilfer, and his hunched form just made it all worse. Overall, he gave the impression of a weasel, and so she named him Weasel even though he was surely the ¡°Visvars¡± Snake had been talking to.
Farther back from the rest, leaning against a stone wall of some sort with a bow slung over her shoulder, stood the fifth member of this gang of self-identified bandits and the only woman of the group. Sofie immediately named her ¡°Hawk¡± because of the woman¡¯s sharp eyes, eyes that looked like that took in everything before them and missed nothing, not even the tiniest ant a dozen meters away. It came as no surprise to Sofie that the woman immediately noticed Sofie¡¯s eyes opening, even in the dim firelight.
¡°She¡¯s awake,¡± Hawk said, her voice flat.
¡°So she is,¡± Snake noted, turning around. He stepped closer and squatted down to better match her eye level.
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¡°Took you long enough, girl,¡± he smirked. ¡°If you¡¯d slept any longer, I would have needed to kick you awake.¡± The man slammed the sole of his boot into Sofie¡¯s gut, seeming to revel in the pained cough she let out. ¡°Now I can just kick you for fun.¡±
He let Sofie wheeze for a moment, and she used that time to take a large gasp of air.
¡°Please, this is-¡± she began, but Snake kicked her again in the same spot, even harder this time. Sofie gagged on her own bile, bringing about a miserable coughing fit.
¡°Bitches don¡¯t get talk,¡± he told her. ¡°Did nobody ever teach you that, you Elseling shit? Ugh, just looking at you pisses me off. Scritt, get me some rags.¡±
Out of the corner of her eye, Sofie caught the look of discomfort on the boy¡¯s face before he stiffened and ran off somewhere. A few moments later, he returned with some cloth. Snake grabbed Sofie¡¯s jaw and powered it open despite her attempts at resistance, stuffing the cloth into her mouth. The rags tasted terrible, and she did her best to not think about where they might have been until now.
¡°Can¡¯t have you getting too loud out here,¡± he commented once he¡¯d finished forcing the dirty cloth into Sofie¡¯s mouth.
He turned to Bull. ¡°Make me a thin wedge,¡± he ordered the large man.
Bull nodded and walked over to a nearby wall and began to pull from it like it was made of clay.
Now that Sofie had a moment where something wasn¡¯t demanding her complete attention, she took the opportunity to look around at her environment. It didn¡¯t take long for her to realize they were in a cave, though the cave looked off to her. Everything was too smooth, and the ground was flat all across the interior. A large exit, wide and tall enough for three or more people to enter side-by-side, was located about fifteen meters in front of her, while a smaller side exit was off to her left.
Looking up, Sofie found that the rope binding her was one single rope led through two thick stone rings above her sticking out from the wall against her back. The discovery made everything click in her head. She¡¯d assumed Bull to be a Feeler for... well, for no reason other than he was a big man, which had no bearing on a person¡¯s talent. But now she realized that he was a stone Observer, of all things. He didn¡¯t seem too great at it, but given time, it was clear he could do plenty. There were even emplacements for torches on the walls, with lit torches standing in several of them. Perhaps this entire cave had been carved out by him, bit by bit?
¡°Umm...¡± Scritt asked meekly, ¡°shouldn¡¯t we see if the Resistance wants her unharmed before-¡±
Snake spun around and backhanded the boy across the face, sending him sprawling onto the smooth floor.
¡°What did I tell you about questioning me, boy?!¡± he snarled. ¡°Must I remind you of the favor I¡¯m doing you by letting worthless trash like you even stick around?¡±
¡°I-I¡¯m sorry,¡± the boy stammered as he cowered from Snake¡¯s anger.
¡°I agree with the kid for once,¡± Hawk chimed in. ¡°I want to see her suffer as much as anybody, but shouldn¡¯t we check with the Resistance first in case they don¡¯t want her too broken? Seems like a risk we don¡¯t need to take.¡±
¡°It¡¯ll be fine,¡± Snake assured her. ¡°They might not want her cut up, but there are ways to hurt people without hurting them, you know what I mean?¡±
He took the proffered item from Bull, a thin stone wedge that looked like a miniature doorstop, and picked up a rock in his other hand.
¡°A friend of mine showed me this years ago,¡± he remarked to the others, before turning his gaze back to Sofie, anger burning in his eyes. ¡°He¡¯s dead now, slain at the hands of your master, like all the others. This is for him.¡±
He grabbed Sofie¡¯s left foot, and she suddenly realized where this was going. She gasped through the rags filling her mouth, thrashing about with both her feet as she tried to break free from his grip.
¡°Come hold her feet down,¡± he instructed. Bull squatted down and clamped onto her left ankle and foot, squeezing it with a strength that she couldn¡¯t fight. Meanwhile, Weasel and Hawk grabbed her other foot and held it to the floor.
Sofie¡¯s mind raced, as she tried desperately to think of a way out of her predicament. But she could only think of one, and it was the forbidden path. Arlette had proved that actual words were not needed for communication on Scyria, meaning Sofie probably didn¡¯t need words for her powers either.
She could keep it tiny, just some small things like ¡°don¡¯t imprison me¡± or ¡°don¡¯t hold me against my will¡±. She could make them forget all about her, and everybody here could just go on with their lives as if none of this had ever happened.
But still, she refused. No matter how innocuous the geas, it was created through mind rape. In a way, doing such a terrible thing to somebody only to put a minor, inconsequential geas on somebody only made the action worse, like killing a baby in order to get a glass of water.
She knew that if she started bargaining with herself like this, telling herself that these were only ¡°mild¡± geasa and they were okay to do, then that would just lead to worse and worse abuses over time. She¡¯d start slowly widening her boundaries over time, until something like pacifying an entire city ¡°wasn¡¯t a big deal¡±.
She would not let herself fall so easily. She had a choice: suffer torture or commit even more terrible atrocities. As much as it pained her, the choice wasn¡¯t really a choice at all. Pain was temporary; sin was forever. She would have to persevere. That was all there was to it.
With steady hands, Snake placed the thin front of the wedge just beneath the toenail of Sofie¡¯s left big toe, lifted the rock in his other hand, and brought it down almost gently. The wedge slid under her toenail, ripping it just a bit off of her flesh.
Sofie screamed, her anguished cry muffled by the cloth blocking her mouth. Pain lanced down her leg and into her brain, causing her whole body to spasm. She fought against their grips, but not even a fully healthy Sofie would have stood a chance against their combined strength. The real Sofie, meanwhile, hadn¡¯t been healthy in weeks¡ªnot since Pari¡¯s death¡ªand the last few days had made it all much, much worse.
Another knock of stone against stone, and the wedge pushed deeper. Sofie let out a howl, tears streaking down her cheeks as her whole body shuddered. She tried to gasp for air but found her breathing limited to only her nose, her lungs working in overdrive to pull in the air she needed.
A retching sound from nearby, followed by the clear sound of liquid splattering, brought a momentary pause to the proceedings. The four Otharians looked back to find Scritt bent over a small puddle, vomit dripping off the teen¡¯s sad excuse for a beard.
¡°Seriously?¡± Bull muttered.
¡°Oi!¡± Snake snapped. ¡°If you can¡¯t even handle this, then go out and keep watch! Now!¡±
The boy scarpered out of the cave, no more prodding needed.
Weasel shook his head with disdain. ¡°Worst excuse for soldier I¡¯ve ever seen.¡±
The rock fell once more, and agony consumed Sofie¡¯s existence. But deep inside, a plan began to form, a plan that might maybe get her out of there with her vow still intact.
The next day, everything lined up for the first part of Sofie¡¯s plan. Weasel and Snake left to go contact the Resistance. Hawk took her bow and went out to scout or hunt or something, and Bull left to... be a lookout? She had no idea, she was just glad he was gone.
Before leaving, Snake had reiterated the need to ¡°keep her intact, for now¡± to the rest of them. It was then that Hawk had chimed in that this meant that they also needed to ¡°keep their pants on this time¡± while throwing a pointed look Bull¡¯s way. Sofie didn¡¯t have to be a genius to figure out what that meant.
Only Scritt remained. Somebody had to watch their prize, after all, and as Snake had put it, ¡°even somebody as useless as you can keep a tied up prisoner from escaping¡±. Scritt was the key to Sofie¡¯s plan. She didn¡¯t know too much about him, exactly, other than that he was the low man on the totem pole, so to speak, but she¡¯d seen signs of humanity in him that the others seemed to lack. Maybe, just maybe, she could use that.
The first hour or so had gone about as she¡¯d expected. He¡¯d sat against the far wall, staring at her emaciated form with a mixture of loathing, fear, and distrust. He kept a small double-sided battle axe strapped to his thin back at all times, perhaps in case he needed to foil her dastardly escape. Eventually, the boy had climbed to his feet and walked into a storage room of sorts to Sofie¡¯s right that she¡¯d missed the day before. He¡¯d emerged a bit later munching on some sort of crackers. Just the sight of the food had elicited a loud groan from Sofie¡¯s gut.
Sofie had remained silent the whole time for several reasons. First, she still had the rags from the night before stuffed in her mouth. Second, she was still in a lot of agony from the night¡¯s torture session. Two of her toenails on her left foot were completely missing, bloody scabs filling in the newly-opened space. They throbbed painfully and constantly, and through them, her whole body throbbed with pain along with every heartbeat. Her torso wasn¡¯t in grand shape either, covered in painful bruises.
The third and most important reason, however, was that she was waiting for the right moment, and this looked like it might be the one. Scritt glanced at her, then at his crackers, then turned around and went back into the storage room. A moment later, he emerged once more with even more crackers.
Sofie made sure to keep still, keeping her body and head as limp and nonthreatening as possible as the boy slowly, warily crept closer, watching her as if she were a wolf caught in a bear trap or something. Once he was close enough, he carefully reached towards her mouth and pulled the ball of cloth out. Sofie let out an involuntary breath and he flinched for a moment, but then he re-upped his courage and reached out again with a cracker in hand.
Sofie¡¯s hands couldn¡¯t reach her head, thanks to the rope binding her, so the boy held the cracker up to her mouth. She bit into the corner, breaking it off and pulling it into her mouth. The cracker was dry, stale, and tasted like cardboard, but Sofie was happy for it anyway. She chewed it slowly, trying to let her saliva moisten it up, except there wasn¡¯t much saliva to be found.
Seeing her parched lips, Scritt seemed to come to the same realization. He left again and returned a moment later with a waterskin.
¡°Here,¡± he said, putting the opening to her lips.
Sofie drank greedily, the cool liquid feeling like mana from heaven as it poured down her gullet. After he took it away, she let out another breath and said, ¡°Thank you.¡±
The boy jumped back, his body tense and ready for a fight. Sofie just stared at him in disbelief.
¡°What are you doing?¡± she asked, trying not to laugh at how wary he was acting towards her, the most pathetic figure he¡¯d probably ever dealt with in his life. ¡°Look at me. What am I going to do to you? Bite your finger? It¡¯s not like I can talk you to death.¡±
He eyed her with suspicion. ¡°Trust not the words of the Elseling, for they speak naught but lies,¡± he quoted.
Sofie sighed. Perhaps this wasn¡¯t going to be easy. ¡°Well, listen to these lies, please: I basically haven¡¯t eaten any real food in days and I¡¯m starving to death. Please feed me more crackers.¡±
He squinted at her, suspicious. ¡°Nobody ever wants more of these things. They taste terrible.¡±
¡°They do. But if you ate nothing but leaves for days on end, you would beg for them as much as I am right now. Look at me. If I don¡¯t eat, I¡¯ll die, and we can¡¯t have that, now, can we? How would you get the Resistance to let you join?¡±
That seemed to get his attention. He approached quicker this time and held out the partially-eaten cracker. She took another grateful bite and munched away.
¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± she asked after a bit. ¡°It¡¯s surely not actually ¡®Scritt¡¯, right?¡±
Scritt frowned and didn¡¯t say anything.
¡°My name is Sofie. Sofie Ramaut,¡± she said after a long silence.
Scritt stood up and walked away, returning to his original spot on the opposite wall. He watched her with a scowl as he munched on his own crackers, waiting for her to pull something evil and Elseling-like. Instead, Sofie just sat, basically unmoving, and watched him back.
¡°Higo,¡± he said half an hour later. ¡°My name is Higo.¡±
Sofie kept her inner grin off of her face. She was in.
Bull returned that afternoon, while Hawk came back as the light outside was growing dim. Higo was busy putting up torches for light while Bull started a fire when she walked in. The other two hadn¡¯t returned, but from what Sofie understood, they wouldn¡¯t be back for another few days.
The three roasted a bird that Hawk had shot down and ate it in front of her. She, on the other hand, ate nothing.
After dinner, Hawk and Bull approached her. Sofie saw the wedge in Hawk¡¯s hand and paled.
¡°Your master killed my sister and my friends,¡± she told Sofie, her voice dark. She picked up the rags, which had sat undisturbed on the stone ground since that morning, and stuffed them back in Sofie¡¯s mouth. ¡°I will probably never get the chance for revenge against him, but you¡¯ll do.¡±
Sofie tried to struggle again as Bull held down her legs, but it proved as futile as the night before. Hawk placed the wedge just beneath Sofie¡¯s right big toenail. She raised the rock.
¡°This is for Kaira,¡± she said.
The rock fell.
¡°Higo,¡± Sofie said softly after swallowing a bite of cracker.
Higo froze but didn¡¯t back away this time. Still, he didn¡¯t say anything.
The two of them were alone again, just like the day before. This time, Higo had come out with crackers for both of them from the start, which was progress.
¡°Higo, I need to know why this is happening to me,¡± she said a minute later. ¡°I don¡¯t understand anything here. Who are these people you¡¯re with? Why do they hate me so much? What are you doing here with them? Why do they treat you so poorly? Please, help me.¡±
Higo scowled.
¡°Please, Higo,¡± Sofie begged softly. ¡°I¡¯m going to die anyway, right? Please, at least let me die knowing why.¡±
Higo stayed silent for a while, his scowl never leaving his face. Eventually, he looked back towards the entrance of their hideout for a second before sitting down nearby. ¡°It¡¯s a long story,¡± he said quietly.
¡°Aw, come on, please? It¡¯s not like I have anything better to do,¡± she chuckled.
Higo looked down at the floor, his eyes losing focus. He seemed to think for a while.
As she waited, she just stared down at her feet, now missing two toenails each, the inner two on each foot. The torture the night before hadn¡¯t been any different than the first time, the specific brand of agony no longer new or novel. But that didn¡¯t make it any easier. Pain was funny that way. You could build up a tolerance for it sometimes, while other times it wore you down until you broke. She felt no tolerance yet.
¡°I grew up in a small farming village southwest of Nont. My family had lived there for generations, or so my father used to say. But he died when I was ten. Mother died two years later. All that we had left was me and my sister. We tried to survive as best we could, working hard in the fields to support ourselves, but the harvests weren¡¯t the best. A few years ago, my sister starved to death. She did it so that I would have enough food to make it through the winter. I was all alone.¡±
Sofie hadn¡¯t been expecting a sad story like this. She wanted to say something but felt like interrupting would be counterproductive now that he was finally opening up a little.
¡°I didn¡¯t know what to do with myself when she left me,¡± Higo continued. ¡°She was my older sister, and she raised me even more than my parents did, especially when it was just the two of us. My life felt empty, and I was miserable anyway. I could barely support myself, and I knew that come winter, I would probably be joining the rest of my family. But then, not long after her death, an Elseling appeared.
¡°I remember watching the Elseling escape from his execution. Everybody was so afraid. A few days later, word spread that the Army was recruiting so they could better hunt down the Elseling. For the first time in a while, I felt a call again. I was going to join the Army and protect my homeland from evil. It was better than starving to death, at least.¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t hold back anymore. ¡°They let a child like you enlist in the Army?¡±
¡°Hey, I¡¯m seventeen!¡± he objected, his head rising to look her in the eye for the first time since the story had begun. Sofie sent him a skeptical look and he deflated a little, his head falling back down to look at the ground. ¡°Fine, I lied about my age. I hadn¡¯t come of age yet, but it wasn¡¯t far off, less than a year away.¡±
¡°So, then what?¡±
¡°So then I joined the Army. They gave me food and started training me with an axe. I wasn¡¯t very good or very strong, but I was just beginning, you know? Then the Elseling attacked.¡±
Sofie kept her mouth shut at the mention of that certain someone. Higo would probably have been surprised to learn her feelings about Blake¡¯s actions, but that was for another time.
¡°He killed the Grand Apostle and all the other leaders. I wasn¡¯t anywhere ready for battle when that happened, but it didn¡¯t matter anymore. They placed me into the Ninth Squad, and the whole remaining Army marched out to defeat the evil that had attacked us.¡±
The kid¡¯s eyes took on a haunted look, the sort of face that nobody, but especially children, should ever make.
¡°Everybody died.¡±
¡°Everybody?¡± Sofie repeated with shock.
¡°Not... ¡®everybody¡¯, everybody,¡± he replied. ¡°But close enough. We used to be proud. The nickname for the Army was ¡®the Thousand Legion¡¯ because it was made of a thousand squads, ten soldiers each. They even made sure to teach me how to count, so that I could properly count all the squads and understand just how large and grand we were. There were over nine hundred squads that made it to the battle. We felt confident in victory. I don¡¯t know how many people survived, but it couldn¡¯t have been more than one or two hundred.
¡°The Elseling¡¯s demons tore us apart. There was nothing we could do to stop them. Even when the leaders used Othar¡¯s Blessing, they couldn¡¯t hold on. It was...¡±
He was shivering now, and Sofie wanted to reach out and hug him or pat his shoulder or something, but she couldn¡¯t do more than listen.
¡°I was so afraid. I ran. I ran and I ran. I didn¡¯t come back until it was all over. Bodies were piled up everywhere, blood... there was so much...¡± The boy looked like he was about to puke from the memory alone, but after a moment, he seemed to steady. ¡°Somehow, half of the Ninth Squad survived. Ketrina, Visvars, Holgers, Armans, and me.¡±
¡°That¡¯s the other people here? The remnants of the Ninth Squad?¡±
¡°Yeah... Ketrina is the scout. Holgers was on the front lines. Visvars worked behind the lines. Armans was the vice-captain. The captain died. Pretty much all of people they knew died too. Ketrina¡¯s sister, Holgers¡¯s friends. Everybody.¡±
Sofie decided to keep calling them by her nicknames for them¡ªSnake, Hawk, etcetera. Those names fit better in her mind.
¡°I was a coward. I abandoned my people.¡±
¡°Is that why they call you ¡®Scritt¡¯? What even is a scritt?¡±
He sighed. ¡°A scritt is a tiny lizard that lives under rocks. They run away and hide from absolutely everything, no matter how dangerous it might be. Armans started calling me that when I came back after the battle.
¡°I thought they were going to kill me. Maybe they should have. But they didn¡¯t. They let me stay and we all ran. We ran from the Elseling and we hid.¡±
¡°And that¡¯s how you ended up here?¡±
¡°We can¡¯t go back. Your master would kill us. Armans says he¡¯s hunting for us even now. So we became bandits. I didn¡¯t know what to do, but Armans said he could make me into a real man and a real soldier, so I came along.¡±
Sofie wanted to roll her eyes. It felt like Snake just wanted somebody to bully and lord over. ¡°And how¡¯s that going for you?¡± she asked.
¡°Fine,¡± he answered defensively. His story over, Higo went back to his usual watching place and watched her, making sure she didn¡¯t pull any evil Elseling tricks.
¡°I¡¯m sorry that all those people died,¡± she said after a moment of quiet.
¡°Why would you care? You¡¯re an Elseling,¡± he pointed out, his voice cold.
¡°That doesn¡¯t mean I can¡¯t care about other people,¡± she told him, despondent. ¡°I don¡¯t care who it is, I don¡¯t want anybody to die. This world has far too much death and suffering already. We don¡¯t need to add senseless violence on top of everything else.¡±
Higo didn¡¯t give more than a soft grunt. Sofie, for her part, didn¡¯t feel like saying or doing much of anything anymore.
¡°Hey,¡± she said a few hours later, ¡°what was your sister¡¯s name?¡±
¡°Vika.¡±
¡°She sounded like a good sister. A better one than I was.¡±
¡°She was the best.¡±
Bull didn¡¯t say anything. He didn¡¯t talk about friends or family. He just got the wedge and went to work.
Within moments, the wounds in Sofie¡¯s mind were ripped open once more. It felt worse than the last time. Each tap was like a sledgehammer in her mind, pounding at the rock that was her willpower. Cracks were forming. She held on.
¡°What¡¯s it like, being a bandit?¡±
Higo stiffened. ¡°What do you mean?¡±
¡°Like... what would you be doing if I hadn¡¯t appeared?¡±
¡°We don¡¯t do that much, really,¡± Higo admitted. ¡°We search the woods, rob merchants, raid villages, that sort of thing.¡±
¡°Raid villages? Didn¡¯t you join the Army to protect the people in those villages? And now you¡¯re attacking them yourself?¡±
¡°Shut up!¡± he blurted out. ¡°It¡¯s not like this is what I wanted!¡±
Dropping the crackers by her feet, he stood up and stormed over to the other side of the cave before slumping down against the wall.
¡°Have they taken you on raids?¡± Sofie asked.
Higo just glared at her angrily.
¡°Have you killed anybody?¡±
The glare intensified.
¡°How many people have you killed?¡±
¡°How many people have you killed, you blasted Elseling?!¡± he shot back.
Sofie¡¯s face fell. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she admitted.
Higo¡¯s face twisted in anger. ¡°Don¡¯t know?! How can you not know?!¡± He took on that look that Sofie had come to recognize as his ¡®barely holding down vomit¡¯ face. ¡°It¡¯s impossible to forget their faces... Unless...¡± He eyed her like a rabbit eyes a wolf. ¡°...you killed so many you lost count...¡±
¡°No, no, you don¡¯t understand,¡± Sofie explained. ¡°I have never stabbed a person with a knife. I have never sliced somebody to death with a sword, or chopped them with an axe. I have never shot somebody with a bow, or even with one of Lord Ferros¡¯s demons, as you so call them. But still...¡±
¡°Then why didn¡¯t you just say ¡®zero¡¯?¡± he pressed her, still looking queasy.
Sofie thought for a moment for a way to explain her troubles without actually explaining her troubles. ¡°What if you didn¡¯t know how to fight, and I taught you how to fight, but I did it badly. If you then went out and got killed in a battle because I taught you wrong, did I kill you by being a bad teacher?¡±
¡°Huh?¡± he replied, looking at her like she¡¯d started speaking in tongues.
¡°Look, it¡¯s complicated, alright? I can¡¯t really think of a good analogy on the spot,¡± she groaned. ¡°I¡¯m just saying, if I trained you to be in the Army but I don¡¯t teach you everything you need to know, like all the proper signals maybe, and you run out onto that battlefield for your first battle, and because you don¡¯t even know the signals you end up all alone and you take an arrow in your heart and die... wouldn¡¯t that be my fault? Wouldn¡¯t I have killed you because I didn¡¯t teach you what you needed to know?¡±
¡°I think I get what you¡¯re saying, maybe,¡± Higo said as he scratched his head. ¡°But, I mean, the person who killed me would be the archer who shot me, not you, even if you did a bad job.¡±
¡°But if I had not taught you at all, you would not have been in the battle in the first place. I put you in a position where you would fail because I did poorly.¡±
¡°I... guess?¡± Higo reluctantly agreed, though he didn¡¯t seem entirely convinced. ¡°So you¡¯re saying you taught people to fight badly? I don¡¯t think I can see you teaching anybody to fight anything.¡±
Sofie snorted. ¡°That was just a hypothetical. But it¡¯s closer than I want to admit. I have... touched a lot of lives since I came to this place. And a lot of those people have gone their own way since and I¡¯ll likely never see or hear from them ever again, and they might already be dead for all I know. And there¡¯s a chance, a larger chance than I want to admit, that if they are dead, it¡¯s because they met me.¡±
¡°That sounds like a load of shit to me,¡± Higo sniffed. ¡°People are responsible for themselves. You¡¯re talking like that, and you don¡¯t even know anybody who died because of you.¡±
Sofie let out a defeated sigh, her gaze falling back to her feet and their scabbed toes.
¡°No, I said I don¡¯t know how many, because there might be many. But I do know one person who died because of me. My little sister.¡±
Sofie tried not to cry, but the tears came anyway. They always did when she thought about Pari, even after this long.
¡°She was the best person I ever knew. The light of my life. And because of what I taught her, what I told her, she died in my arms.¡±
¡°I¡¯m... sorry,¡± Higo said. It sounded like he meant it, too.
It was time to set down the bait.
¡°Her name was Pari. It¡¯s been horrible ever since she died. Every day feels dark and hopeless. You know what it¡¯s like.¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± Higo sighed.
¡°I just tell myself that it¡¯s all going to be okay. That everything will be alright once we bring her back to life. That¡¯s how I get through each day. I¡¯ll see her again soon. It will be wonderful. I¡¯ll hug her until the end of time. I¡¯m never letting her go ever again.¡±
It took Higo a moment to notice what exactly she¡¯d said. She watched out of the corner of her eye, trying to make sure he didn¡¯t see her looking, as he went from sad to stunned to confused to disbelieving.
¡°Say that again,¡± he told her.
¡°Say what again?¡± she asked innocently.
¡°What do you mean, you¡¯re gonna bring your sister back to life?¡±
She tilted her head in false puzzlement as if what she¡¯d said was the most normal thing in the world. ¡°It means exactly what you think it means, obviously. She¡¯s dead now, but we¡¯re going to make her alive again.¡±
¡°T-that¡¯s not possible! You¡¯re crazy!¡±
¡°It is, though. I¡¯ve seen it. I know somebody who died not too long ago, and he¡¯s back alive again, perfectly healthy. It¡¯s like he never died at all.¡±
Higo¡¯s face darkened. ¡°That¡¯s a load of shit. What are you trying to do, play some sick Elseling trick on me?¡±
¡°It¡¯s no trick. There¡¯s this big, giant forest far out to the west, and in there lives a whole big group of people, and one of them has a special power. He can bring anybody back to life, as long as he has a piece of their body. Just a hand or an ear, or even an old bone.¡±
He shook his head fervently. ¡°No. Impossible.¡±
¡°I would have said the same thing just two seasons ago, but this world is full of surprises, you know? So yes, we made a deal with the Stragmans to let us use this man to bring my sister back.¡± Sofie sighed. ¡°I might have to miss it, though. Unless...¡±
She put on her thinking face, ignoring the boy¡¯s defiant glare.
¡°Higo. Would you like to make a deal?¡±
¡°Never!¡± he hissed.
¡°You sure? Not even to get your sister back?¡±
Higo opened his mouth to say something but the words seemed to get caught in his throat. He clenched his jaw shut and let out a blast of angry air from his nose as his glare intensified.
¡°Trust not the words of the Elseling, for they speak naught but lies,¡± he finally stated. ¡°I will not let you twist me, Elseling. I am a proud soldier of Otharia! I will not betray my people again!¡±
Sofie let out a mocking laugh. ¡°Oh Higo, I¡¯m sorry to tell you this, but you are not a soldier.¡±
¡°How dare you! I am too-¡±
¡°You vomit at the sight of violence. You look like you¡¯re going to vomit just from thinking about past violence. Face it, Higo. Some people are suited to fighting, but you are not one of them. Do you know what your squadmates say about you when you¡¯re not around? I hate to tell you this, but it¡¯s not flattering.¡±
¡°Shut up! My squad respects me! They¡¯re making me into a true man!¡±
Sofie laughed harder this time. ¡°Really? Because all they¡¯ve done so far is make you into a gofer. A lackey. A patsy. When¡¯s the last time they¡¯ve done anything besides order you around and beat you for having your own thoughts? They just keep you around so they have somebody to push around, somebody who will do all the dirty tasks they don¡¯t want to do. You¡¯re not a soldier. You¡¯re barely even a bandit. You¡¯re nothing, Higo. You¡¯re a joke to them. And when the others join the Resistance, they won¡¯t have a need for you anymore. You¡¯ll only embarrass them. So they¡¯ll toss you out onto the street, and then you¡¯ll really be nothing.¡±
Higo¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°You... they wouldn¡¯t!¡±
¡°Listen to me, Higo,¡± Sofie said, earnest and serious. ¡°You are not cut out for this life. When Lord Ferros decides it¡¯s time to crack down on all the bandits hiding out in the wilderness, you¡¯ll end up as nothing but a dead body in a forest, and nobody will care. That is the path you¡¯re on, Higo. That is your future.
¡°It doesn¡¯t have to end that way. Is your sister buried somewhere? We can bring her back. We can give you your sister back, Higo. I¡¯ll make sure that Lord Ferros doesn¡¯t do anything to either of you. All you have to do is help me. All you have to do is get me out of here.¡±
¡°You¡¯re... you¡¯re lying...¡± he repeated, but the verve was missing this time.
¡°I can help you, Higo,¡± she pushed. ¡°But not if I¡¯m dead.¡±
Higo still had an angry, distrustful look on his face, but he didn¡¯t say anything and just stared at his feet, thinking about something. Finally, he looked back up and said, ¡°Even if you could do all that, what would it matter? We¡¯d just starve again. Losing her once was bad enough. I couldn¡¯t deal with that a second time.¡±
¡°You won¡¯t have to. I guess you haven¡¯t heard, living in a cave and all, but crops yields were fantastic last harvest, better than you could imagine. Minister Upeslacis even told me that last winter was the best winter he could remember, food-wise.¡±
The boy looked at her, his brow furrowing. ¡°Upeslacis? You mean Old Man Upeslacis?¡±
Sofie blinked. ¡°You know him? Thin, old guy? Always grumpy about something?¡±
¡°He was the head farmer a few villages away. Father always said that Old Man Upeslacis was a man worth respecting. But now even he¡¯s fallen to your master?¡± He let out a forlorn sigh.
¡°Okay, first off, you all keep saying that but he is not my master, he is not my boss, and I don¡¯t have to listen to a word he says. And Minister Upeslacis has not ¡®fallen¡¯ to anybody. What he¡¯s done is worked his old butt off every day to make sure that what happened to your family never happens again. Haven¡¯t you seen all the work going on nearby? All the new farmland opening up and the new farming tools making harvesting easier?¡±
She sat up straight as a thought floated into her mind.
¡°Actually, that gives me a great idea. That old grump is always complaining that he needs more help. We could get you a job, working for him. You¡¯d be paid well. You and your sister would never have to worry about money again. And you wanted to serve your people, right? You said you joined the Army to protect Otharia from evil. What better way to save them than to save them from the evil scourge that is starvation?¡±
The boy hesitated, and Sofie¡¯s hopes soared. But then he shook his head, his gaze hardening.
¡°I... no. I can¡¯t trust an Elseling. Your words are nice, but they¡¯re too good. There¡¯s no way you could do what you say. You can¡¯t bring her back. You can¡¯t,¡± he repeated, though it seemed like he was talking more to himself than to her.
Standing up, he walked over and stuffed the rags back into her mouth. ¡°Please don¡¯t talk anymore,¡± he told her.
Sofie fought back the urge to tell him she could still talk just fine through the rags, and that actual words weren¡¯t needed for communication in Scyria at all. Instead, she let out a sigh as the teen strode back to his usual spot and sat down again, purposely avoiding looking her way. She¡¯d tried, and he hadn¡¯t gone for it.
But he¡¯d wavered.
Ooooh, had she seen him waver.
The seed had been planted. Now she could only hope that it would grow quickly, while there was still time.
Snake and Weasel returned that afternoon. It seemed their meeting had been a success. The Resistance would be sending somebody over to inspect her tomorrow and smuggle her¡ªand them¡ªback into Wroetin. That meant that tonight was the last night the bandit group would spend in this hideout. Snake immediately declared it a cause for celebration.
There was just one problem: they¡¯d run out of booze days ago. And so, it was time for one last raid. A quick strike, in and out in the darkness of the night, with enough booze to last the night and then some. Weasel knew a place ripe for the picking, apparently.
But first, Weasel demanded his turn.
¡°I¡¯d say you¡¯re lucky,¡± he told her with a frown of dissatisfaction. ¡°The Resistance wants you whole. They probably want to break you themselves. So let¡¯s make this one to remember, hm?¡±
Sofie had found the man disturbing since the moment she¡¯d first spotted him, but she¡¯d had no idea just how spot-on her instincts had been until now. The man was a maestro of pain. He seemed to have a horrible talent, able to slowly rip away her last toenails just enough to maximize the pain while minimizing the damage, all so he could inflict even more. She¡¯d thought the previous rounds bad, but this hurt several times more, at least. Like the others, he removed two toenails with excruciating slowness.
Then he moved on to another.
And another.
Sofie felt like she was adrift in a sea of suffering, wave after wave of torment crashing down on top of her and pushing her under, forcing her to swim back up for air. Every time, it became harder. By the time he moved on to her fingers, she¡¯d retreated fully into her mind, just trying to keep from drowning.
She knew she could make it stop at any time. In her mind there flashed a large red button, pulsating right in front of her, almost shouting at her to push it. It would solve everything, it said. It would make it all stop, the pain, the fear, all of it. All she had to do was say two simple words and she could be free. Free of every burden in the world. Just one choice and nothing would worry her ever again. Others would obey her every whim, their lives tied to her words and wants. All of Scyria would bow to her will and thank her for it. She could be everything, Empress of an entire world. All she had to do was take it.
Sofie¡¯s stomach clenched and a torrent of vomit surged up her throat, hitting the rags in her mouth and taking a detour up through her nostrils instead before squirting out all over her chest and legs. The stomach acid burned on the inside as it mixed with her tears on the outside, her body contorting in agony all the while. She could feel herself on a mental precipice, just one strong shove away from crashing into a million pieces. She would lose herself, maybe forever.
But she refused. If Sofie was anything, she was stubborn to a fault, and she clung to that obstinate nature and refused. She had made up her mind, and she would rather lose herself forever than become the instrument of others¡¯ subjugation. If she fell, she fell. That would be the end of it.
And besides, there was still a chance. She clung to that chance like a drowning sailor to a life raft in the middle of a typhoon. It was her lifeline.
It took Sofie a good while, stuck in her head as she was, to realize that they¡¯d stopped the torture at some point. When she didn¡¯t know, as she¡¯d stopped being fully present in the moment a while ago. Nothing felt real, nothing had permanence.
Slowly, gingerly, she returned to the world outside. The others were talking about the raid, working out the details beforehand. She paid little attention to their discussion, letting her world be consumed by her thundering heartbeat and halting breaths.
She burrowed in on her shaky breathing, trying to push the pain away.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
There was still a chance. Higo had wavered. There was still a chance.
Soon enough, the time for the raid came. Higo had to stay behind to watch Sofie, like always.
¡°We¡¯ll be back soon enough. You know what to do, soldier,¡± Snake told the boy with that self-assured, authoritative tone of a commanding officer. The way he turned from strong leader to bully and back made Sofie¡¯s guts twist in disgust.
¡°R-right!¡± the young man replied with a stiff salute.
Soon enough, the other four left, leaving just the two of them alone in the cave. Higo said nothing as he lowered himself down against the cave side and sighed. Bending his knees up and in, he propped his elbows against them and cradled his face in his hands as he let out a long, tense breath. She could see the gears turning in his head. All she could do was wait and hope.
¡°You promise you can bring her back?¡± he finally asked.
Sofie wanted to weep, but she hid her desperation behind a mask of sincerity. Rags still in her mouth, she gave an affirmative grunt of ¡°yes¡±.
He stood up and walked over to her, squatted down beside her, and looked at her with frightened and desperate eyes, but with a glimmer of hope held within. With a quick motion, he reached out and pulled the rags out of her mouth for what she felt like would be the last time.
¡°Yes,¡± she replied immediately. ¡°Yes, I promise. Just get me out of this place.¡±
¡°I need you to swear it,¡± he told her. ¡°Swear it on your life.¡±
Sofie locked eyes with him and spoke with full conviction. ¡°I swear. I will do everything in my power to bring your sister back to life. I will cut a deal with the Stragmans, paying whatever I must, so that they revive your sister along with mine. I will get her back for you. And then I will get you a job helping the old man so that nobody has to starve anymore. I swear this on my life, may God, Othar, or any other deity strike me down otherwise.¡±
The boy took another large breath, seemingly attempting to will himself some courage. ¡°Alright. Let¡¯s go then.¡± He pulled out a small knife and started cutting away at the thick ropes tying her to the wall.
The process went far slower than Sofie wanted, the ropes proving even tougher than she¡¯d thought them. It took several minutes for him to cut even a third of the way through.
¡°I¡¯m disappointed, Scritt,¡± Snake¡¯s voice called out from the darkness outside the cave.
Higo spun about, hiding the blade behind his back, as Snake and the others stepped into the light of the torches, their expressions hard as the stone they stood upon.
¡°To think that I defended you when the others told me their suspicions,¡± Snake spat, slithering up to Higo¡¯s trembling form. ¡°If you were so desperate to get laid, you could have just taken a comely lass the next raid, had your way with her, and been done with it. But no, you¡¯ve proven once again, even after all this time, that you¡¯re just as worthless as you were when we first got stuck with you.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not-¡± Higo began, but Snake¡¯s right hand snapped out, grabbing the boy¡¯s neck tightly and cutting off any further words.
¡°Just worthless,¡± he repeated. With a grunt of effort, he turned and threw the younger man across the cave towards the entrance. The others stepped out of the way as Higo flew by them and tumbled across the cold, hard floor.
¡°Higo!¡± Sofie cried as the kid came to a stop splayed awkwardly along the ground.
¡°As for you, you manipulative little bitch...¡± Snake continued, turning back to her with a glare of cold malice.
Sofie blanched and involuntarily scooted back.
¡°Leave her alone!¡± Higo shouted, pulling himself to his feet. He swayed unsteadily, and blood flowed steadily from his forehead down the left side of his face and eye.
¡°Higo, run, you idiot!¡± Sofie shouted.
The idiot refused to listen.
¡°You truly are even dumber than I thought,¡± Snake snarled.
¡°Shut up! I¡¯m done being kicked around by you!¡± Higo hollered, pulling his axe off of his back and gripping it firmly in front of him with both hands.
Sofie wanted to scream. Why, now of all times, had he finally found his courage?! Why, when it was only going to get him killed?!
Everything had gone sideways. Was there any other way out? Maybe if she distracted them, Higo would realize his error in judgment and flee while he still could? As Snake unsheathed his sword and stepped away from her, she realized it was far too late for that now. There was only one way out left.
Why? Why did it feel like no matter what she did, life forced her into these horrible situations? Was it just luck? Destiny? Or maybe it was all just the sum of her own terrible decisions. Maybe she deserved to be a mind rapist after all.
She took a breath, then another, and another still, each breath coming faster and faster as she worked up her own courage. There was no other way out now, she told herself. No other way but to embrace her terrible nature. With just a few words, she could stop all of this. Make them stop. Make them forget. Even make them die.
No. Even now, that was a line she could not cross. To go down that road was to become everything that she had ever professed to hate. It was to become like them. There would be no going back. Besides, she didn¡¯t need to become a killer; all she had to do was control the situation. Control it through... mind rape.
She was hyperventilating now, her eyes no longer focusing on what was in front of her. Snake was saying something, but she didn¡¯t hear it. All that mattered was finding the will to do what she had sworn to never do, the deeds that she had gone through literal torture to avoid committing. Sofie was so focused on that goal that she almost didn¡¯t even notice when another person stepped into the torchlight behind Higo and buried a large dagger into the right side of his skull.
Everything stopped.
The most beautiful woman Sofie had ever seen stood behind Higo, a soft smile on her gorgeous lips. Her smooth, light, unblemished skin glowed and her long, amber hair seemed to shine in the torchlight. She wore a thin, fine dress embroidered with ornate patterns that accented her already stellar beauty. Somehow, neither the dress nor the woman seemed to have a single spot of dirt on them.
Nobody moved, as if a spell had been cast across the entire hideout. Likely, everybody else was in the same state of shock as Sofie, who was both stunned by the mysterious visitor¡¯s sudden appearance and trying to figure out who they even were and what they were doing here. It wasn¡¯t like anybody even knew there was a bandit hideout here!
Except there was, Sofie realized in a flash. Snake had said it himself: the Resistance were sending one of their own. Who else could this person be? It seemed that the Resistance didn¡¯t want the bandits joining their shadowy ranks, and had sent a killer instead.
With effortless ease, the assassin ripped the blade from the boy¡¯s head, casually sliding just out of range of the blood that followed so that none touched her immaculate outfit. Higo¡¯s body fell to the right and landed with a wet thump, long dead before he even hit the ground.
The ¡°thud!¡± of flesh against stone broke the spell, and Snake and Bull rushed forward, shouting battle cries while Hawk pulled out her bow and Weasel stayed back, a small ball of water forming above his hand. The woman only smirked, pulling out a second long knife with her other hand.
Sofie sat, stunned to silence by the events taking place before her eyes. The woman flowed between Snake and Bull with preternatural grace, somehow avoiding every strike of Snake¡¯s sword and swing of Bull¡¯s hammer with the absolute slightest movements necessary. Her left arm lashed out, swifter than a whip, and Snake¡¯s right hand fell to the ground, no longer attached to his arm. He clutched his bleeding stump with his remaining hand and screamed as his lifeblood sprayed into the air.
The Resistance member danced between the crimson droplets, spinning through utterly untouched. She swayed just slightly as Hawk, cussing up a storm, released her first arrow. The projectile seemed to miss the woman¡¯s throat by no more than a millimeter, but it still missed. Almost as an afterthought, she reached out and sliced the side of Snake¡¯s neck, adding another fountain of blood to the grisly scene.
A stream of dark, murky water shot from Weasel¡¯s hands, aiming at the newcomer¡¯s face to disrupt her senses as Bull charged back in with another long swing of his hammer. As if she knew they both were coming, the woman tossed the knife in her left hand into the air and kicked off the nearby wall, flipping over both threats and slipping her thin form between Bull¡¯s large arms. Her empty palm shot up, striking the spinning knife at the base of the handle and driving it straight up through Bull¡¯s jaw and into his brain. Bull¡¯s body stiffened and she slipped away, somehow bending just as needed to keep her spotless dress from touching any of the dirt on Bull¡¯s chest or arms.
Hawk released another shot, the arrow launched directly at the woman¡¯s head with as much power as the archer could generate. The killer arched backward, her left leg kicking straight upward with such speed that it seemed to blur. The tink of metal against stone reached Sofie¡¯s ears twice in quick succession. She blinked, unsure of what she¡¯d just witnessed, as the arrow tumbled lazily through the air and landed in the woman¡¯s open and waiting right hand.
Gripping the fletching almost daintily, the woman¡¯s whole body seemed to straighten like a whip, her raised leg falling to plant itself firmly against the ground, her arched body rising back up, and her arm lashing out with blinding speed as she sent the arrow back at its owner. Hawk spasmed and fell, her own arrow driven more than halfway through her eye and into her head.
This wasn¡¯t a fight. This wasn¡¯t a battle. This was pure butchery hidden behind a veneer of supple grace, the bandits standing just as much a chance against this terrifying woman as hogs in a slaughterhouse. She wasn¡¯t even trying. She was just toying with them.
Weasel turned and ran towards the smaller, secondary cave entrance, but it didn¡¯t matter. The Resistance assassin flashed towards him, catching up and slicing the back of his knee before he could take more than two steps. His leg gave out and he tumbled to the ground. Before he¡¯d even fully landed, the woman drove her blade down, deep into his neck.
An eerie quiet fell upon the scene now, as the woman stood alone amidst the mutilated corpses of her enemies. Blood splattered the walls and pooled on the ground, and yet she remained untouched, a lone, spotless flower standing tall in the middle of a wasteland.
Resistance assassin or not, Sofie found the woman far more terrifying than the bandits who had tormented her these last few days. Sofie wanted nothing to do with her whatsoever. She found herself praying that the woman would not notice her, that she would just walk away now that her business here was over. But there was no chance of that happening.
The killer turned, as graceful and poised as always, and looked at Sofie for the first time. Sofie¡¯s heart seized as her gaze finally met and she finally saw the woman¡¯s eyes in full. They were the eyes of a cat gazing lazily upon a mouse trapped in a corner.
As the Resistance member took easy steps through the crimson minefield, never once stepping on anything but dry stone, her gaze never left Sofie even once. It was that gaze that finally broke Sofie, sundering the last remnants of restraint that remained inside her. Panic, fear, and a desperate need to live surged forth.
Sofie opened her mouth and, with every fiber of her being, screamed, ¡°Don¡¯t move!¡±
The woman halted mid-step, blinked, teetered, and toppled face-first into a pool of blood.
Chapter 104
It took Blake a while to realize that the grey blurry ceiling in his vision was just that, a ceiling, and not some form of terribly bland afterlife. It took him a little longer to realize that this meant he was alive. It took him longer still to realize that he was stark naked.
The shock of it all was enough to make him try to sit up before he could think about what that meant. His body didn¡¯t respond, not even his upper half. Crippling fear gripped him as visions of a life struck with full paralysis flashed through his mind.
No, he realized after a moment of panic. He could feel the touch of something cold against his arm and back, as well as the bands holding his left arm prosthetic in place. With great trepidation, he willed his hand to close, and to his great relief, it slowly did. It just felt like he was moving through the world¡¯s thickest quicksand, the simple act of making a fist now a monumental endeavor.
That was what this was: utter exhaustion. Pain, too, an ache so pervasive that he hadn¡¯t noticed it until now, as it had almost become the new normal. Blake didn¡¯t feel like he¡¯d been hit by a truck, he felt like he¡¯d been hit by a cargo ship carrying freight trains loaded to the brim with trucks.
What the fuck had happened to him?
With a greater will and intent than last time, Blake tried to push his body up even fifteen degrees, but once again gravity proved to be a villain he could not vanquish just yet. He could, however, circumvent it. His bed liquefied and flowed, pulling in cantacrenyx crystals from the nearby wall.
Shifting into Hyper Mode to construct the necessary circuits and pathways, Blake felt a hot fire rip through his inner being. He gasped and dropped out of it immediately, his lungs heaving feebly.
Blake needed his power to move around, as his physical body wasn¡¯t up to the task at the moment, but he needed Hyper Mode to use it best. Without it, just making simple locomotion would take him a week. So, closing his eyes, Blake went under for a second try.
The fire returned, though he found it more bearable now that he was ready for it. Gritting his teeth, he forged ahead, building the circuits and motors, armrests and wheels. Soon enough, he dropped back into normal time with a breath of relief to find himself reclining in a cold, metal powered wheelchair.
But he was still naked.
Steering his wheelchair in a circle using a small joystick on the left armrest¡ªhis fake left arm being the only part of his body that seemed to fully work at the moment¡ªhe looked around for his suit. Where had he put it? And why had he taken it off in the first place? He couldn¡¯t remember, and that bothered him.
Blake eventually found his suit, or the remnants of it at least, lying in a heap in the far corner of his room. With an internal squawk of protest, he zipped his wheelchair over to take a better look. What he found immediately set him on edge. His suit looked as if it had been ripped apart, the metal clearly torn to pieces with brute force. Had he been attacked?
Quickly looking around his chambers again, this time Blake noticed the door, or what was left of it. Like his suit, the metal had been rent asunder by an unknown adversary, though Blake had a pretty good idea of the culprit. Only one person that he knew of was strong enough to tear through metal that thick. But if Gabriela had done all that... why was he still alive?
Blake needed answers fast, but first he needed clothes and a secure area. To start, he created some undergarments from tucrenyx, using the same microscopic mesh technique that he used every morning. Then, he willed the remnants of his suit to flow across the floor and up his leg. Finally, with a groan, he mentally stepped back into the fire in his soul. As fast as he could manage, he formed the scraps into the armor that he had grown so used to. He could have made it from scratch without the old bits, but the broken pieces had all the needed cantacrenyx crystals in all the right sizes already collected.
Proper crystal allocation remained Blake¡¯s biggest headache when it came to machine creation, even more than a year in. It was a pain in the ass to find the ones he needed for every task, large enough to provide enough power, but small and light enough to fit where he needed it to go. At this point, he somewhat doubted that he would ever find a solution that solved his problem entirely.
His suit properly restored, Blake considered abandoning his newly created mobile chair but decided against it. His arms and head still felt like they couldn¡¯t even lift and support themselves without resting on something. Until his body was back to prime condition, or at least what counted as prime condition after all the shit he¡¯d been through, he would continue to sit and recline. He tilted his backrest back a little more and let out a pleasant sigh. Much better.
A moment later, nobody would be able to tell that something had ever happened to the door to his quarters. He rolled through the repaired doorway to find the other two security doors equally ruined. He fixed those too. Thankfully, no more Hyper Mode was required.
It seemed blindingly obvious now that Gabriela had forced her way into his rooms. Yet somehow, he was still breathing.
Though the state of the doors proved their ineffectiveness against the onslaught of a pissed-off Mexican, he still felt better with feet of metal between him and the outside. Blake retreated to his room to finally figure out some answers. His suit fully booted and interfacing with the server down below, Blake checked the server¡¯s time and date. He couldn¡¯t remember the date from before, so he brought up the logs of his suit and checked the timestamp for when he¡¯d last manually triggered a function in his suit, something he did a good twenty or more times ever day.
Blake gagged at the number he found. FIVE DAYS?!?! He¡¯d been asleep for FIVE DAYS?!?!
Pulling up to a nearby terminal, Blake began cycling through his security camera feeds, trying to see what was going on outside. He started with the fortress itself, checking the hallways, cafeteria, the outside walls...
Everything appeared strangely normal and... intact? People were working, he couldn¡¯t see any damage...
This confused him greatly. With a hint of a grunt escaping his lips, he switched over to his feed in Gabriela¡¯s room. He had a secret camera in the rooms and offices of everybody who lived or worked in the fortress, because of course he did; what was he supposed to do, not keep tabs on the suspicious people living rent-free in his home? That would just be stupid!
The video switched to Gabriela¡¯s room and Blake was shocked to find her there, lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling as if nothing had happened. Then, as he watched, she climbed to her feet... no... her foot? She then proceeded to perform a strange sort of hop-walk to the bathroom across the room and enter it.
Blake didn¡¯t know what to think. The woman also known as ¡°The Monster¡± seemed to be acting in a very didn¡¯t-just-recently-break-through-all-of-his-defenses-and-attack-him manner. Was his conclusion wrong?
Given that Gabriela had entered her bathroom and he didn¡¯t have cameras in the bathrooms¡ªthat was a line even he was unwilling to cross, or had been; perhaps recent events called for that now too¡ªhe swapped over to Arlette¡¯s room. There he found the Scyrian mercenary sitting completely still on the hard floor of her room, eyes closed. In her hands, she clutched a small, nondescript rock. Once again, not the sort of behavior Blake would have expected from somebody whose employer had been attacked.
Quickly, he switched over to Sofie¡¯s room, only to find the place empty. He pondered looking for the Earthling but decided against it. It would be too hard to locate her like this, and he had more important things to do.
Over the next few minutes, he checked Samanta¡¯s room, Leo¡¯s office, and the offices of the various departments. Everything looked busy in a normal, nothing-big-had-happened way.
By this point, Blake had no idea what was going on. Part of him wondered if this was some sort of elaborate prank, but pranks didn¡¯t usually involve paralytic drugs or whatever the hell had messed up his body. He began switching between other feeds, looking first around the fortress and then around the city itself.
Normal.
All normal.
Too normal.
He kept looking.
Some minutes later, his doorbell shattered his concentration with loud buzz. Only the complete lack of pep in Blake¡¯s body kept him from jumping in fright. He checked the camera in the hallway outside and found both Arlette and Samanta waiting outside with strange¡ªor perhaps suspicious¡ªlooks on their faces.
Briefly, he pondered his options. He could ignore them, chase them away, or speak with them. The first two options might be the safest routes, but only in the short term. He would lose this chance to get answers, and having that information would probably be safer in the long run.
He chose to see what they had to say, but still be very careful about it. First, he opened the door in front of them, letting them into the outer security room, which doubled as a waiting chamber for Leo and the like. As soon as they entered, he closed and sealed the door behind them. Now he could be reasonably sure he would only be dealing with the two of them.
Following that, Blake scooted through the third security door into the inner security room, leaving that door open for a quick retreat if needed. Rolling up to the middle door separating him from the others, he created a thin hole, the width of a finger, poking through the foot-thick metal and backed off to the side. He didn¡¯t need to see them, only hear them, after all.
Blake tried to speak, but all that came out was a weak ¡°ha¡± that immediately faded into a long, weak hiss of air leaking from his throat. He should have realized this would be an issue. He didn¡¯t have the energy to speak, let alone have a full conversation.
Luckily, his subordinate noticed the hole and the noise quickly.
¡°Lord Ferros, is that you?¡± she called into the hole.
He managed a light groan.
¡°Think your meanings forcefully and just grunt,¡± Arlette said through the hole, speaking as if she had ample experience with this sort of predicament.
Ah, that was right, he didn¡¯t need to speak real words in Scyria! Slowly taking another breath, he let out a wheeze that Arlette correctly interpreted as ¡°What the fuck happened?¡±
¡°What is the last thing you remember?¡± she asked.
Blake thought back into the past once again. ¡°We came back from the northern mountains,¡± he wheezed. ¡°After that, it gets fuzzy.¡±
¡°Sir, please let me in,¡± Arlette requested. ¡°The situation is... complicated.¡±
Blake wasn¡¯t ready to do that yet. ¡°Who attacked me?¡± he grunted.
For a suspiciously long moment, he received only silence. ¡°Sofie,¡± his underling finally replied.
His body shuddered as he let out a cough combined with a laugh, the sound weak but still the loudest thing he¡¯d managed so far. ¡°No, seriously.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t joke about this sort of thing,¡± the leader of his security apparatus sternly told him. ¡°You should know that.¡±
She spoke the truth, he knew. Arlette Demirt was, if anything, too humorless. But even so... Sofie? It boggled his mind. What was it he had been doing when his memory cut out? He tried remembering again, and this time, perhaps because of Arlette¡¯s mention of Sofie, he recalled a bit more. That was right, he¡¯d decided to figure out Sofie¡¯s abilities because of the dragon!
But still... Sofie? Really?
He filled in the hole, unsealed the door, scooted his chair back into his chambers. Then he opened the door and watched through the doorway as the two entered the second chamber. Arlette took one look at him and immediately grimaced, while Sam stared at him with a storm of conflicting emotions in her gaze, her eyes locked on his face and body.
¡°Oof, you look worse than I thought,¡± Arlette commented. ¡°Sam, why don¡¯t you get him some food and water while we talk? Just leave it to me, alright?¡±
Blake liked the sound of food and water. He opened the door so the girl could leave, and she scampered through the opening.
¡°Sit,¡± Blake wheezed, trying to keep control of the conversation from falling from his grasp. Sadly, it was hard to do that when all you could do was pathetically wheeze and grunt.
Thankfully, Arlette knew the pecking order and did as he said. That was one of the reasons he was more than willing to overlook her few transgressions and keep her around.
¡°So, you are not actually claiming that Sofie tore the doors down, are you?¡± he asked.
Arlette shook her head. ¡°No, that was Gabriela. Sofie¡¯s powers are something like mind control.¡±
Blake choked on his air and sputtered out a ¡°W-what?!¡±
Arlette¡¯s already grave expression grew graver. ¡°I¡¯ll get to that in a moment, but I should start from the beginning.¡±
So, she did. She began with him and Gabriela taking Sofie to a room on the floor below for ¡°tests¡±, which apparently consisted of buzz saws and spikes and other nasty things. Her description of events became far more detailed from the point where she walked in and the argument started. As she talked, Blake could feel his memory pulling together, bits and pieces slowly congealing into a still fuzzy but mostly complete whole.
¡°Then you started to scream and everything went downhill from there,¡± she continued. ¡°It took the combined efforts of Gabriela, Leo, and myself to save you. You¡¯re lucky we managed to even get you in here; Sofie hit some of us as well.
¡°I knew that we couldn¡¯t have it get out that you were half-dead. We aren¡¯t equipped to handle chaos on the scale that news would cause. That¡¯s why I had us move you up here, where nobody but us and Leo would come. But we had to have Gabriela break down the doors to get inside.¡±
This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Blake couldn¡¯t help but find it funny that somebody would break in not to get at him inside, but to get him inside. ¡°And the suit?¡±
¡°Sofie¡¯s powers are horrifying,¡± Arlette said with a visible shiver. ¡°She used it on me and it felt like I was being slowly turned to dust. I was coughing up blood and everything, and that was just from a single moment. You got hit far worse. Blood was pouring from your eye sockets, that¡¯s how bad it became. We needed to know if you were bleeding anywhere else, and your suit wouldn¡¯t come off. And it¡¯s a good thing too. I don¡¯t want to talk about where else you were bleeding, but let¡¯s just say I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d survive the night.¡±
¡°I thought you said she used mind control? How does that turn into me bleeding out?¡±
Arlette¡¯s face darkened. ¡°It¡¯s... she makes it so you can¡¯t do things.¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°We don¡¯t fully know how it works, but it starts when she says the word ¡®don¡¯t¡¯ and tells you not to do something.¡±
A sudden chill filled him. ¡°But she¡¯s always telling me not to do things.¡±
¡°I know,¡± she nodded gravely. ¡°She used her power on me with the very first thing she ever said to me. Who can say how many times she¡¯s used her powers on you?¡±
The chill grew colder. ¡°And what happens when I do it anyway?¡±
¡°That¡¯s when the bleeding starts. She forbade you from touching her, and then when you did, that¡¯s when it all went to shit.¡±
¡°It looks like I owe you my gratitude for saving me,¡± he sighed.
She shrugged. ¡°I would never get another job if I let you die on my watch.¡±
Blake sighed. ¡°I didn¡¯t see Sofie in her room,¡± he noted.
¡°She-¡± Arlette started to answer but stopped. She looked at him as if she¡¯d come to some sort of realization.
¡°What?¡± Blake demanded, annoyed.
¡°She ran away. She¡¯s probably out in the countryside somewhere.¡±
¡°I see. Well, she¡¯ll come back on her own eventually,¡± he reasoned. ¡°She has no other place to go, after all.¡±
Arlette frowned and sighed. ¡°Damn, it hit you too. I was hoping it wouldn¡¯t be like that.¡±
¡°What do you mean it hit me too?!¡± Blake hissed, his body tensing up.
¡°Think about what you just said, given what you know. Do you really think it¡¯s wise to let somebody who can kill you with just a few words run around your country unaccounted for?¡±
A spike of alarm shot through him. ¡°Hell no! What was I even thinking?!¡±
Who in their right mind would leave Sofie of all people unsupervised?! Only Pari would have scared him more!
Blake tried to swivel around to the console he¡¯d used a few minutes ago, fully intent on immediately locating the wayward Earthling, but his left arm refused to budge. It was like his brain couldn¡¯t manipulate the mechanisms of the prosthetic anymore, though he¡¯d done so as naturally as breathing for the last year and more. Confused, he tried to manually move the chair¡¯s motors, only to find himself unable to do that as well. It was like he had some sort of mental block keeping him from using his powers!
Blake felt himself on the edge of a breakdown. If he couldn¡¯t use his powers, he had nothing left! In a panic, he liquefied the metal of the nearby wall. It... worked? His panic subsided, being replaced by confusion.
¡°That feeling of helplessness is terrifying, isn¡¯t it?¡± Arlette empathized. ¡°She forbade us all from trying to find her. If you even think about trying to find her, your body locks up. It doesn¡¯t matter what you try to do. As long as the intent is somewhere in your heart, it knows.¡±
¡°But I don¡¯t remember her doing that...?¡± Blake objected, confused.
¡°It happened after you went unconscious. Now we know that you don¡¯t have to hear it for it to work on you.¡± She leaned in. ¡°Did you rationalize reasons to not search for her?¡± she asked knowingly.
He nodded weakly.
¡°I think I¡¯ve figured out some of how it works,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s like a qeromore seed pod: there are different layers. The first layer is the rationalization. If you aren¡¯t aware of what she did to you, you simply avoid doing it by coming up with excuses why you don¡¯t need to, or just avoiding it altogether. It¡¯s almost like the idea becomes slippery and you can¡¯t grab it. That¡¯s why you didn¡¯t see the obvious need to locate her.
¡°Once you become aware of the restriction put on you, then you can overcome the slipperiness. But that¡¯s when the second layer comes in. You can try to do the action in question, but you just... can¡¯t. Your body will freeze, your mind will cloud. It¡¯s like hitting a wall.
¡°Once you know what you can¡¯t do and you find the wall, it¡¯s possible to force yourself through it. Don¡¯t. All that will do is activate the third layer, the punishment. That¡¯s what happened to you when she touched you. And that¡¯s what happened to me when I forced myself through the wall and tried to go after her. I barely managed a single step.¡±
Arlette¡¯s words sent Blake¡¯s mind spinning. Part of him started thinking of all the possible restrictions he might be unknowingly living with. Another part of him thought through the implications of Sofie¡¯s abilities and what they meant to the big picture. But most of him just felt furious.
To Blake, a person¡¯s self was sacrosanct. He¡¯d always feared something like Alzheimer''s more than physical death. The thought of his mind slipping away, the part of him that made him him slowly degrading, and knowing it was happening but having no way to stop it, until eventually there wasn¡¯t even enough of him left to know it was happening anymore...
No, he would take a nice quick car crash, please. What Sofie had done to him was right up on that same level. She¡¯d messed with something that nobody should ever touch, and by all rights, he deserved payback.
And yet... she was now also a tool far too powerful and versatile to throw away. If he could harness her power, how much would he be able to accomplish? Not that she would take such a thing lying down. But even if he just could gain control over when she could use her power, he could feel much safer. There was no way in hell that he was going to let her get within twenty miles of him without some sort of reliable guarantee that she wouldn¡¯t be able to mess with his being in a pique of self-righteous anger. It was that or kill her, something that he wanted to avoid¡ªunless she¡¯d made him want to avoid it?! His skin crawled.
¡°I don¡¯t know what is real and what is something she¡¯s done to me,¡± he lamented.
¡°I know,¡± Arlette agreed.
¡°She... she surely didn¡¯t know what she was doing, right?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know anymore,¡± came the reply. ¡°I¡¯ve decided that there¡¯s no way she knew when I first met her. There¡¯s no reason she would willingly let herself be hunted across Nocend when she could have just stopped it with a few words. But I think it¡¯s possible she realized what she could do at some point along the way.¡±
¡°Then why would she be here, in this mess? She could conquer the world with a power like that.¡±
¡°Maybe she already is,¡± Arlette offered. ¡°If you could control people with just words, what person would scare you more than the man who controls metal killing machines from a distance far beyond what words can reach? As soon as she knew of your existence, she made a beeline right for you, and now here she is, living in your castle and ordering you around. She can just let you take over the world. After all, why be the one on the throne when you can be safer pulling the strings behind the scenes?¡±
Blake blinked. What Arlette said made a sort of sense, but...
¡°No, she¡¯s too much of a coward for that sort of thing,¡± he decided. ¡°She knows that any conquest I engaged in would be bloody, and Miss Killing-Is-Bad wouldn¡¯t want to have that on her hands.¡±
Not that it made a massive difference in Blake¡¯s feelings whether or not she¡¯d known beforehand what she¡¯d done to him. If Sofie had burned down his house, he¡¯d still be plenty pissed at her even if she¡¯d done it entirely by accident.
Arlette hummed in thought. ¡°You have a point,¡± she conceded. ¡°And she probably could have just made us all forget everything instead of running away like she did at the end, but still... this is Sofie we¡¯re talking about. It¡¯s hard to say for sure.¡±
¡°So if we can¡¯t try to find her, then what can we do?¡± Blake wondered.
¡°Well, she might show up alongside somebody else,¡± Arlette began.
She told Blake about Gabriela and Chitra, and how they¡¯d managed to skirt the restrictions. Blake¡¯s mood alternated between cheer that something was being done about this issue and frustration that yet another person had managed to sneak into Otharia against his wishes.
The buzzer rang, signaling Sam returning with some much-needed refreshment.
¡°I¡¯ll try to come up with something to keep her in check, should she show up in the near future,¡± he told his employee. ¡°Until then, she is not to be allowed into the fortress under any circumstances.¡±
¡°Understood,¡± Arlette nodded, rising to her feet. ¡°Is there anything else you need from me right now? I am making headway on my ink investigation and I would like to get back to that.¡±
¡°Before you go, tell me what you know of Sofie¡¯s... restrictions. Who has them, and on what?¡±
¡°What I know is likely only scratching the surface,¡± she replied.
¡°Still, it¡¯s a start.¡±
¡°She¡¯s hit me with several that I know of, largely related to keeping her alive back when we first met in Zrukhora,¡± Arlette informed him. ¡°In addition, I am now forbidden from chasing her, hurting her, or trying to find her. It is possible that you, Gabriela, and Leo are also under all three of those restrictions, though only the finding one is confirmed right now. Gabriela also is forbidden from standing on two feet.¡±
Blake blinked. ¡°Huh?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, it¡¯s...¡± She shook her head in frustration. ¡°Sofie¡¯s idea of a non-impactful restriction leaves much to be desired.¡±
¡°I need to make a list, or something,¡± Blake muttered. ¡°I can think of several things she¡¯s done to me just off the top of my head.¡±
¡°That would be very helpful,¡± Arlette nodded. ¡°Anything else, sir?¡±
¡°That is all,¡± he said, and so Arlette walked out, leaving just him, Samanta, and the food. He took a weak sniff and smiled, the scents filling a hole inside him he hadn¡¯t realized was there until now. Using his mechanical arm, he picked up the glass of water and took a sip. The feeling of the liquid coating his throat was enough to bring a tear to his eye.
Taking a small bite of bread and chewing it slowly, he looked over to the girl, who continued to stare at him with indecision. ¡°Thanks, Sam,¡± he grunted through the pulped bread. ¡°Sorry, but I¡¯m going to need to push your lessons back a little longer.¡±
Sam just scowled.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, Sam? You¡¯ve been acting weird since I woke up.¡±
¡°Nothing,¡± she finally said. With that, she retreated from his chambers, almost as if she were running away.
As he took another bite, he idly wondered if she was going through some sort of teenage thing and mentally shrugged. Whatever it was, she¡¯d probably get over it soon enough.
After all this wheezing and grunting and eating, Blake felt absolutely exhausted. There was so much for him to do and catch up on, but he just had nothing left. He managed to get himself back into his bed just before he passed out.
* * *
Blake Myers had a problem. It had been two days since he¡¯d woken from his Sofie-imposed slumber, and he hadn¡¯t gotten any better. If his body was healing at all, then it was doing it much too slowly for him to tell the difference.
Why did Scyrians get to heal at superhuman rates and he didn¡¯t? Blake found this abundantly unfair.
He couldn¡¯t keep existing like this. He needed some sort of healing, something to at least get him back to pre-Sofie levels at least. Something that could let him use Hyper Mode without pain.
The problem was that he had no real way to heal himself. Scyrian medicine was rather crude because it didn¡¯t have to be more than that. People healed quickly from most injuries on their own with minimal outside assistance, and disease was shockingly rare, so few people bothered to enter or advance the medical field.
One option did exist, however, if he could manage to get it. And so, Blake summoned Arlette and put in a call to the Stragmans. Normally, Blake would gladly make the call himself, but he didn¡¯t want to show his weakness, especially not to the Chos. So instead, he had Arlette act as his representative.
Though a mid-level functionary answered the Many connection, it didn¡¯t take long for Akhustal Palebane to appear when Arlette asked for her. The Chos glared at her through the projection, making no effort to hide her annoyance.
¡°Well? I had assumed that your request was a great emergency, great enough for you to practically invade my land without even contacting me,¡± she snapped. ¡°What is taking so long? Your time is running short. We move again soon.¡±
¡°I apologize for the delay, but there have been some unexpected complications,¡± Arlette told her. ¡°I must ask, how much of the body is needed for the resurrection to work?¡±
¡°You will need at least a full knuckle of an adult finger or anything of similar size,¡± the Stragman leader told her. ¡°Anything smaller does not work. Is that why you are once again disrupting my day without warning?¡±
As Arlette began to apologize and explain more, Blake sighed. If any amount of flesh would do, they could have just used the tiny piece of Pari¡¯s toe that he had cut off a while back for study. About half of it still existed, but it was perhaps the size of a grain of rice.
He thought back to the Chos¡¯s original gripes. She has not exaggerated; he had broken most every norm with his actions. But he¡¯d done far more than that, really. He¡¯d dedicated hours and days of thought, research, work, and travel to the task of returning Pari Clansnarl back to the land of the living. He¡¯d nearly died multiple times in pursuit of this goal.
This begged the question... why was he trying to bring Pari back, even at the risk of his life? He wasn¡¯t Sofie; he could live in a world where that insane biological freakazoid child stayed dead. Yes, he¡¯d been eager to meet the being capable of making biotechnology, but that being had turned out to be a very angry and hostile dragon. So why was he putting himself in danger over and over? Why not just cut the deal now and walk away while he was still alive?
Was this another act of Sofie? He wracked his memory for a case when she¡¯d said anything that might cause his behavior, but couldn¡¯t come up with anything at the moment. That didn¡¯t mean it hadn¡¯t happened. And given that she could have done it to him as he slept...
There could be plenty of other reasons, he supposed. Gabriela, for one, seemed just as set on reviving Pari as Sofie did, and he really didn¡¯t want to get on that woman¡¯s bad side again. Then there was the simple fact that he hated losing, and giving up on this, after everything he¡¯d put into it, would be a massive blow to his pride. This was not the first time his muleheaded nature had led him into making poor choices, but he was too muleheaded to change. And maybe, just maybe, he actually wanted to hear that wild child giggling like a tiny madwoman as she sprinted down the halls again.
Or maybe it was time for him to drop this dead end and get back to more productive activities. Taking the loss would hurt his ego, sure, but his most recent brush with death had him reconsidering his willingness to needlessly put himself in danger. If Gabby didn¡¯t like it, she could go do it herself. If Sofie didn¡¯t like it, then maybe she shouldn¡¯t have messed with his mind.
¡°I said no!¡± Palebane snarled, bringing Blake back to the conversation at hand. ¡°I do not care how important you believe it to be! Stragma is not and will not be your personal healing service! I agreed to your first request because only you could meet our needs, but there is nothing you can do for us beyond that. I will not have the whole world lining up at our door, begging for our miracles!¡±
Blake signaled for Arlette to step out of the Many¡¯s view and over to him so he could whisper to her out of the Many¡¯s earshot.
¡°What are you doing?¡± the Chos complained.
¡°My apologies,¡± Arlette replied, quickly stepping back into frame. ¡°My Lord wishes to know-¡±
¡°Lord Ferros is there? Why will he not show himself?¡± she demanded hotly.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, but he is unable to speak with you at this time,¡± Arlette deflected. ¡°However, he wishes to know if you would be willing to alter the original agreement to change the party intended for healing.¡±
¡°Absolutely not,¡± the Stragman shot back. ¡°I have already shown your lord favor which he had barely earned. I overlooked his encroachment upon our lands. I have overlooked his rudeness and disrespect. He needs us, not the other way around! The deal will remain unaltered, or there will be no deal! Do not ask again, or the deal will be off regardless!¡±
With that, the projection cut off.
¡°Well, that went well,¡± Blake grunted.
¡°I apologize for my failure, sir-¡± a dismayed Arlette began, but Blake didn¡¯t want to hear it.
¡°You did nothing wrong,¡± he wheezed. ¡°I was wrong in my reading of her. Fuck.¡±
Still, Blake did not give up.
¡°The person they have who can do this, you said he is being held against his will?¡±
Arlette tilted her head in thought. ¡°Not exactly. Tehlmar said that he seemed incredibly strong. If he wanted to leave, he probably could. Tehlmar thinks it¡¯s something else keeping him there, like a hostage of some sort.¡±
¡°But he¡¯s surely from Earth, right? What if we rescued him and the hostage?¡±
¡°Far easier said than done,¡± she told him. ¡°We don¡¯t know who or where they are, if they even exist. Without better information, any attempt would probably fail, and the repercussions would be bad for us. What¡¯s more, they would change their procedures to make everything we¡¯d learned useless for a second attempt.¡±
¡°Hmmmm,¡± he muttered. ¡°Still... we should talk more about this in the future.¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want my fellow Earthlings held prisoner if I can help it. And having somebody around who could heal people would be great. We should try to get what intelligence we can.¡±
She nodded, though her brow furrowed. ¡°If you say so.¡±
¡°I do say-¡±
Blake felt the buildup just before it happened, just long enough to realize what was coming but not enough to do anything about it. An eruption of agony detonated inside him, the pain running up and down his spine and locking his already-weak body fully immobile.
The world around him began to violently tremble, the metal all around him quaking with greater vigor than any previous episode. He thought he heard yelling and could see Arlette¡¯s mouth opening, but he couldn¡¯t process her words through the excruciating torment ping-ponging around his form.
He felt liquid leaking from his eyes and running down his face, but it didn¡¯t feel like tears.
* * *
Blake awoke to the familiar sight of his chambers. He tried to take a breath and instead let out a pained cough. Everything hurt again. His body actually felt worse than after waking up from his 5-day coma, somehow. At least, this time, he still had his underwear on.
¡°Oh! You¡¯re awake already,¡± Gabby said, leaning over him with eyes filled with concern.
¡°How long...?¡± he managed to wheeze out.
¡°Ah, maybe two hours?¡± she replied. ¡°It took a bit to get you out of your armor and clean off the blood.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t keep doing this,¡± he said both to her and to himself. ¡°I¡¯ll probably die the next time if something doesn¡¯t change.¡±
Gabriela looked at him with a look that said ¡°I don¡¯t know what you expect can be done about it.¡± But against her expectations, Blake had an idea, a crazy idea that he¡¯d discarded just a few hours ago as too dangerous and unlikely too succeed. The difference was that Blake realized now that the most dangerous thing he could do was wait. His time was running out unless he took action.
¡°Pack your stuff,¡± he told her as his bed shifted into a wheelchair for the second time that day. ¡°And tell Arlette that we¡¯re leaving for the north, just the two of us... please.¡±
¡°What, now?¡± Gabriela asked, her brow creasing. ¡°I don¡¯t think if you should even be moving right now.¡±
¡°No time to lose,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s time we had one last visit with a certain giant dragon, wouldn¡¯t you say?¡±
Chapter 105
Rain pelted down, the torrent of water pouring over Sofie even with the cover of the trees. She welcomed it. The water left her feeling cleansed in more ways than just physically. The softened dirt didn¡¯t hurt either; between the rocks, the roots, and the fact she hadn¡¯t been able to find anything better to use in the bandits¡¯ storage room than a single-hand wooden spade the size of a gardening trowel, she found digging to be hard enough without the ground also being as hard as a brick. Letting the mindless monotony take her away from the events of the past few days, she plunged her trowel into the earth, over and over.
She¡¯d woken up to daylight and a cave hideout covered with blood and corpses. Apparently, her body¡¯s weakness, brought on by malnutrition, insomnia, and torture, had combined with the intense emotional stresses of that night to cause her to faint at the end of the slaughter. The sleep helped. Higo¡¯s knife, dropped by her side when Snake first attacked him, had helped even more. Freeing herself had taken some time, but the celebratory Liberation Crackers had made everything better.
Not really.
Her scabbed fingers and toes throbbed constantly, pain flaring up with every step she took. Her body still felt weak and lethargic, even after gorging herself on crackers and other assorted food in the storage room. Granted, she hadn¡¯t felt anything close to ¡°good¡± since Pari¡¯s death, but even compared to just two weeks ago, she felt like utter shit.
Still, she did it anyway because it needed to be done.
She thought as she dug. The Sofie of the past, the one sitting in a library, would never have been able to do this, she knew. That version of herself would have crumpled into a weeping heap and accomplished nothing. And yet, she found herself wishing that she could be that person again. She couldn¡¯t help but feel that she¡¯d lost just as much as she¡¯d gained¡ªif not more¡ªsince coming here.
She could feel Scyria pushing her every day to become somebody she didn¡¯t want to be. She didn¡¯t know what was worse: that it was working, or that everybody else seemed to view her resistance to it as some sort of obstinate, selfish, naive folly. Who you were as a person was perhaps the last true choice a person could have, the one thing anyone had near-total power over, but this goddamned hellhole of a world seemed intent on twisting everyone she knew into some cruel mockery of the person they had been.
Blake had probably been a jerk back on Earth, but surely not a murderous one. It was Scyria that had broken him so, both mentally and physically, and set him on his spite-fueled quest. The quest had no end; Blake was chasing the ghosts of acknowledgment and vengeance, but no matter what he did, they would always be a step out of reach. Sofie believed that even Blake understood this by now, but he was far too stubborn to stop. Or perhaps, he feared what would happen to him without his drive to prove an entire country incorrect.
Sofie wanted to believe that Gabby had been a nice person before the transfer; she could see the motherly nature the older woman still held within her. Still, the Eterians had taken to calling her a monster for a reason. When faced with the choice between two lives integral to her existence and the lives of thousands upon thousands of others, she¡¯d chosen the two. Blake, Arlette, and the rest probably thought that the Ubrans had tricked Gabby into her actions. Sofie had thought the same, once. Now, she wondered if Gabriela had equally used the Ubrans, letting them build her a permission structure for her actions, a justification to soften the guilt of her crimes.
And then there was Arlette. What would she be like if she had been allowed a normal, warm childhood? What would she be like if she¡¯d just been allowed to be happy? What would a truly happy Arlette even look like? Sofie tried to imagine it and came up blank. She didn¡¯t think she¡¯d ever once seen the Scyrian in a state that could qualify as true happiness.
All these people and more, twisted by the horrors and vagaries of this accursed world. Tehlmar, Samanta, General Astalaria, even Pari... all of them warped by something terrible. And they looked at her and lectured her just because she didn¡¯t want that to happen to her. Well, maybe it didn¡¯t matter anymore.
She hadn¡¯t even been able to uphold her vow for even two weeks. Yes, the last few days had been intensely trying, but Sofie viewed that almost as Scyria itself slapping her down for the hubris of thinking she had the power to decide anything in her life. Vows, promises... they meant nothing here.
Slowly the dirt receded until eventually, she stepped out of a shallow depression deep and wide enough to hold several bodies.
That task finally complete, Sofie took several deep breaths and let the rain wash off the mud before walking a good ten meters away. There, she gingerly lowered herself to her knees and began to dig once more. This time, she would dig a hole far more narrow than the last, but deeper as well.
The rain had faded to a fine drizzle by the time she finally finished digging the second grave. Sofie carefully climbed out of the hole, wary of the slick muddy sides¡ªso much rain had fallen that both graves had partially filled with water by this point¡ªand shook herself off. Judging by what she could make of the sun¡¯s position in the overcast sky, twilight was only minutes away. It had taken her literally all day, and she still needed to finish the job. With a sigh, she staggered back to the nearby hideout.
The man-made cave stank of blood and worse. Sofie had done what she could to clean up the dried pools of blood¡ªnot to mention the dried urine and feces the corpses had released after death¡ªbut there was a limit to what she could accomplish without proper supplies.
¡°See how long this is taking?¡± a voice asked as she trudged inside. ¡°I told you, just dump them out in the forest.¡±
Sofie ignored the voice with its feigned concern and continued her trudge over to Weasel¡¯s nearby corpse. Letting out a loud grunt, she barely managed to heave his limp corpse up over her shoulder and carry him out to the grave, where she unceremoniously dumped him with a gasp of pain. Walking on her own hurt bad enough, but walking with the extra weight of a dead body made her toes want to riot.
Hawk came next; though larger than average for a female Otharian, her body posed a bit less trouble due to her thin build. Snake was a pain¡ªshe half-carried, half-dragged him. As for Bull... she had to put thick sticks under his body and drag him along the ground until they made it to the slick forest floor. Without the sticks to roll under the giant and reduce the friction, she doubted her strength would have been enough to move him at all.
Once the corpses all laid where they belonged, Sofie quickly pushed the pile of dirt on top of them, pulling out her trowel to finish the job. The rain had died down by now, thank goodness; the dirt pile was muddy enough as it was. One of the three moons¡ªshe forgot which was which¡ªpoked through the cloud cover, giving her enough light to finish her work. She felt hungry, but she pushed through it. She could eat in a bit, once she¡¯d finished the task.
Once a layer of dirt separated the bandits from the open air, Sofie slowly made her way back inside for one last body. It smelled a little better already.
¡°It¡¯s so cute that you care so much more for the boy than the others,¡± the voice remarked. ¡°Young love, perhaps?¡±
¡°Shut up,¡± she growled.
She dragged Higo¡¯s corpse to the smaller and deeper separate grave and dumped his body like she had the others. The hole filed slowly under the sky¡¯s muted silver shine until the job was finally done.
Casting the tiny shovel aside, Sofie sank down against a nearby tree, worn to the bone. By this point, the screaming of her fingers and toes had mixed with the aches of her muscles and the emptiness of her stomach, but she didn¡¯t have it in her to move for a little while. Or, perhaps more accurately, she didn¡¯t have it in her to face what lurked inside the cave.
The quiet of the forest echoed the silence of the void within her. Life felt... hopeless? Pointless? Some combination of both? Despite what she¡¯d told Higo, the odds of her ever seeing Pari again looked slim and got slimmer by the day. A life without her sister was a life without meaning.
Like the others, Sofie had never wanted to be sucked into Scyria in the first place. She had no role here because this world was not meant for her. She¡¯d been too scared during the beginning, between being enslaved and being hunted, to even notice or care. Then she¡¯d found Pari. That little imp, combined with the ruggedness of survival in this world, kept her constantly busied to the point that she¡¯d never had the need to really ponder her purpose.
Pari¡¯s death had opened up the door to said pondering for the first time since the transfer. Without the giggling feline distraction running around, she¡¯d had time to begin to realize just how empty her life was. She¡¯d locked those thoughts away as best she could, but now, alone in the quiet forest, she could no longer hide from the truth.
She didn¡¯t belong here. None of them did.
She felt empty. Was this hollowness what filled Gabby all day every day?
Sofie thought that maybe she understood the mother¡¯s malaise better now. Gabriela had known from the start that they belonged back on Earth, and she¡¯d done everything in her power to try to return. It was no wonder that she seemed to sleepwalk through each day now. She knew that her life was meaningless here.
Now, Sofie knew it too. Or rather, she couldn¡¯t avoid the realization anymore. But what could she do about it?
She could try to find something else to plug the hole, but she doubted anything out there could change the fundamental truth. Her efforts towards an Otharian education system was a great example of this. Looking back, she could see that it was something she¡¯d taken up to try to fill the hole she hadn¡¯t even admitted was there at the time.
What made her qualified for anything like the creation of a school system throughout an entire nation? Nothing, if she were to be honest. It wasn¡¯t like she¡¯d been taking education classes in university. Nor was she especially skilled in administration. It had simply been a need she¡¯d recognized and tried to fill, but it wasn¡¯t her purpose here. She didn¡¯t even especially enjoy it.
There was one activity she did enjoy: translating ancient books. That wasn¡¯t a purpose either. It was just a hobby, one that accomplished nothing more than filling time.
Speaking of filling time, the convulsions of her gut told her that she¡¯d filled too much out here at this point. Pushing herself to her feet, she made her way back inside to face the cave¡¯s newest denizen and get some well-earned food and water.
Darkness filled the cave interior; she¡¯d been outside so long that the torch had burned to nothing. Still, she could visualize the hideout¡¯s simple, two-chamber layout with ease, so walking through it to the storeroom didn¡¯t pose much difficulty. It helped that the obstacles had been cleared, as well. The last thing she needed was to be tripping over bodies in the dark, or worse, stubbing her brutalized toes.
Once she¡¯d reached her destination, Sofie fumbled in the darkness for the pile of torches that she remembered to be in the close left corner. Before long, her fingers found the pile and she returned to the main chamber with one in each hand.
¡°Could you make a flame for me, please?¡± she asked into the shadow.
¡°Can you not even manage something so simple on your own?¡± the voice asked with mock concern. ¡°You poor thing. You must be truly exhausted.¡±
¡°Can you just can it with the comments for once?!¡± Sofie snapped. ¡°You spent months with Gabby! You should know full well by now that Earthlings can¡¯t do the same magic as your people! Just do it, already!¡±
¡°Well, since you asked so nicely.¡±
A bright white flame the size of Sofie¡¯s fist materialized in the middle of the hideout, the light illuminating the stiff, blood-soaked form of Chitra Batranala against the side wall. The Scyrian¡¯s polite smile, the kind retail employees made while thoughts of murder raged behind their eyes, made Sofie want to scream.
She had not expected to find the Resistance killer still alive when she woke up that morning. Even more, she did not expect to find that the woman was not actually a member of the Resistance, but rather Gabby¡¯s Ubran friend and confidant, Chitra Batranala.
Chitra¡¯s state revealed a very important discovery about Sofie¡¯s powers: geasa weren¡¯t necessarily literal. The Ubran couldn¡¯t move her limbs, head, or neck, nor could she bend or twist her torso in any way. She was locked out of nearly every voluntary function of her body, her limbs stiff as boards¡ªthough, thankfully, Sofie could reposition them with a hearty tug if she needed to. And yet, Chitra could breathe and speak without issue.
One would think that breathing counted as movement. Perhaps heartbeats and peristalsis counted as well. Speaking, emoting, and moving one¡¯s eyes would definitely count by almost any sense of the word. And yet, here she was, breathing, speaking, emoting, moving her eyes, and blinking, all while neither screaming nor bleeding out of her eye sockets.
Sofie could only conclude that her subconscious desires affected the rules of her geasa. She¡¯d wanted Chitra to stop, and so Chitra had, but she hadn¡¯t wanted her to die, and so she had not. Though at this point, the woman¡¯s attitude was starting to make Sofie consider changing her mind.
Chitra Batranala did not like Sofie one bit, and seemingly had no compunction with making sure Sofie knew it. The whole day had been filled with comment after passive-aggressive comment like a chronically disappointed mother. Sofie could do nothing right in her eyes, and it was driving Sofie up the wall. She almost wanted to forbid the woman from speaking.
Almost.
Pushing her feelings aside for the moment, Sofie reached out and touched the torch to the flame. The white fire vanished, replaced by the orange gleam of the burning stick. Sofie walked over to the nearby stone sconce, placed the torch inside. Then she lit the second one using the flame of the first, walked to the other side of the cave, and placed it in the other sconce. The dual light sources cast competing half-shadows across the hideout.
Wait, she still needed to eat. With a sigh, she pulled the torch back down and tromped into the storeroom again to raid their dwindling food supplies. Unwilling to go digging for the moment, she seized on the remaining crackers. The stale carbs lacked taste and appeal, but at least she knew what she was getting into with them. She wasn¡¯t in the mood for taking chances right now.
The crackers were... not as dry as ever; she¡¯d forgotten to store them properly, and the day¡¯s ample moisture meant damp crackers that were somehow even less appetizing than the dry ones. Thinking of all that water, she realized now that she should have figured out some way of harnessing the rain to replenish the water supply. A shame, she¡¯d been too caught up in her own feelings earlier to think about stuff like that when it mattered.
She waddled back out¡ªwaddling flatfooted took a while but also hurt noticeably less than normal walking¡ªand sat down beside the near-motionless Scyrian. She offered a cracker towards Chitra.
¡°I prefer meat,¡± the Ubran sniffed.
¡°Fine, starve all you want, then,¡± Sofie replied. She¡¯d had enough of the immobile woman¡¯s attitude.
¡°There is surely some in their supplies if you look hard enough.¡±
¡°Well, I¡¯m tired, so take it or leave it,¡± Sofie harrumphed.
¡°Treating your savior so terribly,¡± Chitra sighed melodramatically. ¡°You¡¯re nothing like the girl Gabby described.¡±
¡°And you¡¯re nothing like the supportive, caring friend she told me about, either!¡± Sofie shot back. ¡°Can you stop with all this condescending, passive-aggressive bullshit and give me a little respect?!¡±
The woman laughed, her voice like a bell. Somehow, even while ¡®paralyzed¡¯, she managed to seem elegant. ¡°Respect is not given so freely, child, and you¡¯ve shown me little reason to give you any whatsoever.¡±
¡°And what would give you reason?¡± Sofie wondered through clenched teeth.
¡°To begin, you could stop mourning the death of the very people who tortured you,¡± the Ubran told her with no small amount of derision.
¡°I¡¯m not!¡±
¡°You buried them, did you not? You should have left them for the scavengers, though even that would be a gift.¡±
¡°A shallow, waterlogged grave is not a gift. It¡¯s the bare minimum any person deserves.¡±
¡°And what of the boy bandit?¡±
¡°Higo wasn¡¯t a bandit,¡± Sofie argued. ¡°Not like the others, at least.¡±
¡°That is perhaps the most laughable thing you have said so far. Being an ineffectual bandit does not absolve one of banditry.¡±
¡°He was just a confused kid swept up in the tide of events far bigger than he could handle. He did not deserve what happened to him¡ªwhat you did to him. I¡¯ll never forgive you for that.¡±
Chitra rolled her eyes. ¡°Life cares not for what anyone ¡®deserves¡¯, child, and I need your forgiveness even less. My goal was to ensure your safety, and I accomplished that as I saw fit. The boy was lucky to get as quick and painless a death as I gave him.¡±
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¡°He was trying to save me! You didn¡¯t have to kill him at all!¡±
¡°My task was to rescue you, not to perfectly deescalate the unknown situation I discovered you in when I arrived,¡± Chitra shot back. ¡°I lacked the luxury of time to fully understand the dynamics, but I could see that you were in danger. I acted in the way that best assured your survival.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a load of bull, and you know it!¡± Sofie snarled. ¡°I¡¯m not blind! You were enjoying every moment of that butchery!¡±
¡°I enjoy cleaning up trash, yes; I will make no apologies for that. But make no mistake, I cleaned up your mess, child.¡±
¡°Fuck you!¡± Sofie spat, almost leaping to her feet in indignation. ¡°You can¡¯t make your actions my fault!¡±
¡°Then whose fault is it, child?¡± the Scyrian asked with a calm smile as Sofie marched across the cave.
¡°Yours! It sure wasn¡¯t my knife stabbing into their bodies!¡± Sofie hollered as she paced back and forth. ¡°And stop calling me a child!¡±
¡°Then stop behaving like one!¡± came Chitra¡¯s harsh reply. ¡°I only was forced to act because you refused to. You could have resolved your predicament yourself with ridiculous ease¡ªmy current state is more than enough to attest to that¡ªbut instead, you stayed your hand.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not that simple!¡± Sofie protested.
¡°What could be simpler than a single command? With a few words, you could have been on your way without a single drop of blood spilled. And they wouldn¡¯t even have to remember you if you didn¡¯t want them to! But you didn¡¯t, and for what?¡±
¡°Because it hurts people, you... you...!¡± Sofie screamed, her frustration boiling over to the point that she momentarily lost her ability to speak. Instead, she let out a roar and hurled the remaining crackers into the nearest wall before stomping them into crumbs.
¡°You and Tehlmar and the rest this goddamned world, you¡¯re all the fucking same!¡± she snarled as she huffed with fury and indignation. ¡°Just because my first answer to every fucking problem isn¡¯t to start stabbing, I¡¯m ¡®too soft¡¯, ¡®too weak¡¯! It¡¯s like it¡¯s never once occurred to you fucking troglodytes that maybe, just maybe, the fact that you¡¯re all violent psychopaths is the reason your whole world fucking blows! All this pain and suffering didn¡¯t just randomly happen!
¡°But noooo! I¡¯m the stupid one for not wanting to add more agony and bloodshed to this godforsaken place! I¡¯m the stupid one for thinking a better world would be possible if you all weren¡¯t so busy with the might makes right bullshit! Well, you know what? This pathetic thing you ignorant brutes call living? You fucking deserve all of it! Every last fucking drop!
¡°And what if I held off? So what if I didn¡¯t want to tamper with other peoples¡¯ minds? The only person getting hurt was me! That¡¯s my choice, so you have no fucking right to judge me! And I was going to stop them, just so you know! Nobody was going to get killed! But then you went on your little stabbing spree and murdered them all before I could do anything! So fuck you, and fuck Tehlmar, and fuck this whole fucking dimension!¡±
¡°Enough.¡±
The single phrase, disdain practically dripping from each syllable, froze Sofie in her tracks.
¡°I will not be lectured by an infant throwing a fit,¡± the Scyrian woman hissed.
¡°Listen, you-¡± Sofie began.
¡°No, you listen, you pathetic whelp,¡± Chitra snapped. ¡°I do not call you a child because you are ¡®weak¡¯ or ¡®soft¡¯ or anything of the sort. There is nothing wrong with looking for non-violent solutions; in the palace, a well-placed word was often far more effective than any blade could ever be. I call you what you are because you are so terrified of the consequences of your actions that you choose not to act at all.
¡°Every step, no matter how small, creates a tremor that spreads through the world. Adults understand this, and they accept it and carry on regardless. They accept it because to live in the world requires it. Only children get the benefit of cowering in a corner, waiting for another to act on their behalf. Adults get no such luxuries.
¡°You possess a power so grand that it would make kings weep, and yet the thought of using it to even the smallest degree paralyzes you. Someone with your powers could single-handedly change this world if they so decided, but not you. You run from everything like the child you are¡ªthe child you choose to be. All actions carry a risk, Sofie. Such is the way of the world, as it always has been. I will not coddle you and your naive delusions. If you wish to be taken seriously, then look within. Until then, do not waste my time with your infantile tantrums.¡±
¡°Oh, give me a fucking break!¡± Sofie snapped back. ¡°That¡¯s so easy for you to say. You¡¯re not the one who has to pay the price in the future when something goes wrong.¡±
¡°Neither are you,¡± Chitra replied.
¡°All the more reason to avoid it, then! Look at what it¡¯s done so far. Pari died, just because of three stupid words I told her a year ago.¡±
¡°But you only discovered the truth of your abilities recently, is that not so? Mistakes of the past have little bearing upon your choices from this point onward.¡±
Sofie shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s still wrong,¡± she stated. ¡°I don¡¯t have the right to saddle people with burdens that could destroy them in the future just to get things I want.¡±
Chitra looked at her like she¡¯d grown two heads. ¡°What folly are you spouting now? Of course you do. Power is meant to be wielded. That is the point of it.¡±
¡°Even if it¡¯s evil?¡±
¡°Power has no morality, child.¡±
¡°Mine does! It reaches inside the most sacred part of a person and defiles it! Why don¡¯t you get that?! Why aren¡¯t you angry about what I did to you? I reached inside of you and messed with your very being! It¡¯s... it¡¯s mind rape! I violated you!¡±
Though she could not move, the Batranala somehow seemed to shrug. ¡°All power is violation in some form. The exact method matters little.¡±
¡°What in the world are you talking about?!¡± Sofie cried out.
¡°You see a man beating another man in the street,¡± the Scyrian began as if explaining something to a five-year-old. ¡°You tell the man to stop and he tells you to mind your own business. So you use your power and he stops. Lord Ferros comes across the same scene and tells the man to stop or his death machines will kill him. The man stops. What is the difference?¡±
¡°What¡¯s the difference?! Isn¡¯t that obvious?!¡± Sofie hotly asserted. ¡°He didn¡¯t mind rape the man!¡±
¡°I say again: the method matters little. You believe that by affecting another through your ability, you are violating their soul, yes? Have you not considered that Lord Ferros pointing a gun to the man¡¯s head is just as much a violation, merely physical and emotional rather than spiritual? Instead of defiling the man¡¯s self, as you claim to do, he defiles the man¡¯s self-worth, his agency, his reputation, and more. The soul is a part of one¡¯s self, but it is no more special than one¡¯s body or mind. To tamper with it is no worse than cutting off a finger or filling a man¡¯s head with lies. It is simply more direct. Why, one could argue that it is, in fact, cleaner and preferable to the other, less-direct methods.¡±
¡°But what I do is permanent,¡± Sofie contended. ¡°Like, if I made the man unable to attack others, he might end up dying from an attack that he otherwise would have been able to escape.¡±
Chitra snorted. ¡°The man Lord Ferros threatened stops the beating and quickly runs away. That night, feeling angry and powerless, he gets drunk and terribly beats his child to regain a feeling of superiority. Do you not see? All power has repercussions. The difference you cling to exists only in your mind.
¡°Imposing your will onto others, forcing people to do as you desire... it can be accomplished in a thousand ways, but in the end, the specific details matter little. Power is power. Yours might be a bit more direct than most, but that does not make it worse or better. The power of Lord Ferros, the Chos, or even the great Emperor whom I once served are no different than yours in any meaningful way. The only question is if you are willing to embrace what power entails, as they did.¡±
Sofie didn¡¯t know how to reply, so she just sat and said nothing for a long while.
¡°I don¡¯t know if I am,¡± she finally admitted as she got up several minutes later. Slowly, she made her way to the storeroom, grabbing two bedrolls and some dirty blankets before returning to the main chamber.
¡°I¡¯ve had enough of talking today,¡± she told the frozen woman as she set out one bedroll. Chitra didn¡¯t complain as Sofie slid her onto the fabric, rearranged her position so that she rested flat on the floor, and threw a blanket over her. Sofie walked all the way to the other end of the cave and set up her own bedroll. The fabric was not very soft and did little to cushion the hard stone below, but she could tell a bit of a difference. Even with the lingering stench, it didn¡¯t take long before she was out like a light.
Sofie watched as the Ubran chewed eagerly on the tough dried meat. For somebody effectively paralyzed from the head down, the woman looked as pleased as punch for the meal. Sofie had never met anybody who liked meat as much as Chitra, though she had to admit that the protein tasted leaps and bounds better than the crackers from yesterday.
¡°All done?¡± Sofie asked as Chitra swallowed the last of the piece.
¡°Indeed,¡± came the reply. ¡°I thank you for assisting me with the meal.¡±
¡°Well, far be it for me to mistreat my ¡®savior¡¯, after all. Especially since I did this to you.¡±
¡°Quite.¡±
Sofie took a deep breath and steeled herself. ¡°Don¡¯t breathe through your nose.¡±
For the first time when using her powers, Sofie concentrated on her inner self, searching for some sort of indication that something was happening within her... and almost to her surprise, she did actually notice something. The sensation barely registered, like a tiny thread being pulled from a shirt she wore and tied nearby to hang almost imperceptibly between her and something else. Then, in a heartbeat, the sensation vanished. She could no longer feel the presence of anything ¡°off¡± inside her.
Meanwhile, back in external reality, Chitra blinked in shock, her chest halting mid-inhale for a moment before she opened her mouth and finished her breath. ¡°Is this some sort of punishment for my words last night?¡± the Ubran asked, mildly irritated. ¡°Because I will not apologize for honesty.¡±
¡°No, it¡¯s not,¡± Sofie answered. ¡°Pari died because of me. It hurts to know that she could still be alive if it wasn¡¯t for my words. But I realize, now, that I also could have saved her if had known about my powers then. I could have stopped everything.
¡°You were right, in a way, when you said I was running away. I¡¯ve been running away from myself, and I can¡¯t do that anymore. I don¡¯t want to be like Blake. I don¡¯t want to stomp all over others and throw my weight around like that. But I can¡¯t let something like Pari¡¯s death happen again just because I¡¯m afraid to use my powers, as terrible as they are. But to do that, I need to understand everything about how they work.¡±
¡°And you intend to use me to find out.¡±
¡°I already hit you with my power once. What¡¯s one more on top of it? And I hear that you don¡¯t care for my forgiveness, so why should I care for yours?¡± Sofie sneered. ¡°Besides, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can leave this stupid cave.¡±
¡°Why add more restrictions at all? You already turned me into a statue.¡±
¡°Because I still don¡¯t trust you to not kill me the minute you can move again,¡± Sofie retorted. ¡°If you weren¡¯t Gabby¡¯s friend, I probably wouldn¡¯t trust you enough to talk with you. I probably would have just dumped you by a nearby village.¡±
¡°Hmph,¡± the Batranala replied. ¡°Then let us get this over with.¡±
¡°You may breathe through your nose,¡± Sofie said.
The Scyrian seemed to try to sniff for a moment, but nothing happened.
¡°Hmm. I allow you to breathe through your nose.¡±
Once again, nothing happened. Sofie sat down beside the other woman.
¡°I release you from not being able to breathe through your nose.¡±
Still nothing.
¡°Don¡¯t don¡¯t, perhaps?¡± Chitra suggested.
¡°Don¡¯t don¡¯t-¡± Sofie¡¯s sentence ground to a halt. ¡°Wait, what if that did the opposite? Instead of releasing you, it added a second geas where you couldn¡¯t not breathe through your nose?¡±
¡°...good point,¡± Chitra admitted. ¡°That would be a problem.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s leave that for another time, then,¡± Sofie sighed. ¡°This might be harder than I had hoped.¡±
More than an hour later, Sofie let out a groan of frustration as she leaned all the way back, her back coming to rest on the cold, hard cave floor.
¡°I can¡¯t think of any other ways to say it!¡± she sighed in defeat.
Nothing either of them had thought of had worked. Every permutation, every alternate wording, all of them seemed entirely without effect. They¡¯d even branched into more tangential, related phrases to no avail.
Sofie rolled her tired body over and pushed herself to her feet. ¡°I think we should try something else for a while,¡± she muttered as she headed into the storeroom. There, she searched about until she found a few pieces of clean cloth¡ªclean enough in comparison to everything else, at least¡ªin a bag in the back corner.
¡°What are you up to now?¡± Chitra wondered as Sofie wandered back into the main room.
¡°Let¡¯s try something else. Experimenting,¡± Sofie replied before stuffing her mouth full with the cloth to the point that her jaw hurt.
¡°Don¡¯t blink with both eyes at the same time,¡± she said to the Ubran, though in reality, her voice sounded like little more than muffled moaning and groaning.
Chitra blinked... with both eyes, unamused. Sofie tried again, but still, nothing seemed to occur.
¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± she admitted, once her mouth was once more empty of cloth. ¡°I said it, why didn¡¯t it work?¡±
¡°Perhaps you need to speak it fully,¡± Chitra conjectured.
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Perhaps the actual act of speaking is required for you to actualize your ability. Some people find saying certain mantras or performing certain physical movements can help them set their minds properly for a task,¡± Chitra explained. ¡°For example, some Observer schools teach children with both mantras and gestures. A rare few that learn this way end up unable to Observe without performing those mantras and gestures, even when they grow older. Perhaps actually fully speaking the words aloud is your version of this.¡±
¡°So... the whole time I was being tortured... I would never have been able to stop them, anyway!¡± Sofie gasped. She rubbed her tired eyes and groaned. All that time, when she¡¯d been fighting not just the pain but her own urges to make it all stop, her powers would have been useless in the first place. Water under the bridge, she told herself as she moved on to the next aspect she wanted to test.
¡°Don¡¯t blink with both eyes at the same time,¡± Sofie said again, only in French.
Once again, Chitra continued to blink unimpeded.
¡°Don¡¯t blink with both eyes at the same time,¡± Sofie finally said in Dutch.
The Ubran blinked her left eye, then her right, and sighed. ¡°Was that truly necessary?¡±
¡°I needed to confirm,¡± Sofie replied, telling herself that this was all for a worthy cause. The rationalization lightened the weight on her conscience, but not by much.
The sun approached the horizon as Sofie stretched tall, letting her weary joints feel a moment of relief. The bandits had built their hideout into the side of a hill, which meant that there was a hilltop upon which she could stand, as she did now. The view wasn¡¯t anything amazing, but it felt good to be able to look around and see more than just a cave wall or a tree trunk five meters away.
At least the sunset could help keep her sorrow at bay for a little while. A full day of experimentation had revealed little, other than that she could be neutralized with little more than a ball gag or by not speaking Dutch. Despite trying all sorts of different ideas, they had not found the one thing she needed to find: a way to unbind somebody. Until she knew how to release people from her power¡ªif it was even possible¡ªshe could never face Arlette and the others ever again.
At this rate, she would never go back. The question then would be what to do with the paralyzed woman in the cave below. Sofie couldn¡¯t bring herself to consider abandoning her, especially not since the woman¡¯s predicament was Sofie¡¯s doing.
Chitra Batranala bothered Sofie, no matter how Sofie tried to get over it. For some reason, Sofie found that she wanted the Ubran¡¯s approval, or at least understanding. Maybe it was just because there was nobody else around to give Sofie the validation she needed right now, or maybe it was that Chitra felt almost like a personification of Scyria and Sofie was arguing not with a single person but with the world itself.
Chitra Batranala was a woman born and raised here¡ªa world where people died needlessly all the time and this sort of daily tragedy counted as a normal day. Death, violence, and suffering were just standard features of existence for her. Growing up in such a place, it was no wonder that she seemed completely unfettered by anything approaching the morality she knew on Earth. Chitra knew what she wanted and she had the skills and smarts to get it. And if that required killing, then she would kill without hesitation.
In the eyes of Chitra and the rest of the world, if you died, it was your fault. It meant you were too weak to keep living, simple as that. Sofie still couldn¡¯t fully accept such a reductive argument; that argument was made by the strong survivors, after all. Of course they would frame the world to justify their deeds as righteous.
But in that light, perhaps something could be said for Chitra¡¯s actions. Sofie knew how weak she seemed to the Scyrians¡ªthe other Earthlings as well, to be honest¡ªand by Chitra¡¯s outlook on life, Sofie probably deserved the death of a weakling. Other than her connection with Gabby, there was absolutely no reason for Chitra to intercede in Sofie¡¯s fate. In her eyes, Sofie was not just someone deserving of scorn, but somebody who deserved whatever happened to them. And yet, she had interceded with dramatic decisiveness. Yes, Sofie wasn¡¯t entirely thrilled with the results of said decisiveness, but could she fault Chitra for trying to save her life?
Sofie rubbed her face and let out a small groan. The Ubran¡¯s arguments were getting to her a little after this long day.
As the sun began to duck behind the earth, Sofie made her way back down to the hideout below. Stepping into the storeroom, she grabbed more of the dried meat¡ªnot much left of that, she noted¡ªand went to feed her immobile companion.
Chitra didn¡¯t seem as tired as Sofie felt, instead appearing more bored out of her skull than anything else. Her eyes did brighten, however, when she noticed what Sofie held in her hands.
¡°What was it like, living in the Imperial Palace?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°It was much like this,¡± Chitra replied. ¡°Completely at the mercy of another¡¯s whims.¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes.
¡°If you wished to kill me here and now, could I stop you?¡± the Ubran pointed out.
¡°But I wouldn¡¯t do that,¡± Sofie protested.
¡°Irrelevant. The possibility exists all the same,¡± Chitra told her as she began chewing on a large bite of meat. ¡°To live in the Palace was to live beneath the constant threat of death. The Emperor¡¯s power was absolute, and one wrong word could spell your end. I witnessed many a fool perish for the slightest of reasons.¡±
¡°That sounds horrible.¡±
¡°It was not for the faint of heart, but everyone there chose to be there for a reason.¡±
¡°And what reason would you have to go there?¡±
Chitra swallowed her meat and opened wide for another piece. ¡°Revenge.¡±
¡°Revenge? Against who?¡±
The Batranala only smiled, causing Sofie to roll her eyes again.
¡°Fine, don¡¯t tell me.¡±
Sofie sat back and sighed, munching down on the last of the crackers she¡¯d been able to find in the storeroom. She didn¡¯t know if she should feel anxious or delighted that no more of the tasteless floor tiles in grain form existed. For the moment, she decided to feel both at the same time.
¡°So...¡± she began, ¡°I wanted to say I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve already apologized for what you did four times today,¡± Chitra pointed out.
¡°Not for that, for... I mean, you had never even met me, and yet you came all the way here searching for me. I wasn¡¯t appreciating that like I should. It says a lot that you would be willing to do something like that for anybody. And I was thinking earlier, putting myself in your shoes, and I¡¯m still not happy with what you chose to do, but I guess I can see why you chose to do it.¡±
¡°This is quite an about-face from your declarations last night,¡± the Ubran remarked.
¡°I was a little... heated then. I think I¡¯ve just realized that I don¡¯t want to keep going in this cycle anymore. It¡¯s not fair to anybody for me to judge this world and its people by the standards of my world, and all it does it lead to anger and disappointment for everybody involved. You did your best as you saw it, and I don¡¯t want to condemn you for trying, even if I wish Higo were still alive. I know you said you didn¡¯t care for my forgiveness, but I just wanted to say it to you anyway and get it off my chest: I forgive you.¡±
Sofie froze as she felt something inside her shift, something far more noticeable than the fleeting blip she felt when creating a geas. For a moment, she felt fuller, more whole, as if something she didn¡¯t know she had lost had returned to her.
¡°Your sentiments are noted,¡± Chitra replied, ¡°but I do what I do for my own-¡±
¡°Did you feel that?!¡± Sofie butted in.
Chitra blinked. With both eyes.
¡°You blinked!¡± Sofie gasped.
She watched in delight as the Ubran took a trial sniff, which quickly turning into a full-blown inhale through her nostrils. Almost gingerly, the Batranala tilted her head down to look at her hands as she squeezed and released them several times. With a breath of satisfaction, she slowly moved them against the wall and began to pull herself up until, at last, she stood tall for the first time in two days.
¡°No way!¡± Sofie giggled in disbelief. ¡°The geasa are gone! All of them!¡±
She had a way to make things right, and that way might remove even the geasa she couldn¡¯t remember making in the first place! It felt like a dream come true. At least, the effect sure did. She wasn¡¯t exactly sure what to think about the nature of the phrase involved, but she¡¯d care about that later.
Sofie backed away and watched as the formerly lithe and graceful woman took an uneasy, halting step. Chitra swayed, and only the presence of the wall kept her from falling. Sofie almost went to help, but her past statement remained true: she still didn¡¯t trust Chitra entirely not to do something now that she had her body back.
¡°I¡¯ve been sitting motionless for so long, it¡¯s like I¡¯ve never moved my body before,¡± Chitra eventually said aloud. ¡°Everything feels stiff.¡±
¡°Are you alright?¡± Sofie inquired, a little concerned for the other woman.
¡°I will be back to myself shortly,¡± came the confident reply.
¡°Good!¡± Sofie let out a breath of relief. She already felt bad over what she was about to do; she didn¡¯t need extra guilt added on top. ¡°Don¡¯t move.¡±
¡°What are you-¡± the Ubran protested as she went stiff and toppled over once more.
¡°Who said we were finished? We have so much more to do,¡± Sofie reminded the still form lying in front of her. ¡°I¡¯m not stopping until I understand everything about how this works. Didn¡¯t you say it yourself? Power is meant to be wielded?¡±
Chitra let out a burst of laughter, the first laughs from the Ubran that Sofie had ever heard which didn¡¯t sound like mockery. ¡°Well, well,¡± she chortled. ¡°Perhaps there is hope for you after all.¡±
Chapter 106
Arlette took a deep breath, feeling her chest swell as the air flowed in through her nostrils. She cleared her mind as best she could and concentrated on the illusion in her hands. She had conjured the illusion of a small rock into her hands, and, as per Peko¡¯s instructions, focused intently upon it.
She took in its shape, observing the tiny nooks and crannies, the marbled grey and brown texture, the matte surface. It was exactly as she¡¯d imagined it... which only made sense, as it was an illusion, which by definition was crafted quite literally from her imagination.
¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re going on about,¡± she griped to Peko, who lounged decadently in a chair on the far end side of her desk here in her office.
¡°I told you, yourself with every aspect of that rock. Its look, its sound, its weight, its feel, its smell, all of it.¡±
¡°And I told you, it¡¯s an illusion!¡± she informed him again, exasperated. ¡°It doesn¡¯t have anything to familiarize with outside of the look!¡±
The bastard flashed her a teasing grin. ¡°That sounds like quitter talk to me.¡±
The only reason she didn¡¯t smack him was the fact that he was intangible.
¡°Just help me understand what you¡¯re going for,¡± she pleaded.
¡°It¡¯s better if you figure it out on your own¡±, he replied.
¡°I¡¯m trying, but it all feels like a waste of time. Like, I can make an illusion of a rock. I can create the sound of a rock hitting things. But how am I supposed to get familiar with the ¡°weight¡± of an illusion when it isn¡¯t real?! It doesn¡¯t obey any physical rules¡ªno falling to the ground, no interacting with the world, no nothing! Look!¡±
With a casual flick of her wrist, Arlette threw the rock against the nearby wall of her office and it bounced off the metal, making a loud ¡°clang¡±... except none of it had actually happened. She had Observed the illusion so that it traveled with the movement of her hand and arced into the wall. Then she Observed a metallic illusory sound as she ricocheted the false rock in the angle that her mind told her would look natural.
¡°The rock didn¡¯t do that, I did that. It¡¯s just a simulation, bound by hard limitations.¡±
¡°Keep at it,¡± came the reply. ¡°If you really need a push in the future, I¡¯ll see what I can do, but this has to be your journey.¡±
Arlette rolled her eyes.
¡°Come now, have I ever led you wrong before?¡± he asked.
¡°No, you haven¡¯t,¡± she readily admitted. ¡°That¡¯s the only reason why I¡¯m willing to give this stupidity a try. But not right now, I have to get some work done.¡±
Banishing the ¡°rock¡±, Arlette returned to her work. She had a little time left before Blake and Gabriela left for one last trip to the north of Kutrad. Arlette didn¡¯t think confronting a god¡ªor ¡°dragon¡±, as the Earthlings called them¡ªwas a very good idea, but Blake seemed to have some sort of plan. That or he¡¯d become so desperate about his physical state that he didn¡¯t know what else to do. Maybe both.
Before they left, Blake wanted to talk to her about plans in case Sofie appeared when they were gone. Chitra had disappeared days ago, presumably on some mission to find Sofie¡ªthough of course, Arlette had no desire to confirm such a guess¡ªand nobody had heard from her since. Gabriela maintained faith, asserting that Chitra was a smart and capable individual who they could rely upon. Even putting aside her anti-Ubran biases, Arlette¡¯s outlook lacked the Monster¡¯s rosiness.
Well... there was little use in wasting more time pondering possibilities. Either Sofie would reappear¡ªwith Chitra or without her¡ªor she wouldn¡¯t, and Arlette couldn¡¯t do anything about it without risking her life. Until then, as she waited for Blake, she had something else to occupy her attention.
Progress on her ink investigation came in fits and starts. Some evidence trails would go cold, while others would have an unexpected breakthrough. Being the head of Blake¡¯s security apparatus had its benefits, as she had people upon which she could foist many of the dirty work, but she still found herself doing a great deal of the investigation herself. She just didn¡¯t trust her subordinates enough, if she had to be honest, not only to get the job done right, but also to not be double agents. After seasons of wrestling with this slippery guerrilla movement, her paranoia had grown to rival her employer¡¯s.
Ink did not just appear out of nowhere. It had to be manufactured at great cost, then sold at even greater prices. The amount of ink needed to properly blind several of Blake¡¯s monstrous machines would cost a fortune, especially the specific ink the resistance had used: mapper¡¯s ink. Thick, opaque, and resistant to water, mapper¡¯s ink was mostly used to create maps and other documents that might need to withstand a little exposure to moisture without running. Other regions of the world had their own form of mapper¡¯s ink, made through a variety of means, but Otharia¡¯s variant came from the seeds of a rare flower that only grew on the eastern third of the country. The resulting prohibitive cost rendered the ink a niche product here.
One would think that the sudden purchase¡ªor theft¡ªof a large quantity of such a pricey material would not go unnoticed, and yet...
Arlette read the latest report from one of her field agents. It seemed that the small ink seed harvesting community in southeast Otharia knew nothing about any strange ink orders, or they were keeping silent about it. Either way, they claimed that there had been no sudden increase in demand for the seeds. If that proved true, and the other regions reported the same, then it meant all the ink had come from the existing market supply. That should just make the procurement even more glaring.
So why hadn¡¯t she found anything yet?
If only the record-keeping in Otharia could be as good as it was in Eterium. For as annoying as dealing with that government had been, at least they excelled at recording everything. She recalled somebody once telling her that Lord Ferros had pushed for better accounting at some point, and wondered if perhaps the country was actually doing a poor job just to thumb their nose at him.
A buzz from the door pulled Arlette from her musings. She checked the screen installed in her desk. Instead of finding a face in the image, she found herself looking at an overhead view of some slightly messy brown hair falling down a child¡¯s shoulders. Arlette didn¡¯t need to think too hard to know why Samanta stood outside her door.
¡°Hey Samanta,¡± she greeted the child after opening the door. ¡°He asked you to come get me?¡±
The tyke nodded, and the two of them made their way out of the Security Ministry offices and into the deeper bowels of the fortress.
¡°I bet you wish he would make some sort of communication system for this place, don¡¯t you?¡± Arlette asked after a bit. ¡°Then there would be no need to send you running around to fetch people for him.¡±
¡°Understanding doesn¡¯t work through speakers,¡± Samanta reminded her. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t work unless we all had the same speak. Especially with how he is right now where he can¡¯t speak properly. He says he¡¯s going to make some new system with lights or something the next time he redesigns the floors, but he said that the last time, too.¡±
¡°Is that so?¡± Arlette chuckled, hiding a smile behind her hand. The Samanta that she¡¯d first met would never have spoken that much to her, especially not about stuff related to Blake. Ever since their talk beside Blake¡¯s unconscious body, the child had started opening up to Arlette more. Perhaps she saw Arlette as a kindred spirit of sorts. Arlette wasn¡¯t to seek out children like Sofie or Gabriela seemed to, but she did feel a little encouraged by how Samanta seemed... well, not happier, exactly, but at least noticeably less miserable than before. It almost felt to Arlette like she¡¯d reached back into the past and helped free her childhood self of the self-loathing that had tortured her for her entire adolescence. Nobody should have to go through that unnecessary pain.
Eventually, Samanta split off to go do whatever it was she needed to do, while Arlette continued onward to her boss¡¯s quarters. There, she found the man sitting in his wheeled chair, surrounded by three long-legged, waist-high skitters that almost reminded Arlette of end tables from their general shape and proportions.
Arlette couldn¡¯t see much of Blake Myers himself. He sat in his usual armored suit, though with his head uncovered and propped up by his chair¡¯s elevated headrest. Ever since the Sofie incident, he didn¡¯t seem to care if she saw his face. He must have figured that any weight or presence created by his armored image would be undone by her memory of him naked and bleeding out his ass. If so, he figured correctly.
Speaking of which, judging from his face alone, Blake had yet to recover from his latest setback. She¡¯d been told before of previous ¡°episodes¡±, as he called them, but had never experienced one herself until yesterday. It had been a harrowing experience, and she still couldn¡¯t believe the ceiling had not collapsed and crushed her to death. He believed that these incidents were caused by stress, though that only led Arlette to wonder why he didn¡¯t have them every five minutes.
The Lord Ferros sitting in front of her was easily the worst-looking conscious version of him that she¡¯d ever seen, worse than when he¡¯d been recovering from the Monster¡¯s attack, and worse even than when he¡¯d first woken up post-Sofie. The dark veins easily visible beneath the pallid skin of his face was perhaps what put this version over the top.
¡°Let¡¯s make this quick,¡± Blake groaned. ¡°Since we still don¡¯t know the limits of her powers or much about how they work, I¡¯ve made several options. If she shows up while I¡¯m not here, it will be up to you to determine which method will best lock her down. With me so far?¡±
Arlette nodded.
¡°Good. Option one,¡± he wheezed as the first skitter scurried up to Arlette. On the flat top sat a strange-looking metal helmet that seemed almost entirely solid, without even an opening for the eyes. Several crystalline structures were embedded into the outside of the helmet, along with a bit that seemed reminiscent of a speaker.
¡°This helmet blocks all sound coming in or out, and reproduces it with speakers,¡± Blake explained. ¡°Given that Sofie¡¯s powers might be in some part sound-based, this could neutralize her powers entirely.¡±
¡°But understanding comes through sound, so how would she be able to understand anybody? And how would we understand her?¡±
¡°Well, she would just have to learn everybody¡¯s languages,¡± Blake conceded. ¡°She¡¯s unnaturally good with languages, right?¡±
¡°Even for her, that would take forever.¡±
¡°Well, we live in a world of compromises,¡± the man shrugged.
¡°And what, is she supposed to sleep and wash with it on?¡±
¡°No, it can be removed if given permission from an approved administrator.¡±
¡°And what if she tries to remove it on her own?¡±
¡°Then the embedded crystals make the inner lining implode and her head turns into goop.¡±
Arlette blinked. ¡°...uh...¡±
¡°Option two,¡± Blake resumed, gesturing with his metal arm at the second skitter, which moved forward to take the place of the retreating first. On this one, Arlette found a metal collar, as thick as those used against the mightiest Feelers. She picked it up and was surprised by the lighter-than-expected weight. ¡°This baby will listen for Sofie to say her magic word. When she does...¡±
The inner half of the collar suddenly and powerfully constricted, the movement so swift and unexpected that Arlette accidentally dropped it back onto the skitter top below.
¡°...bam! No air for five minutes. The point is to stop her from saying anything after the trigger word. Hollywood lies, you know; it takes more than six minutes to die from strangulation. At least, it does on Earth. With the way our bodies are tougher here, I bet it would take far longer for her to die. This should just be enough to neutralize her for a while.¡±
Arlette thought back to her deadly struggle with the Ubran Emperor, remembering how she had strangled him with a chain and the excruciating wait for him to fall unconscious. She figured that Blake was probably right about how much danger it would put Sofie in, though she couldn¡¯t help but think that he was brushing off the pain that would come with it.
¡°And should she somehow keep talking even while being choked out?¡±
¡°It explodes,¡± he replied nonchalantly.
¡°...I-¡±
¡°Option three is if nothing else works,¡± Blake cut in as the third skitter replaced the second. Atop the skitter was a small model of a home placed upon a hill, the whole thing grey and made of tucrenyx. ¡°I¡¯ve built a small house out in the nearby countryside where we can keep her away from anybody. I got this idea from what the Drayhadans are doing with that Mother of Nightmares person. Basically, we set up two perimeters, an outside one and an inside one. Nobody else goes inside the outer perimeter, and she can¡¯t go outside the inner perimeter. If we make the gap between the two large enough that she can¡¯t be heard by anybody outside, then she can¡¯t mess with anybody. Complete isolation, everybody is safe.¡±
¡°And she dies if she leaves,¡± Arlette stated as much as asked.
¡°Well, yeah,¡± came the answer, as if she¡¯d asked if the night sky held three moons.
¡°What if the Resistance gets in and steals her away?¡±
¡°Then she definitely dies.¡±
Arlette sighed. Was this the man she¡¯d worked for over the last few seasons, or was he losing the plot before her eyes?
¡°What? What¡¯s with that look?¡± Blake demanded to know.
¡°I¡¯m just as concerned with Sofie using her powers against us as you, but isn¡¯t this a bit... extreme?¡±
¡°Why shouldn¡¯t I take every precaution to ensure my safety around a dangerous individual?¡±
¡°But how is she different from you? Aren¡¯t you also a dangerous individual? What about the Monster?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not the same,¡± Blake argued. ¡°Just being within earshot of Sofie is like having a loaded gun pressed up against your head at all times. With me, or even Gabby, you can see it coming. You can react. But what can you do if Sofie leans around that doorway behind you and says ¡®don¡¯t live¡¯ really fast? Because that¡¯s all it is going to take for her to wipe us all out. Two simple, quick words and it¡¯s already too late. I refuse to live with that gun against my head, and the only surefire way to remove it is to guarantee that she¡¯ll die too if she tries something.¡±
¡°Then why not just kill her on sight, if you¡¯re going to treat her like some dangerous beast?¡± Arlette replied, a little sour on the inside. Even after all that Sofie had done, this felt a bit wrong.
¡°Logically, that would be the safest course,¡± Blake admitted, ¡°but I can¡¯t go that far when she hasn¡¯t actually done anything against us knowingly. Not yet. Besides, we might need her abilities for something in the future.¡±
¡°So you just want to lock her away, make her your unwilling prisoner for the rest of her life?¡±
¡°Why are you giving me such a hard time about this?¡± he complained. ¡°I thought you, more than anybody, understood the threat that she represents.¡±
¡°Because you¡¯re talking about her like she¡¯s a tool, that¡¯s why!¡± Arlette shot back. ¡°Just some object to keep around for your own convenience! I can¡¯t stand that, even if it¡¯s her we¡¯re talking about! I just can¡¯t! Is it not true that she stopped Gabriela from killing you? Doesn¡¯t that count for anything?¡±
Blake sighed. ¡°Look. I can¡¯t afford half-measures with this, or none of my solutions will end up being of use. Besides, you know her as well as I do. Are you really willing to bet everything that she isn¡¯t going to show up out of nowhere with some stupid idea in her head and do something regrettable? The first thing she did when we first met was punch me in the face. What is stopping her later on from deciding that I¡¯m a tyrant that needs to be taken down and then doing something about it?¡±
¡°I know her well enough to know that she won¡¯t accept any of these choices for too long, that¡¯s what I know. She¡¯ll become resentful of your rules and start working against them eventually. Most anybody would.¡±
¡°I¡¯m working with a teaspoon of knowledge and an ocean of assumptions and guesswork here. You should feel happy that I was able to come up with anything at all. Look, if she shows up¡ªif¡ªthen you¡¯re going to need something you can use. We need to get her under control in the short term; she cannot be allowed to roam about unchecked, and you need something that can make sure that happens without putting everybody around her in danger. That¡¯s all these are. We can work on something you and she find more acceptable in the future if we have to.¡±
¡°Fine, whatever,¡± Arlette grunted as she walked out of his chambers. ¡°Make sure you take a Many with you this time.¡±
The discussion with Blake left a bad taste in her mouth, so Arlette decided to go replace that taste with something better from the fortress dining hall. Blake¡¯s quarters were currently located on the fifth floor of the fortress where Samanta, Arlette, Sofie, and Gabriela also had rooms. Access to this floor was restricted, with the only other person with access being Leo. All others would be unable to take the elevators to the fifth floor or get inside without being let in by one of the aforementioned people.
The food, on the other hand, was all the way down on the ground floor, and between her and said comestibles were three floors filled with the administrative offices of the various government ministries. Hers could be found on the fourth floor, which was nice because it meant her common trips to the fifth floor and back wasted as little time as possible.
Calling the elevator, Arlette waited for the chime and then stepped past the opening doors. Selecting the ground floor, she moved into the corner and waited as the cabin descended. Slowing down as it approached the third floor, the elevator came to a halt and its doors opened to reveal the one person that Arlette least wanted to see.
¡°Elseling,¡± Minister of State Simona Jumala hissed as she stepped into the elevator. All of a sudden, the comfortable temperature of the cabin seemed to freeze over.
¡°Minister,¡± Arlette flatly replied.
Arlette and Simona had become intimately acquainted the previous year when Arlette had sucker-punched the Otharian, after which Simona had tried to kill her by dropping her out of the sky. Arlette had demanded that Blake do something about the crazy woman or she would not work for him. That ¡°something¡± had turned out to be an apology from Simona¡ªa poor and insincere one, in Arlette¡¯s opinion¡ªand Blake giving her a ¡°stern talking-to¡± wherein he made it clear to the lunatic that any further action would not be tolerated. Arlette hadn¡¯t been sold that this would be enough, but she had to admit that she¡¯d barely seen the other woman in the seasons since. Barely, except for times like this.
¡°What have you done to my lord?!¡± the Otharian snapped, her voice laced with venom. ¡°What foul plots are you planning?¡±
Arlette rolled her eyes and fought down the urge to punch her again. ¡°What are you ranting about now?¡±
¡°Lord Ferros has not been to a Council meeting for days! He refuses to give an audience to any of the Ministers, save you!¡± The woman stepped closer, her eyes filled with wild suspicion. ¡°Why is that? What evils are you up to?!¡±
As Arlette looked into the Otharian¡¯s unhinged gaze, her battle-honed instincts started to flare warnings of an imminent attack. Not having her sword on her at the time, her arms drifted down to her thighs, fingers hovering over the knives strapped to the outside of each leg. Her heartbeat quickened, each beat thumping in her ears.
Another chime rang through the cabin, forcing Arlette out of her fighting state. To her immense relief, the cabin just then came to a stop and the doors opened to reveal the first floor. ¡°Your problems have nothing to do with me. Go bother Lord Ferros and leave me out of your insanity,¡± she said as she sidled around Simona and out of the elevator.
¡°I will uncover your plans, Elseling! Mark my words!¡± Simona shouted after her as she quickly retreated. ¡°I will not let you Elselings corrupt-¡±
The doors closed again, cutting the raving lunatic off. Arlette let out a breath of relief. She¡¯d almost pulled a knife on a presumably unarmed woman, crazy or not. That would have gone over poorly against most anybody, but Simona especially would have used it to drag her into all sorts of trouble.
Today had already exhausted her, and it was only the early afternoon. Hopefully, the rest of the day would be less stressful.
After her meal, Arlette walked over to the House of Manys. She¡¯d heard the sound of the Flying Toaster leaving the fortress, meaning Blake and Gabriela had left for Kutrad, and she wanted to make sure she knew which Many to use if she needed to contact them in case of emergency. The Many handlers here took a bit of getting used to, and she didn¡¯t want to have to waste time with them if something was on fire.
Stolen novel; please report.
Once that had been taken care of, she went back to her office for a little more work. There were threats to look into, and it was about time she gave the border perimeter system another inspection. After that, who knew? Maybe she¡¯d go find Tehlmar and have a drink or seventeen.
A ping came from her work terminal on her desk, its tone loud and insistent. She didn¡¯t hear this sound often; it meant that somebody without entrance authorization was trying to request entrance to the fortress.
Activating the machine, she answered the ping, a series of images of two people shot from various angles filling the screen. She immediately recognized the pair as Sofie and Chitra. The Ubran stood tall and dignified, as unruffled and above the fray as the first time Arlette had met her, her immaculate Batranala outfit spotless, as usual. Meanwhile, Sofie looked about the opposite, her shoulders slumped as she stared at the ground in front of her feet, every bit the sorrowful, repentant child. The Earthling looked even thinner than before, but mostly unharmed, with the noted exception of some bandages wrapped around her fingers.
She¡¯d found Sofie, Arlette realized with sudden alarm. She braced herself for an onslaught of agony, but none came. Right, she realized, she wasn¡¯t barred from finding Sofie, she was barred from attempting to find Sofie. Which she hadn¡¯t done. She¡¯d dodged an arrow without even knowing it.
Arlette immediately initiated Step One of what Blake had dubbed the ¡°Omega Karen Protocol¡±, activating a set of skitters held in reserve for this very moment. The twenty skitters flooded out from their various compartments and stormed through and around the fortress, coming to surround Sofie from all sides. Deadly machines immune to Sofie¡¯s powers, leveled their weapons of war in her direction and she quailed at the sight.
Sofie said something in a sort of depressed sob, though, as always, the meaning did not follow the sound through the speakers. This, of course, presented a problem, though not one that Arlette couldn¡¯t overcome. Picking up the microphone attached to the side of the machine, she summoned up decades-old childhood lessons and spoke.
¡°You found her,¡± she noted in rusty, halting Ubran. It was the best way Arlette could think of to communicate with them. She absolutely refused to get close enough to them to allow everybody to understand each other normally, so she could only rely on what she¡¯d learned back in her fake princess training.
¡°It was a simple matter, Minister,¡± the Batranala replied in perfect Gustilian, because of course she fucking could. Well, at least it would make this whole process easier. ¡°What would you have us do now?¡±
¡°I have questions,¡± Arlette told her, switching with relief to Gustilian herself. ¡°You may come inside, but Sofie must stay there for now.¡±
Arlette noted how the Earthling stiffened slightly at the mention of her name.
¡°She says that you must stay out here for the moment,¡± Chitra told her, still using Gustilian, likely so Arlette could follow along.
Sofie nodded, looking around at the gang of robots surrounding her and the crowd of Otharian onlookers forming around them. She said something pleading to Chitra.
¡°She asks that you allow her in just enough for her to escape the gazes of the people.¡±
¡°No,¡± Arlette immediately replied.
Sofie must have understood from the tone alone, as she seemed to deflate. With a sigh, Arlette switched her terminal back to skitter command mode, selected the outermost ten robots¡ªtwenty of the latest skitter variant was more than overkill anyway, in her opinion¡ªand ordered them to turn about and begin a crowd dispersal protocol. The citizens got the message pretty quickly and most of them scattered.
With that taken care of, Arlette opened the nearby entrance for just a moment, allowing the Ubran into the fortress. Leaving her office with three skitters in tow, she took the elevator¡ªSimona-free this time, thank the stars¡ªto the first floor. There, she commandeered two more person-sized skitters to act as bodyguards¡ªjust in case Sofie had implanted something terrible in Chitra¡¯s mind¡ªand met the Batranala in person. After the initial greetings, she led the Ubran to the elevator for a private discussion.
¡°I¡¯m afraid that Gabriela is not here at the moment,¡± she informed the beautiful woman.
¡°Ah, she rode within the floating machine we saw not too long ago?¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Arlette replied as the two of them entered the empty elevator. ¡°So... was it difficult? You were gone longer than I had thought you would be.¡±
¡°Not very,¡± the Ubran claimed. ¡°She was quite easy to track down. The delay can be attributed to some... mistakes that happened along the way.¡±
¡°I see,¡± Arlette answered noncommittally.
They said little else until Arlette led Chitra out onto the fifth floor, where she knew they could talk in private.
¡°Have you have learned about Sofie¡¯s powers?¡± she inquired. ¡°We can¡¯t allow her inside until we have her ability under control.¡±
The Ubran nodded with understanding and agreement. ¡°You are wise to seek to control her while she is vulnerable.¡±
Arlette let out a grunt; it felt as if the words had taken physical form and slapped her across the face. ¡°That¡¯s not what this is about.¡±
¡°My apologies, I jumped to conclusions,¡± the Ubran replied in that diplomatic way that left little doubt in Arlette¡¯s mind just how on the mark Chitra believed herself to actually be. ¡°As for her abilities...¡±
It turned out that Chitra had learned much. Very much. Far more than Arlette had hoped. Enough, for sure, for Arlette to make a determination.
¡°Take this to her,¡± she instructed, handing over the thick collar. ¡°She cannot enter without first wearing this.¡±
¡°A slave collar of sorts?¡± Chitra mused, looking it over with care.
This time, it felt like the words had slammed into her gut. ¡°It is only a precaution, though a dangerous one,¡± she allowed.
¡°I shall take this to her, though I doubt she will be delighted to see it.¡±
¡°Be careful, then. If she decides to use her powers, this will be her last chance and you will be the only target.¡±
The Ubran smiled knowingly. ¡°I do not foresee that being an issue,¡± she calmly replied as she turned to leave.
¡°Oh, one more thing,¡± Arlette added to the retreating Ubran.
¡°Yes?¡±
¡°It would be in everybody¡¯s best interests, yours especially, if this entire thing were to be buried and never spoken of again. The public cannot know the truth of what she can do.¡±
¡°Worry not, Minister,¡± the Batranala responded as she stepped into the elevator. ¡°In the palace, secrets were not just a skill, they were a way of life.¡±
The doors closed, leaving Arlette to collect her thoughts. She took the next cabin down, going back to her office to watch the events unfold from the terminal.
A short wait later, she observed as the fortress gate opened once more and Chitra stepped outside. A seed of guilt germinated inside her as she saw Sofie look up with hope gleaming in her eyes; the guilt grew, taking root in her gut, as she watched that hope wither away the moment Sofie noticed the collar. For some reason, Arlette got the impression that Sofie somehow recognized it for what it was.
Sofie said something, her voice soft.
¡°She did not tell me,¡± Chitra replied.
Sofie said something more.
¡°She wishes to know what the collar will do to her,¡± Chitra said through the screen. ¡°Specifically, she wishes to know if it will explode and kill her.¡±
Sofie knew after all. Arlette couldn¡¯t say how, but she knew. Perhaps something similar had been used on her before, back when she¡¯d left Arlette during the siege?
¡°If she pushes it too far, it will,¡± she confirmed.
One passed message later, Sofie let out a squawk of dismay-tinged outrage, followed by a spurt of distressed but unintelligible words.
¡°She asks if there is any way she could be allowed inside without having to wear a bomb around her neck,¡± Chitra clarified.
¡°No,¡± Arlette stated.
Another relayed message, another torrent of words. Arlette did not need to understand them to recognize hurt feelings beneath. She felt a twinge of guilt but told herself that it had to be done.
¡°She says that the collar is terrible and demeaning, and she begs you to reconsider. She says she just wants to make up for her mistakes and asks that you give her a chance.¡±
¡°She¡¯s welcome to make up for any mistakes she wants, as long as she puts on the collar,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Those are the requirements. Lord Ferros will not compromise on this.¡±
Chitra repeated Arlette¡¯s statement and Sofie seemed to deflate. She mumbled something low and sad.
¡°She wants to know how the collar works, in detail, before she puts it on.¡±
Arlette thought back to the instructions Blake had given her just before he left. ¡°First, she must put on the collar. Then, when it starts to beep, she must say ¡®don¡¯t¡¯ several times in her speak as she would say it when using her powers. Once the collar is set up, it will listen for her to speak that word, and when she does, it will constrict around her throat until she cannot breathe. If she somehow keeps speaking through this, it will explode and kill her.¡±
The relayed explanation took a bit longer this time, but soon enough she heard Sofie¡¯s panicked, irate, ranting reply, which seemed to stretch on and on. Finally, with a huff, Sofie seemed to run out of both air and anger.
¡°I will save you the litany of disparaging remarks about a person named Blake,¡± Chitra finally told her. ¡°She wants to know how it will know not to choke her if she says something like ¡®I don¡¯t feel hungry¡¯, or how it won¡¯t kill her if she talks in her sleep.¡±
¡°People like Lord Ferros and myself can temporarily deactivate it using touch and a keyword, so we will disable it when you want to sleep. As for other usages of the word, I don¡¯t think it can tell the difference.¡±
A stammered objection.
¡°Yes, you do say it all the time,¡± Chitra agreed.
More anguished gnashing of teeth.
¡°What about if you used a gag as well?¡±
A pause, then a question.
¡°Yes, exactly.¡±
A long, protracted sigh escaped Sofie¡¯s lips as she seemed to wither even more.
Chitra turned back to the communication panel. ¡°She requires a gag,¡± she informed Arlette.
¡°A gag?¡± a befuddled Arlette repeated.
¡°Yes, a implement inserted into the mouth to hamper mouth movement and speech and is often used for binding or activities of a sexual-¡±
¡°Yesyesyes I know what that is!¡± Arlette interjected. ¡°But why?¡±
¡°Since she cannot use her powers without speaking in her native tongue, a gag would allow her to communicate without worrying about unintended harm.¡±
Sofie, her voice seemingly filled with a desperate hope, asked something.
¡°She offers to wear a gag instead of the collar, as it would prevent her from using her powers without the need for choking or death.¡±
Arlette thought about it. Given that she wasn¡¯t a fan of Blake¡¯s remedies, the proposal appealed to her somewhat. But, there would be nothing stopping Sofie from just taking the gag out and using her powers, and Blake would never go for that. He would not accept any solution that didn¡¯t completely prevent Sofie from slipping her restraint off and striking when he least expected it.
¡°Rejected,¡± she finally said. ¡°We can get her a gag so she feels safe to speak, but the collar must be worn too. Enough delaying. Put it around your neck and let¡¯s get this over with.¡±
She could see Sofie hesitating as she held the collar in her hands. The younger woman still didn¡¯t want to put it on, and Arlette didn¡¯t blame her. She decided to give Sofie one more push.
¡°Sofie, listen. I know you don¡¯t like this, but you made your choice when you came back here. Blake is deadly serious about this. If you refuse to wear that collar, I¡¯ve been ordered to take you away to your own little prison out in the wilderness. Everything there is run by his machines, and you won¡¯t be allowed within leagues of another living, breathing person, possibly ever.
¡°I know how much you need people in your life. If you ever want to talk to Samanta, or say hi to Leo, or share a meal with Gabriela, you have to give in here. If you ever want to be able to snuggle with Pari again, you have to put on the collar. Please just do it, for everyone¡¯s sake.¡±
Arlette could hear Sofie sniff long and loud, her hands trembling in the terminal image. Slowly, she brought the collar up to her throat and put it on.
Arlette watched as they went through the setup procedure, making sure that everything went as Blake had instructed. She didn¡¯t have to understand Sofie to know that she spoke the proper word. The memories of Sofie¡¯s powers were seared in her mind to the point that she would never forget what that word sounded like.
¡°Thank you,¡± she said through the microphone when it was finally over.
¡°I believe my task is now complete, so I shall take my leave,¡± Chitra told them both with a bow. ¡°Please tell Gabriela that I wish to see her when she returns.¡± With that said, she turned and made her way through the crowd of skitters and off into the city.
Arlette opened the gate again, letting Sofie inside the fortress for the first time in many days. Once she saw the Earthling had entered, she closed it again and ordered the surrounding skitters to return to their bays.
Turning off the terminal, Arlette leaned back and rubbed her temples. She hated having to be the bad guy, and she couldn¡¯t help but resent both Blake and circumstance for foisting this role upon her. Still, the role needed to be played, no matter how guilty it made her feel.
A buzz came from the door. Arlette didn¡¯t need to check the screen this time to know who would be on the other side. Taking a deep breath, she hit a button and the door opened to reveal a disheveled Sofie standing in the doorway.
The Earthling nervously clutched her left arm above the elbow with her right hand. Dirty, matted hair hung over her Arlette couldn¡¯t see too much of her face through the dirty, matted hair that hung over it, but she noticed the gleam of wetness through the gaps. The one eye she could see swept its gaze around the room but avoided Arlette entirely.
Two chairs sat on the far side of Arlette¡¯s desk. Slowly and silently, the Earthling shuffled over to one and slumped down into it with tired movements. She rocked back and forth slightly, her hands repeatedly going up to touch the collar, as if still in disbelief that it was there.
For several long, excruciating moments, silence reigned, neither of them willing to be the first to speak. Finally, Arlette couldn¡¯t take it anymore and cleared her throat.
¡°So Chitra says that you can-¡±
Sofie raised her head and met Arlette¡¯s gaze, giving Arlette a clear look at her tear-streaked face. ¡°Do you really think so poorly of me? Do you really think I¡¯d do something to you again after all of this?¡±
¡°Hey, the exploding collar is Blake¡¯s idea, not mine,¡± Arlette deflected. ¡°If a gag can restrict your abilities, I would be fine with that, but you know he won¡¯t go for it.¡±
¡°But you still made me wear it, and you wouldn¡¯t even come out and talk to me. You just hid up here like I was some sort of demon or something! You know who I am as much as anybody, Arlette. Am I really that scary to you?!¡±
Arlette took a deep breath and looked Sofie in the eyes. ¡°...yes. I find you absolutely terrifying. All of you Earthlings scare me,¡± she continued as Sofie slumped in her chair. ¡°Blake can make hundreds of machines capable of horrific death, an army of beings that can¡¯t be sliced, fooled by illusions, or reasoned with. If he decided to ambush me, my death would be assured.
¡°My nerves still go on edge whenever the Monster is around me. I can¡¯t help it. I¡¯ll never be able to forget the carnage she wrought before my eyes, no matter how sad she acts about it now.
¡°But you... you terrify me far more than the others. They are just hypothetical threats; I know what you can do. What happened to me when I tried to fight your rule was one of the worst experiences of my life, and it was just a slap on the wrist compared to what you did to Blake and what I bet you could do if you really wanted to cause harm. Just thinking about it makes me tremble.
¡°Let¡¯s be realistic, here. If you weren¡¯t wearing that collar, you could kill me in the blink of an eye right at this very moment and there would be literally nothing I could do to stop you. I would be dead before I even knew what was happening. I can¡¯t not be terrified, Sofie. It just isn¡¯t possible.¡±
¡°But I would never do that to you ever again, now that I know! I would never hurt you! You¡¯re my only real friend! You know that... right?¡±
¡°Sofie...¡± Arlette let out a slow breath. This whole conversation hurt. She didn¡¯t want to say what she had to say, but she didn¡¯t want to lie more. Everybody needed to lay it all out on the table. ¡°I know you believe that, and with all of your heart. But a bomb that hasn¡¯t exploded is still a bomb. And life doesn¡¯t care what that bomb swears it will or won¡¯t do. Life loves nothing more than to reveal vows like that as folly.¡±
Sofie¡¯s hands went to her collar again. ¡°Do we have to talk about bombs right now?¡± she grumbled.
¡°Sorry, but if we¡¯re to be honest, here, that¡¯s the best analogy I can think of for you right now. You¡¯re an immediate, imminent threat to anybody within speaking distance.¡±
¡°...I never wanted to be a bomb,¡± Sofie muttered, as her eyes started leaking once more.
¡°I know. I know. But I learned long ago that none of us gets to pick our lot in life. I... I fear you, Sofie, but I don¡¯t hate you, understand?¡±
¡°Really?¡± the Earthling sniffed, rubbing the tears away with her sleeve. ¡°After everything I did to you?¡±
¡°I... I can¡¯t stand being manipulated, but I recognize that you at least didn¡¯t know what you were doing to me, and I don¡¯t want to hate somebody for accidents. I¡¯m still pretty angry at you, though.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, Arlette. For... for messing with your mind, and for being such a burden, and for putting you in danger because of my selfishness. You deserve better friends than people like me.¡±
¡°Stop it,¡± Arlette replied with a scowl. ¡°I get to decide who deserves to be my friend, not you. And I¡¯m sorry, too, for trying to hurt you before. I lost myself and overreacted.¡±
Sofie practically leapt to her feet. ¡°Hugs.¡±
Arlette blinked as Sofie marched around the desk. ¡°Huh?¡±
Sofie stuck her hands out and pulled Arlette out of her seat and into a tight embrace. ¡°Hugs.¡±
After a moment of mental recalibration, Arlette begrudgingly let her arms wrap around the Earthling¡¯s back. She could feel Sofie¡¯s bones through her skin, a stark reminder of just how much the younger woman¡¯s body had withered away this last season. She¡¯d say something about it later when the mood was more right.
¡°You know,¡± Sofie began, ¡°people would probably say that I¡¯ve had nothing but bad luck these last few years, with the whole ¡®sucked into another world¡¯ thing, but that¡¯s wrong because I got you. I didn¡¯t pick you, you know. I just grabbed the first person I could. And I was thinking, I¡¯d be dead by now if it had been anybody else in that entire city. That, or enslaved. It was a one in a million chance. I¡¯m glad it was you, Arlette. I might not ever be able to repay you for everything you¡¯ve done for me, but I want you to know that I¡¯ll always be grateful.¡±
¡°You can start repaying me by releasing me from your curse,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°I was trying to say that before, but we got sidetracked.¡±
¡°Oh! Ahaha, right!¡± Sofie laughed. ¡°Sorry, I got so caught up in my feelings earlier that I forgot for a moment! I should have done that first!¡± She squirmed out of Arlette¡¯s embrace and reached out to firmly grasp both of Arlette¡¯s shoulders. Looking her squarely in the eyes, she solemn said, ¡°I forgive you.¡±
Arlette must have misheard. ¡°You forgive me?¡±
¡°Oooohhhh!¡± Sofie gasped. ¡°My, that was waaaay stronger than before! You must have had a lot!¡±
¡°You forgive me?¡± Arlette repeated.
¡°Oh, that¡¯s just what I have to say to release somebody,¡± Sofie explained. ¡°It¡¯s stupid, but whatever. At least it works! You should be good to go!¡±
Arlette searched herself. She didn¡¯t feel any different, as far as she could tell.
¡°I have so much to do,¡± Sofie sighed as she sluggishly returned to her seat. ¡°There are so many people I have to apologize to and clean of geasa... Blake, Gabby, Pari, Leo probably, Sam too, Jerithim-¡±
Oh, did Sofie not know Jerithim had died? In all the chaos of that time, nobody must have informed her. Arlette added it to her list of things to talk about when the mood was better.
¡°Keep it to Blake, Gabriela, Samanta, Leo, and myself for the moment,¡± Arlette told her. ¡°We don¡¯t want anybody else to know about what you did to Blake. We can¡¯t have him look weak to the public.¡±
¡°But then, how can I fix the others?¡± Sofie objected.
Arlette shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m not saying don¡¯t fix them, just find a way to say what you have to say mid-conversation. Or just say it to them outright and don¡¯t explain it. They can¡¯t know what you did to them. The only people in on this are us, Blake, Gabriela, Leo, and Samanta.¡±
¡°And Chitra?¡±
¡°And her, sort of. She shouldn¡¯t know about Blake though, unless you said something?¡±
¡°Not specifically...¡± Sofie answered, looking away. ¡°I... she saved me from some... some bad stuff. But I still can¡¯t fully trust her for some reason, and I¡¯m not sure why. I feel a bit guilty about it.¡±
Arlette shook her head. ¡°Don¡¯t. I don¡¯t trust her too much either.¡±
¡°Really? Then why did you send her after me?¡±
¡°You made sure we all couldn¡¯t find you. We didn¡¯t have anybody else. She clearly did the task well enough, at least.¡±
¡°I guess...¡± Sofie agreed, though Arlette caught a twinge of sadness in her eyes.
A second lull settled over them for a moment. Arlette once again focused inward, trying to feel for any changes to her self, but couldn¡¯t find anything. She probably lacked the means. Peko would be able to help, but it wasn¡¯t like she could summon him while Sofie was around.
¡°How do I know I¡¯m clean?¡± she asked.
¡°What do you mean?¡± Sofie frowned.
¡°I just don¡¯t feel any different, is all. Isn¡¯t there some way to verify that it worked?¡±
¡°Oh! Well, we just have to have you do something you couldn¡¯t do!¡± Sofie chirped before her gaze grew distant as she looked into the past. ¡°Let¡¯s see... well, I¡¯d rather you not leave me to die, so that¡¯s out. What else was there? Oh, I know! Slap me!¡±
¡°What?¡± Arlette snorted.
¡°I put a geas on you that prevented you from hurting me at the same time I stopped you from trying to look for me, remember? Well, now we can kill two birds with one stone!¡± Sofie chirped with a wide, pleased grin. She hopped back out of her seat and pulled Arlette up as well. ¡°If you¡¯re still feeling angry at me, give me a good old whack on the arm and work out that aggression while proving that you¡¯re all better!¡±
Arlette stared at the younger woman in front of her, her arms held out invitingly, and didn¡¯t know what to think. Hurt Sofie? Why? This seemed like such a stupid and pointless idea. They¡¯d just reconciled, why would she want to hurt her friend?
¡°Come on, get to smacking!¡± prodded the friend in question.
¡°I¡¯d rather not,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Have you looked at yourself recently? Look how thin and bony your arms are! I don¡¯t want to break something.¡±
¡°What, are you serious?¡± Sofie scoffed. ¡°I¡¯m not made of glass, you know! You¡¯re not going to kill me with a stupid little hit on the arm.¡±
¡°Yeah but...¡±
¡°Oh, stop treating me like a baby.¡± Sofie rolled her eyes and grabbed Arlette¡¯s right hand, putting Arlette¡¯s finger and thumb on Sofie¡¯s exposed wrist. ¡°Just pinch me then, if you¡¯re going to make such a big deal out of my silly idea.¡±
Arlette stared blankly down at her hand, her fingers primed for a simple pinch. But she didn¡¯t want to pinch Sofie.
Why didn¡¯t she want to? A worrying possibility arose in her mind. This felt just like how she¡¯d rationalized other things in her mind related to Sofie and her restrictions. But wasn¡¯t she supposed to be free from those? What was going on?
Now that she recognized the familiar strings pulling at her thoughts, they no longer had a hold on her. With that realization came the realization that she actually did want to smack Sofie, very much. She took her hand off Sofie¡¯s wrist and pulled her arm back, winding it up for a good hearty slap.
Her arm wouldn¡¯t move. It felt just like before, a wall inside her mind, blocking out possibilities and actions. She pushed against it, fighting to break through the wall for just a moment, and through force of will, broke through. Her arm lethargically swept forward and bumped weakly into Sofie¡¯s hand with a barely audible ¡®smack¡¯.
¡°What was that?¡± Sofie asked, puzzled.
Arlette pulled her hand back and tried again. The same wall reared up inside her and she broke through it with just as much effort as before. Her arm moved a bit faster and the smack this time sounded a bit louder than the last time. Sofie let out a tiny ¡°ah!¡± and flinched slightly. Arlette tried again and again, but found herself unable to bring forth anything stronger than that tepid second slap.
¡°Arlette, what are you doing? What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°I thought you said you could fix me! You didn¡¯t take the blocks inside my head out at all!¡±
¡°W-what?!¡±
Emotional wounds deep inside Arlette¡ªformed during her childhood and deepened with each new breach of trust¡ªreopened once again and let loose a swell of anger and betrayal, unbidden and unwanted but impossible to contain.
¡°They¡¯re still there! You little fake! Did you have that fucking Ubran bitch say that so you could get in here?!¡±
¡°I-I don¡¯t-¡± Sofie stammered behind her.
A loud, sudden alarm blared from Sofie¡¯s collar and her voice cut out, strangled from existence by thick, strong, and uncompromising bands of metal. Sofie¡¯s eyes seemed ready to pop out of her head as she staggered back, her hands clutching desperately at Blake¡¯s creation to little effect. Her foot hit the corner of her chair and she tumbled to the floor, writhing in pain.
Part of Arlette felt satisfaction watching the Earthling suffer, but not enough to keep her from acting. Moving to the younger woman¡¯s side, she roughly grasped the collar and put her hand on the finger sensors and spoke the nonsense words that Blake had taught her for deactivating the device.
With two short beeps, the collar disengaged and Sofie took a massive, loud gasping breath. She coughed and shuddered on the floor for a few moments as more tears started to leak from her wide, red eyes.
¡°I can¡¯t do this,¡± she sobbed. ¡°I can¡¯t! I can¡¯t live with this thing around my neck! Please, I need the gag, at least! Please!¡±
¡°You¡¯ll get your fucking gag. Now, get out,¡± Arlette growled, pointing toward the door.
Sofie coughed again and swallowed as she climbed unsteadily back to her feet. ¡°Arlette, I¡¯m so sorry! I didn¡¯t know! Chitra never had this-¡±
¡°I said GET OUT!¡± she screamed, her whole body shaking with a fury that threatened to burst out at any moment. Sofie trembled before that fury and scampered away, hurrying from the room. Arlette listened to the sound of Sofie¡¯s retreating footsteps. Only when they seemed far enough away did she let loose. Picking up Sofie¡¯s chair, she hurled it across the room as hard as she could, watching it carom off the walls with a great crash before skidding into her desk and coming to a halt.
Broken. No matter how much time passed, no matter who or what tried to fix her, she remained broken. She¡¯d thought she¡¯d changed after Tehlmar had come back. She¡¯d thought that maybe she¡¯d be able to handle herself the next time her trust turned out to be misplaced. But every single time, it still hurt more than the last. Would these scars inside her ever truly heal?
Before she even knew where she was going, Arlette found herself up on the fifth floor, walking to her room. Her route took her by Sofie¡¯s room, its door closed tight. She thought she heard what sounded like weeping coming from the other side and, for a moment, she considered stopping to try to say something but decided against it. Instead, she continued to her own room, wherein she threw herself onto her bed, face-down into a pillow, and tried not to scream.
She felt a presence join her on the bed, a soft hand gently rubbing her shoulder.
¡°Can you still see what she did to me?¡± she asked.
¡°No, the bindings are gone. She really did remove them, like she said,¡± Peko replied. ¡°But your soul is still twisted and warped from what she did. That¡¯s probably what is still affecting you.¡±
¡°Do you think it will get better?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. Only time will tell, I guess,¡± he told her.
¡°I¡¯m so tired, Peko. Every time I trust somebody, they end up hurting me.¡±
He gave her shoulder a steady squeeze. ¡°Then you have to get stronger until they can¡¯t hurt you anymore. Just listen to me. I¡¯ll be with you all the way to the end, just like I always have been.¡±
¡°You¡¯re the only one, the only one who has never harmed me,¡± Arlette sniffed. ¡°Thank you, Peko. Thank you for being here.¡±
¡°Of course,¡± he said with a smile. ¡°It¡¯s why you created me, isn¡¯t it? We¡¯re a team! Just you and me, against the world.¡±
Chapter 107
The Flying Toaster gently swayed back and forth as the air currents buffeted its gargantuan form. The oscillation proved just enough to make Blake mildly seasick, which he would normally have remedied the same way he used to deal with car sickness back in the day: by staring out at the distant horizon to steady his stomach. Unfortunately, though he sat within feet of the airship¡¯s helm, there was no horizon in sight right now. Normally, a span of windows ran from the back left of the cabin around the front to the back right side, providing an expansive view in two hundred and seventy degrees. For this flight, however, those windows were coated with a film of opaque tucrenyx, partly out of consideration for the wellbeing of his passenger and partly for the wellbeing of his floors.
Over the course of several trips, Gabriela Carreno had single-handedly made Blake grateful he¡¯d never gotten around to installing carpet throughout his precious zeppelin. Given how much work it took to clean her copious vomit on these metal floors¡ªand that didn¡¯t even consider the smell¡ªhe couldn¡¯t imagine trying to get it out of a thick, luxurious rug. That was why he¡¯d consented to her request to block all the windows for this trip. It wasn¡¯t like he needed the view to pilot, anyway. A single viewscreen hooked up to a swiveling camera placed on the ship¡¯s bow did the job well enough for the moment. He just liked the view.
Gabriela did not. Even with the windows sealed off so she could best pretend that they weren¡¯t floating a thousand feet in the air, the woman looked to Blake¡¯s eyes to be barely holding herself together. Blake had never dealt with somebody confronting a severe phobia head-on like this before, and he honestly didn¡¯t know what to do.
He didn¡¯t even know why she was here. He knew from experience that she could easily outrun the airship, even if he threw every last bit of power into its engines. She could have just sprinted north and relaxed for a while until he caught up.
Perhaps the reason she¡¯d decided to ride along pertained to the third person in the cabin, though Blake often failed to think of the Many in that way. It was so easy to forget that they were human, given how... inhuman their presence felt. They were more like statues of living flesh, barely breathing, much less moving.
As was the plan, he¡¯d brought a Many along, just in case Sofie appeared during this trip. Given how heavy-handed in his life Murphy¡¯s Law seemed to be since the transfer, that meant that she¡¯d definitely show up. And, whether or not his foolish idea worked, Gabriela would need the Many to communicate with the others on the way back.
So far, the Many remained as motionless as ever, seemingly unfazed by any rocking, swinging, swaying, or assorted turbulence that they came across so far. Blake idly wondered how often they had to eat, or how long before they would need to poop. He hadn¡¯t brought any Many handlers along, since nobody could know about his current even-worse-than-normal condition, so if anything happened, it was up to the two of them¡ªmeaning Gabriela, while he provided moral support¡ªto take care of any issues.
It wasn¡¯t that he was totally useless right now; he could still manipulate metal, create circuits, and operate preexisting technology without issue. Heck, even the fiery pain, which assaulted him every time he entered Hyper Mode since Sofie¡¯s attack, had gradually faded with each passing day to the point where it now was just a bad case of heartburn. But all that said, he still could barely even move his arm, the vile foe known as gravity always there to thwart him.
Back on Earth, Blake had treated his body like crap. More so, he¡¯d taken it for granted. Getting a new and improved body upon arrival on Scyria hadn¡¯t helped; even when he¡¯d lost part of his left arm to Jarec¡¯s obsidian blade, he¡¯d largely shrugged it off. But after his encounter with Sam, everything had changed. It turned out, shockingly enough, that having half your body suddenly stolen away really made you appreciate what you¡¯d once had.
Now, he was experiencing that same feeling all over again. Lacking the ability to even lift his one remaining arm, he found himself pining for the days of mere partial-paralysis. If, through some miracle, he ever regained a functioning body, he swore to cherish it like the priceless treasure that it was. A proper diet, exercise, yoga, coffee enemas... the works.
To manage that, however, he needed to survive the upcoming year. Or month. Or week, to be honest. That was why he had decided to powered-wheelchair his ass directly in front of a dragon¡¯s maw.
Some would say that willingly bothering a dragon, especially one with which you already have bad blood, is pure suicidal stupidity. Some had said it, straight to his face. But Blake¡¯s options were limited at this point; If the Stragmans wouldn¡¯t help him, he only had two remaining: kidnap their healer or find another one.
The former option was more a pipe dream than a real possibility, sadly. There were over ten million Stragmans in their massive migrating city, and he had no idea where they were hiding the one person in there who could help him. They probably moved the healer around, too, to make it harder to find them. And even if he did manage to locate them, extracting them would still pose a heavy challenge. A super-dense rainforest was practically kryptonite to complicated machines like skitters. And even if he succeeded, what guaranteed that the rescued Stragman healer would even be willing to help him?
That left a highly violent and angry dragon as his only option. Blake knew full well that this was indeed crazy, reckless, and tantamount to jumping from a plane without a parachute. But his calculus had changed since the last episode, and the sensations he¡¯d felt from his body since had only confirmed his original decision as the right one.
Not for the first time, Blake found himself wishing he had a Scyrian body. He had always been jealous of the remarkable healing ability Scyrians exhibited. Given that it was apparently normal not just for humans, but for elves and beastkin as well, he didn¡¯t believe it to be biological in nature. According to Arlette, the theory most widely believed in Scyrian academia¡ªor at least, most widely believed two decades ago, when she¡¯d last learned about it¡ªwas that Scyrians had a form of subconscious Feeling going on at all times. In the back of their minds, they knew what their body felt like, and they unknowingly would revert themselves back to what they felt to be ¡°right¡± and ¡°normal¡±.
It explained why injuries like lost limbs couldn¡¯t be healed, while other heavy wounds could be completely recovered from in a matter of days. Losing a body part would be enough to shock a person and recompile their subconscious feeling of what their body¡¯s ¡°normal¡± was. After all, it would be hard to maintain the old ¡°normal¡± when you can¡¯t see or feel or use your arm anymore. Blake would know.
It also explained why such a filthy world wasn¡¯t rampant with disease. In fact, there seemed to be almost no disease at all, with the only known ones being both incredibly strong and incredibly rare. He could only surmise that anything under a certain threshold of deadliness would simply be no match for the combination of an immune system and that subconscious healing.
Sadly, since Earthlings in Scyria couldn¡¯t Feel or Observe like Scyrians could, they couldn¡¯t heal like Scyrians either. They were, however, superhumanly tough. This, he could attest to personally. A normal Earthling would have died from the aftermath of losing an arm, but he hadn¡¯t. The knife to the back, as well, should have done him in. The others had corroborated his thoughts. Even Sofie, the weakest physically of the three of them, had been able to soldier through extended periods of little to no food, water, and sleep without breaking down.
But even a superhumanly tough body had its limit, and it seemed that Blake had found it. He was little more than a mind in a lump of meat at this point, barely able to breathe, let alone move. Once-simple acts he¡¯d always taken for granted were beyond him now. Ever since waking up from his Sofie-induced slumber, he¡¯d lacked the physical strength to effectively talk. Despite his hopes, his body had not regained the strength he needed for full-throated speech; the opposite had happened, in fact. Only Scyria¡¯s strange but fortuitous ¡°meaning transferal¡± allowed him to communicate efficiently now through a smattering of wheezes, sighs, weak coughs, gasps, and grunts.
He heard a small gasp behind him, the sort he¡¯d grown to recognized as a Many roughly emerging from their stupor.
¡°Hello? Is anybody there?¡± a meek and muffled female voice called out. Blake swiveled his chair around to find a half-size Sofie projected in midair, her voice, face, and body language combining to make her the personification of contrition. He immediately noticed the grey metal collar around her neck and felt a flash of satisfaction. He¡¯d trusted that Arlette would follow his command in this matter, and she had justified his trust in her.
The bulky collar, more than two inches thick and over an inch tall all the way around her neck, looked almost comical on Sofie¡¯s slight frame. Nothing could be done about that, sadly. He¡¯d needed that much metal to house and protect the cantacrenyx crystals needed to power the device¡¯s different functions, especially the choking one. That was one of the limitations of crystal tech: the size of the crystal often dramatically impacted the forms of what they powered, sometimes for the worse.
The rest of Sofie didn¡¯t look anywhere near as well-off as his shiny new restraint collar. The younger woman looked worn out and beaten down, her face sunken in and her body thinned out. The puffiness around her eyes told him she¡¯d been crying heavily not too long ago. Looking closer, he felt confusion at what appeared to be a large quantity of cloth stuffed into her mouth.
The illusory Sofie was focused on Gabriela, who had been lying right in front of the Many. Blake, being farther away and off to the side, was outside what would be shown on her end. For the moment, he decided to stay out of view. Who knew what the girl was capable of, and how unstable she might be? Better to wait and see for now. He wouldn¡¯t survive another incident.
¡°Sofie, you¡¯re back!¡± Gabriela exclaimed, sitting up in a flash. Climbing to her feet¡ªor to one foot, to be more accurate¡ªshe hopped over to the Many and pulled aside the veil covering the face to let Sofie see her. ¡°What happened to you?! You look terrible! What¡¯s that thing around your neck? And is that a cloth stuffed in your mouth?¡±
¡°It¡¯s a long story,¡± Sofie deflected. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Gabby. I¡¯m sorry for hurting you and for everything else. I won¡¯t ever do it again, I promise.¡±
¡°It was an accident,¡± Gabriela replied like a mother comforting a child.
¡°You¡¯re really not mad at me?¡± Sofie asked with a sniff, puzzled but hopeful. ¡°Arlette is furious at me right now.¡±
¡°I know what it¡¯s like to make big mistakes and then have to live with them,¡± Gabriela said softly. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t hate you for something you didn¡¯t do maliciously. But please, tell me you know a way to let me stand properly again.¡±
¡°I... I don¡¯t know if I do,¡± Sofie admitted. ¡°I thought I found something that worked, but then it didn¡¯t work for Arlette, so I don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on anymore. I was hoping you would let me try and figure out what¡¯s happening.¡±
¡°Please, you have no idea how annoying this is.¡±
¡°Okay, here goes. I hope this works through a Many...¡± Sticking her fingers in her mouth, Sofie pulled out what looked like two balled-up socks. She seemed to collect herself as she took a long, deep breath. ¡°I forgive you.¡±
Blake couldn¡¯t help himself and let out a long scathing wheeze¡ªas scathing as wheezes could be, at least. ¡°Excuuuuuuuuussssssseeeeee me?! You what?!¡±
Sofie¡¯s pensive expression twisted into a scowl. ¡°Blake?! Were you here this whole time? I should have known! Show yourself, you asshole!¡±
¡°You forgive her?!¡± he repeated mockingly as he wheeled himself into view, pulling up so he sat at Gabriela¡¯s side. ¡°Of all the self-righteous bullshit you¡¯ve spouted, this takes the cake!¡±
¡°Fuck off, Blake! It¡¯s not like I chose to make it work like that!¡±
¡°Sure you didn¡¯t,¡± he scoffed with a roll of his eyes. ¡°You¡¯ve never been one to judge others. Not Sofie, paragon of virtue!¡±
¡°Oh stuff it up your butt!¡± Sofie snarled, throwing him double deuces before turning her attention back to Gabriela. Taking the two socks, she furiously shoved them back into her mouth until she almost looked like a chipmunk. ¡°You want to know why I¡¯m talking with these socks in my mouth? It¡¯s because he and Arlette made me wear this!¡± She pointed to her neck, and the thick, powerful safety device wrapped around it. ¡°All it takes is for me to say ¡®don¡¯t¡¯ just once by accident and it strangles me! Or it might explode! This is the only way for me to not kill myself! So you can eat shit, Blake!¡±
Catching Gabriela adding her own glare to Sofie¡¯s, he met them with contempt.
¡°What? You¡¯re already on her side? Don¡¯t give me that look!¡± he hissed back at the scowling Mexican. ¡°After all that she did, you think I¡¯m going to let her back into my house without some protection?!¡±
¡°You know I didn¡¯t do it on purpose!¡± Sofie spat. ¡°Now I have to wear this stupid uncomfortable piece of crap everywhere just so I can see my friends again. It¡¯s bullshit! It¡¯s hard to move my neck and it gets sweaty on the inside and I can¡¯t even imagine what it¡¯s going to feel like to try to sleep with it on. Even your code phrases are bullshit! Only you would have somebody say ¡®crunchatize me, Captain¡¯ to make this thing stop choking me.¡±
¡°I needed something that nobody would ever say in a conversation,¡± he told her.
¡°What the hell does it even mean?¡±
¡°It means I miss eating a part of a complete breakfast,¡± he replied with an extra layer of snark and a roll of his eyes. ¡°Enough with the bitching. There¡¯s nothing I can do from here, regardless. Now, did your forgiveness work or not?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not my-¡± Sofie shook her head. ¡°You know what, forget it. Yes, I felt something happen. Try putting your leg down.¡±
Slowly, gingerly, Gabriela lowered her leg until her foot hovered just a fraction of an inch above the floor. The whole leg trembled slightly for a moment before the sole crossed the final gap and pressed firmly against the metal. Everybody seemed to tense, waiting for something to happen, but it soon became apparent that nothing had.
¡°It worked!¡± Gabriela chirped happily.
¡°Oh, thank goodness,¡± Sofie sighed. ¡°Did anything feel different or something?¡±
¡°Yeah, it felt like there was a lot of resistance, like my body didn¡¯t want to move my leg,¡± Gabriela said as she lifted herself up on the balls of her feet and lowered back down. ¡°Especially the last few centimeters. I had to really fight through it.¡±
¡°Maybe that¡¯s what happened to Arlette?¡± Sofie wondered aloud. ¡°I should go talk to her again...¡±
¡°Not before you fix me, too!¡± Blake cut in.
¡°I should just leave you as you are, jerk,¡± Sofie replied.
¡°Meaning confined to a wheelchair, unable to move? Too weak to even speak properly?¡±
Sofie paused, his question sinking into that thick head of hers and making some. She swallowed weakly, worry quickly overtaking her anger. ¡°Is... is it that bad? That¡¯s why you¡¯re... talking so weirdly?¡±
¡°Did you think I¡¯m doing this for fun?¡± he hissed. ¡°You made me bleed out so much that everybody¡¯s amazed I¡¯m even still alive.¡±
Sofie paled and he got a front row view as her anger towards the indignity he¡¯d forced upon her and her guilt as what she¡¯d done to him wrestled for control. Guilt won. ¡°I¡¯m sorry-¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want your apologies,¡± he cut her off. ¡°I want you to fix me. Free me so, at the very least, this won¡¯t ever happen to me again.¡±
His words were like a slap in the face, and she visibly flinched before deflating slightly, tired and defeated. ¡°Alright, fine, I forgive you,¡± she sighed so softly that Blake barely caught it.
¡°Alright, we¡¯ve all been hurt by this, but it¡¯s over now,¡± Gabriela said in an effort to mediate. ¡°We can¡¯t let mistakes tear us apart.¡±
Sofie¡¯s attention moved back to the other woman and she froze, her gaze stuck on Gabriela¡¯s lower half. ¡°Um, Gabby?¡±
¡°Hm?¡± Gabriela replied, confused.
Blake looked over and immediately understood Sofie¡¯s concern. ¡°You¡¯re standing on one leg again.¡±
Gabriela glanced down in surprise, finding her foot and leg¡ªthe other one this time¡ªraised high. ¡°Oh, I am! Whoops!¡± With a loud clang, she brought it back down. ¡°I don¡¯t know why I did that.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on,¡± Sofie moaned in frustration. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s because it¡¯s through a Many? Please let me know if anything else strange happens later. Or better yet, turn around and come pick me up. You¡¯re going to try to get Pari again, right? I can help.¡±
¡°We are going up there again,¡± Blake admitted, ¡°which is why you definitely can¡¯t come along. Ol¡¯ Grandpappy might be more reasonable without you around.¡±
¡°But-!¡± She let out a sigh. ¡°Yeah, you¡¯re right. I don¡¯t know how, but he could tell that I¡¯d put geasa onto Pari. Just promise me you¡¯ll do everything you can to get her back this time, alright? Please?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll be ready for him this time,¡± Gabriela assured her. ¡°We¡¯ll get her back.¡±
¡°Thank y-¡± Sofie began before halting to let out another sigh. ¡°Your leg is up again.¡±
¡°Wha? What is with this?¡± Gabriela let out a grunt and her foot shot down to strike the floor hard enough to send tremors through the airship.
¡°Hey, watch it! Don¡¯t hurt my baby! She¡¯s fragile!¡± Blake chided.
¡°It just feels... normal to have it in the air,¡± she stated with some frustration. ¡°My leg keeps going back up when I¡¯m not thinking about it.¡±
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The already small Sofie seemed to shrink in on herself a little more. ¡°I... I should go. I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°No, it¡¯s-¡± Gabriela tried to say, but Sofie was already gone, the Many slumping down into their usual stupor. She walked forward and readjusted the veil to cover the Many¡¯s face before rounding back to Blake with a frown of discontent.
¡°Do you two have to squabble over everything like petty children?¡± she asked.
¡°Yes,¡± Blake succinctly replied.
¡°Ugh,¡± Gabriela said with a shake of her head as she retreated to a nearby wall and leaned her back against it. ¡°How much longer until we¡¯re there?¡±
¡°Another full day, at least,¡± he told her.
¡°Ugh!¡± she repeated. ¡°I hate being up here.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know why you even decided to come along for the ride,¡± Blake said, putting voice to his earlier musing. ¡°I know you can run faster than this thing can fly.¡±
¡°I haven¡¯t been able to push myself like that ever since we fought. I don¡¯t know why,¡± she admitted. ¡°I told you before, I don¡¯t have the same energy I used to. Everything is harder now. Even if it wasn¡¯t, how would you like to sprint full-throttle for a full day? Does that sound enjoyable to you?¡±
¡°Not normally, no,¡± he agreed. ¡°But, if the second option was to have a prolonged panic attack, then I¡¯d run my tail off. I can¡¯t help but notice how little ¡®enjoying¡¯ you¡¯ve been doing in here.¡±
¡°Well, I also wanted to be here in case Sofie did appear. I didn¡¯t think the chances of it happening were very high, but now I¡¯m glad I did. You don¡¯t know how annoying that one-foot thing was. And fighting like that? Fighting a dragon is hard enough without a handicap.¡±
¡°Yeah, about that,¡± he replied. ¡°I have bad news for you.¡±
Gabriela looked down and let out a loud groan at the discovery of her right foot hovering in the air. Frustration flashed in her eyes and the foot returned to the floor.
¡°It really is like it¡¯s become your new normal,¡± he observed. ¡°You keep subconsciously returning to it when you aren¡¯t paying attention.¡±
The sight brought with it worries. What did Gabriela¡¯s issues mean for him? Was there some restriction that he didn¡¯t know about, still messing with his thoughts? He didn¡¯t feel any different, so he could only trust Sofie¡¯s word that she had cleansed him. He didn¡¯t think she was the type to lie about these sorts of things, especially not while swamped with guilt, but still, having to rely on the promises of another concerning something so intrinsic to his very being bothered him.
¡°Maybe it will go away soon?¡± she wondered, more pleadingly than anything else.
¡°I hope so. We¡¯re going to need you at full power, or as close to that as you can get now, in just a couple of days.¡±
¡°Do you have a plan?¡± she asked.
¡°I have a plan to get into his lair and a plan for what happens next, but they¡¯re both pretty much shots in the dark,¡± he admitted. ¡°We just don¡¯t know enough to make any surefire strategies.¡±
¡°Then why the rush?¡±
Blake paused and mulled over his answer. He hadn¡¯t told anybody yet, but strangely enough, he felt like she, his once-sworn nemesis, deserved to know. He hated to show weakness, but she was here to ride into battle with him when nobody else was.
¡°There¡¯s a reason. A reason I haven¡¯t told anybody,¡± he told her. ¡°I don¡¯t have much time to gather information anymore. I think I¡¯m dying.¡±
Gabriela gasped.
¡°Ever since I got to this world, my body has taken hit after hit. First, I lost my arm. Then, I lost the use of my lower half. That injury started giving me attacks where I would seize up in tremendous pain. Then, you nearly put me into a coma. Then, Sofie did put me into a coma. She put me on a precipice, and then one last attack pushed me over the edge.
¡°I realized it last night. I can feel it. My body is losing what little vitality it had left and everything is getting harder and harder. At some point, just breathing will become too taxing for this sad excuse for a mortal shell, and that will be that. The only question is how much longer I have left... unless I can convince the one being on Scyria who might have the biological know-how to heal me to do so before that time runs out.¡±
¡°How much time do you think you have?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. Two weeks? Three? Could be less. Who can say, really? Maybe I¡¯ll nosedive tomorrow and that will be that.¡±
¡°That¡¯s... I¡¯m so sorry,¡± she said, seemingly not sure what to say to a man declaring his own demise.
Blake didn¡¯t blame her. Being the one to talk about your own death felt no less awkward. ¡°Yeah, well... I¡¯m not dead yet,¡± he said flatly with an attempted air of dismissal. It didn¡¯t seem to work.
¡°Why haven¡¯t you told anybody?¡±
¡°Who? Sam would probably take joy in the news. Arlette would start obsessing over stuff she can¡¯t control anyway. And Sofie would take it personally, and I just don¡¯t see the point in driving that stake through her heart. She¡¯ll just blame herself for it all and fall apart even more. Remember what Pari¡¯s death did to her? She didn¡¯t even have anything to do with that and she fell to pieces.¡±
¡°But she did make you like this,¡± Gabriela pointed out.
¡°Yeah, but maybe I would have still been fine if you hadn¡¯t wrecked me last spring, or if I didn¡¯t take a knife to the back a week after my arrival, or whatever. She was just the latest in a long parade of punishment that began when I got here, really. And more so, unlike the rest of you, she didn¡¯t do it on purpose.¡±
Gabriela averted her gaze, uncomfortable with the current topic, as Blake pushed on.
¡°When I first got here, I didn¡¯t know I had superhuman strength. So on the second day, I shoved a woman so hard that I caved her head in on a stone pillar. I mean, she was trying to kill me, but still, I hadn¡¯t meant to murder somebody at the time. So, personally, I¡¯m trying to rationalize the anger I feel about Sofie right now by reminding myself that she almost definitely didn¡¯t know what she was doing.¡±
Gabriela continued to stare off to the side, but he could see the troubled memories replaying themselves in her mind. ¡°The first person I saw when I arrived here died to my hands. I don¡¯t think I even made it a minute before it happened.¡±
¡°A minute... wow, really?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t know where I was and my children were suddenly gone, replaced by these strangely dressed people. I panicked. I only meant to grab him by the shoulders, but it was like squeezing dough through my fingers. He was dead before I even knew what was going on.¡±
¡°Yeesh.¡±
¡°I tell myself that I didn¡¯t know, and it makes it a bit easier. But that excuse only works for that one man, not the other people I¡¯ve hurt and killed, like you.¡±
¡°If you¡¯re going to say you¡¯re sorry, don¡¯t bother,¡± Blake cut in. ¡°We were two people fighting on opposite sides. That¡¯s how it works. You tried to kill me, I tried to kill you. I did kill you, kind of, dozens of times. I don¡¯t blame you for what you did.¡±
¡°Really? I didn¡¯t expect you to be so forgiving about me and everything else,¡± she admitted.
¡°I know I¡¯m generally a bitter, spiteful asshole, but I just don¡¯t see the point in being petty right now. Maybe it¡¯s the whole ¡®on death¡¯s door¡¯ bit messing with me. As for you, you drove me up the wall when we were foes, but once the war was over, the war was over.¡±
¡°I would have killed you if Sofie had not appeared. That¡¯s a fact. I never expected that you would be willing to let me live in your castle.¡±
¡°Yeah, well, Sofie had a hand in that at the start,¡± he conceded. ¡°Still, of all my unwanted guests, you¡¯ve been the best. I¡¯d say we¡¯ve gotten along since then far better than anybody expected, given the whole killing each other thing.¡±
¡°It¡¯s because we understand each other better than we do the others,¡± Gabriela remarked.
¡°How so?¡±
¡°We¡¯re the two loneliest, most miserable people in the entire city,¡± she stated with a pained smile.
Blake let out a forlorn, wheezing chuckle. ¡°Shit... we are, aren¡¯t we? Even Arlette found love, somehow. Fucking hell.¡±
¡°You swear too much,¡± she told him.
¡°Swearing is fun!¡± he shot back. ¡°And it adds needed emphasis to my words!¡±
¡°It¡¯s vulgar and disrespectful.¡±
¡°Fine, I¡¯ll tone it down a little for your delicate Christian ears. Christian, right? Catholic?¡±
¡°Catholic,¡± she confirmed with a frown.
¡°I find it nuts that you would still stick with religion after everything that¡¯s happened,¡± Blake grunted. ¡°Just the existence of another universe should be all the evidence you need to drop that crap in the garbage where it belongs.¡±
Her frown deepened. ¡°My faith is none of your business,¡± she said flatly.
¡°Oh, come on! You said it yourself: we¡¯re the two loneliest people in Wroetin, and now we¡¯re all alone for an extended time with nothing to do. Why not open up a bit, get to know each other better, and maybe push ourselves to the fifth and sixth loneliest people? It¡¯s not like we have anything better to do. Plus, I would note that you¡¯ve been too distracted since we started talking to freak out about being a thousand feet off the ground.¡±
Blake winced as her fingers dug into the wall behind her. Perhaps he shouldn¡¯t have reminded her about that last part.
¡°Fine, I¡¯ll start,¡± he continued. ¡°I first became an atheist when I was five. I went to my first day of Sunday school and heard the Christian creation myth from the Bible for the first time. Even at five years old, I remember thinking, ¡®I¡¯m not going to believe a book that was written by people who weren¡¯t there¡¯. It just seemed stupid then and the arguments others gave me throughout my life only made me more convinced that all religion and spirituality was a bunch of bunk. So you might imagine my surprise one evening when I was suddenly pulled off my toilet and dumped here.¡±
¡°You were on the toilet?!¡± she laughed with an amused grimace.
¡°I¡¯m just glad I¡¯d wiped before it happened,¡± he chuckled. ¡°But yeah... I was so sure I knew what the world was really like. No gods, no afterlife, just a bunch of intelligent meat living on a rock floating through a mostly empty void. Then his place comes along; magic is everywhere and souls are real. Just a total stake through the heart to my belief system.¡±
¡°Sounds like you could use some of that religion ¡®crap¡¯,¡± came the snarky comment.
¡°But it¡¯s not like any religion is right about this, either,¡± he countered. ¡°No, I¡¯ve fallen back to my backup worldview, the coward¡¯s atheism: agnosticism. If there is some great truth to this life, we meatbags sure aren¡¯t going to be able to figure it out. It¡¯s far beyond us, and no old books written when people thought humours were a thing is going to magically have the answer.¡±
¡°That sounds terrible!¡± Gabriela remarked. ¡°These questions aren¡¯t some pointless mysteries. They give meaning to our lives, each and every day! How can you live like that, just stumbling around blind with no light to guide you?¡±
¡°Better no answer than a wrong answer, in my book,¡± he told her with a shrug of his eyebrows. ¡°People are bad at dealing with uncertainty, but you can learn to live with it. Especially for the more esoteric questions.¡±
¡°They don¡¯t feel so esoteric anymore,¡± she commented.
¡°That¡¯s true,¡± he allowed. ¡°Okay, your turn.¡±
¡°I never agreed to anything,¡± she said, crossing her arms in front of her.
¡°Hey, I am opening up and baring my soul here. It¡¯s only fair that you reciprocate,¡± he argued.
Gabriela sighed with resignation.
¡°To put it simply, I know He is real because I have felt Him for my entire life, from childhood to today. His love warmed my heart when I was growing up without a mother or father to love me. He lifted me up when I was down, and He guided me when I felt lost.
¡°When you are an orphan child, the lack of a family eats a hole inside you and leaves you hollow. When I look back now, I can see how He and the Church filled that void for me and so many others at the orphanage. There is a supreme comfort in knowing that God loves you and brought you into the world for a reason. His presence was unmistakable.
¡°Yes, I didn¡¯t know what to think when I arrived here. I didn¡¯t know what any of it meant. Why would He send me here? What did He require of me? Why did He leave my children behind? Was this some sort of punishment? I kept searching for meaning, but I never found it. At this point, I don¡¯t really do that anymore. I guess I just decided that I would find it naturally, or that I don¡¯t need to know. But I still believe. Even when I had nothing, I had my faith. It is a part of who I am, and to throw it away is to throw myself away.¡±
¡°And you don¡¯t see anything wrong with any of it after all the things you know now?¡±
¡°Maybe it is all true, but only back in our home dimension,¡± she reasoned. ¡°Perhaps there is a different truth for each world. The details don¡¯t matter as much as the fact that the Lord loves me and has a plan for me. I have faith in Him above all.¡±
¡°¡®The details don¡¯t matter?¡¯ Watch out, that line of thinking is the dreaded slippery slope towards becoming an agnostic.¡±
The joke brought an amused snort from his conversation partner. A hint of a smile crossed her face, the first he¡¯d seen in a while. It lasted just a moment before fading, blanketed by dark thoughts.
Blake could guess the thoughts going through her mind, as they were going through his own. Any mention of Earth threatened to send waves of memories and emotions cascading through him.
¡°Sometimes, when I¡¯m all alone, I start to wonder about what¡¯s happened back there since the transfer,¡± he said to the room. ¡°What¡¯s the latest hot video game? Who¡¯s the President now? Have we finally started to slow our unending march toward global climate annihilation? Is Earth better now than it was when I was last on it?¡±
¡°What about your family? You don¡¯t think about them?¡±
¡°Of course I do,¡± he said defensively, ¡°but we already had a pretty separated relationship. They lived three time zones away from me and I only saw them maybe twice a year. And they have other children to care about. I¡¯m sure they¡¯re devastated, but it could have been much worse. It¡¯s not like... well...¡±
He didn¡¯t have to finish his sentence.
¡°Would you like to know a secret? Since you told me yours?¡± she asked softly, her voice barely audible above the noise of the airship propellers.
¡°Sure.¡±
¡°Part of me is afraid to go back,¡± she whispered. ¡°What if I go back and they don¡¯t recognize me anymore? I don¡¯t know if I would be able to take it. It¡¯s been so long already. I¡¯m missing so many important things in their lives.¡±
That was, if they even were alive. Blake kept that thought to himself, but he knew that she¡¯d thought it as well. Neither of them had it in them to say it aloud.
¡°Well, it¡¯s complicated,¡± he said instead. ¡°We don¡¯t even know if there¡¯s time dilation to factor in. It¡¯s possible that time here is moving faster than it is on Earth, and if we went back today, only three months will have passed back home.¡±
¡°Really? You think that¡¯s possible?¡± she asked with sudden hope.
¡°It might be. It¡¯s equally possible that time moves slower here, and we would return to find six or more years had passed on Earth. The only hint I have is Othar, who seems like he was from ancient Greece. But the histories here are too ruined to tell if he arrived here three thousand years ago or ten thousand, nor what century he was from on Earth. It could be anything.¡±
¡°Othar was like us?!¡± she gasped.
¡°Yep,¡± he confirmed. ¡°Makes you wonder if there were others like him back then, too.¡±
¡°Probably,¡± she said with a bit of thought. ¡°I think the Sword of Eternity might be related to an Earth person back then. It¡¯s the only thing I can think of to explain what it is. There¡¯s no way the Ubrans made it, and if it was the ancients, then wouldn¡¯t there be more than one?¡±
¡°Yeah, you might be right. I tried examining it back in the day, and it seems nearly impossible. I couldn¡¯t get readings on it, and nothing would pierce whatever material it was made out of.¡±
Gabby sighed and looked up towards the ceiling wistfully. ¡°Ugh, none of this makes me feel any better.¡±
Blake grinned cheekily. ¡°It¡¯s just more uncertainty to learn to live with.¡±
¡°I hate you.¡±
¡°Good, I have a reputation to maintain. Also, please don¡¯t break my airship, but your leg is in the air again.¡±
The clang of boot striking metal echoed through the entire gondola.
A fine drizzle floated down from the overcast sky of northern Kutrad, but Blake didn¡¯t mind. He wanted to experience as much as he could while he still had the time, including such things as the feeling of mist falling on his face as the afternoon sun peeked through the thin clouds above. He had never been one to leave the house more than necessary¡ªair conditioning existed on Earth for a reason¡ªbut for some reason, this time he found himself enjoying the sensation. It left him feeling refreshed and, for lack of a better word, alive.
It helped that cantacrenyx technology didn¡¯t have to care about water in the slightest. Were he stuck with Earth electronics, his task today would be a nightmare. Instead, he could create with his mind at ease, which was good because he had enough to deal with without the environment making it all harder.
With a series of beeps, the tiny spy skitter sitting on his lap began initialization, moving its joints all around as it checked for faulty parts. Finding everything in working order, it skedaddled down to the forest floor to join its many brethren.
Blake let out a tired breath. Hyper Mode didn¡¯t make him want to scream anymore, but it still felt uncomfortable and left him feeling even more exhausted than normal. Still, he didn¡¯t have a choice. He needed this small army of tiny skitters for the first half of his desperate plan.
The biggest downside to traveling by zeppelin was the limit to what you could take with you. The Flying Toaster, though a marvel of engineering, still had a weight limit. He could carry only what he could fit in the cargo bay, which usually he filled with large skitters for his own protection. However, this time he needed a large number of cantacrenyx crystals and tucrenyx with which to create his two new armies. Unwilling to leave his defense to Gabby alone, he¡¯d decided to split the difference and take half a bay¡¯s worth of guard skitters while filling the rest with raw materials. That was nowhere near enough to complete his plan. The rest he would have to dig up, but with Hyper Mode, he knew he could find what he needed quickly enough.
¡°Food¡¯s ready,¡± Gabby said, walking into his vision from behind him with a bowl in both hands. She put one down on a nearby stump and bent down with the other to be near his level. Pulling a spoon out from who knew where, she scooped up a spoonful from the bowl and held it out to him. ¡°Come now, if the Many can eat, you can eat.¡±
¡°Soup again?¡± he groused.
¡°Better than more solid foods for somebody in your state,¡± she flatly told him. ¡°Open up.¡±
¡°Soup is so blah,¡± he said as he reluctantly opened his mouth and accepted the liquid nourishment.
¡°Well, get used to it, because that¡¯s all you¡¯re eating as long as I¡¯m making your meals,¡± came the chilling response.
Blake was helpless to contradict her and could only grumble his dissatisfaction.
¡°Are you sure it¡¯s a good idea to have the airship so far from us?¡± she asked after a few spoonfuls of flavored water.
¡°We can¡¯t risk Grandfather noticing it floating about. If he gets even the slightest inkling that we¡¯re nearby, that could ruin my plans entirely. That¡¯s also why we¡¯re hiding here in the western forest instead of setting down where we did the last two times,¡± he explained. ¡°Besides, if he were to come south enough to find us, at that point the Toaster would do us no good. He¡¯d just rip it to pieces. It¡¯s extremely fragile, you know?
¡°It¡¯s just three large, thin chambers, each holding a near-vacuum, with a shell wrapped around them for aerodynamics and looks,¡± he admitted. ¡°Most of the design and the strength is focused on keeping the vacuum chambers that provide the lift from collapsing under the air pressure. Physical duress is not its strong suit. I had enough trouble just keeping it light enough to float and still carry enough extra weight to make the whole thing worthwhile.¡±
He thought about telling her more, that he had to conduct routine maintenance on the tanks to keep them from buckling, but decided against it. She had a hard enough time riding the thing as it was.
¡°So then, what, exactly, is this plan of yours?¡± she wondered. She looked over the assembled tiny robots, each about a foot long. ¡°I don¡¯t see how those little things are going to take down a dragon.¡±
¡°They¡¯re for recon,¡± he explained, pointing with his prosthetic at a screen off to the side. A series of small video feeds played in the window. ¡°I plan on putting one near every peak in these southern mountains, all the way to his lair. They¡¯re going to stay inconspicuous and relay their feeds back here to me, and we¡¯re going to watch and figure out his patterns. Ideally, he leaves his lair every day and we can track his flight path and everything. I already have some of them working their way north now.¡±
The screen changed to an overhead map showing the estimated positions of the skitters. The map lacked detail and he couldn¡¯t vouch for its accuracy in the areas he and his skitters hadn¡¯t been to yet, sadly, but he had limited information to work with. It wasn¡¯t like satellite imagery existed here. Still, certain parts were much more detailed, and he spotted one skitter approaching a notable area just at that moment.
¡°Check it out,¡± he told her. ¡°I sent one to check the place the dragon ambushed us. Remember, before all this crap happened, we were going to go get your sword from the pit you dropped it in?¡±
¡°I remember.¡±
¡°Well, let¡¯s see what we have here.¡±
Pockmarks dotted the mountainside, marking the scene of the struggle. Blake couldn¡¯t help but notice, with some worry, the complete lack of broken skitters in the area. He¡¯d been in too much of a rush saving the lives of his companions to clean up all the destroyed robots. The plan had been to retrieve them and Gabby¡¯s sword at the same time, once the dragon was less likely to be in the area. Then stuff had gotten in the way.
¡°There, that crater,¡± Gabby said a moment later, pointing at a hemispherical hole in the rock and dirt that had to be at least forty feet wide and deep.
¡°I thought you dropped it in a hole,¡± he said.
¡°The gas was eating away at everything, the sides included,¡± she explained. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be like the hole Pari made. That¡¯s it right there. Has to be.¡±
¡°Well, let¡¯s check it out then,¡± he said as the skitter neared the lip of the crater and peeked over the edge. A nearly perfect bowl-shaped hole could be seen on the screen, clearing Blake¡¯s doubts instantly. Only that matter-destroying gas could have created something so smooth and uniform. There was only one problem.
¡°I don¡¯t see it down there,¡± he observed.
¡°Yeah...¡± she agreed.
He directed the skitter to enter the crater for a closer look, but after several minutes of looking about from all angles, they could not deny reality any longer.
¡°It¡¯s gone,¡± he said. ¡°Do you think it¡¯s possible the gas destroyed it too?¡±
¡°No,¡± Gabby answered with an emphatic shake of her head.
¡°Then he must have taken it,¡± Blake sighed. ¡°Damn, that¡¯s going to make phase two a little trickier.¡±
¡°What is phase two?¡± she wondered.
¡°Breaking and entering, of course,¡± he said. ¡°We sneak into Grandpa¡¯s lair when he¡¯s out and prepare for his return.¡±
¡°This whole idea seems sketchier with every word,¡± she stated as she resumed feeding him. ¡°I thought you wanted to talk to him, but instead you¡¯re just going to make him angrier.¡±
¡°That¡¯s what my phase two skitters are going to be for. Later, I¡¯m going to make a bunch of what can best be described as walking bombs. When he returns, he¡¯s going to find enough of them crawling around the ceiling to bring the whole mountain down on all of us. Plus, you should hopefully have your giant sword back, if it¡¯s really in his hideout. Really, the entire crux of the plan is just to make him hesitate long enough for me to establish a dialogue. Once we manage that, I think there¡¯s a decent chance the two of us will be able to come to some arrangement.¡±
¡°What makes you so sure?¡±
¡°Because that dragon, behind the fire and the scales and the giant, pointy teeth, is without a doubt a total nerd. I know a dork when I see one.¡±
¡°That¡¯s what you¡¯re betting your life on? A feeling?¡±
¡°It¡¯s the best shot I have.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not a very good one.¡±
¡°I know,¡± he admitted. ¡°Also, your leg is up again.¡±
¡°Still?! You have to be kidding me! ARRRGH!¡±
The tremor from the resulting stomp could be felt over a mile away.
Chapter 108 part 1
Bazzalth grumbled as he brought the display polyp up to his eyes, the low rumble of interest gently vibrating the walls of his lair. It had taken him days to properly design and grow a window to the world within the world, the realm of the impossibly diminutive that made up all things. He¡¯d made one before, many centuries ago, but that one had only been able to provide a picture of the largest that this tiny world contained. He required something more capable for his current subject of study. Something much more capable.
Within moments, the bioluminescent algae along the back of the polyp began to glow, the light providing a backdrop to the black ink slowly filling the translucent film that covered the front. The ink coalesced into an image, a crystalline pattern of maddening detail. As his powerful mind slowly parsed what he saw, Bazzalth realized with dismay that the pattern appeared to be a fractal one. Would he have to delve even deeper?
No, he decided. Not for now, at least. The pattern most likely continued as it did, only smaller, for many iterations. Perhaps, it even went on forever, endlessly repeating no matter how closely you looked. Not long ago, he would have thought such a thing impossible, but back then he would have believed a lot of what this crawler¡¯s weapon did was impossible. To think that a material existed that could take a bath in a person¡¯s blood for a period of five days and emerge entirely unscathed! Truly fascinating!
Only two other materials could boast a similar feat, though not entirely. A person¡¯s flesh, obviously, also could withstand the blood pumping through it. However, in truth, even it slowly broke down when faced with the unending corrosive nature of a person¡¯s ichor. The secret was that a person¡¯s flesh was constantly regenerating, utilizing the profound energy imparted by the liquid to continuously rebuild against the onslaught.
No, outside of this obsidian-hued crystal, only one substance could survive a person¡¯s blood entirely unharmed. That substance floated in a vat close by, seemingly trapped indefinitely in a state of half-death. Bazzalth took another long glance at his prized specimen, as had become routine since he had retrieved her days ago. He found some irony in the fact that her body, filled with and seemingly impervious to the most destructive substance known to personkind, could be laid low by something as weak as a crawler-made blade.
And yet, though her heart no longer beat and her mind no longer fired, Pari was not yet dead. Not by his definition of the term, at least. He¡¯d found that the individual biochemical compartments that made up her body still seemed to function on an individual level, seemingly pulling energy from the processed blood bath in which she was suspended. But more importantly, her soul remained the vibrant blue it had always been, showing not even the slightest hint of the dead souls¡¯ grey. While such behavior went against everything Bazzalth knew of souls from millennia of observation, the reason for such a discrepancy was plainly obvious to his eyes.
The chains.
Hundreds of ethereal chains wrapped tightly around Pari¡¯s spirit, binding it in complex patterns, the purpose of which he could not yet discern. So tightly were they wrapped around her that they warped the soul¡¯s form into a nightmare mockery of its normal self.
But not all of them encircled her soul. Bazzalth could find them easily, now that he¡¯d noticed their existence. Hidden within the mass of chains were chains of a different sort, larger and sturdier than the rest. Unlike the others, these chains did not wrap around the soul but rather seemed to have embedded one end directly into it. Of the dozens of these chains, five stood out. Along these five, and these five only, flowed the energy that kept Pari¡¯s soul alive.
One end of each and every chain, of both varieties, led away from Pari, their incorporeal forms reaching south through the wall of his cave lair and extending across this vast world to connect Pari even now to the Vile One, the most horrid of crawlers to ever exist. Not only did this foul being¡¯s machinations dare to tamper and defile Pari¡¯s very essence, but they also refused him his prized specimen! After all, how could he conduct proper study when such an unknown variable was constantly interfering? Bazzalth found the situation utterly intolerable, and he vowed once more that soon enough that cursed creature would not escape his wrath.
Almost by habit, he glanced at the point where the chains met the wall. Early on, he¡¯d marked the point where they met, so he could use any deviation to track the comings and goings of the Vile One. That was how he¡¯d known of her approach some days ago.
It rankled him that she had escaped his grasp, but such was the price of caution. He didn¡¯t dare slay the wretch, lest it turn out that her bindings lasted beyond death. No, he had to make sure he did everything that he could to try to free Pari from the crawler¡¯s clutches before he took the final option. Only then could he get the unsullied data he needed, make Pari a part of his hoard, and fulfill his promise.
The day¡¯s patrol proved uneventful, just like nearly every one since the day he¡¯d been forced to send Pari out into the world, the day when Gretiem had...
No, there was little point to reliving the events of that day again. All that really mattered was that the destruction of the crawler city to the south meant that incursions into Bazzalth¡¯s territory had almost entirely ceased. It made him wish he could fly higher. If that were possible, he¡¯d be able to easily see so much further and his flight speed would dramatically increase, since he wouldn¡¯t need to navigate the mountains¡¯ treacherous crosswinds. But alas, to fly too high was to be spotted, and still this could not be permitted. It would be wonderful, however, as the circuit would take perhaps only a third of what it took each day now, allowing him more time for what truly mattered.
Still, this patrol was nearly over. He could see the entrance to his lair one peak over, and...
What was that rock doing beside the entrance?
Having lived in the same lair for hundreds upon hundreds of years, he knew every boulder, canyon, and crevice around. No large rock, about half the size of one of his fists, had sat there when he¡¯d left earlier that day. His powerful eyes peered through the vast distance between them and spotted something unnerving sitting atop the stone: a small, quadrupedal mechanical device.
Quickly, Bazzalth¡¯s gaze moved from the rock to his lair. Immediately, he spotted three live souls inside. What was more, he noticed that two of them were not blue but green, the soul color of the Vile One and her minions. They had somehow infiltrated his lair during his absence!
An almost instinctual fury burst forth inside him, and he let out a roar that echoed through the mountain range. They were after his lair! His possessions! His... his Pari! Her corpse belonged to him and nobody else!
Bazzalth¡¯s wings beat once at full power, tripling his speed in a single moment and sending him hurtling towards his lair. He would show those impertinent beings what it meant to anger a person!
The fools had not even stationed any of their usual scavenged war machines outside the entrance, instead only leaving the one atop the boulder. That paltry machine stood barely a fifth of the height of even the smallest war machines they¡¯d thrown at him before, and it even lacked the usual pathetic weapons the others possessed. Instead, it merely had the four legs and a somewhat swollen-looking, almost bulbous body. It would not stop him.
As he neared the entrance and the rock, the machine squatted low. He eyed it with a shred of suspicion, wondering what sort of plot it would try once he got closer. What he did not expect was for it to detonate. One loud crack later, and all that remained of the machine were tiny pieces littering the ground. Little of the rock remained either, a part of him noticed with detachment.
Bazzalth had no time to care about a malfunctioning piece of ancient crawler technology. Instead, he rushed past the debris and charged into the tunnel entrance. As he barreled through, he noticed the sundered membranes that he¡¯d used for decades to seal the passageway scattered in pieces across the tunnel floor. Thick as his finger and grown from his own mighty and durable flesh, they would normally open much as a sphincter would to allow him through while squeezing tight for anything else, forming a near-impenetrable barrier to entry. Only another person would be strong enough to force their way past. That and, apparently, one annoyingly resilient crawler.
He knew now what he would find before he even reached his lair. The two green souls meant two invaders. With the signs he¡¯d seen already, he knew that these two would be the servants of the Vile One: the Scavenger and the Revenant. The Vile One herself would not be here; she lacked the courage to face him, as demonstrated in their last encounter when she had immediately abandoned her underlings in a futile attempt to escape.
True enough, he found the two a moment later as he entered his lair, but that was about all that followed his expectations. Much to his surprise, the lair looked untouched. His various devices and instruments seemed intact and unmolested. Even Pari still floated within her vat.
The interlopers appeared contrary to expectations as well. Unlike the Revenant, who carried herself warily and held her reclaimed weapon guardedly in front of her, the Scavenger lounged in a wheeled metal chair, seemingly entirely unconcerned with the situation he was in. Far more importantly, Bazzalth could see no chains on either of them! They were free from the Vile One¡¯s bindings!
Something seemed off. Very off. But Bazzalth decided he did not care; he would not miss an opportunity so fortuitous. These crawlers knew how to free Pari and he would pry the necessary information from them using whatever means necessary. He would focus on the Revenant, he decided. She had somehow survived his blood mist bomb, a weapon he¡¯d constructed specifically to slay her. Created using a specially processed aerosol variant of his blood, the destructive power of the mist was only slightly inferior to the raw liquid. If she could survive that, then he would not have to worry about accidentally killing her before learning what he needed to know.
The Scavenger let out a weary breath, barely audible even to Bazzalth¡¯s superlative ears. The message contained within it, however, came across loud and clear: ¡°Before you do anything stupid, look up.¡±
Bazzalth almost ignored it; the audacity of a lowly crawler giving him orders would normally have been enough for him to slay the creature on the spot. But everything still felt off; these were no ordinary crawlers, and Bazzalth couldn¡¯t quite reconcile the situation with how composed the Scavenger appeared despite Bazzalth¡¯s immolating rage. He decided to heed the crawlers words this once. He turned his gaze toward the cave ceiling for a moment and his thoughts momentarily crashed to a halt.
Small, bulbous-bodied machines, just like the one outside, covered the surface above them¡ªhundreds, perhaps even several thousands of them¡ªtheir bodies forebodingly still. It didn¡¯t take long for Bazzalth to realize his previous misunderstanding: that exploding machine outside the lair had not been a malfunction after all. It had been a demonstration.
Just one of these tiny machines packed enough power to destroy a rock forty times their size. If they all exploded at once...
Bazzalth did the calculations several times, utilizing knowledge built over decades of studying the rocks of these mountains, and came to the same chilling conclusion each time.
They would bring the entire mountain down upon everyone and everything here.
A bluff. It had to be. No crawler would willingly take their own life; they were far too pathetic for such an act. But... but what if this one was different?
Bazzalth had full confidence that he would survive the explosion and subsequent collapse, and his hoard¡ªlocked safely within his prodigious mind¡ªwould thusly survive unscathed as well. But what of his equipment? His research materials? His exhaustive collections of samples acquired over centuries, each carefully organized and cataloged? Their odds of survival were far less encouraging.
He would have to rebuild and regrow everything¡ªa new lair, a new suite of instruments, and all the rest. What¡¯s more, he¡¯d have to explain to his sister why his old lair had been destroyed, and if she found out he¡¯d been bested by a crawler, then the pain of losing his equipment and collections would be nothing in comparison to what she would inflict upon him. With great anger and dismay, Bazzalth realized that the crawlers had their claws around his throat, not the other way around.
¡°I¡¯m glad you understand the situation,¡± the Scavenger wheezed. ¡°Know that I can detonate them at any time, and they will also detonate automatically should I die. So let¡¯s all just have a nice little talk, yeah?¡±
¡°Talk?¡± Bazzalth growled furiously. ¡°Crawler invades Bazzalth¡¯s home, threatens Bazzalth, then wants to talk?!¡±
¡°Given what happened the last two times we¡¯ve met, I thought it wise to demonstrate enough strength that you would be forced to view us as beings worthy of respect, rather than as two conveniently delivered snacks,¡± came the reply. ¡°We came here to negotiate as equals.¡±
The furnace within him surged into action as his outrage grew. The disrespect! These crawlers thought themselves his equal? Preposterous!
His mind raced through several battle plans, discarding most of them immediately as they wouldn¡¯t deal with the collapsing ceiling issue. He quickly settled on a rough plan of action: first, he would swipe the Revenant to the side, sending her into the vats filled with Ichor of Life. The Ichor could destroy even souls themselves, so it would be his best chance to take her out of the equation before she could respond. What¡¯s more, the action would take him in the same direction and bring him close to Pari¡¯s vat, meaning he would be able to protect his most precious data source with his body when the rocks fell. The rest of the lair would be lost either way, if what the Scavenger claimed about them exploding on his death were true.
¡°Not enough, huh? Alright...¡± the Scavenger moaned.
A number of robots scurried down from the ceiling¡ªnot enough to alter the threat, sadly¡ªand took positions around various pieces of equipment. Bazzalth¡¯s breath caught as he noticed two climbing onto Pari¡¯s tank. There was no realistic possibility that the child¡¯s delicate body would survive even one of those blasts.
¡°Look, I don¡¯t want to do this, so don¡¯t make me,¡± the chairbound crawler hissed. ¡°The choice is up to you. And don¡¯t fool yourself into believing this is a bluff. I don¡¯t have much hope for my own life as it is, and she¡¯ll live through it. Trust me, she lives through fucking anything.¡±
Bazzalth could barely wrap his mind around what was happening. His mind ran through countless scenarios, but all of them ended the same way: he would lose everything.
¡°Ten, nine, eight, seven,¡± the crawler counted.
Bazzalth could see no way out. He would have to treat with these pathetic creatures to avoid disaster. The indignity of being forced to engage with crawlers on an equal footing threatened to crush his spirit. He, the superior being, lowering himself to their level! If Tavreth ever found out...
¡°Six, five, four,¡± the crawler continued.
No, he would make this quick, and she would never learn of this shameful incident. But if she did... nothing she had done to him so far would compare. The thought terrified him, almost as much as the thought of losing his entire lair.
¡°Three, two-¡±
¡°Bazzalth¡¯s benevolence for such impudence is short-lived,¡± he rumbled, hoping to keep the panic inside him from showing. ¡°Speak quickly.¡±
¡°About time,¡± the crawler grumbled. He seemed to sit a little straighter, his head held a little higher. ¡°Alright, then... I¡¯m dying. I want you to heal me.¡±
If the moment hadn¡¯t been so serious, Bazzalth would have laughed at the absurdity of the request. A person healing a crawler? Preposterous! No person would ever do such a thing! Not for a currently living crawler, at least! He had little inclination to even consider such a request, especially after the crawler had the gall to threaten him in his own home.
Still, how was he supposed to respond? If the Scavenger was already dying, then they likely cared less about their own survival--their behavior just now corroborated this. That just made the threat above him even more real. Negotiations were so frustrating! This was why it was better to just take that which you desired through strength, as any proper person did. The process was so much simpler.
¡°Why would Bazzalth care to heal crawler?¡± he replied.
¡°Because I can make it worth your while,¡± the Scavenger told him. ¡°I can build you machines-¡±
¡°Bazzalth has no need for crawler machines,¡± he growled.
¡°Then I¡¯ll give you something better. How would you like to study the body of somebody from another world? This is a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.¡±
Bazzalth was so thrown off by the unexpected response that he didn¡¯t know what to say. For the first time since he¡¯d first encountered these crawlers, he took a closer look at their souls and found many more differences than just color. While the souls of other crawlers appeared a consistent, uniform blue, these contained a multitude of greens of various shades constantly in flux. Countless eddies spun and swirled in a violent maelstrom that reminded him very much of the surfaces of certain celestial bodies he¡¯d studied twelve hundred years ago. Normal crawler souls would pulse very slowly, almost like a heartbeat. These seemed instead to vibrate almost imperceptibly but with tremendous vigor, almost buzzing in place. But most notable was their shape. Lumpy and misshapen, the souls contained a number of grooves circling their surfaces as if they were being squeezed by invisible snakes. The size of the grooves matched those of the chains still encircling Pari¡¯s soul.
Were these crawlers truly from another world? The idea seemed hard to believe. And yet, their souls were wholly different from the myriad he¡¯d seen over millennia. Combine that with the abilities of the Revenant and the Vile One, both several orders of magnitude more powerful than any he¡¯d ever witnessed before, and he found himself shockingly willing to entertain the Scavenger¡¯s claim.
What sort of knowledge could he glean from studying such a unique specimen? The opportunity to expand his hoard with Knowledge that no other person would ever be able to obtain enticed him beyond words. He could feel the yearning roaring within him, building swiftly in strength until it threatened to overtake his reason. But no person survived their early years without learning to wrangle that urgent, ever-present need. He pushed it aside and instead focused on another problem.
¡°Bazzalth cannot guarantee that crawler will be healed,¡± he warned.
¡°Come now, do you think I came here by chance? I¡¯ve seen your work. You are, without a doubt, the greatest expert in organic science on this world by an absurd margin. If anybody can figure out how to fix me, it would be you.¡±
That his skill in the matters of life exceeded all others did not surprise Bazzalth. After all, the competition were merely crawlers. What hope did they stand against him? Still, his abilities were not limitless. ¡°Not all things are possible. Yet Bazzalth will be punished for failure regardless? No.¡±
The Scavenger let out a weak sigh, though it seemed that everything he did was weak and listless. ¡°So you don¡¯t want your lair blown up if you try and still fail. I guess that¡¯s fair. But I do not feel safe here exposed and alone. If I were to remove the bombs, then there needs to be another way of ensuring my safety and your cooperation. Hmmm...¡±
The crawler fell silent for a moment, deep in thought.
¡°What about a collateral?¡± the Revenant chimed in, speaking for the first time.
¡°Yes, a great idea,¡± the Scavenger replied. ¡°A collateral will do nicely.¡±
Bazzalth hated collaterals. Other people loved to take what was his to force him to make them things they desired. It was part of the pain of being weak, he supposed, but that didn¡¯t make it any more pleasant.
¡°What would make a good collateral for us?¡± the crawler continued, slowly looking around the lair. Bazzalth grew stiffened as the Scavenger¡¯s gaze fell upon a certain body. ¡°I know! Pari would-¡±
¡°No,¡± Bazzalth growled immediately.
¡°I must insist. Pari is the only thing here valuable enough to work.¡±
¡°NO!¡±
¡°You¡¯d rather have this whole place blown to smithereens than loan us Pari for a few weeks? Really?¡±
¡°Pari-child is priceless data! Pari-child many times more valuable than puny crawler! Bazzalth will not give Pari-child!¡± he shot back. The Revenant tensed, resetting her stance and glowering his way.
¡°Don¡¯t talk about comparing value when you don¡¯t even know what I can offer you,¡± the Scavenger replied. Unlike the Revenant, he remained entirely unconcerned. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to do this, but I guess you¡¯ve forced my hand. Give us Pari and not only will I let you study my body, but I will also share with you many facts that only I know. Facts from my homeworld. Think about it. Not a single other person on this world knows what I know. This is an exclusive, once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes opportunity, and I am offering it to you just this once. Take it now or lose it forever, because if you don¡¯t, I¡¯ll be too dead to tell anybody anything.¡±
More unique knowledge? Bazzalth''s hoard called to him, telling him to agree, but he could not. Not if it meant exposing Pari to the Vile One again.
¡°Let me give you a taste,¡± the Scavenger said. ¡°In my world, there is only one moon. It was created by a collision of celestial bodies that knocked off part of our world as it was still forming.¡±
The hoard in the back of Bazzalth¡¯s mind reached out, seizing the new Knowledge and pulling it in with gusto to consume, process, and incorporate within itself. Then, as it always did, it came back ever hungrier with new questions, new needs. How did the lack of the two other moons affect the world¡¯s night? Was it darker? How did that added darkness change the nature of the life living there? What about tidal patterns? Bazzalth wanted to know. His hoard yearned for it greatly... but he couldn¡¯t let himself give in from something so simple. While interesting, this Knowledge was, in the end, quite rudimentary.
¡°Bazzalth is not impressed. Bazzalth doubts crawler has much to offer.¡±
¡°Is that so? Then what if I told you our people have walked on our moon? Many times, even? Don¡¯t know how? I can tell you so much about that and more. All you need to do is agree to our offer.¡±
Bazzalth¡¯s hoard writhed as it took in the new data, unable to reconcile it with other Knowledge. Nobody could travel to the moons; such a feat lay deep within the realm of impossibility. Several people had tried before, including Bazzalth himself. As one gained height, the air required to counter the world¡¯s ceaseless downward pull grew thinner and thinner, until there was no longer enough to stay aloft. What laid beyond that was naught but emptiness, the gulf between the end of air and the moon many, many times greater than that between the end of air and the ground below. And yet, this crawler had the audacity to claim such a thing?!
But what if it were true? Would the Scavenger be stupid and foolish enough to make such an obviously false claim as proof of his value? Something told him this was not the case. As far as crawlers went, at least, this one seemed more intelligent than most, and one who, given the machines above them, understood the dangers of dealing falsely with a person. No, he had told Bazzalth this precisely because it was impossible.
Bazzalth¡¯s hoard screeched in hunger, its need greater and more powerful than it had been in a long, long time. It gnawed at his sanity, pushing him to do something drastic, to take the crawler and tie him down and pull every last bit of Knowledge from his tiny brain. But to do so would bring a great cost, a cost he could not abide.
All he could manage to get out was a simple, pained ¡°How!?¡±
¡°Uh uh uh, that¡¯s confidential until you agree to our arrangement,¡± the snide crawler replied. ¡°All you have to do is say yes and I¡¯ll tell you everything I can. I¡¯ll even draw you pictures, whatever you want.¡±
Bazzalth knew he had lost, his will laid low by his rampaging hoard and the cruel crawler sitting before him, but he refused to submit so easily. A person fought until they could no longer fight. If he could not stop himself, he could at least do something for his prized data.
¡°Bazzalth has one condition.¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°Crawlers must never return Pari-child to Vile One, and must reveal how crawlers became free from Vile One¡¯s chains.¡±
¡°Free from the Vile One? Huh? Who is the Vile... oh... oh man...¡± The crawler began repeatedly wheeze so hard he began to tremble. It reminded him, in a way, of the noises Pari used to make when highly amused, only far more pathetic. ¡°The look on her face when I tell her... oh, it¡¯s going to be priceless! Oh, she¡¯s- URK!¡±
Suddenly his body began to shake harder, almost violently. The chair metal armor he wore and the chair in which he sat began to shake as well, almost as if vibrating in sympathy. Even the crawler¡¯s soul seemed to be quaking along with the rest.
The Revenant let out what sounded like a curse, bounding over to the Scavenger and ripping off his armor as easily as if she were peeling a fruit. Her actions revealed the crawler beneath the metal, giving Bazzalth his first glimpse at the true Scavenger. What Bazzalth saw did not bode well for the Scavenger¡¯s life. Blood covered the crawler¡¯s face and upper body, with more leaking out with every spasm.
¡°Help him!¡± the Revenant cried out. ¡°Help him now or it will be too late!¡±
She hadn¡¯t needed to say anything; Bazzalth was already on the move. He was not losing his lair, nor such a rich data source, over such a insignificant reason. Rushing over to one of his storage units, he pulled out a small vial of holnox venom. Vial in hand, he returned to the Scavenger and swiftly picked him up, doing his best to not crush his fragile body¡ªyears of experience handling Pari and other delicate samples helped greatly in this regard. Placing him upon the examination table, Bazzalth fed the venom to his injector array, selected one of an appropriate size, and began injecting the venom in small doses around the crawler¡¯s body.
Quickly, the Scavenger¡¯s quaking ceased. Bazzalth monitored his condition for a moment, making sure that the crawler¡¯s weak breathing continued.
¡°What did you do?¡± the Revenant asked, quickly and easily hopping five times her height up onto the table.
¡°Holnox venom,¡± Bazzalth replied. ¡°Paralyzes crawlers, interferes with nervous system.¡±
¡°Won¡¯t something like that kill him?¡±
¡°Only if too much injected, but Bazzalth did not,¡± he told the worried crawler. ¡°Scavenger-crawler is correct. Bazzalth is greatest in world. Bazzalth will fix crawler, then crawler will tell Bazzalth everything.¡±
¡°Hmmmm...¡± Bazzalth rumbled as he studied the model of the rocket that has supposedly carried living crawlers to a moon. A tiny model of a crawler stood beside the rocket¡¯s base, putting into perspective the truly gargantuan size of the construct. Were a similar rocket designed for a person, it would easily surpass the height of the mountain within which he resided.
Bazzalth found it almost hard to believe that crawlers could be capable of building something so large from just metal. Stone, sure. He knew how certain crawlers could grow stone over time until a large tower or wall stood where none stood before. But metal? Never had he known of a crawler that could do the same for metal. Not until the Scavenger, at least.
For the first time, Bazzalth got a clear, unobstructed view of the Scavenger using his metal-shaping ability. Like other crawlers, the mechanisms of his abilities could not be seen to Bazzalth¡¯s eyes. Through some undetectable mechanism, metal obeyed his will to the molecular level, much like fire materialized spontaneously at the bidding of other crawlers. His range appeared to be far superior to that of others, however.
Bazzalth wanted to study this in greater detail more than anything, but he doubted he had the proper instruments to truly make headway. He would need to do a bit of study with what he did have, learn what he needed, and then design and grow it. The process would take several days, but he had the time¡ªfourteen days of time, to be precise.
The Scavenger had awoken only two crawler hours after his seizure, thanks to Bazzalth¡¯s expert treatment, upon which the final arrangement had been agreed upon. The Revenant would take Pari for fourteen days, then return. Bazzalth had that long to stop the Scavenger from dying and learn as much as he could in the process. With the agreement made, The Revenant had cut Pari free from her vat and carried her away, followed by a long line of machines until none of the exploding devices remained within his lair. Then the questioning had begun, which led him to the present topic.
¡°How rocket made? Grown, like from stone?¡±
¡°No, nobody has powers on my world like they do here. Everything had to be made in foundries and factories and then assembled into the final version,¡± the Scavenger said. Well, not so much ¡®said¡¯ as ¡®wheezed, hissed, and grunted with intent¡¯. Bazzalth didn¡¯t mind so long as he could understand the information contained within the noises.
¡°No abilities?¡± Bazzalth repeated with some doubt. ¡°Then how Scavenger-crawler have ability?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± the crawler admitted. ¡°I gained my abilities when I first arrived here. I can¡¯t explain why. My body improved too, to the point where I could do things here that no human on my homeworld could ever accomplish. That¡¯s how it is for all of us. We basically became superhuman when we got here.¡±
Bazzalth grunted, putting another topic of study onto his mental list, and moved on. He¡¯d come back to that later.
¡°How rocket get to moon?¡± he wondered. Though he had not heard the term ¡®rocket¡¯ until today, he was well aware of the basic mechanism of such devices; he¡¯d discovered and studied such rudimentary physics back in his first century. The cones at the bottom of the rocket were clearly vents for some sort of combustion, which would push the entire thing in the other direction. ¡°Combustion not strong enough.¡±
¡°Sure it is, if you have the proper fuel.¡±
¡°Tell Bazzalth about proper fuel,¡± he commanded.
¡°Uh, well, you know about oil? The kind found underground, I mean.¡±
¡°Bazzalth is familiar.¡±
¡°It¡¯s made from that.¡±
¡°Do not lie to Bazzalth,¡± he growled, shaking the table slightly with his anger. ¡°How oil burn where no air?¡±
¡°You bring the air with you, obviously. Just the oxygen, to be specific.¡±
¡°Oil too dirty. Cannot burn enough to propel anything.¡±
¡°Well, you have to refine it first, obviously. It¡¯s a far more complicated process than just burning oil you pump out of the ground.¡±
¡°Tell Bazzalth of refining process.¡±
The crawler faltered. ¡°Well, umm... I don¡¯t know it.¡±
¡°Crawler promised secret knowledge as part of deal,¡± Bazzalth angrily reminded the puny creature lying on the examination table. He had half a mind to simply end its sorry existence, hunt down the Revenant, and reclaim Pari at once. ¡°Is crawler already breaking deal? Bazzalth can learn much from crawler¡¯s corpse.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t expect me to know everything!¡± came the frightened protest. ¡°I¡¯m not a chemistry expert, alright?! Ask something I know more about!¡±
The whole arrangement was looking more and more dubious by the moment. Bazzalth¡¯s desire to study the Scavenger¡¯s ability was about all that was keeping the crawler alive at the moment.
¡°Look, it gets far more feasible when you understand that the whole rocket was not going to the moon,¡± the Scavenger hurriedly continued. ¡°It fired in stages like this. The bottom stage would burn first, then when it was exhausted, it would break off.¡± The bottom third separated from the rest of the model. ¡°Then the second stage, then the third. I think these stages might have just burned pure hydrogen and oxygen, actually.¡± The model split apart until all that remained was a small piece at the tip. ¡°Really, all of that was just to throw this tiny bit fast enough to make it to the moon. It¡¯s kind of wild that they managed to do it at all, and they did it several times.¡±
Well, that did make a bit more sense, Bazzalth had to admit. With such a design, it might actually be possible to accomplish such a feat, assuming that the fuel could indeed be made strong enough. Hydrogen did release much more energy upon combustion than oil.
¡°Why only several times?¡± he inquired.
¡°Uh, I think it was very costly and it was decided that there wasn¡¯t much that could be learned up there or something? They instead worked on making space stations, little permanent habitats that float above the earth outside of the atmosphere, and using them for research instead. That¡¯s how I understand it, anyway. It all happened before I was born.¡±
His hoard ingested the Scavenger¡¯s explanations and found them possible. Myriad possibilities crossed Bazzalth¡¯s mind. A lair hovering above the world, far out past the atmosphere? A lair on a moon? One lair on each moon?! The possibilities!
Perhaps he¡¯d given up too easily, swayed by the temptations of Knowledge within easy reach. If such puny crawlers could manage this, then Bazzalth could as well. Shivers of excitement down his spine. The pathways of Knowledge were countless. Ever larger his hoard would grow.
His hoard satiated for the moment, Bazzalth moved onto the main topic at hand. ¡°Scavenger-crawler must remove garments so Bazzalth may study body,¡± he instructed.
The grey clothes flowed off the crawler¡¯s body, forming a puddle to his side. So they had been created from metal! Bazzalth had not been sure. He had not thought the Scavenger capable of manipulating metal to such a fine degree. Bazzalth¡¯s anticipation grew yet again as he picked up the crawler and laid him on another section of the table.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
¡°Huh... that was... much more gentle than I would have expected from somebody with giant claws bigger than my whole body,¡± the Scavenger remarked.
¡°Bazzalth has much experience,¡± he replied as he switched out the viewport he¡¯d been using to peek into the atomic world for one much more familiar. He only needed to see cellular structure for this.
¡°Pari?¡±
Bazzalth just grunted.
¡°She would talk about you all the time, you know.¡±
Bazzalth paused, a flash of alarm rushing through him. Had all that time he¡¯d spent training Pari to stay silent about him been for nothing? Had she gone out and told everybody all the things he¡¯d told her not to? ¡°What did Pari-child say?¡±
¡°Just about how great and wonderful and strong you were. That sort of thing.¡±
¡°Is that all?¡±
¡°She never told us you were a dragon, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re asking. We had no idea.¡±
Bazzalth let out a chuff of relief and amusement. He could live with these people knowing of his existence, even if word of him spread. With the crawlers pushing north more every year¡ªthe destruction of their city would only slow them down, not stop them¡ªthe existence of people would be discovered eventually. His job was simply to push that inevitability as far into the future as possible. What he could not live with was another person learning that he had raised and then released a half-person, half-crawler hybrid into the wild. It would bring about dire consequences that made him tremble just thinking about it. ¡°Pari-child was good child.¡±
¡°Cutest little terrorist you ever did see.¡±
Bazzalth wanted to press further on the topic, to question the crawler about Pari and the Vile One. He wanted to know the circumstances of Pari¡¯s death as well, plus how the Scavenger had managed to free himself. Still, he held off for the moment. Bazzalth did not trust the Scavenger¡¯s answers to be free of falsehood. He had been far too lax the last time with the crawler known as Pyr and had almost lost his precious data for it. This time, he would study the crawler better first, learn his expressions, his way of speaking, his tone, until he could spot a lie properly. Only then would he begin.
Instead, he turned back to the matter of the crawler¡¯s body. A pretty sight this was not. From the torso to the head, the Scavenger appeared severely unhealthy. While some muscle remained, the way the sweaty, pallid skin loosely covered the torso was a clear sign of the body shrinking rapidly. The sign appeared even more clearly on the arms, the skin sagging. Well, the arm, really, as the crawler¡¯s left arm was little more than a stump severed above the elbow.
Yes, not a pretty sight indeed. Bazzalth had seen other crawler bodies in similar condition, especially when he destroyed their mines. Yet somehow, this crawler¡¯s lower half made the upper half appear vibrant in comparison. He¡¯d never seen something like the Scavenger¡¯s legs before.
Waxy, white skin hung off bones with little in between, giving the false impression that the legs had been mummified in some way. Myriad dark blood vessels ran across the ivory skin, the hundreds of interlocking lines reminding him in a way of the weavings of various insects. These were not the legs of a living person.
How much of the Scavenger¡¯s condition was caused by the state of these legs? How much of his legs¡¯ condition was caused by the state of the rest of him? Bazzalth did not know, but he would have to find out, and fast.
First, he needed samples. Manipulating the controls on the side of the table with his claws, he sent weak nerve impulses along one of the table¡¯s many manipulation arms, this one with a small blade at the end. The arm reacted to the impulses, the muscles at the base slowly contracting and bringing the implement steadily down.
He preferred to use these arms to his own when it came to delicate or detailed work. He had more control than if he used his own claws. It also let him observe better. It was hard to see your subject when your hands were many times larger and always obstructing your view.
¡°Hey, hey, hey!¡± the crawler hissed as the blade descended, tucrenyx flowing towards him. ¡°What are you doing?!¡±
¡°Bazzalth requires samples for study,¡± Bazzalth patiently explained.
¡°Samples meaning what, you carve off a piece of me? Hell, no! I¡¯ve already lost enough of my body, thank you!¡± The tucrenyx grew closer.
¡°Bazzalth must have samples or Bazzalth will be unable to fix Scavenger-crawler,¡± Bazzalth less-patiently explained. He set the side of his hand down between the flowing metal and the Scavenger, only for the metal to flow beneath and around it anyway.
¡°Then take some blood! That¡¯s fine! Do a biopsy, even! But no lopping off pieces of me!¡± The metal rushed over the crawler¡¯s body and hardened into a thick metal shell.
¡°Very well.¡± Bazzalth grumbled and changed out the blade for a small syringe. ¡°Pari-child never complained.¡±
¡°Pari wouldn¡¯t know normal if it smacked her in the face!¡±
Bazzalth was beginning to miss working with cadavers.
A low rumble escaped Bazzalth¡¯s maw as he gazed at his collection of samples taken from the Scavenger¡¯s body, trying to unearth the secrets held within. Inspection of the cells had revealed several enlightening, fascinating facts. The true question was what it all meant.
Fact One: the Scavenger¡¯s cells gave Bazzalth undeniable proof of the crawler¡¯s claims of extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional origin. Though he appeared the same as all other crawlers, his cells were different enough for Bazzalth to consider him a completely different species from the base crawler that he mimicked. Bazzalth noted how the cells, though clearly different in appearance, seemed to still have sub-cellular structures that accomplished the same tasks as the local crawler¡¯s. It was almost like two people independently writing the same story despite having never once met.
Interestingly, the cells taken from the upper, more-healthy half appeared nearly identical to those from the legs. Given the state of the body¡¯s lower half, Bazzalth had expected to see some malformation or something, anything that would let him distinguish between the two halves easily, but no. The legs cells on their own seemed just as healthy as the others. The issue was that they weren¡¯t on their own.
The entire lower half of the Scavenger¡¯s body was a war zone, where his immune cells waged ceaseless battle against a horde of single-celled microorganisms. Bazzalth had never seen anything like this lifeform before. Not quite a bacteria, not quite an amoebic parasite, they attacked the crawler¡¯s cells directly, seeming to puncture the outer wall and enter the cell, devouring it from the inside out before using the newly gained excess mass to split into two copies.
Where had this creature come from? Though there was always the remote possibility that this was some sort of rare local disease that Bazzalth had never seen before¡ªeven he could not find and catalogue every single species of single-celled lifeform in the world¡ªhe rather doubted it. Instead, he thought back to the crawler¡¯s earlier words, when he¡¯d claimed to only have gained great strength and ability after traveling to this world. If such a thing had truly happened to him, would it also happen to the variety of other organisms that also made his body their home? Bazzalth believed that, at least in this case, that had been exactly what had occurred, because the Scavenger¡¯s superpowered cells were slowly losing.
He glanced over at the sleeping crawler, the small being¡¯s chest rising and falling weakly beneath a large pelt. Did a similar disease exist within the Revenant¡¯s body, or, perhaps, that of the Vile One? Why did they not display symptoms? Perhaps the Scavenger¡¯s problems were two-fold. Perhaps they all did have something like this within them but each of their immune systems were keeping it at bay, while something which had happened to the Scavenger had weakened him just enough that his body began to slowly lose the fight?
Bazzalth¡¯s thoughts immediately went to the spinal injury that had deprived the crawler of the use of his lower body. There had to be some relation between that injury and his current state. Bazzalth considered conducting a procedure or two to learn more about the injury, but decided now was not the best time. He didn¡¯t want to risk waking his subject. The Scavenger needed every bit of rest Bazzalth could give him right now, or he might not live long enough for Bazzalth to learn everything he wanted to learn. That would be a disaster.
¡°Really? She got the artery too?¡± the Scavenger wheezed the next morning.
¡°Correct,¡± Bazzalth replied as he took another look at his readings from the just-completed procedure. ¡°Complete severing of both nerve and blood vessel.¡±
¡°How did I not die from that? I should have died from that real quick, right?¡±
¡°Scavenger-crawler¡¯s body different than normal crawler,¡± Bazzalth explained. The difference served as yet another stark reminder that Bazzalth was dealing with an extra-planar being. Any normal crawler would regenerate the damaged tissues at a steady pace. Their healing prowess could not stand in comparison to a person¡¯s, of course¡ªnothing on this world could¡ªbut they would likely have been fully healed within a matter of days. Their issue was surviving the initial injury. From his deep understanding of crawler anatomy, without immediate medical treatment, he knew that the average crawler with this exact wound would bleed to death far sooner than they would be able to heal enough to stop the bleeding.
The Scavenger¡¯s body, on the other hand, seemed the exact opposite: a level of hardiness that possibly even outclassed people, paired with an utterly pathetic level of healing and regeneration. He¡¯d found it utterly remarkable the level of strength the cells within his samples had displayed, even long after being cut off from nutrients and oxygen. Bazzalth suspected that the Scavenger would have been able to survive a far worse wound than the admittedly bad one he¡¯d already received. In a way, he was surviving such a wound now, if one thought of the state of his legs as a wound caused by the infection within.
Once Bazzalth had finished explaining this to the Scavenger, the crawler just nodded slowly. ¡°I see,¡± he said. ¡°That also explains why I didn¡¯t die when I lost my arm before that, too. I never had the chance to get that treated at all, but I survived just fine.¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
¡°But how does that explain the infection in my legs? If it¡¯s as bad as you say, why isn¡¯t it everywhere?¡±
¡°Bazzalth has theory,¡± he said.
¡°Oh? Let¡¯s hear it.¡±
Not for the first time, Bazzalth found himself grateful that the Scavenger was at least decently intelligent. It was nice to have a conversation partner who understood what you said the first time and wanted to know more.
¡°Bazzalth believes infection within Scavenger-crawler from beginning, but crawler¡¯s body able to successfully fight infection and hold infection at bay, so Scavenger-crawler detected nothing wrong. Bazzalth thinks that sudden loss of blood to lower body destabilized lower half enough for infection to gain clawhold. Deterioration of lower half continues from then.¡±
¡°Alright, I can maybe see that part. But again, why is it only my legs?¡±
¡°Crawler¡¯s body has cell barrier in torso preventing spread of infection. Massive build up of immune cells from wound outward, all infection that come up die. Bazzalth believes body cut off lower part to save rest of body. Infection level in rest of body minimal.¡±
¡°Wait, what? There¡¯s like a wall in my body blocking off the disease from my upper half?¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
¡°That¡¯s... not a thing. We don¡¯t have those.¡±
¡°Bazzalth believes body specially constructed barrier in response to danger. Perhaps special nature of body allowed for such mechanism.¡±
¡°It¡¯s really weird to hear that I¡¯m some sort of medical oddity,¡± the crawler mused. ¡°So my body is just leaving my legs to fend for themselves? What happens when there¡¯s nothing left?¡±
¡°Bazzalth believes infection will move upward in mass and break through barrier. Rest of body will be consumed.¡±
The Scavenger gulped. ¡°Can you fix it?¡±
¡°Bazzalth has never found organism Bazzalth cannot kill,¡± he reassured the crawler. The crawler did not appear reassured.
¡°Hmmmmmmm,¡± Bazzalth rumbled as he stared into the magnifier.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± the Scavenger asked.
¡°Nothing,¡± he replied without looking away.
¡°Uh huh,¡± came the sarcastic response.
Now Bazzalth looked away, glaring at the annoying crawler. The crawler was not currently lying down, having constructed another wheeled chair from the metal he¡¯d brought with him. Unfortunately, after having finished that, the crawler seemed to have nothing better to do than watch Bazzalth and make comments.
Bazzalth found himself appreciating Pari even more. The child had known how to amuse herself without having to bother him all the time. The Scavenger needed something to distract him while Bazzalth worked, but he seemed far too nervous to make his own and Bazzalth was far too busy to do anything about it either.
¡°That¡¯s the sound you make when something didn¡¯t go how you thought it would,¡± the crawler told him.
Bazzalth snarled lightly and went back to looking at the magnifier. He didn¡¯t want to admit it, but the Scavenger was fairly correct.
¡°Well?¡±
¡°Chemical did not work,¡± Bazzalth finally, begrudgingly said.
¡°Which one? Weren¡¯t you testing two?¡±
¡°Both,¡± he conceded.
¡°Both?! Didn¡¯t you say that these were each powerful antibiotics?¡±
¡°Correct. Chemical Three is highly effective antibacterial agent, yet infectious organism entirely unaffected. Likely immune. Chemical Seven is strong anti-parasite substance. Initial test showed viability, over half of disease in sample perished. Bazzalth administered second test after survivors reproduced. Nine of ten survived. On third test, parasites are now immune.¡±
¡°It¡¯s adapting that fast?¡± The crawler paused. ¡°Actually, is that fast?¡±
¡°Abnormally fast.¡±
¡°Fuck...¡± the Scavenger moaned. ¡°Can we just fill me up with enough to kill them all all at once?¡±
¡°Scavenge-crawler would die before infection does.¡±
The crawler sighed before falling into blessed silence.
Bazzalth returned to his experiments.
¡°Hey, Bazzalth.¡±
Bazzalth ignored the Scavenger.
¡°Hey.¡±
He took a deep breath, keeping his gaze on the magnifier and focusing on the important goings on within.
¡°Bazzalth, hey.¡±
Bazzalth wrenched his gaze from his important study to fix the crawler with another glare. ¡°Does Scavenger-crawler want Bazzalth to fail?¡±
¡°Of course not! It¡¯s just... I¡¯ve been here for three days now and I can¡¯t not ask anymore. Why do you keep calling me ¡®Scavenger-crawler¡¯? My name is Blake.¡±
Bazzalth felt like he was back in time, answering Pari¡¯s inane questions, except Pari¡¯s usually made more sense. ¡°Scavenger-crawler is Scavenger-crawler because Scavenger-crawler scavenges.¡±
¡°Scavenges what? I don¡¯t scavenge anything.¡±
¡°Old crawler machines, obviously.¡±
¡°You think I stole all my machines? You¡¯ve watched me make some!¡±
¡°Bazzalth thought so before. Now, Bazzalth believes Scavenger-crawler builds machines using old crawler designs.¡±
¡°Well, fuck you, too! Yeah, a few of my parts are based on some stuff I found, like the memory units, but ninety percent of my robots are entirely my own design!¡±
Bazzalth blinked in surprise. While the back of his mind grabbed upon the new word ¡®robot¡¯ and devoured its meanings, finding it a pleasant modification on ¡®machine¡¯ with subtle but important differences, the front of his mind was more confused as to the sudden outburst of anger.
¡°Scavenger-crawler is upset,¡± he noted.
¡°I¡¯ve been building machines and robots since my parents bought me a K¡¯Nex kit for Christmas when I was nine, and I¡¯m damned proud of it! How would you like it if I said that you just steal all your knowledge from some ruins you found?¡±
Bazzalth grumbled. Admittedly, he would not take such a claim very well. To say that one did not amass their hoard themselves was to question a person¡¯s worth as a person. It was one of the highest of slights, serious enough to bring about even combat and possibly death. Luckily, no person was foolish enough to make such claims about another.
Still... ¡°Bazzalth finds claim dubious. Robots constructed by Scavenger-crawler contain internal composition remarkably similar to old machines.¡±
¡°Oh come on, that¡¯s like saying if I created a linked list, everybody else who comes up with the same thing is stealing from me,¡± the crawler griped. ¡°When dealing with logical problems, it¡¯s not uncommon for two parties to reach very similar conclusions. That¡¯s just the nature of the field.¡±
He paused for a moment and Bazzalth took the opportunity to turn his attention back to studying what was important: the microbes.
¡°Hold up... you¡¯ve studied ancient machines?¡±
¡°Correct,¡± Bazzalth said without looking up.
¡°Can I see them?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Oh, come on! Please?!¡±
¡°Bazzalth disposed of machines two thousand years ago,¡± he informed his irritating patient.
¡°God damn it,¡± the Scavenger sighed, falling thankfully quiet again.
Unfortunately, it was not to last.
¡°So you must have been alive for a long time, yeah?¡± came the unwanted question not long after. ¡°How old are you, Bazzalth?¡±
¡°Crawler agreed to reveal knowledge; Bazzalth did not.¡± Even if Bazzalth trusted the nosy crawler, one did not give up pieces of their hoard easily.
¡°You¡¯ve been answering plenty of my questions already,¡± the crawler argued.
¡°Questions pertaining to Scavenger-crawler¡¯s situation only,¡± Bazzalth pointed out.
¡°Oh, come on, spoilsport. I¡¯m just curious. Everybody knows that dragons live a long time. It¡¯s no secret.¡±
This time, Bazzalth could not help but look up. ¡°Dragon?¡± he asked, pondering the word and all the information that rode upon it. Wings large enough to black out the sun, huge and sharp teeth, a domineering presence, and power¡ªoverwhelming power. All in all, it was not a bad word... but it was not ¡®person¡¯. ¡°Do not belittle Bazzalth by using other term than ¡®person¡¯. Bazzalth will not tolerate disrespect.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t get to have a monopoly on what counts as people, dude,¡± the crawler scoffed. ¡°I¡¯m a person just as much as you are.¡±
¡°Crawlers are not people,¡± Bazzalth growled. ¡°Crawlers are crawlers.¡±
The Scavenger ignored the rising anger in Bazzalth¡¯s voice and refused to back down. ¡°And for me, people are people, and dragons are dragons. Besides, don¡¯t act like this is some cut and dry rule that can¡¯t be smudged. You do it all the time.¡±
¡°Bazzalth does not!¡±
¡°Then why do you call her ¡®Pari-child¡¯ instead of ¡®Pari-crawler¡¯ when she¡¯s just as much of a crawler as the rest of us?¡±
Bazzalth felt himself heating up inside and let out a powerful venting snort, roasting the nearby area with flames and scalding-hot air. ¡°Do not belittle Pari-child! Pari-child is half-person, with the blood of a person inside far more powerful than even Bazzalth¡¯s and others¡¯ blood. Pari-child is not like Scavenger-crawler. Pari-child is far superior in every way.¡±
¡°Tch... touchy.¡±
¡°Bazzalth is not ¡®touchy¡¯,¡± he rumbled. ¡°Scavenger-crawler is simply incorrect.¡±
¡°Whatever. I¡¯m going to get some fresh air. This place stinks of hubris and self-importance.¡±
Glad to have won, Bazzalth turned back to the magnifier and prepared to begin a new set of tests. He made no attempt to stop the Scavenger as the wheeled chair rolled to the edge of the table before growing legs and climbing down to the lair¡¯s floor. The Scavenger would be back. The crawler needed him, not the other way around. At least now, for a moment, Bazzalth could work in peace.
Death came for them all, sweeping through them like a tsunami. Scores died, torn apart by the sheer lethality that came from mere contact. And yet, others survived, seemingly unharmed by the poison which claimed their brethren. Those that lived moved on, continuing their lives as if nothing had changed. They hunted, they ate, they multiplied. Another wave approached, and several more succumbed to the blight, their defenses unable to withstand a second blow. The others carried on.
Bazzalth looked away from the magnifier and rose to his full height, arching his back and spreading his wings out as he stretched away the tightness. He was in a foul mood. After the Scavenger¡¯s tantrum, Bazzalth had worked through the rest of that day and through the night with little to show for it.
Nothing he¡¯d tried yet had worked beyond the first dose. The microorganisms infesting the Scavenger¡¯s legs were, by leaps and bounds, the most hardy microbes he¡¯d ever seen, and he¡¯d seen more than anybody. Toxins that could devastate other similar lifeforms at low doses would be shrugged off like nothing, even when the dose was increased to tens of times higher than what would normally be needed.
The microbe¡¯s ridiculous adaptability only made things far worse. The Scavenger¡¯s own hardiness allowed Bazzalth to use levels of poison that would kill a normal crawler many times over, so Bazzalth had been able to find single drugs or drug combinations that were at least partially effective against the microscopic scourge, but within two or three doses, those drugs would lose all potency and become useless. Once again, he¡¯d never seen anything like it.
In most any other context, he would find this utterly fascinating, a new air current to ride on the hunt for Knowledge. In this case, however, it meant the extinguishing of many other currents, ones that he would never get the opportunity to soar upon again. As he counted his remaining time running down, Bazzalth couldn¡¯t help but feel growing frustration at the whole situation.
Were the Scavenger¡¯s body healthier, there was the possibility that Bazzalth could administer several doses of drugs that had showed initial success, greatly setting the infection back, and let the crawler¡¯s immune system handle the rest. Unfortunately, he doubted that said immune system was up to the task at its current strength, and given the state of the body as a whole, the doses might be enough to kill the crawler all on their own. They were rather toxic to non-people, after all.
Counting the day of arrival, this was the fourth day that the Scavenger had been in his lair. Four days, and zero progress. Technically, he was making progress in that he was eliminating options for treatment, but that felt like progress only in the most literal sense. He was no closer to curing the infection and saving the Scavenger from death. He would find a cure eventually, he knew; no problem such as this could go unsolved forever when pitted against his mighty intellect. Accomplishing the feat before the death of the crawler, however, was a different proposition, one he no longer had much confidence in.
Perhaps it was time to cut his losses, he mused. There was another way to get great amounts of data from the crawler, data he would be able to trust fully, unlike some of the Scavenger¡¯s earlier claims. There would be no going back after that, however. The act alone would break the agreement in full. Then, he¡¯d have to figure out what to do about Pari and all the other complications that would arise from that.
Not just yet, he decided. After three full days of interacting with the Scavenger, Bazzalth believed he had enough of a read on the crawler to better detect lies and falsehoods. Before he decided to take radical action, he would see if he could get what he wanted most without it first.
¡°Scavenger-crawler,¡± he rumbled.
¡°Once again, name¡¯s Blake,¡± came the reply. Not exactly an acknowledgment, but good enough for the moment.
¡°Bazzalth has more questions.¡±
¡°What else is new?¡± the Scavenger snorted, looking away from a small screen that hung in front of him. The screen hung from an arm that protruded out from his chair near the side of the examination table, where he sat every day while not being treated or studied. Bazzalth preferred to keep him there, close by where he could keep tabs on him when Bazzalth was busy with something else. ¡°Well, that was the deal. Ask away.¡±
Bazzalth decided to start with a big one, something he¡¯d been pondering since the first day. ¡°Why does Scavenger-crawler prize Pari-child so greatly?¡±
The Scavenger tried to hide it, but Bazzalth could see it now¡ªthe slight tension off the neck muscles, the slight flush in the face, the way his blink lasted longer than normal. Yes, three days had been enough to know the next statement would be suspect at best.
¡°I don¡¯t know what you mean. I only chose the child because the way you had everything laid out in here implied you valued her more than other stuff. The vat was raised up above the other vats and everything.¡±
¡°Then why crawlers chase after Bazzalth after Bazzalth retrieve Pari-child? Why crawlers return days later?¡±
A fraction of a moment of hesitation. Not much, but Bazzalth was wise to the signs now.
¡°We were bringing Pari back to her grandfather, or so we thought. We didn¡¯t realize you were the grandfather, so when you took her, we tried to get her back. Once we realized the truth, we dropped it. The second time was a coincidence. We were here for something else.¡±
Bazzalth leaned forward. ¡°Why else crawlers within Bazzalth¡¯s domain?¡±
¡°Mining,¡± came the quick response. Too quick. ¡°I need more cantacrenyx crystals and they¡¯re hard to find, so we were looking for more deposits up in the mountains.
Bazzalth knew now that the Scavenger could restructure his robots at will, so it was not infeasible that there was some truth to this one, but it felt wrong in Bazzalth¡¯s gut. Every single robot there had been fully equipped for war.
¡°Where is Pari-child now?¡±
¡°Staying in a village in Kutrad, though I don¡¯t know which. We decided it was safer for all of us if I don¡¯t know where. You¡¯ll get her back after you fix me and the full allotment of days are up.¡±
As the crawler spoke, Bazzalth noticed several signs of falsehood with each sentence, until the final sentence. Then he saw all of them. It took everything he had to not crush the pathetic creature right then and there. The crawlers intended to rob him of his prized data! He vowed to not let this disrespect go unpunished, but he held off for the moment. Crushing the Scavenger could wait.
Bazzalth knew the course to take now. First, he slyly waited, studying another two possible cures. Neither of them proved to be any better than the rest. Having separated his next actions from the earlier questions long enough to avoid suspicion, he turned to the crawler with a grave face
¡°Scavenger-crawler,¡± he began, earning a grunt of recognition, ¡°Bazzalth requires new inspection. Current data is insufficient.¡±
¡°Mmmm,¡± came the acknowledgment. Before the crawler could put up a fuss, Bazzalth lifted him and his seat as one, moving them to the main examination area of the table.
¡°New inspection requires injection,¡± Bazzalth explained. ¡°Injection will allow Bazzalth to get better data.¡±
¡°Yeah, sure, whatever,¡± the crawler replied, not really paying attention, his eyes focused on the screen. After more than three days of procedures, the Scavenger¡¯s vigilance had grown lax. Bazzalth would make him regret that.
Heading to the back of the lair, Bazzalth pulled down a container filled with small canisters grown from bone. Pulling out a specific one filled with a creamy green liquid, he inspected it to make sure it had not degraded since being stored centuries ago. As expected, the vacuum-seal had held perfectly, preserving the truth serum in perpetuity.
Through the course of many years, Bazzalth¡¯s crawler experimentation had led to a wealth of unusual discoveries. One of the most unexpected was the revelation that a specific enzyme, found in the nectar of a vine that grew to the far north, interfered with a crawler¡¯s brain in very specific ways, interfering with their ability to lie and resist impulses. The crawlers would know, in a sense, what was happening to them as they blurted out answers to questions they desperately didn¡¯t wish to answer. Their stress levels would rise, their bodies becoming tense, their heart rate rising significantly, etcetera, until the drug eventually wore off and brain function returned to normal.
Bazzalth worried a little that the Scavenger¡¯s body would not be able to handle the mental stress, but that was about it. The Scavenger was lying, both in general and specifically about Pari, and that could not be tolerated. Bazzalth would have his Knowledge, even if he had to break the crawler¡¯s mind. After all, while an incredibly unique crawler, the Scavenger was still just a crawler in the end.
The Scavenger didn¡¯t even blink as the truth drug entered his body, the treacherous substance working towards his brain with every heartbeat. He seemed entirely unperturbed, bored even. That changed quickly.
Bazzalth¡¯s sharp eyes caught the very moment the drug began to take effect. The Scavenger¡¯s pupils suddenly dilated to their full width. His left eye opened wide, while his right upper eyelid¡ªand the upper one only¡ªslid down to half-cover the right eye. His body went stiff as a board... before going completely limp.
Bazzalth blinked. That wasn¡¯t how events were supposed to proceed.
¡°Wha¡¯... wha¡¯ did... wha¡¯ did ya do ta me?¡± the crawler asked with a slurred wheeze. Bazzalth had no idea how one could even slur a wheeze, but somehow the crawler managed it easily. Bazzalth grew increasingly worried as the crawler slowly slumped to the side, drool beginning to drip from his mouth as his lips widened into a content smile. ¡°Heh, heheheheh, heeeeeeeeee... I feel gooooooood...¡±
Bazzalth tried not to panic and only half-succeeded. What was he supposed to do now? This was the exact opposite of what he¡¯s desired. Would the crawler even feel compelled to answer his questions? And could he trust those answers? Bazzalth didn¡¯t know. Still, what else was there for him to do at this point?
¡°Where is Pari-child?¡± he began.
An amused giggle bubbled up from the crawler. ¡°How would I know, silly? I¡¯m not there, I¡¯m here!¡±
Bazzalth couldn¡¯t hold back a groan. A wasted effort after all. But then, before he could take action, the crawler kept talking.
¡°She¡¯s prob¡¯ly in Stragma now... tha¡¯ was the... the plan, anyway. Gabby¡¯ll... she¡¯ll do it. Not like the others, ¡¯cept Arlette maybe. Gotta get the twerp ta Stragma quick ¡¯n¡¯ stuff.¡±
Bazzalth¡¯s suspicions were confirmed! Scorching anger built within his gullet, but he kept his composure for the moment. ¡°Crawler lied to Bazzalth!¡± he accused.
¡°Duhhhhhh!¡± the Scavenger retorted.
Bazzalth had not expected such a complete and brazen confession, though given the state of his counterpart, perhaps he should have. Mentally off-balance, he asked the simple question that came to mind first: ¡°Why?¡±
¡°¡¯Cuz yer scary, dummy! ¡¯Specially when yer angry. Why else? Ya always get mad when... when I talk ¡¯bout the little imp. Why would I wanna tell ya tha¡¯ ya won¡¯t be gettin¡¯ ¡¯er back? Then ya¡¯d get real mad, so ¡¯t¡¯s a good thin¡¯ ya don¡¯ know tha¡¯.¡±
Bazzalth did indeed find himself getting even madder than he already was upon hearing the news. ¡°Bazzalth will retrieve Pari-child,¡± he growled.
¡°Can ya, though?¡± the crawler replied, the serum making him seemingly unable to experience the fear he claimed had kept him from telling he truth all along. ¡°¡¯Cuz she¡¯s alive again, or she¡¯s ¡¯bout ta be. Was I wrong? I thought I was onta somethin¡¯.¡±
Now Bazzalth didn¡¯t know what to think. The Scavenger had a habit of showing flashes of disturbingly high intuition, and in this case he was spot on with his deduction. ¡°Pari-child cannot return to life,¡± Bazzalth deflected. ¡°Bazzalth already resurrected Pari-child with blood concoction. No substance will work again.¡±
The Scavenger broke down into a fit of giggles. ¡°C¡¯mere, c¡¯mere, lemme tell ya a secret,¡± he hissed quietly.
Begrudgingly, Bazzalth leaned forward.
The crawler whispered so softly that Bazzalth¡¯s great hearing almost didn¡¯t pick it up, as if the crawler were revealing the great forbidden truth of the world. ¡°The mitochondria is the... the powerhouse of the cell.¡±
Bazzalth felt a headache coming on as the little creature began to uncontrollably snicker. How was that a secret? Was he trying to say that the path towards a second resurrection went through some sort of reactivation of specific part of a cell? That made absolutely no sense!
¡°Nonono I¡¯m kiddin¡¯ I¡¯m kiddin¡¯ I¡¯m kiddin¡¯ I¡¯m kiddin¡¯ I¡¯m kiddin¡¯... c¡¯mere c¡¯mere, I¡¯ll tell ya fer real this time...¡±
Against his better judgment, Bazzalth leaned in again and listened to the crawler¡¯s whispered secrets.
¡°Inertia is a property of matter!¡±
The crawler¡¯s snickers returned with added snorts for good measure while Bazzalth contemplated performing a live dissection on the spot. The crawler¡¯s mirth sputtered out as the snorts and snickers turned into a weak coughing fit.
¡°Okayokayokay fer real fer real this time,¡± he wheezed once the coughs had subsided. ¡°There¡¯s a way ta brin¡¯ somebody back ta life without drugs ¡¯n¡¯ stuff. Time travel! Push ¡¯er time back ta... ta b¡¯fore she died an¡¯ ¡¯t¡¯s like it never happened!¡± He then proceeded to wiggle his eyebrows up and down, which meant something, probably.
¡°Impossible!¡± Bazzalth growled. To think after the first two time, he had fallen for the crawler¡¯s tricks a third time as well! What nonsense! ¡°Temporal manipulation impossible. Localized temporal manipulation even more impossible.¡±
¡°I knowwww, riiiiighhhht?! Tha¡¯s wha¡¯ I said!¡± the Scavenger giggled. ¡°But ¡¯t¡¯s real!¡±
¡°How could crawler know?¡±
¡°The Stragmans, they have a way ¡¯n¡¯ they already... they already brought back thousands of people! I met one! Bu¡¯ nobody¡¯s supposed ta know! ¡¯T¡¯s a secret! So don¡¯ tell nobody, ¡¯kay?¡±
Bazzalth found himself hurriedly reevaluating the entire situation. This revelation, if true¡ªand it seemed as if the Scavenger believed it, at least¡ªchanged a lot of things. That there existed a being that could do what he could not in this regard... his pride chafed at the thought. Yet at the same time, an entire new realm of study had just opened up to him. Temporal mechanics... how incredibly exciting!
¡°Why crawler not simply tell Bazzalth from beginning?¡±
¡°Why would ya have believed me? I wouldn¡¯t have believed me. ¡¯N¡¯ ya already tried ta... kill us twice. How would we even tell ya? ¡¯N¡¯ do ya even want ¡¯er alive again?¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Bazzalth immediately replied. An alive Pari would only have more time to grow and provide Bazzalth with even more data in the future. But some things still didn¡¯t make sense. ¡°Why bring Pari-child to Bazzalth if such method exists?¡±
The Scavenger let out an amused snort. ¡°¡¯Cuz we didn¡¯ learn ¡¯til after we go¡¯ back. Learnin¡¯ ¡¯bout it b¡¯fore would¡¯ve been too easy.¡± His grin faded some, and Bazzalth could feel the crawler¡¯s mood shift. ¡°This stupid world... ¡¯t¡¯s like ¡¯t¡¯s made ta fuck ya over. Nothin¡¯ bu¡¯ pain.¡±
Bazzalth continued to push his lines of questioning, unsure how long the serum would remain effective given the already abnormal response. ¡°Why Scavenger-crawler come to Bazzalth when Scavenger-crawler could be healed by Stragmans? Stragman procedure would guarantee success, correct?¡±
The crawler grew quiet, a disconcerting change from his previously effusive demeanor. ¡°I could... if I had ta, I guess...¡± he admitted. ¡°I did ask ¡®em b¡¯fore, ya know. They said no, but I could... could force ¡¯em if I really wanna. Bu¡¯ I only went ta them ¡¯cuz I thought they were the only option. I¡¯d lose too much ta use ¡¯em if there¡¯s a chance I... I could avoid it.
¡°I jus¡¯ wanna be me, ya know? ¡¯T¡¯s not fair tha¡¯... tha¡¯ Pari doesn¡¯t have ta lose anything. Jus¡¯ rewind ¡¯er ta righ¡¯ b¡¯fore when she gets killed, no problem. But... but me? Nnnnnnoooooooooooooo, my wounds¡¯re too old. I¡¯d lose ev¡¯rythin¡¯. All tha¡¯ knowledge... ev¡¯rythin¡¯ I learned the last few years...
¡°I can¡¯t do it. I can¡¯ give up my knowledge... ¡¯t¡¯s too important. Knowledge¡¯s too important... makes ya who ya are. Defines ya. More important than anythin¡¯. I wouldn¡¯t even be me anymore. I¡¯d be... be somebody else... somebody dumb. I like being me, ya know? How could I throw tha¡¯ away? Ya get it, right? The others... they don¡¯ get it. But ya get it. I know ya get it. Tha¡¯s why I like ya. Ya get it.
¡°¡¯N¡¯ hey!¡± he chortled, his good mood returning. ¡°If ya somehow can¡¯t save me, they can bring me back if it comes down ta tha¡¯, so make sure ta keep my body, yeah?¡±
Bazzalth did not reply, the crawler¡¯s earlier inebriated words still echoing through his mind. The Scavenger understood. All the other people had always mocked him, calling his hoard pointless. ¡°A waste of time,¡± they called it. ¡°What use it Knowledge without the power to use it?¡± They¡¯d never understood, and he¡¯d long come to accept that they never would. But this crawler... this measly little insignificant being... he understood. Somehow, he knew the truth as Bazzalth did.
Bazzalth didn¡¯t know how to take this. It was almost too much, this sudden onrush of confusing emotions and sensations. To think that another being finally understood, and even viewed his own understanding positively as well... But it was a crawler! Could Bazzalth even allow himself to feel this way over a crawler?
¡°Bazz, buddy, wha¡¯s... wha¡¯s wrong?¡± the crawler asked. ¡°Yer lookin¡¯ weird. Ya hungry? Let¡¯s make waffles. Nothin¡¯ a good plate of... of waffles can¡¯t fix.¡±
¡°Nothing is wrong,¡± he refuted. ¡°Bazzalth is simply not... accustomed to such sensations...¡±
¡°Yeah, ¡¯t¡¯s hard bein¡¯ lonely.¡±
¡°Bazzalth is not lonely.¡±
The Scavenger scoffed. ¡°Hey, ¡¯t¡¯s alrigh¡¯ ta be lonely.¡±
¡°Bazzalth is not lonely,¡± he repeated. ¡°Bazzalth can fly out and visit other people whenever Bazzalth desires.¡±
¡°Ya haven¡¯t left yer lair since I came. Nobody came ta visit, either.¡±
The admission came grudgingly. ¡°Other people do not understand Bazzalth.¡± He didn¡¯t know why he was even saying this out loud, to a crawler no less. Perhaps he was just so shaken already, his mental state thrown into upheaval from a moment ago, but he found himself speaking aloud thoughts that had been with him for his entire life. ¡°Being around other people only leads to pain. ¡±
¡°I know tha¡¯ feelin¡¯... tha¡¯ feelin¡¯ when yer in the middle of a crowd... an¡¯... an¡¯ ya look out... an¡¯ all ya see is people who look like ya, talk like ya, act like ya, and ya say... ¡®why can¡¯t I connect with... with anybody? There¡¯s all these people, why do I feel so alone?¡¯ An¡¯ tha¡¯ feelin¡¯, it grows. It grows an¡¯ it grows an¡¯ it grows until ya just... ya just wanna go away to some place where there¡¯s nobody else around and shut yerself away, ya know? ¡¯Cuz then, at least the loneliness is somethin¡¯ ya chose. Yeah, I know tha¡¯ feelin¡¯ all too well. ¡¯T¡¯s okay, Bazz. ¡¯T¡¯s not yer fault.
¡°Ya know wha¡¯ would really... cheer ya up? A big ol¡¯ plate of waffles... haven¡¯t had ¡¯em in forever... could prob¡¯ly make ¡¯em back at the fortress, bu¡¯ ¡¯t¡¯s not the same without the maple syrup, ¡¯n¡¯ they don¡¯ have anythin¡¯ like tha¡¯ here... I know, ya could figure it out, yeah? Make maple syrup! Yeah, let¡¯s get lotsa waffles with loads of syrup!¡±
¡°Silence,¡± Bazzalth growled, ignoring the foolish creature¡¯s ramblings about food. He couldn¡¯t let this go on any longer. He could feel himself losing control as old, unburied memories and emotions rose from the past to bombard him all over again. It was already almost too much for him to handle. And the crawler¡¯s words, striking home with almost supernatural accuracy... how had the Scavenger known? Or was his experience perhaps not as unique as he¡¯d always believed?
But more importantly, he had a time limit and much more he needed to know. ¡°How Scavenger-crawler escape from clutches of Vile One?¡±
¡°Hah? Vile One? Wuzzat?¡±
It seemed the crawler¡¯s memory paled in comparison to his own. ¡°Third crawler-¡±
¡°Oh! Oh yeah! Heh heh heh... I don¡¯ get it. Wha¡¯ ¡¯re ya talkin¡¯ ¡¯bout, clutches? Sofie don¡¯ have it in ¡¯er to put people in clutches... well, she kinda did...¡±
¡°Bazzalth could see chains binding Scavenger-crawler¡¯s soul before, same chains that bind Pari-child. Scavenger-crawler¡¯s chains now gone. How?¡±
¡°Chains? Wha¡¯ chains?¡± the crawler asked, trying his best to look around, which only resulted in him limply flopping in place once and giving up. ¡°I don¡¯ see no chains.¡±
¡°Chains made of soul energy, only Bazzalth can see.¡±
¡°Ya can see souls?! So coooooooooollllllll! Wha¡¯ do... wha¡¯ do they look like?¡±
¡°Not important. Chains bound Scavenger-crawler before. Chains gone. How chains gone?¡±
¡°I dunno, mannnn... tha¡¯s like... too much fer my head right nowwww... Maybe ¡¯cuz she took the restrictions away or somethin¡¯...¡±
¡°Vile One removed chains?¡± That made no sense at all to Bazzalth, unless... ¡°Scavenger-crawler freed as part of Vile One¡¯s ruse to get Pari-child?!¡±
¡°Pffft!¡± The crawler shook with what Bazzalth believed was laughter, and Bazzalth immediately began to worry about another seizure like the last time. Luckily, that did not come to pass, at least yet. ¡°Sofie? Naw. Tha¡¯ girl¡¯s too honest. Stupid honest. Not a chance. If she removed... if she removed the chains, ¡¯t¡¯s because she fucked up ¡¯n¡¯ she¡¯s tryin¡¯ ta un-fuckup or whatever. Undo ¡¯er mistakes ¡¯n¡¯ all tha¡¯.¡±
¡°Crawler cannot truly believe that Vile One did not intend for bindings,¡± Bazzalth protested, aghast at the naivet¨¦ of the impaired crawler.
¡°Why not?¡± the Scavenger shot back. ¡°Ya wanna... ya wanna know the truth? Ya wanna know? We¡¯re... we¡¯re allllllllllll fuckups. Me ¡¯n¡¯ Sofie ¡¯n¡¯ Gabby, three giant fuckups. None of us know wha¡¯ we¡¯re doin¡¯. We¡¯re all jus¡¯ tryin¡¯ ta keep our heads above water ¡¯n¡¯ hopin¡¯ the next wave isn¡¯t the one ta push us under fer good. We¡¯re all just... fuckups with too much power and not enough sense.
¡°I... I killed somebody, ya know... well, I killed lotsa... lotsa people, really... but this one, I didn¡¯ mean ta do it. I jus¡¯ like kinda went...¡± He made a small shove with his arm, sliding it forward slightly along the arm of the chair. ¡°...boop! ¡¯N¡¯ she was dead. Jus¡¯ like tha¡¯. Boop!
¡°¡¯N¡¯... ¡¯n¡¯ tha¡¯s not supposed ta be how it is, ya know? There¡¯s this saying in my world... with great power... comes.... comes........ you gotta be responsible with it.¡±
Bazzalth had never heard such a stupid saying before. Power did not come with responsibility at all! In fact, one might argue that the more powerful one was, the more freed from responsibility they became. After all, what were those weaker than them going to do about it?
¡°But I¡¯m nothin¡¯ compared ta Sofie,¡± the crawler rambled on. ¡°She¡¯s the queen of fuckups. I booped one person, bu¡¯ she... here she was goin¡¯ ¡¯round the world boopin¡¯ people lef¡¯ ¡¯n¡¯ righ¡¯ ¡¯n¡¯ she didn¡¯ even know ¡¯til jus¡¯ recently... it¡¯s like finding ou¡¯ ya¡¯ve been a serial killer fer a decade in yer sleep. What¡¯re ya supposed ta do with tha¡¯?¡± He sniffed. ¡°But at the same time, she booped me too so fuck her, you know? Heh heh heh heh.
¡°Ya don¡¯ have ta make Sofie do nothin¡¯ abou¡¯ these chains or whatever, Bazz. Trust me, she¡¯ll get rid of ¡¯em fer ya. I can tell. She¡¯s... she¡¯s always pokin¡¯ ¡¯er nose inta ev¡¯rythin¡¯... carin¡¯ too much ¡¯bout ev¡¯rybody in the... in the whole world. Tha¡¯s why she feels guilty now ¡¯bout ev¡¯rythin¡¯, even if it wasn¡¯t ¡¯er fault. Prob¡¯ly thinks Pari died ¡¯cuz of her too, the idiot.
¡°But ¡¯t¡¯s okay, we¡¯re gonna bring ¡¯er back ¡¯n¡¯... ¡¯n¡¯ ev¡¯rybody¡¯s gonna be happy again ¡¯n¡¯ yer gonna fix me ¡¯cuz yer... yer the science dragon and ev¡¯rythin¡¯s gonna be alright. Ev¡¯rythin¡¯s gonna... gonna be...¡±
The crawler¡¯s head dipped for a moment before righting itself. Bazzalth could see the crawler struggling against the urge to sleep and only marginally succeeding.
¡°Hey, c¡¯mere,¡± the Scavenger slurred, his eyes drooping. ¡°C¡¯mere c¡¯mere c¡¯mere c¡¯mere c¡¯mere.¡±
The crawler wanted to prank him again, Bazzalth knew, but he humored the little thing anyway and moved closer.
¡°Put yer hand... claws... whatever... put ¡®em up in fron¡¯ of me... yeah... now make a... make a fist...¡±
Confused, Bazzalth did as requested, only to watch as the crawler made a fist with his hand as well. Using his chair arm to move the arm, the Scavenger brought his tiny fist up and tapped it against Bazzalth¡¯s so lightly that Bazzalth would not even have felt it had he not been paying rapt attention.
¡°Bam! Heheh,¡± the crawler chortled as he unclenched his fist and wiggled his fingers in a strange manner. ¡°Brofist.¡±
Bazzalth had no idea what was going on. ¡°What crawler do?¡±
¡°Brofist, mang! Means we¡¯re friends ¡¯n¡¯ stuff now. ¡¯Cuz we¡¯re bros, ya an¡¯ me. Science bros! Heheheeee... science rules!¡± The crawler slumped over a little more, his eyes drooping further. ¡°Hey, listen... listen, ¡®kay? I¡¯m... I¡¯ma take a nap fer a bit, ¡®kay? If my mom calls, tell ¡®er... tell ¡®er I want waffles fer breakfast...¡±
The Scavenger¡¯s head fell once more, and this time, he did not recover. Bazzalth gave him a quick inspection and verified that he still breathed, then finally allowed himself to relax a little. His head still felt like it was spinning, his world having been put through some strange, inebriated whirlwind. He struggled to come to grips with the various thoughts and feelings rampaging through his head.
Almost magically, Pari would return to life. The bindings on Pari¡¯s soul, and the rest of them, were supposedly accidental and would be resolved for him? It was almost too outlandish to accept... but Bazzalth had trouble believing that the impaired crawler had been able to tell any substantial falsehoods, affected as he had been. Which only made the other stuff the Scavenger had said even harder to deal with.
Kinship.
When was the last time another had expressed such kinship with him? Never, he realized. Not from any other person, not even his own sister. There was Pari, of course, but that had been quite different. She¡¯d expressed affection and adoration, yes, but never kinship. No, nobody had ever understood Bazzalth, not like this crawler did. Not even once.
Bazzalth did not believe in the concept of miracles, only in extreme statistical outliers. Only now, looking back, did he realize that one such outlier had just occurred. Against all expectations, Bazzalth found he greatly desired for the crawler known as Blake to live to see another day. No, more than that. Simply curing the crawler¡¯s infection was no longer acceptable. He would find a way to restore the Scavenger¡¯s¡ªno, Blake¡¯s¡ªbody to its proper form, so that Blake would be able to live a long and proper life¡ªfor a crawler anyway. Then the two of them would unlock the mysteries of the universe.
Returning to his chemical storage cabinet, he pulled out several other vials, each filled with a compound that would help mitigate the lingering effect of the last injection. One by one he administered them, watching with satisfaction as the crawler¡¯s fitful sleep eased into a soft slumber. Then, he turned back to his magnifier and began to prepare another trial. He had a task to complete, after all, and only a handful of days to do it. He would not fail.
Chapter 108 Part 2
Bazzalth looked up from his work the next day as Blake woke with a weak and weary groan. ¡°I feel like utter trash... what the hell?¡± the crawler muttered.
¡°What can Blake-crawler remember?¡± Bazzalth asked, trying to hide his nervousness. He¡¯d run numerous tests through the night and unfortunately come up with little, as usual. It had gotten to the point where Bazzalth had set into motion a second plan in the hopes of finding an alternate route to a solution.
¡°Finally calling me by my name?¡± Blake asked, surprised and pleased.
¡°Bazzalth spent time reconsidering and decided that Blake-crawler¡¯s ability is worthy of slight recognition,¡± Bazzalth told him.
¡°Great, glad you finally joined the winning team,¡± the crawler replied. ¡°But anyway, I remember... I was playing Tetris, and you said you needed another scan or whatever, and then you needed to give me something so this scan would get better data than the last one, and then...¡± He shot Bazzalth an angry look. ¡°I don¡¯t remember anything after the injection. Did you drug me?¡±
¡°While Blake-crawler¡¯s body appears like other crawlers, body is actually entirely different on cellular level. Chemical Bazzalth injected presented unanticipated side effects in Blake-crawler¡¯s unique physiology,¡± Bazzalth explained. Technically, he¡¯d told no falsehoods.
Alarm played across the crawler¡¯s face, and Bazzalth internally felt relief wash over him that Blake had been fooled. ¡°What did it do to me?¡±
¡°Blake-crawler showed signs of mental impairment, then lost consciousness. Once Bazzalth decided that Blake-crawler was not permanently harmed, Bazzalth decided to leave Blake-crawler to recover.¡±
¡°Wait, so... are you flying blind here, medically? You have no idea what any of your test drugs will actually do to me?¡±
¡°Correct. Bazzalth does use cell samples to help judge safety, but unforeseen side effects still quite possible. Bazzalth neglected to test inspection drug, though unwanted effects would not have revealed themselves on cellular level.¡±
Blake sighed. ¡°Great. Wonderful. Well, do you need me for anything now?¡±
¡°Bazzalth does not.¡±
¡°Aight, I¡¯m going to play some more Tetris. I had a serious streak going last time before you interrupted me. Let me know if you need something.¡±
The cavern descended into an awkward silence for several moments as Blake returned to his Tetris and Bazzalth took a moment to tend to the growth of his new device.
¡°Three thousand twelve,¡± Bazzalth finally said.
¡°Huh?¡± Blake replied.
¡°Bazzalth is three thousand and twelve years old.¡±
Blake blinked. ¡°That¡¯s... that¡¯s really old, dude.¡±
¡°Incorrect. Bazzalth is youngest person.¡±
¡°Be that as it may, three thousand years is still a crazy long time to be alive, dude. You must have seen quite a lot of things in your life.¡±
Bazzalth didn¡¯t know what to say to that, so he just huffed a non-committal reply.
¡°Hey, have you ever heard of a dude named Othar?¡± Blake inquired.
Bazzalth snorted. ¡°Bazzalth knows of no person known by such.¡±
¡°No, I mean, what about ¡®crawlers¡¯ named Othar? From a long, long time ago? Supposedly a really powerful guy.¡±
¡°Bazzalth has never heard of crawler known by ¡®Othar¡¯ either,¡± he told Blake.
¡°Damn...¡± Blake swore. ¡°Thought I finally had a lead... what are you doing over there, anyway?¡±
¡°Bazzalth is checking growth of new machine to inspect Blake-crawler¡¯s body.¡±
¡°Oh neat, I want to see!¡± The crawler¡¯s chair sprouted insectile legs once more and carried him down to the floor, across the lair, and over to Bazzalth¡¯s side. ¡°I¡¯ve been super curious about how you make your stuff.¡±
The frame of Bazzalth¡¯s new device stood a little more than twice Blake¡¯s full height and four times his height and length, a tall rectangular structure made of bone and held together by sinew, all growing within a solid gelatinous base.
¡°What¡¯s this jello for?¡± Blake asked.
¡°Everything,¡± Bazzalth replied. ¡°Base is created from Bazzalth¡¯s blood using other device-¡± He pointed to a large chunky device on the other end of the his lair. ¡°-and imprinted with desired hormones in desired pattern. Once seed is planted, machine grows through base, using base as nourishment. Hormones adjust type of flesh in what places. When finished, last of base is burned away, leaving completed design.¡±
¡°Hold up... you make a block of jelly and you kind of draw inside it what you want?¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
¡°And then what do you put in it?¡±
¡°Small piece of Bazzalth¡¯s flesh.¡±
¡°Any part?¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
¡°So your whole body is like stem cells? They just grow into whatever you tell them to become with the hormones in the jelly?¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
¡°Jesus Christ, you built a biological three-dimensional printer. I know some enthusiasts who would die to see something like this. This is wild. Nothing like this would be possible on my world. Our biotech is way behind what you¡¯re capable of, and we have thousands of people working on this stuff.¡±
Bazzalth just grunted acknowledgment again, but inside he felt rather pleased to hear this.
¡°One thing that I¡¯m still confused about, though...¡± Blake continued. ¡°Why go through all this trouble, when you could just make machines out of tucrenyx and cantacrenyx instead?¡±
Bazzalth scoffed at the ludicrous question. ¡°Why Bazzalth waste time on non-functional machines?¡±
¡°What do you mean, non-functional?¡± The chair twirled in a slow rotation, then back. ¡°Does this look non-functional to you?¡±
¡°Blake-crawler¡¯s creations only work now because corruption almost gone,¡± Bazzalth explained, as if he were explaining something simple to Pari.
¡°Corruption? What corruption?¡±
Bazzalth blinked. Could crawlers not feel it like he could? The subtle tingle that ran through his whole body, so omnipresent throughout his whole life that he would not even notice it for centuries at a time?
¡°Corruption weak now,¡± Bazzalth continued. ¡°No longer strong enough to impede energy flow.¡±
Blake stared ahead with a slight frown on his face, an expression that Bazzalth had learned meant Blake was thinking about something.
¡°Bazzalth,¡± he said after a long moment. ¡°How long has it been since the machines started working?¡±
¡°Less than two years,¡± Bazzalth replied.
¡°When was the last time they worked?¡±
¡°Bazzalth cannot say. Ancient crawler machines have not worked for as long as Bazzalth has been alive.¡±
Blake grew quiet. ¡°Huh,¡± he finally said. ¡°I¡¯m... I¡¯m gonna go play some more Tetris.¡±
¡°Why are we doing this, again?¡± Blake griped. ¡°I don¡¯t see how this will help me live.¡±
¡°Increase in scope of study required to search for possible cures,¡± Bazzalth reminded him. ¡°Also, Blake-crawler agreed to study of body. Bazzalth would lose much opportunity if Blake-crawler dies before Bazzalth can research properly.¡±
¡°Fine, whatever. Are you sure this is going to be safe?¡± the invalid crawler asked as his metal chain carefully lowered him into the reclining flesh seat within the middle of the new sensor device, now fully grown and cleaned off.
¡°Safety remains in question with anything concerning Blake-crawler¡¯s body,¡± Bazzalth replied, ¡°but Bazzalth believes sensor will pose little danger.¡±
¡°I hope you¡¯re right,¡± came the reply. The muscles beneath the chair contracted, pulling the seat down flat until Blake was fully horizontal.
¡°Blake-crawler understands sign? Knows procedure?¡±
¡°Yeah, yeah, don¡¯t worry about it,¡± he stated.
Bazzalth¡¯s hoard thrummed with anticipation as he awakened the machine from its slumber by sending a blast of searing hot flame into the input tube. The fire warmed the flesh and blood within, allowing the flesh of the machine to better access the energy flowing through its channels. The conduits especially were going to need as much energy as they could get.
Within the center of the device was a small platform large enough to hold both Blake¡¯s current seat and a melted down square of metal that had been Blake¡¯s chair just moments ago. Several oval circles made of bone surrounded that platform, and they began to spin within the machine, rotating around Blake horizontally, vertically, and every way in between, moving faster and faster and faster until they formed a blur that glowed with the power of Bazzalth¡¯s transcendent life force. From above, Bazzalth looked down upon the machine and the crawler within, peering through two thin but vital membranes at the being inside and hoping his suspicions were correct.
Since the beginning of this arrangement, one of Bazzalth¡¯s biggest questions had been how Blake could do the things he did with metal. The mystery stoked the old embers of perhaps his greatest research failure, further enticing him to investigate.
The problem was, Blake had no real idea how he could do what he did. He knew how to harness his power but not the mechanism by which it functioned. That was not good enough for Bazzalth.
This machine was his single solution to both that problem and the problem of solving Blake¡¯s health. If it worked¡ªunfortunately, not even close to a sure thing¡ªthen he would get a glimpse into a world he¡¯d never before seen and hopefully get another lead towards restoring Blake¡¯s body at the same time.
After mining Blake¡¯s understanding of his abilities as best he could, Bazzalth had made some small but crucial modifications to his design, adding a second membrane over the top of the machine while modifying the one already there. The two membranes sat atop each other, and each could be pulled into the machine like an eyelid with the simple squeeze of a polyp. One membrane now contained as much molecularized tucrenyx, as Blake called the metal, integrated into the structure as possible while still remaining transparent. The second membrane had a similar treatment, except with cantacrenyx, the cloudy crystals that powered all his devices. These two materials were the two that seemed to interact with Blake¡¯s powers the most, and in them Bazzalth placed his hopes.
As the machine approached maximum power, fed by the life force within and spurred on by his primordial fire, Bazzalth flipped between the two membranes with great eagerness. At first, nothing, but then... a shimmer on the crystal membrane. Bazzalth focused the full force of his prodigious eyesight upon it and gasped.
He could see it! Barely, but he could see it! An exotic energy, something never before witnessed on this world, saturated Blake¡¯s body from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. Perhaps it was simply a byproduct of the lens through which he viewed this hidden world, but the energy seemed to swirl about in countless little eddies like the tiny currents of a deep and placid lake.
Bazzalth could have looked at it forever, but his new machine could only run at this capacity for so long before needing time to recover. He checked his instruments, seeing what, in anything could be properly quantified. Disappointingly but not surprisingly, few of his best instruments showed any reaction at all. He did not yet know how to measure this new energy.
One instrument, however seemed to get a reading of some sort: his durbidian harmonic gauge. The gauge hovered ninety-three, around the readings of a normal crawler. Well... that told him little, or it told him a lot. He wasn¡¯t quite sure yet. He would have to keep an eye on it.
Bazzalth held up two claws over the machine, the signal to Blake to begin to use his ability. The crawler¡¯s gaze went to the metal block beside him and Bazzalth watched with rapt attention as the formless shimmer seemed to extend from Blake¡¯s body and envelop the metal as well. The metal began to change form, the shimmer matching it.
Bazzalth chuffed with glee. The image he could see was murky, with poor definition, but such was to be expected from a prototype. What mattered was that he had uncovered the basic mechanism behind the crawler¡¯s strange ability. A wonderful first step, one which he knew would not be the last.
The instrument suite once again showed little reaction at all, except the durbidian harmonic gauge, which was... not average anymore. Very unaverage, in fact. How intriguing...
On a whim, Bazzalth concentrated on his soulsight. The green glow of Blake¡¯s soul shone brightly, its gleam nearly blinding. Bazzalth had seen this before; whenever Blake or the Revenant had used their abilities, the luminosity of their souls would spike. Though Bazzalth couldn¡¯t see too well, it did vaguely appear to him as if the energy was flowing in and out of the soul, cycling through it for reasons unknown. He couldn¡¯t make out anything more.
With the scanner soon to run out of energy, Bazzalth initiated the resting procedure and watched as the machine slowly wound down. Once it had entered a sleep state, he opened the top and removed Blake and the metal.
¡°You looked way too happy for this to have been a bust,¡± the crawler remarked. ¡°What did you find?¡±
Bazzalth told him of his general observations and conclusions.
¡°So a nearly invisible energy is inside me, and I control it to use my power. Interesting...¡± he hummed. ¡°Did the energy decrease or anything when I used it?¡±
¡°Scan machine lacks instrumentation to answer such question definitively and Bazzalth¡¯s view lacked detail, but Bazzalth observed no reduction in energy.¡±
¡°So how does this compare to normal Observation or Feeling?¡± Blake inquired.
Bazzalth went quiet, his mood souring slightly.
¡°What is it?¡± Blake asked.
¡°Bazzalth cannot answer because Bazzalth does not know how crawler abilities work,¡± he begrudgingly admitted. ¡°Bazzalth studied question for many years when young, but could find little. Bazzalth chose to wait and return to topic after accumulating more Knowledge and experience.¡±
¡°Eh, no shame in knowing when to put something down. There comes a time when beating your head against a wall is no longer worth it, and smart people recognize that,¡± Blake reassured him. Bazzalth felt a sizzle of relief that the fellow researcher agreed. ¡°But so, you didn¡¯t learn anything at all? Nothing whatsoever?¡±
¡°When fire Observation begins, noted spike in soulforce from soul. Soulforce buildup disappears... then, nothing. Fire appears. No energies detected, no trace of reactions. Bazzalth never found how fire manifests. Same with stone, water, and others. No mechanism found.¡±
¡°But mine is different?¡±
¡°Correct. Durbidian harmonic readings imply different mechanism than standard crawlers.¡±
¡°Hold up, durbidian what now?¡±
¡°Durbidian harmonic frequency is frequency of soulforce. Frequency of soul is within range of frequency of world. All crawler souls maintain frequency close to frequency of eighty-five. Person souls similar. Frequency outside range implies different origin of soul.¡±
¡°And mine was?¡±
¡°At start, ninety-three.¡±
¡°That¡¯s pretty close to eighty-five, isn¡¯t it?¡± Blake replied, seemingly dubious.
¡°Correct, is within range. However, once Blake-crawler used ability, frequency changed.¡±
¡°To what?¡±
¡°Unknown.¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Frequency too high for gauge to measure. Could not get reading.¡±
¡°How high does the gauge go?¡±
¡°Eight thousand three hundred fifty two,¡± Bazzalth stated.
¡°Wow... okay then...¡± Blake grunted.
¡°Bazzalth believes reading proof of Blake-crawler¡¯s extra-dimensional origins.¡±
¡°Some higher-frequency plane?¡±
¡°Correct. When accessing ability, soul¡¯s durbidian harmonic frequency returned to original frequency, possibly to access energy and ability.¡±
¡°Why doesn¡¯t it always just stay like that, then?¡± Blake wondered.
¡°Unknown. Possible adaptation to local environment.¡±
¡°This whole soul thing is still so weird to me,¡± his counterpart sighed. ¡°Actually, wait a minute! How do you know this whole thing about different frequencies meaning different dimensions? Wouldn¡¯t you only have Scyrian souls to look at? Or have you seen something like this before?¡±
Bazzalth hesitated. ¡°Bazzalth will not speak of kaersha,¡± he finally said. ¡°Is forbidden.¡±
¡°Kaersha? What¡¯s that?¡±
¡°Forbidden!¡± Bazzalth repeated for the stone-headed crawler.
¡°All right, all right, message received...¡± Blake reluctantly gave in. ¡°So I guess the real question is, does any of this help make me right again?¡±
The crawler¡¯s words dragged Bazzalth down from his high with a stinging blow of reality. How did this new knowledge help? At least directly, it didn¡¯t, and Bazzalth had gotten so caught up in the joys of discovery that he¡¯d lost track of this fact.
¡°Use of new Knowledge may become apparent in future,¡± Bazzalth surmised. Or, so he hoped.
¡°So, it didn¡¯t do jack for me right now, then.¡±
¡°...correct.¡±
¡°Then what is left?¡±
Bazzalth pondered the conundrum with a dour mood. The latest experiments had provided nothing of immediate value towards Blake¡¯s recovery. Bazzalth¡¯s myriad tests continued to come to the same set of conclusions: either the drug proved ineffective, was not effective long enough to matter, or showed itself to be too powerful, destroying the infection but also the host. The middle ground was the most frustrating. Watching the microbes adapt and overcome each of the drugs every time, and within such a short time too, just made him feel powerless sometimes. To be beaten by a single-celled organism! Truly the most humiliating defeat one could possibly endure. But what else was he supposed to do, except keep trying? Nothing seemed to be able to consistently defeat this lifeform. Nothing except Blake¡¯s own body, at least.
Bazzalth froze as a flash of realization coursed through him. Of course! What a fool he¡¯d been! Why hadn¡¯t he thought of it sooner?
¡°There is another way,¡± he declared.
¡°Really? What is it?¡±
¡°If Blake-crawler¡¯s body is only force capable of defeating infection, then Bazzalth must bolster Blake-crawler¡¯s body so that body can overcome infection entirely.¡±
¡°You can do that?¡± Blake asked, somewhat dubious. ¡°How?¡±
¡°Would require large infusion of life energy,¡± he explained. ¡°Dangerous. Would require proper transfer method to ensure success. But only option remaining.¡±
¡°What do you mean, ¡®dangerous¡¯?¡± Blake warily inquired.
¡°Bazzalth developed method to temporarily boost lifeforce of others eight decades past,¡± he told the crawler. Those experiments had been some of the first steps on the winding path that had eventually led to the creation of Pari. ¡°Tested on variety of animals and found improper processing led to incompatibility of lifeforce. Incompatibility could lead to death, or worse.¡±
¡°Or worse?!¡±
¡°Those that did not die immediately manifested heavy mutations,¡± Bazzalth said, his mind going back to those days. The malformed extra limbs, the bizarre growths and tumors, the agony. Bazzalth was not one to empathize with his test subjects, but even he found himself regretting some of the outcomes. ¡°Those that died were the more fortunate.¡±
Blake did not appear enthused by the information. ¡°I think it¡¯s best if we avoid that route, perhaps? Try something else?¡±
¡°Incorrect. Bazzalth sees no other options with acceptable chances for success within remaining time frame. Worry not, Bazzalth has perfected proper processing procedure. Bazzalth believes Bazzalth can have working solution within several days.¡±
¡°But my biology is different than normal,¡± Blake pointed out, still not convinced for some reason, even after Bazzalth¡¯s fully confident assurances. If Bazzalth said he could make something that worked, shouldn¡¯t that be enough? Bazzalth was the foremost authority on these matters, after all.
¡°Correct. Bazzalth must run extra tests during development.¡±
¡°Meaning...¡±
¡°Meaning Bazzalth needs more samples. Many more samples.¡±
Blake groaned.
Bazzalth watched the centrifuge spin with great satisfaction. The machine was one of his favorites, endlessly useful and, thanks to centuries of design improvements, elegant as well. Right now, it was busy separating the various elements of Bazzalth¡¯s blood for further processing. For Blake¡¯s body to be boosted by lifeforce, large quantities of external lifeforce would be needed. Only Bazzalth¡¯s superlative lifeforce would serve as an acceptable source for something this important. Few sources could even provide enough lifeforce for what was needed, anyhow. It was basically just people and Pari.
His mind still boggled at the sheer unfathomable amount of lifeforce held within that tiny child. Blake had told him that just drops of her enriched blood were enough to burrow a large hole down into the very depths of the world, and he believed it. It was a shame that lifeforce was largely useless when it came to power, or she would have been perhaps the most powerful being alive. Instead, she¡¯d remained a largely defenseless little half-crawler child until her death.
Now that she would be returning to life, would he be able to see her again, or would he have to wait for her second death? No, he needed proof of Blake¡¯s claims, even though he did not doubt them. He would make sure that the crawlers presented Pari to him for inspection.
Soon enough, the centrifuge finished its task and Bazzalth moved on to the next step: processing certain elements of the blood to alter the lifeforce to a form that Blake¡¯s body could absorb and use. This part was tricky. It took a good deal of time and all of his concentration. So, of course, Blake was asking stupid questions again.
¡°Who would win in a fight, a dragon or a leviathan?¡± the crawler wondered.
Bazzalth paused, wrapping his great intellect around the inanity of the question. ¡°A person, obviously. Leviathans cannot breathe out of water.¡±
¡°Yeah, but what if the dragon fought in the ocean or on top of it?¡±
Bazzalth blinked. ¡°Why would person ever do that? Stupid tactics.¡±
¡°It¡¯s a hypothetical, Bazzalth. A scenario conceived to facilitate argument and debate.¡±
¡°Why would any person want to debate such ridiculous topics?¡±
¡°Because it¡¯s fun?¡±
¡°Bazzalth doubts this.¡±
¡°Never mind. I¡¯ll get you to understand the joys of dumb arguments someday, but not today, I guess. But speaking of which, I am curious... are leviathans related to dragons?¡±
Bazzalth set down his tools for a moment and turned to look Blake in the eyes. ¡°Advice for crawler: do not ask question again. Others would crush crawler just for asking.¡±
¡°Oh, is that another one of those touchy subjects? What about leviathans as a whole? Can I ask about them, at least?¡±
¡°Bazzalth will allow it.¡±
¡°Are they intelligent?¡±
¡°Bazzalth has only ever observed animalistic behavior. Data suggests no, but sample size not large enough for definitive evaluation.¡±
¡°I guess that makes sense,¡± Blake conceded. ¡°How big are they really? I¡¯ve only ever seen one, and from a distance, and I think I only saw part of the head. I looked absolutely huge, though.¡±
¡°Leviathans vary in size but are indeed massive. Small leviathans often larger than Bazzalth.¡±
¡°Jesus. Glad they¡¯re stuck in the ocean and I¡¯m not. I just wonder how many of them there are. It seems like the oceans wouldn¡¯t be able to support a lot of them, given how much they must eat.¡±
¡°Data hard to gather, given environment,¡± Bazzalth replied. ¡°However, people only require one meal every twenty or more days. Possible that leviathans also-¡±
Bazzalth¡¯s speech came to an abrupt halt as he caught the glow of a powerful soul entering the range of his soulsight. A jolt of fear ran along his spine as he recognized the familiar aura.
¡°Hide,¡± he hissed. ¡°Blake-crawler must hide, immediately.¡±
¡°Huh? What¡¯s going on?¡± Blake sputtered.
¡°Now! No time! Hide under bed furs!¡± he roared as he rushed to a small container near the lair entrance and pulled out a handful of large waxy tubes. Without hesitation, Bazzalth took a deep breath and blew flame across the whole bunch, lighting their tops. As they burned, a thick, pungent scent emerged from each, masking the smell of crawler to his nostrils.
Bazzalth hesitated to call these wax cylinders ¡°candles¡±, but he had to admit they were at least in part patterned after Pari¡¯s creations and informed by his experience with the child. After having to send her away, he¡¯d decided to create these should a similar situation ever present itself. He had not expected to need them for several centuries, at least, so he felt glad he¡¯d bothered to make them already instead of putting it off.
Still, these maskers would only help hide the smell of crawlers. They would not save him if she got suspicious anyway.
Blake, fortunately, had the good sense to listen to Bazzalth without his normal backtalk. His chair was already on its way towards the back of the lair, his cadre of smaller robots following close behind. The crawler was doing what he could, now it was up to Bazzalth to do the rest.
Bazzalth emerged into the late afternoon light just as his sister touched down, the ground shaking from the impact.
¡°Clear skies, Tavreth-sister,¡± he greeted her as calmly as he could.
¡°Calm skies, Bazzalth-brother,¡± the towering figure returned.
¡°What brings Tavreth-sister?¡±
His sister chuffed, annoyed. ¡°Cannot Tavreth simply wish to see Tavreth¡¯s only blood relation?¡±
¡°No,¡± Bazzalth replied, a sliver of desperate courage working its way into him. ¡°Would go against thousands of years of experience with Tavreth-sister.¡±
The larger person did not take the truth well. ¡°Tavreth has called for Congregation in ten days,¡± she snarled. ¡°Bazzalth-brother will attend.¡±
¡°As Tavreth-sister wishes,¡± Bazzalth replied. If this was all she had come for, then perhaps everything would be alright after all.
¡°Bazzalth will present results of kaersha research at Congregation,¡± his massive relative added.
Bazzalth felt his blood run cold. He hadn¡¯t touched that terrible stuff in over a year, despite her instructions to focus on it. He just found it so loathsome that he did everything he could to avoid it. To be honest, he had no idea how Tavreth didn¡¯t feel the same. Did she not feel the sheer repulsion he felt? No, she did, she simply was strong enough to overcome it.
¡°As Tavreth-sister wishes,¡± he repeated, his mind whirling. How was he supposed to be ready in just ten days? And he had a more important commitment hiding inside right that very moment! He¡¯d have to fit as much as he could in the few remaining days after Blake left. There was no way he could work on kaersha with a crawler around.
¡°Very well,¡± his massive kin stated. She turned away, her sky-shrouding wings unfurling, only to stop halfway.
¡°Dearest brother...¡± she growled, her deep voice sending tremors through him and the ground alike.
Bazzalth¡¯s already-cold-running blood froze over as she held up a massive handful of rubble. Several small pieces of metal could be seen sticking out from the rocks. He¡¯d gotten so distracted with Blake that cleaning up the wreckage of his robot had completely slipped his mind!
Tavreth picked out one of the pieces with a gargantuan claw and held it up to her equally gargantuan eye. ¡°Dearest brother, Tavreth does not appreciate being lied to.¡± The sheer menace in her voice was enough to make Bazzalth¡¯s legs shake.
Tavreth did not bother to ask what it was, and Bazzalth did not bother to tell her. He knew that she knew full well the nature of the pieces in her grasp.
¡°What Tavreth say about crawler machines?!¡± she roared, her thunderous voice almost a blow unto itself, shaking Bazzalth to his core. ¡°Bazzalth-brother disregarded instructions to study pathetic machines instead!¡±
¡°Incorrect! Bazzalth would not dare!¡±
¡°Then why crawler machine outside lair?!¡±
¡°Bazzalth encountered broken machine during patrol near crawler mine. Did not dare leave device near crawlers, so took back and destroyed.¡± A lie, and not the best one, but the only decent one he could come up with in the moment. He just hoped that she would not catch it. What other options did he have at this moment? To admit the truth was to invite disaster!
A mammoth hand shot out and grabbed Bazzalth by the throat and pulled him closer. ¡°Must Tavreth remind Bazzalth-brother?¡± she hissed furiously. ¡°Tavreth knows when Bazzalth-brother lies!¡±
Of course she knew. Bazzalth should have known that would never fly with her. But...
An idea flash through his mind as her claws cut through his scales and into his skin. Perhaps he could use this to his advantage a bit?
¡°Then listen to Bazzalth,¡± he croaked out. ¡°Bazzalth has not been studying crawler machines. Bazzalth understands Tavreth-sister forbids doing so.¡±
Both entirely true statements.
Tavreth glared at him for a moment. ¡°Then, perhaps Tavreth should verify Bazzalth-brother¡¯s claims,¡± she growled, releasing him and stepping forward.
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Bazzalth stood no chance of stopping her as she brushed him aside like one would a blade of grass. Before he could say a word, she was already half-inside the tunnel. Apparently, one did not have to invite disaster for it to arrive anyway.
¡°Lair stinks,¡± she remarked with a snort upon entering.
¡°Lair requires fumigation at intervals,¡± he replied. Once again, a true statement, just not one pertinent to the current situation.
Tavreth looked around his cavern with a critical eye, looking for anything amiss. Bazzalth knew that she had no idea of the functions of any of his equipment, so his only fear was some piece of Blake¡¯s machines still lying around somewhere. To his immense relief, neither of them spotted anything of the sort.
Stepping deeper into the cave, Tavreth continued her search, working her way towards the back of the cave. Bazzalth fought with himself, trying to keep his rising nervousness from showing up on the outside as she grew closer and closer to the bed of furs in which Blake hid.
Almost as if she knew, Tavreth stopped over the large pile and sniffed deeply. Bazzalth¡¯s breath caught in his throat.
¡°Bed reeks. Bazzalth-brother should have replaced bed furs years ago.¡±
¡°Bazzalth will replace furs soon.¡±
His sister took a quick breath, and before Bazzalth could even react, she spewed out a blast of flame so hot that it caused even Bazzalth to flinch from the heat.
¡°No!¡± Bazzalth could only watch in horror the pile of furs and everything within them turned to ash within a moment.
¡°Bazzalth-brother will replace furs now,¡± she stated with satisfaction.
An incredible source of unique Knowledge. An enrapturing object of study, full of priceless mysteries. Somebody who understood. The only one who understood. Gone. All gone.
Bazzalth had no words. No thoughts. The magnitude of his sudden immeasurable loss pushed anything else from his mind, leaving him numb as his sister by blood but not by mind walked up to him all self-satisfied, continuing past and out of the lair.
Bazzalth followed.
¡°Tavreth only desires best for Tavreth¡¯s dearest brother,¡± she smugly said once outside.
¡°Tavreth-sister desires Bazzalth be Tavreth-sister¡¯s minion, nothing more,¡± he bitterly spat from behind her, the sort of thing he¡¯d always thought but never had the courage to say. Perhaps he was just too filled with mourning to care anymore. ¡°Tavreth-sister has only ever cared for Bazzalth as means to more Power.¡±
Surprisingly, for once she did not strike him or worse. Instead, she only looked back at him with contempt. ¡°Tavreth does much for Bazzalth-brother. Is not Tavreth¡¯s fault if Bazzalth-brother cannot see. Perhaps if Bazzalth-brother were not embarrassment to lineage, Bazzalth-brother would be able to challenge Tavreth, but Tavreth and Bazzalth-brother both know day will never come. Ten days, dearest brother. Ten days,¡± she said again as her wings unfurled. With a mighty leap, she catapulted into the sky and within a moment she was gone.
Bazzalth did not move until Tavreth¡¯s soul left his soulsight. Only then did he dare reenter his abode, his heart heavy and a boulder within his gullet. Immediately, he went to the charred remains of his bed.
Nothing remained but black char atop melted rock.
Gone. Lost forever.
Unable to contain his sorrow, Bazzalth let out a roar that seemed to shake the heavens themselves. His fists slammed into the nearby wall¡ªonce, twice, three times¡ªleaving behind a series of cracks and shattered stone. A second cry erupted from his maw, threatening to shake the stalactites from the ceiling.
Damn his sister! She¡¯d known what she was doing! She had known he¡¯d been hiding something in the bed from the moment she¡¯d walked in. This was all about teaching him a lesson, he knew. Keeping him under her claw. But what could he do about it? He was too weak, and he would always be too weak!
A sound crossed Bazzalth¡¯s ears, giving him pause: a soft knocking coming from somewhere nearby. He went quiet for a moment, and a breath later, it came again.
Taptaptap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.
Bazzalth¡¯s hearing led him away from his former bed and over to a nearby storage container. He bent over to listen.
Taptaptap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.
Something was in his storage container. Something alive.
Bazzalth unlocked the container and practically ripped it open, only barely managing to preserve the integrity of the chest in his haste. He looked in, and, squeezed between two rows of vials and looking back up at him, sat one slightly-frazzled looking crawler.
¡°Phew! Thanks, Bazz, it was getting mighty sweaty in there,¡± the crawler said as his chair lifted him out.
¡°What Blake-crawler doing in supply container?!¡± he asked, flabbergasted.
¡°Well, I figured hiding in the bed was a terrible idea,¡± Blake told him. ¡°That never ends well in the movies, you know. So I asked myself, since you lighting those smelly-ass candles meant that my scent would be a problem, where would there be the least airflow so I would be the hardest to find by smell? I figured one of these was the best bet. You store shit in here for a long time, right? Years and years? So that meant it had to be airtight.¡±
¡°But container has lock,¡± Bazzalth pointed out.
¡°You¡¯d be surprised how little locks matter when you can just pour liquid metal into them and work them from inside,¡± Blake chuckled. ¡°Just didn¡¯t expect the seal to be so strong from the inside. So, is everything alright?¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Bazzalth half-lied. He still had the kaersha problem, but that was a problem for another day.
¡°You sure? You seemed to be roaring really loud just now.¡±
¡°All is within acceptable parameters.¡±
¡°...you thought I¡¯d died, didn¡¯t you?¡± Blake accused him with a mischievous smirk on his face.
Bazzalth tensed involuntarily. ¡°Of course not,¡± he lied.
¡°Ah ha, you did, didn¡¯t you? You thought I was dead and it made you upset!¡±
¡°Bazzalth suffered momentary loss of composure, nothing more,¡± he huffed, turning away from the insolent creature.
¡°Awwwww... buuuuuddddyyyyyyy, that¡¯s so sweet! Gimme a hug! Come on!¡±
¡°Silence.¡±
Bazzalth weathered the indignity as the insufferable crawler mocked his weakness by creating a pair of metal arms from his chair and wrapping them around Bazzalth¡¯s nearest claw. Perhaps it would have been better if the impertinent creature had perished after all.
The serum manufacturing process continued through the next day. Bazzalth concentrated on each important step, while Blake sat nearby and told him how he could make everything so much better if Bazzalth just did it Blake¡¯s way. Because the crawler knew how to do the work so much better than Bazzalth did, apparently.
¡°I¡¯m telling you, dude, computers are the way to go. Computer science revolutionized my world, and it can take you just as far. You could probably even make organic computers. Your different devices around here all have some sort of minor proto-brain, right? Take that a step or two further. Make living computers and automate all these menial steps so you can be free to focus.¡±
¡°Bazzalth has limit to what can be grown,¡± he told the over-enthusiastic crawler. ¡°Risk of device sentience increases with complexity of device nervous system. Sentient devices break.¡±
¡°Uh... what? That¡¯s a thing that can happen?¡±
¡°Correct,¡± Bazzalth. ¡°Bazzalth created many... mistakes when first researching. Machines experienced pain and other suboptimal sensations.¡±
¡°Then go with inorganic,¡± Blake pivoted, not missing a beat. "Transistors. Microchips. You would be able to offload a bunch of work, though you¡¯d need to create a generator first and a whole power system and... yeah, there¡¯d be a lot of setup. Still worth it, though.¡±
¡°Worth how?¡± Bazzalth asked, unconvinced. He had a working system already, why spend precious time creating a whole other system that was not guaranteed to be superior? And it would resemble crawler machines enough to risk angering his sister. ¡°Bazzalth does not require external computation like crawlers. Bazzalth can compute everything Bazzalth needs with mind.¡±
¡°Well, it¡¯s not like we just use computers for number crunching, you know! There¡¯s the internet, for example. Connect a bunch of computers together around the world and you can do all sorts of things. Like, talk to other people from across the world with ease.¡±
¡°Crawlers can already talk across world without computers,¡± Bazzalth pointed out.
¡°That¡¯s not the same at all!¡± Blake objected. ¡°Can they order three pounds of sour apple licorice and a pair of size fourteen sandals and have them show up at their house two days later? No!¡±
¡°Bazzalth always comprehends meaning in Blake-crawlers words, yet so often understands nothing.¡±
¡°It¡¯s called ¡®online shopping¡¯. You can connect your computer to another one somewhere across the country and tell it ¡®I want a sixteen-ounce jug of cat treats, a water bottle, and two USB cables¡¯ and then they get sent to you. It¡¯s great! You don¡¯t even have to leave the house!¡±
Bazzalth¡¯s attention latched onto the last sentence and he reevaluated the utility of inorganic computational machines. The vision of a future time, where he could just have all his experimental materials brought to him and he never left his lair, floated through his mind like the wild delusions of a fever dream. Could such a wondrous world even be possible? It seemed too good to ever be true.
A more immediate reality called to his attention as a nearby machine¡ªorganic and versatile and very much fine without inorganic computational processors, thank you very much¡ªlet out a hiss of steam. The first test serum was finally complete.
¡°Bazzalth requires samples,¡± he told the crawler. ¡°True tissue samples.¡±
Blake swallowed. ¡°Not blood?¡±
¡°Not blood.¡±
¡°Can you make them small, at least?¡±
¡°Worry not, Blake-crawler. Bazzalth will take samples from legs, so Blake-crawler will not feel it.¡±
¡°That doesn¡¯t reassure me, dude,¡± Blake replied, but the crawler¡¯s skittishness mattered little. There was not much he could do to stop Bazzalth, anyhow.
Soon enough, Bazzalth had his samples, six slices of skin and muscle, each about the size of the crawler¡¯s smallest toe. Blake had stopped complaining once the coagulant had set in and stopped the bleeding in the leg. Bazzalth didn¡¯t even know what the little creature was whining about. A superficial wound that small was nothing. Bazzalth doubted he would have even noticed it was there.
Taking the first sample, he set it on a small platter and set it on the examination table where both he and Blake could see it. After loading the smallest syringe arm with some of the test serum, setting up the proper sensors and gauges, and calibrating the instruments, he turned to Blake. ¡°Observe,¡± he commanded as he manipulated a syringe arm to release a drop of the serum upon the sample. The drop, about a tenth the size of the sample, landed and flowed around flesh, coating it from every side.
The effect was immediate.
The tiny sample swelled, growing at a tremendous pace. Long, dark, curly hair seemed to burst from the skin, growing in thick, tangled chunks so thick that it could be mistaken for fur. The skin beneath it grew a sickly yellow, its texture rough and covered in bumps and lumpy growths. The entire mass had more than tripled in size, the muscle beneath it all the biggest source of the expansion. Bazzalth could see the muscle fibers struggling against each other as they grew every which way instead of all in one coordinated direction. The most striking feature, however, was the new blood vessel sticking out of the lump of flesh. Almost twice as large as the biggest blood vessels in Blake¡¯s body, its open end gaped at them, begging for blood. There had been no blood vessel large enough to note before the serum had been administered.
¡°What the flying fuck did I just watch?¡± the crawler groaned. ¡°Thank god I¡¯m too weak to vomit right now.¡±
¡°Serum is not properly synced with Blake-crawler¡¯s lifeforce. Failure to synchronize resulted in catastrophic growth.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a tumor. You¡¯re going to give me cancer.¡±
¡°Incorrect. Proper serum will bring different result.¡± Picking up the mutated sample, Bazzalth moved it to the area with the magnifier and, with the care and precision of somebody who¡¯d done it a million times before, sliced off several thin pieces for inspection.
¡°Hmmmm,¡± he rumbled after a moment. ¡°Serum is success.¡±
¡°You call that success?!¡± an appalled Blake wheezed.
¡°Correct,¡± Bazzalth replied, checking more slices and finding the same result in each one. ¡°Sample fully eradicated infection. Next step is adjustment to mitigate side-effects.¡±
Blake let out a weary, uneasy moan, his gaze never leaving the mutated sample. ¡°I don¡¯t know about this anymore, dude.¡±
¡°Nonsense,¡± Bazzalth snorted. ¡°Quest for knowledge continues.¡±
¡°Well, it looks better than the last one, at least,¡± Blake hummed the next day as they inspected the new test with the second, updated serum.
The results of the new batch looked much like the last, only with the severity of the mutation cut by half.
¡°Indeed,¡± Bazzalth agreed. ¡°Progress is acceptable. Final version will likely be ready by end of tomorrow.¡±
¡°So that¡¯s... how long from now is that? I don¡¯t even know what time it is right now since I disassembled my suit. How do you even tell time in here with no natural light or anything? I don¡¯t see a single thing that looks like a clock.¡±
¡°Bazzalth counts,¡± Bazzalth told him, earning him what he thought to be a disbelieving stare. His ability to read crawler expressions was improving swiftly with all the recent experience, but he still wasn¡¯t always sure.
¡°You count,¡± Blake replied, his tone confirming Bazzalth¡¯s initial expression evaluation. ¡°Like, just constantly count in the back of your head for hours without stopping.¡±
¡°Not hours, millennia,¡± Bazzalth replied, somewhat confused about what part of this simple statement was so hard to understand. ¡°Do crawlers not count time? Is simple.¡±
¡°We have something that does it for us, like any rational being! Who would want to manually keep track of time that way?¡±
¡°Relying on outside source for internal knowledge is folly.¡±
¡°What, do you not have any books or anything? Do you not write stuff down?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°That¡¯s crazy. What if you forget?¡±
Bazzalth let out a loud snort. ¡°Impossible. Bazzalth does not forget contents of hoard.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t you forget to patrol just a few days ago?¡±
¡°Different,¡± Bazzalth huffed. ¡°Did not forget, merely slipped from mind in excitement.¡±
¡°Okay, whatever you say, bud.¡±
¡°Did it work? That looks... normal. The good kind of normal.¡±
Bazzalth inspected the latest test sample with a critical eye. Indeed, the result appeared as hoped. Healthy skin and muscle, as if he¡¯d cut it from a physically well crawler and not his diseased companion here.
¡°Will this work on all parts of my body? Like, my nerves and whatnot?¡±
¡°Serum should affect all cell types equally,¡± Bazzalth replied, slicing the sample thin for inspection.
¡°So, like, I could walk again? Maybe get my arm back too?¡±
¡°Both likely,¡± he told the crawler as he put the sample beneath the magnifier and observed the magnified image with great satisfaction. ¡°No trace of infection. No side-effects.¡±
¡°Well, hot damn! So we¡¯re ready to go?¡±
¡°Incorrect. More testing needed to confirm.¡±
¡°Really? You still have doubts?¡±
¡°Incorrect,¡± Bazzalth replied again. ¡°Bazzalth simply must make sure all aspects are optimal before administration. Only single dose will be possible, so must make sure that all variables within acceptable ranges.¡±
¡°What do you mean, only a single dose is possible?¡± Blake inquired.
Bazzalth grunted and brought the arm containing the test serum back over the sample. ¡°Observe.¡±
A single drop fell upon the tissue, and the effect was immediate.
¡°Holy shit!¡± Blake hissed as the sample turned black and began to smoke. Within a moment, nothing remained upon the dish but a tiny pile of what looked like ash.
¡°Second dose always causes cellular destruction and molecular decomposition.¡±
¡°Alright, in that case, maybe test things a few more times,¡± Blake allowed.
The following tests went as hoped, continuing to display full cellular regeneration and complete eradication of the infection. Finally, Bazzalth felt fully ready to begin the end of this entire ordeal. ¡°Serum complete,¡± he pronounced. ¡°Time for treatment.¡±
¡°Hold on,¡± Blake said. ¡°Before we get started, I have to take care of something.¡±
The crawler retreated to the far corner of the lair, a single one of his small helper robots following behind the chair. Once far from Bazzalth, the robot scampered atop Blake¡¯s lap. Blake stared at it silently for a good long while. Then, apparently done, the robot scarpered from the lair, rushing into the tunnel and disappearing.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, just leaving a will and instructions,¡± Blake told him. ¡°You know, in case something happens.¡±
¡°Nothing will happen,¡± Bazzalth growled, rather offended that Blake would even think that his treatment might go wrong. Bazzalth was the greatest master of organic science, after all; even Blake himself had said so.
¡°I know. Still, can¡¯t hurt, right? It will just go hide a few mountains away. If something does happen somehow, it will let the others know.¡±
Bazzalth moved Blake to another side of the table, where he¡¯d prepared a large array of injection arms, while Blake abandoned his chair and any other metal, lying naked on his back.
¡°Ready,¡± the crawler stated.
Slowly, Bazzalth lowered the various arms, inserting each needle into a different part of Blake¡¯s body until the crawler looked like a pincushion. He¡¯d expected some sort of griping, but to Blake¡¯s credit, he stayed silent, though Bazzalth did note that Blake¡¯s eyes were firmly shut.
Once all the needles were in place, Bazzalth began the injection of the serum. All the points of the body needed to be injected at the same time, which was why he¡¯d needed to use so many and all at once. Quickly, the syringes emptied and the serum was fully within Blake¡¯s body, merging with his blood and spreading to every corner. Bazzalth hurriedly removed all the needles.
The effect was... not immediate.
¡°Is something happening?¡± Blake wondered several moments later. ¡°I don¡¯t feel any different.¡±
¡°Patience,¡± Bazzalth replied, though that was mostly to hide his own rising panic.
Nothing was happening. No regeneration, no growth, nothing. Now twenty heartbeats after injection, there should have been massive signs of improvement, at least.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Bazzalth did not understand. All the tests had proceeded as desired. They¡¯d seen the results just that day many times! Had he somehow overlooked some critical factor? He needed to look again.
Manipulating his blade arms, he took a thin layer of white skin webbed with black from the crawler¡¯s diseased foot and moved it to the magnifier for study. Looking at the cells through his equipment, he found... healthy cells without a single invasive microbe to be seen. Bazzalth blinked and checked again. Finding the same thing, he looked down at the sample itself. Healthy, pink skin sat on the observation plate, without a single blemish anywhere to be seen.
Baffled, Bazzalth hurriedly took a second sample from right beside the last one, except this time, he did not move it from Blake¡¯s proximity immediately. Instead, he stared at the sample and waited for it to manifest the same changes as the last one. Nothing happened.
Confused, he began to carry the sample to the magnifier when he noticed the change begin. White became pink, while the black web receded until it soon disappeared entirely. Before he even made it to his magnifier, the sample had taken on a similar appearance to the first. Bazzalth remained baffled. It was like the flesh had been waiting for him to take it away from Blake before-
He froze as realization crashed into him. Of course! How could he have been so stupid? All of his tests had been on Blake¡¯s tissue, but the samples had been outside of the influence of Blake¡¯s body¡¯s exotic energy! That was the only difference! The energy had to be somehow interfering with the transmission of lifeforce, keeping it locked within the serum! Only when removed from the whole and free of the energy field could the lifeforce spread to the flesh! That had to be it! How foolish he had been to not realize such a critical complication beforehand?!
But how to get around it? He highly doubted the energy could be removed. It was likely as much a part of Blake as the crawler¡¯s love for random tangents and inane questions. Nor did Bazzalth know how it could be circumvented. But... perhaps it could be overcome. What he needed was an external energy to counterbalance the interference. If the combined energy became strong enough to overwhelm Blake¡¯s exotic energy, it would theoretically allow the lifeforce to break through. But Blake¡¯s exotic energy was mighty. A vast amount of energy would be needed to be strong enough to counterbalance it. Where would he be able to find enough energy for the task?
A chemical energy might do the trick, but he only had a handful of options on hand, and all of them were likely to do far more harm than good. Nor did he have a simple way to convert his own prodigious power into a compatible form. He did have a small electrical generator stored away that he¡¯d created for use with chemistry research, but that nothing that could create the level of power he needed right this moment. If only he hadn¡¯t recycled his old, more powerful generator nine centuries ago!
But that had always been the way he¡¯d worked, hadn¡¯t it? He prepared for his experiments ahead of time, designing and growing whatever equipment he needed beforehand while recycling the old, unneeded items. There was a limit, after all, to what he could fit into his lair, and what was the day or two needed to grow a desired object to the likes of him? His system had always served him well. Until now.
For the first time in a long time, it seemed that his methods had come back to bite him in the tail. Exposed to Blake¡¯s body, the compound would not be stable for too long¡ªhalf a day, at the very most. He could not afford the wait required to grow a generator strong enough for his needs. But what else could he do?
Fortunately, Bazzalth had an idea: if he didn¡¯t have the time to create the energy in his lair, then he would have to go outside and ¡°harvest¡± it. Unfortunately, the only two options he could think of to accomplish this were highly unpleasant, to say the least. The things he did for Knowledge...
Retreating to a storage shelf on the far side of the cave, he pulled down a device he¡¯d created long ago, back when he¡¯d been but a whelp first studying the basic nature of matter. The object had a fairly simple construction, with a smooth, rectangular body made from bone and a metal rod sticking out on each end. Taking it in hand, he left the lair¡ªignoring Blake¡¯s confused protests¡ªand took to the sky heading north.
The air was still that night as he flew between the peaks, a rare occurrence that let him increase his speed even more than normal as he swerved between the moonlit heights. Forty seven peaks later, Bazzalth descended towards what had once been a normal mountain but now was missing the upper two-thirds of its mass. This artificial plateau was covered by various geometric patterns surrounded by precisely manicured hedges, from checkerboard to hexagonal to other more abstract designs. Some of the spaces were empty, save the patterns, while others contained all manner of sculpted stone formations. Given that he didn¡¯t see the owner of these gardens within them, he landed to the east side of the former mountain and approached a tunnel that led down into what remained of the once-mighty peak.
¡°Daravith,¡± he called into the entrance.
¡°Enter,¡± came an enticing rumble a moment later.
Bazzalth took a moment to settle his nerves before he did as instructed. He had no trouble fitting inside; this tunnel had been created by somebody larger than he, though that could be said about every other person. The tunnel declined as he went, going ever deeper into the base beneath the mountain. A newcomer would likely wonder if such a design would prove a mistake, as all the nearby rain would flow down into the tunnel, flooding the lair below. Anybody who had been inside before, however, would know that this was not a flaw but a feature. In fact, the ground around the tunnel entrance had been purposely sloped towards the entrance to collect as much water as possible.
Bazzalth¡¯s ears picked up the sound of splashing echoing along the tunnel, telling him he was nearly there. Sure enough, just twenty breaths later, he emerged into a large cavern similar to his own but much larger. Unlike his lair, a full half of the cavern was filled with water, creating a large pool that surrounded a central island. Just a single path led from Bazzalth¡¯s location to the land in the center.
Within that pool, not too far from the entrance, lounged Daravith. Lying on her back, she kicked her front feet out playfully, sending a small surge of water flying towards Bazzalth before rolling over and standing up. With an amused rumble, she climbed from the pool to saunter over to him.
Bazzalth didn¡¯t even manage to react to the water flying his way; he barely even registered as it cascaded over him. His gaze and his mind were too preoccupied watching the water wash down Daravith¡¯s pristine, alluring horns, her large, powerful chest, her deadly sharp claws. Tiny droplets clung to the scales on her firm, strong muscles and lithe but powerful tail, glimmering like gemstones in the ambient glow of the moss on the walls and ceiling.
She was so, so beautiful... and she knew it, which only made her use it mercilessly against him for her own amusement. Bazzalth hated interacting with every person living in these mountains, but Daravith was easily one of his least favorites. He hated the way his body would grow hotter, his heartbeat increasing and his thoughts growing cloudier. He didn¡¯t know what to do with this rush of feelings and he resented the loss of control. His thoughts were the only thing he still had full control over when around another person, but she had to somehow twist even them. Yes, he loathed being around Daravith, but he had little choice this day, as Daravith was also the only person who could breathe lightning.
Daravith came to a halt less than a tail¡¯s length from Bazzalth, towering over him with her much larger stature. Easily more than one and a half times his height, she represented the more usual size of a person, compared to Bazzalth¡¯s diminutive presence.
¡°To think Little Bazzalth would seek out Daravith all on Bazzalth¡¯s own,¡± she purred, looking down upon him like a red-throated tree drake eyeing unsuspecting prey on the ground below. ¡°Daravith has been thinking Daravith needs to have Bazzalth make Daravith more toys. Daravith has been ever so bored.¡±
Bazzalth had wondered why she had not appeared at his lair in the last several hundred years. Before then, she had ¡°visited¡± him frequently, sometimes even more than three times a decade, to force him to make toys, games, and other items of amusement whenever she got too bored. The problem was, as a person who hoarded Recreation, Daravith was always bored¡ªextremely so. She dedicated her life to all manner of games, competitions, novelties, relaxation activities, and anything else that might help while away the days, but every person knew that one¡¯s hoard could never be satiated, only quieted for a time.
¡°Little Bazzalth has brought a gift for Daravith?¡± she purred, glancing at the device Bazzalth held in his claws.
Bazzalth gulped, trying to ignore the smell of her scent as it wafted into his nostrils. ¡°Bazzalth comes with request.¡± He held up the device. ¡°Daravith fills lightning containment unit with Daravith¡¯s lightning breath.¡±
She chuckled. ¡°Amuse Daravith for three seasons and then Daravith will consider request.¡±
Bazzalth grunted his refusal. ¡°Lightning must happen now. Bazzalth will return later if necessary.¡±
Daravith¡¯s tail whipped out towards his head faster than he could react and struck him hard enough to send him stumbling and nearly knocking him into the pool.
¡°Look at Little Bazzalth, unable to withstand even gentle touch. So weak and pathetic!¡± she laughed. ¡°Far too weak to demand conditions.¡±
She was upon him before he could ready himself, her larger, stronger body easily overpowering his and pinning him onto his back. Bazzalth¡¯s heart beat even harder and faster as she leaned in close, her humid, musky breath almost caressing his face. His body blazed ever hotter, especially in certain parts where he wasn¡¯t accustomed to feeling such heat.
¡°Someday, Daravith will take Little Bazzalth and Little Bazzalth will become only Daravith¡¯s toy. Little Bazzalth will create endless amusements for Daravith and fill Daravith¡¯s hoard until Nartrill catches Treuvax.¡± She slowly ran a razor-sharp claw along his neck as she effortlessly held him in place. The touch sent a chill shiver running down to the tip of his tail. ¡°Were Little Bazzalth not part of Tavreth¡¯s faction, Daravith would have done so already. Tavreth will not protect Little Bazzalth forever. Daravith is looking forward to that time. Daravith will be ready.¡±
¡°Lightning required to complete task for Tavreth,¡± Bazzalth gasped, hoping to use his sister¡¯s name and the fear that came with it in a last-ditch effort to get what he needed. Tavreth would not appreciate it, but he would deal with that later. ¡°Daravith desires Tavreth¡¯s rage.¡±
The other person snorted contemptuously. ¡°Daravith will not bow so readily. Even without Gretiem, Daravith¡¯s faction strong. Tell Tavreth to come instead if Tavreth desires lightning so greatly.¡±
Before Bazzalth knew what was happening, Daravith had picked him up and he found himself hurtling up the tunnel and into the tunnel wall. Stunned, he pushed himself to his feet as Daravith turned her back on him and lazily glided into the nearby water.
¡°Go now,¡± he heard her say, ¡°and next time, Little Bazzalth must remember Little Bazzalth¡¯s station.¡±
He didn¡¯t need to be told twice.
Moments later, Bazzalth emerged onto the surface and took flight once more, heading west towards the nearby ocean. His course quickly took him over the Sea of Lamentation as he fervently tried to clear his head and pull together his scattered, discombobulated thoughts.
There¡¯d been some sort of need inside him, one vastly different than that of his hoard which he was used to. Though he¡¯d felt it several times before, he still didn¡¯t understand this need or why it sometimes appeared from nowhere when confronting certain other people. He hadn¡¯t been ready for the power it had held today, however. It had been so strong that a part of him had wanted to say yes right then and there.
His resolve had held, of course. After all, if he were to do nothing but create new amusements for Daravith for the rest of his life, what would happen to his research? Who else would plumb the secrets of reality? But he knew, deep down inside, that his days of joyous research were running out. He lacked the power to oppose Daravith, whenever she eventually decided to come for him. She would force him into the role she desired, whether he wanted it or not.
Perhaps the worst part was that, as far as strength went, she was around average. He found himself grateful that only Daravith seemed to be considering this. If others also desired to bind him to a life of servitude, he didn¡¯t know what he would do.
The thought made him appreciate Tavreth¡¯s presence in his life¡ªa rare feat. But he knew deep down that she protected him not because of their shared lineage but for her own, more selfish reasons. She needed him, and that was that.
As moons grew closer to the horizon, Bazzalth finally spied the outer cloud layer of his second option: Chalacc¡¯s Fury. Nobody could remember when the massive monsoon had first appeared; it had always been there, like the sun or the moons. Lazily meandering near the center of the Sea of Lamentation with the occasional detours to glance off the surrounding landmasses, it reminded Bazzalth of the great eternal gas planet storms he¡¯d spotted through his telescope when he first decided to study the celestial bodies as a young whelp. Though its strength could not be compared to said storms¡ªif his calculations were correct, those behemoths could swallow all three moons with ease¡ªChalacc¡¯s Fury was no laughing matter. Its harsh winds and roiling lightning, especially near the center, were more than powerful enough to dissuade even the mightiest person from approaching without a good reason.
Tonight, Bazzalth had a very good reason. He¡¯d hoped, foolishly, that Daravith would be accommodating enough to assist him in his moment of need, and had decided to try her first because she was closer. Now that... that had happened instead, Chalacc¡¯s Fury was the only readily available source of the powerful lightning he required.
Strong crosswinds buffeted Bazzalth as he pushed through the outer edges of the storm. He clutched at his lightning containment unit, worried that it would slip out from a sudden unexpected gust. The solid device¡¯s weight pulled his front down, making the journey even more taxing, but he persevered for the sake of Knowledge.
The howling gale battered him now, nearly picking him up and sending him spiraling towards the brine below. Sheets of rain as thick as his wings were wide pelted him endlessly, impeding his vision. Even his potent muscles were beginning to protest under the constant strain, but he pressed on. Only a little further and he would be close enough to the heart of the storm.
Then, through the rain and the wind and the mist, he sighted his destination: a wall of cloud so dense that it could be mistaken for solid stone were it not roiling so violently. Thick cords of lightning arced across its surface, with bright pulses beneath telling of many more within.
Holding the lighting containment unit out before him, Bazzalth hurtled into the vortex and waited for the inevitable. He didn¡¯t need to wait long. Just moments later, he felt the tremendous buildup of power all around him as the air itself seemed to crackle and thrum. The storm answered his request with great enthusiasm. Blinding bolts bombarded him and his device, knocking him momentarily senseless. Debilitating pain followed as the lightning coursed through his body, but he fought through it, banking and flaring his wings to their maximum span. The storm obliged, hurling him out with a violent force.
Bazzalth tumbled through the air for several heartbeats as he regained full control over his body. Soon enough, his tumble turned into a glide and he turned towards home, the storm¡¯s winds working in his favor now.
Once, long ago when Bazzalth had been but a half his current size, he¡¯d first decided to uncover the secrets of Chalacc¡¯s Fury. It had only taken several moments for him to realize just how over-matched he¡¯d been then, and so he¡¯d declared that he would return when he could overcome the storm¡¯s might. He¡¯d returned several times since, each attempt ending the same as the last.
Now, though more than twice the size and many times the strength of the younger Bazzalth, he still was no match for the monsoon¡¯s boundless rage. He¡¯d lasted only moments within the inner storm and, had he stayed too much longer, would have suffered injury and possibly even death. His people liked to think themselves to be peerless beings, unrivaled in power; Bazzalth himself was no exception. But he found it wise to remember that they were not invincible. Chalacc¡¯s Fury stood forever as the ultimate reminder.
The remaining trip back went quickly and uneventfully. Two of the three moons still hung in the sky when he alighted in front of his lair. Proceeding through the tunnel, he entered the cavern to find Blake lying just where Bazzalth had left him, except surrounded by several small machines less than a third Blake¡¯s size. They each resembled the same basic structure as the larger robots Bazzalth was used to seeing from Blake, except instead of an arsenal of weapons, they each only had one thin, dexterous arm with a small claw at the end. With each claw Bazzalth noticed small bits of what looked like crawler food.
With great care, one of the robots lowered the claw and deposited the food in Blake¡¯s mouth. His mouth worked slowly and weakly, the simple act enough to strain him. He swallowed, another seemingly exhausting process.
¡°Glad I decided to bring my own food, just in case,¡± the crawler said as the robots scattered upon Bazzalth¡¯s entrance. ¡°If I¡¯m going to die, I¡¯d prefer something quicker than starvation, thank you very much. What the hell did you rush off for, anyway? You didn¡¯t even seem to hear me when I was calling for you.¡±
¡°Bazzalth needed to harvest for procedure.¡±
¡°Procedure? I thought the procedure failed.¡±
¡°Correct. Healing compound did not activate. Too much energy resisting reactions. Bazzalth has developed theory to counteract energy.¡± He set the lightning containment unit onto the examination table not far from the crawler.
¡°Well, shit. And to think I¡¯d given up. This is why I came to you. I knew you could do this,¡± Blake told him with a warm smile. He glanced at the unit. ¡°So is that part of this... theory or whatever?¡±
¡°Indeed,¡± Bazzalth answered as he turned away to look for the rest of the necessary equipment.
¡°What is it?¡±
Bazzalth reached into a storage container, moved several other old devices aside, and pulled out two long metal cables, each with one end terminating in a solid sphere. ¡°Lightning containment unit.¡±
¡°Lightning containment? You mean a battery?¡±
Battery? Bazzalth examined the unfamiliar word, as well as the intent that came with it, and found it most agreeable. It summarized the lightning containment unit well while being more efficient. He would use it. ¡°Correct.¡±
¡°Are you sure that this procedure or whatever is going to be safe?¡±
¡°Blake-crawler¡¯s condition too severe now. Safe procedures will produce unsatisfactory results,¡± Bazzalth informed the crawler as he pulled out a lightning-proof mat from the bottom of the same storage compartment, as well as manacles made from the same material. Both of them were leftover from certain experiments he¡¯d done on crawlers several centuries ago. ¡°If unsafe procedure fails, Blake-crawler will die regardless.¡± The sound of a soft sigh behind him suggested that perhaps this logic was not enough for Blake, so he decided to reassure the crawler. ¡°Bazzalth sure either result will provide fascinating data.¡±
¡°But it should work, right?¡± Bazzalth noted how Blake¡¯s wheeze increased in pitch and seemed to sound a bit... tighter, perhaps? His still limited experience suggested that the crawler was becoming worried. Strange that his assurances had not worked.
¡°Bazzalth estimates success odds at approximately sixty four percent,¡± he informed his guest as he picked him up and placed the mat beneath him before setting it down.
¡°That¡¯s all?!¡± His subject was clearly growing more agitated as time went on. It would be best to begin the final procedure as soon as possible. Bazzalth connected the first cable to the battery and placed the spherical end to Blake¡¯s right. ¡°What are you even going to do? That battery is to power a machine or something, right? Right?¡±
¡°Energy within must be counterbalanced by energy without,¡± Bazzalth explained as he fastened the manacles first to the table and then to Blake¡¯s arms and legs.
¡°Let¡¯s hold off for a bit and talk this over.¡±
¡°Cannot wait, serum will break down soon.¡±
¡°No, no, wait, let¡¯s step back and think this-¡±
¡°Prepare for pain,¡± Bazzalth advised. Placing the second cable¡¯s end to the crawler¡¯s left, he completed the connection.
Blake spasmed against the restraints as the lightning arced through him, his face contorted into a mockery of it normal self. As Bazzalth watched, he couldn¡¯t help but note how unprepared for pain the crawler appeared despite his clear warning on the matter. At least the lightning coursing through Blake¡¯s chest kept him from screaming. The screams of crawlers annoyed Bazzalth, one of the many reasons he preferred his test subjects to be already dead.
The putrid scent of burning fecal matter informed Bazzalth that Blake had voided his bowels. With a loud gag, he spat up the contents of his stomach as well. Bazzalth noted the low volume of vomit with encouragement. Nourishment was important when it came to healing.
All around the lair, the sound crashing metal echoed. Bazzalth glanced away from his subject for a moment to assess the noises. What he found were Blake¡¯s robotic creations scattered around the cavern, each spasming as violently as their creator. Slowly their forms degraded, the metal melting away until all that remained were cantacrenyx crystals lying in puddles of liquid tucrenyx. How utterly fascinating! He would have to find a way to study that later. For now, however, his focus needed to be on Blake himself.
Getting his microscope to focus on the writhing crawler was a near impossible task, so Bazzalth would not know if the process was working as intended until completion, which would not come for another twenty-two breaths. Until then, he could only wait.
The lightning continued to rampage through Blake¡¯s body, but as the process neared the thirteenth breath, Bazzalth noticed something was wrong. Blake¡¯s writhing magnitude was dropping, as if the level of pain was decreasing rapidly. Yet, according to Bazzalth¡¯s calculations, it was far too early for his body to have healed. Was the current weakening?
As if to answer the question, thick plumes of smoke began to spew from the battery at an alarming rate. Rushing over to the newly befouled device, he blew a steady stream of air towards the source of the smoke to get a better view. A small, hairline crack ran along the bottom and side of the container! Where had this come from?! It hadn¡¯t been there when he¡¯d left the lair!
The scene of Daravith hurling him roughly down the tunnel to her lair crept back into his mind. That must have been when the damage had been done. Or maybe the battery had been unable to hold up to the strain of the lightning inside it? Perhaps both?
No, the reason mattered little at this point. What mattered was that the battery was losing charge quickly, and there was nothing he could do about it. The damage had already been done. Blake¡¯s treatment would not continue for much longer, meaning he would not receive the full benefits of the serum, not even close.
Slowly the lightning faltered, going from dozens of separate prongs to ten to five to two to one. Finally, with a pathetic sputter, the last line petered out and the lair returned to mostly silence.
Bazzalth leaned in, studying the still-twitching form of his subject. Listening closely, he heard the weak but present sound of a heartbeat, each beat getting slowly but steadily stronger. Blake would live, it seemed. Exactly as planned.
Well, perhaps not exactly as planned. Cut off prematurely, the serum had not been able to fully restore Blake¡¯s body: Blake¡¯s left arm remained missing. On the other hand, his legs had filled out greatly, no longer the shriveled sticks from before. They looked like actual legs now, with visible muscle and everything, and Bazzalth could see no sign of infection.
After removing the battery and the connected cables, Bazzalth fetched a container of water and splashed it on and around the crawler to wash off the area. When that proved to be not enough, he fetched a second. It ended up taking five containers before Blake¡¯s body appeared fully clean. Picking the unconscious crawler up, he moved him to another area of the table, away from the water, and covered his naked body with several furs.
Blake showed signs of stirring not long after, quicker than Bazzalth had expected.
¡°What the fuck, dude,¡± he muttered weakly. ¡°You couldn¡¯t even get my consent before you put me in the chair?¡±
¡°Bazzalth did not put you in any sort of seat,¡± Bazzalth corrected him.
¡°It¡¯s a figure of speech,¡± Blake answered, as if that somehow explained it. ¡°Still, I-¡± His eyes shot open. ¡°I¡¯m talking. I¡¯m talking! It worked!¡± Overeager, he tried to push himself up from beneath the furs, only to thrash about ineffectually.
¡°Wait,¡± he muttered, pulling the furs off him. ¡°My arm¡¯s still missing! My legs! I still can¡¯t feel my legs!¡±
¡°Process aborted prematurely due to battery failure,¡± Bazzalth explained. ¡°Body was not able to fully heal.¡±
¡°...and that¡¯s it, isn¡¯t it? That¡¯s all I get? Can¡¯t do it again.¡±
¡°Second dose will cause rampant cellular degeneration and destruction,¡± Bazzalth reminded him.
For some reason, the crawler began to chuckle. ¡°Oh, right, of course! Of course it does! Since when has this world ever given me anything I wanted? Ahaha!¡± His complete right hand curled into a fist, and he began to slam it into the table over and over with enough strength to send noticeable tremors along the top. ¡°What a fucking idiot I am! What a loser! Ahahahahaha!¡±
Bazzalth didn¡¯t know what to think as he watched Blake laugh uproariously while shouting insults at himself. Was he happy or upset? Or...
¡°Is Blake-crawler mentally well? Such laughter may indicate brain damage.¡±
¡°Oh, if only,¡± came the guffawed response. ¡°Hope is one hell of a drug, man. The comedown is rough.¡±
¡°Give Bazzalth hope sample and Bazzalth can try to produce antidote,¡± Bazzalth told him.
For some reason, Blake found Bazzalth¡¯s simple statement of fact to be the funniest thing he¡¯d ever heard. He doubled over in hilarity as Bazzalth looked on, nonplussed. Bazzalth couldn¡¯t help but wonder if he would ever fully understand such illogical creatures, or if he even wanted to.
¡°Hoooooo, booooy,¡± Blake wheezed when his cackling fit had finally died down. ¡°Was that a joke? You¡¯re telling jokes now? There¡¯s a chance for you yet.¡± He sighed. ¡°I¡¯m just bummed. I was really looking forward to being able to walk again. You don¡¯t know what you got until it¡¯s gone, as they say.¡±
¡°While regrettable, outcome was always many standard deviations from likeliest subset when Blake-crawler first arrived. Only fools clutch at such outliers. Blake-crawler should consider that even current outcome was unlikely,¡± Bazzalth enlightened the misguided crawler. ¡°Bazzalth agreed to attempt to halt death. Bazzalth did not agree to bring Blake-crawler to perfect condition. Blake-crawler should rejoice in eradication of infection, regeneration of leg musculature, and increased vigor. Blake-crawler will likely live long life with current condition.¡±
¡°You know what? You¡¯re right. I shouldn¡¯t be upset about this,¡± Blake said, seemingly to himself more than Bazzalth. ¡°Even without my... legs and whatnot, I haven¡¯t felt this good in years. My body feels strong, and the pain is completely gone!¡± He held up his right fist in front of his face, relaxing his hand and then reforming a fist over and over. ¡°I was able to work with less, I can work with this. I can. I can.¡±
Tucrenyx began to flow up the table and form around Blake, beginning to form a suit of armor like the one he¡¯d worn before. Quickly, Bazzalth reached out and grabbed the crawler, pulling him from the metal before it could solidify around him.
¡°Hey, what gives?¡± Blake whined.
¡°Did Blake-crawler forget? Several days remain before end of agreement. Now that Blake-crawler is healthy, Bazzalth can cease holding back. Blake-crawler¡¯s body has so much more Knowledge to offer, and Bazzalth will harvest every last drop.¡± He eyed Blake with gusto.
Blake gulped.
Chapter 109
The city of Kukego bustled with activity in the early morning, the rush of people visible even from high above. The arrival of Arlette¡¯s group generated as large a crowd this time as it had the last, only this time, the soldiers there to greet them looked far less on edge.
Without much ceremony, Sofie, Gabriela, and Arlette were ushered to what appeared to be some sort of guest house near the main administrative quarter and told to wait there. Gabriela had carefully placed Pari¡¯s casket upon a nearby table, set down a large metal box beside it, and they¡¯d settled down to wait while ignoring the dozen or so guards outside.
¡°Ugh, I can¡¯t believe we have to wear these lame outfits,¡± Sofie griped, tugging at the thick collar of her traditional Otharian formal clothing. ¡°They¡¯re way too hot for this place. It¡¯s not even summer yet and it¡¯s already sweltering here.¡±
¡°Though we¡¯re here on personal business, we are still representatives of Otharia,¡± Gabriela replied, begrudgingly tugging on a ruffled sleeve with similar distaste. ¡°We have an image to maintain.¡±
Arlette watched the other two fuss with their ornate dresses with smug amusement. The ostentatious garments practically overflowed with unnecessary frills, ribbons, and other ornaments of current Otharian high fashion. Were she, Arlette, here with the others, she would have had to wear one as well, but she didn¡¯t. That was because ¡®Arlette¡¯ was not in the room with them, ¡®Khiran¡¯ was.
A disguise that Arlette had donned before leaving the airship, Khiran had long orange hair, pale, freckled skin, and soft blue eyes. Like the others, Khiran wore a thick Otharian dress, but hers was entirely an illusion. That meant she could wear a much more temperature-appropriate outfit underneath. Her true clothes were thin, tight, and short to allow for the largest variety of fake clothes to be layered on top.
¡°We didn¡¯t when we came here the last time,¡± Sofie argued.
¡°That¡¯s because Leo didn¡¯t find out in time to have outfits made for us the last time,¡± Gabriela pointed out. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t want to throw away all his hard work, would you?¡±
¡°Hmph,¡± Sofie pouted. ¡°I guess. I wouldn¡¯t want to make Leo upset. Poor guy has enough on his plate without us making things more difficult. Still, the sooner I can get out of this, the better. How long do you think they¡¯ll make us wait?¡±
¡°How long do you think they¡¯ll make us wait?¡± Sofie wondered after an hour.
¡°Probably for a good while,¡± Arlette replied, her illusory voice lower and huskier than her usual one. She ran a hand through her long, dark orange hair, feeling it transition from the solid of her short real hair to the longer fake locks that covered them. ¡°I bet this is the Chos expressing her displeasure with Lord Ferros over the delay and his... later requests.¡±
Sofie snorted. ¡°Somehow, that doesn¡¯t surprise me. I wonder how he¡¯s doing right now.¡±
¡°Probably dead,¡± Arlette surmised.
Gabriela shook her head. ¡°No, that...¡± She looked around at her surroundings, seeming to realize that they were likely not alone. While nobody was in the room, that did not mean that nobody was listening. ¡°...that person wouldn¡¯t risk it, probably. He cared about Pari too much.¡±
Arlette leaned back on a pile of cushions, letting the soft fur lining caress the back of her neck. ¡°I still can¡¯t believe you willingly went and just talked to... to one of them.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Sofie wondered. ¡°It¡¯s hard to believe, but supposedly he did raise Pari.¡±
¡°Even if true, that means nothing,¡± Arlette countered. ¡°They are not beings that can be just talked to like that. They are avatars of rage and destruction, not conversation partners. Sofie, surely you have not forgotten what happened the day we met?¡±
¡°That¡¯s true, I guess. Grandfather was angry too, but he did speak. That other one seemed... different, like it wasn¡¯t even capable of understanding speech, or even sentient thought. It was just a giant killing machine.¡±
¡°Well, it worked, didn¡¯t it?¡± Gabriela replied, running a finger along the metal casket.
¡°I learned long ago that just because something works doesn¡¯t mean it was ever a good idea,¡± Arlette said. ¡°I¡¯d very much like the person who pays me to stay alive and not chase after deadly things for no reason, thank you very much.¡±
¡°He did have-¡± Gabriela cut herself off mid-sentence, a sheepish look momentarily passing over her face. ¡°Never mind.¡±
¡°What? He had what?¡± Sofie pressed.
¡°Nothing,¡± Gabriela said with a shake of her head. ¡°Forget I said anything.¡±
¡°Come on, tell us!¡±
¡°Sofie, leave it,¡± Arlette told her. ¡°Whatever it is, he¡¯ll tell us when he¡¯s ready.¡±
¡°Fine, whatever,¡± came the grumpy response. ¡°I¡¯m surprised you¡¯re still so big on the idea of secrets after how much they¡¯ve hurt you, but you do you, I guess.¡±
¡°This and that aren¡¯t the same at all,¡± Arlette stated, feeling a little annoyed at Sofie¡¯s jab.
¡°How would you know?¡± the collared girl shot back. ¡°You have no idea what sort of secrets that man might be keeping.¡±
¡°Now is not the time or place for any of this,¡± the woman known as the Monster said with a cowering glare.
Both Arlette and Sofie flinched. Although the shortest of the three, Gabriela knew how to project menace like nobody else when she wanted to.
¡°Sorry,¡± they both said at the same time.
¡°I know you two aren¡¯t getting along too well right now, but at least fake it until we can get back on the ship.¡±
Appropriately cowed, the two fell silent. Arlette turned her attention momentarily to the nearby metal casket, very similar in design to the one that had held the child immediately after her death. The one difference was that the casket was not sloped like before, as not even a drop of the deadly rainbow blood remained in the girl. It seemed that all of her remaining normal fluids had been removed before recovery and replaced with something more benign. The issue was, the ¡°benign¡± fluid tinted Pari¡¯s body blue, lending everything a very unsettling appearance. Sofie had said that the girl looked like a ¡°blueberry¡±, a fruit from her world that Arlette was not very eager to try if it truly looked similar.
Arlette¡¯s hunch proved correct¡ªor at least she thought so¡ªwhen it took over four hours for the relevant Stragmans to show themselves. The Chos entered with a swagger and a look of eager anticipation. Her eyes immediately fell upon Gabriela, staring at her like a hungry man looked at an exquisite roast just out of reach. She had her massive war club propped up upon her shoulder, as she always did whenever Arlette saw her. Arlette¡¯s gaze flickered momentarily to the one ear atop the Stragman¡¯s head, her mind flashing back for a moment to the battle where the massive woman had lost the other one. Arlette¡¯s mind still boggled at the thought that the Chos had taken on a chimirin-boosted elite warrior and won with wounds so light.
Entering behind her were a dozen guards, each formidable in appearance. While Arlette could tell just from the way they carried themselves that these were experienced and highly capable fighters, their tattoos just made it all the more clear.
Tattoos were always the easiest way to tell a Stragman¡¯s station. Flegs had simple designs that only covered part of the neck, shoulder, and upper arm. Blous took the Fleg patterns and elaborated on them, adding embellishments and detail while also expanding the total area covered to the entire arm. Hono markings were even more complex and spread to the chest.
The Blou tattoos on each of the guards¡¯ strong, fit bodies made an odd comparison to the Hono marking on the man they accompanied, the Chos¡¯s husband General Caprakan Bloodflower and his debilitated form. The man before her today, hobbling forward using a pair of crutches, bore little resemblance to the amiable, pleasant fellow she¡¯d first met the year before. Scars crisscrossed almost every piece of visible skin, seemingly at war with the complex Hono tattoos on his arms and chest. While noticeably thin, there were signs that the man¡¯s body was filling out again, but she could clearly see a difference in the development of his upper body compared to its lower counterpart.
Tehlmar had told her about his sister¡¯s ugly history with the Chos. He¡¯d informed her as best he could about what she¡¯d done to Palebane¡¯s husband, though he hadn¡¯t been too knowledgeable about the details. That was likely all for the best, she figured. Hearing that she had severed all the major tendons in his lower body, rendering him unable to move any part of his legs and feet, was already more than she wanted to know.
The knowledge brought back the memory of beneath the farmhouse just the year prior when she¡¯d done much the same, though only to a single tendon. Still, one was more than enough. After what Sulwyn had tried to do, she didn¡¯t feel much guilt for crippling him for a year or more, but she would never forget the terrified look in his eyes as she did it.
Caprakan Bloodflower¡¯s eyes held none of that terror, but she saw something else within them: a desperate determination, like he was clinging onto the edge of a cliff with everything he had, just fingertips away from disaster. While his time in Drayhadal had been literally torturous, Arlette wondered if his days were now torture of the more figurative variety. While the man was an accomplished Observer, Tehlmar¡¯s sister¡¯s ministrations had robbed him of much of his strength, and in a society where strength was merit, the husband of the leader and strongest person in the nation could not be weak. His current state would be a constant source of shame, both to him, his family, his partner, and the nation as a whole... and there was nothing he could do about it except wait through each seemingly endless season until his body finally returned to normal. Or, he could have himself healed by the last member of the incoming group. Why he chose not to was a mystery, and what that Arlette could only idly wonder at.
Speaking of that last member, Arlette almost didn¡¯t notice his existence until he was just a handful of steps away, a bizarre circumstance given the man¡¯s sheer size. Though large, imposing, and covered with muscles that looked like they could lift a mountain, the man lacked presence. Despite the eye patch over his right eye, the man did not carry himself like a fighter, or at least not like one who still had some fight within him.
Arlette took in the man¡¯s curly graying beard, calm brown eye, and dark tan skin and committed it all to memory. This had to be the Stragman¡¯s Earthling. Before leaving, Blake had instructed her to come to Stragma if his mission to retrieve Pari ended successfully. Her mission was to identify the Earthling here and ascertain what was going on with them. It took only a moment¡¯s glance to know that this man did not enjoy his situation, as he made no attempt to hide his forlorn mood. It would be her next task to ascertain why.
¡°About time you showed up,¡± the Chos had the audacity to say. ¡°I hope you have everything you promised.¡±
¡°It¡¯s right here,¡± Gabriela curtly replied, indicating the nearby box.
¡°And the fight?¡± the Stragman asked with relish.
¡°If that is the price, I will do it.¡±
¡°Tomorrow evening, at the Champion¡¯s Arena. Until then, I will allow you to roam the city to experience our great culture.¡± Arlette didn¡¯t believe that for a second. There was no way in hell they would be able to roam freely, at least not without being watched at all times.
Gabriela¡¯s eyes flashed with a hint of malice. ¡°No, you will bring Pari back now, not tomorrow. I already agreed to fight when I don¡¯t really want to. Don¡¯t push me.¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t dream of it!¡± the Chos declared, not even batting an eye at the danger coming from across the room. ¡°I am a woman of my word. You shall get what you bargained for. The only stipulation is that I will not allow you to return to your flying machine until after the fight. Can¡¯t have you running off early without paying in full, of course. Assuming, of course, that the rest of your payment is satisfactory?¡±
Gabriela stepped forward and pushed the large metal box towards the Stragmans, who eyed it with suspicion. ¡°Here it is,¡± she said. ¡°Lord Ferros could not be here today, but he told me how to use it.¡±
She picked the box up and set it on its small end so it stood like a dresser and pressed something on the back. The box split open to reveal what looked like a metal cage shaped like a person from the shoulders down hanging from the inside of the box. The cage had two halves, the top half just a handful of thin rods that barely outlined the shape of a human, the bottom half a series of plates overlapping each other in the shape of legs. At the same time, the back¡ªor what she assumed was the back, at least¡ªopened up wide, as if preparing to consume a man whole.
¡°Get inside,¡± she told the cripple.
The general and the guards hesitated, and Arlette didn¡¯t blame them. This looked closer to some arcane torture device than something helpful. Still, after a moment and with some assistance, General Bloodflower managed to enter the contraption, putting his arms in first and hanging from the upper part as a guard pushed his dangling legs into their slots.
A moment later, the contraption came alive and closed, stitching together until Arlette couldn¡¯t tell that there¡¯d been an opening at all. The plates on the lower half shifted, sliding in and out, around and between each other as they tightened around the Stragman¡¯s legs, eventually locking in place to form a near-seamless armor encasing the lower body. The upper half tightened as well, though the rods were so thin that the vast majority of his body could still be seen through the large openings.
The box let out a shrill beep and then released Blake¡¯s creation, enclosed Stragman and all, from its clutches. Only Gabriela¡¯s quick hands prevented him from falling smack down on his rear as he wildly and uncontrollably tipped backward. After catching him as he toppled, she dragged him over to a nearby sofa and leaned his back against the side so he was halfway between sitting and lying down.
The Chos rushed over, clearly unhappy with her husband¡¯s state. ¡°I swear, if you hurt him-¡± she began.
¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± he cut in. ¡°It¡¯s just very tight. How is this supposed to work?¡±
¡°First, bend both your pinkie fingers to the point that they touch your palms. This puts the legs into ¡®Walking Mode¡¯, meaning that the legs will now react to your movements, allowing you to control them,¡± Gabriela told the general, speaking as if she were reciting instructions memorized¡ªwhich she clearly was. ¡°When in Walking Mode, each leg is directly controlled by your arm and hand movements.¡±
She continued for a while, droning on and on. Arlette could almost hear Blake¡¯s voice as she said things like ¡°adaptive input algorithms¡± and ¡°limited torque capacity¡±.
¡°That was... a lot,¡± Bloodflower remarked when she finally finished.
¡°Focus for now on just getting the hang of moving your legs as you sit. Experiment and learn. Lord Ferros told me to tell you that the suit will learn and adjust to you as you do the same to it, but it will still be a while before you will be able to stand, let alone walk. ¡®Walking is a very complex activity that we all take for granted¡¯ is how he put it.¡±
The Chos harrumphed, mollified slightly for the moment.
¡°Now it¡¯s your turn,¡± Gabriela stated.
¡°...fine,¡± Palebane replied, waving, almost shooing, the large eye-patched man forward. ¡°Do it.¡±
The large Earthling stepped forward, obediently but with a noted lack of urgency or enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Sofie and Arlette undid a latch at the top of the container, letting the top swing on a hinge down and out of the way. This opened the way for them to pull the thin platform upon which Pari¡¯s body rested out of the larger container until Pari¡¯s entire body laid exposed. Though the platform and Pari jutted out well past the edge of the table upon which the container rested, the container had so much weight that even if Arlette had joined Pari, there would have been no worry of it tipping over.
¡°All ready,¡± Sofie said to the bearded man. ¡°Thank you very much for doing this, Mister... what was your name?¡±
The man opened his mouth to speak.
¡°Hey!¡± the Chos snapped before he could say anything. ¡°No chit-chat! Get it over with!¡±
The man¡¯s mouth closed and his lips drew into a line, but he begrudgingly did as ordered. Placing his hands above Pari¡¯s still body, his eyes shifted focusing on something that Arlette could not see. His face scrunched up in effort and he let out a grunt of effort. Nothing happened.
Moments passed as that nothing continued to happen, the room largely silent save the thumps of General Bloodflower¡¯s legs twitching as he experimented with the assistive armor. The large man stood largely still, his eyes now closed. Though the room was relatively cool for Stragma at the current time of day and year, his body had broken out into a heavy sweat.
¡°Are you trying to make us look bad?¡± Palebane finally snarled at the Earthling. ¡°What in Ruresni¡¯s name are you trying to pull?¡±
¡°It¡¯s... this one¡¯s different,¡± the man grunted, his deep voice low and tired. ¡°She¡¯s... heavier, far heavier than the others. I¡¯m trying my best but I can barely push her.¡±
¡°No excuses!¡± the Chos shot back. ¡°Just get it done!¡±
The man sighed and returned to whatever it was he was supposedly doing. He took a deep breath, let out a grunt, and closed his eyes.
More moments passed in silence. Every so often, the man would tremble for a moment and his breathing would become heavier for a little bit, but outside of that, still, nothing changed.
Until suddenly, things did.
Having spent many years as a mercenary, Arlette had witnessed death in a hundred ways, including many deaths much like Pari¡¯s¡ªthe bowels are cut, the entrails spill out, and the only question left is how long before the loss of blood finishes the job. This only made the experience of watching somebody un-die that much stranger.
Somebody, the god known as ¡°Grandfather¡± most likely, had packed the child¡¯s loose intestines back into the torso cavity. Arlette¡¯s mind boggled as those intestines slowly unfurled, splaying out across Pari¡¯s lower body. Blood that had not been present within them began to flow into the large gash as the entrails then reversed course and began to slither back into the little girl¡¯s gut like a mass of writhing worms. Then the large wound started to shrink, the side on Pari¡¯s left closing up and transforming back into spotless skin as it worked its way along the torso towards the initial puncture. Then, the last of it disappeared and it was as if nothing had ever happened to Pari in the first place.
The man let out a large gasp and fell to the floor. He laid there, panting and wheezing, utterly spent.
Meanwhile, Pari¡¯s body inhaled and her eyes flashed open. Before she even had a chance to process what was going on, Sofie swept her up into a crushing hug, blubbering apologies and bawling like an old, sorry drunk at last call.
¡°Alright, it¡¯s done. Get him out of here,¡± the Chos told the guards impatiently. She scooped her partner up, eliciting a squawk of protest, as the guards lifted the Earthling up and draped him over their shoulders. As they left, she looked back at Gabriela with fire in her eyes. ¡°Enjoy the sights and get yourself prepared. I won¡¯t be holding back tomorrow. You had better be ready to do the same.¡±
They left as suddenly as they entered, leaving only Arlette, a scowling Gabriela, a profusely apologetic Sofie, and one extremely perturbed beastkin girl.
Trapped in Sofie¡¯s vise-like embrace, Pari peeked through the gap between her sister¡¯s arm and chest, her eyes taking in what little she could that wasn¡¯t blocked by armpit. She sniffed, taking in the myriad scents of Stragma and Sofie, her tail lashing about with increasing agitation.
Finally, Sofie seemed to catch on to Pari¡¯s discomfort and released her adoptive sibling. Pari¡¯s eyes swept the room and she sniffed deeply again, her brow furrowing in consternation. ¡°Where meat pies go?¡± she finally asked.
¡°Mmmmmm, what is that divine smell?¡±
Arlette, or rather Khiran, stood in front of a small food stall several blocks from her and her party¡¯s Chos-provided lodgings. After ¡®changing¡¯ into simpler clothes better suited for long walks through a hot jungle city and leaving the guest house, it hadn¡¯t taken long for her to end up here. The heavenly sweet, savory, and spicy scent had called to her immediately, almost leading her by the nose right to this very spot.
¡°What? Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯ve never had prekali before,¡± the old man replied, skeptically, his large, bushy tail twitching slightly. ¡°Everybody¡¯s eaten prekali. Unless...¡± He squinted at her, giving her a more thorough inspection.
¡°You are correct, I¡¯m not from around here,¡± Arlette informed him, cutting to the chase. She leaned in and twisted to look at the sky, pointing up and away towards a small grey dot visible through the relatively sparse tree cover. ¡°In fact, if you look up, you can see how I arrived right over there.¡±
The man¡¯s budding suspicion evaporated almost instantly and his eyes lit up. ¡°Oh, you¡¯re one of the people who came from the flying thing!¡± he exclaimed, his face lighting up. ¡°First time you all showed up, you did it not even a block from where I¡¯d set up for the day. Best day of business I¡¯ve had in seasons with those crowds!¡±
¡°Glad to hear it, though I would have thought you¡¯d have great business always if you¡¯re selling something that smells so scrumptious.¡±
¡°Haha, a woman after my own heart! Here, have one on the house, as thanks.¡± He picked up a flatbread and piled it high with some sort of ground meat and vegetables that she didn¡¯t recognize. After slathering the whole thing with a fruity sauce, also of unknown origin, and handed the completed prekali to Arlette.
She took a bite and let a moan of pleasure work its way out of her food-stuffed mouth. Why couldn¡¯t Otharian food be this good? What even was in it? She decided she didn¡¯t want to know, lest knowing ruin the magic.
¡°So, I have to admit, this place is a lot more... peaceful and orderly than I expected. I¡¯d heard there¡¯d been some kind of rebellion or something going on here.¡±
Indeed, everything she¡¯d seen so far of Stragma¡¯s spring city appeared to be a neat, organized, and pleasant place. The buildings, though odd to her eyes with their modular construction designed for easier migration, looked colorful, well-maintained, and clean. People walked the well-swept streets, chattering happily without much concern. All in all, not much different than other wealthier areas in well-run metropolises she¡¯d been to. Had Arlette not already known of what had happened just a season ago, she would never have suspected anything had happened.
The shopkeeper¡¯s face went dark. ¡°Those no-good Shell bastards!¡± he huffed. ¡°Nearly ruined my business, they did! It¡¯s all that newcomer¡¯s fault! Knew he was trouble from the moment I saw him!¡±
¡°Yeah?¡± she mumbled through another bite. She could see the crotchety man picking up momentum and decided a light touch would be best.
¡°He disrespected the Chos in front of the entire nation, can you believe it? Then he started up a thrice-damned rebellion! Got all those lowlifes thinking they should be getting what they don¡¯t deserve!¡± He turned his head and spat on the ground in disgust. The motion revealed something Arlette hadn¡¯t been able to see before from her vantage point: the distinctive patterned tattoo of a Fleg running down the side of his neck.
¡°Useless, no good weaklings,¡± he muttered. ¡°They¡¯re a weight on the rest of us, dragging us all down, and suddenly they want handouts?! Bah! Palebane-chos put them all in their place, she did, especially that uppity newcomer. We won¡¯t have to worry about them getting ideas anymore.¡±
¡°She put it down all by herself? How did she manage that?¡± she wondered.
¡°Don¡¯t know, to be honest. There are rumors, of course, but there¡¯s rumors about everything these days. What matters is that she did it. We¡¯ve all seen her parading that bastard around so the Shells can all see their hero defeated.¡± He sniffed. ¡°You need to really rub their noses in it so they can understand their role, you see.¡±
Arlette didn¡¯t see, but she kept that to herself as she shoveled the last of her meal into her maw. She¡¯d never had too strong of an opinion on Stragman society as a whole; their system was their system and she¡¯d always felt like she had no right to judge. What the Fleg wanted, on the other hand, seemed rather excessive.
¡°Well, thanks for the chat,¡± she said. ¡°What do you say to one more to take with me?¡±
¡°Of course. That will be 14 Skints,¡± the stingy old bastard replied with his hand extended.
Arlette idly wandered the streets of Kukego and surveyed the local shops as the day moved into the early afternoon. She burped, decided she was full for now, and tucked the remaining half of her second prekali into a small bag strapped to her side. It had taken her almost a quarter of an hour to convince the miserly codger to take Otharian money, as she had no Stragman coin on her, but eventually they¡¯d come to an agreement. The rest of that hour she¡¯d spent playing tourist and thinking back to the day¡¯s events as she made her way through various neighborhoods.
All in all, Pari had taken the whole ¡°coming back to life in a different country¡± thing remarkably in stride. One would have expected some crying or panicking, at least, but no, she¡¯d been remarkably calm the whole time. The closest anything had come to that had been the moment Pari had finally realized that Samanta wasn¡¯t there with the rest of them. Their assurances that her friend was safe and sound had been all it took to erase her worries and return her to the blithe young creature she usually was.
Perhaps Arlette should have expected this; the child¡¯s grasp of normalcy was like night and day to that of an average person, and the less Arlette thought about Pari¡¯s danger sense, the better. It stood to reason that being raised by a god would make it hard to worry about such mundane dangers as large beasts or a man with a blade, she reasoned.
Watching your adopted sister die in front of you, on the other hand, had made it hard for Sofie to not worry about everything. When Arlette had left to go walk alone, Gabriela, Sofie, and Pari had been a quarter of an hour into an argument about if it was safe to let the child outside, and she would not have been shocked if they were still arguing about it over an hour later. Predictably, Sofie was overreacting and acting like just stepping outside would cause Pari¡¯s head to fall off. Arlette knew that Sofie would eventually come around to the side of reason, but it would take her some time, and Arlette didn¡¯t care to be around for the whole ordeal. Besides, she had more important things to do today.
There was just one small problem: Arlette was being followed, or at least so she believed. It made sense, of course, that the Stragmans would want to keep tabs on everybody in their little group. She thought that maybe she¡¯d spotted one person tailing her at a distance in the crowded streets, but that was based only on glances out of the corners of her eyes as she¡¯d window shopped, so she wasn¡¯t entirely sure. She¡¯d avoided any active searching. She didn¡¯t want them knowing she knew they were there, if they were actually there.
She¡¯d led her tails around long enough, she decided, as she spotted a public bathhouse several buildings down the street. Public bath culture in Stragma was interesting. Baths were, ostensibly, free. Run by Shells at the behest of the government, the bathhouses were not allowed to charge for entry. Any financial support for them past the seasonal government grants came exclusively from tips provided by the patrons for good service. Supposedly, it had been that way for centuries, but all Arlette cared about at this moment was that it made for the perfect spot to ditch her stalkers.
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Walking in, she quickly took a left towards the female changing room. The bathhouse was fairly busy at this time of day, and nobody paid any attention to her as she moseyed into one of the private changing stalls, only to reemerge a heartbeat later a changed woman.
The new Arlette sported deep dark skin, golden slit-pupil eyes, and pitch-black hair that matched both the black fur covering triangular ears and the tail poking out of her traditional Stragman daily attire. The distinctive winding tattoos of a Fleg wound from the sides of her neck down her shoulders to her upper arms. This new identity she called ¡°Parin¡±, as she was essentially a concept based on Arlette¡¯s estimation of what a grown-up Pari would look like. Always one for detail, Arlette made sure to add in a sheen to her ¡°newly washed and treated¡± hair, given that Parin had supposedly just finished her time in the baths.
A new patron entered, a woman who seemed very uninterested in changing or bathing. She scanned the entire chamber, looking for something and not finding it. With a curse, she headed quickly for the rear doorway which led to the baths themselves. With no small amount of amusement, Arlette walked right by her on her way towards the entrance and the woman didn¡¯t notice a thing.
Leaving the establishment, Arlette spotted the one man whom she¡¯d initially tagged as possibly following her. He stood near another man, the two of them talking as they watched the bathhouse entrance. Curious, Arlette strained her ears as she walked by them, neither of them batting an eye at her.
¡°Don¡¯t know why Granta felt the need to rush in after her,¡± the one said. ¡°There¡¯s only one entrance to this place. All we need to do is watch and wait. The Otharian will come out eventually.¡±
¡°I know, right?¡± the other agreed. ¡°And it¡¯s not like it¡¯s the end of the world if she somehow slipped over the walls or something. We¡¯ll be able to pick her up again, no sweat. She¡¯s a human, she¡¯ll stick out wherever she goes.¡±
She suppressed a chuckle. She¡¯d stick out wherever she went, would she? She wished the duo luck in their vigil as she continued on her way towards her real destination. Hopefully, they¡¯d be there all day.
It wasn¡¯t hard for ¡°Parin¡± to know when she¡¯d arrived at a Shell neighborhood. The drop-off in shelter quality alone told her all she needed to know.
The buildings elsewhere, like by the prekali stall earlier, were modular and made for easy disassembly and transportation; if one looked closely, one could see where the walls fit into the floor, how the ceiling intersected with the walls, etc. Yet, for all of that, those buildings still looked and felt like real, legitimate structures, buildings with a sense of solidity and permanence.
The structures here? Not so much.
Looking around, Arlette saw ramshackle buildings built out of misshapen metal, broken planks of wood, and all manner of other detritus. Those were the lucky ones. Many others were relegated to tents stitched together from patches of worn-out fabric, set up haphazardly on the hard ground. It was almost like this place wasn¡¯t so much a neighborhood as it was an encampment that happened to be located inside a city.
She could feel the eyes of the locals following her as she made her way deeper into the neighborhood. It made sense; Parin was marked as a Fleg, and she was too neat, too clean, too unblemished. She stood out here like a torch in the night.
She fixed this in bits as she continued through the community. Her Fleg tattoos vanished. Her illusory clothes acquired a variety of rips and tears, with large splotches of dirt and mud, while her sword vanished beneath her fake outfit. Her hair grew a bit shorter and became more dirty and disheveled. Soon, nobody paid any more attention to Arlette than they did any other Shell.
A palpable malaise pervaded the neighborhood. Almost every Shell moved as if they¡¯d just spent three days doing punishing physical labor without rest. For all Arlette knew, perhaps they had.
Arlette didn¡¯t know exactly what she was looking for as she walked. Blake wanted information about the Earthling here and his situation, as detailed information as she could get. Since she couldn¡¯t just ask the government, that left her with basically two options.
The first would be to try to find some sort of black market information broker, assuming any existed here. Most cities had one lurking in their underbelly, so the odds were pretty good. The issues were reliability, compensation, and time.
Without actually talking to anybody involved, Arlette would have to just take the broker on their word, which she wasn¡¯t willing to do. If she had to talk to people involved to verify, she might as well just get the information from them in the first place.
That was if she could get any information in the first place. She would have to be able to pay the broker¡¯s hefty price, and she¡¯d had enough trouble paying for prekali.
And that assumed she could even find a broker in the first place! Any person who made a living off of selling secrets wouldn¡¯t last long if easy to locate. That took time, time she didn¡¯t have. Her absence was already pushing things as it was. She had to be back within a few hours. Then she would have to attend the fight tomorrow morning, after which they were going to leave.
That left talking to the other people involved, the Shells, as her only realistic option. She¡¯d hoped to find something by coming here, some sort of lead, but now that she was here, she realized that she didn¡¯t even really know what a lead would look like. And so, she found herself wandering, taking in the misery of the denizens here as she tried to spot something, anything, that she could use.
She didn¡¯t spot anything, but she did hear something. Arlette had nearly crossed the entire large slum, to the point where she could see the line up ahead where the buildings suddenly became more normal again¡ªalmost like a treeline on a mountain¡ªwhen her ears picked up the all-too-familiar sound of flesh impacting flesh followed by a pained grunt. Somebody was getting beaten¡ªrather severely too, from the sound of it.
Arlette followed the sounds behind a nearby shack and peeked around the corner to find two Flegs, each wearing the uniform of the Civil Guard. Most cities had their own City Guard, which was responsible for keeping order both inside and out. Since Stragma was both a city and a nation, the responsibilities were instead split. The Army, Intelligence, and Security forces were responsible for external matters, which left the Civil Guard to handle more mundane issues like murders, theft, and, apparently, beating the utter crap out of Shells.
One of the two guardsmen had the Shell held fast from behind, keeping the thin young man from moving or blocking as the second guardsman drove fist after fist into his torso. Thin vomit covered the Shell¡¯s front. He heaved from each successive blow, though his stomach had to be empty as little more than spit dribbled from his swollen lips on his bruise-covered face.
Finally, the blows stopped and the first guardsman let the Shell drop. He hit the ground like a sack of grain and curled up into a ball as they each kicked him several times for good measure.
¡°This one was just a warning. If we ever catch you looking at us like that again, we¡¯ll do far worse,¡± the first guardsman said as the second one spit on the trembling Shell. ¡°Nobody will notice if you just disappear, and even if they do, you know the Guard won¡¯t care enough to try to find you.¡±
The two turned to leave so Arlette stepped back, blending in with the surroundings.
¡°You¡¯d think, after all that¡¯s happened, that these fuckers would know where they stand,¡± the one muttered as they passed.
¡°Some of them still have hope that their ¡®savior¡¯ will return and fix everything,¡± the other snorted. ¡°Just goes to show, they¡¯re not just weak and pathetic, they¡¯re stupid, too.¡±
The pair laughed as they continued on their way.
Once Arlette was sure they were gone for good, she emerged from her hiding spot. Though others must have heard what was going on, nobody had come to help, not even after the guardsmen left. As sad as that was, after her walk through here, it didn¡¯t surprise her.
The Shell, a teen with short, round, almost human ears, spotted tan hair, and a thin tan tail, remained huddled on the ground, though he appeared conscious. Arlette reached down and grabbed him by the shoulder, prompting a weak and desperate attempt to wriggle free.
¡°Hey! Hey!¡± she barked. ¡°Calm down!¡±
The Shell looked up at her through his one unswollen eye, seemingly confused at what he saw. Arlette pulled out a small waterskin and lowered it down to his lips and helped prop up his head. ¡°Here, wash out your mouth. Spit it out, don¡¯t swallow.¡±
The young man did as instructed, which was a good sign. He seemed decently cooperative and his mind didn¡¯t seem too clouded by the beating. Once he had spit, Arlette helped him half-crawl, half-stumble over to a nearby wall, against which he sank to the ground.
¡°Are you alright?¡± she asked.
He let out a weak grunt. ¡°Yeah. Thanks.¡±
¡°You can thank me by answering some questions.¡±
The Shell tensed as he became wary.
¡°Relax, I just need some help,¡± Arlette told him, ¡°and judging by what those goons said, you seem like the type of person who might be able to help me.¡±
The young man¡¯s puffed lips remained sealed, the distrustful gaze in his one good eye unwavering.
Arlette sighed. ¡°Look, here. You should eat something now that you vomited everything up.¡± She fished out the bag containing her half-eaten prekali and opened it up. The Shell¡¯s eye lit up as the sweet and savory aroma¡ªstill rather delicious-smelling even now¡ªwafted from the opening and into his nostrils. Fishing it out, she held it up in front of him. ¡°I don¡¯t have much, but I¡¯ll give you the rest of this if you cooperate.¡±
¡°Who are you?¡± he asked, still suspicious.
¡°A friend.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not with them?¡±
¡°Who, those two assholes? Why would I be involved with those losers?¡±
¡°Because you¡¯re not a Shell.¡±
Arlette held in a sigh. Well, she couldn¡¯t perfectly fake everything. She put on a puzzled and slightly offended look and asked, ¡°Why would you say that?¡±
¡°Prekali is expensive. Most of us Shells can only afford maybe one a year,¡± he told her. ¡°No way you would just give half of one away. Also, you¡¯re too pretty.¡±
Well, that was what she got for not knowing Stragman commerce better. As for the latter comment, she wasn¡¯t going to even touch the sort of self-esteem issues that would lead to that sort of statement.
¡°Ah, well, you found me out,¡± she said with a resigned grin. ¡°I¡¯m not what you think, though. I¡¯m from somewhere far away.¡±
She removed the illusion around the front of her head, where only he could see, just for a moment.
His eye went wide and he tried, futilely, to scramble back through the wall he leaned against. ¡°M-M-M-Masked-¡±
Arlette threw her hand over his mouth before he could say anything else. It wouldn¡¯t do for somebody to overhear something like that.
¡°No, no, look,¡± she hissed, turning her head and removing the illusion around her ear so he could see the nice, round shape. ¡°I¡¯m a human. How could I be one of them if I¡¯m not an elf?¡±
The young man paused for a moment as he processed the new information and after a moment Arlette let her hand fall away. She gestured with the prekali. ¡°Are you going to work with me or not?¡±
Though his eyes still didn¡¯t seem entirely trusting, he reached out and seized the prekali with both of his grubby hands. Before Arlette could even say a word, he began to scarf it down, taking massive bites and chewing faster than a red-bellied tar rat. Within a moment, the prekali had entirely vanished into the young man¡¯s gullet as if it had never existed. His gaze was steady, his decision made.
¡°What do you want to know?¡±
¡°The man with the eye patch who can bring people back to life-¡±
¡°Rudra-dora?¡± the Shell interjected, growing suspicious again.
¡°Is that his name?¡±
¡°You don¡¯t even know that? You really are from far away.¡±
¡°What is ¡®dora¡¯?¡± she inquired. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard that honorific before.¡±
¡°It¡¯s new.¡±
¡°New?¡±
The Shell looked away for a moment. ¡°We... created it. Us Shells.¡±
¡°You Shells just made up an honorific? Can you even do that?¡±
¡°Who cares?!¡± the young man hotly shot back. ¡°Rudra-dora deserves it the most! He¡¯d done more than anybody in all of Stragma!¡±
¡°Then what happened to him?¡± she asked. ¡°I just saw him this morning, and that was a man defeated if I¡¯ve ever seen one. There was no spirit left in him whatsoever.¡±
¡°You did?!¡± he gasped. ¡°Where?!¡±
¡°Not important,¡± she replied, giving him a quick flick of a finger to his forehead. ¡°Answer the question.¡±
The Shell hung his head. ¡°Sorry, I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m just a nobody. I don¡¯t know what happened.¡±
¡°Nothing?¡±
¡°The rumors say he was seduced by a foul temptress who led him astray and betrayed him to the Chos, but there¡¯s no way that happened!¡±
¡°Who would know the truth?¡±
¡°The leaders of the struggle movement would probably know, but they got taken away.¡±
Damn, her task just kept getting harder. ¡°Where did they get taken?¡± she pressed.
¡°Away. Prison.¡±
¡°Which prison?¡± she pushed.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, I don¡¯t...¡± He paused for a moment. ¡°Arteka. I was in the crowd when they came for Klataan. One of the guards said something about Arteka. So he, at least, might be there.¡±
¡°Where is that?¡± She¡¯d never heard of the place, but then again, she¡¯d never had reason to learn the name and location of Stragman prisons before.
¡°It¡¯s by the west stadium,¡± the young man supplied helpfully.
¡°Ah, got it,¡± Arlette stated. ¡°Is there anything more?¡±
¡°That¡¯s all I know, I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°Well, it¡¯s better than nothing. Thank you, and try to avoid getting beaten next time, hm?¡±
She went to turn away, but the Shell¡¯s hands reached out and through her illusion, latching onto her real clothes with a sudden, unexpected strength. ¡°Please, save Rudra-dora!¡± he begged. ¡°When the Flegs came, they killed so many people and burned so much. They killed my sister and my father. Rudra-dora brought them back for me. Without him, I don¡¯t know what I would have done. Please, we need him. Most people have given up. Please.¡±
¡°I can¡¯t promise you anything, but I¡¯ll do what I can,¡± she told him as she left. It wasn¡¯t a promise, but in her heart, she had to admit it felt pretty close.
Arlette always found it amazing the places you could get inside with an impressive uniform, a stern glare, and an aura of confidence. That was all it had taken for Arlette¡ªor, more accurately, ¡°Intelligence Officer Parin-blou¡±¡ªto not only get inside Arteka but to have the guards there practically at her beck and call. As the middle caste between Flegs and Honos, a high-ranking Blou could be considered the equivalent of a Lieutenant in an army elsewhere, meaning she had the power needed to boss guards around while not being so high-ranked as to not get their hands dirty like a Hono would be. That was how she found herself within a secure interrogation chamber as two nervous guards led an old man into the room.
¡°About time,¡± she snarled, giving the pair a disapproving look. She¡¯d found long ago that if you were pretending to be somebody of authority, acting as if you were in a bad mood meant people usually asked fewer questions and obeyed orders more readily.
¡°Apologies, sir, but we-¡°
¡°Did I ask for excuses?¡± she growled. The pair trembled as Arlette stared them into the ground. ¡°You have carried out my orders, now leave! I am not to be disturbed during this interrogation. If I am, I trust you know what will happen. Understood?¡±
The guards disappeared quicker than a half-eaten prekali in the hands of a teenage Shell, leaving her alone with the older man. He looked at her with a mix of worry and acceptance, as if he saw nothing but bad things in his immediate future but was resigned to whatever might happen.
¡°Sit,¡± she said.
The room was rather small, with only a small, round table two paces in diameter and a pair of chairs around it. Slowly, achingly, the man lowered himself into the chair by his side. Arlette took the other and studied him for a moment.
The man looked to be perhaps in his late fifties to early sixties, with short gray hair, large ears atop his head shaped like a leaf, and a short, puffy tail that barely protruded from his prison uniform. His yellow prison uniform appeared unwashed and scuffed, and his hands were chained together in front of him. Judging by the wrinkles on his face and the splotches on his face and arms, the years had not been kind to this old man. And yet...
¡°You are Klataan, a leader of the Shell resistance?¡±
¡°I am.¡±
He spoke calmly, refusing to bow his head or look away. Come what may, he refused to relinquish what he still possessed. Arlette decided she would probably like him if they¡¯d met in different circumstances, but she didn¡¯t have time to make friends.
¡°I will make this simple,¡± she told the man. ¡°Answer my questions completely truthfully, and no harm will come to you. Try to hide anything, however, and you will regret doing so more than you can imagine.¡± She pulled out one of her throwing knives and dressed it up with an illusion, making it appear crueler, with vicious serrations along one side. She held it up in front of her and looked the man in the eye. ¡°You know full well that I could cut off your every finger and my superiors would not even bat an eye. Is that clear?¡±
The Shell swallowed and nodded.
With a quick flick of her wrist, Arlette reversed her grip on the knife and embedded it into the wooden table between them as a reminder. ¡°Good. Then, let¡¯s begin. You know Rudra well, did you not?¡±
¡°Relatively well, I suppose.¡±
¡°Explain.¡±
¡°As a member of the Shell Council before this all started, I and the others worked rather closely with him throughout the strike.¡±
¡°What sort of man would you say he is?¡±
The man frowned. ¡°Until recently, I believed him to be a man of the utmost integrity. He believed in the betterment of us all and fought almost single-handedly for those beliefs. Now, however...¡± He shook his head mournfully. ¡°Everyone has a weakness, I suppose, but I did not expect him to abandon everything he claimed to believe in for just one woman. I thought he was stronger than that, but alas.¡±
¡°And do you and your compatriots know the identity of the woman in question, or was it always just a nameless woman?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know who the woman is,¡± the man replied. Try as he might, Arlette caught the way his neck muscles tensed as he answered. A lie.
¡°I believe I made it quite clear what would happen if you lied to me,¡± she stated calmly as she placed her hand around the handle of the knife in the table.
The man went white as a sheet and scooted back in his chair. ¡°I-I¡¯m sorry! T-T-Tepin Silverfall!¡± he stammered. ¡°It¡¯s Tepin Silverfall!¡±
Arlette had to fight to keep the shock from her face. Tepin Silverfall? The Chos¡¯s assistant? She was the hostage?
¡°The Shells in the city I interrogated did not know this. How do you?¡± Arlette pressed.
The Shell hesitated. Arlette scowled as she ripped the knife from the table and stood up. ¡°Very well, if you insist on hiding things-¡±
¡°Alright, alright!¡± he cried, putting his arms up over his face. ¡°The Hidden Fang told us!¡±
¡°The Hidden Fang?¡± She¡¯d heard rumors of the shadowy group back when she¡¯d first come to Stragma but had paid them little mind at the time.
¡°Yes! Please don¡¯t tell anybody you heard it from me,¡± he begged. ¡°They¡¯ll kill me!¡±
¡°Tell me everything and I will consider it,¡± she told him. ¡°I was under the impression that the Hidden Fang spoke to no one.¡±
¡°Yes, that¡¯s how it always was,¡± he confirmed. ¡°We in the Council never knew who they were and they never showed themselves, until Rudra. They were the ones who came to us, talking about a ¡®general strike¡¯ and all that. After that, one of them would reach out to us on occasion in secret, though only when they felt like it and not the other way around. Their contact was the person who told us, but only if we kept our mouths shut.¡±
¡°I see,¡± she replied. Was there some connection between Silverfall and the Hidden Fang? While interesting, it didn¡¯t concern her mission, so she set the information aside.
¡°How do you believe he would react were she to disappear entirely?¡± Arlette inquired. ¡°Or if, say, the Hidden Fang were to pay her a visit?¡±
¡°I-I don¡¯t know, I can¡¯t say with any certainty,¡± he replied. ¡°Before, I would have said he would have stayed firm no matter what, but he ended up not being the man I thought he was. If you require an answer, I humbly suggest you go to Qelton and ask Silverfall herself. Silverfall would know better than anybody here in Arteka.¡±
Arlette¡¯s ire rose as she realized she was going to have to sneak into another prison today. How many more times would she have to risk herself for this mission? This was getting fucking ridiculous!
¡°Very well, Klataan. That will be all,¡± she bristled as turned to leave. ¡°Your answers were... acceptable. I will keep quiet for your safety.¡±
¡°Thank you, madam Blou!¡±
Arlette ignored the sniveling Shell. She¡¯d been wrong, she hadn¡¯t ended up liking him after all. Opening the door, she glared at the guards outside. ¡°What are you looking at?!¡± she snarled.
Arlette left the prison in a huff, and this time she didn¡¯t have to fake it.
As Arlette approached Qelton Prison, she did her best to tamp down her frustrations and bring back the cold, authoritative persona of ¡°Intelligence Officer Parin-blou¡±. It wasn¡¯t easy. It did not shock Arlette that a society of millions would have multiple prisons, but why did they have to be so far apart? She¡¯d spent the entire day traversing the city from one place to another, to the point that the sun had set half an hour ago!
Arlette thanked fortune that it was currently Spring, as the prisons here were like prisons elsewhere: normal landbound buildings. Had they all been suspended between the giant trees of Pholis, hundreds of paces above the ground, then this whole ordeal would have been all the harder and more exhausting.
The four guards at the entrance didn¡¯t react when she emerged from the darkness into the light of the torches burning above the archway. Likely at least one of them had some sort of night vision and they¡¯d seen her coming.
One of the guards, perhaps the leader of the group judging by the slightly more detailed uniform, stepped forward and the group saluted her, which Arlette returned. As if she¡¯d done it a thousand times before, she pulled a high-quality blank piece of parchment¡ªthe same one she¡¯d used the last time¡ªand handed it over.
With her illusions, Arlette set letters to the page spelling out instructions to admit her to speak to one Tepin Silverfall. For one last stamp of authenticity, the bottom of the document contained the Chos¡¯s personal seal, something only the Chos and her husband would have easy access to. Arlette had copied it from a drawing Tehlmar made for her before the trip. He¡¯d gotten several very good looks at it during some raucous drinking sessions with the Stragman leader, and, while he preferred fighting to spying, he¡¯d been trained well enough to know to commit it to memory when he had the chance.
The guard leader arched an eyebrow as he read the empty parchment. ¡°You¡¯ve come at an odd time, but this seems in order,¡± he remarked, folding the document back up and returning it to her.
¡°I would have preferred to arrive at a more reasonable hour, but today has not exactly proceeded as planned,¡± she admitted in all honesty. ¡°You know how it can be.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t we all,¡± he chuckled. ¡°In the grove the turnam warbles, calling for the sunset.¡±
Arlette blinked, unsure what he¡¯d said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡±
The guard frowned, and Arlette noticed his hand moving back near the sword that hung on his hip. The other guards tensed as well, eyeing her with sudden suspicion.
¡°In the grove the turnam warbles, calling for the sunset,¡± the man repeated.
Arlette¡¯s blood went cold. Fuck, she hadn¡¯t expected to need to know some random code phrase, too! The other prison hadn¡¯t been like this at all! She quickly went through her options.
Trying to answer was out. She had no idea what the proper response was.
Running could work. She was quick and agile, especially for a non-Feeler, though with four guards, that meant at least two, likely three Feelers. Depending on their specialties, she might find herself struggling to escape.
Fighting was also likely out. She would if she had to, but if she drew her blade, it would likely be in an attempt to create an escape route for the aforementioned running option. Fighting her way into the prison was not a possibility she could entertain.
The last option was to bluff. She still had the appearance of authority, at least. That was perhaps her best weapon in this situation.
She decided to bluff, the run if needed.
¡°General Bloodflower-hono requires my report immediately,¡± she growled, giving the guard leader Parin¡¯s best intimidating glare. ¡°Step aside before I report you all and you experience his wrath for yourself!¡±
It turned out to be the wrong move. The four guards surged forward, each of them faster than she was at her fastest. Backpedaling as fast as she could, Arlette drew her sword and ducked out of the way of the swipe of a spear heading towards her head. She noticed that the attack came with the spearhead turned so she would be struck by the blunt side. They wanted to take her alive.
Still retreating, she struck out at the guard leader, who parried and counterattacked, also with the blunt edge of his single-edged sword. Arlette twisted agilely around the blow, only to feel something sweep her feet out from under her. One of the others had managed to get behind her without her noticing.
Arlette tumbled to the ground, disoriented. The sharp blade of a spear appeared beside her neck, with a second taking position over her gut, before she could even think of moving. They¡¯d caught her so quickly that she hadn¡¯t even escaped the torchlight.
She was fucked.
A series of metallic thumps growing closer caught her ears. The guards noticed it too, as two of them¡ªunfortunately not the ones keeping her on the ground¡ªturned towards the approaching noise, their weapons ready.
¡°Good, good! Well handled!¡± a voice called from the darkness, apparently delighted at the show.
Arlette put the voice and the sounds together and realized what was happening just as General Caprakan Bloodflower emerged from the gloom. At the sight, she upgraded her status to ¡°royally fucked¡±. What was he doing here, and why him of all people?
The soft orange light of the torches gleamed off the hard metal shell encasing his legs, sending dim reflections bouncing at various angles all over the area. He teetered slightly with each small step, a clear sign that he had nowhere near mastered Blake¡¯s mechanical legs, but he did not fall over.
The two guards took one look at the man¡¯s getup and tensed once more.
¡°In the grove the turnam warbles, calling for the sunset,¡± the one said.
¡°The birnkalta slither through the darkness, waiting to strike,¡± the general replied.
¡°Three hunters, one prey. The scent lingers,¡± the guard continued.
¡°Forever shall they feast, until the swarm arrives,¡± Bloodflower answered.
The guards relaxed slightly.
¡°General Bloodflower-hono! This woman-¡±
¡°Yes, yes, I am well aware of what transpired here,¡± the general cut in. He turned to Arlette, his eyes gleaming in the torchlight. ¡°Demirt-blou, I must thank you again for agreeing to assist us in these tests. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.¡±
Arlette blinked, not quite able to grasp what the general was getting at. Was he mocking her?
Then, against her expectations, he waved for the guards to back off. ¡°You may release her now. The test is over and you passed with flying colors.¡±
The guard standing over her with the spear to her throat look back at him, evidently just as confused as she was. ¡°Sir?¡±
¡°Must I spell it out for you?¡± Bloodflower snapped. ¡°Arlette Demirt-blou, here, graciously agreed to my request to help test the security protocol at various locations here in the city. The test is now over. Unlike some others, you all passed with flying colors. Once again, well done.¡±
¡°Yes, of course, sir,¡± the guard replied, removing the weapon and stepping back.
Arlette got up slowly, her mind spinning. The general was covering for her? Why?
¡°Now, Demirt-blou,¡± the general continued, turning towards the prison entrance. ¡°There is still one more thing we must take care of, yes?¡±
Arlette watched as he headed into the facility, his arms moving forward and back and in and out as his legs followed, his steps still quite ungainly and uncertain but solid enough to slowly move him forward. Her mind sorted through a variety of possibilities. Was this some sort of trap? She¡¯d already been captured, so that made no sense. But then, for what other reason would Bloodflower be doing this? Perhaps this was some weird way of thanking Blake for the suit by helping her?
The general paused under the archway of the entrance and looked back at her over his shoulder, impatient. ¡°Well? Are you coming or not?¡±
The walk through Qelton was perhaps the most awkward time of Arlette¡¯s life. General Bloodflower¡¯s skill with his new walking frame was good enough that he could move about without falling over, but only just. He could get into a rhythm on flat ground that let him move at about two-thirds of a normal person¡¯s walk, but only in a straight line. Every time he had to turn even the slightest bit turned into an endeavor, and Qelton had far more than its fair share of corners to navigate.
It was clear to Arlette that the man would not take kindly to her helping him with this. Prideful people like him never wanted to admit weakness, even if it were plainly evident to all. But she wasn¡¯t much in the mood to help him, anyway. Not until she had some idea of what he was trying to pull.
There were just too many questions, and he wasn¡¯t helping. No, the general seemed content for them to work their way deeper and deeper into the facility in silence. Arlette, however, was not.
¡°How did you know I was here?¡± she finally worked up the courage to ask.
The man responded with a snort. ¡°Come now, did you think I would forget about you? You show up with my wife¡¯s childhood idol, some weird foreign noble girl, and a 6-year-old child who makes candles that explode and you think you would just slip my mind? You were under my command for days, even!
¡°I remember when you first demonstrated your abilities after joining the Second Army. The others might have thought it an amusing novelty at best, but I could see the frightening possibilities immediately. Not just on the battlefield, but infiltration, assassinations, the works.¡±
He went silent for a moment as he fought to stay upright as they slowly rounded another bend. More than once, he had to use his hand against the wall to maintain his balance, but he did not fall. While his movements were still very clumsy, Arlette couldn¡¯t help but be impressed at how quickly the man had managed to get to this point.
¡°When I received the report that an Otharian had somehow seemingly vanished into thin air while being watched, I began to suspect your involvement. Taking over the investigation, I halted the search and sent out orders to watch a variety of critical locations for any unusual activity. When I received word of a Blou from Intelligence interrogating a former Shell Councilmember in an unscheduled visit more than a season after all the interrogations in that matter had finished, that told me everything I needed to know. It was trivial to figure out where you would appear next.¡±
He gave her a smug smirk, to which Arlette returned a dour scowl.
¡°You should feel fortunate for my involvement. Had the normal people been in charge, well... I¡¯m sure you know, given our history with Drayhadal, how Stragma feels about spies. Especially spies that take on the appearance of others.¡±
¡°But instead, you¡¯re helping me,¡± Arlette pointed out. ¡°Why?¡±
The man didn¡¯t respond for several long moments. ¡°I have my reasons,¡± he said finally. Arlette pressed further, but he refused to elaborate.
Tepin Silverfall had her own wing, a newly constructed section of the prison entirely for her and her alone. As they went, it became increasingly clear to Arlette just how incredibly tight the security was for this one prisoner. Even if she had somehow managed to fake her way through the guards outside, she would never have made it through the two other guard checkpoints. She knew this for a fact because the general had insisted, in order for them to keep up the charade, that she ¡°test¡± the other checkpoints as she had the first, each time with a similar result.
Her prize for making it all the way inside sat in a cell much like any other she¡¯d seen, other than a little more furnishing than usual with a small table and a single chair joining the usual cot. Arlette found the former assistant lying on said cot, staring at the ceiling, as they entered.
Tepin propped her head up at the sound of them arriving and the guards who stood watch over her all day leaving, her face darkening immediately upon seeing Caprakan. ¡°Finally come to gloat, have you?¡± she asked bitterly.
¡°Surely you know me better than that, Tepin,¡± Bloodflower replied, coldly.
¡°I know you far too well, which is why I know you are not here with good intentions,¡± she told him. ¡°Tell me, then, to what I owe the honor of a visitation from the esteemed Consort General Caprakan Bloodflower-hono?¡±
¡°I am merely a chaperon of sorts today,¡± the general deflected.
Only then did Silverfall seem to notice Arlette¡¯s presence. She stared for a moment, rubbed her eyes, checked again, and finally sat up. ¡°And you would be?¡± she asked stuffily. Arlette noted that captivity had done little to rob her of that secretarial attitude.
For the first time that day, Arlette released her illusions entirely. The move took the imprisoned woman by surprise, but, the professional that she was, she hid it well.
¡°Weren¡¯t you one of Jaquet¡¯s followers?¡± she asked after a few moments of contemplation.
Arlette would have laughed at the question, had the circumstances been brighter. ¡°That would be one way to put it, perhaps,¡± she responded, deciding to cut to the chase. ¡°I¡¯m here to talk to you about Rudra.¡±
The Stragman¡¯s face darkened once more, turning back to the general. ¡°What¡¯s your game, Bloodflower? Is this some sort of bizarre intelligence operation?¡±
¡°I am not Stragman or working in any way for Stragma or him,¡± Arlette informed her. ¡°The general is just helping me.¡±
¡°Helping you do what?¡±
Arlette considered what to say and decided on the truth. The general had pretty much deduced why she was here already, and she needed to speak honestly with Tepin if she wanted the cooperation she needed. ¡°...collect information so my employer can decide if Rudra requires rescue.¡±
Tepin laughed.
¡°Is that so?¡± the disbelieving woman replied. ¡°Did you know that this man here is one of the most conservative, traditionalist people in power, far more than the Chos herself? Not only did he push her in that ideological direction, the thought of his disapproval made her even more unwilling to bend to our demands than she would have been otherwise. The very notion that he would be assisting you in such an endeavor is completely preposterous.¡±
Arlette looked back at the glowering metal-wrapped man and he crossed his arms as he glared back at both of them.
¡°She speaks truth, for the most part,¡± he admitted. ¡°I was very conservative.¡±
¡°Was?¡± Tepin snorted. ¡°Are you claiming you¡¯ve suddenly changed your mind?¡±
¡°I have no obligation to explain myself to either of you,¡± came his dour response. ¡°Just know that our goals are aligned in this case.¡±
¡°Look,¡± Arlette pleaded to the small prisoner, ¡°please just talk with me for a moment. I doubt anything you tell me would be something he doesn¡¯t already know.¡±
The prisoner hummed. ¡°Ask, then, and we shall see if I answer.¡±
¡°Rudra¡¯s situation seemed quite miserable. How long can it continue like this before something has to change?¡±
Tepin scoffed. ¡°Rudra is nothing if not stubborn. I can imagine the current state of affairs continuing as long as I remain locked away.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t think he might act on his own?¡±
¡°Not unless my safety is guaranteed. Even then, what he might do is very limited. The idiot is a pacifist, you realize? A fool of the highest order?¡±
¡°So if you were to escape to safety, perhaps somewhere outside of Stragma, he would also leave on his own? That might be all it takes?¡±
Tepin shrugged, looking wistful. ¡°Who can say? He blundered by putting my safety above the well-being of every Shell once, but after all that he¡¯s been through since, perhaps he has finally learned. Sometimes I think to ask him when we are together, but I have yet to find the courage. Though I have told him a thousand times not to make the same mistake again should the opportunity arise, a part of me is afraid that he will listen. Does it make me a terrible person, that sometimes I find myself happy he chose me over my people and my decades-long dream? I wonder.¡± She shrugged again. ¡°You would be better suited asking him yourself. Only he knows fully what goes on inside that impenetrable skull of his.¡±
Arlette twisted around to look back at the general, who shook his head.
¡°This is the best I can manage without Akhustal finding out. I would not be able to hide that from her. Now, I think it would be best if we left,¡± he told Arlette. ¡°I can only cover for your absence for so long, and we both need rest for what tomorrow brings.¡±
¡°Alright,¡± she agreed. He was correct, it was already far too late in the day and she needed to get back. ¡°Good luck,¡± she told Tepin.
The prisoner nodded but did not speak. She didn¡¯t have to; her distrustful gaze watching the retreating General Bloodflower-hono¡¯s spoke volumes on its own.
Chapter 110
¡°First, presenting the challenger!¡± the master of ceremonies, a balding man in his forties, proclaimed. His voice, augmented and amplified by Feeling, rang out over the din of the packed stadium. ¡°Hailing from the distant land of Otharia, she is called by some as the ¡®Reaper of Redwater¡¯, but to most Gustilians and Eterians, she is known simply as ¡®The Monster¡¯! I give you: Gabriela Carreno!¡±
A chorus of hisses and jeers showered down from the stands towards a woman standing just steps away from very center of the stadium, only to be cut short by the announcer.
¡°And now, her opponent!¡± A loud cheer rose up immediately from the massive audience surrounding the arena. There had to be at least a hundred thousand people packed into the stands. ¡°The leader of this great nation, she is the bane of beasts, the slayer of sharp-ears!¡± The MC¡¯s volume quintupled as the cheering rose into a roar, his words thundering over the crowd¡¯s excitement. ¡°People of Stragma! I give you: the one, the only, Akhustal Palebane-chos!¡±
The crowd exploded with noise, the thousands upon thousands of Stragmans hollering and stomping their feet, sending tremors that shook the very earth itself. Standing opposite her opponent with a lopsided grin, the giant woman raised her warclub high and soaked in the adulation.
Sitting in his cell, Rudra Kapadia gazed out through the slits in his cell and wondered how he had ended up in this situation. Though he had perhaps the best seat in the house for what was to come, he would have given almost anything to be anywhere else.
The stadium resembled cricket stadiums back home, with an oval-shaped arena in the middle surrounded by enough long stone benches to seat a small city. The only real differences were the size of the central oval¡ªabout seventy meters across and sixty meters wide by his best guess¡ªand the massive stone platform in the center. At least fifty meters long and wide, the platform rose a little more than a meter from the ground, with large stone pillars jutting skyward every twelve meters or so in each direction.
And there, pushed flush with the side of the stone platform with the slatted end facing the center of the arena so he could see out of the top two-thirds, sat Rudra¡¯s cell. He could see the entire platform and half of the stadium, but little else. Since his cell had only one wall with any openings whatsoever¡ªthe door on the left side of the wall and the vertical bars running down the right side from the top to the bottom¡ªhe could not see if anybody else was around him.
Apparently, the Chos had come up with a new way to utilize his abilities. With him around, she and her opponent could go all-out with truly deadly attacks without the fear of death or permanent disability. Needless to say, Rudra was not a fan of any of this.
Looking at the woman announced as ¡°Gabriela¡±, he could see that she wasn¡¯t a fan either. Everything about her, from her slightly slumped shoulders to the dispassionate gaze coming from her tired, bag-lined eyes, screamed that she was not so much looking forward to what was to come as much as she was resigned to get it over with.
Rudra had no real idea what to make of the woman. She sure didn¡¯t look like some impossibly powerful warrior. Around average height for a woman¡ªon Earth at least; he still wasn¡¯t sure what counted as average in Scyria¡ªwith a modest frame, she paled in comparison to the immense bearwoman standing ten meters away. A simple ponytail of long black hair encrusted with sweat and dirt hung down her back. She wore an unimpressive outfit of light leather padded armor over a simple, thin brown shirt and equally uninteresting grey pants. Outside of the armor, the huge black crystalline sword in her grip¡ªtaller than she and about as wide¡ªand the lean muscles on her arms, she more resembled a regular housewife than somebody with nicknames that contained words like ¡°monster¡± and ¡°reaper¡±.
The Chos, on the other hand, very much looked like how he would imagine a ¡°strongest person in a country of over ten million people¡± to look. Towering over her opponent, Akhustal Palebane rolled her broad, brawny shoulders, looking down at Gabriela the way a starving man would look at an exquisite meal. Her eyes gleamed with anticipation in a way Rudra hadn¡¯t seen since¡ well, since the day he¡¯d declared himself a pacifist to the nation.
She wore fairly little. Her lower half was covered only by a kilt-like skirt made of furs and feathers, no doubt hunted by her at some point in her life, with thin, tight shorts underneath. Her feet were clad in thin, open sandals that laced up her ankle for support.
As for her upper body, she wore no armor, with only a thick wrap of tan bandages around her chest for support. Rudra immediately knew that while wearing so little would keep her relatively cool during the battle and help maximize her agility, she did it mostly to show off as many of her tattoos as possible. Long, complex patterns traced across her body like her head was a tree and the markings were the world¡¯s most complicated root structure. As he looked, Rudra was sure that there was some sort of pattern there, but it was too intricate for him to make it out from this distance. These were the markings of the Chos, the tattoos that very few in history ever had the right to display.
¡°The rules are simple: the first combatant to kill or incapacitate their opponent five times is the victor!¡± the announcer cried. ¡°For the safety of all you watching, all combat must be contained to the central platform! Any combatant knocked from the platform must return within the count of twenty or they will be deemed incapacitated! That¡¯s all! May the best fighter win!¡±
The crowd cheered again as the MC quickly left the platform. The Chos hefted her club, holding it out in front of her with a single hand as she shifted her stance to something that almost reminded Rudra of a fencer. Meanwhile, Gabriela assumed a more basic two-handed sword stance, setting her left leg slightly forward and holding the blade in front of her with it tilted upward.
¡°You didn¡¯t tell me we were going to fight in front of a crowd,¡± Gabriela complained.
The Chos scoffed. ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t we? It¡¯s more fun with people watching, so let¡¯s put on a show! Remember, death has no meaning during this fight, so give me everything you have!¡±
Rudra leaned up against the bars and stared out at the pair. Though he didn¡¯t want to be involved with any of this, if he had to stand here and watch, at least he could, perhaps, gain some useful knowledge about the Stragman¡¯s weaknesses. He needed something, anything, at this point.
The smaller woman shot forward, covering the distance to Palebane in under a second, causing Rudra to let out a gasp. What swiftness! She moved faster than any person Rudra had ever seen!
¡°Oho!¡± the Chos chortled, seemingly impressed as Gabriela swung her sword around with such speed and power that Rudra could hear it woosh through the air all the way across the platform. As she did, Palebane repositioned her club slightly to block the path of the massive blade.
Rudra felt a minute tremor run through the platform as the crystal sword met the wooden stick at tremendous speed and¡ the stick won? To the shock of both Rudra and, seemingly, Gabriela, the Chos¡¯s club didn¡¯t seem to budge when the blade rebounded off of it, sending the smaller woman spinning wildly away. The crowd howled with laughter as she tried to regain her balance as her feet slid along the flat stone.
¡°Great!¡± Palebane called to her. ¡°You¡¯re almost as fast as that Ubran guy on chimirin I fought at Crirada! But you¡¯ll need more than that if you want to beat me!¡±
Gabriela gritted her teeth and sprang forward again, her weapon lashing out over and over in a ferocious assault. And yet, each time, she found as little success as the last as the Chos easily blocked each blow, moving her club about so quickly and dextrously that one would have thought it was made of Styrofoam.
In a way, it was.
On an intellectual level, Rudra understood what was going on. Tepin had told him one day when he¡¯d asked about how she could lug such a large, heavy object around all day without getting fatigued. His love had figured out the secret long ago¡ªshe was so smart; he would never have guessed it on his own just by watching the Chos fight.
The secret was that her powers let her ¡°cheat¡±, in a sense. He¡¯d thought that she was merely a very strong Feeler with an impervious stick, but he couldn¡¯t have been further from the truth. Instead, the large Stragman was actually an Observer who could somehow alter the inertia of inanimate objects. Lower the inertia to practically nothing, and you could move something like that massive club as easily as if it were a plastic straw. Increase it greatly, and suddenly it had the inertia of a mountain, easily repelling even the absurdly powerful strikes of her opponent and striking with a power thousands of times greater than what should be possible.
So yes, he understood how it was all possible. Still, seeing it in action was a different matter entirely. The ease as which the Chos could switch between various states, changing the inertia of the club from minuscule to gargantuan at the last possible moment before Gabriela¡¯s blade struck it, then reverting to the light version before the club¡¯s sudden ¡°weight¡± could throw her off balance, boggled his mind. It pointed to an immense talent, one worthy of appreciation. Rudra just wished that talent hadn¡¯t gone to Akhustal Palebane of all people.
Gabriela charged in for another flurry of attacks, but this time, her opponent decided to do more than just place her club in the way. For the first time, the Chos struck back, her club swinging out to crash head-on against the incoming blade. The force of the blow was so great that it nearly tore the crystal weapon from Gabriela¡¯s hands, knocking her dangerously off-balance. The follow-up slammed into her side, crushing right through her arm as if it were made of paper and sending her hurtling into a nearby stone pillar. Gabriela¡¯s head struck the stone with force great enough to crack her head open like a melon, leaving bits of blood and brain matter smeared down the column as her body slid to the floor.
The crowd erupted.
A team of Stragmans¡ªfellow Shells by the looks of them¡ªrushed out onto the arena to fetch Gabriela¡¯s body and bring her to him, but their efforts proved unneeded as, in a single moment, this woman he¡¯d met only once just the day before immediately became one of the most relevant people in his life.
Before the Shells could make it to the downed woman, a strange crimson mist manifested around the body. Rudra couldn¡¯t tell from his distance exactly what was happening, but the mist seemed to condense into Gabriela¡¯s corpse¡ and then she stood up, seemingly completely fine.
The Chos laughed joyously, clapping her hands with excitement. ¡°So it¡¯s real! You¡¯re truly unkillable!¡±
The onlookers, for their part, murmured in disbelief. It was one thing for somebody to bring others back to life. This was another thing entirely.
Rudra was the most shocked of all, but for different reasons. In his mind, memories of a long, late-night discussion with Tepin bubbled up into his consciousness. She¡¯d told him of talk at the top of the government of other people with strange, powerful abilities back before the night when everything had fallen apart.
He hadn¡¯t known what to think at the time. The appearance of others with mighty powers that far exceeded what Scyrians could manage screamed ¡°other people from Earth¡±, but part of him had wondered if the talk was just rumors spread by superstitious, gullible natives. In the end, he¡¯d decided that it didn¡¯t matter. Even if there were others like him in this world, he¡¯d come to the conclusion that, locked away as he was in the middle of a giant rainforest, the odds of his seeing another person from his home ever again were so low that they might as well be zero.
And yet, against all expectations, here she stood, somehow miraculously unharmed. Speed beyond even the greatest Feelers, strength that possibly rivaled his own, plus the ability to return from the dead? There was only one explanation. Now he just felt stupid; her name alone should have tipped him off.
But now that he knew that a fellow Earthling stood just meters away, what was he supposed to do about it? Gabriela Carreno was not here for him in particular. She¡¯d come to have a little catgirl child revived. If the Chos hadn¡¯t demanded this battle as part of the payment, she would already be gone. She had no interest in him.
Palebane backed away, creating space as Gabriela set herself. Without a word, she hopped into the air and kicked off the pillar behind her, launching herself towards the Chos. The Stragman ducked behind an adjacent pillar in reaction. As she flew by, even though stone stood between her and Palebane, the Earthling swung at her anyway.
Rudra¡¯s jaw dropped as, with a crystalline sching, the sword cut through the stone as if it were paper mache. The column toppled over, revealing a surprised and delighted Chos, a line of dripping red having appeared going from the top of her left shoulder across and down to just above her right breast.
¡°What a marvelous weapon!¡± she cried.
Gabriela didn¡¯t respond, instead rushing in once more and bounding over the felled stone to deliver a mighty overhead slash. With a malicious grin, the Chos blocked it, kicking out with a leg to strike Gabriela¡¯s airborne body before she could land. The Earthling tumbled but righted herself before Palebane could capitalize on it.
The rest of the round went much the same as the last. Rudra felt like the Earthwoman¡¯s striking and movement speed seemed a bit faster than the first round, but it made no real difference. Try as she might, she couldn¡¯t get through the larger woman¡¯s defense. The Stragman roamed the stage, moving as she pleased while fending off the powerful but ineffectual swipes, every block and deflection announced by a loud ting as two weapons collided.
The crowd found the intense battle mesmerizing. They oohed and aahed with each blow, enraptured by the struggle of the two combatants.
Rudra, for his part, found himself blown away by just how incredibly impervious the Chos¡¯s club seemed to be. Gabriela¡¯s blade could cut through solid stone as if the stone were water, and yet Rudra watched as the Chos easily parried the smaller woman¡¯s punishing strikes, the wood stopping the crystal blade without even a scratch.
Tepin said that it and the cage that held him were both grown from the Mother Tree Ruresni herself at tremendous cost. An impossible entity, Ruresni towered over the forest, reaching high into the sky. How many kilometers tall could it be? Just eyeballing it, Rudra guessed at least five, but probably closer to eight or nine. For the tree to be able to withstand its own absurd weight, its wood would have to be equally absurdly strong and durable. That explained why, no matter how hard he tried with his mammoth strength, Rudra could not even get a creak from the bars of his cell.
But still, no matter how much he understood this intellectually, the construction worker within him refused to accept it. It was still just wood! Wood had no right being that strong!
¡°Come on, Gabriela, are you even trying?¡± the Chos shouted over the din as her massive club zipped back and forth, blurring from spot to spot to neatly intercept every last one of her opponent¡¯s strikes. Gabriela might have thought it a taunt, but Rudra knew that she¡¯d meant it earnestly. He could see the shade of disappointment slowly creeping across her face as the battle went on.
¡°I thought you knew how to fight! You¡¯ll never even touch me like this!¡± she snapped. She swung to bat away her opponent¡¯s sword. As before, the blow sent Gabriela reeling, her upper body twisting back and to the right. This time, however, she managed to pull her sword back around, bringing up the flat side in front of her chest and bracing the back of it with her free left forearm. The club slammed into her guard like a freight train, driving the back flat side into Gabriela¡¯s torso and flinging her like a rag doll into another pillar as a loud, ringing clang reverberated through the stadium.
Gabriela struck the pillar with her back first, followed by the back of her head. She let out a grunt of pain and tried to push herself back to her feet, but the Chos wasn¡¯t willing to wait around and let her get up so easily. She caught up in a moment and swung her weapon like a cricket bat, driving it right into the flat side of the sword once more with another resounding clang. Gabriela braced the sword in front of her by gripping the handle with her right hand and bracing her left forearm against the back of her weapon. Somehow, through a feat of prodigious strength, she did not get crushed as the weight of a cruise ship pounded the flat side of her blade into her torso a second time.
The column she was pressed up against, however, did not fare as well. The club struck with such unstoppable momentum that it drove Gabriela through the hard stone as it swung through, breaking the column into pieces that ranged from several centimeters across to over two meters long. These new boulders plummeted towards the ground, many of them right where Gabriela sprawled face down on the ground, battered and discombobulated. Before she could recover her wits, the rocks landed on top of her, crushing her.
The crowd roared again, though Rudra couldn¡¯t help but notice how the Chos did not seem to share their jubilation.
The crimson fog from last time returned a few moments later, and then the rubble began to move. A disgruntled Gabriela pushed herself free, clearly not enjoying herself in any way. She hefted her sword and rushed in once again.
Rudra watched as their dance entered its third verse, though the steps seemed little different than before. He could tell with certainty now that the Earth woman was moving significantly faster than before as she struck with almost wild abandon, her body almost blurring left and right as she rained down blows from every angle she could.
Still, it made no difference. The Chos moved with a grace no giant should possess, dancing around some of Gabriela¡¯s attacks and blocking the others with the fluidity born of a thousand battles. It was her experience, Rudra realized, that let her keep up with her opponent¡¯s frankly absurd physical abilities. Rudra¡¯s sharp eye could see how she began moving to deal with each of Gabriela¡¯s attacks before the attack had even begun, the Chos relying on years of honed experience to let her keep ahead of the Earth woman¡¯s assault.
What¡¯s more, her mass-altering trick allowed her to move her massive club without needing to reposition her body every time. Gabriela, on the other hand, had to set her stance properly every time so she could properly leverage her strength to swing her equally massive sword, meaning her body essentially tipped off every attack. Super strength or no, she still had to abide by physics to a large degree; the Chos did not.
It made an amusing contrast, he had to admit. If somebody without prior knowledge was asked to pick which of the two would fight like a bruising berserker and which would rely on finesse and experience, they would surely get the two backwards.
¡°You¡¯re too linear!¡± the bored Chos complained as she contemptuously smacked Gabriela¡¯s blade aside. ¡°Is this really all you can offer? There¡¯s no way someone this weak could take down Redwater Castle all by themselves! Why are you hiding your true strength? What happened to the legend that made every Nocend soldier piss their pants?¡±
¡°Shut up,¡± the Earthling replied, her voice dull.
The Chos sighed, lifting her club high. ¡°You¡¯re no fun at all!¡±
The club descended towards Gabriela like an avalanche. Wisely, the smaller woman, instead of trying to block it, just stepped out of the way.
It didn¡¯t matter.
Rudra flinched as a shockwave ran through the entire stone platform and slammed into his cell, rocking it back and throwing him off his feet. When he finally managed to get upright again and look out at the arena, what he saw stunned him.
The massive stone platform, easily fifty meters across, was broken. Massive cracks ran through it like a spider¡¯s web, one of them traveling right to his cell and running down the side of the stone. Bending down to look, he saw that the crack, wide enough that he could slide his entire hand into it with ease, ran all the way through from top to bottom. She¡¯d split the entire thing into pieces!
One look out at the aftermath showed just how extensive the damage was. What had been a single solid slab of stone just moments ago was now at least twelve smaller shards, with the way many of them jutted out to one side hinting at possibly more pieces beneath. Some were just slightly tilted, where only the lean of their pillars was pronounced enough to show they weren¡¯t completely level; others now slanted heavily to one side or the other, creating hazardous holes to fall into and protrusions to trip over. One particular shard right by the point of impact, about nine meters long by his estimation, now tilted upward at what looked to be at least a thirty-degree angle.
The Stragman leader stood in the center of it all, her chest heaving noticeably as she looked down at Gabriela¡¯s corpse laying at her feet while the crowd roared its approval of her feat of strength. It seemed that this sort of thing taxed her enough that she couldn¡¯t do it all the time, thank goodness. The woman was scary enough as it was without her being a walking earthquake.
A red mist told Rudra that Gabriela must have died again, but he didn¡¯t know how as he¡¯d missed the moment because his cage had bucked so suddenly. Judging by the crater in her rib cage, Rudra guessed that she¡¯d fallen from the tremor, upon which Palebane had delivered another crushing blow.
Three to nothing, now. At the rate things were going, this dumb event would be over soon¡ªor so Rudra hoped. While it hurt his pride a tad to see a fellow Earth native getting embarrassed by a Scyrian, he would gladly take it over the alternative. Almost anything would be better than the dreaded alternative.
¡°Perhaps I should have raised the price if this is all you can manage,¡± the Chos told Gabriela as the smaller woman rose unsteadily to her feet.
The Earth woman glared back but didn¡¯t say a word. Instead of rushing in as she had the times before, she set her feet and closed her eyes for a moment. Akhustal waited patiently for Gabriela to collect her thoughts. Then, opening her eyes with renewed purpose, Gabriela charged forward.
The duel resumed, only this time on much more uneven terrain. Swing, block, swing, block, swing, block, even faster than before, a staccato barrage of tinging chimes as crystal clashed with wood over and over. As always, the Chos fended off her assailant until she saw an opening.
¡°Predictable!¡± she large woman scoffed. But this time, when she struck back, something different happened: Gabriela let go of her sword.
Akhustal¡¯s giant bat smacked the black blade with the force of ten runaway buses, sending it hurtling out of the arena, where it embedded itself deep into the stone base of the stadium stands. But while her weapon went flying, Gabriela did anything but. She ducked in, just under the Chos¡¯s swing, and stabbed a hand into the surprised Stragman¡¯s gut.
Akhustal Palebane froze, a mix of shock and pain visible on her face as Gabriela¡¯s hand pierced elbow-deep into her intestines. Rudra saw the Earth woman¡¯s arm flex for a split second and a pop echoed across the arena. The Chos immediately collapsed to the ground like a puppet without its strings. Gabriela yanked her arm free, pulling out a rope of intestines as she did and tossing them haphazardly onto the ground before turning to go retrieve her weapon.
The Shells sprinted out towards the arena, quickly working their way through the rubble to retrieve the half-dead Chos as the crowd looked on in stunned, silent disbelief.
The dreaded alternative had come. Rudra took a deep breath as the team of Stragmans approached, trying to summon up courage he didn¡¯t have. They arrived well before he could manage such a feat, depositing Akhustal Palebane on the other side of the cell bars.
He had a choice. All he had to do was not bring her back. Without her, the country would be thrown into chaos. The balance of power would be shattered, giving the Shells another opening to vie for a better life.
But Tepin would suffer. Those in power would torment her, making her wish for a death that she could never have. The image of the Chos¡¯s husband, Caprakan Bloodflower, and his condition upon his revival flashed unbidden and unwanted into his mind. Would he do to Tepin what had been done to him?
Rudra looked down at Palebane through the bars and realized she was staring at him. Though bleeding out quickly, the woman was not yet dead. With only her gaze, she dared him to let her die. Though she couldn¡¯t speak in her condition, she didn¡¯t need to; her message was clear: ¡°Do it and see what happens¡±.
In the end, his choice was really no choice at all. Was this some devious way to torment him? To rub his powerlessness in his face? Or did she just view him as a tool to be used however she saw fit? He didn¡¯t know anymore. In essence, it didn¡¯t make a difference either way.
He reached out through the gaps between the bars with both hands, bringing them close enough to do his work¡ªafter so much practice, he¡¯d gotten to the point where he didn¡¯t need physical contact with his patients anymore, if that had ever been a requirement at all. The pooling blood reversed, streaming back into Akhustal Palebane¡¯s body. Her guts curled up within her as her pulverized spine reformed. In a moment, it was all over and the Chos sat up and looked around.
¡°What happened?¡± she asked him, looking herself over. ¡°I lost?¡±
The last thing that Rudra wanted was to have to talk to Palebane more than necessary, but he knew that she wouldn¡¯t take him ignoring her well. ¡°Yes,¡± he told her.
¡°I¡ damn, I can¡¯t remember! I can¡¯t remember the good part!¡±
Rudra couldn¡¯t believe his ears. ¡°Did you not realize it would be like that? Did you not pay attention any of the thousands of times I¡¯ve done this?¡±
¡°Of course I know!¡± she snapped back, immediately defensive. ¡°I have a Many recording the whole fight for later, but¡ it¡¯s just not the same if I don¡¯t remember it! What happened! Tell me!¡±
¡°She let you knock her sword away, stabbed her hand into your gut, I think grabbed your spine and crushed it, then tore your intestines out.¡±
¡°Damn it, that sounds awesome!¡± she griped, pushing herself to her feet. ¡°This is so disappointing.¡±
Without even a word of thanks, she stepped back into the arena to deafening cheers. ¡°Now, that¡¯s what I was looking for!¡± she said with a lopsided grin to the returning Gabriela. ¡°Give me a challenge!¡±
Gabriela just scowled.
Rudra curled up in his thoughts for a little while as the two resumed their battle, the constant rhythm of tings fading into the background as he tried to think of anything but his depressing situation. At least healing Palebane had shown him that his powers were still working properly. Normally, reviving a person felt like the metaphysical or spiritual equivalent of pushing a well-oiled, empty shopping cart: easy, not especially taxing, and something he could do for a long time without tiring. Reviving that little girl had been like trying to push a boulder three times his size up a hill. He had barely managed it, and it had taken everything he¡¯d had within to do so.
He¡¯d spent the night wondering if something had gone wrong with him and his weird power that he still didn¡¯t understand. However, Palebane had felt like a shopping cart again, so his only conclusion was that nothing was wrong with him, something was wrong with the girl.
A second loud sching pulled him back to the moment. He looked out through the bars just in time to see Gabriela catch a freshly felled stone column and hurl it at the Chos before rushing in behind it.
Instead of dodging, like a normal person, Palebane reared back and swung her club to hit the massive stone projectile head-on, shattering it into hundreds of tiny pieces and sending the majority of them flying back at Gabriela. Instead of dodging, like a normal person, the Earth woman just streaked right through the cloud of stone shrapnel at blistering speed, letting pieces strike her and even stab deep into her everywhere except the head, which she protected with her blade.
The nearly suicidal action got her to her opponent in time to strike before the Chos could pull back for another swing. However, Palebane still had just enough time to lift her club to block the incoming slash. It wasn¡¯t until the two were about to collide that Rudra realized that Gabriela had rotated her sword to hit with the broad, flat side.
A thunderous peal rang out from the sword upon impact, the deafening note sending Rudra¡¯s skull vibrating and threatening to burst his eardrums. He clamped his hands over his ears as fast as he could, but it barely made a difference as the sound bounced around the hard, flat walls of his cell, amplifying it further.
Meanwhile, outside his portable prison, the rest were faring little better. The crowd were all covering their ears much like he was, with their mouths open in what he assumed were screams. As for the combatants, the Chos lurched drunkenly about, desperately fending off Gabriela¡¯s furious attacks. Unlike everybody else, the smaller woman seemed largely unaffected by the toll of her weapon.
Without her characteristic poise, the leader of Stragma faltered. Within a few moments, she stumbled over a crack in the floor and Gabriela pounced. With a quick swing, one whole Palebane became an upper and a lower Palebane.
Gabriela staggered on the follow-through, the vibrations still emanating from her weapon clearly throwing her off as well. Steadying herself, she rotated her grip so her blade faced the floor and stabbed it down into the stone.
The vibrations quickly bled out of the crystal and the ringing ceased, leaving the stadium in the blissful relief of relative silence.
The effort to get the Chos to Rudra¡¯s cell took longer than the last time, partly because of the condition of the battlefield, but mostly because none of the Shells seemed able to walk properly. When they finally managed to drag her to him, Rudra looked down at the bisected corpse¡ªshe was actually dead this time¡ªand noticed that blood was leaking from both of her ears. Her eardrums had burst. No doubt her inner ear had been decimated as well.
Rudra sighed. Another Palebane death, another example of the total power she held over him. He didn¡¯t even get any real joy from watching his captor die over and over; relishing the death of another was not his way.
Once her body was whole again, Palebane sat up, looking around in confusion. She patted her ears with her fingers and they came back red.
Oh, right. He¡¯d brought her back to before her death, but he¡¯d forgotten that she¡¯d been deafened before that. Reaching out from the cage, he pushed her back a little bit further.
¡°I lost again?!¡± the Chos asked with disbelief once he was done with the second push.
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Damn it all! I want to experience it! This isn¡¯t fair!¡± she snarled with a stomp. ¡°Well? What happened this time?¡±
¡°She made her sword ring and it was really loud.¡±
¡°¡what? Give me better descriptions than that! Ones that make sense!¡±
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¡°I¡¯m not your fight recapper or whatever,¡± Rudra grumbled. ¡°Why don¡¯t you ask her?¡±
The side of Palebane¡¯s fist slammed into the bars. ¡°Don¡¯t push me.¡±
¡°You hit her sword, it rang like a bell incredibly loudly, you tripped, and she cut you in half.¡±
She turned back towards her opponent. ¡°You can do that?!¡±
Gabriela shrugged. ¡°The crystal makes it an amazing tuning fork if you hit it at the right spot.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve been holding back on me,¡± Palebane accused. ¡°I told you to fight with everything you have.¡±
¡°I am,¡± came the reply.
¡°Then prove it! Those tricks won¡¯t work on me twice. Give me a real fight!¡±
The two took their positions again. Now that Gabriela had almost caught up, Akhustal no longer appeared bored or disappointed. Instead, she smiled to herself as she stared forward in intense concentration.
The two moved at the same time. Unlike before, the Chos didn¡¯t just block and parry. This time, she struck first, forcing her opponent to abort her own attack early and spin wildly out of the way. Not letting up, Palebane kept up the pressure.
The two returned to their dance of death, but this time, the Stragman controlled the tempo. Gabriela tried to break through the assault, spinning, dashing, leaping around as she looked for a way in, but the Chos¡¯s club met her each time.
The smaller woman even tried to swing her blade blunt side forward again, hoping to trigger another sonic attack, but Palebane was ready for the tactic and managed to adjust the path of her attack to hit lower on the sword. While it still rang, the sound lacked the incapacitating punch of before, leaving Gabriela spinning out of control with a vibrating weapon in her hands.
Gabriela couldn¡¯t block the swings, as the mass difference would just send her and her weapon flying. Trying to counterstrike would just open her up for attacks. Every swipe of the stick could be deadly.
So, to counteract this, Gabriela did the only sensible thing: she ran. Sprinting around the arena, springing off protruding slabs and what pillars still stood, she used her unparalleled speed to simply avoid getting near the Chos and her death club altogether.
¡°Stop running and fight!¡± the Stragman growled as the crowd loudly expressed their displeasure through a serenade of jeers.
¡°I thought you told me to try to win?¡± Gabriela shot back.
The Chos muttered something to herself but seemed to admit her opponent had a point, as she didn¡¯t reply.
At that point, it seemed that Gabriela decided to begin a counter-assault of sorts. As she ran, she bent down and grabbed a stray rock, twirled, and fired it like a bullet towards the Chos¡¯s face. Palebane barely managed to get her club up in time to block it before it took her head off.
Another stone flew, then yet another. With a growl of annoyance, Akhustal held her club in front of her with the handle above her head and the rest pointed down to cover her body and charged. The weapon was large and wide enough to block most any projectiles coming from the front, but not all. Because she had to raise the club higher than her head so the thick shaft protected her face, her lower legs were mostly unguarded.
Seeing this, Gabriela scooped up a handful of smaller stones and, in one throw, fired them low, a blast of shrapnel aimed right at the Stragman¡¯s feet. Most of the stones missed, but at Rudra saw that one clearly didn¡¯t. It buried itself deep into Palebane¡¯s left ankle, causing her to grunt in pain as she tumbled face-first onto her weapon behind a toppled pillar.
Seeing her chance, Gabriela shot forward like a bullet from a gun. Leaping over the pillar, she pulled her sword back against her left shoulder with the point facing forward and down, ready to thrust into her prone opponent.
¡°Got you,¡± Rudra heard the Chos cry triumphantly as she twisted, pulling the club out from beneath her with an ease that neither Rudra nor Gabriela foresaw, swinging it with the full power of her strong, thickly muscled arms. Unable to move properly as she was still in the air, all Gabriela could do was twist wildly to try to bring as much of her blade between her and the incoming bludgeon as she could.
A short but mighty clang rang out as the club impacted with the momentum of an aircraft carrier, sending the smaller woman zooming across the arena like a cannonball right... at him. Rudra leaned away, covering his head and face as the Earth woman and her sword slammed into the bars of his cell. The sword bounced off with a clang, but the woman... not so much. She struck the bars with a sickening squelch, rocking the cage back slightly and spraying the sticky wetness of blood and gore all over Rudra¡¯s side and back. He fought back the urge to hurl his breakfast all over the cell floor. Though he¡¯d seen myriad dead bodies since his arrival here, few had been quite so fresh and none had ever been so¡ messy.
This time, he got an up-close view of his fellow Earth native¡¯s power in action. The fog seemed to form from the blood, guts, and other viscera as if the damaged bits of her body were evaporating into a mist that hung like tendrils of incense in the air. Quickly, those tendrils lurched towards the brutalized corpse on the other side of the bars, moving almost as if they were being sucked in by some invisible force.
Rudra found the sight downright miraculous, even more so up close this time. A power that worked even in death? Even in this weird world of wonders, how was such a thing even possible?
In just a few moments, Gabriela was whole once more. The woman blinked, looking inside and meeting his gaze for the first time as she pushed herself to her feet. She didn¡¯t take in the sight of him, or look around, or anything like that. Instead, she spoke quickly and to the point, as if she¡¯d had the question in mind the whole time and had just been waiting for the opportunity. ¡°Do you need our help?¡±
A thicket of spears flashed in between them as a dozen or more guards came running, interposing themselves between him and her. They pushed her back towards the arena and though she still somehow held her massive sword in her hand, she did not resist them.
Yes, he needed help. Oh, how desperately he needed help. But the words remained lodged in his throat as images of a battered and broken Tepin strangled him. He could not, would not, take any action that risked putting her through more pain. He just couldn¡¯t. A malaise fell over him as, not for the first time recently, his helplessness threatened to overwhelm him.
¡°Hey!¡± an angry voice snapped, bringing him back to reality.
Rudra looked up to find the Chos looming over him on the other side of the bars.
¡°Fix my foot,¡± she commanded.
Looking down, he saw that she did, in fact, still have a stone the size of his finger lodged in her left ankle, clearly sticking through not just flesh but bone. How she could stand there with little more than an air of annoyance, rather than rolling on the ground screaming in pain, he had no idea.
His head still swimming, he pulled the stone free, he closed his eyes, entering the state he had grown so used to after doing it so long. He felt her spirit, as he had twice already today, and pushed as he always did.
The Chos looked around, disoriented.
¡°I lost already? But wait, they¡¯re cheering.¡±
¡°Your foot got hurt and you want me to fix it.¡±
¡°Hmmm,¡± she replied, seemingly distracted by something.
¡°Stop wasting time!¡± Gabriela impatiently called from the platform center. ¡°I didn¡¯t agree to do this forever!¡±
¡°Right,¡± the Chos mumbled, turning around and walking back out to the center for the next round.
Rudra could tell that something was off about her this time, but at first he wasn¡¯t sure what. It wasn¡¯t until the fighting resumed, the combatants bobbing and weaving, attacking and counter-attacking, that a persistent thought popped into his head and wouldn¡¯t leave. Perhaps due to his scrambled mental state, he¡¯d made a mistake and pushed her too far back in time. The way she fought, it was very similar to before, as if she¡¯d forgotten at least the last entire round and likely more. Gone were the aggressive tactics she¡¯d just used the previous round to secure a victory, replaced with the more defensive fighting she¡¯d relied on before.
At least the Chos was enjoying it. Rudra didn¡¯t know how Gabriela managed to increase her speed and striking power every round, but she did. This round was no exception. The woman was closer to a blur than a person at this point, but Palebane didn¡¯t seem to mind¡ªjudging by the wide grin on her face, she was loving every second.
But just because the Stragman was loving life at the moment didn¡¯t magically turn his misstep into a positive. That was the crux of the issue, the reason for the war now raging inside his mind. That issue was this: did pushing somebody significantly back past their moment of death without their expressed consent, be it by days, weeks, months, or even years, count as an act of violence?
Rudra always tried to bring somebody back as close to their death or time of injury as was possible for them to be whole and healthy, but it was something based on feelings and estimations, not science. Sometimes he wouldn¡¯t go far enough and then he¡¯d have to give them a little push to fix things up; other times, he would go back a little too far, and they¡¯d forget things¡ªthings that they would never regain. Rudra always felt terrible about that, assuming it wasn¡¯t some minuscule gap of a minute or two.
On a physical level, one could argue it would be a blessing for all but the most unfortunate. The subject, or perhaps ¡°victim¡± was a better term, would be younger, and therefore, by and large, healthier than the alternative. But it would come at the cost of everything else. They would lose their memories, their experiences, maybe even their relationships¡ everything that made them who they were.
Hypothetically, if he were to not just revive a thirty-year-old dead soldier but also push them back to when they were fourteen, it would give them a second chance at teenage life. But it wouldn¡¯t be like they would be able to tackle their newfound adolescence with any of the knowledge they¡¯d accumulated since, since those memories would be gone forever, so what would they gain beyond their youth? Plus, what of the person¡¯s significant other? Their family, their friends, maybe even their children, if they had any? It would break everything and many lives outside of the victim¡¯s would be greatly affected. Would Rudra not be destroying a life with that act? Would he not be, in essence, killing the man in creating the boy, and therefore, inflicting a sort of murder upon the man¡¯s family?
But¡ what if he could solve everything by just pushing the Chos back in time past the point where they¡¯d first met? Was that the solution he had been looking for this whole time?
After weeks and months of frequently interacting with her, Rudra had come to the conclusion that Akhustal Palebane operated on two levels. He¡¯d somehow managed to get on the bad side of both.
On the first level was her more impersonal side. That side viewed him as a threat to the social order of the country. It valued tradition and believed that too much change would be detrimental to Stragma¡¯s future. Like others in this country, she¡¯d been raised to believe that strength equaled virtue. This part of her likely considered the idea of the least-powerful people in the nation gaining rights to be completely at odds with the fundamental values of the nation. A Stragman only deserved the rights they could grab with their own strength, not some handout.
But then there was the personal side, the side he believed dominated her thinking and behavior. That was where the true problem lay. She¡¯d asked him, begged him, to return her tortured and murdered husband to her, and he¡¯d said no. Even worse, he¡¯d used her loved one as a means of leverage against her for seasons on end, keeping Caprakan¡¯s return in constant jeopardy until he got what he wanted. He could see, when he bothered to meet her gaze these days, that she¡¯d never forgiven him for using her lover as a cudgel. That, more than anything, was what he now believed to be the driving force behind his current life and the way she treated him.
Pushing her back two years, perhaps, would not solve the dispassionate side¡¯s objections to his goals of societal change, but it would erase the grudge she bore. While others could tell her of what had happened in the missing years, a grudge born of lived experience was something that burned far hotter and longer than one constructed of second-hand stories. With that out of the way, maybe there would be a path to move forward. Or maybe it would accomplish nothing at all¡ªor, perhaps, it would just make things worse.
In the end, it kept coming back to the question of if he even could do anything of the sort. Oaths and promises weren¡¯t things he made to honor only at his convenience. It all came down to how he defined violence, which, he realized, was an extremely depressing thought for multiple reasons. Anybody trying to rationalize actions by parsing definitions was already heading towards a cliff.
Another sching caught Rudra¡¯s attention, dragging him back to reality. However, when he looked up, he didn¡¯t find a falling stone pillar, he found a falling Chos¡ªor rather, her two halves, split vertically right down the center.
The crowd gasped at the sight of their leader¡¯s insides spilling all over the outside. Before, they¡¯d been cheering raucously at the prospect of her inevitable victory, but now the seeds of doubt had sprouted with the score getting closer at four to three.
Despite his hope, Gabriela did not take advantage of the pause in the action to try to speak with him again. Instead, she spent her moment walking over to one part of the stands. There, a small special section, like a VIP area, had been cordoned off. In it sat not only such prominent figures as the Chos¡¯s husband and General Fernfeather, who was maybe the second most powerful person in the country, but also the Otharian visitors.
The three Otharians each exuded a different vibe. The orange-haired one seemed to be watching the proceedings with interest. The thinner, black-haired one, the one who had asked his name the day before, looked three seconds away from vomiting. The smallest one, the dark feline child with the shining yellow eyes, he could see bouncing in her seat with a joyous grin on her face, not a single care in the world. Every so often, she¡¯d take a bite out of something in her hands. Prekali, if his eyes did not lie to him.
Who- no, what was that little girl? The experience of trying to revive her had been one of, if not the, most trying times of his life, and he never wanted to experience anything like it again. But why her? He couldn¡¯t see anything special about her; all he saw was just another Stragman child.
The Shells finished dragging one half of the Chos over to his cell, and Rudra didn¡¯t miss the glances they gave him as they left. Many looked at him with pity, some with disappointment or sadness, and a few with¡ something else. Something darker.
Rudra ignored the glances, as he didn¡¯t feel like he had the right to speak to the people he¡¯d let down. Instead, he focused on the piece of Palebane they¡¯d left for him. This time, he went carefully and made sure that he only pushed her back as much as needed and no more.
The Chos reformed, except this time she was almost naked, with only the one half of her shorts still on her body. An attendant of some sort rushed over with a replacement outfit.
¡°What do you remember last?¡± he asked as she quickly put on her kilt thing and the attendant wrapped her chest in new bandages.
¡°I blocked a slash from the left and she spun right with the momentum of the rebound, and I went to block the incoming strike from that way, and¡ hm, that¡¯s where it ends.¡± Her eyes twinkled. ¡°I lost again? How did I die this time?¡±
¡°I wasn¡¯t looking,¡± Rudra told her.
¡°Tch.¡± She turned to her left and spoke to somebody Rudra couldn¡¯t see, likely one of the guards around his cell that he¡¯d seen earlier. ¡°You! Tell me what happened!¡±
¡°Y-yes, Chos! She¡ uh¡¡± He could hear him swallow from meters away. ¡°¡she cut through the floor and sliced you in half from the bottom up.¡±
¡°Oh? Wait, why did she wait until now to try that?¡±
Palebane turned back to the arena and addressed Gabriela, who had returned from her little visit with her group. ¡°You¡¯re just making this up as you go, aren¡¯t you?¡±
The Earth woman shrugged.
¡°Are you even taking this seriously?¡±
¡°Yes, I promised to try my hardest and I am,¡± Gabriela testily replied. ¡°Nobody has ever stopped my attacks before.¡±
The Chos snorted as she made her way through the rubble towards her dropped club. ¡°Then I suppose you¡¯re learning fairly well,¡± she remarked as she bent down and seized her weapon. ¡°But don¡¯t think you¡¯re going to win! This round will be the last!¡±
Gabriela hefted her sword. ¡°Good.¡±
For perhaps the final time, the two came to blows. Both of them pushed themselves as hard as they could. Rudra could feel each time the two weapons clashed like one could feel the beat of a bass drum, only heavier. Gabriela poured attacks down like rain upon Akhustal, who just barely managed to stay alive by the slimmest of margins. Pushing herself to her limit, the Chos was balancing on a knife¡¯s edge, blocking strikes at the last moment, dodging others by a hair¡¯s breadth, and occasionally pushing the smaller woman back with some well-timed counter-swings, all with an ecstatic grin plastered across her face.
It became clear fairly quickly that the Stragman leader would run out of steam first. She was only flesh and blood, after all; she would tire eventually, while Gabriela¡¯s greatest power seemed to be her ability to just keep coming until her opponent cracked under the unending pressure. Soon, he could see signs of the Chos tiring as she started to take little nicks and cuts from attacks she¡¯d dodged entirely earlier.
Palebane seemed to realize the same thing, though it seemed to only excite her more. The tip of Gabriela¡¯s sword flashed down, leaving a thin cut running down Akhustal¡¯s chest and slicing most of the new bandages. The Chos countered with a thrust of her club, driving the Earthling back for a fraction of a moment. The break wasn¡¯t long, but it was just enough for the Stragman to grab her club with both hands, lower it towards the ground, and then thrust it skyward.
Gabriela sprang forward and her blade sang as it flashed through where the Chos¡¯s torso had been, but her target was no longer there. Rudra, Gabriela, and the crowd watched with shock and disbelief as Akhustal Palebane rose into the air, or perhaps more accurately, was pulled upward by the inertia of the club to which she still clung with both of her large, strong hands. Three, seven, ten meters high she rose before the momentum petered out and she slowly tumbled in the air while gravity reasserted itself.
Using her club as leverage, Palebane adjusted her rotation, canceling out her tumble so she was oriented front-down and mostly parallel with the ground. Her body bent upward like a bow as she pulled the club back, winding up for a strike that would make the rest of her strikes today look like love taps.
Gabriela did not seem the type to run from a confrontation, and she lived up to Rudra¡¯s estimation when she initially responded to the Chos¡¯s absurd maneuver by setting her feet and twisting around, her muscles tensing like steel cables, to prepare her own punishing attack. Yet he caught her slight hesitation as she stared up at the plummeting Stragman. Given that she had lost every single time they¡¯d exchanged blows head-on, Rudra didn¡¯t blame her when, with her opponent staring down at her with wild eyes from less than three meters away, she abruptly changed her mind and threw herself out of the way.
¡°It¡¯s over!¡± the Chos cried. Her body snapped forward, swinging her weapon towards the ground with everything she had just before she landed. The indestructible club crashed down like a meteor¡ªunstoppable and inevitable in its finality.
KRAKOOM!
Rudra hurriedly shielded his head with his arms as a shockwave ran through the stone platform, shattering the boulders into pieces as it traveled. The blastwave slammed into him and the cell at the speed of sound, ramming the front of his prison with enough force to send it rolling backward. Rudra flailed desperately inside, trying to find purchase in the smooth interior as the floor became the front, then the ceiling, then the back. The light within the cell vanished momentarily as the only side of the cell with any openings found itself flat against the ground. Then the light came rushing back as the cell tipped some more as if trying to keep going and complete a full rotation, only to run out of momentum and fall forward and return Rudra¡¯s world to darkness.
Grumbling to himself, Rudra crawled over to the right half of what was usually the front of the cage but was now the floor, blindly feeling for the bars with his hands. Running palm across them, he found the left-most gap, the one between the solid left half of the wall and the first bar. Gripping the bar tightly with his right hand, he stuck his left hand through the gap between the bar and the rest of the wall, placed his palm to the ground below, and shoved.
Having spent days carrying the cage on his back Rudra knew just how heavy it was, and he took that weight into account. Rudra¡¯s prison tipped back, easily righting itself so that he could see the arena once more.
His jaw dropped. He wanted to say that his cell had tumbled at least fifteen meters, but he couldn¡¯t say for sure because he could no longer find the edge of the stone platform to determine where the cage had stood just moments ago.
The arena had been, by and large, utterly destroyed, as if a large bomb had gone off in its center. The massive slab of stone, once a single solid piece and moments ago several still-massive chunks, was now little more than a pile of rubble. The blast had strewn much of it across the open area, with some of the pieces even landing in the lowest sections of the stands.
His eyes spotted a black-haired woman lying front-first against the foundation of one those raised stands, a large club pierced through her chest and into the stone of the stadium itself. Looking back towards the center, he found the Chos doubled-over and breathing heavily as blood flowed from a dozen scrapes and cuts, as well as what looked like a stone sticking out of the top of her right thigh. What had he missed while the cage was rolling?
The match was over, its end announced by the stillness that hung in the air. No announcers jumped in to proclaim a victor. No one in the crowd immediately roared their approval.
Eventually, the crowd stirred, their shell shock wearing off with time. Their voices banished the stillness as the air shook with deafening cheers and chants of ¡°Strag-ma! Strag-ma!¡±. The Chos straightened up and raised a fist to the air, soaking in the adulation. Judging by her grin, her injuries barely caught her notice.
Meanwhile, Rudra watched as Gabriela¡¯s remains again brought forth a red smoke. Slowly, the club began to move as if some invisible hand was pushing it out from inside the stone. After several moments, it clattered to the rubble below and the woman rose to her feet with a massive hole through her leather armor and undershirt centered around her sternum.
¡°Wonderful! Just wonderful! That was fantastic fun! You lived up to the hype after all,¡± the Chos declared with great enthusiasm as she carefully navigated the treacherous rubble beneath her feet. She grunted, placing her left hand on her right shoulder and rolling it with noticeable discomfort, but her smile never wavered. ¡°You should feel proud. I try to avoid doing that technique because it nearly dislocates my shoulders every time I do it. You¡¯re the second person I¡¯ve ever had to use it on after that Ubran guy!¡±
She grabbed Gabriela¡¯s arm and raised her hand up for the crowd. The Stragmans acknowledged her efforts with decent applause as well, but the approval only seemed to worsen the Earthling¡¯s mood.
Rudra¡¯s mood wasn¡¯t much better. He did not get another chance to speak to his fellow dimensional castaway. Instead, he and his cell were carted away immediately upon the match¡¯s end, leaving him to brood over his own failings. He should have said something, but he couldn¡¯t risk it. He should try to do something when let out of his cage, but he didn¡¯t dare. He was stuck, trapped eternally in a hole he¡¯d helped dig, and the walls only seemed to get higher by the day.
Rudra subconsciously tensed as the cell door swung open just enough for a small, slight woman to stumble inside. As he did every day at this time, he weighed the risks of bursting through the opening with Tepin tucked under an arm and making a break for it, and as he did every day just after, he decided it would put her in too much danger. With her frail body, he couldn¡¯t even guarantee that she wouldn¡¯t get hurt from the sudden momentum changes that he¡¯d likely have to put her through to get away. And then, even if they did get away¡ where would they go?
Escaping to the Shell ghettos would surely be little more than a temporary measure. The Chos had the manpower to find them there if she needed to, no matter how well hidden they might be. But running away from the city would be even worse. The Stragman rainforest was likely more dangerous than all the jungles on Earth combined. How was he, with only several weeks of experience in the forest¡ªif you could call doing little more than walking in a group and following the commands of the team leader for several weeks ¡°experience¡±¡ªsupposed to not only survive out there on his own but protect Tepin at the same time?
A passionate kiss on the lips broke him from his spiraling thoughts. He¡¯d been so wrapped up in his worries that he¡¯d missed the door closing. Pushing those thoughts aside, he returned to the moment and swept his darling love into a gentle but firm embrace, lifting her easily off the floor and into his arms.
¡°I missed you,¡± he said, another thing that happened each day, though this time the words meant even more than usual. ¡°I-¡±
A thin finger pressed against his mouth, bringing him to silence.
¡°I have some very important things to tell you, so we must not waste time today,¡± she told him in the barest of whispers, leaning forward so that she spoke right into his ear.
¡°Me too,¡± he whispered back. After so many visits, they¡¯d gotten rather good at conversing as quietly as possible so not even the sharpest-eared eavesdroppers would be able to listen in.
She kissed him again as he walked to the far wall and sat down against it with her facing him as she straddled his wide waist.
¡°You first,¡± he said.
She told him of her visitors the night before, of what had been asked, and her thoughts on what it all meant. He then filled her in on Gabriela from that morning and, in a rare moment of pure candor, of what had gone through his mind the whole time.
Tepin sighed, leaning in and burying her face in his chest. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she mumbled.
¡°Don¡¯t.¡±
¡°No, no matter how many times you deny it, it¡¯s true. I dragged you into this. I forced your hand. I made you as much of a culprit as I. If I had just left you alone, you¡¡± She was crying, he realized with alarm. He almost never saw tears from the stoic woman. ¡°¡you would never have had to suffer like this.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve said it before and I¡¯ll say it again, as many times as I have to for you to stop with this,¡± he whispered back as he tenderly stroked her disheveled hair. ¡°I made my decisions on my own, so please, stop blaming yourself.¡±
She grunted in reply and they both went silent for a moment, the only sounds left being the sounds of their breathing as his hand ran from the top of her head behind her ears down along her back to the base of her tail.
After several strokes, she pulled herself back a bit and rubbed her face and eyes before fixing him with a steadfast stare. It was like the tears had never existed.
¡°Unfortunately, your Earthling and her companions surely left hours ago; there is little we can do about them now,¡± she began. ¡°Instead, we must consider what happens should they decide to return.¡±
¡°What do you mean?¡±
Tepin paused, taking a deep breath and seeming to consider her next words carefully.
¡°If I were to escape this place to somewhere else, somewhere out of this endless jungle where the Chos could never threaten me again, what would you do? Would you come?¡±
¡°I¡ but what about the Shells? Without either of us, the movement would be crippled! Would you really want everything you¡¯ve worked for to go to waste like that, Tepin? What about your dream?¡±
¡°Why must you care so much about my dream? What about your dreams? Don¡¯t you have any that are wholly your own?¡±
Rudra exhaled. ¡°Back when I had Jaya, I was full of dreams. I was young and the world seemed limitless. I dreamed of having a family, opening up a shop, getting rich, even seeing the world with her by my side. But those dreams disappeared with her. I spent years of my life feeling empty. Even after I ended up here, I was just living every day for no reason other than to see the next one. It¡ it felt terrible.
¡°Do you remember back when I first met you? The real you? I ended up embracing your cause back then more because I wanted to fill the hole inside me with some sort of purpose than for any other reason, but it turned out that it filled that hole really well. The more I did it, the more I interacted with others, the more I liked it. Eventually it became my cause as much as it was yours. Isn¡¯t that good enough? Even if you didn¡¯t mean to, you gave me something to exist for.¡±
¡°Then, are you saying that you would stay here? Something tells me that your fellow Earthlings wouldn¡¯t rescue me just so you can stay where you are.¡±
Rudra shrugged. ¡°Eh? I don¡¯t know what they might want. She didn¡¯t ask me if I wanted to escape, she just asked if I needed help. That could be anything.¡±
¡°You are clouding your judgment for no reason.¡±
¡°What do you think I should do, then? I don¡¯t have an answer. I would want to go with you, of course. But¡ do you remember what you said that first night? It was something like, ¡®There are over three million Shells in Stragma, and neither of us is important enough to outweigh the salvation of three million people.¡¯ Why should our happiness suddenly outweigh everything else? It wouldn¡¯t be right to just abandon everyone.¡±
¡°I have no choice. My current existence only serves as a chain to tie you down, and I cannot let that continue,¡± Tepin reminded him. ¡°Regardless, I lack the means of stopping them from stealing me away if they so choose. But you¡¡± She sighed. ¡°I want you to think, long and hard, about everything. You must not allow guilt to replace me as the next chain that binds you. You are not the only person who can do what must be done, and you must avoid the trap that is thinking otherwise. Make a list and figure out what must be addressed before you will be willing to leave. Identify the finish line of this race, and push towards it. Then, should events unfold so that they come for you, you will know if you can leave.¡±
¡°Alright,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll try.¡±
¡°That¡¯s all any of us can do now.¡±
Their conversation faded into quiet for a while as they each retreated into their own thoughts. Rudra ran his fingers through his beloved¡¯s hair as he breathed in deep. As much as he didn¡¯t want to admit it, she smelled less than pleasant these days, probably because they didn¡¯t let her wash often enough. He took a small amount of reassurance that, at the very least, they fed her well each day, but unfortunately, he knew that this could always change at a moment¡¯s notice.
Regardless of what happened to her, he could only hope that the others from Earth could do what he could not and save her. He would take that, for now.
¡°What were they like?¡± Tepin asked, intruding on his thoughts.
¡°Hm?¡±
¡°The person from Earth and the Otharians. What were they like? I only met one of them, and it turned out to be somebody I¡¯d met before.¡±
¡°Oh yeah?¡±
¡°Yes. It¡¯s a long, complicated story that I don¡¯t feel like getting into.¡±
Rudra took the hint. ¡°Well, there¡¯s wasn¡¯t much time to get an impression. There is this orange-haired woman who seemed largely calm and professional. She didn¡¯t say anything while I was there, though. This other smallish, kind of thin woman seemed nice enough. She asked my name, which nobody else did, so that¡¯s something, I guess. She seemed to really love the child. They all did, you could see, but especially her. And Gabriela seems rather dour and business-like. She pretty much outright said to the Chos¡¯s face that she didn¡¯t want to battle and was only doing it out of obligation. Still put up an amazing fight, though.¡±
¡°All that for a single child. It¡¯s¡ remarkable.¡±
¡°Well, all I can say is that it was a very cute child. A beastkin like you, with dark skin and gleaming yellow eyes. Reminded me of a panther from back home. Adorable little thing, she was. It made me think that when we have children, they will be even cuter than she is.¡±
¡°W-what are you talking about, you moron!¡± she sputtered.
¡°You don¡¯t want kids?¡±
¡°I¡¡± She paused for a moment, searching for the right words. ¡°Bringing a child into this world, given who I am and our situation¡ I feel like it would be more of a curse bearing down upon them than a blessing. They would go through so much pain. I could never curse my child with a life like mine.
¡°But,¡± she continued with a scathing glare, ¡°none of that matters, anyway! Bearing a child would probably kill me well before I could give birth. And even were that not the case, did you truly think that a human and a beastkin could procreate?¡±
Rudra shrugged. ¡°Can¡¯t they? I never really thought about it.¡±
She rolled her eyes. ¡°Idiot!¡± she hissed. ¡°We¡¯re completely different peoples¡ªI can no better conceive your child than I could an elf¡¯s! Were you really making love to me thinking I would conceive?¡±
¡°I told you, I didn¡¯t really think about it.¡±
¡°Sometimes I wonder what I see in you.¡±
He pulled her in close again. ¡°Well, if that is how it is, then I guess we¡¯ll just have to adopt,¡± he said lightly.
Tepin went stiff as a board.
They talked for a little bit longer of various things, but soon, as they so often did these days, they moved on to other, more intimate activities. Rudra couldn¡¯t help but notice just how much more fervent his lover seemed this time.
¡°Hope you had your fun for the night,¡± a male voice called from outside the cell. Tepin and Rudra looked up from their embrace as a familiar silhouette entered the illumination of the torches outside, the flickering light reflecting into the chamber off a pair of very shiny, very metallic legs. ¡°Visiting hours are over.¡±
¡°You again?¡± Tepin growled. ¡°Why are you here?¡±
¡°Why am I anywhere?¡± Caprakan Bloodflower asked. ¡°Stop wasting time and get out.¡±
Never taking her wary gaze off of him, Tepin stood up and walked to the door. A squad of guards formed around her to escort her back to wherever they hid her away. Noticeably, the general did not accompany them.
¡°Leave us,¡± he said to the remaining troops. They seemed a little puzzled, but none of them dared to question the commands of a high-ranking Hono who also happened to be the Chos¡¯s husband.
¡°I don¡¯t think I want to talk to you,¡± Rudra told him once the two of them were alone. ¡°I hear you¡¯re not to be trusted.¡±
¡°And, do you believe it?¡± Caprakan asked, folding his arms across his chest with his hands on his sides. ¡°Have I not always treated you well?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know if I would say you¡¯ve treated me much at all. You haven¡¯t spoken to me in months¡ªsince I revived you, now that I think of it, and you were dead most of the time before that.¡±
The Stragman¡¯s hands tightened. ¡°It is best that it happened that way. For some time after awakening in your cell, I was plagued by¡ difficulties. I avoided contact with everyone until quite recently.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± Rudra said.
¡°Stop it. I am not here to receive the pity of a Shell locked in an inescapable prison.¡±
¡°Then why are you here after all this time?¡±
¡°I wanted to hear your answer to a question. What is strength to you, Rudra?¡±
¡°What kind of question is that? And why me?¡±
¡°Because I desire the perspective of somebody who is¡ untainted by this place, I guess you could say, which makes you perhaps the most qualified person I have easy access to.¡±
Rudra leaned back and thought for a moment about the general¡¯s circumstances. It wasn¡¯t hard to imagine and empathize with the struggles he¡¯d faced. First, he¡¯d been tortured¡ªwhich was bad enough¡ªbut then, upon revival, he¡¯d become a living embarrassment for himself and the Chos during the challenging recovery afterward. Rudra would have pitied him, but he knew that the only thing the Stragman would hate more than being an embarrassment or laughingstock would be to be pitied. Pity was for pathetic creatures, like Shells.
After a moment of consideration, Rudra decided to cooperate. Caprakan was correct, he had treated Rudra fairly well. Rudra found that his enmity towards the Chos did not extend to her partner, perhaps because he had not been a party in those tumultuous early clashes. No, he had been the weapon he¡¯d used against her.
But still, that didn¡¯t mean he had to cooperate for free.
¡°I¡¯d be more than glad to discuss that with you, as long as you put a word in for me with your wife.¡±
¡°About what?¡±
¡°The way she treats me, the way she treats Tepin, the way she treats the Shells¡ pick one.¡±
Caprakan nodded. ¡°Very well, if that is your price. However, know that my word means little with her when it comes to anything related to you. You know how stubborn she can be. But, I¡¯ll try.¡±
¡°Yeah, I know,¡± Rudra agreed. He sighed. After a few more moments of consideration, he said, ¡°I don¡¯t know how to answer your question, to be honest. Things like strength are concepts too broad to be easily narrowed down to a few simple words. That¡¯s where I think you all get it so wrong. There¡¯s so much more to strength than just being able to win in a fight.¡±
¡°Is that so?¡±
¡°You have seen, firsthand, what I am capable of, physically. Would you say that I am strong?¡±
¡°I would not. A weapon is only as strong as the will to use it, and you lack that will.¡±
¡°And yet, without a single battle, I nearly brought this place to its knees. Just me and all the others you¡¯ve all deemed so worthless. Could a weak person manage such a thing?¡±
¡°I wonder. That same person now cowers in a cell, meek as could be.¡±
¡°I made some mistakes. It happens to everybody.¡±
The Stragman cocked his head to the side. ¡°You mean your silly ¡®pacifist¡¯ idea?¡±
Rudra shook his head. ¡°No. Not at all. I¡¯ve never regretted choosing to become a pacifist. It helps define me and solidifies who I am, and I am proud of my decision. But when you limit your options like that, especially in a place like this, you have to be even better than others just to stay afloat. I was too foolish and overconfident, and it led me to¡ to where we are today.
¡°I should have sought out more allies, people who could protect me and cover my weakness with their strengths. I should have pressed harder and been more proactive from the beginning. And most of all, I should never have stepped into this blasted cage.¡±
That drew a smirk from the man. ¡°Quite a trap she laid for you, isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°I could break my first cell as if it were made of paper. It never occurred to me that something like this could even exist.¡±
¡°Yes, I imagine you were quite shocked.¡± He ran a hand along the bars appreciatively. ¡°Given the size of it, it probably took every single one of our arbor Observers an entire season of nonstop effort to craft this, especially without my assistance.¡±
As his hand traveled over the bars, branches started to grow out of them, winding around the adjacent bars as little green leaves budded from the ends. Rudra stared, wide-eyed. Was his cage¡ alive?!
¡°You coax the tree to grow a small part of it into the shape you desire, you see,¡± Bloodflower continued. ¡°The problem is, if you let it go, it will revert to its original shape.¡±
He removed his hand from the bar and indeed, Rudra could see the branches very slowly but surely withering and retreating back into their bars.
¡°You have to hold it, keep it in the form you desire, for days on end, until it becomes the natural shape. Only then can you sever it from the Mother and expect it to hold. It is an exhausting effort reserved for the rarest of items, done usually once a generation at most for the Chos¡¯s weapon. You must have made her truly desperate to resort to something like this.¡±
¡°You know a lot about this sort of thing,¡± Rudra noted.
¡°Of course. I am the greatest arbor Observer of my generation. It is how I achieved my rank. Akhustal¡¯s club is my personal handiwork.¡±
¡°So she didn¡¯t have that thing until she became the leader, is that right?¡±
¡°Correct. Only the Chos has the right to a gift from the Mother Tree. It wasn¡¯t until she was acknowledged as the next Chos that she received hers. Until then, she had to make do with an inferior version, which dented rather easily, if I recall correctly.¡±
¡°How did she become Chos, anyway?¡±
¡°Hunting dangerous monsters on her own that would normally take a team of ten to slay, as well as a very famous undefeated streak in combat tournaments for ten years running. It was a rather easy choice for her predecessor to make, really. Much easier than usual, if our histories are to be believed, though things rarely got so bad that the Challenge of Ruresni needed to be invoked.¡±
The man straightened, pushing himself away from the bars. He teetered slightly before his metal legs adjusted and steadied him.
¡°Well, this has been an enlightening chat, but I must go. A word of advice: consider your next actions very carefully. Akhustal prizes you more than you may know, and I cannot say what she will do to keep things as they are.¡±
With those words, he turned and began to leave, his arms moving in strange patterns as his mechanical legs took short but steady steps. Just before he receded from the torchlight, he stopped and looked back at Rudra for a moment.
¡°Thank you, by the way, for reviving me.¡±
And with that, he faded into the darkness.
Chapter 111
Pari Clansnarl stretched herself up as high as she could go, raising herself up on her tiptoes to maximize her paltry height and get as good a view from the cabin viewport as she could. The world of the clouds and the sky beckoned to her with the promise of grand vistas the likes of which she had never seen before, views like the awe-inspiring sight imprinting itself onto her eyeballs at that very moment.
The Stragman¡¯s great Mother Tree, Ruresni, towered over everything much in the same way that Grandfather would tower over a measly Crawler¡ªshowing utterly overwhelming domination through nothing but indomitable presence. It even overshadowed Metal Man¡¯s delightful floating wagon, within which Pari and the others currently sat. That overshadowing was quite literal.
Though it was around midday, the deep darkness of night filled the world on the other side of the window. The Mother Tree¡¯s wide, arcing canopy spread out wide like one of those ¡°umbrellas¡± that Sofie had made Metal Man create for them, blocking the light of the sun for kilometers around so effectively that only the sight of the sunlit forest far off in the distance betrayed the impression that it was the dead of night. Her sister had said that the tree¡¯s top had to be at least ten kilometers wide. Pari believed her because Sofie was smart and knew these kinds of things.
Nowhere else could Pari see a sight like this. The view filled her with wonder. Flying was the super greatest!
Perhaps Pari¡¯s favorite moment of her life was of the short time when Grandfather had finally taken her from their home to fly in his hands. The wind rushing through her hair, the breathtaking view, the feeling of freedom so pure, as if they could go anywhere they dreamed to... it had seared itself into her memory, a short span of sheer joy within what had otherwise been one of the worst days of her life. The Flying Toaster¡ªwhatever that was supposed to mean¡ªlacked much of that experience¡ªno rushing wind or total freedom here¡ªbut it was still a wonderful second-place. Where else would Pari find a view like this?
¡°I¡¯m so glad to be out of there,¡± Sofie sighed wearily from a seat in the back of the cabin. ¡°Being watched every minute of the day was starting to drive me crazy!¡±
¡°Mmhm,¡± Arly dismissively replied as she checked some of the various sticks and other weird things poking out of the surfaces up at the front of the cabin. Pari didn¡¯t know what any of those did, only that she wasn¡¯t allowed to touch them anymore¡ªnot after the last time.
Only the three of them were in the room at the moment. Almost immediately after getting on the Flying Toaster, Gabby had excused herself and Pari hadn¡¯t seen her in the hours since.
As for Arly, she finally looked like herself again. Pari had known from the start, of course. Upon ¡°waking up¡± in the Stragman room, she had immediately smelled through Arly¡¯s disguise. Nobody else smelled of tallow, iron, and salt the way she did.
Pari hadn¡¯t said anything at the time. It wasn¡¯t right to ruin another person¡¯s prank, after all. But, to her surprise, Arly had stayed in disguise the entire time they¡¯d been in Stragma. Whatever sort of joke she¡¯d been concocting, it must have been a big one.
Arly was clearly not in the mood for laughing right now, however, but Sofie didn¡¯t seem to pick up on that and continued talking. ¡°So, now that we can talk freely again, what did you find out? Why is the guy stuck in a cage?¡±
¡°That¡¯s none of your business,¡± Arly flatly answered.
¡°Come on, tell me!¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°Why not?!¡±
Pari pulled her gaze from the majestic vista outside and turned to watch with dismay the burgeoning argument between her two sisters. She could smell the stress and frustration they were each giving off. She smelled the same odors whenever the two talked now, ever since the world had changed to put her in Stragma out of nowhere. The whole scene distressed Pari greatly. Family wasn¡¯t supposed to fight!
¡°Because this is a mission tasked to me by my employer. It has nothing to do with you and I will not discuss it with you without his agreement,¡± Arly testily explained.
¡°That¡¯s a bunch of bull!¡± Sofie shot back, stepping forward until they were less than two meters apart. ¡°We¡¯re both from Earth! That man¡¯s circumstances matter as much to me as they do to Blake! Why did you all purposely leave me out of this?¡±
Arly¡¯s voice turned icier than the snow atop Grandfather¡¯s mountain. ¡°You know why.¡±
Pari walked up and tugged urgently at the side of Arly¡¯s shirt. ¡°Arly-sis, why Arly-sis mad at Sofie-sis? Sofie-sis do something bad?¡±
Arly¡¯s face twisted into a visage of wrath incarnate and Pari was almost physically pushed back by the smell of her anger as it cascaded from her in waves. ¡°You didn¡¯t tell her?!¡± she snarled at Sofie, who visibly recoiled from the sudden outburst.
¡°I-I was going to, but, uh¡±, Sofie stammered, ¡°I-I-I couldn¡¯t find the, uh, the right time to, uh-¡±
Arly stepped forward and smacked Sofie across the mouth so hard that the smaller sister fell to the metal floor. ¡°Coward!¡± she spat. ¡°After all you put her through, you can¡¯t even do the one most important thing?! Don¡¯t even think of talking to me again until you¡¯ve told her everything. All of it.¡±
With that said, Arly marched towards the main cabin exit, holding the hand she¡¯d used to hit Sofie up to her eyes and giving it a good look. ¡°Well, at least that¡¯s almost back to normal,¡± Pari heard her mutter to herself just before she disappeared from view, leaving just the two of them remaining.
Pari rushed up to Sofie as her sister pushed herself up into a sitting position. ¡°Sofie-sis hurt?!¡± she asked with great concern. Tears poured from Sofie¡¯s eyes like twin springs creating rivers of sadness and she avoided Pari¡¯s gaze. Pari felt herself getting angrier with each passing moment. How could Arly hurt her sister like that!? ¡°Arly-sis suddenly is big meanie! Don¡¯t worry Sofie-sis, Pari will fix!¡±
Sofie reached out and grabbed Pari¡¯s arm before Pari could take a step. ¡°Pari, no.¡±
¡°Nya?¡±
Pari didn¡¯t know what was going on anymore. She could smell Sofie¡¯s pain and sadness, but why did she suddenly reek of so much guilt?
¡°She¡¯s right, Pari,¡± her forlorn sister softly stated. ¡°I should have told you everything already, but I didn¡¯t because I was afraid.¡±
¡°Afraid? What make Sofie-sis afraid?¡±
¡°Because...¡± Her throat seemed to seize up, strangling the words before they could emerge. Eventually, Sofie swallowed and took another breath so she could speak again. ¡°Because I hurt you, sweetie. I hurt you terribly.¡±
Pari had no clue what Sofie was going on about. Still, she quickly checked her body to make sure, just in case. ¡°Pari not hurt at all,¡± she helpfully informed her sister.
¡°No, I...¡± She took a deep breath. ¡°Look, sweetie, during the time when you were, uh, not with us, we discovered that I actually do have a power like Blake and Gabby after all.¡±
Pari found the idea that Sofie thought she didn¡¯t have a power to be far more surprising than that she had one. Pari could smell the power, just like she smelled from Metal Man, Gabby, and Grandfather. Why would Sofie be any different?
¡°We figured out what my power is,¡± Sofie continued, ¡°and, um, it is basically that I force people to... to not do things. I force them to act in ways that I want.¡±
¡°Pari not understand.¡±
¡°It... it starts when I say the word...¡± She took a long, deep breath. ¡°...don¡¯t.¡±
A loud screech rang out from the large metal ring that encircled Sofie¡¯s neck. Pari had asked why it was there several times over the last day and a half, but her sister had avoided answering the question each time. Now, she got an up-close view of what it was for as it constricted around Sofie¡¯s throat like a brown-snout constrictor snake.
Pari began to panic as her dear sister¡¯s face went redder than an unripe durkon. She tried to stand, but Sofie¡¯s hold on her arm stayed firm and unrelenting. It was that grip, more than anything, that kept Pari from losing her cool entirely.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the ring relaxed and Sofie let out a powerful exhalation before taking a series of large, gulping breaths.
¡°I¡¯m okay, I¡¯m okay,¡± Sofie assured Pari, to only moderate success.
¡°Pari hates metal ring!¡± she declared with great furor. What sort of horrible device was this, anyway?! It could only have been created by that meanie, Metal Man! Pari decided to give him a present in stinkcandle form the next time they met.
¡°I do too, sweetie, but it keeps me from accidentally hurting people and I can¡¯t live with you and the others without it. Supposedly I¡¯ll get something better after we pick up Blake, if he¡¯s still alive.
¡°Anyway, when I say... that word, it acts as a trigger, and then whatever I say next is the thing the person I¡¯m talking to can¡¯t do anymore. It¡¯s coercive mind control and it¡¯s terrible and wrong, and I used it on you all the time without realizing it and I am so, so sorry.¡±
Pari thought about Sofie¡¯s words and took them seriously. She thought back to all the times her sister had told her not to do things with that word.
Don¡¯t jump on the bed.
Don¡¯t eat your boogers.
Don¡¯t fart in public.
Don¡¯t talk with your mouth full.
Don¡¯t eat other people¡¯s boogers.
Don¡¯t shove bugs in my face.
Don¡¯t make me come in there.
An endless stream of ¡®don¡¯ts¡¯ bubbled up from her memory. Sofie hadn¡¯t been wrong, she¡¯d apparently used it quite often on Pari. But wasn¡¯t it all used in a caring way?
¡°Pari still not understand. Mother and Father told Pari same things many times. Why bad when Sofie-sis says them?¡±
¡°Because... because my power alters a person¡¯s very identity, changing who they are. It robs them of their ability to be themselves. And I used it on you the most. I would never want to control you like that. I want you to be the wonderful little ragamuffin that you are.
¡°On top of that, it hurts people. If you try to fight it, it¡¯s like your body starts to break down from the inside. And then there are all the people who probably got hurt when their geasa interfered when they least expected it... like you. If I had never told you not to kill people back then, you wouldn¡¯t have died!¡±
Pari shook her head vigorously in disagreement. ¡°Pari not die because of Sofie-sis. Pari promised Sofie-sis to not kill people so Pari not kill big meanie! Pari just forgot until right before, but Pari remembered in time to stop!¡±
For some reason, instead of relief, Pari only smelled renewed sadness. ¡°No, that¡¯s... you remembered because my geas made you remember...¡± Sofie let out a tired sigh before cupping Pari¡¯s face in her hands and lifting her head so they faced each other fully. ¡°Oh, you sweet little thing. What am I supposed to do with you? Please, you shouldn¡¯t try to take the blame for what happened. It¡¯s my fault.¡±
Pari took in her sister¡¯s worn-down appearance from up close for the first time that day. She had to admit, it was a worrying sight. Pallid skin covered sunken cheeks, while glassy eyes stared back at her beneath dry, straw-like hair. Pari had been with Sofie during harrowing periods before¡ªthe journey from Drayhadal back to Kutrad and the Battle of Crirada stood out as two particular times when neither of them had had much to eat¡ªbut Sofie had never lost weight like this before.
Still, as bad as she looked now, Pari could already see noticeable improvements from the day before. The change between Sofie when they¡¯d been eating meat pies and the gaunt, haggard figure that Pari had opened her eyes to see just a moment later was so great that Pari almost thought they were different people. However, their smell had not changed, which was how Pari knew that the stick-thin, bony woman hugging her and weeping was her sister after all. Only Sofie smelled of musty wood, ground orta grass seed, and power.
Pari shook her head, which was much harder with Sofie¡¯s hands in the way. ¡°Grandfather makes people do what Grandfather wants many times, even with Pari,¡± she told her sister. ¡°Sofie strong, so making weak follow is way of world. Grandfather says so. Why Sofie sorry?¡±
Sofie snorted. ¡°You¡¯ll have to forgive me if I can¡¯t put much value in the morality of a dragon that tried to kill me.¡±
The words froze Pari in place, a chill running down her spine. She¡¯d never heard the word ¡®dragon¡¯ before, but the meaning came across all too clearly. Sofie knew! She knew Grandfather¡¯s secret!
How long had she known?! And how? Pari had been so very careful to keep the secret, too! Would she have to kill Sofie-sis like she¡¯d killed those two people in the woods? But she¡¯d also promised not to kill anybody anymore! What a disaster! She was stuck, forced to break a promise no matter what!
¡°Sweetie? What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°Pari promise to keep secret for Grandfather, but Sofie-sis know secret! Grandfather said Pari not true Person if not keep promises!¡± she fretted.
Her thoughts went back, not for the first time, to those cold, miserable days on the streets with her brother. She¡¯d promised Brother that she would stay hidden, that she wouldn¡¯t come out for anybody but him. She¡¯d been a bad girl and broken that promise, and now he was gone forever. She had to be a good girl now and keep her promises, or Sofie-sis and Grandfather would disappear too! She-
Before she knew what was happening, Pari found herself swept into an overpowering embrace. ¡°Hush, now,¡± Sofie said softly into Pari¡¯s ears. ¡°You need not worry. We all learned of his true nature without you. We met him and everything.¡±
¡°N-nya?!¡± Pari went rigid in shock. Sofie-sis had met Grandfather?!
¡°It¡¯s a long story, but I¡¯ll explain later, okay?¡±
Still, not even her sister¡¯s words and embrace could fully quench the embers of worry now smoldering in her heart. Like any true sister, Sofie noticed this immediately.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, sweetie?¡±
Pari gulped, almost afraid to give voice to her troubles, lest she regret the answer. ¡°Is... Pari good girl?¡±
¡°You¡¯re the best girl, sweetie. I¡¯m so proud that you care so much about keeping your promises. You¡¯ll always be a wonderful child. And...¡± Sofie sniffed. ¡°You¡¯re a great friend, too. Never forget that. If anybody has been a bad girl, it¡¯s me.¡±
¡°Sofie-sis not bad girl either!¡±
¡°Maybe not, but maybe that¡¯s the problem. I can¡¯t tell what to think anymore.¡±
¡°Nya?¡±
¡°I¡¯m so sick of being weak and helpless, Pari. I¡¯ve been little more than an anchor dragging everybody around me down this whole time, and I¡¯ve always hated it. But now, I finally get my hands on a weapon only to find that it¡¯s cursed and I shouldn¡¯t dare use it. I keep second-guessing everything to the point where I might as well stay weak because it¡¯s easier.¡±
¡°Sofie-sis hate being strong?¡± Pari wondered. ¡°Grandfather says strength is only thing that matters.¡±
¡°I just... my powers only ever hurt people. Even when I accidentally used them for things that are good, like with you and not killing people, it only ended up creating disaster in the end.¡±
¡°Sofie-sis wrong!¡± Pari cried out, pushing herself out of their hug so she could see her sister¡¯s face shocked again. ¡°Sofie-sis save Pari, remember?! Arly-sis and others were big meanies and wanted to hurt Pari, but Sofie-sis stopped Arly-sis!¡±
Though Pari could watch the shifting expressions on Sofie¡¯s face, she didn¡¯t need them to track the flow of emotions. Her nose told her everything as her sister went from shock and confusion into probing uncertainty and finally chagrined acceptance.
¡°You¡¯re right,¡± Sofie meekly replied. ¡°That was the greatest thing I¡¯ve ever done, and I was so busy focusing on all the rest that I never thought of it that way. But it doesn¡¯t erase all the damage I¡¯ve done with the rest.¡±
¡°Pari knows!¡± she exclaimed as she came upon a brilliant idea. ¡°Arly-sis was being big meanie, so Sofie-sis use powers only against big meanies and Sofie-sis not need to worry!¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t help but chuckle. ¡°A wonderful idea, sweetie, but how will I be able to know who is a big meanie?¡±
¡°Pari will help! Pari will point out all big meanies for Sofie-sis, so Sofie-sis can beat up big meanies for Pari!¡±
Sofie¡¯s chuckle turned into full laughter. ¡°You sure hate meanies, huh?¡±
¡°Yes, Pari hates big meanies!¡± she huffed. ¡°Big meanies bully Grandfather and hurt Sofie-sis and make Arly-sis cry! One day Pari will stop big meanies forever!¡±
¡°Okay, sounds like a plan,¡± Sofie replied, taking another big sniff. ¡°Thank you. This wasn¡¯t a conversation I should be coming out of feeling so... unburdened, but... here we are. If only we could clone you for every sad person in the world.¡± She turned her head and stared through the cabin wall at something. ¡°Speaking of which... I need to go have a chat with Arlette. Why not pay Gabby a visit? She¡¯s probably very stressed out right now and could use some relief like you gave me.¡±
¡°Okayyy!¡± Pari leapt to her feet and ran down the hallway to the area where all the sleeping rooms were located. It wasn¡¯t hard to find Gabby¡¯s room. Pari could smell her, after all.
Only Gabby smelled like Gabby, though Gabby had two smells. The first was her smell when she was calm and happy, when she smelled like a sea breeze with a hint of citrus, and, just like Sofie, great power. It was a soothing combination of scents that Pari found very calming. Unfortunately, Gabby was rarely happy. When she wasn¡¯t, there was an added layer atop the rest, a layer of acrid burning, almost like an excessively sooty and smoky fire. Though the scent in the hallway was hours old now, the fire still smelled extra potent.
Pari stood outside the closed door to Gabby¡¯s room and pressed the bell button outside. Her ears picked up the ring coming from inside the room, but no other sound. After several moments, she tried knocking, but that had the same result. Finally, without any other options, she reached up on her tiptoes and pressed the door button. To her surprise, Gabby had not locked the door and it slid open with a soft swish.
Pari almost gasped at the sight before her eyes. She found Gabby laying with her back on the floor in the middle of the room, almost completely still. The only things that kept her from falling into a panic were the missing scent of death and the clear rise and fall of Gabby¡¯s chest. Almost as bad, however, the room was filled with the scents of distress, unease, and fear. A strong, almost overwhelming fear.
¡°Gabby hurt? What wrong? Where enemy?!¡± Pari inquired, rushing in to kneel over the prone body. Given a closer view, she could see how pale the Earthling¡¯s face was, but unlike Sofie, Gabby had not looked seriously ill before getting on the Flying Toaster. Not only that, her mouth was drawn into a line, her eyes were squeezed shut, and her jaw was clenched as if she were fighting through pain. A truly troubling discovery, indeed!
Pari looked around the room quickly, trying to find the threat that had hurt Gabby and produced such heavy terror from the woman. Unlike the others, Gabby never smelled of fear. Never! What was it that could drive such a fearless woman into this state?
Gabby responded to Pari¡¯s sudden arrival several heartbeats later with a grunt, one devoid of any meaning. Her eyes slowly opened, but she didn¡¯t seem to recognize Pari in the slightest.
Scared that something was truly wrong now, Pari leaned down close to Gabby¡¯s belly button and took a deep sniff, then another, and another still. She began sniffing her way up the woman¡¯s torso, hoping to smell something different within Gabby, something out of place that might be causing all this pain.
A hand grabbed the back of Pari¡¯s shirt and lifted her up so she hung over Gabby¡¯s chest, swiftly bringing an end to Pari¡¯s frantic inspection.
¡°Child, what in the world are you doing?¡± Gabby asked, her voice rough and gravelly.
¡°Sofie-sis says that dogs can smell cancer within person¡¯s body and that Pari¡¯s nose better than dog nose so Pari try to find problem with sniffing,¡± she informed her companion. ¡°Pari find why Gabby hurt so Pari can find big meanie that make Gabby hurt and afraid.¡±
A single eyebrow rose on Gabby¡¯s forehead. ¡°Do you even know what cancer is?¡±
¡°No,¡± Pari admitted. ¡°Pari not know dog either.¡±
¡°Well,¡± Gabby sighed, ¡°it doesn¡¯t matter. You won¡¯t find anything.¡±
She lowered Pari down onto her chest and absentmindedly scratched her behind her left ear. Pari hummed as she tilted her head for a more optimal scratch.
¡°Why Pari not find anything?¡±
¡°Because what¡¯s wrong with me isn¡¯t in my body, it¡¯s in my head.¡±
¡°Pari not understand.¡±
¡°I¡¯m afraid of heights,¡± Gabby told her.
¡°...Pari still not understand.¡± She sure seemed to be saying that a lot today. How could somebody be afraid of heights? Wasn¡¯t that like being afraid of the sky? Of flying? How could anybody fear that wonderful thing?
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¡°Have you ever been afraid of something?¡±
A memory of a creature flashed before her eyes. The terrible roar, the menacing eyes, the way it hunted her, chasing her without mercy through the hallways...
¡°Pari has.¡± A truly horrifying memory, one not easily forgotten.
¡°Well, it¡¯s like that, taken to the extreme, except it happens to me when I¡¯m high up. It¡¯s like my mind is screaming at me right in my ear and I can¡¯t make it stop. I start shaking and I vomit everywhere, and I feel so weak and helpless, but there¡¯s nothing I can do but try to fight through it.¡±
¡°But... Gabby not fall! Floor hard and strong!¡± Pari kicked the floor next to them for effect, eliciting a clang.
¡°I know that I am likely quite safe here, child, but fear does not listen to reason. Especially this sort of fear. I can tell myself that I¡¯ll be fine all I want, but it does not help anywhere as much as I wish it did.¡±
¡°Is okay, Pari here now so Gabby not need be afraid,¡± she assured the woman with a wide smile.
Gabby seemed taken aback by Pari¡¯s simple declaration. After several moments, she finally said, ¡°How do you manage it, you sweet little thing? How is that smile always on your face? Where does it come from?¡±
Pari found the question to be very strange. The fear was surely confusing Gabby right now. ¡°Smile comes from being happy!¡± she informed the confused Gabby. Where else would it come from?
¡°That¡¯s not what I meant, you little munchkin!¡± Gabby snorted, giving Pari a poke in the side. ¡°How are you so happy all the time?!¡± The woman seemed to deflate as sadness returned. ¡°I¡¯m so tired, Pari. I don¡¯t know how much longer I can keep going. But you... it¡¯s like every day is Christmas in your eyes. Don¡¯t you ever get sad? Don¡¯t you ever have a bad day?¡±
Pari thought long and hard about her answer. Was she really always happy? Was that how everybody saw her? Sure, she was happy a lot, more than others like Gabby and Sammy, but was that unusual? Was it bad?
¡°Sometimes Pari is bored, and sometimes Pari is lonely, and sometimes Pari thinks about her old Family and feels sad,¡± she eventually admitted. ¡°But then Pari remembers that Pari has new family! Pari has Grandfather and Sofie-sis and Arly-sis and Sammy-friend! And Pari can make candles and eat yummy food and get lots of hugs, so why would Pari be sad?¡±
¡°A ¡®new¡¯ family, huh?¡± Her hand, at the moment scratching behind Pari¡¯s ear, stopped and clutched nervously at the hair behind the ear. ¡°If only it were that easy.¡±
A thought popped into Pari¡¯s mind, an idea so perfect and correct that she couldn¡¯t believe she hadn¡¯t thought of it already.
¡°Is okay! Gabby-sis always nice to Pari and give Pari food and good hugs and try really hard when Pari in trouble just like Sofie-sis and Arly-sis, so Pari has decided Gabby-sis is Gabby-sis now! Gabby-sis not alone anymore!¡±
Pari basked in the brilliance of her decision. Pari had been quite negligent with her hoard, having only amassed four people¡¯s-worth of Family so far. Meanwhile, Gabby clearly needed companionship. What¡¯s more, she had easily cleared all the requirements for sisterhood at this point. ¡®If only it were that easy¡¯? It was that easy! Gabby was so silly sometimes.
But Gabby didn¡¯t respond as Pari had expected, delighted at her promotion. Instead, she went still for a moment and Pari heard her heartbeat momentarily seize. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Pari, but I can¡¯t.¡±
¡°No?¡± Pari couldn¡¯t believe her ears. Shocked and appalled, she searched the Earthling¡¯s face for a sign that this was some sort of joke but found nothing of the sort. Why? Why would she say no? Family was wonderful and everybody wanted Family, so that could only mean... ¡°Pari¡¯s Family... no good? Gabby hates Pari?¡±
¡°No, no!¡± Gabby hurriedly proclaimed. ¡°It¡¯s just...¡± She sighed and pulled Pari against her chest. ¡°I have a family already, sweetie. They¡¯re still out there, somewhere. I can¡¯t give up on them, even if I never see them again. That¡¯s... that¡¯s why...¡±
As the woman began to tremble, Pari finally understood why Gabby was so sad all the time. So she was separated from her Family! How truly, terribly sad! Truly, Gabby required the utmost comforting. Luckily, Pari knew just the trick, a technique her mother had used to comfort her back when Pari had been just a small child. She reached out and began to pat Gabby lightly on the head. ¡°There, there,¡± she said softly. ¡°Pari knows Gabby-friend will see Family again. There, there.¡±
Pari knew that her ¡°there, there¡± technique was working because Gabby¡¯s shaking lessened immediately and the sorrowful scent she exuded weakened, so she kept doing it, patting away the woman¡¯s anguish one pat at a time.
Finally, minutes later, her companion released a long sniff and broke her silence. ¡°Gabby-friend?¡± the Earthling asked.
¡°If Gabby-friend cannot be Gabby-sister, then Gabby-friend be Gabby-friend, yes?¡± Pari masterfully explained.
¡°Alright... Alright, we can be friends all you want.¡± Gabby wiped the tears from her eyes and shuddered, the sort of shuddering that happened when you tried to force down a sob. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Most of the time I can push it away, but sometimes...¡±
¡°Is alright to be sad. Pari will stay for Gabby-friend, so Gabby-friend can be sad with Pari and feel better. There, there.¡±
¡°Pari, it¡¯s been, like, half an hour. You can stop patting my head.¡±
¡°Is okay. Gabby-friend is tired,¡± Pari said, her healing pats unceasing. ¡°Gabby-friend sleep now. Pari will stay for Gabby-friend so Gabby-friend sleep. There, there.¡±
Pari could see Gabby start to argue, only to be subdued by the pats and give in. ¡°How in the world did somebody so sweet ever come to be?¡± she wondered aloud as she closed her eyes and let her head sink to the hard floor. Before Pari could even count to thirty, she started to hear light snores coming from her new friend¡¯s mouth. Gabby hadn¡¯t been lying about being tired.
It was perhaps three minutes later that Pari realized she was bored. Wrapped up in Gabby¡¯s arms, she couldn¡¯t do much of anything, but she also wasn¡¯t sleepy. But at the same time, she might wake up her friend if she moved too forcefully and her headpatting arm was feeling pretty worn out at this point. Slowly, gently, she tried to pull herself free, only to realize that she couldn¡¯t move. Gabby¡¯s arms continued to enfold her in a tight, unbending embrace even in slumber, making any movement incredibly difficult. Not, at least, without waking up her friend. And so, Pari began what would go down in legends as ¡°the Forever Squirm¡±. It took her over an hour to regain her freedom, but at least she managed to not wake her new friend in the process.
¡°There, there,¡± Pari said softly as she gently patted the bawling Sammy on the top of her head. ¡°There, there.¡±
Sammy¡¯s tears didn¡¯t stop, however, and the distinct odor of distress still blanketed the normal Sammy odors of topsoil, wool, and pickled vegetables. Clearly, Pari wasn¡¯t doing her technique hard enough. She redoubled her headpatting efforts. ¡°Pari is here for Sammy-friend. There, there.¡±
¡°I thought you had left me too,¡± Sammy sobbed.
¡°Pari came back, Sammy-friend not need to worry, there there.¡±
In truth, Pari found it rather hard to wrap her head around all the sorrow she¡¯d had to confront since her ¡°revival¡±. Sofie, Gabby, Sammy... even Arly had given her a long, long hug. All of them had been so sad about her ¡°death¡±, but for her, nothing had happened. She¡¯d blinked and suddenly found herself somewhere else.
She believed Sofie and the others, of course. She knew with her whole heart that her sister would never lie to her. But there was a huge difference between what she understood and what she felt. From her perspective, it was like she¡¯d left for a few minutes to go to the potty, only to come back to everybody acting like she¡¯d disappeared for a year. It just didn¡¯t feel real. Was she supposed to be crying too? Was she supposed to feel sad? She didn¡¯t know the answer, but the fact remained that she didn¡¯t feel the same as the others and she found herself unable to pretend she did. But what was she supposed to do, not help her crying friend? Sofie said that friends were always there for friends in need, and Pari was the best friend in the world!
It had been clear from the moment of their arrival that Sammy was in deep distress. Normally Sammy didn¡¯t care about the comings and goings of people. She liked to stay out of sight much of the time and avoid attention when she wasn¡¯t being dragged around everywhere by Metal Man¡ªor should he be called Metal Meanie now? Anyway, Sammy did not wait at the elevator for people disembarking from the airship, and she most definitely did not throw herself in tears at people as they got off the elevator. And yet that was precisely what had occurred not long ago.
Even now, the two of them still stood in the hallway outside the elevator doors. Sofie and the others, after a moment, had decided quickly that they would only be in the way, leaving Pari to soothe yet another wounded spirit. And so, once more, Pari patted and patted away somebody¡¯s grief, easing their pain with the flat of her palm.
Eventually, Sammy calmed down enough that Pari was able to lead her to her room. Alpha, her weird metal pet, ran wildly around their feet when they opened the door, almost tripping them, but they made it to Sammy¡¯s neatly made bed and sat down together. The entire time, Sammy didn¡¯t release her grip of Pari¡¯s hand, as if she thought Pari would just disappear if she let go for even a second.
The two of them sat in silence for a few moments. Pari waited for Sammy to do... something, anything, but her friend seemed frozen. It seemed it would be up to Pari to get something going. She didn¡¯t want her friend to become stuck in some weird grief and sadness loop forever, and she was getting bored, besides.
¡°Sammy want to play game?¡± Pari ventured.
¡°Mmmm,¡± Sammy responded. Pari didn¡¯t even know if she was listening.
What would a good game for them to play be? The best choice would probably be something simple, so it wouldn¡¯t take her too long to teach. Sofie had said that there wasn¡¯t too much time before they were leaving to go see Grandfather.
¡°Pari knows!¡± she declared, bouncing off the bed and turning to face her friend. ¡°Pari teach Sammy-friend ticky tacky toes!¡±
That seemed to catch Sammy¡¯s attention, as her eyes seemed to regain focus and see Pari properly for the first time in a while. ¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Ticky tacky toes! Is game Sofie-sis taught Pari! Come, come!¡±
Pari dragged her companion off the bed and over to the nearby study desk. The desk was covered with parchment, each filled with writings, drawings, and diagrams that Pari didn¡¯t comprehend. She paid them no mind, instead searching for and pulling out a blank sheet. Grabbing a nearby pen¡ªone of Metal Meanie¡¯s only good creations¡ªPari made a small diagram made up of two horizontal and two vertical lines.
¡°Purpose of game is to create line of three in row before other person makes line of three,¡± Pari explained. ¡°Pari will go first!¡±
Taking the pen, she drew two diagonal lines intersecting each other in the middle¡ªan ¡®x¡¯, the Earth shape for ¡®no¡¯, according to her sister¡ªin the upper-left corner box.
¡°Sammy-friend¡¯s turn,¡± she said, holding the pen out.
Sammy stared at the pen, then the diagram, then the pen again. Finally, she slowly took the pen and drew her own two diagonal lines on the top-middle box.
¡°No, no, Sammy-friend make wrong shape!¡± Pari exclaimed, grabbing the pen. ¡°Sammy-friend make circle!¡±
Quickly, she drew a circle¡ªthe Earth shape for ¡®yes¡¯¡ªover Sammy¡¯s mistake, drawing it over and over until it dominated the box. Then, she drew her own mark in the center square. Just one more turn and she would have a victorious line running down and right across the board!
Sammy drew a circle in the lower-right corner. Drat! Pari responded by taking the lower-left corner. Sammy took the upper-right box. With a snicker, Pari made her mark in the middle-left box and drew a line through it.
¡°Pari wins!¡± she said, triumphant. ¡°Play again, now that Sammy-friend understands rules, okay? Sammy goes first because loser goes first!¡±
Sammy didn¡¯t seem as enthused, giving little more than a short hum and a small nod. Pari drew another board beside the first one. Perhaps she would purposely lose a game or two, to liven her friend¡¯s mood and grab her interest better.
¡°Sammy-friend cheating!¡± Pari announced to nobody in particular as Sammy drew a line across the board. There was no other explanation.
¡°I am not!¡± her adversary giggled.
¡°Then why Pari only lose or tie?!¡± Pari fumed.
Yes, Pari had intentionally lost the second and third games to make Sammy feel better. But then Sammy had started cheating, and Pari had not won a single game since. Looking at the page, there had to be at least thirty boards scribbled on it now. The vast majority of them featured a line drawn through three circles. Not a single one, save the very first, featured a line through an x.
¡°Maybe you¡¯re just bad!¡± came the laughing response.
Impossible! Pari nearly jumped as her tail, lashing about with ill temper, smacked painfully and unexpectedly against the desk leg. She¡¯d show Sammy what was what! She¡¯d win this next game for sure, cheating or no cheating!
¡°Pari, it¡¯s time to-¡± Sofie¡¯s voice called from the bedroom door. Seeing the scene, she walked into the room. ¡°Am I interrupting something? Pari, what¡¯s got you so irate?¡±
Sammy simply held up the parchment.
¡°Hmmm...¡± Sofie said, inspecting it closely. ¡°Pari, your strategy needs work.¡±
Pari gasped. Betrayed by her own sister!
¡°Maybe she can teach you how to improve when you get back. But for now, it¡¯s time to leave. We got all the food and everything all loaded and ready. All that¡¯s left is you.¡±
¡°Okay!¡± Pari¡¯s spirits rebounded instantly at the reminder that she would be seeing Grandfather again soon. She turned to leave, but before she could take more than a step, Sammy¡¯s hand reached out and grabbed her tightly by the wrist.
¡°Nya?¡±
¡°Please don¡¯t go,¡± she begged softly.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, Samanta, but she has to come. It¡¯s part of the agreement that he gets to see her again,¡± Sofie explained.
¡°But... but...¡±
Pari could feel Sammy¡¯s hand trembling around her arm as the scent of anxiety¡ªstrong and bitter, almost like a rotting egg¡ªfilled the room. It hurt to see her friend like this so suddenly. But why was she acting this way, just because Pari was leaving again for a few more days?
I thought you had left me too.
¡°Sammy-friend afraid that Pari won¡¯t come back?¡±
Sammy didn¡¯t respond verbally, but the way her grip on Pari¡¯s wrist tightened was all the confirmation Pari needed. Luckily, Pari had a brilliant solution.
¡°Sammy-friend come with Pari! Then Sammy-friend not worry about being alone! Pari can show Sammy-friend to Grandfather and tell Grandfather how Sammy-friend is Pari¡¯s bestest friend ever!¡±
Sammy locked up and the scent of anxiety was suddenly overwhelmed by the scent of... terror? Huh? Pari sniffed. The smell was coming from both Sammy and Sofie, for some reason.
¡°Pari not understand. Sammy-friend not want meet Grandfather?¡±
Sammy shook her head vehemently.
¡°Why?¡±
¡°He¡¯s a dragon and he¡¯s super scary,¡± Sammy whispered, avoiding eye contact.
¡°Nya?!¡± Pari had to replay her memory of what was just said several times before she was certain she hadn¡¯t missed something. ¡°Grandfather scary? Sammy-friend confused, thinking of wrong person. Grandfather not scary at all!¡±
¡°He¡¯s absolutely terrifying,¡± Sofie chimed in.
What was this absurdity? Pari couldn¡¯t believe her ears! Grandfather was Grandfather! Pari had never once felt any fear towards him in the slightest! Surely, they just didn¡¯t see him the proper way.
¡°But, Pari wants to show Grandfather Sammy-friend! Pari wants to tell Grandfather about Sammy-friend and how Sammy-friend is best friend in world! Pari not let Grandfather be scary, Pari promise!¡±
¡°I think this is a bad idea,¡± Sofie warned.
¡°...I¡¯ll go.¡±
¡°Yayyyy!¡± Pari cheered, hopping about in an impromptu dance.
¡°You really do not have to do this,¡± Sofie told Sammy.
¡°I don¡¯t want to be left here again. It was the worst. And... I can always hide in the ship.¡±
Pari skipped out of the room feeling as high as the Flying Toaster. Everything was wonderful! In just a little bit, she would get to have the best reunion ever! And there was no way Pari was going to let Sammy hide on the ship.
But first, she headed for her own room. It was time for a different reunion, a reunion with her candlemaking equipment.
Not even the sea breeze could mask the odor of nervousness emanating from everybody else in the four-person group, which shook Pari a little. Sofie and Sammy, she understood¡ªthey¡¯d already told her they were afraid¡ªbut even Gabby smelled of worry.
Unlike the others, Pari couldn¡¯t help but feel like a candle ready to explode from excitement. To think that she would get to see her Grandfather again so soon! She had so much to show him and tell him! Almost subconsciously, her hands moved down to feel for all the candles she¡¯d tucked away in her various pockets. Good, they hadn¡¯t disappeared in the last five minutes. She¡¯d spent so much effort making them all on the journey north, it would be a shame if she couldn¡¯t show them all off to amaze him.
Perhaps it was just the wait getting on the others¡¯ nerves. Their meeting point, a shelf of rock jutting from the side of a mountain on one side and ending on a sheer cliff down to the sea on the other, was located to the northwest of Kutrad on a small sliver of land between the mountains within which Grandfather lived and the ocean. Having left the Flying Toaster behind, they had taken one of Metal Meanie¡¯s crawly transport things¡ªanother neat creation, she begrudgingly had to admit¡ªand arrived to find... nobody. Grandfather was late.
Fortunately, he was not too late. Pari first knew he was coming by the sharp intake of breath she heard come from Sammy to her left. Following her friend¡¯s gaze, she spotted a giant winged being swooping around the nearby peaks and into view. He flared his wings as he approached, cutting his speed dramatically and sending a powerful blast of wind washing over them as he touched down for a landing just a few dozen meters away. With that wind came the scents that had, by and large, defined her childhood: blood, brimstone, and power.
¡°Ahahaha! That was incredible!¡± Metal Meanie cheered, hopping out of Grandfather¡¯s hand as he held it down near the ground. ¡°We should do that again sometime, Bazz! Better than any roller coaster I¡¯ve ever been on, that¡¯s for sure! Hooooowee!¡±
¡°Grandfather!¡± she cried out with joy. ¡°Grandfather is here!¡±
Pari paid no attention to the armored figure. She¡¯d already jumped down from the transport and was sprinting as fast as she could towards her beloved family member, arms outstretched. She threw herself onto the closest finger and wrapped her arms and legs around it tightly like she always used to when she needed to get onto Grandfather¡¯s hand. The finger curled upward almost by reflex and she dropped down onto his palm.
All Pari could see through her tear-blurred vision was a wall of golden scales, but that was more than enough. Her breath grew ragged as she began to ¡®happy growl¡¯¡ªor ¡®purr¡¯, as Sofie called it¡ªso loudly that she could barely hear and she flung herself up against his warm snout. ¡°Pari missed Grandfather so much!¡± she sobbed, rubbing herself against his smooth scales and taking deep, strong sniffs to breathe in as much of his calming, familiar scent as possible.
What was this bizarre wrenching in her abdomen? This strange feeling of melancholy relief that made her want to clutch onto Grandfather and never let him go? Was this what Sofie, Sammy, and the others had felt about her, this happiness that somehow carried deep sorrow within?
¡°PARI-CHILD LIVES. INCREDIBLE,¡± Grandfather rumbled.
¡°See? I told you. And with that, I¡¯ve fulfilled my half of the deal.¡±
¡°MMMMM, INDEED. THE PACT IS COMPLETE.¡±
Pari felt her floor shift as Grandfather moved her up and over towards his left eye. ¡°PARI-CHILD IS HEALTHY AND WHOLE?¡± he asked.
Pari sniffed and rubbed her eyes to wipe away the tears of joy. She nodded emphatically. ¡°Uh-huh! Pari had so much fun! Pari has lots of stories to tell and things to show Grandfather!¡±
She stared into his gargantuan eye, the relatively small body part still many times her entire size, taking in the speckled golden iris surrounding the huge, open oval of darkness that was the eye¡¯s pupil. Suddenly, the pupil closed into a slit barely wider than Pari¡¯s torso and she instinctively tensed. Unlike people, People did not radiate emotional scent, but Pari knew Grandfather more than well enough to know what this meant. Grandfather was angry.
The hand holding Pari curled into a cage of flesh and bone as a growl of rage built up from the base of Grandfather¡¯s chest and burst forth as a mighty, wrathful roar that shook Pari to her bones. ¡°PARI-CHILD STILL CHAINED!! VILE CRAWLER!!¡±
The others scattered as Grandfather lunged forward, his great maw opening wide to chomp down towards Sofie. Sofie screamed as she scrambled away, but she was just too slow.
¡°Grandfather, no!¡± Pari shrieked from atop his palm, but he didn¡¯t listen. His head snapped down... and missed as Gabby came flying in from the side, knocking Grandfather¡¯s head off course with a mighty swing of her great sword.
He let loose a second roar, equal to the first in its ferociousness. ¡°RELEASE PARI-CHILD, VILE CRAWLER! BAZZALTH WILL NOT ASK AGAIN!¡±
¡°Grandfather, stop!¡± Pari cried out, but she seemed beyond his notice.
What was going on?! Pari had never seen him like this before! Why was he so angry all of a sudden?! He was going to hurt her precious Family at this rate!
This was Pari¡¯s fault. She¡¯d promised that she would not let Grandfather would not be scary and she was breaking her promise, so that meant that it was up to her to stop him. But how?! All she had were the candles she had tucked away in her pockets! Could she stop him with only those?
Yes, she realized. There was a way. A simple, effective way that only required a single candle.
Grandfather had moved the hand upon which she stood so that it hovered above and behind his head, keeping her away from the fighting. Unfortunately, it also prevented her from enacting her idea, and so she had to get out.
Squeezing through a gap between his thumb and forefinger, Pari jumped down to the top of Grandfather¡¯s neck and lowered herself to all fours while the muscles beneath her writhed powerfully as the battle continued ahead of her. Quickly, she scampered forward, the shifting surface giving her little trouble; running about atop Grandfather, regardless of what he might be doing at the time, was something in which she had years of experience.
Pari slid to a halt atop his head, right between his eyes, and pulled out the crucial candle as Grandfather lashed out at Gabby with his free hand, smashing her into the nearby mountainside with tremendous force. Pari¡¯s hands shook, but she managed to snap a small flame into existence quickly. Wrapping her fingers around the sides of the candle to get a solid grip, she reared back and waited for a moment. She had to time her throw correctly for her plan to work.
The right time came just a moment later. Pari threw the candle forward with everything her tiny body could muster, sending it arcing over the rest of Grandfather¡¯s face and down in front of his snout¡ªor, to be more precise, right in front of his left nostril.
Grandfather¡¯s nostrils were, like everything about him, quite large, large enough that at least a dozen copies of Pari could crawl inside at the same time and not get stuck. A small target, this was not. What¡¯s more, she had timed her throw wonderfully. He inhaled heavily, perhaps preparing for a great blast of flame, just as the candle passed in front of the opening. In other words, all she had to do was get it close, and Grandfather would do the rest for her. With rush of wind, Pari¡¯s stinkcandle was practically plucked from the air and disappeared into Grandfather¡¯s nose and beyond.
A moment later, Grandfather¡¯s entire form shuddered to an awkward halt and he let out a massive, shaking wheeze as plumes of noxious smoke billowed from his nostrils. His eyes seemed to lose focus, no longer trained like a predator upon Pari¡¯s sister while he hacked and coughed. Pari¡¯s clutched at the nearest finger and his whole body lurched perilously to the side and fell to the ground with a crash.
Quick as lightning, Pari slid to the ground and ran around to his snout.
¡°PARI-CHILD,¡± he sputtered, ¡°WHAT-¡±
Pari bopped him on the nose as hard as she could!
¡°No! Grandfather bad!¡± she hollered. ¡°Pari promise Grandfather not hurt friends! Pari not let Grandfather break Pari¡¯s promise! Pari is Person and Person always keeps promise! Grandfather said so!¡±
¡°VILE CRAWLER... BAD...¡± he managed to wheeze as more terrible smoke filled the air.
Pari coughed as the rancid smell entered her nostrils, but she pushed through the horrid odor, refusing to let it derail her now.
¡°NO! Grandfather not treat Sofie-sis like big meanie!¡± she continued, still hollering out her anger. ¡°Sofie-sis saved Pari and spent time with Pari and taught Pari lots of super neat things and fed Pari yummy food and played games with Pari and let Pari sleep on warm tummy and gave great scratches and pets! Sofie-sis is Pari¡¯s Family and Pari loves Sofie-sis and Sofie-sis loves Pari just like Pari loves Grandfather! Grandfather not be mean to Sofie-sis!¡±
She gave him another bop on the nose for good measure.
The stinkcandle seemed to have run its course within Grandfather¡¯s nose and lungs, as he managed to push himself back up onto his haunches and no longer seemed so unsteady.
¡°Bazz, dude, what the fuck!? I thought we had a deal!¡± Metal Meanie coughed, marching up to the pair. ¡°She¡¯s back to life and she¡¯s fine, right?! Just like I said!¡± He gagged and coughed some more. ¡°God, this smells so fucking bad, Jesus Christ!¡±
¡°PARI-CHILD NOT FREE OF CHAINS,¡± Grandfather growled, some of his anger remaining.
Metal Meanie spun towards Sofie, who was cowering behind the transport. Sammy was right beside her, shaking in her shoes, while Gabby stood protectively in front of the transport with her sword out and her teeth grit. ¡°The hell, Sofie? You didn¡¯t fix her?!¡±
¡°I did!¡± she insisted.
¡°LIES!¡±
¡°Bazz, chill!¡± Metal Meanie insisted with his hands on his hips. ¡°Getting angry isn¡¯t going to fix anything. Remember, we can¡¯t see what you see, so you need to talk it out. Tell us what¡¯s wrong.¡±
To Pari¡¯s shock, Grandfather listened. She¡¯d never seen Grandfather listen to a person before. Why now, and why him of all people?
¡°CHAINS CONNECT PARI-CHILD¡¯S SOUL TO VILE CRAWLER.¡±
¡°Chains?¡± Sofie wondered, confused.
¡°So it¡¯s the same as before, the way she was when Gabby took her away?¡± Metal Meanie inquired, ignoring Pari¡¯s sister entirely. ¡°With all the chains wrapping around her soul?¡±
¡°What?!¡± Sofie screeched.
¡°NO. SOUL-WRAPPING CHAINS GONE. ONLY OTHER, SPECIAL CHAINS REMAIN. FEW, WITH ONE LARGE AND OTHERS SMALL. DO NOT WRAP, INSTEAD INSERT DIRECTLY INTO SOUL.¡±
¡°N-no, that... that can¡¯t be true!¡± Sofie stammered.
¡°Hmmm, and do you see any others besides the ones attached to Pari?¡± Metal Meanie continued, not sparing Sofie a glance.
¡°YES. SEVERAL ATTACHED TO CRAWLER CHILD, AND OTHERS.¡±
¡°Others? Going to the rest of us?¡±
¡°NO. OTHERS COMPLETELY UNCHAINED.¡±
¡°Then, what do you mean by ¡®others¡¯?¡±
¡°MORE SPECIAL CHAINS ATTACHED TO VILE CRAWLER. ALL HEAD SOUTH.¡±
¡°How many, would you say?¡±
¡°UNCOUNTABLE. MANY THOUSANDS.¡±
Sofie made a faint noise and sank to the ground, clinging to one of the transport¡¯s legs to keep herself from falling over entirely. Metal Meanie and Grandfather largely ignored her as they continued to discuss between themselves, though, to Pari¡¯s relief, Sammy and Gabby went to make sure she was alright.
¡°Okay, so it seems that there¡¯s a side of her abilities that none of us knew about. Not even her, judging by that reaction. Don¡¯t worry, we¡¯ll figure it out and get Pari all cleared, alright? We can even bring her back later to make sure. Alright?¡±
Grandfather released a low growl, but one that Pari understood as begrudging assent.
¡°Great. Look, I gotta go take care of this new problem, so why don¡¯t you get back to reminiscing with the twerp? That¡¯s why you came, isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°INDEED,¡± Grandfather rumbled. The nearby eye rotated back to focus on her. ¡°PARI-CHILD, TALK WITH BAZZALTH.¡±
¡°No! Not until Grandfather apologize to Sofie-sis for being meanie!¡±
Grandfather¡¯s eyes narrowed again and he stared daggers towards Sofie. ¡°NEVER.¡±
Pari stomped her feet in outrage. ¡°Then... then... Pari mad at Grandfather forever! Pari not want to be in Grandfather¡¯s hoard anymore!¡± she shouted.
Grandfather¡¯s eyes went wide at her proclamation and his tail lashed wildly against the ground.
¡°PARI JOKING. PARI MAKE CRAWLER JOKE.¡±
¡°Pari not joking! Pari serious!¡±
Grandfather seemed to droop, wilting like a potted plant left in the hot sun. The cough returned, a heavy series of hacks that shook him, and by extension Pari, like an earthquake. She grabbed hold of a nearby claw and held on until the fit subsided.
When it was finally, over, Grandfather let out another reluctant grumble.
¡°VILE CRAWLER!¡±
¡°Sofie-sis¡¯s name is Sofie!¡± Pari reminded him.
He sighed. ¡°SOFIE-CRAWLER,¡± he grunted. ¡°BAZZALTH FORGIVES SOFIE-CRAWLER FOR HURTING PARI-CHILD.¡±
Sofie blinked, unsure of what to say, while Pari waited for him to continue. Soon enough, it became clear that he needed some help.
¡°Grandfather, tell Sofie-sis Grandfather is sorry for attacking Sofie-sis.¡±
¡°PARI-CHILD, BAZZALTH CANNOT SAY SUCH THINGS.¡±
Pari let out a harrumph, crossing her arms again and turning away from her Grandfather entirely.
He sighed again. ¡°BAZZALTH IS... SORRY... FOR ATTACKING SOFIE-CRAWLER...¡± he forced out.
¡°I¡¯m sorry for hurting her,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°I want you to know that I love her with all my heart and never would do anything to hurt her on purpose.¡±
Grandfather let out one final, noncommittal grunt.
¡°Yay!¡± Pari cheered. ¡°All better now! Pari happy!¡±
¡°PARI-CHILD STILL ANGRY AT BAZZALTH?¡±
¡°Pari not mad anymore. Pari be in Grandfather¡¯s hoard again.¡±
¡°BAZZALTH RELIEVED. NOW, TELL BAZZALTH WHAT PARI DO EARLIER. PARI-CHILD MAKE NEW CANDLE? BAZZALTH NEVER SMELL WORSE ODOR.¡±
¡°Nya! Pari used stinkcandle! Pari discovered many new candles! Pari learned amazing things and saw super neat sights like super giant glowing tree and Pari have big adventures and make friends and other stuff! Pari help others and stop meanies and take care of problems all by self!¡±
Grandfather reached out with a giant claw and carefully rubbed Pari along the back, as he used to back when she was younger. She pressed herself ¡°HMMMM, PARI HAS GROWN,¡± Grandfather rumbled.
¡°Yes,¡± she declared, standing tall and proud, ¡°Pari has grown three whole centimeters!¡±
For some reason, everybody else but Grandfather thought that was hilarious.
Chapter 112
Chains. Chains into Pari¡¯s soul. Sofie had been sure the worst of her nightmare was past her. She¡¯d felt the geasa release from Pari¡¯s soul when she¡¯d said the magic words. It had been the strongest sensation she¡¯d felt from any one person as well, there could have been no mistaking it. Pari was free of her terrible restraints, she¡¯d been absolutely positive. She¡¯d been wrong.
Chains. It wasn¡¯t how she¡¯d envisioned her powers before, but it was now. Chains binding little Pari down, wrapping around her, crushing her. Sofie couldn¡¯t unsee it now that the image had implanted itself in her head.
Chains. Thousands of them, all leading to her.
There could only be one explanation: there was another side to her powers that she hadn¡¯t known about. It probably wasn¡¯t geasa, or so she hoped. If this side operated by spoken word, as the other side did, then it was something she didn¡¯t say often, given that the number of chains leading to her sister was so low. That, or she was constantly clearing them without realizing it. But if she could feel it when she banished a geas, wouldn¡¯t she have felt something when clearing one of these chains?
No, the most likely explanation was the first one: it only triggered on a seldom-spoken word, one she¡¯d said to Pari a few times... and one she¡¯d said to the children of Otharia during a class. That was the only explanation she could think of for what the dragon had described as countless chains leading south. She¡¯d done something, likely something terrible, to thousands of innocent children all over the nation.
Sofie took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She told herself that it wasn¡¯t a disaster, that it was actually good. She knew about this side of her powers now, which meant that she could fix things. Surprisingly, this worked. She found her despair dwindling, pushed out by mounting determination. Yes, she had managed to find a way to figure out and fix the first side of her powers, she could do it again. She knew what to look for this time, so it would probably be easier than the first. It had to be. She would make things right.
An off-tune warbling caught her attention over the sounds of the wind and the loping transport upon which she rode. What was that sound? Whistling? Sofie looked up to find Blake cheerily tilting his head left and right as he whistled a jaunty tune that she didn¡¯t recognize. He seemed strangely cheerful, more than she¡¯d ever seen him before.
¡°There¡¯s my baby!¡± he called out happily as Sofie spotted the Flying Toaster hovering off in the distance. They were out of the mountains, she belatedly realized. Had she really zoned out the multi-hour trip back from the meeting point? Yes, she realized. She¡¯d gotten so caught up in her feelings of self-loathing and depression that she couldn¡¯t remember anything that had happened even two minutes after the start of the trip. Even the events before then felt like a blur, barely making an impression on her.
The elevator touched down before them not long after. Sofie held Gabriela¡¯s arm as the compartment swayed slightly as they rose. She would have held her hand, if Gabby were willing, but the grooves that Gabby¡¯s fingers were squeezing into the elevator railing suggested that it would probably end poorly for the integrity of her hand.
Once the lift docked, Sofie followed behind the others as the group stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway that connected the various sections of the Flying Toaster. Gabby split off from the rest as they passed the living quarters. Once the rest of them arrived at the front cabin, Blake made a beeline for the pilot¡¯s chair. He lovingly caressed the control panel. ¡°Yes, how is my baby? Hm? Did they treat you well?¡±
¡°Weirdo,¡± Sofie muttered.
¡°What was that?¡±
¡°Nothing,¡± she replied. ¡°Hey, can we stop by Xoginia on the way back?¡±
¡°What? Xoginia?¡±
¡°Please?¡±
¡°Eh, sorry, that¡¯s too out of the way,¡± Blake said with a shake of his head. ¡°We¡¯re headed home, sweet home, baby! The faster, the better!¡±
¡°Come on!¡±
¡°Nope!¡±
¡°Tch. Whatever, I¡¯m going to go check on Gabby,¡± Sofie said, disgruntled. This was going to take time. She¡¯d have to wear him down after she talked to Gabriela.
¡°Sounds good!¡± Blake replied with a thumbs up and a grin. ¡°Tell her thanks again for me!¡±
As Blake began whistling that same tune again, Sofie suppressed a shudder and retreated from the cabin. One quick trek back through the hallway later, Sofie found herself at the open door of Gabby¡¯s room. The Mexican woman had not yet assumed her ¡°lie on the floor and suffer¡± pose, though she looked like she¡¯d been about to when Sofie had shown up.
¡°Hey,¡± Sofie began.
¡°Yes?¡± Gabby asked, her voice strained.
¡°You, uh, notice anything weird going on with Blake?¡±
¡°Like what?¡±
¡°He¡¯s happy. Like, not ¡®Blake happy¡¯ but actually happy, like... ¡®Pari happy¡¯. It¡¯s creeping me out. And then he¡¯ll just kind of just space out for a while for no reason, even when I¡¯m in the middle of talking to him, then he¡¯s back to being creepy again like nothing ever happened.¡±
¡°Maybe he¡¯s being mind-controlled,¡± Gabby offered.
¡°Can Bazzalth do that?¡± Sofie wondered, pulling up memories of everything she knew of the dragon¡¯s capabilities. ¡°I mean, I guess if he made some sort of brain worm, he might be able to...¡± Her eyes caught the hint of a smirk on Gabby¡¯s lips, putting a new perspective on the suggestion. ¡°You¡¯re messing with me, aren¡¯t you.¡±
¡°He got his body back. Isn¡¯t that enough of a reason to be happy?¡±
Sofie pouted a little. ¡°I guess so. It¡¯s just weird that he¡¯s like this when he didn¡¯t even get healed all the way.¡±
¡°You¡¯ll just have to ask him, then.¡±
¡°Ugh. If I have to.¡±
Gabby lowered herself onto her back on the hard floor. ¡°You have to.¡±
¡°Fine,¡± Sofie grumbled. ¡°Anyway... thanks for saving me today. Putting yourself in front of that angry monster took a lot.¡±
Gabby cocked an eyebrow. ¡°Don¡¯t know why you¡¯re acting like it¡¯s some brave deed. I¡¯ve done it before, remember, and he can¡¯t kill me¡ªhe already tried.¡±
¡°I know, but...¡± But that was before Gabby had known of Sofie¡¯s activities. Even though the older woman had shown far more forgiveness than any of the other adults, Sofie had still found herself surprised when Gabby had leapt into action to rescue her. Maybe it was the way Arlette looked at her these days or the collar around her neck that symbolized Blake¡¯s thoughts better than words ever could. ¡°Thanks anyway.¡±
Gabby replied with only a strained, noncommittal grunt. Sofie took that as her signal to wrap it up.
¡°Alright, I¡¯ll go deal with Blake¡¯s weirdness and keep Pari from blasting a hole in the side of the gondola,¡± she said, taking several steps towards the doorway. She paused and turned back, an idea popping into her head. ¡°Actually, that reminds me. Now that Grandfather gave Pari a whole hoard of materials for her candles, she could make you one that would put you to sleep. With how hard you have it with flying and all, would you like me to ask Pari to make you some sleepcandles for next time? Sleeping seemed to help you when we came back from Stragma.¡±
¡°No, that isn¡¯t necessary,¡± Gabby replied.
¡°Are you sure? Pari would be more than happy to make one.¡±
¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± came the terse response.
Sofie couldn¡¯t help but scowl at her fellow Earthling¡¯s stubbornness. What was it about North Americans that made them so inflexible? With the way Gabby was acting, it was almost like...
Sofie stepped back into the room and squatted down to better look the other woman in the eye. ¡°Are you putting yourself through this on purpose?¡±
The silence that followed provided all the confirmation Sofie needed.
¡°Gabby, what the heck are you doing?!¡± she hissed. ¡°You¡¯re torturing yourself, and for what?!¡±
¡°I have to,¡± Gabriela insisted. ¡°I have to do this. I have to do penance for my sins.¡±
¡°Penance?! What, is this some sort of mental self-flagellation?¡±
¡°Well, it¡¯s not like whipping myself will do anything!¡± Gabby responded as she pushed herself up into a seated position
¡°Gabby, this...¡± Sofie let out a tired sigh. ¡°You know this can¡¯t be healthy.¡±
¡°I have to atone somehow, Sofie! But how? What sort of penance would even cover the sort of terrible sins I¡¯ve committed?!¡±
¡°I¡¯m the wrong person to ask when it comes to making up for massive mistakes,¡± Sofie admitted.
¡°It wasn¡¯t a mistake, Sofie!¡± Gabriela snapped as she rose to her feet. ¡°I¡¯m not like you! I made a choice! A deliberate choice with open eyes! And nothing you or Chitra or anybody else says can erase the weight on my conscience and the stain on my soul!¡±
Despondently, she sank down onto her nearby bed, her head in her hands.
¡°Back home at the orphanage, they once taught us that, should we ever need to confess but have no Catholic priests available to us, we were supposed to find a priest of another religion and ask them for help instead. But there are no priests in this forsaken world.
¡°Most of the people on this continent practice some sort of ancestor-revering spirituality; I have no idea if Drayhadans even have a religion; if there¡¯s such a thing as a Stragman priest, they would just tell me that all the people I killed deserved it for being weaker than me; the Ubrans worship the man who I betrayed and helped get killed, so it¡¯s not like I¡¯m welcome back with them ever again; and Otharia had a religion with priests, but Blake killed them all! There¡¯s nowhere for me to turn! Maybe I was right all along. Maybe this really is hell.¡±
Sofie had to admit that Gabriela¡¯s issue was, in fact, quite the conundrum. However, there was one point about which she thought Gabby was incorrect.
¡°Have you talked to Leo about this?¡± she inquired.
Gabriela looked at Sofie through the gaps in her fingers, her confusion evident. ¡°No? Why would he matter?¡±
¡°Leo is a priest, didn¡¯t you know? Blake killed all the high priests, but he didn¡¯t kill all the Voices.¡±
¡°I thought Voices were like town mayors and administrators, not priests.¡±
¡°They¡¯re... kind of both, I guess? Though their official religion is dead, if that matters to you,¡± Sofie told her. ¡°Anyway, as basically Prime Minister of Otharia, that makes Leo the highest-ranking priest in the country by default. And you know he would try to help you. He¡¯s a nice person like that.¡±
¡°Is he? I never really talked to him,¡± Gabby admitted.
¡°From what I understand, the Church locked him away for years because he was too nice. I think you¡¯d like him if you got to know him better.¡±
¡°I... guess I could give it a try...¡±
Sofie stepped forward and leaned in, giving Gabriela a quick, hearty hug. ¡°You¡¯re only as alone in this as you want to be. Remember that.¡±
With that said, she turned around and headed towards the door.
¡°Hey,¡± Gabby¡¯s voice called out before Sofie was all the way gone. Sofie looked back to find Gabby looking at her sheepishly. ¡°I, uh... I think I¡¯d like those sleepcandles after all.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll let Pari know,¡± Sofie assured her with a smile. ¡°But, if it¡¯s alright with you, could you stay awake for a little longer? I could really use your help with something... if I can convince Blake.¡±
Sofie found Pari back on the bridge. To Sofie¡¯s surprise, the child was not making candles. Instead, she was glaring at a tic-tac-toe board with no small amount of bitterness as Samanta drew a line through a row of circles once again. Sofie decided to teach Pari not to be a sore loser in the very near future. But for now...
¡°Pari, sweetie, Gabby needs a sleepcandle. Could you make one for her please?¡±
Pari perked up immediately. Usually, people were asking her not to make so many waxy cylinders of chaos. She ran over to her equipment and began setting it up, pulling a small wad of Grandfather¡¯s ¡°wax¡± out of a large sack, followed by some plants that Sofie didn¡¯t recognize.
¡°I still can¡¯t believe that she was making candles out of Bazz¡¯s earwax this whole time,¡± Blake laughed. ¡°Oh man, watching her scramble into his ear canal like this tiny spelunker was something else.¡± His eye fell onto the many tic-tac-toe-covered sheets littering the far corner of the cabin, most of them left over from the trip north. ¡°Maybe I should make them a copy of Connect Four and blow their little minds.¡±
¡°That¡¯s a good idea. Do it,¡± she told him. ¡°Kids need stimulation. Maybe you could make some other stuff while you¡¯re at it.¡±
¡°Yeah! Maybe I¡¯ll make an improved version of Crossfire, one where you don¡¯t lose all the tiny metal balls three days after getting it for Christmas,¡± he replied as he leaned back in his chair and stretched. It was the sort of physical maneuver that she¡¯d never seen him do before; not before she¡¯d bound him to a wheelchair, not even before getting mauled by Gabby. Clearly, much had changed for the better within his body.
¡°So, you seem to be feeling better,¡± she noted. ¡°What was it like living with a dragon?¡±
Blake¡¯s brows furrowed slightly. ¡°We talked about this for, like, two hours on the way back. Weren¡¯t you listening?¡±
¡°No, I was... distracted.¡±
¡°Distracted?¡± he repeated, a little annoyed. ¡°By what?¡± He paused for a slight moment. ¡°Oh, right. That.¡±
¡°No, I am not in the mood to talk about it,¡± she preemptively told him.
¡°That¡¯s fine, I know you¡¯ll take care of it,¡± he replied lightly. Once again, Sofie found herself wondering who this was and what they¡¯d done with the Blake she knew so unfortunately well. The old Blake would have seized every opportunity to harass her over stuff like this. ¡°Anyway, it was kind of fun, actually. Bazz reminds me of some of my friends from college. A little awkward and rough around the edges, but that¡¯s to be expected from somebody who has basically been a shut-in for several thousand years. Brilliant, in his own way. It was nice to finally have an intellectual peer to converse with.¡±
Sofie tried her best to not roll her eyes at the man¡¯s conceitedness¡ªhe just wanted a reaction from her¡ªbut failed miserably.
¡°Not brilliant enough to fix you, apparently,¡± she remarked, perhaps a bit meaner than she¡¯d intended.
The tone didn¡¯t seem to bother him. The lack of snark and peevishness continued to throw her for a loop. The old Blake would have said something nasty three times already.
¡°A result of bad luck, sadly,¡± he replied. ¡°His giant capacitor battery doohickey broke before I could fully heal. But I¡¯m still better off than I have been in a long time.¡±
¡°So, he actually came up with a way to heal you completely? Even your missing arm?¡±
¡°So he claimed, yeah.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t think that sort of thing would be possible.¡±
¡°A lot of wild things are possible in this world, especially when you factor in mad science,¡± Blake reminded her.
¡°So then, are you going to return to finish it once he gets a better battery?¡±
The hint of a frown, the first one she¡¯d seen all day, flitted across his face for a moment. ¡°It¡¯s a single-use method, I¡¯m afraid. If we tried it again, I would die. So, I can¡¯t exactly just go back. It won¡¯t be that easy.¡±
¡°You would have to go to Stragma,¡± Sofie concluded, picking up what he was putting down. ¡°You would need to get rewound to before you were healed.¡±
¡°Right.¡±
¡°Well, that doesn¡¯t sound that difficult.¡±
¡°Yeah, it¡¯s just...¡± Blake¡¯s eyes lost focus as he retreated into his thoughts again, as he had been doing off and on all day.
¡°...it¡¯s just what?¡±
He shook his head. ¡°It might be more complicated than that.¡±
¡°How so?¡±
Blake opened his mouth to say something, then paused and closed it again with a shake of his head. ¡°It¡¯s nothing. Never mind.¡±
¡°Something¡¯s bothering you.¡±
¡°It¡¯s just a few idle thoughts¡ªconjectures and assumptions, really. Nothing worth talking about.¡±
¡°If you insist,¡± she said doubtfully.
¡°I insist. What about your trip? I take it everything went well?¡±
¡°It was certainly something, that¡¯s for sure,¡± she admitted. ¡°Wasn¡¯t it, Pari?¡±
¡°Yeah!¡± the child exclaimed, putting her incomplete candle down for a moment to beam excitedly from across the deck. ¡°Gabby-friend was like ¡®hah!¡¯ and then Club Lady was like ¡®hahhh!¡¯ and then Gabby-friend was like ¡®whoosh, bang!¡¯ but then Club Lady was like ¡®bam, pow!¡¯ and then Gabby-friend was like ¡®clang!¡¯ and Pari¡¯s ears hurt and then Club Lady was like ¡®kaboom!¡¯ and then Club Lady won.¡±
¡°Sounds... unique,¡± Blake managed to say.
¡°Grandfather stronger than Gabby-friend and club lady, of course,¡± declared the child who took down the ¡®great and mighty Grandfather¡¯ with a single stinkcandle.
¡°It was an experience, to be sure,¡± Sofie allowed.
¡°And the big bear woman won?¡±
¡°She did, five to three, I think.¡±
¡°Wow, she looked strong, but I never imagined she would be able to stand up to our rabid wolverine in human form.¡±
¡°Blake, stop being mean.¡±
¡°Mean? That was a compliment, I assure you!¡±
¡°Whatever.¡±
¡°So... enough with the chit-chat,¡± Blake said, suddenly dialing up the seriousness. ¡°Why are you even here, Sofie? You know the plan was for you to stay as far away from Bazz as possible. Did you suddenly develop a death wish?¡±
¡°Well, I realized that there was something I needed to do,¡± she informed him. ¡°Something that really shouldn¡¯t wait.¡±
¡°Something in Xoginia, I presume?¡±
She nodded.
¡°Alright, spill the details, and I¡¯ll consider it.¡±
¡°I want to try to end slavery in Kutrad.¡±
Blake stared at her for a moment and then rubbed his eyes. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, say that again. I thought I heard something absurd.¡±
¡°You are aware that one of my current goals is to erase all the geasa I accidentally created since I arrived. Well, I actually have a bunch on the king of Kutrad.¡±
¡°You what?!¡± Blake interjected with disbelief. ¡°What did you do to him?¡±
¡°Most of it doesn¡¯t really matter anymore, but the big one is I think I took his ability to ¡®say another word¡¯, as I put it at the time.¡±
Blake sputtered into laughter. ¡°So it was you! That explains so much!¡±
Now it was Sofie¡¯s turn to be puzzled. ¡°It does?¡±
¡°He shows up to every meeting with the lower half of his face all wrapped up in bandages and he never speaks. Instead, he writes it into a book and somebody else reads it to everybody. It¡¯s been like that for months and nobody knew why! My only theory was that Arlette had busted his jaw so terribly that even Scyrian healing couldn¡¯t fix it, but it always felt like a reach. This makes so much more sense. He literally can¡¯t speak!¡±
¡°Well, anyway,¡± Sofie continued, ¡°this got me thinking. I¡¯ve been just removing the geasa without conditions every time, but here I have leverage over somebody powerful. Shouldn¡¯t I use that leverage while I can to make the world better?¡±
¡°You should! I assume you wouldn¡¯t return his voice until he delivers on his end of the bargain, of course.¡±
¡°Of course,¡± Sofie agreed. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t trust him to follow through otherwise.¡±
¡°That¡¯s the most un-Sofie thing you¡¯ve ever said. Good for you!¡± Blake chuckled. ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re finally seeing the light and coming around to my side on this.¡±
Sofie¡¯s thoughts screeched to a halt when she heard those chilling words. Had she been drinking, she would have done a spit take. ¡°What are you talking about?¡± she reluctantly inquired.
¡°Well, let¡¯s be honest here,¡± Blake began, steepling his fingers. ¡°Mind-control is some serious, fucked up shit that¡¯s right up there with slavery and murder. I know you agree, because Gabby told me that you¡¯ve made it your latest mission to undo every use of your powers that you can as quickly as possible. After all, each day is one more day that your victims are being violated terribly, right? And yet, here you are, willingly condemning a man to suffer when you could just end it today.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, what?¡±
¡°What do you mean, ¡®what¡¯? Did you think you¡¯d show up and he¡¯d snap his fingers and slavery would just instantly disappear?¡±
¡°No, I¡¯m not naive enough to think he can just instantly decree it away and everything would be fixed immediately,¡± she argued, ¡°but he would be taking a huge and critical first step. Slavery isn¡¯t going to end on its own. You need to take big actions if you want to change big institutions.¡±
¡°All a decree like that would accomplish would be to put his head on a pike by the end of the year. Then, all your leverage goes up in smoke while Kutrad stays a slave state,¡± Blake insisted. ¡°Didn¡¯t Arlette explain to you how slavery works here?¡±
¡°Ah, no,¡± Sofie admitted. ¡°After what happened to me, the last thing I wanted to think about was anything involving slavery and Kutrad.¡±
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¡°Then let me spell it out for you the way she spelled it out for me. Here¡¯s the problem, Sofie: the noble houses are actually the people with the most power in Kutrad, and they love slavery. The only reason King Morgan is able to maintain power is that those blue-blooded shitheads all hate each other and would rather backstab their counterparts than work together. But they probably would unite if he gave them a reason strong enough to overcome their petty feuds, and nothing would do that better than the threat of slavery¡¯s end. They¡¯d take him down and put up somebody else in his place who would keep slavery legal, and then nothing would be accomplished.¡±
¡°Wait, really?¡±
¡°Yes. She told me that the nobles use slaves for tons of things like mining and farming that make up massive swaths of their income. They would all view an action like taking away their slaves as the same as taking away their money and power. That¡¯s the equivalent of a declaration of war in their minds, and it¡¯s a war which King Morgan would lose.
¡°That isn¡¯t to say that the mission is impossible. Given enough time, he might be able to find a way to pull it off through backroom deals, and bribes, and targeted assassinations, and... you know, fucking politics bullshit,¡± he said with no small amount of venom and distaste. ¡°But we¡¯re talking years here, maybe decades. Not days. So, the question is, is Little Miss Sofie ¡®I Want Good Things To Always Happen But Without Paying The Human Cost Needed To Make Them Happen¡¯ Ramaut willing to allow King Iorweth Morgan to suffer until the deed is done? Do you have it in you?¡±
Sofie didn¡¯t know what to say. It had taken her several days of hard thinking before she¡¯d decided that it was alright to keep King Morgan voiceless for another few months if that was what it took to end the injustice that he willingly tolerated every day. She was no fan of the spineless monarch; in fact, she pretty much hated his guts. But was she willing to continue effectively torturing him for years on end to get what she wanted?
The answer came to her far more clearly than she¡¯d expected, by and large, because she could not view the question in a vacuum no matter how hard she tried. Her old memories would flood in and color her thoughts with visions of beaten down, newly captured slaves being force-marched behind the wagon where the slavers kept her, of the way the slavers and buyers talked about her like she was a piece of meat, of a red hot brand get closer and closer to her skin until it was just centimeters away, ready to mark her forever. If she could save thousands of people with just one man¡¯s suffering and her own guilt, then she would do it.
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°So, finally come around to the winning team, have you?¡± Blake smirked.
¡°No, Blake,¡± she retorted, fighting back the desire to smack the smug grin off his face, ¡°this is a one-time exception, okay?¡±
¡°Sounds to me like I was right and you were wrong.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not what it means at all and you know it!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, Sofie, I really feel like heading straight home,¡± he said, scratching his head lazily. ¡°I think I¡¯m gonna need you to say ¡®Blake was right¡¯ out loud so I can get the motivation I¡¯ll need to delay our travels.¡±
Sofie stiffened as a wave of pique washed over her. ¡°You can¡¯t be that immature,¡± she protested in disbelief.
¡°Oh man, I¡¯m just so tired, you know?¡± Blake snickered. ¡°Living with a dragon is so exhausting! I can¡¯t wait to get home and sleep in my own bed after so very long!¡±
¡°I can¡¯t believe you sometimes. You¡¯re the most childish person in this ship, and yes I¡¯m including the literal children in this assessment.¡±
¡°Those sure are a lot of words that don¡¯t convey how right I am,¡± he commented.
Sofie¡¯s hands balled into fists and she barely contained the urge to slug him. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn¡¯t want to say the words¡ªreally, really very much didn¡¯t want to. Yet, as much as it vexed her to her core to give him this sort of satisfaction, she¡¯d already condemned a man she barely knew to years of suffering. Saying some dumb words was nothing in comparison, right? Right, she told herself, though the glee coming from the insufferable man across from her made it a lot closer in her mind than it should have been.
¡°Blake was right,¡± she said stuffily.
Blake¡¯s sly smile grew into something far more wicked as he seemed to have an idea. ¡°I couldn¡¯t hear you very well. Gonna need you to say that again.¡±
¡°Blake!¡±
¡°Sorry, what? Speak up, please,¡± the bastard laughed.
¡°I swear, one day I¡¯m going to just... rrrrgh!¡± Sofie growled as he cupped a hand to his ear. ¡°Fine! Blake was right! Now, will you help me or not?!¡±
She swayed as the Flying Toaster suddenly swung around, reorienting eastward.
¡°Of course! How could I ever turn down a request from my star pupil?¡± Blake asked.
Sofie huffed indignantly, prompting another round of guffaws from her tormentor.
¡°Come now, my dear protege,¡± he giggled as a small round table rose into existence between them. A large cube sprouted from the table, slowly shifting into a mildly accurate model of the King¡¯s castle. ¡°Let us not waste time over petty quarrels! We have two hours before we arrive! Planning is afoot!¡±
Sofie crossed her arms with a sniff, refusing to dignify his buffoonery with a response. It seemed that a happier Blake was even worse than she¡¯d thought.
¡°The bridge to the tower?¡± Blake asked as the two of them each looked through a spyglass towards the rapidly growing palace of Iorweth Morgan, King of Kutrad.
¡°Yes, if you can put us down on top of it, that would be great. Drop some robots too to cover the ground. Gabby can hold the front.¡±
¡°It will be a little tricky but I can manage it. You should head to the elevator. We¡¯ll be there in a few minutes.¡±
Sofie nodded and made her way towards the back of the ship. Before she went towards the elevator, she took a detour to Gabriela¡¯s cabin, where she found the woman sitting on her bed already fully dressed in her battle attire.
¡°Oh good, you¡¯re ready,¡± Sofie remarked.
Gabby nodded. ¡°So, what is it you need me to do, exactly?¡±
¡°All I need from you is a few simple things,¡± Sofie explained. ¡°I need you to protect me, which shouldn¡¯t be hard since the only enemies to worry about should be in front of us. Just as importantly, though, I need you to be as coldly intimidating and imposing as you can manage. What you need to do is make an impression. Oh, also, I¡¯m going to be acting different, too, so try not to react if I say anything weird, okay?¡±
¡°So we¡¯re putting on a performance?¡± Gabby asked, looking Sofie over from head to toe. ¡°Is that why you¡¯re dressed all weird? Like some kind of... techno-wizard?¡±
¡°Exactly,¡± Sofie replied, inspecting the long ornate robe she¡¯d picked up in Otharia before their trip. The darkest robe she could find, it had long, drooping sleeves and a hood, much like the stereotypical wizard¡¯s robe that somebody like Gandalf would wear. She¡¯d felt it lent an air of spooky mysticism. Then, Blake had gotten his hands on it.
Claiming that her robe was not mysterious and remarkable enough, the infuriating man had proceeded to alter the garment to his satisfaction whether Sofie wanted him to or not. The final result could have been worse, she supposed. Filaments of grey metal thread now wove through the fabric like silver blood vessels, while a variety of strange-looking ornaments in a variety of three-dimensional geometric shapes hung from all parts of the robe, including the sleeves. The trinkets made little ¡®tink¡¯ noises as she walked, which she supposed added to the effect.
The biggest addition, however, was something other than the robe itself. ¡°You need a mask,¡± Blake had vehemently insisted. ¡°A good mask multiplies the creepy and menacing vibes by at least ten times.¡±
After receiving her mask, she couldn¡¯t help but agree. Blake had decided to go for his interpretation of the well-known comedy theater mask, giving it a well-executed, if not quite original, evil slant. Blake had claimed that it was actually based off an old Mario game that had given him nightmares as a child, but she had no idea what he¡¯d been talking about; Mario games weren¡¯t creepy at all, not like this thing. Its crescent moon eyes leered with malicious intent, while the wide, mocking smile hinted at unknown danger. The mask covered her face entirely; combined with the robe¡¯s hood, nobody would know who she was unless she desired it.
Donning the mask, she spread her arms wide as she looked at Gabby through the thin eye slits. The mask did limit her vision a bit more than she would have liked, unfortunately. ¡°Well? Do I look appropriately sinister and darkly threatening? Like an evil, callous warlock with powers beyond a mortal¡¯s understanding?¡±
¡°It¡¯s pretty good, given what you have to work with,¡± came the reply. ¡°It might have worked better when you were all bony and thin, though.¡±
¡°Yeah, the skeletal look might have helped, but nothing I can do about that now,¡± she agreed. Sofie had been feeling great ever since Pari¡¯s revival, the burden of guilt that had been crushing her no longer weighing on her shoulders. This feeling applied to the physical as well as the mental. Just days later, her gaunt appearance was no more, her body having filled out and returned to her normal physique. ¡°Anyway, I think it¡¯s time to head out.¡±
Blake was waiting for them at the elevator. ¡°We¡¯re almost there,¡± he told them. ¡°I¡¯m going to start with the skitter drops like we planned. Ready?¡±
¡°Ready as I¡¯ll ever be,¡± Sofie replied.
¡°Cool. You two stay here,¡± he said as he entered the bot bay.
Sofie peeked into the bay from the hallway as the bay doors rotated open, revealing the city of Xoginia lit by the mid-afternoon sun below. The howl of the wind and the drone of the propellers screamed in her ears as the rushing air whipped through her hair.
¡°Alright, here we go!¡± Blake hollered over the din.
Suddenly, the drone of the propellers exploded into a roar and the craft leapt forward. One by one, the robots dropped out of the bay, lowering down at frightening speed from cables attached to their tops. The Flying Toaster banked hard as it flew a relatively circular loop around the castle, the cables retracting one by one as they deposited their payloads around the area.
The first part of the plan was relatively simple: drop the skitters down around the castle, with the vast majority of them on the side farthest from the king¡¯s panic room tower, and herd the king towards the bridge that connected the tower to the rest of the castle. Once they had him where they wanted him, the rest of the plan would commence.
As the airship slowed down after completing its bombing run and moved to hover over the bridge, Blake returned to the hallway.
¡°Alright, it¡¯s go time,¡± he said. ¡°Get in the elevator and I¡¯ll lower you to the bridge.¡±
¡°Wait,¡± Sofie interjected, pointing at the collar around her neck. ¡°This needs to come off.¡±
¡°No way!¡± Blake shot back. ¡°What¡¯s the point of it if you can just take it off!¡±
¡°Nobody looks fearsome with a collar like that one,¡± Gabby pointed out. ¡°And, given the slave trade, they would probably take it to mean she¡¯s a slave of some sort. Is that the impression you¡¯re aiming for?¡±
¡°Hmmm, fine, but it¡¯s going back on the moment you get back up here,¡± he decided. He reached forward and pulled the collar off, the metal flowing around Sofie¡¯s throat like water. ¡°Good luck with your LARP session.¡±
¡°Blake, just shut up for once, would you?¡± Sofie moaned as she climbed into the elevator, donned her mask, and pulled up her hood.
Gabby joined her a moment later, tenser than the cables holding the compartment aloft. She only grew tenser as the elevator began its steady descent.
¡°It¡¯s going to be okay,¡± Sofie told her as she moved behind the Mexican and began to massage her shoulders. ¡°All you have to do is look menacing, like the big burly bruiser in the movies who does all the dirty work for the kingpin.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not tall enough to be one of those,¡± Gabby muttered.
¡°It¡¯s fine, your sword more than makes up for it.¡±
Their timing could not have been better. A man emerged from the palace and onto the bridge only twenty meters away as they touched down upon the center of the stone arch, the elevator compartment nestling in between the raised stone sides of the narrow span. The rough stone ground against the lift¡¯s walls as the box settled in, and Sofie could practically hear Blake¡¯s whining about his ¡°baby¡± getting scratched up.
The man screeched to a halt as he spotted them, only for more people to push him forward in their desperate rush towards safety. Soon, a small group of maybe twenty people stood on the edge of the bridge, looking at the elevator and the airship with great apprehension. None of them seemed ready to take another step forward.
Sofie didn¡¯t recognize most of the people; outside of a scholar or two, most of them looked like soldiers of various sorts, bodyguards and the like. However, about a third of the way into the group, Sofie spotted two people who caught her eye.
One was a woman in her mid-twenties with long fiery hair that rolled down her head and over her shoulders in long twisted red curls. She wore a large and exquisite blue dress adorned with beautiful red flowers that matched her hair perfectly and her angry scowl. Atop her head sat a gorgeous golden tiara covered with an array of different jewels. A queen, perhaps? Sofie had not known that King Morgan had a spouse, but it seemed to be the case.
The man of the hour, however, was whom Sofie truly cared to see, and she found him just two people over from her. His lower face was wrapped in white bandages, just as Blake had described, and he had a nervous glint in his eyes as he surveyed the situation.
The compartment door slid to the side and out stepped Gabby, much more composed now that she was on semi-solid footing¡ªthough being on a bridge high above the ground probably wasn¡¯t helping her much. The soldiers gasped and pulled out their weapons as she took a casual step forward, then another. Sofie stepped out behind Gabby, letting them focus on her for now.
¡°Ancestors have mercy!¡± the one in the front gulped. ¡°It¡¯s the Monster! We need to retreat!¡±
¡°What manner of cowardice is this?!¡± the redheaded woman snapped. ¡°It¡¯s only one woman. Strike her down!¡±
¡°My Queen,¡± the front man responded, not taking his eyes off of the slowly advancing Mexican, ¡°I witnessed her at Crirada. Even if we had a thousand fighters, we would not stand a chance. We must leave and find another way out!¡±
After a short moment of consideration, the woman¡¯s face hardened. ¡°No. If she is who you claim her to be, then we would be dead already if she wanted it. She is here for a different reason.¡±
¡°How very astute of you,¡± Sofie observed, stepping out from behind Gabby as the two came to a halt about five meters from the group. ¡°Perhaps there is hope for your country yet.¡±
Sofie knew that she would never be able to pull off the physically intimidating vibe, but she didn¡¯t need to. That was what Gabby was here for. So instead, she did her best to channel an amalgamation of every single evil mastermind and puppet master villain she¡¯d seen in movies and television shows. The sort of person who didn¡¯t appear physically dangerous, but still somehow projected an aura of menace anyway. The sort of person who didn¡¯t raise their own hand to strike another because they didn¡¯t have to. The sort of person who was always, always, in control.
¡°I see you know my pet,¡± Sofie remarked as she stepped out from behind the sword-wielding woman who probably didn¡¯t appreciate being called a pet¡ªSofie swore to apologize later. ¡°She will only bite those who misbehave, so I suggest you all try to be good little boys and girls, yes? Because, as you already know, she bites quite hard.¡±
¡°Who are you, to dare to invade our land and threaten the rulers of this great nation?!¡± the red-haired woman snarled at her.
Sofie frowned behind her mask. The woman¡¯s anger was blunting the impression she was going for, giving the onlookers more courage. Despite her mysterious appearance, the Queen seemed far too irate to fear her properly. Fortunately enough, Sofie knew somebody who would, and whose terror would set the group¡¯s mood appropriately.
¡°Perhaps you should ask your King who I am,¡± Sofie replied with a tilt of the head. ¡°Do you see, oh mighty King? I was right when I told you we could return at any time and you would not stand a chance at stopping us, was I not?¡±
The king, who was already looking at her with confused trepidation, froze, the confusion vanishing as he put an identity to her voice at last. ¡°Huaaa!¡± he screamed, backpedaling in a sudden panic. Tripping and falling onto his rear, he continued to scream as he kept scrambling backward until he ran up against the stone wall of the palace.
Sofie offered a mocking bow. ¡°Greetings, Your Majesty. It¡¯s been ever so long. Did you miss me?¡±
The king let out another horrified shriek that was only barely muffled by the bandages wrapped around his face, his eyes darting about like prey cornered by a predator, looking desperately for a way out. Like the scream before, Sofie noted that the sounds carried no meaning within them. He could manage nothing but ineffectual bleating.
The effect of the king¡¯s reaction proved immediate. Where before, they regarded her as a mere curiosity beside the imposing Gabriela, she could now see the anxiety in their eyes. It was time to drive it home.
¡°Mmmmmm,¡± Sofie hummed as the king whimpered pathetically from the rear of the group. ¡°What a lovely voice. It¡¯s such a shame, I hear you never use it anymore. I wonder why...¡± She cupped her cheek in her hand and pretended to think for a fraction of a moment. ¡°Oh, yes! It¡¯s because I took your words, didn¡¯t I?¡±
¡°You! You... foul whore!¡± the woman howled. ¡°You did this to him?!¡±
Sofie cackled. ¡°All I did was impart upon him an infinitesimal fraction of the suffering he¡¯s allowed under his rule,¡± she informed the blustering woman. ¡°A mere drop of suffering in an ocean of agony. Truly, it seems that I may have been too lenient... should I take your words as well?¡±
The threat finally shut the loud, brash woman¡¯s mouth, which brought a wicked grin to Sofie¡¯s face. She could see the woman sweating in fear, her strong facade starting to crumble. The last bout of resistance was falling apart. She had them in the palm of her hand.
¡°Perhaps it is lucky for you that I am in a great mood today,¡± she told the queen. ¡°I will spare you from the consequences of your insolence just this once. After all, as you said, we are not here today to fight. In fact, I have come to give you great news! I have decided that I shall restore your monarch¡¯s ability to speak! All you must do is one simple task. You must end all slavery in this country forever. Only once the people of Kutrad, all of them, are free of their chains, will I return what I have taken.¡±
The group went still.
¡°W-what rubbish is this?¡± the queen finally sputtered. ¡°What would even possess you to make such an absurd demand?!¡±
¡°I do not have to explain myself to anyone, least of all a trumped up, self-important bitch like you,¡± Sofie haughtily replied. ¡°The terms are clear.¡±
¡°But that impossible!¡± she cried. ¡°The nobles would never permit it!¡±
¡°Hmmmmm, that sounds like your problem, not mine,¡± she told the woman as the redhead stewed in frustrated, futile anger. Sofie offered a wide smile behind her mask. ¡°It was so good to see you again, Your Majesty. I hope you make the proper choice.¡±
¡°Come, Gabriela,¡± she commanded, turning her back on the assembled people and heading towards the elevator, ¡°let us be away from these pathetic creatures before I change my mind.¡±
The two of them entered the compartment and the door closed. She heard the sound of the clamps releasing as the elevator rose into the sky. The last sounds she heard from below were the soft sobs of a despondent queen.
¡°How¡¯d it go?¡± Blake asked once they got back aboard. To Sofie¡¯s dismay, he wasted no time forcing the collar in his hands back around her throat.
¡°About as well as I could have hoped,¡± she told him with satisfaction. ¡°We¡¯ll find out if it accomplishes anything in the future, I guess.¡±
¡°Great, let¡¯s round up the bots and head home, then.¡±
¡°Your pet?¡± Gabby asked as the two of them entered the sleeping cabin section of the ship.
¡°Sorry,¡± Sofie sheepishly apologized. ¡°I went a little overboard.¡±
¡°A little? If you had chewed the scenery any harder, you would be spitting out pebbles right now. You sure seemed to be enjoying yourself.¡±
¡°No, not at all!¡± Sofie protested.
Gabby gave her a witheringly skeptical look, hot enough that Sofie melted under its glare.
¡°Okay, yeah, maybe a little,¡± she confessed.
¡°Trust me on this one,¡± Gabby told her. ¡°The worst thing you could do is lie to yourself about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Don¡¯t repeat my mistakes.¡±
¡°I understand.¡±
¡°Good. Now, if you don¡¯t mind, I¡¯m going to use one of these sleepcandles and knock myself out for as much of this trip as possible.¡±
Sofie turned into her room and removed the costume, dropping it onto the bed for the moment, too busy with her thoughts to care about mundane things like tidiness at the moment. As much as she didn¡¯t want to admit it, it had been fun to be in total command of the situation, to have everybody in the palm of your hand. After spending so much of her time in Scyria in chains or hounded by others looking to put her in chains, she had finally been able to look down at some of those responsible. She had the upper hand, now. She had the power. That sensation, for a few moments, had given her a rush that she hadn¡¯t felt before, a sort of sadistic joy that terrified her now that she looked back upon it. When she had threatened to take the queen¡¯s voice, it had been an empty threat, but if she were honest, not as empty a threat as she would have liked.
She swore two things at that moment. The first was that she would not allow herself to travel any further down that path. The call of her powers was too enticing, able to solve so many problems in a simple and easy but terrible way. She could never allow herself to succumb to the idea that ¡°a little more wouldn¡¯t hurt¡±. This torture she was willingly inflicting upon King Morgan would be the first and last time she would allow herself such transgressions.
The second thing she swore was that she would never, under any circumstances, let Blake know how much she¡¯d enjoyed it. The man was insufferable enough already.
The first thing Sofie noticed as she approached her rooms was the smell, a highly unpleasant odor that reminded her of particularly noxious wet farts mixed with rotten eggs and a hint of skunk. Unfortunate past experiences meant that she was well acquainted with this particular scent; somebody had set off a stinkcandle.
Out of all of Pari¡¯s candle-based creations, Sofie found the stinkcandle to be the absolute worst¡ªworse, even, than the powerful and destructive boomcandles, including the massive, barrel-sized versions she¡¯d made with Blake. Boomcandles, at least, had productive uses, like blasting for mining operations or construction. Stinkcandles, however, had no beneficial utility whatsoever. They were used for one reason and one reason only: to give somebody a very bad day.
The original stinkcandle, discovered on the plains of Eterium on their initial flight to Stragma, had been little more than a glorified stinkbomb, a prank for naughty and mischievous little catgirls. The stinkcandle of the present, however, had been ¡°upgraded¡± and ¡°refined¡± in the months after the Ubrans had retreated, to the point that nobody would ever think it a toy. No, the only term Sofie could find in her mental lexicon that accurately captured the truth of the modern stinkcandle was ¡°chemical weapon¡±.
Once a stinkcandle erupted, belching toxic fumes that covered a wide area, the first thing everybody would be hit by was the ¡°new¡± and ¡°improved¡± smell. This new stench, at its full potency, was enough to utterly incapacitate most anybody, overwhelming their sense of smell with an odor so putrid and foul that it felt like your entire respiratory system was on fire. The rest of their body wouldn¡¯t fare much better. Their eyes would burn and fill with blinding tears, while their skin would itch to the point where they would find themselves scratching themselves raw. Several people had projectile vomited on the spot. Others had started to choke and had gone into convulsions.
The smoke from the initial explosion would dissipate rather quickly, but that didn¡¯t mean that the suffering was over. Not in the slightest. The smell of a new stinkcandle persisted for many hours. Any soul unfortunate enough to be hit would stink for several days, ruining their ability to do much of anything other than sit alone and inhale their own stench. Nobody would be willing to step within ten meters of them until the smell wore off, and any food you tried to eat would taste terrible. Washing didn¡¯t seem to do much of anything, either. You just had to live with it.
Sofie knew all of this, of course, from personal experience. Pari had been a little too enthusiastic with her testing and the two of them plus Samanta had paid the price. Or, at least, Sofie and Sam had paid the price. The little rascal hadn¡¯t had an issue in the slightest, even though Sofie knew her sense of smell was exponentially superior to theirs. Perhaps she could smell all the subtle ¡°mini-scents¡±, if those were something that existed, and isolate them all so they didn¡¯t bother her, like how somebody with superior hearing might be able to hear individual melodies in what others would experience as only a wall of noise? Sofie didn¡¯t really know for sure, and she sure as hellfire wasn¡¯t going to be running experiments to find out.
Sofie entered her room to find the smell inside a little weaker than the already weak levels in the hallway. The candle had probably gone off a while ago, somewhere else in another part of the fortress, with the lingering scent transported to other areas through the building¡¯s ventilation system. To her relief, she found that the odor, while unpleasant, was nowhere near strong enough to make her room unlivable at the moment.
Looking around the chamber, Sofie reflected on how alien it felt to her, even though she¡¯d only been gone for a few days. Yet, what little she had was still exactly where she¡¯d left it. Her bed remained messy with her bedsheets piled up in the lower-left corner, her small closet still featured the same small set of outfits hanging from hangers, and her books remained untouched where she¡¯d left them weeks and weeks ago. Nothing seemed to have changed.
Perhaps, it was her who had changed. She¡¯d last left this room thinking she¡¯d uncovered and solved her greatest mistake; now, she didn¡¯t know what to think anymore.
She glanced at the books again. She hadn¡¯t been in the right mind frame for translating since Pari¡¯s death. Maybe now, she could begin to make progress again. Her mind felt muddled and uncertain, yes, but no longer clouded by despair. The hobby might be what she needed to take her mind off of the latest complication in her life.
Sofie almost jumped when a hard series of knocks came from outside her door. Blake was outside. She must have been too in her own head to notice the clanks of his approaching steps, but she knew it was him. That knock had the distinctive timbre of his metal glove striking the metal door that nobody else could replicate.
Opening the door, Sofie immediately reeled back, gagging as the pungent odor of stinkcandle invaded her room, far stronger than it had been even in the hallway before. Gagging, she hit the door button and retreated, but the door didn¡¯t budge. Blake took a step inside.
¡°What did you do?!¡± Blake wheezed accusingly.
¡°Ack! Get out!¡± she coughed, backing even farther away.
¡°Did you make her do this with the chains?!¡±
¡°Get out of my room THIS INSTANT!¡±
Blake stepped back out into the hallway as a large rotary fan rose out of the floor between them. The fan rapidly spun up to the point that it generated a strong cone of wind blasting out of the doorway and into the hall, pushing all of the airflow out of her chambers. The smell weakened significantly, though Sofie didn¡¯t look forward to traversing the nearby halls anytime soon.
¡°Better?¡± Blake yelled over the din of the propeller. It wasn¡¯t until now that she noticed the stuffed-up timbre of his voice, as if his nose was entirely clogged.
¡°What the heck is wrong with you, Blake?!¡± she shouted over the din.
¡°What¡¯s wrong with me is that your little cretin turned my rooms into a biohazard site!¡± he hollered back. ¡°It¡¯s like somebody dumped a sewer into a landfill and then set it all on fire!¡±
¡°That sounds terrible, but I fail to see what I have to do with it!¡±
¡°I was too busy coughing to catch most of it, but she definitely mentioned your name! What did you do?!¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t do anything! I haven¡¯t seen her since we got off the ship hours ago!¡±
¡°Oh yeah?! No invisible mind-control chain bullshit because you¡¯re unhappy about the collar? She did it all on her own?¡±
¡°She¡¯s her own person, Blake. She can make her own decisions.¡±
¡°Well, in that case, then so can I. I¡¯m kicking her out and she can go find some other place to stinkify that isn¡¯t my home!¡±
¡°What?! You can¡¯t!¡± Sofie cried.
¡°I sure as hell can! I will not tolerate somebody who thinks it¡¯s alright to make my fucking rooms smell worse than a toxic waste dump living under my roof, no matter if they¡¯re seven or seventy!¡±
¡°You tolerate somebody living under your roof who literally severed your spine, Blake!¡±
¡°That¡¯s different, and you know it!¡±
¡°Kids overreact to things, Blake! That¡¯s how they work! She¡¯s just a little girl!¡±
¡°She¡¯s a fucking terrorist, is what she is! It¡¯s been hours, and I can still barely keep myself from coughing! I had to stuff tucrenyx into my sinuses just to be able to function! You want her to be able to stay? Make it worth the pain and I¡¯ll think about it!¡±
Sofie squeezed her hands into fists so hard that she could feel her nails cutting into her palms. What an absurdly bizarre scene she found herself in, hollering arguments over the drone of a large fan at a man so smelly that he could fumigate a house with just his presence. It would have been funny if he wasn¡¯t so infuriating.
¡°Go talk to her, not me,¡± she replied. ¡°I¡¯m sure there¡¯s something she can do to make it up to you.¡±
¡°Like what, make me a candle? No thanks, I¡¯m good. Let¡¯s be clear, Sofie, I only let her stay here in the first place because you wanted it. That means you get to pay.¡±
Why was Blake being so insistent that she make it up to him? The question kept bouncing around Sofie¡¯s head. After all, in her mind, Pari could do many things that would be far more useful to Blake than anything Sofie could offer. Blake claimed that he didn¡¯t want candles, but that was oversimplifying the catgirl¡¯s capabilities and they both knew it. So, then, why was he here?
¡°What could I even do to make things right?¡± she asked.
¡°Hmmm, how about this? You¡¯re still translating those ancient texts, right? Give me a copy of everything you have translated so far in those books of yours, in English, plus updated translations every day as you continue to translate more.¡±
Suddenly, Sofie felt like a light had gone on in her mind and she could see everything for what it was. Blake seemed to want quite badly to see her translated books. This set off alarm bells immediately, as Blake had never shown much interest in her translations before.
Clearly, Blake didn¡¯t have it in him to simply come and ask¡ªand if she were honest, she very well might have rebuffed him regardless, for reasons including but not limited to a certain ring around her neck. That was why he was using Pari as leverage, trying to extract this concession from Sofie over something in which she had little involvement. It felt like extortion or something. Well, she wasn¡¯t about to give in that easily.
¡°No,¡± she told him. ¡°I refuse.¡±
¡°Really? I thought you would care about your so-called sister¡¯s wellbeing!¡± he retorted.
¡°If Pari¡¯s gone, then I¡¯m gone. We¡¯ve lived on our own before, we can do it again. I¡¯ll get a job and we¡¯ll be fine without you. If you want my translations, then you¡¯ll have to do much more than that for me.¡±
¡°Yeah? Like what?¡±
¡°You know what,¡± she told him, lifting her chin.
Blake stared at her in thought for a few moments as the winds ruffled his short hair. ¡°In the fortress only,¡± he finally said. ¡°You have to keep wearing it outside. And you have to translate every day, as much as you can manage.¡±
Sofie blinked. That had been... shockingly easy? He¡¯d pivoted straight to bargaining! Where was the bluster, the arguments, the bile? How desperately did he want these translations?
¡°I want this gone for good,¡± she insisted.
¡°Sorry, in here I can install at least some measure of control and containment. Out there, it¡¯s necessary.¡±
¡°Oh, you¡¯re going to just put stuff in the walls instead? How is that any better?¡±
¡°You won¡¯t have a collar that can choke you to death around your throat all day. And I have some new ideas, now that we know more about your abilities, which should be able to work without having to threaten your life to do so. But outside, it stays on. Also, you have to actively work on the chain issue too, and report to me or Arlette what you find.¡±
Sofie didn¡¯t know how to reply to that. On the one hand, she wanted that damned collar gone for good. On the other, this was a massive improvement and all she would have to do was... something she was going to do anyway?
¡°...alright, deal,¡± she finally agreed. ¡°It might take a while to translate into English, though.¡±
¡°Deal. I¡¯ll check and see if there are any books left in Otharia that can help you, as well. Might make things easier for you,¡± he replied. The collar around her neck popped open with a snap. Sofie wasted no time removing it from her body. As much as she wanted to throw it away, she instead placed it on a side table. Meanwhile, the fan receded into the floor from whence it came. ¡°Alright, I¡¯m going to go wash for the third time today.¡±
Sofie smirked as he left, but didn¡¯t bother telling Blake the sad truth. Instead, she decided to go visit a certain naughty catgirl, give her a big hug, and talk to her about proportional response.
Chapter 113
Iorweth Morgan couldn¡¯t sleep. Little surprise, there; he hadn¡¯t been able to sleep well for a long time. This was worse than usual, however. This wasn¡¯t the normal insomnia where he trudged through a stupor of guilt and regret, the kind which his love would soothe away with a heartfelt, loving embrace as they lied in their bed together. No, this was the old insomnia, the one ruled by fear that took the form of a single question: what if the witch actually came back, as she had threatened to, and stole away even more of him?
For more than a season after his first encounter, that fear had ruled his every waking moment. His mind became overwhelmed with suspicion, every odd movement, every slightly out-of-character utterance, every slight movement caught in his peripheral vision or heard outside his sight prompted the same paranoid thoughts and terrible anxiety. Was the guard in the corner of his eye a loyal soldier, or that blasted woman in disguise, waiting to strike? What about the ministers he spoke to, or the nobles he reluctantly met with, or the citizens who came to beg for his favor? How would he know, until the blade was buried in his chest?
Though he¡¯d tripled security and implemented various procedures like secret code phrases to keep himself safe, he¡¯d never felt safe, by and large because of the constant reminder that was his own existence. No matter how much he¡¯d tried to forget and move on, he would be dragged back to the past each time he needed to speak. The curse the witch had left upon him showed no mercy. No matter what or how hard he¡¯d tried, he¡¯d found he could vocalize neither words nor meaning¡ªexcept for the one time he¡¯d pushed impossibly hard, that is.
In a way, though, that mistake had been perhaps the most fortunate mistake of his life, as it had brought him together with Tangwen. Being an unwed monarch had been its own brand of torture. It had long been tradition for the King of Kutrad to marry a member of the noble families, and to such ends, Iorweth had been bombarded with female suitors from the various families for years. No convention, festival, or meeting could conclude before every patriarch there had shoved their most eligible daughter in his face with the hopes that one would catch his fancy. This had not changed, even after the loss of his voice, though the women looked at him with less hope and more unease in their eyes after that.
Though nearing forty years of age, Iorweth had continued to resist marriage for a variety of reasons. First, it would make his life harder. His marriage would be more than just a joining of two people. It would be the joining of a noble house with his own. While he would gain the support of said house, it would come at the cost of the support of most of the other noble houses. Their insubordination would intensify as they turned their sights on him with greater focus than before, for they knew as well as he that the support of his wife¡¯s house would come with the expectations of reciprocation¡ªin total, a net loss.
Second, and¡ªif he were to be honest¡ªmore importantly, the thought of joining with a noble made him want to vomit. He already despised interacting with them and their pompous attitudes. The men seemed far more interested in hunting¡ªliterally with animals and metaphorically with women¡ªthan in effectively administering their domains, which only made running the country more difficult. He enjoyed the occasional hunt just as much as any other red-blooded male, but there was a limit, surely! The women talked only of gossip and fashion, both of which seemed to change by the day. He was supposed to live with one of these people for the rest of his life and interact with their family with great frequency? Not if he had anything to do about it!
But then, a year ago, he¡¯d crossed paths with his soulmate and everything had changed. He could still remember the terrible incident: the injured natuz charging out of the underbrush, its sharp horn gleaming with murderous intent as it charged the court doctor¡¯s back; Iorweth¡¯s realization that Cedrik Daniels¡ªthe court doctor and a good man who had faithfully served both him and his father for decades¡ªwas unaware of the impending doom; his desperate cry to warn the man before it was too late, with every fiber of his being pushing against the horrible curse inside him and, for the slightest of moments, succeeding; pain so horrible that it redefined agony, followed by blood and darkness.
He¡¯d woken a day later in a room he didn¡¯t recognize to find a moderately attractive woman with long red-orange curls that seemed to glow with an inner fire taking his pulse. The first thing she¡¯d done, upon realizing he¡¯d finally awakened, was make sure he was well and get his account of what had happened. The second thing she¡¯d done was tear into him for his actions as he lied there, unable to shout back.
He¡¯d been utterly irresponsible, she told him. Had he died, there would be nobody left to carry on the Morgan family line, and control of the country would fall to the nobles¡ªor ¡°fatuous, vainglorious, self-centered bastards¡±, as she¡¯d put it¡ªwho would burn the whole nation down in a bloody civil war over their own greed, she¡¯d said. That was how he¡¯d first met the woman named Tangwen Beynon. He¡¯d developed a liking for her immediately.
Despite how much Iorweth had sacrificed to warn Daniels, his efforts had been in vain. The doctor had died almost instantly when the natuz pierced his heart in its suicidal rush. Tangwen had been the doctor in the small town nearby, the only living person with medical expertise close enough to be of use as Iorweth bled out seemingly every orifice at once. She¡¯d saved his life, he had no doubt.
Though he and his subordinates had wanted to move him back to Xoginia as soon as possible, that had proved to be impossible. The foul curse¡¯s punishment for his resistance had robbed his body of its vitality to the point that everybody agreed he would have to stay. In the end, it had taken him twelve days to fully recover from his ordeal.
As he recovered, in the periods when he wasn¡¯t either working while still in bed or fast asleep¡ªthe incident had reinforced his fear so greatly that she¡¯d had to drug him into slumber¡ªthey¡¯d conversed about a great many things. The more he¡¯d learned of her and interacted with her, the more his liking grew. Eventually, wild thoughts had taken root, thoughts that he found himself unable to completely eradicate. You see, to Iorweth¡¯s shock and surprise, Tangwen Beynon was a noble.
House Beynon was one of the smaller, more middling noble families in Kutrad, but they were still nobles and, as King of Kutrad, Iorweth Morgan knew all the nobles far more than he wished to. And yet, he¡¯d never once met Tangwen in any of the balls, ceremonies, or other noble gatherings, despite her being only five years his junior. That was, it seemed, because her family had done much to pretend that she didn¡¯t exist, going so far as to leave her on the estate while the rest of them traveled to Xoginia every year.
Tangwen was an embarrassment, you see; brash, willful, uncompromising, and utterly lacking in the manners and etiquette that any Kutrad noblewoman was expected to possess, the family was utterly ashamed to be associated with her in any way. This feeling she reciprocated. By her own admission, she¡¯d become a woman of healing precisely because it would greatly infuriate and humiliate her family. After all, doctors dealt with blood, guts, and other unsightly things regularly, and nobody of her stature would ever deign to dabble in such unseemly affairs.
Iorweth found that he loved her no-nonsense attitude and deep caring for others. He loved the way her smile lit up when she laughed and the cute songs she would hum to herself when she thought nobody was listening. He loved how passionate she was during sex¡ªthough that aspect didn¡¯t make itself apparent until after the wedding. Most importantly, he loved that she hated other nobles as much as he did, though her dislike was more personal. What better way to fulfill his obligations while simultaneously sticking it to all the swaggering assholes pushing their daughters at him? Still, it wasn¡¯t until he¡¯d journeyed to the Beynon estate and asked for her hand in marriage, upon which her father had offered that he marry one of his other daughters instead, that he¡¯d known for sure that she was the one. She was perfect.
It was Tangwen¡¯s presence by his side the last few seasons that had allowed him to finally attain some semblance of peace¡ªenough, at least, to sleep again. Unfortunately, through that peace, he¡¯d allowed himself to do the unthinkable. He¡¯d allowed himself to mostly forget.
There would be no forgetting anymore.
Even now, many hours later, Iorweth could still hear the witch¡¯s terrible laugh echoing in his ears, could still feel the weight of her predatory gaze bearing down upon his soul from the other side of her harrowing mask. She¡¯d made true of her threat, driving home just how powerless he was against her.
Given her words and company the year before, he¡¯d always interpreted her warning to mean she would return in the form of a knife in the dark. Instead, she¡¯d returned in the most attention-grabbing way possible with two unthinkably formidable figures under her thrall: the unkillable Ubran, said to be the strongest warrior ever to exist, and the overlord of Otharia, Lord Ferros himself.
He had heard many stories and read innumerable reports about the Ubran¡¯s unkillable swordswoman. Ferocious, bloodthirsty, and seemingly immune to pain, she haunted the dreams of what few soldiers returned home after the war¡¯s end. The thought of such an unstoppable killer in the hands of that wicked sorceress, waiting to be let loose upon him, chilled him to the bone.
But as frightful as controlling an immortal killing machine might sound, her command of the other of the two was what truly boggled his mind. Iorweth knew Lord Ferros, having had numerous interactions with the man through Many. The Lord Ferros that he knew was a man who bowed to no one. Fiercely independent and stubborn, the Otharian ruler made it a point to avoid showing weakness in any form in front of Iorweth and the others. And yet, somehow, the witch had forced him to his knees.
How long had Lord Ferros been under the vile woman¡¯s spell? Iorweth had not noticed anything unusual in the last few meetings, but that would make her influence all the more insidious, did it not? What if he was also compromised, and simply didn¡¯t know it? As much as he wanted to, he couldn¡¯t take that possibility off the table.
There had been times when he¡¯d wondered if all of this was simply a game to the witch. Her name, Sofie Ramaut, had never been on the initial reports, the ones Iorweth had used to make his ill-fated decision. And yet, there in his dungeon she¡¯d been, completely unafraid of a man of his power and station. She¡¯d even taken the time to throw a litany of insults his way while shackled to a wall. That wasn¡¯t the sort of behavior of a normal, rightfully fearful being.
Then there was the way she¡¯d behaved within the tower, taking control from Arlette Demirt, the nominal leader, as if she¡¯d always been the one truly in charge. She¡¯d manipulated them all with ease, stealing from him both his voice and the location of the secret passage out as if it had been her plan from the start. And of course, he hadn¡¯t missed the gleam of glee in her eyes when she¡¯d crushed his manhood, the sort of gaze you¡¯d see from a child casually destroying a doll they didn¡¯t like. It was as if she¡¯d simply been toying with them all from the very beginning.
Her supposed message today had only confirmed his suspicion that he and all the others were her playthings. Like a wicked merchant found in the fairy tales of his youth, she¡¯d dangled his salvation in front of them, only to demand the impossible for it. She¡¯d brought hope and then left it just out of reach, tormenting him with its presence. Iorweth could not imagine a more evil being to ever exist.
At least, this time, she¡¯d looked the part. Her robe and hood had seemed to consume the midday light itself, hiding her true form within shadow. Iorweth could have sworn that he¡¯d seen the mask move as if it were alive, its gaze following him even when she turned her head. Then there were the many trinkets she¡¯d worn from her robes like trophies, no doubt amulets used to bind spirits to her will. All in all, he knew now that this was the true Sofie Ramaut, not the thin, unassuming woman he¡¯d first met before. That had all been a guise.
Not that her appearance had really mattered. She could have been dressed in a jester¡¯s outfit or a milkmaid¡¯s dress and it wouldn¡¯t have mattered. Once he¡¯d recognized her voice, the one seared into his memory, he¡¯d lost everything. He could barely remember what had happened after he¡¯d realized who was standing on the bridge in front of them. The rest he¡¯d learned second-hand from the others after he¡¯d somewhat regained himself later.
Now, hours later, he had still yet to fully recover, and he doubted he ever would. As he stared at his bedroom ceiling, Iorweth¡¯s ears strained in the darkness, searching for the ominous low hum of the Otharian flying craft returning. The witch¡¯s unspoken message had come through as clear as a cloudless sky. With her resources, there was nothing they could do to stop her if she wanted in. Be it through infiltration or brute force, she was inevitable. Nowhere felt safe for him now. The illusion he¡¯d created for himself the last few seasons had been irreparably shattered. Safety was but a myth.
Tangwen rolled over, burying her face into his shoulder. ¡°Dearest, you must sleep,¡± his love hummed. ¡°I know that fiend has scarred you deeply, but you will not heal if you do not rest. Take the draught I made you. I know you hate the side effects, but tomorrow is too important.¡±
She was right, as per usual. Iorweth climbed out of his soft mattress and fetched the vial on a nearby table. Drinking it in one gulp¡ªit tasted like garbage, even when she made it¡ªhe returned to the warm divot where he¡¯d been. He embraced his wife, gave her a kiss, and closed his eyes. Soon he felt the medicine working, clouding his mind, and not long after, he finally entered the world of dreams. That world proved little better for him that night.
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One would expect that communication between parties would be slow and awkward when one of them can¡¯t speak, and for a little while, that had indeed been the case. These days, while communication was still somewhat slower, there existed a semi-formal system that expedited it all. It had gradually formed almost naturally through his and his ministers¡¯ collective struggles until they could hold detailed discussions without too much delay.
First, there was the reader, somebody designated to stand over Iorweth¡¯s shoulder and read aloud the words he wrote down. Usually, it was somebody present but not involved in the conversation itself, such as a literate bodyguard, but more and more often his Queen would volunteer, as she had this time¡ªhe felt that it was beneath her and her station to do this, but she claimed she liked doing it, so he didn¡¯t make a big fuss.
Iorweth always carried writing tools with him now, from the moment his wife finished wrapping his lower face with silken bandages in the morning to the moment she took them off at night. He wrote with an ingenious device called a ¡°fountain pen¡±, gifted to him by Lord Ferros, the same person who had invaded his sanctuary just the day before. To fuel the pen, he also carried a portable inkwell at his side, which hung from a thin strap around his shoulder when he was moving around.
The most important tool, however, was the large book he carried with him wherever he went. Each book¡ªhe¡¯d filled up a good number over the seasons¡ªstarted entirely blank. Most of it he slowly filled with his words to be spoken aloud by the designated speaker, but the front pages were where he had his default responses. These pages, filled with responses ranging from one step above yes and no¡ªthe witch¡¯s curse didn¡¯t prevent him from nodding, after all¡ªto far more complex messages and even numbers, these pages contributed the most to the improved conversation speed.
Since he¡¯d come up with the idea, he found he only had to actually write out a message a quarter as often as before; instead, he simply pointed at various words and phrases while saving time and ink. There were even the occasional days where he could get by with only filling a page with writing. Today, however, was not one of those days.
¡°You cannot be seriously entertaining the idea!¡± Minister of Commerce Caitlin Carrigan hollered across the table. ¡°Not only is her demand realistically impossible to fulfill, we have nothing that guarantees that she¡¯ll even keep her word!¡±
¡°I simply think it¡¯s best to look at what we know of her, based upon her past behavior,¡± Prime Minister Connor Seare responded in his usual level tone. ¡°Our King says that she mentioned her hatred of slavery as a justification during her first attack. Then this time, she presented her demands as an offer, as if she were the benevolent party. It seems to me that she does, on some level, value at least the appearance of righteousness. Were we to somehow fulfill her requirements, I would say there are good odds she follows through on her half of the bargain.¡±
¡°Preposterous!¡±
¡°Would you prefer that she return in the future to find that we¡¯ve disregarded her entirely? How would she take that, I wonder? Perhaps you might volunteer to let her take your voice next, my dear?¡±
The ¡°debate¡± had raged like this among the people in the locked room for the last hour. Everybody was on a knife¡¯s edge, not only because of the events on the bridge the day before but also because of what had happened shortly afterward. Prime Minister Seare had thankfully possessed the presence of mind to keep everybody who¡¯d heard the witch¡¯s proclamation sequestered from the rest of the palace until Iorweth had regained his faculties.
Once he¡¯d returned to himself, Iorweth, in his full power as King, had delivered unto them a decree: not a single word of what had happened could be spoken to anybody outside of the group, on penalty of death for every single person other than he and Tangwen. He had no choice but to be so draconian; were the nobles to get even a whiff of an inkling that slavery might be under attack, they would not hold back, and so, neither would he. Many of the people who¡¯d been there at the time were important to the workings of Kutrad, but they were not invaluable, and he¡¯d made sure they understood that. They knew now that a single peep from any one of them, minister or soldier alike, would result in the deaths of them all.
Iorweth fully expected this threat to keep the secret locked tight... for now. It was only a matter of time before it got leaked somehow. Half of the attendees here were soldiers, and, like it or not, soldiers drank. No threat would ever be able to keep their mouths sealed forever.
Even if they did stay sealed, however, others he could not control still could ruin their plans at any time. The witch and her cohort could leak the contents of their meeting at any time and there was nothing he could do about it. This was the biggest reason he hadn¡¯t just had the witnesses killed to ensure their silence. It would do little to his security while robbing him of vital subordinates that he very much did not wish to lose.
And so, his logic brought him back to the beginning. Only one plan of action remained.
He finished his writing and held it up for his love to see.
¡°Silence!¡± she barked, bringing a blissful end to the noise. She leaned forward slightly to better see his tiny scrawl.
¡°I have decided that we will attempt to fulfill the witch¡¯s demands and bring slavery to an end within Kutrad,¡± she read aloud. Several of those in attendance gasped, while a few others muttered to themselves. Iorweth made sure to note who did what. ¡°It is important that everybody here understands the reality in which we all now reside. The witch has implicated us in the eyes of many of the most powerful people in this nation. Should they find out the truth of what occurred, we will be marked for death. I need not remind you that, while I hold far more power and wealth than any one noble house, I do not hold even close to the power and wealth of the noble houses combined. Should they learn of what transpired yesterday, their reaction will most likely be to take up arms against us all. Even should we all decide to disregard the witch¡¯s offer entirely, they will not be satisfied; not when they can ensure their way of life goes unchallenged with relative ease.¡±
He flipped the page.
¡°You are all aware of what will happen to each and every one of you if you should leak what transpired, but we cannot be sure that the witch will not return tomorrow and announce every last detail to the entire city. We must assume that the nobles will learn the truth eventually. When that time comes, I plan to be prepared. There is no use arguing over whether or not to obey the witch¡¯s decree. If we attempt it and fail, we will die upon the blades and pikes of the houses. If we do not attempt it, we will still face the same fate once the houses learn the truth. I repeat, we are all already guilty in their eyes. Do not delude yourself.¡±
His gaze swept the room as Tangwen spoke, looking for signs of disloyalty¡ªor worse, stupidity and foolishness¡ªwithin the ranks. Several of the soldiers appeared quite nervous. Had they been contemplating defection? Perhaps informing one of the more powerful nobles in exchange for protection? They would doom themselves along with the rest, but perhaps they could not see this. He made a note to have them watched more tightly. Perhaps a few of them would need to be silenced after all.
¡°If we must bear this mark of guilt no matter what we choose,¡± Tangwen continued to read, ¡°then I will choose the path that at least offers a reward for it. Remember, you are all implicated in this, now. There is no going back. Let us set a course immediately.¡±
He flipped to the final page.
¡°I know just how unlikely our success feels right now. If we are to accomplish this task, then we will need power. Our first task is to acquire this power through whatever means necessary. Let us begin with the discussion on this point. All ideas are on the table.¡±
The room went silent for a few moments as his message sank in. Finally, Prime Minister Seare sat down and rubbed his temples with a long sigh.
¡°Very well,¡± he said. ¡°The most obvious issue here is our troop count. Since Your Majesty¡¯s army suffered heavier losses than the armies of the houses, we are at an even greater troop deficit than we were before the blasted war. If we wish to stand a chance, we need to bolster the Army. That needs to be step one.¡±
¡°But where would we get enough troops?¡± Tangwen asked.
¡°I can think of no alternative than the mandatory enrollment of all people within the target age group,¡± the Prime Minister replied. ¡°If voluntary enrollment was sufficient, the Army would not be so understaffed today.¡± He sighed again. ¡°I believe we¡¯ve already tripled the initial enrollment bonus, with little result.¡±
¡°But we cannot have a functioning nation if so many of our people have to set aside their lives to become soldiers,¡± Minister Carrigan pointed out. ¡°The economy would fall apart, if the affected people didn¡¯t overthrow us first!¡±
¡°Of course. That¡¯s why I propose a system of soldier citizens. We train them for a period of time, long enough to get them at least mildly competent, then they return to their old lives until we call upon them. Their quality would be substandard, but with enough of them, it will make a difference.¡±
¡°Why wouldn¡¯t the nobles object to this?¡± the Queen wondered. ¡°Would this not put them on alert?¡±
¡°Not if we explain it properly,¡± Seare argued. ¡°Our Army has been devastated. We have perhaps eight thousand troops left after all our losses. We need to bolster our forces greatly for national security, of course. We impress upon them how chaotic and unstable Eterium is right now. Play up their desperation and the danger they pose.¡±
¡°And how will their families survive without them during this period?¡± another minister inquired.
¡°We would have to pay them enough to offset the loss, of course,¡± Seare replied.
¡°What about mercenaries?¡± another person asked.
¡°It¡¯s a shame not even a single general was present yesterday; we could use better information than I possess,¡± Seare grumbled. ¡°I¡¯m sure we could pad out our forces with mercenaries, of course, but keep in mind that we would be competing with our opposition. Of course, there would be the monetary factors-¡±
¡°Sir?¡± a hesitant voice chimed in from the back. Everybody turned towards the unfamiliar voice, which turned out to come from a scruffy soldier whose name Iorweth did not know. The man was definitely not high ranking, the king could plainly see.
¡°If you have something to say, say it,¡± a clearly irritated Prime Minister¡ªIorweth knew how much he disliked being interrupted¡ªtold the soldier.
¡°Well, sir, it¡¯s just that we probably won¡¯t be able to get many mercenaries for a long time, if ever, sir.¡±
That drew a scowl from most everybody in the room.
¡°Explain,¡± Tangwen commanded.
¡°Yes, well, my cousin is a mercenary, one of the few who survived Crirada, you see,¡± the soldier nervously explained. ¡°He told me that almost all the bands are disbanding, sir. They lost so many that there¡¯s just not enough people left to continue, and a lot of those still alive are done with fighting, anyway. He said it¡¯s so bad that the Mercenary Guild itself might fall to pieces.¡±
¡°So, few mercenaries and the ones still around will be demanding heavy coin,¡± the Prime Minister muttered. ¡°Thank you for your information.¡±
¡°Raising an army is expensive, mercenaries are expensive... money is the true issue here, isn¡¯t it?¡± observed Minister Carrigan. ¡°It always comes down to funds, every time. Funds we don¡¯t have.¡±
¡°It hasn¡¯t helped that our low manpower has decreased our exports,¡± Seare added.
¡°What about getting help from another country?¡± somebody asked. ¡°A loan, perhaps?¡±
¡°From who?¡± Tangwen replied. ¡°Otharia, Drayhadal, and Stragma would not be interested, Eterium is so mired in the chaos brought about by the invasion that I wouldn¡¯t be surprised were it to split into several smaller states within ten years, and as for Gustil...¡± She turned to the Prime Minister. ¡°When was the last time we heard from their new ¡®king¡¯? Has he even managed to construct a stable government yet?¡±
Seare shook his head. ¡°Thanks to the Ubrans purging the place of everybody who¡¯d ever held even a spoonful of power, he is finding it quite hard to muster the expertise needed to govern an area as large as Gustil was before their fall. Our people report that their governments are still largely limited to the city level, with the more open land largely ungoverned.¡±
Iorweth wrote two words and held it up for his love to read. She glanced at them and faltered. ¡°Dear, are you sure?¡± she asked.
He nodded.
¡°The mountains,¡± she read aloud.
The rest of the room stiffened. They did not need him to specify which mountains he was referring to. There was only one place that was known simply as ¡°the mountains¡±, the Krekard Mountains to the north of Kutrad.
Writing furiously, he spelled out his reasoning.
¡°The rest of the world may be unstable, but that provides us with the best opportunity. Nocend will need many more resources, especially metals, in the years to come as Eterium falls and Gustil tries to rebuild. Satiating that need will grant us the wealth we require, but we do not currently have the deposits needed to produce the iron and rare minerals that will be in such high demand. We will find what we need in the mountains.¡±
¡°But, Your Majesty,¡± one of the soldiers weakly protested, ¡°the mountains...¡±
He didn¡¯t have to finish his sentence; everybody knew what he was going to say: the mountains were where people went to die.
¡°This time it will be different,¡± Iorweth scribbled. ¡°No more small expeditions. No more mines manned by expendable slaves. The mountains have not yet been conquered because we have never had the spine nor the need to do so. We have both, now. I want an expedition organized as soon as possible to survey the entire range. Spare no expense.¡±
¡°Sire, I am not sure we will be able to gather the manpower we would require for an undertaking of that magnitude,¡± the Prime Minister cautioned. ¡°Given the range¡¯s reputation, I doubt we would have much luck getting even a quarter of the people we would need, even if we paid exorbitantly for them. Nobody would think it worth the risk.¡±
¡°We both know that the legends are but myths. The cold and dangerous terrain is what claimed our previous expeditions.¡±
¡°That may be so, but you will not be able to convince the public of that. Everybody here has heard rumors of what lies in wait behind the peaks, yes?¡± Seare pointed at one soldier. ¡°You, what have you heard?¡±
¡°Uh, well, my mother used to always say it was roving packs of jaglioths who made their dens in the mountains, sir,¡± the soldier answered.
The Prime Minister pointed to another soldier. ¡°And you?¡±
¡°I heard that there¡¯s something off up there that makes everybody turn into cannibals and eat each other,¡± the soldier responded.
He pointed to another still. ¡°What about you?¡±
¡°Vengeful spirits,¡± came the reply.
¡°You see the problem, Your Majesty? No amount of money will make these people go where they do not feel safe enough.¡±
¡°Then we make it safe enough,¡± the Kutrad king wrote. ¡°Send troops to guard them. Enough to ensure that nobody is slain by jaglioths or spirits. Five thousand should be enough, yes?¡±
¡°Do you think that is wise, sire? It would be a substantial expenditure.¡±
¡°It is time that we claimed that which has always been Kutrad¡¯s. We will make the Krekard Mountains ours once and for all, and from them, we shall prosper.¡±
¡°As you say, Your Highness,¡± Seare said with a nod.
¡°This has been enough discussion for today,¡± Tangwen read aloud. ¡°All present will do well to remember what is at stake for all of you. You are dismissed.¡±
¡°Your Majesty, if I could have a word,¡± Minister Carrigan said.
¡°Later. I grow weary,¡± he replied.
Iorweth and Tangwen stayed put while the Minister joined the rest filing out into the hall with dampened spirits. Iorweth could see it on their faces, in their eyes. Everyone understood now just what they had all been pulled into. There was no way out for any of them, nor himself, at this point.
¡°Are you sure this is what you think is best, my dearest?¡± she asked him once they were alone again.
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he confided. ¡°It feels impossible. But even so, it is what I desire. I want to be able to tell you that I love you with my own voice. Is that not worth trying for?¡±
Tangwen embraced him and, for one wonderful moment, the harshness of the world seemed to vanish. ¡°Then let us strive for it with everything we have, my love,¡± she murmured in his ear. ¡°When the two of us are together, not even the gods can stop us.¡±
Chapter 114
Mizuko reclined in her chair, letting the gentle breeze wash over her and temper the heat of the sun shining down upon her. Reaching to her side, she gently grasped the teacup and lifted it to her lips, letting the warm brew trickle between her lips as she took in the picturesque view of the rolling grasslands before her. Though the tea was the same high-quality leaves as she¡¯d tasted hundreds of times before, by now it tasted sour on her tongue. Though the waving grasses and spotless blue sky provided the same majestic sight she¡¯d enjoyed for months, now it only brought her dissatisfaction.
Mizuko was bored. She was tired of spending every day in the manor that was now her home. It was a very pleasant and luxurious life, to be sure¡ªeating delicious meals cooked using expensive, high-class ingredients; sleeping upon a mattress filled with a rare moss that smelled like pine leaves and was the softest thing she¡¯d ever lain upon; relaxing in the expansive flower garden that Pyria had ordered built to the side of the manor; even, to some degree, being waited on hand and foot¡ªbut even the grandest of lives grew tiresome and monotonous without variety.
Having been given a second chance at life, a second youth to savor¡ªfeeling like you were seventy counted as youth for somebody as old as she was¡ªshe¡¯d spent almost the entirety of it in one of two places: this manor and the Clan Palace in Esmaeyae. Having regained her vigor through the unknown miracle that had brought her here, she¡¯d then proceeded to squander it.
The realization left her feeling bitter inside. She yearned to leave this place, to go and see the wonders that this new world provided, but things were never so simple. Sure, she could just walk away, but then what?
Hers was a complicated existence. Her power made her the object of desire for all four ruling clans within Drayhadal. Ever since the day she¡¯d stopped the Stragman invaders, her presence had been impossible to conceal from the other clans. As hard as Pyria tried to keep the other clans away, she didn¡¯t have the power to fully block their demands.
Unfortunately, those demands manifested in the form of not-so-welcome visitors every few days, one from each of the other clans. They came as a group¡ªnone of the clans would allow the others a chance to talk to her alone¡ªand spent their time trying to ingratiate themselves and their clan with her. Mizuko didn¡¯t find any of the representatives too odious, but they did carry the same air of smug superiority that she found with every high-ranking elf she¡¯d ever met, even¡ªno, especially¡ªPyria.
Only the protection of Pyria and the Esmae clan kept Mizuko from becoming a prize to fight over. As fascinating as the volcanic city Astryae or Casmyae¡ªthe ¡°City On The Lake¡±¡ª sounded, just the act of her visiting one of them risked igniting a near-civil war between the clans. They might even go as far as to try to attack her. Provided she saw it coming, she knew she could handle just about anything with her strange mental abilities. The question was if she wanted to. Those on the receiving end of her power often did not emerge from the experience undamaged.
That brought up a whole other obstacle to her exploratory desires: where and how would she sleep? To her constant dismay, Mizuko had yet to find a way to keep her dreams from hurting everybody around her, meaning she would be a danger wherever she might be when it was time for slumber. If she were to travel, she would have to sleep out in the wilderness or she¡¯d end up mentally traumatizing a bunch of unprepared people every night¡ªand even that didn¡¯t guarantee anything. Even the servants went back to their homes in the nearby town when she retired for the evening, while the guards had to massively expand their perimeter to avoid being caught up in her dream.
Those guards and servants, along with their ruler, were perhaps the final obstacle to her desire. She had no illusions as to her relationship with Pyria Esmae. The elven princess liked her and took the time to visit often¡ªthough, recently, noticeably less frequently than before¡ªbut Mizuko knew that their friendship was secondary to her utility. She had no doubts that the servants reported her activities to the princess and that the guards had orders to keep her in as much as they had to keep others out.
There was only one exception to these beliefs, one elf who Mizuko felt comfortable saying she could trust wholeheartedly. Coincidentally, that elf just happened to be stepping out of the manor now with a small tray in her hands.
¡°Madam Mizuko, your afternoon snack is ready,¡± the elf said with a shy smile. She placed the tray on a side table to Mizuko¡¯s left and stepped back, a hopeful expression on her pretty face.
¡°Thank you, Vura. More of your experiments, I presume?¡± Mizuko replied.
¡°Yes,¡± the maid confirmed with a downcast glance. ¡°I apologize if they grow tiresome.¡±
¡°Oh, not at all, not at all,¡± she reassured the girl. ¡°Watching you improve day by day has been one of the most interesting things to happen here in a long time.¡±
One day, Mizuko had developed a craving for tarts, specifically the miniature variety you could hold in your hand. This presented a problem, for a variety of reasons. First of all, she knew how a tart looked and the general construction from having eaten them from time to time, but she¡¯d never made one herself. She didn¡¯t know any of the techniques needed to make them properly, nor anything about ingredients other than that fruits of various sorts were involved depending on the recipe. To make matters more complicated, one could not just substitute Scyrian ingredients for Earth ones and call it a day. Everything was different¡ªdifferent fruits, different grains, even the butter used here came from a different animal and had a different flavor and consistency.
None of these problems had stopped Vura from trying to make some anyway. Things had not gone well at the start, but the elven girl had thrown herself at the task with a near-obsessive determination that she only seemed to display in matters concerning Mizuko. After learning all she could about baking from the other servants, she¡¯d embarked on an ambitious regimen of experiments, trying all sorts of ingredients, ratios, and preparation methods to find what worked and what didn¡¯t. Now, only a month or so later, her efforts produced something remarkable.
Mizuko took one of the small, circular treats and took a large bite. Delectable buttery flavor mixed with the sweetness of lantberry jam in her mouth, drawing forth a hum of pleasure that broke through even her sour mood. ¡°You¡¯ve gotten so good at this so fast, it¡¯s incredible. This is your best batch yet. I¡¯d say lower the sweetness just a little, however. It overshadows the rest of the lantberry flavor a bit too much. Then, you¡¯ll have something truly special.¡±
¡°Y-you are too kind, Madam...¡± Vura squeaked, blushing and avoiding eye contact. Her face blushed even redder at the praise, but Mizuko could see the delight in her eyes. Vura valued Mizuko¡¯s words highly, perhaps too highly.
Mizuko¡¯s relationship with Vura had started by chance; the elf had been the first person she¡¯d stumbled upon after arriving on this world. Even distraught as Vura had been at the time, not even that had been able to hide the girl¡¯s beauty. Mizuko could still remember how her long, flowing lavender hair had glimmered in the sunlight that day.
That hair was no longer long and flowing; Vura had cut it short not too long ago. Mizuko believed it was part of the elf¡¯s attempts to remake herself and she approved wholeheartedly. The Vura of their first meeting had been a broken girl shattered by tragedy. Cruelly attacked and robbed of her ability to have a child in a society that judged a woman¡¯s worth by their ability to bear children, she¡¯d spiraled into a pit of self-loathing and despair. The Vura of today was... still a work in progress, but very much improved. Mizuko knew her to be far more confident, more assertive, and less held down by ghosts of her past. It made the old woman smile to see how much Vura had blossomed and how much further still she could go.
¡°Well, aren¡¯t you going to take some for yourself?¡± Mizuko prodded her companion.
¡°Madam Mizuko, I would never dream-¡±
¡°Come now, everyone should be entitled to the taste of their own cooking. Besides, if you don¡¯t eat a few, how will you know what needs improving in the next batch?¡±
Perhaps Mizuko¡¯s biggest complaint was that their friendship¡ªif you could call it that¡ªwas still far too one-sided for her taste. This was, at least partly, Mizuko¡¯s own fault. After all, she was the one who had pushed Pyria to hire the girl here in the first place. Now, when Vura looked at Mizuko, she didn¡¯t see an old woman; she saw an obscenely powerful otherworlder, one who had pulled her from her miserable existence and given her everything she could ever hope for and more. Mizuko would have preferred if she just saw an old woman.
¡°If Madam insists,¡± the girl conceded, her hand darting out to snatch three of the delightful treats.
Despite Mizuko¡¯s best efforts, she had so far been unable to convince the elf to drop the ¡°Madam¡± part of her name. Vura insisted that she could never dishonor the great savior of Esmae¡ªand an esteemed elder, to boot¡ªlike that. As a native of Japan, Mizuko understood the importance of titles, honorifics, and the like better than most. But even in her homeland, one tended to drop them when talking to one¡¯s closest friends and confidants. Vura was, by far, Mizuko¡¯s closest friend and confidant. After spending so much time together, they shared a relationship far closer and more intimate than Mizuko¡¯s relationships with the other servants and even Pyria, and she felt that their speech should reflect that. Vura disagreed. At least she¡¯d managed to convince the girl to move past calling her ¡°Madam Yamanaka¡± like the others did. Baby steps.
It constantly struck Mizuko as rather bizarre that Vura, who looked under twenty years old, was actually well over seventy. Mizuko even still thought of her as a ¡°girl¡± instead of a woman, despite the fact that, were she human, she would be a shriveled old crone in the twilight of her life. It surely had to do with how much like a young person Vura acted, her manner and thinking far more in line with somebody who shared her visual age than her numeric age. This was the case with all the elves, Mizuko realized, from the guards and servants to that belligerent prince and even to Pyria.
¡°Mmmmm,¡± Vura pondered as she chewed on the results of her hard work, her head tilted towards the sky to take in the sun¡¯s midday rays, ¡°perhaps a dusting of salt on the top would...¡±
The girl¡¯s eyes went wide and the two-and-a-half pastries tumbled onto the stone patio upon which she stood. She pointed up into the sky, her body frozen in place. ¡°Wh-wha-wha?¡±
Mizuko turned her head and stared up at the sky, following the girl¡¯s point. As it was a cloudless day, it didn¡¯t take more than a second to spot the source of Vura¡¯s confusion, wonder, and fear. Hanging in the air, several kilometers away, flew a grey lump quickly heading east. Unlike for Vura, the sight did not fill her with confusion, wonder, or fear because Mizuko knew what a dirigible looked like and this was very clearly one of them.
Mizuko had never quite forgotten what Tehlmar, that rude and tactless prince, had told her, but it had fallen to the back of her mind. There were other people like her, people from her home, out in this world. She wondered what their lives were like, and if they had been as lucky as she to fall into a comfortable existence. This person, the one who had created this blimp, had clearly been having a grand time since their arrival. She wanted to meet them all, to get to know those that shared in the miracle that brought her to this place.
Not everybody shared those desires. A shout brought her gaze momentarily back down to her level. A squad of soldiers tasked with protecting a nearby section of the estate stood in shock as they watched the metallic grey blimp. They all showed the same mix of fear and wonder as Vura, except for one man. He seemed shaken to his core, a stark terror radiating from him. A cry tore from his throat and he fell, clutching his head, to the grass.
Mizuko sighed, trying not to let the sadness she felt from the sight of the man overwhelm the other emotions brought on by the sight of the dirigible. She¡¯d seen this kind of reaction before from others damaged by her power; at this point she was far too familiar with the signs.
¡°Madam, we must get you inside, quickly!¡± Vura exclaimed, rushing over to shepherd her into the manor.
¡°No. There is no need, child,¡± she soothed the panicking maid. ¡°Nothing will happen, I assure you. It is merely a blimp. A... a palanquin that flies in the sky.¡±
¡°A... palanquin?¡± the girl repeated with puzzled awe.
¡°That¡¯s right. And see, it isn¡¯t anywhere near us and it¡¯s heading away. There¡¯s no need for alarm. Instead of focusing on me, go get a drink for that poor fellow over there. Something soothing.¡±
She checked the poor man again to find him moaning and trembling on the ground. Given the context, it looked like this soldier had been present during Stragma¡¯s invasion and had been one of the unlucky elves to get caught up in her memory.
Pyria tried to keep the damage Mizuko had inflicted on others out of Mizuko¡¯s sight, but her efforts were only semi-successful. Mizuko felt rather glad this was so; she preferred to face the consequences of her actions, rather than run from them forever. Said consequences largely fell into two groups. The first were those affected by her original accident on the first night, some soldiers but mostly civilians living in or near the Clan Palace.
This man seemed to fall into the second group, the soldiers who hadn¡¯t been able to get far enough away during the Stragman invasion, when she¡¯d used her powers in earnest for the first time. These were easier to spot, as they did things like involuntarily cringe at the sudden appearance of birds flying overhead, or, just perhaps, have a mental breakdown at the sight of something large and metal hanging in the sky above.
Mizuko regretted causing the man pain, as she regretted hurting all the others that day, but she¡¯d come to accept that her actions had been necessary. Without her, the land would have been overrun. That wasn¡¯t just her or Pyria¡¯s opinion, either¡ªevery single soldier whom she¡¯d hurt had told her the same. They viewed their trauma as a noble sacrifice for the sake of the land that they loved, a glorious battle scar of sorts, and generally seemed to chafe at her when she tried to apologize. The generally believed that by bemoaning the incident, she was dishonoring their sacrifice, so eventually, she¡¯d just stopped.
Vura ran off into the manor to find something for the soldier while Mizuko watched the blimp continue on its merry way, shrinking smaller and smaller as it went until it could no longer be seen. She couldn¡¯t help but envy the easy freedom on display. That blimp could go anywhere; nobody could stop something that high up. She wondered what sort of adventures the people inside were up to. The sight stoked the fires of her wanderlust¡ªalready growing with each passing day¡ªto the point of insufferability.
¡°I¡¯ve made up my mind,¡± Mizuko declared, pushing herself out of her seat.
The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
¡°Madam?¡± Vura said from behind her, making Mizuko startle. She hadn¡¯t noticed the maid rejoining her.
Mizuko took a moment to steady her composure before issuing her declaration. ¡°I have decided to go on a journey.¡±
¡°You want to walk to town? I shall fetch your walking shoes!¡±
¡°No, Vura, not a walk to town. A true journey.¡±
¡°A journey... to Esmaeyae?¡± Vura asked hesitantly, as if worried about what the answer might be.
¡°A journey out. Away. To elsewhere, wherever that may be. I want to see the world, Vura. Have you never wished to see what lies beyond these rolling hills?¡±
¡°B-but it¡¯s dangerous out there, Madam! Beasts and barbarians and any other number of terrible things!¡±
¡°Come now, it cannot be that bad. I cannot live in this gilded cage forever. It is well past time that I stepped outside, and I mean truly stepped outside.¡±
Perhaps that was the answer Vura feared, as it left her near tears and trembling like a leaf in the wind. ¡°B-b-b-b-b-but Madam! What if something were to happen to you?! I cannot even bear the thought of-¡±
¡°Hush, I will be perfectly fine,¡± she assured the maid. ¡°After all, you will be coming with me, won¡¯t you?¡±
¡°Wha?¡± the elf gasped. The words seemed to transform the girl. She stood taller, her shoulders set with purpose. ¡°O-of course! I will be by your side as long as you will have me, Madam!¡±
¡°Then that settles that, doesn¡¯t it?¡± Mizuko chuckled, grabbing the maid¡¯s arm and leading her back into the manor. ¡°Come, we have much to prepare.¡±
¡°Madam Yamanaka, I beg you to reconsider!¡± the head maid pleaded early the next morning as she blocked the doorway out of the manor with her body. The other servants looked on from all around the pair, their gazes filled with anxious unease.
Mizuko shifted her pack, getting it into a more comfortable and balanced position. ¡°I have had more than enough time sitting in this house for months on end to consider and reconsider and reconsider again. It is well past time,¡± she declared, glancing around to all the servants looking on. ¡°Do not worry. I have little doubt that we will see each other again in the future. Until then, I thank you all for your hospitality these past seasons. Now, step aside, Yrenil.¡±
The head maid let out a defeated sigh and moved out of the doorway. Mizuko nodded to her as she stepped out into the morning sunshine, Vura right behind her.
The two had spent the previous evening preparing for their journey as best they could without the others finding out, a task easier said than done. Doing anything in a place like this without the servants knowing was a daunting task, and to make matters worse, much of what she wanted¡ªlike bedrolls or sleeping bags¡ªcould not be found at the manor. Still, they¡¯d managed to fill two packs with some food, clothes, some small pots for cooking, cushions, and some other items. Good enough, she thought, for a start. They could purchase more of what they needed at a town later on using the money Mizuko had saved from the stipend Pyria gave her.
It didn¡¯t take more than a minute of walking for their exit to be noticed by the soldiers outside guarding that part of the estate. They looked at her and Vura with confusion for a moment before the color drained from their faces. One man, the leader of the seven-elf squad, turned as white as a sheet.
¡°Madam! Please wait!¡± the leader called out as he ran over to her, the others a few steps behind. Though Mizuko knew all of the servants well, the same could not be said of any of the soldiers there. Unlike the servants, their duties kept them away from the manor itself unless something bad were to happen, so she¡¯d rarely even spoken with any of the many guards.
Mizuko ignored his plea and kept walking. The soldier fell into stride next to her. ¡°Madam, what are you doing?¡±
¡°I¡¯m going for a walk, that¡¯s all,¡± she replied. Though she would never admit it, Mizuko felt a perverse pleasure at the sight of the panic in the man¡¯s eyes. All the soldiers realized what was going down, but none of them knew what to do about it. Their princess would make them all pay dearly if one of them were to harm her, and none of them could stop Mizuko anyway if she were to actually try.
¡°Madam, there are all manners of danger out there! Please, stay inside, where we can keep you safe!¡±
¡°The greatest danger I can see is dying of dreariness from staring at the same waving grass for another season. As you can see, we are taking immediate action to avoid that danger. But do not worry, we will be careful.¡±
The man kept pace in silence for a few moments, his eyes darting about as he furiously thought. ¡°At the very least, I ask that you let us accompany you. If you would just wait for a little while so that we can return to our homes and grab what we would need, we can at least make sure no harm comes to you.¡±
¡°No, we will continue on,¡± she insisted, not stopping for even a moment. She knew what the man was playing at. He wanted to delay them as much as possible while he reported their actions to the princess. She wasn¡¯t going to stop him from doing that, but she didn¡¯t feel like making his life easy. ¡°I¡¯m sure robust youngsters like yourselves will be able to catch up in no time."
The soldier bit his lip, his mind pouring over various possible scenarios to determine his best course of action. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. ¡°Mortiu, Wenstan, you stay with them. The rest of us will meet up with you later.¡±
With that, all but two of the soldiers took off, running southeast towards the nearby town as fast as their legs could take them. Mizuko let out a snort of amusement and kept walking, even increasing her pace a bit.
As she crossed hill after hill, Mizuko felt truly wonderful for the first time in a long time. The air buzzed with an infectious energy, one that drove her forward. She delighted in the sounds of the wildlife and the swish of the grass in the breeze. She luxuriated in the warmth of the morning rays on her cheeks. She even found herself amused by the way the wind tugged on her straw hat¡ªit had been a smart move to tie a string to it and fasten it around her head. But mostly, she just reveled in the feeling of exploration, of finding something new and different, even if that thing was just another grassy hill.
It was a shame the others couldn¡¯t seem to enjoy it as she was.
¡°Madam Mizuko, please let me carry your pack for you,¡± Vura implored for the third time.
¡°Vura, enough. Let this old woman carry her pack in peace.¡±
Vura took on the dejected demeanor of a scolded puppy. ¡°I-I-I merely wish to lighten your burden.¡±
¡°Bah! What for? I know I look like I¡¯m nothing but wrinkles, but there¡¯s life in these old bones yet! None of you seem to understand that sometimes a burden is a special joy of its own.¡±
¡°I-I don¡¯t understand.¡±
¡°Of course you don¡¯t. You haven¡¯t been through what I¡¯ve been through. Listen, child. Back before I came here, I was so weak I could barely move. I had not walked on my own two feet, not even with assistance, for fifteen years. By the final few years, I could barely even move my arms or speak.
¡°You see, my dear, there is a joy found in movement, one that you don¡¯t realize is there until you are no longer capable of it. Now that I can finally move again, I don¡¯t want to spend the rest of this life just sitting and lying about like a lump. Why do you think I kept asking to help with the chores around the manor, even when you all kept saying no?¡±
¡°Ah... I-I never realized-¡±
¡°None of you did. It¡¯s my fault, not yours. I should have been more insistent, should have explained things properly. But it was a confusing time and I did not want to impose. Perhaps you should take heart that it took me this long to get to this point. You all took such good care of me that I didn¡¯t want to leave.¡±
Vura went from morose to flustered in the blink of an eye. Mizuko couldn¡¯t help but find the way the girl blushed to be incredibly cute. Vura really was a puppy in elf form, wasn¡¯t she?
¡°Let me partake in this joy a little longer,¡± Mizuko continued. ¡°I¡¯ll let you know if this becomes a burden too great, I assure you.¡±
¡°Of course!¡± Vura chirped quick-stepping up to walk right beside her. For the first time since they¡¯d left that morning, Mizuko saw her truly smile.
The other soldiers caught up to them before lunch. Together, they settled down in a small grove of trees and started a small fire for cooking. After a quick meal, they continued onward.
Mizuko made it a point to learn the names of the other soldiers. Now that they were here, she didn¡¯t want to be rude. Other than Mortiu and Wenstan, the two who had accompanied them this whole time, the others were Tesrin, Ren, Etorio, Looletta, and the leader Krishpar. Mizuko found the squad to be, collectively, annoyingly on edge. They constantly scanned their surroundings for danger, as if a gang of bandits was going to pop out of the grass in the middle of the Esmae clan¡¯s controlled and secure lands. Even Vura constantly glanced about.
¡°What are you all so uptight for? Lighten up a bit,¡± Mizuko finally said, having had enough of it all. ¡°We have seven highly trained fighters, not to mention myself. If anybody attacks, they won¡¯t stand a chance.¡±
¡°We aren¡¯t worried about people here,¡± Vura told her. ¡°It¡¯s the animals that I¡¯m afraid of.¡±
¡°The animals?¡±
¡°Marnit gnat swarms and yellow-crested hunting lizards, mostly,¡± Krishpar chimed in. ¡°Especially the lizards. The locals call them ¡®widow-makers¡¯ for a reason. They¡¯re rare, but all it would take is one bite for their poison to take down most anybody.¡±
¡°Madam Mizuko, do your powers work on insects?¡± Vura inquired. ¡°What about lizards?¡±
¡°I... I have no idea. I¡¯ve never given it any thought.¡±
¡°Well, just stay behind me then if one shows itself,¡± Vura said with conviction. ¡°That way I would take the bite instead of you.¡±
¡°Nonsense!¡± Mizuko snapped, coming to a halt. ¡°Vura, I¡¯m tired of this. The same goes for all of you. I know your task is to protect me, but sacrificing yourself is far too much. I can¡¯t accept that!¡±
¡°But-¡±
Mizuko reached out and cupped the girl¡¯s cheeks in her gnarled hands. ¡°Listen to me, child. I have already lived a full life. Everything from the moment I came here has been a gift I have been happy to receive, but make no mistake: when my time comes, I will not mourn a life incomplete. You, however, have so much of your life left to live and grow. I have no desire to die just yet, but I cannot have you throw your life away for my sake. Do you understand?¡±
¡°...yes, Madam,¡± came the weak reply.
¡°Promise me. Promise me you¡¯ll put worth in your own existence over mine.¡±
¡°...I promise.¡±
The words were so quiet that Mizuko, who was right in front of her, could barely hear them. Still, it was good enough for now.
¡°Wonderful. Then, let us continue¡ªcarefully.¡±
And so they did, traversing the land. Mizuko continued to enjoy the experience and the small taste of freedom it provided. There was just one question hanging over the whole thing. When would Pyria show herself?
The answer came in the form of two hundred soldiers and two large, ornate palanquins bearing the crest of the Esmae clan waiting for them as the setting sun turned the sky turned orange. Upon the arrival of Mizuko¡¯s comparatively small group, the lithe, elegant figure of Pyria emerged from the first palanquin, a sour look upon her face.
¡°Mizuko.¡±
¡°Pyria.¡±
¡°Please come inside, so that we may talk privately,¡± the clan leader requested, indicating the open palanquin beside her.
¡°The palanquin stays on the ground.¡±
¡°Of course. I am no thug here to kidnap.¡±
Pyria stepped into the vehicle first. Mizuko grabbed Vura¡¯s arm and followed, pulling the very reluctant girl behind her as she climbed aboard the palanquin and took a seat. The princess frowned at the sight of the other elf seated beside Mizuko.
¡°I said privately. That means just you and me, not this...¡± She gave Vura a once-over as if she didn¡¯t recognize the maid. ¡°...servant.¡±
Mizuko became momentarily confused. Pyria had interacted with Vura on multiple occasions. She knew the maid¡¯s name and her tragic story. Why didn¡¯t she recognize her now? Perhaps Vura¡¯s radical change in hairstyle, combined with the low light, simply made her look like an entirely new person. It really was a significant difference, and if somebody hadn¡¯t seen her in a while it would surely be confusing.
Still, none of that addressed the actual issue.
¡°Vura stays or we both go.¡±
¡°Vura...¡± Pyria stared at the other elf for a moment before her eyes went wide and she rubbed her face, exhausted. ¡°Yes, my apologies. I have not had the opportunity to sleep much lately.¡±
¡°I-it¡¯s alright, P-P-Princess,¡± Vura meekly squeaked.
Without even acknowledging Vura, Pyria returned to glowering at Mizuko, the maid¡¯s very existence seeming to have disappeared from her mind.
¡°You could have come to me instead of acting this way.¡±
¡°You are making far too much out of a simple bit of traveling. I merely wanted to enjoy the sights and sounds of this beautiful countryside.¡±
¡°So it¡¯s just a coincidence, then, that you were heading northeast, straight towards the Eterian border? Please, Mizuko, show me a little respect. I already have far too much on my plate right now without you making it all worse. If you had just reached out, we wouldn¡¯t have to go through all this.¡±
¡°And our conversation would have gone exactly as this one is about to¡ªand just how the last one went, and the one before that. ¡®Too dangerous¡¯, ¡®too chaotic¡¯, ¡®too unpredictable¡¯, ¡®too likely to start a civil war¡¯.¡±
¡°All good and true arguments.¡±
¡°And all things too large for even somebody with your influence to fix, meaning they stay true forever.¡±
¡°I¡¯m hurt that you would think that. You know that we all treasure you, the elder who saved our entire clan and perhaps the entire nation. You¡¯re a hero to the entire clan and we just want to protect you.¡±
¡°I am honored that you all think of me that way, Pyria, but the time has come to decide. Am I your friend, or am I a prisoner locked away in a cage without bars?¡±
The princess frowned in thought for a while, and Mizuko and Vura gave her the silence that she needed. Finally, after a tense wait, her face set as she came to a decision.
¡°Give me some time. My best troops are currently engaged in joint training exercises in Kechou territory. It will be a little while¡ªdays at least¡ªbefore they can return, whereupon they can join you for your protection. Besides, it will take me time to convince the other clans to agree to anything. If they don¡¯t, they absolutely will interpret your arrival as an invasion. Just give me time, and you¡¯ll be able to see all the wonders of Drayhadal.¡±
Now it was Mizuko¡¯s turn to frown. ¡°I don¡¯t want to see just Drayhadal, I want to see the world. As much of it as I can.¡±
¡°Feh, the rest of the world isn¡¯t worth seeing,¡± came the dismissive reply. ¡°The best lands in all of Scyria are here; that¡¯s why we claimed them for ourselves. What would you even go see, the Deadlands? I hear they¡¯re called that for good reason¡ªnothing but a bunch of drab rocks stretching out into the horizon. What fun is that?
¡°There¡¯s nothing for you to find out there but chaos and misery, Mizuko. The Ubrans left Eterium in shambles, Gustil can¡¯t even be called a real country anymore, Stragma is filled with savages who would kill you on sight if the wildlife doesn¡¯t eat you first, Otharia is run by a brutal dictator, and Kutrad is nothing but trees and slaves. Drayhadal has more to see than all the rest of them combined! You could tour Drayhadal for years and still not experience the entirety of its wonders. You can consider your next step once you¡¯ve seen everything we have to offer. Perhaps the barbarians will have recovered enough to be presentable by then.¡±
¡°How long before everything would be ready?¡±
Pyria leaned back and sighed. ¡°Depends on the other clans, honestly. They¡¯re a nightmare to work with, you know. Once they realize what I¡¯ll have to negotiate, they¡¯re going to start demanding concessions from me for all of this and they¡¯ll keep pushing until they get everything they can. Sometimes, I wonder how I ever managed to deal with them.¡±
¡°How long?¡±
¡°...half a season, most likely.¡±
Half a season¡ªabout a month and a half. Half a season was not exactly an eternity in the grand scheme of things, but to Mizuko, it felt like forever. Still... if Pyria followed through with her promise, it was not that long a time to wait. Mizuko hesitantly decided to acquiesce to the princess¡¯s request for the time being. Pyria had always followed through before. Should that not be worth a little trust?
¡°Alright. You¡¯ve done enough for me that I will choose to trust in you. I owe you that much.¡±
¡°That is good to hear. I will have this palanquin return you to your home now if that is alright with you,¡± Pyria replied, opening the door and stepping out.
It wasn¡¯t alright with Mizuko. She wanted to savor the outdoors more, hear the chirps of the insects at night, and sleep beside a fire underneath the stars. But she couldn¡¯t, not with everybody else with her. Not until she finally solved her dream issues. For the moment, the palanquin remained the best way back, as regrettable as it was.
¡°There is still much I must attend to today,¡± the princess and de facto ruler of Esmae lands continued with a curt nod. ¡°Farewell.¡±
The door shut and the palanquin trembled as it rose into the air on the shoulders of eight strong, specially trained Feelers. Within a moment, they were on their way back to the manor, their journey ending as unceremoniously as it had begun.
Mizuko had much to ponder on the way back. She couldn¡¯t help but notice how much Pyria did not want her to leave Drayhadal. Was it that she worried for Mizuko¡¯s safety? Or was it about maintaining control over Mizuko¡¯s life? How much of her concern was a legitimate issue of logistics, and how much was just stalling for time? Mizuko didn¡¯t have the answers to these questions, and it troubled her that she had to ask them in the first place.
Vura, on the other hand, just spent her time slumped forward, staring despondently at the floor.
¡°What¡¯s wrong, dear?¡± she asked the maid.
¡°Our trip ended so quickly. We didn¡¯t even manage a day,¡± Vura bemoaned. ¡°I had hoped to see the wonders of the world alongside you, Madam, I really had.¡±
¡°Vura, you didn¡¯t expect her to just let me go without a word, did you?¡±
¡°No, but... you did? What was the point of this, if you knew she would stop us?¡±
¡°To send her a message.¡±
¡°Send her a message? Madam, you know we have a messenger. You¡¯ve used him many times.¡±
Mizuko chuckled. ¡°That sort of message just wouldn¡¯t do this time. She has already been largely ignoring my missives these days, but more importantly, a letter just doesn¡¯t carry the appropriate weight. I had to take action to show her just how serious I am about this. Now, she cannot say she doesn¡¯t know the level of my commitment. One way or another, something must give.¡±
¡°So this was your plan all along?¡±
¡°In a sense, yes. The walk itself was well worth it on its own, though, wouldn¡¯t you say?¡±
Mizuko leaned back in satisfaction. Her plan had been a smashing success. Now it was up to Pyria to make the next move. Mizuko would give her a little time, but not too long. She wouldn¡¯t wait forever.
Chapter 115
Arlette gripped the railing of the transport as it lurched wildly around a bend in the road. The robot¡¯s long legs and high center of gravity meant it often swayed when rounding bends, but right now she was pushing the machine far beyond normal speeds. She would have pushed the ¡°strider¡±¡ªas her eccentric employer called it for some reason; sure, this one had much longer legs, but all his robots strode¡ªeven faster if she could, but to do so would have left her escort of smaller battle-ready skitters behind. They were already moving as fast as they could, their many shorter legs churning up the dirt beneath.
A trader ahead swerved off the road in a panic, a fearful look in his eyes as Arlette and her hoard charged forward. He wrestled desperately with the reins as Arlette¡¯s metallic herd thundered past and continued on its way, the horde¡¯s uncanny presence spooking the cart¡¯s garoph into a wild frenzy. Normally, Arlette would have felt bad about this, but then again, normally she wouldn¡¯t have been speeding down a dirt road with a small army of murder machines right behind her. This time, however, she was, because this time, she finally had a lead.
Cellvas was a municipality straddling the line between town and city. Maybe the largest metropolis outside of the five major cities of Otharia, it sat in a prime location within the triangle formed between Wroetin, Nont, and Eflok¡ªclose enough to all three that it was easier and safer to stop there when traveling between them. It would add a few extra days to the trip, but in a way, it was like traveling to one and a half cities. You could always buy and sell wares in Cellvas, too. In fact, its location was such that some of the country¡¯s more prosperous businesses had built warehouses there to store goods. Then those goods could easily travel to any of the three cities with relative ease.
At least, that was how it worked and how it had been for centuries, but times were changing fast. In the near future...
The vast, vast majority of Otharians still refused to ride Lord Ferros¡¯s tracked wagon transportation system for a whole host of reasons, none of which Arlette found very credible or justified. Lacking the prejudices of the natives, she used it whenever she needed to travel directly from Wroetin to another major city for her work. The wagons¡ªor ¡°trains¡± as Blake named them¡ªtraveled at an absolutely impossible velocity, one that made the already absurd speed of a ¡°strider¡± look like a garoph trudging through mud. What¡¯s more, they were far more comfortable than a wagon or the metal beast upon which she sat. Oh, and they were free to use. If one wished to travel from city to city, the ¡°train system¡± was, hands down, the cheapest, fastest, and most comfortable method of transport, one which cut a ten-day journey down to a handful of hours.
It would take time, she knew, before the system would be in widespread use¡ªyears, maybe even decades. Garoph-headed stubbornness was as integral to an Otharian¡¯s national character as duty was to Gustilian society¡ªback when Gustil had still existed, at least. Still, she believed, the wondrous utility of her employer¡¯s creation would eventually win out, and when it did, it would spell the death of this place and other towns like it.
None of the tracks in the system went anywhere near Cellvas. Running directly from city to city, they didn¡¯t concern themselves with the towns and villages that had served for centuries as waypoints along the way, places to stop and rest and maybe enjoy a meal or stock up on supplies. The more people who used the ¡°trains¡±, the fewer who would be on the road. Soon, these towns and villages would begin to wither as the flow of commerce dwindled to a trickle.
Hardest hit would be places like Cellvas. Once merchants realized they could transport goods from market to market in a few hours instead of days just by moving their storage to a major city, they¡¯d have no more use for a place like this. Cellvas was a town living on borrowed time. The poison had already entered the system, rotting away at the inside. The only question was how long it would take for the symptoms to appear. As she neared the town wall, the ¡°strider¡± finally and mercifully slowing to a more manageable speed, she wondered just how many people here realized any of what was to come.
Not that any of this mattered to Arlette in that moment. Her musings were only that, the idle thoughts of a woman trying to ease her anxiety by thinking about anything else other than the reason she had, suddenly and without warning, grabbed several subordinates and a dozen skitters and taken them on a frantic multi-hour journey. Now that they had finally arrived, however, she had no choice but to circle back to that reason.
They¡¯d had a breakthrough with tracking the ink used to blind Blake¡¯s robots during the attack that had happened during her and Tehlmar¡¯s... ¡°date¡±¡ªeven now she hesitated to call it that, but to her chagrin, no other term fit better. But that was getting off-topic; what mattered was that they¡¯d had a breakthrough, leading them to this single warehouse owned by a nebulous business organization known as the ¡°Pale Moons Mercantile Company¡±.
The Pale Moons Mercantile Company was a very minor entity, even just relative to the larger trader organizations in Otharia. Normally, Arlette would have had no real reason to even notice such small fry, but as she¡¯d dug deeper and deeper into her ink investigation, the PMMC had popped up with abnormal frequency. For such a small company, the PMMC had been buying an awful lot of ink.
Once she and her people had turned their focus to the small organization, more and more suspicious details kept popping up. The company was new, having not even existed a year ago. Nobody seemed to have ever met the owners; any purchases were done through intermediaries and all goods were usually picked up by unmarked wagons directly from the seller. Nor could anybody say where the money they used to purchase things came from. Arlette¡¯s team had labored for days, trying to track down any customers who¡¯d purchased from the PMMC, but if they even sold anything at all, they did it through a different name. They were a ghost of a company. Just tracking down anything at all about them had proved to be a challenge. Until today, they hadn¡¯t even known if the PMMC had owned any property for which to store the materials they purchased.
That morning, Arlette¡¯s team had found something different, something worth looking into without delay. Through their tireless sleuthing, they¡¯d acquired another record of purchase for a large quantity of ink made by the Pale Moon Mercantile Company. They¡¯d already gotten their hands on plenty of these records from around the nation, but this one was different. This one hadn¡¯t been picked up from the seller. No, this one had a delivery address, one that pointed to a supposedly unowned warehouse here in Cellvas.
¡°Where is the warehouse located? Do you remember?¡± she asked Fidsel Aigars, one of the three others accompanying her on this impromptu journey, as they approached Cellvas¡¯s western gate. The small, nervous office worker was the odd man out, a pale ball of anxiety who had not weathered the harrowing trip well. An administrative assistant of sorts, the bookworm usually spent his workdays combing through and compiling reports from field agents, as well as coordinating with the Minister of Justice¡¯s people. Unfortunately for him, he had also been the only native of Cellvas within her reach this morning, and as such, had been conscripted to be the local guide.
¡°Uh... I think it¡¯s in that direction, closer to the north end,¡± he told her, pointing at an industrialized section off to their left. ¡°I think I¡¯ll be able to narrow it down if we get closer. It¡¯s been a few years.¡±
¡°Alright,¡± she said, taking the transport¡¯s controls into her hands and steering the ¡®strider¡¯ around the wall and towards the north gate. ¡°You two know the plan?¡±
¡°Yes, Minister, you¡¯ve gone over it with us three times since we left Wroetin,¡± Gvido Gailis responded. His tone was harsh, but Arlette didn¡¯t mind much. Gvido was maybe the bluntest, least respectful Otharian she knew outside of the Minister of Agriculture, but she liked that he always said what he meant and didn¡¯t hold anything back. It also helped that he was the best stone Observer she had. His job was simple in concept but harder in execution: to find any and all traps and hidden tunnels, passageways, or chambers lurking within the solid stone so often used in Scyrian construction. Though she had yet to see the warehouse for herself, she and the others had full confidence in assuming the building would be stone. Everything built by people of wealth was, for a variety of reasons.
¡°Gvido, show some respect to the Minister...¡± chided Ramune Berzina, the last of the people riding the transport. Unlike the Observer, Ramune insisted on at least some level of decorum at all times. With their clashing attitudes, the pair didn¡¯t exactly get along too well, but their abilities paired too well for Arlette to only take one of them. Ramune was a rare type of Feeler sometimes referred to as a ¡®sensory Feeler¡¯, somebody who, instead of training to increase their strength or speed or stamina, chose to enhance their senses.
Ramune was the first of these specialized Feelers that Arlette had met in a long time¡ªperhaps five years. She could see leagues into the distance or the finest details on a single hair, hear the slightest of sounds, detect even the slightest of lingering scents, and more. The woman had been a hunter in the past, using her superhuman senses to find and stalk the prey she needed to hunt to feed herself and her family. Now, Arlette used her to gather clues. If anybody in Otharia could find traces of evidence from where they were going, it would be her.
Everything started wonderfully. The guards at the northern gate had the good sense to promptly get out of her way when they saw Arlette and her robotic swarm coming, and Arlette guided the transport through the gate and into the city. Despite Fidsel having lived elsewhere for a while, he was able to successfully guide them to their general destination without much trouble and they¡¯d narrowed it down from there swiftly. They came to a halt outside a small warehouse surrounded by other similar but larger warehouses. The building looked fairly inconspicuous, with bland tan walls, no visible windows, and a single double-door entrance in the front. No signs marked the place as anything whatsoever. In a way, its featureless nature made it a wonderful match for the organization that likely owned it.
Arlette had tried a stealthy approach in earlier raids, using Gvido to quietly open a hidden entrance in order to catch the perpetrators unawares. That tactic took a long time, however, and had never worked. They would step through their newly created opening, only to find their quarry long gone.
This time, she had decided to take a swifter approach, stealth be damned. Quickly, Arlette ordered most of her skitter forces to rush forward and surround the premises. She could not help but start to grin in triumph. Nothing inside this place was getting away now. She sent out another order and another skitter stepped up to the front doors, took a few steps back, and then launched itself forward with as much power as its motors could generate. With a bang, the weighty chunk of metal rammed into the center of the stone doors. A loud ¡°CRACK!¡± echoed through the neighborhood and the door collapsed inward.
Arlette made a note to thank Lord Ferros for the new battering ram command he¡¯d added at her request. It seemed to work wonderfully, meaning now she had a way to break down doors without putting herself or her subordinates in danger.
¡°Let¡¯s go,¡± she proclaimed as the transport¡¯s cabin lowered down closer to the ground, a thin ramp extruding from the side and the door above it opening automatically.
Arlette practically ran down the ramp, hustling towards the door and sliding up to the side of the door frame before peeking inside. It took her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, but when it did, she found...
¡°Huh?¡± she muttered.
¡°Seriously?¡± Gvido scoffed, just walking directly inside.
¡°It¡¯s completely empty,¡± Ramune observed, following the Observer inside.
Arlette could only stare at the vacant interior, dumbfounded. The other times, though there had been no terrorists to catch, they had at least found the standard items one would expect to find in a warehouse or shop: crates, shelves, goods, etc--some sign that somebody, at some point, had used the place. The inside of this building, however, was literally empty. The entire structure was one single room composed of flat stone walls and a smooth, barren stone floor. Not a single ware occupied the warehouse.
Arlette felt her mind go blank as she entered the room, coming to a halt again just a few steps past the doorway. Of all the possibilities she¡¯d had in mind, this had not been one of them. She didn¡¯t know what to do, or even what to think.
What did this mean? Had she been following a false lead the whole time? It couldn¡¯t be, could it? So many of the pieces had finally fit together! But then how could she explain this? Was she still just blindly groping in the dark? Or was something even more sinister going on? Had somebody tipped off her quarry that she was coming for them? Was there a traitor in her midst?
Arlette shook her head to clear it of the bad thoughts. No, this wasn¡¯t like what had happened with Basilli. The Ivory Tears had been an eclectic band of misfits who¡¯d come together for more through circumstance than planning. Her team now was different; she¡¯d assembled it deliberately and carefully with security being a major focus. The loyalties of her subordinates were without question. They might not be fully loyal to an Elseling like her, but they all cared deeply about the safety of their homeland and multiple rounds of vetting had verified this many times over. Many of them had friends or family who had been affected by a Resistance attack.
But then, why? Why was the Resistance so hard to pin down? Why couldn¡¯t she even track down a stupid black-market company like the Pale Moon Mercantile Company? Were the doubts that she constantly had to shove into the back of her mind actually correct? Was she not cut out for this kind of thing?
¡°We¡¯re done, Minister,¡± Gvido announced as he returned to the door, Ramune right behind him.
Arlette started, her mind returning to the moment. How much time had passed while she¡¯d been struggling deep within her thoughts?
¡°Any luck?¡± she asked, daring to hope against hope, even though the man¡¯s dour face gave her all the answers she didn¡¯t want.
¡°Solid all the way down, as far as I can tell,¡± he replied. ¡°Nothing in the walls, either.¡±
¡°And you?¡± she asked Ramune.
The former scout shook her head. ¡°Nothing but dust, Minister.¡±
¡°So we were still too slow,¡± Arlette sighed.
¡°No, I doubt being a bit faster would have changed anything. Indoors in a place like this, with no real ventilation, I should be able to smell the lingering scent of a person from maybe up to twelve days ago, but I don¡¯t smell anybody. Judging by the dust accumulation, I¡¯d say this place has been empty for days... probably tens of days.¡±
The woman¡¯s statement stifled any more thoughts of double agents, at least, but it still didn¡¯t make Arlette feel any better. Hours spent rushing over here, all to accomplish nothing but making herself look like a fool.
¡°So, you¡¯re saying there¡¯s nothing here. Nothing we can work with, at least.¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Ramune told her gravely. ¡°This place is completely clean.¡±
¡°This is a bust,¡± Gvido added in. ¡°Again.¡±
¡°Fuck,¡± Arlette spat out. She lashed out in frustration and anger at a nearby wall, driving her left fist into its solid stone side. Something crunched, and it wasn¡¯t the stone. ¡°FUCK!¡±
Thunk.
"Stupid warehouse."
Thunk.
"Stupid shitty company."
Thunk.
"Stupid, stupid, STUPID!"
Thwack!
The fourth of four knives pierced into the wooden target hung upon her living room wall, its point sinking almost the width of two fingers deep into the durable panel. Arlette growled out a curse as she marched across the room to the target. Of course she would lose her cool on the real one.
Four identical-looking throwing knives were embedded in the target; only one of them was real¡ªthe last one, the one she¡¯d thrown with all of her anger and self-hatred, the one that would be a bitch to pull out with only one good hand. Still, as Peko instructed, she did her utmost to pretend there was no difference between the four except that the last one had been thrown harder. He was very insistent about that part.
Peko¡¯s initial ¡°training regimen¡±, the imaginary stone, had yielded no tangible progress¡ªat least as far as Arlette could tell; if her friend had some secret purpose behind the exercise, he still refused to divulge it. Still, she suspected that she¡¯d failed to achieve whatever that purpose was, as he¡¯d changed her training to its current form¡ªstill without explaining anything. It drove Arlette to the edge of madness, but she continued to play along. Peko had been with her for as long as she could remember, and his advice had saved her life multiple times. Still, her patience was beginning to fray.
One by one, she pried the ¡°knives¡± from the board, making sure to treat them like real, ordinary throwing knives. She made sure not to squeeze her fingers too close together, made sure to move her arm as she would have had to if she had to actually yank out a blade stuck in wood, and made sure to create the squeak of the wood as the metal was pried loose. She even made sure to maintain the illusion of the damage to the target as best she could.
To some degree, it was not difficult; she had two decades of practice with maintaining the myriad tiny details of an illusory disguise, all the way down to the individual folds of her false outfit. She had nearly that many years of experience with her throwing knives, a common design found all over the continent, and knew them like the backs of her hands. And yet, no matter how many times she went through the motions, Peko was never satisfied. Were her illusions not realistic enough? Was there something she was missing? All her friend would say was that he couldn¡¯t tell her without ruining it. Somehow, that made it all the more annoying.
¡°Look, today might not have gone how you wanted-¡± Peko began as he lounged on her bed.
¡°Shut it.¡±
Proving once again the wiser of them, Peko did as he was told. He just watched as she took one knife at a time in her right hand and chucked them across the room into the target.
Fake.
Real.
Fake.
Fake.
Again.
Fake.
Fake.
Real.
Fake.
Again.
Real.
Fake.
Fake.
Fake.
¡°I¡¯m done,¡± she finally declared, pulling the only real knife from the target and dismissing the rest. The board seemed to heal suddenly as most of the damage it had sustained throughout the exercise was revealed to be illusory all along. She rounded on Peko, her irritation threatening to boil over. ¡°How many more times do I have to do this shit?¡±
¡°Until-¡±
¡°Peko, I swear to the stars above, if you¡¯re about to say something like ¡®until you figure it out¡¯... I don¡¯t care if you¡¯re imaginary¡ªthe thing I¡¯ll ¡®figure out¡¯ will be a way to bash your head in. Whatever this is, it isn¡¯t working. If you can¡¯t just tell me, then figure out another way, because I¡¯m not spending the next twenty years throwing knives into a fucking board every night!¡±
Still fuming, Arlette marched into her bathroom and drew a hot bath. She felt a little bad for snapping at her imaginary companion; she was frustrated with his crap, but in reality, she was far more frustrated with herself. Perhaps a long soak would wash off the stink of failure, but she doubted it.
The next morning found Arlette in just as bad a mood as before. In fact, her temper might have been even worse for one simple fact: Tehlmar wouldn¡¯t get out of her office, and she really wasn¡¯t in the mood to deal with him.
¡°What happened to your hand?¡± the elf wondered, gazing with concern at the bandage-wrapped extremity.
¡°I don¡¯t want to talk about it,¡± Arlette grumbled.
¡°Did somebody attack you?¡±
¡°No! I said I don¡¯t want to talk about it!¡± she growled. ¡°Why are you even here?! I have work to do! Don¡¯t you have work to do?!¡±
The former Drayhadan snorted. ¡°Your boss doesn¡¯t trust me enough to give me real work. The stuff he told me to do I already finished two days ago.¡±
¡°And you didn¡¯t tell him?¡±
¡°Why, so he can assign me more pointless busywork? It¡¯s like I always say, Letty: the number one rule of a mercenary is expectation management. Never do a better job than you¡¯re being paid for, or when it¡¯s time for your next contract, they¡¯ll just expect that extra work at the same price.¡±
¡°Well, go be delinquent somewhere else,¡± Arlette told him in as dismissive a tone as she could manage. She scooped up a loose pile of reports and tapped their bottom edges against her desk, condensing them into a single, neat pile. ¡°I have to get back to work.¡±
¡°But do you, though? Do you really?¡±
¡°Of course I do!¡± Arlette snapped. ¡°We¡¯re finally close to a real breakthrough!¡±
¡°Letty...¡± he sighed, placing his palms on the desk and leaning across it to better look her in the eyes. ¡°You¡¯ve been ¡®close to a real breakthrough¡¯ for half a season. You¡¯ve been working your life away at this desk all day, every day, without a single day off for at least the last twenty days¡ªeither that or doing that training or whatever that you won¡¯t let me see. I know you know as much as any leader what overwork does to people. You¡¯re just as liable to make mistakes and miss important details in your condition as you are to accomplish anything worthwhile. You¡¯re not going to make any progress as you are now. You need a break.¡±
¡°Nobody else has said-¡±
¡°Nobody else has said anything because they either don¡¯t want to get on your bad side, or they¡¯re too skittish because you¡¯re their boss. That¡¯s why it falls to me to say what needs to be said. Letty, you look terrible. You¡¯re clearly worn down and it¡¯s making me worry. So, I¡¯m going to ask you again. Do you really need to work today?¡±
¡°I...¡±
Arlette glanced down at the thick pile of paperwork in front of her. In truth, she¡¯d already read through all the new reports today, though she hadn¡¯t yet done her customary reread, where she¡¯d read the reports of the last few days with all the new knowledge in her mind to look for patterns and threads to follow.
If she were to be honest with herself, she was not actually on the cusp of a breakthrough. That had been yesterday, and it had turned out to be a colossal embarrassment for her. Was anything she was doing today going to really accomplish anything, or was she just pushing herself fruitlessly to try to make up for yesterday¡¯s failure?
There were no substantive leads in the new reports. Deep down, she knew that rereading them wasn¡¯t going to uncover anything, at least not today. And as much as she didn¡¯t want to admit it, Tehlmar was right about the effect the grind was having on her. Her gaze went, unbidden, towards her bandaged hand. Try as she might, she still couldn¡¯t find a justification for her childish tantrum. She¡¯s just snapped¡ªand then snapped bones in her hand. Would she have done the same without having worked herself to the bone for days on end?
Maybe.
But maybe not.
¡°I¡¯ll tell Lord Ferros I¡¯m taking the rest of the day off,¡± she conceded.
¡°Tomorrow as well,¡± Tehlmar prodded.
Arlette sighed. ¡°Fine, tomorrow as well.¡±
¡°Excellent!¡± He clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms vigorously with excitement. ¡°I¡¯ll go get some booze and meet you by the west fortress gate. Bring one of those creepy transport things.¡±
¡°What, have you been planning this from the start?¡±
¡°Oh, of course! What sort of committed partner would I be if I wasn¡¯t always planning another date, hm?¡±
¡°Yes, because our last one went so well,¡± she snorted. ¡°Sofie is still mad at you over what happened last time, you know. She blames you for that other elf¡¯s death.¡±
¡°Yes, that is exactly why she hates me.¡±
¡°Now, get out of here before I change my mind. I¡¯ll meet you in a bit.¡±
Arlette locked up her office and made her way from her department to the floor¡¯s main hallway. From there, she stepped into an open elevator and headed up two floors.
This was the floor that Blake had moved both his living and working quarters to after Pari had detonated within them the nastiest-smelling stinkcandle Arlette had ever had the displeasure of experiencing¡ªshe¡¯d barely caught a whiff and immediately lost her lunch onto the metal floor beneath her feet. Though her employer had flushed out the air and replaced the metal making up the rooms with fresh metal untainted by the beastgirl¡¯s actions¡ªjust as Arlette would have done, had she the ability¡ªhe¡¯d then relocated all of his quarters anyway, claiming, even after all his efforts, that he could still smell it. Arlette couldn¡¯t detect even a whiff of that putrid odor anymore and believed that whatever Blake was sensing resided entirely within his head, but she had the wisdom to keep that to herself.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Though Arlette had not been around for the early days of Lord Ferros¡¯s rule, she¡¯d heard the stories; once her subordinates had warmed up to her, they¡¯d shared their stories of those chaotic times. Between Samanta¡¯s stories and theirs, she felt it safe to say that the Lord Ferros of those times would have overreacted to Pari¡¯s deed with fire and fury. The Lord Ferros of the more recent past¡ªthe one she¡¯d first met and the one to hire her¡ªhad been more tired and worn down, his fury still present but weighed down by bitterness and cynicism. Still, she didn¡¯t believe he would have reacted too well, either; exiling the girl from the fortress would have been the least punishment she could envision.
The Lord Ferros of today, however, was... different¡ªmore mellow, more relaxed, more willing to forgive and forget. It was like he had a completely new outlook on life. The change had been so significant that Arlette had wondered if the Lord Ferros of now was a literally different person, a doppelganger created by the god with whom he¡¯d gone to parley.
The ultimate expression of her employer¡¯s attitude shift could be found in the difference between his new rooms and his old ones. His old rooms had been like a fortress within a fortress, with their own absurd security mechanisms that had, to be frank, made it a giant pain in the ass to speak with him. His new rooms were just rooms. With normal doors. That was it. The strict security of the fortress itself remained unchanged, and only certain approved people could enter this floor on their own, but he clearly no longer felt the need to keep himself entirely locked away. Arlette welcomed the change
There was one other difference, however, that she found much less appealing.
Ringing the doorbell, Arlette stood outside Blake¡¯s office and began to count. When she reached twenty, she rang it again, pressing the button twice this time.
The door slid open just a crack, not enough for her to see inside the room but enough for her to be able to hear his voice.
¡°Hm? Yeah? What?¡±
¡°Lord Ferros, I wanted to inform you that I¡¯m taking the rest of the day and tomorrow off.¡±
Blake did not respond. Once more, Arlette began to count. When she hit thirty, she spoke again. ¡°Lord Ferros?¡±
¡°What? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure,¡± came the absentminded reply. ¡°Go. Do what you need to do. It¡¯s fine.¡±
Arlette wasn¡¯t quite sure that he¡¯d heard a single word she¡¯d said, but she decided not to press the issue. With a shrug, she turned and left.
Something was on her employer¡¯s mind and had been since he¡¯d returned. His thoughts would wander off in the middle of meetings and even direct conversations. Whenever anybody asked what was wrong, he would deny that there was any problem and change the subject.
Arlette didn¡¯t know what was on Lord Ferros¡¯s mind. If she were being honest, she didn¡¯t know if she really cared outside of idle curiosity; it certainly wasn¡¯t her business, anyway. She had more important things to think about right now.
¡°In what world will the two of us need that much booze?¡± Arlette wondered as the elf struggled up the ramp and into the transport cabin with a large casket over one shoulder and an unmarked wooden case under the other arm.
¡°Given how weak the local brew is,¡± Tehlmar grunted, ¡°I might be wise to get another.¡±
¡°Where did you even get your hands on one of those?¡±
¡°I have my ways,¡± he replied with a wry smile.
¡°You stole it, didn¡¯t you.¡±
He let out an overly dramatic gasp. ¡°You wound me, fair maiden! To think you would think me a lowly thief!¡±
¡°Calling you a lowly thief would be a compliment compared to other things I¡¯ve called you not too long ago.¡±
¡°But now that we¡¯re together, you call me ¡®sexy¡¯ and ¡®honeyplum¡¯,¡± he smirked.
Arlette couldn¡¯t help but roll her eyes and let out an exasperated groan. ¡°¡®Honeyplum¡¯? I have never, and will never, call you ¡®honeyplum¡¯. I would rather die.¡±
¡°So you will call me ¡®sexy¡¯?¡± he chuckled, wiggling his eyebrows.
¡°I hate you so much,¡± she sighed, prompting another round of chuckling. ¡°You¡¯re in a very good mood today.¡±
¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I be? I get to spend time with the woman I love. I¡¯ve been looking forward to this. Wanted to take you to this place for days.¡±
¡°¡®This place¡¯ had better not be a gaming hall.¡±
¡°How rude!¡± he protested in mock outrage. ¡°To think that you think of me that way.¡±
¡°Uh-huh,¡± she snorted. ¡°You¡¯re the one who lost most of his pay in some gross gambling den every time we stopped at a town.¡±
¡°That wasn¡¯t me, that was Jaquet the Quick!¡±
¡°Who you said was basically the same person as you ¡®for authenticity¡¯,¡± she reminded him. ¡°And, let¡¯s not pretend you haven¡¯t been in either of the two underground casinos here in Wroetin.¡±
¡°Well, I have to do something to liven up my days, you know? It¡¯s boring here.¡±
She snorted again. ¡°What¡¯s in the box?¡±
He smiled knowingly. ¡°You¡¯ll see when we get there.¡±
¡°And ¡®there¡¯ is?¡± she prompted again.
¡°Trust me. You¡¯ll like it.¡± He pointed off into the distance. ¡°Head west.¡±
¡°Should be just over that hill, if I remember...¡±
¡°How did you even find this place?¡± Arlette asked. They¡¯d been traveling for a good three hours at normal transport speed¡ªfar slower than ¡®Arlette rushing to Cellvas transport speed¡¯ but still far faster than any other form of travel outside of the rail wagons¡ªand she hadn¡¯t seen a sign of an Otharian village in over half an hour.
¡°Yes, here we are!¡± Tehlmar announced.
Arlette looked around as the multi-legged transport slowed to a halt. Like much of Otharia, the land around them was more rock than dirt, with a variety of hearty bushes and grasses eking out a living as best they could. One area ahead had a far denser volume of plant life, which probably had something to do with the sound of running water in her ears.
¡°Could you carry that for me, please?¡± the elf asked, pointing at the metal box as he bent down to hoist the cask of ale upon his shoulders.
Arlette acquiesced, grabbing the handle on the lid with her good hand and following him down the ramp and off the transport. Grunting all the way, he led her towards the sound of running water until they came upon a small, shallow stream about three paces wide and less than half a pace deep. From there, he turned right and headed upstream, taking a thin path that led along the side of the water. The stream and the path twisted and wound, refusing to stay straight for more than twenty paces as they worked their way higher. Several times, they found themselves on a thin, one-pace-wide strip of rock with the stream to their left and solid stone to their right.
Just before Arlette got annoyed enough to demand an explanation, they passed through a naturally formed stone arch and the view before her finally opened up once more. She couldn¡¯t help but stop in her tracks and stare for a little; it was like she¡¯d stepped into a different world.
The first thing she noticed was the colors. Rainbow hues of flora bombarded her eyes from every angle, a sudden and dramatic shift from the dull stone they¡¯d hiked past for the last half hour. Gorgeous blossoms in a hundred different shapes and colors covered the ground, mixed in with knee-high grass. Flowering shrubs ringed the edge of the space, adding their own brilliant hues. Three large trees towered over the area, providing much-needed shade over the wide pond.
Right, there was a pond, too, a large one in the center of the space. Oval in shape, it filled the middle half of the glen, its water overflowing by her feet and forming the stream they¡¯d followed to arrive here. Aquatic plants and other aquatic life covered much of the surface of the pond, adding more color to the scene. The only areas that remained a drab and dreary tan and grey were clearly man-made¡ªsmooth, flat stone walkways circled the circumference of the pond; a stone pavilion stood off to the right, its large, slanted roof propped up by thick, solid columns; and last, but definitely not least, an ornate stone walking bridge, complete with railings, that crossed over the very center of the pond.
Arlette had to blink for several moments before her eyes and brain could adjust to the sudden change in environment. She stared dumbly all around, taking in everything from the flora to the pond to how the area was bounded by large, smooth, and flat rock walls, almost as if this place had been cut directly out of the middle of a rock shelf. Perhaps, she considered, that was exactly what had happened.
¡°What is this place?¡± she finally found the voice to ask. She resumed her steps, following the stone path around the pond and toward the pavilion, where Tehlmar stood with a cheeky grin on his face.
¡°So, the boss man decided to give me busywork a bit ago,¡± he began. ¡°As I said, he doesn¡¯t trust me too much, I think. Not like you. Anyway, he had me go out to Keqont to go through some bunch of paperwork left over in the regional church palace or whatever they call them here. I guess he never got around to going through them or something, not that it mattered; there wasn¡¯t really anything important there. I think he just wanted to keep me busy.
¡°So anyway, one thing I did stumble upon, however, was this. I found mentions of a secret hideaway that the regional governor¡ªor priest, or Apostle, or whatever they were called¡ªhad set up decades ago. Basically, he had this place made to be his little secret getaway where he could go to unwind. Obviously, it¡¯s gotten a bit overgrown-¡±
¡°A bit?!¡± Arlette snorted.
¡°-but hey, it¡¯s still pretty great, huh? The far end of the pond is actually a spring. The pond is even stocked with fish!¡±
¡°How long have you known about this place?¡± Arlette inquired.
¡°Eh, about fifteen days, now,¡± Tehlmar answered as he opened up the metal box she¡¯d carried up here.
¡°Does anybody else know?¡±
¡°Nope! It¡¯s our little secret!¡±
He pulled out two metal rods, each the width of a finger. With a tug, the rods lengthened, forming long poles about six paces in length.
¡°You didn¡¯t even tell Lord Ferros?¡±
¡°Are you serious?¡± he scoffed, pulling out some string and tying it to the end of each pole. ¡°I can if you really want me to, but why can¡¯t this just be our little secret place, just for the two of us? He doesn¡¯t need this one. He¡¯s got more than enough power to make ten places just like this any time he wants to.¡±
¡°I guess that¡¯s true,¡± she conceded. ¡°By the way, what is with the poles?¡±
¡°Aren¡¯t you hungry?¡± he replied, pulling out two small metal hooks and a small sack that smelled like offal. ¡°Let¡¯s catch dinner.¡±
¡°Catch?¡±
¡°I still can¡¯t believe you¡¯ve never fished before,¡± Tehlmar said as they sat in the center of the cross-pond bridge, their legs dangling off the side. If Arlette stretched her toes, she could just barely touch the surface of the pond with the tip of her big toe. Tehlmar, being a midget, stood no chance.
The two of them lounged lazily on the bridge¡¯s edge, each of them resting their back against one of the posts that formed the railing on that side, a pole propped up between their legs and a tankard of beer in hand. Arlette kept her eyes pointed downward, watching the string for movement. Besides, with the reflection in the water, she didn¡¯t need to look up to see Tehlmar while they talked. It was rather convenient.
¡°Why not? There weren¡¯t any ponds near my home with fish in them, so I never tried it. We¡¯d catch other animals around them though, newts and whatnot, but not fish.¡±
¡°What about after you left?¡±
¡°Well, princesses don¡¯t fish, for one. That¡¯s something only an undignified peasant would stoop to. Then, after I ended up on this side of the Divide, I guess I was just too busy. My second parents and I lived in the city and I was always in school or training or something else. After that...¡± She shrugged and took a drink. ¡°Just never thought about it, you know?¡±
¡°I guess it was different in Drayhadal,¡± he shrugged. ¡°The Casm have been the ruling clan for many decades, and whatever fashion and activities the ruling clan has tend to become popular among the elites of Drayhadan society.¡±
¡°And the Casm live in a city by a lake.¡±
¡°Not by a lake, on a lake. Literally anybody could just open their window and drop down a hook and grab a fish any time they wanted. Of course, so much fishing meant that they nearly caught and ate all the fish, so the Casm declared a new law limiting how much fishing the general populace was allowed to do. The nobles, of course, could fish all they wanted. That only made it a more exclusive, special activity in the eyes of the other nobles, so by the time I was a child, it was something we all did from time to time.¡±
¡°Well, it¡¯s not bad. Rather relaxing, I guess.¡±
The two of them lapsed into silence for a while. Arlette, for her part, just soaked in the ambiance of this secret garden in the middle of nowhere, trying to allow herself to unwind for the first time in what felt like ages. She took in the sounds of the birds and the insects, the smell of the pond and the plants, and the sound of the burbling brook leading from the edge of the pond. She found it pleasant. She could feel the anger and frustration that had built up on her psyche slowly beginning to melt away. It felt... nice.
¡°Letty, are you happy here?¡± Tehlmar asked eventually, finally breaking the quiet.
¡°...I don¡¯t know,¡± Arlette admitted after giving it some thought. ¡°In some ways, this is the best situation I¡¯ve been in in a long while. I don¡¯t have to pay for an inn; my rooms are the nicest they¡¯ve ever been, maybe even better than when I was a princess; I don¡¯t have to worry about security; I don¡¯t even have to pay for food if I don¡¯t want to; I¡¯m close to friends; I¡¯m close to you; I am getting paid far more than I¡¯ve ever been paid before; I have the pride that comes with an important job; my employer isn¡¯t some nitwit noble who is constantly making idiotic demands... There¡¯s a lot to like.
¡°On the other hand...¡± She sighed. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯m very good at my job. I have more resources, more personnel, more time than I ever had as a mercenary. And yet, I struggle to produce results anywhere near what I used to manage with just a handful of people. Every time those bastards attack somewhere and kill people, it feels like failure¡ªno, it is failure. I haven¡¯t made the least bit of progress in stopping them, and it has been seasons now. And then, on top of all the guilt and the frustration, I have to worry that Lord Ferros will decide¡ªrightly¡ªthat I¡¯m not suited for this job and I¡¯ll lose all the good stuff I mentioned.¡±
¡°Do you think he¡¯ll really relieve you of your position?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. Everything he¡¯d told me says that he won¡¯t, but I can¡¯t help but think that, if I were in his position, I¡¯d toss me out without a second thought.¡±
¡°But he isn¡¯t you. He doesn¡¯t seem to have your capacity for self-loathing, for one.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t deny that, I guess,¡± she conceded. ¡°I told him, one time, that I didn¡¯t think I was competent enough to do what he was asking me to do. Do you know what he said?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°He said ¡®Stop it¡¯,¡± she quoted, putting on her best Blake voice and making sure it was as nasally as possible. ¡°¡®Anybody who can keep Sofie Ramaut alive for a year is more than competent enough to handle this. More than that, anybody who can keep her alive that long deserves a fucking medal.¡¯¡±
Tehlmar threw his head back and guffawed, drops of beer falling from his tankard into the water below. It was a very Jaquet-esque mannerism, one she¡¯d seen countless times over the years, and Arlette couldn¡¯t help but smile slightly at the sight. Even though the two of them looked nothing alike¡ªespecially with the huge size difference¡ªfor a moment, it was like Jaquet was sitting next to her again. It felt... warm.
¡°That man is so strange,¡± Tehlmar giggled once his laughter had mostly died down. ¡°Was he always like that?¡±
¡°Until recently, he¡¯s been the same self-important, sarcastic asshole as he was the day I met him. Did I ever tell you the first thing he said to me?¡±
¡°No, I don¡¯t think you have.¡±
¡°I walk into his quarters, and he¡¯s sitting there, all dressed up in his armor and mask, trying to look all intimidating in a chair, and he looks up at me for a moment, and he says, ¡®I thought you¡¯d be taller.¡¯¡±
The guffaws returned, harder than before. ¡°It¡¯s so hard to take the man seriously. I mean, what sort of person is so cowardly that they won¡¯t even show you their face?¡±
That was right, she realized: Tehlmar had yet to see Blake¡¯s face. Very few people that she knew had ever seen it¡ªSofie, Gabriela, Samanta, Leo, and herself... and maybe Pari. That, as far as she was aware, was the entire group.
¡°I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s some tactic of his, or what. Maybe he thinks it will make him more feared, but I don¡¯t see the point. He¡¯s the only person I know to actually fight with the Monster and survive. That¡¯s more than enough to earn my respect.¡±
Tehlmar spat into the pond. ¡°That woman pisses me off.¡±
¡°Who, the Monster?¡±
¡°Yeah. Sometimes I want to give her a piece of my mind. Same to the rest of them.¡±
¡°Well, you¡¯re going to have to wait. She left a while ago and nobody knows when she¡¯s coming back,¡± Arlette informed him. ¡°But seriously,¡± she continued with a roll of her eyes, ¡°why do you bring this up every time we¡¯re together? You were blabbering on about it on the first date, too.¡±
¡°Well, I was right then, and I¡¯m right now! You and the rest of us Scyrians put people like her up on a pedestal, like they¡¯re untouchable, and for what? What have they done to deserve that respect?¡± he argued. ¡°Remember when Jaquet the Quick was regarded as a terror on the battlefield? One of the strongest fighters in Nocend, too fast and too strong and too skilled for all but the best of the best to handle? It really grinds my axles to think that I put all that work into being, uh, the other me, and this girl just shows up and she¡¯s stronger and faster than I could ever dream of, and she can¡¯t die to boot! Do you think I was as strong as I was from the start? No! I had to work hard for years to get to where I was, and she just pops into the picture one day, stronger than I could ever be. Makes it all feel pointless, sometimes. Like nothing I did ever even mattered.¡±
¡°Like we¡¯re just side characters in their story,¡± Arlette agreed. She tipped her cup back and drank it down until there was nothing left, then got to her feet to get a refill. She paused to find her balance as the world swayed slightly. How many steins had she consumed now, four? Six? The answer was ¡®not enough¡¯. ¡°I feel it every day. I¡¯m surrounded by people who can lift mountains or make machines that fly through the sky or fucking control peoples¡¯ minds, and I¡¯m supposed to act like that isn¡¯t crazy. They don¡¯t even seem to appreciate the work that everybody else has to put in just to get to a tiny fraction of their power. They don¡¯t get it. But I do. I know what it takes to get true power... and what it costs.¡±
Arlette sat back down with her cup newly refilled and set it aside. Reaching into a pocket, she drew out a small vial, entirely empty save for a single drop of pitch black liquid resting at the bottom. ¡°See this?¡±
¡°A small crystal vial? What about it?¡±
¡°This is not just any small glass vial,¡± Arlette corrected. ¡°I got this vial in Crirada. Picked it up from near the half-melted corpse of General Khilran, a fairly powerful Eterian water Observer. Well, powerful for a Scyrian, at least. See this drop of black liquid at the bottom?¡± She held it out and at an angle, so he could see the last bit of liquid collected against the bottom edge. ¡°This nasty stuff once filled the whole container, and just by drinking it, Khilran gained enough power to go toe to toe with an Earthling... or perhaps even outclass them. It was like she controlled the ocean itself.¡±
¡°Are you serious?! There¡¯s something that can do that!?¡±
¡°And then,¡± she pressed on, ¡°she popped. Her body ruptured like a berry squeezed between your fingers. It had barely been a few moments. Just a few moments, and all it cost her was everything.¡±
¡°Wait, I think I remember something about this. This is that Otharian drug, isn¡¯t it? Chimirin?¡±
She nodded.
¡°Stars above, to think that it¡¯s actually real! I¡¯d always thought it was a rumor. The Battalion had records of it from centuries past, but it didn¡¯t seem possible that something like this could actually exist.¡±
She held the vial up to her face and watched the light filter through the clear glass-like material.
¡°At the time, I picked this thing up on a whim. I¡¯d thought that maybe it would somehow prove useful in the future. It didn¡¯t, but I still keep this around as a reminder of everything that happened back there. Of all the people lost, all the sacrifices made. So desperate for power that people burned their entire futures for just a few moments, just long enough to turn the tide...¡±
Arlette shook her head, banishing those bad memories for the moment.
¡°Oblivion. That is what this is. That is what it takes to come close to the level of power that people like Sofie and the Monster achieve just by breathing. But... what can we even do about it?¡±
¡°I had a trainer back in the Battalion who used to say that life is like climbing the world¡¯s tallest cliff side. It¡¯s not a bad idea to look up once in a while at those far above you. It gives you a goal, something to strive for. But if you spend too much time looking up at others and not at the handholds right in front of you, you¡¯ll never make progress, and eventually, those people will be too far above you for you to see them anymore.¡±
¡°Yeah, no shit,¡± Arlette snorted. ¡°Have any other words of wisdom I¡¯ve already heard from all four of my parents, oh wise sage?¡±
¡°Sure. ¡®All you can do is your best.¡¯¡±
She laughed, but slowly her merry chortles fades, being replaced by forlorn, halfhearted chuckles. ¡°I am doing my best. I really am. I¡¯m trying so hard, but nothing¡¯s working anymore. I think I have to admit to myself that I¡¯ve hit the limit of what I¡¯m capable of. I¡¯m not like them; I¡¯m just a Scyrian, and there¡¯s only so much you can do with illusions, anyway. I¡¯ve been trying new avenues, trying to find ways to expand my abilities, but... nothing works. None of it. All I want is the power to have control over my own life, but the only path to that power leads to...¡± She held up the vial again, staring at the last remaining drop held within. ¡°...annihilation.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t give up, Letty,¡± Tehlmar said, scooting closer and putting a concerned hand on her shoulder. ¡°Progress is never smooth and easy, and sometimes you can beat your fists against a rock for five years without feeling like you¡¯ve gained a thing, but it only ever becomes pointless when you give up. You can do it, Letty. You have it in you to be even better than you are¡ªI don¡¯t know how, but it¡¯s true¡ªand I¡¯ll be by your side every step of the way. We¡¯ll do it together. We¡¯ll find a way.¡±
As Arlette stared into the elf¡¯s eyes, she came to a realization. Tehlmar¡¯s past actions¡ªthe lies, the abandonment... none of that mattered to her anymore. She¡¯d forgiven him fully, completely, and without reservation. At what point she had done so, she couldn¡¯t quite say. Maybe it had been back on that first night together, back at the inn when he¡¯d laid out his love for her in embarrassing detail. Maybe it had been sometime later, or even now, at just this moment. In a sense, it didn¡¯t really make a difference. What mattered was how it felt when she thought about a life with the former Drayhadan prince, the man that, in one form or another, had already been by her side longer than anyone else. It felt... good¡ªno, more than good. It felt... right.
¡°Thank you,¡± she said.
¡°Of course! You know you can always count... oh.¡± He pointed at the pond¡ªmore specifically, at the end of Arlette¡¯s string. The line twitched repeatedly as something struggled beneath the surface. ¡°It seems you have caught us our dinner.¡±
Arlette yanked the rod upward, pulling a large fish out of the water and sending it arcing overhead to land with a wet slap in the center of the bridge. Ignoring the creature as it flopped desperately about, she set the pole down and grabbed the sides of Tehlmar¡¯s head in her hands, ignoring the twinge of pain from her left. ¡°Dinner can wait,¡± she said as she pulled his lips towards hers. ¡°I¡¯m hungry for something else right now.¡±
Late that night, Arlette stumbled into her living quarters to find an annoyed Peko waiting for her.
¡°About time,¡± he said. ¡°Let¡¯s get to training.¡±
All Arlette managed to get out was a confused ¡°...wha?¡± and a moderately loud belch.
¡°You wanted a push, right? That¡¯s what you told me last night. It¡¯s time.¡±
¡°But... I¡¯m too hammered,¡± she slurred.
¡°Exactly,¡± he said, pushing her down into a nearby chair and turning it towards the target across the room. Reaching down to her thigh, he pulled a throwing knife from its strap and placed it in her left palm. ¡°Get to it.¡±
She groaned. ¡°Do I have to?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
Another burp forced its way out, mixing with a sigh of resignation. Three more phantom knives appeared in her hand beside the real one as Peko retreated to sit on the bed and watch. Looking away, she shuffled them around, then picked one at random.
She knew it was a fake knife from the start; though it looked the same, and she tried her best to pretend it was real, it lacked the presence that came with being an actual physical object. This was why this whole rigmarole made no sense and was such a waste of time. Deep down, despite her best efforts, it just wasn¡¯t possible for her to fool herself, so whatever Peko had in mind would forever be an impossible task.
Though the board was hard to make out and sometimes, just for a moment, it looked like there were two boards, she wound up and threw with confidence. This wasn¡¯t the first time she¡¯d thrown a knife while soused¡ªdrunken violence was practically a mercenary rite of passage. Her aim was... well, it hit the wood, at least. That was all that mattered, right?
She reached for another randomly selected blade and immediately knew it to be real. The way it pulled ever so slightly against her fingertips told her everything. She pulled her arm back and let it fly, then repeated the pantomime twice more.
¡°I got it,¡± Peko said as she began to struggle to her feet. She gratefully sank back into the chair as he walked over to the target board and began to pry them out, one by one.
¡°Did you ever think about Severed, Arlette?¡± he asked with his back still turned to her as he pulled the final blade from the wood.
¡°Huh?¡± Arlette eloquently responded, thrown off by the sudden change in topic.
¡°As far as anybody knows, Severed people, before they become Severed, are not special,¡± Peko continued, crossing the chamber and handing Arlette the four blades before returning to the bed. ¡°They are not supremely powerful Observers. So, why can they do what they do?¡±
Arlette chucked a knife. It was a fake.
¡°...dunno.¡± In her drunken fog, she was having enough trouble keeping track of the knives. She couldn¡¯t spare much of her impaired mind to try to make sense of whatever it was Peko was rambling on about.
Next one... fake.
Knife three... fake.
Even her alcohol-addled mind knew that this meant the last one had to be the real one. Yes, there it was, that heft that the others lacked. She hurled it towards the target, then yawned and rubbed her eyes. Today had really taken a lot out of her.
¡°I think it¡¯s important to underscore the magnitude of what a Severed actually achieves,¡± Peko carried on as he fetched the knives for Arlette a second time. ¡°Whether it¡¯s the scores of tentacles that they¡¯re so known for or other more bewildering creations, they are able to create things¡ªreal, corporeal objects¡ªthat are far more complex than any Observer.¡±
Arlette threw a knife... fake.
Another... fake.
A third... fake.
That meant... yes, a subtle squeeze of the fingers told her everything she needed. Her eyelids starting to droop, she tossed it.
¡°Fire, water, stone... the thing about Observer creations is that they¡¯re all so homogeneous. There¡¯s no difference between creating a drop of water and a ball of it the size of your fist; it¡¯s all the same material, you¡¯re just making more of it and adjusting the collected material into your desired shape. But Severed are different. Their creations are levels above: more complex, more varied, more detailed.¡±
Throw. Fake.
Throw. Fake.
Throw. Fake.
Once again, the real knife came last. She waggled the weapon slightly, feeling the inertia as it changed direction. She threw it while she still could. Everything about her felt spent. The alcohol was really taking its toll, now.
¡°And yet, how? What is that they have that all the rest of us lack?¡±
He got up and cleared the board a fourth time, but this time, he went back to the bed without handing her back her knives.
¡°They¡¯re insane,¡± Arlette answered. Unlike the rest of Peko¡¯s long-winded sermon, this was an easy question to answer, even while smashed, as it didn¡¯t require any thought. Everybody knew that Severed people were crazy.
¡°Close, but no. Their insanity is the source of the key to their power, but it is not the key itself. The key is something far more rudimentary, something you and I and everybody else has to some degree.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Belief. Do you remember what the Severed you came across in Crirada was acting like? He was seeing something, something only he could see, and he believed that what he saw was real. It was a belief so strong that it became his truth. He didn¡¯t just believe that the world he saw was real, he knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. It is that belief, a belief so wholehearted that even reality accepts it as truth, that is the secret to a Severed¡¯s power.
¡°All this time, everybody has thought that the key to power was understanding. To improve as a water Observer, you must study the water, learn to understand it¡ªwhat it is, how it acts, all the finest details and minutia of it. And for others, maybe that is the only way... but not for you.
¡°You don¡¯t make water, you make an illusion of water. It¡¯s the opposite of how traditional Observers function. What it is, how it acts, all the details and minutia¡ªyou decide all of that, not the material. Understanding does not matter. What you need is not greater understanding, it¡¯s greater belief¡ªbelief strong enough to make your creations real.¡±
¡°That¡¯s... impossible,¡± she slurred. All this thinking was making her head hurt.
¡°Is it?¡± Flashing a smug grin, Peko held up a hand, four knives held between his fingers. Releasing the blades, he let them tumble from his grip. One by one, they fell towards her bed. Two of them pierced the soft cushioned top of her mattress just beside her pillow, while the others bounced haphazardly, clanking off each other before coming to a rest.
Arlette¡¯s exhausted, muddled mind abruptly crashed to a halt. Every instinct she had told her that the knives on and in her bed were real, but that only made her more confused. Lurching out of her chair, she stumbled over to her bed and collapsed beside the assembled blades. One touch was all it took to confirm that they were, indeed, entirely real. They had mass and weight, and the cuts in her mattress were, dismayingly, no illusion. Where had he acquired these?
¡°From you, of course,¡± Peko told her. ¡°Every time I fetched them from the board, I took the real knife and hid it.¡±
His words made her brain hurt. There had only been one real knife, not four. Where had the other three come from? It didn¡¯t make any sense!
¡°Of course it does. Each time I hid a knife, I gave you back the three illusions¡ªbut you expected four, so you would subconsciously create a fourth fake knife. Did you not find it strange that the last knife you threw was always the real one? That wasn''t a coincidence, Arlette. Each time you got down to that final knife, you took that illusory blade and you made it corporeal because you knew, without a doubt, that one of them was true. You believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that if the others were fake, then the last one had to be the real one... and so it was.¡±
Arlette struggled to keep her mind afloat as Peko¡¯s words battered her like storm waves battered a ship, threatening to capsize her. Sometimes she had trouble keeping up with Peko while sober; now, she found herself being swept under. That didn¡¯t stop him, however. His triumphant grin grew wider as he pressed on.
¡°Don¡¯t you see? This is the true power of belief, Arlette¡ªthe way forward that you¡¯ve been looking for. Think about it. Not only could you make fire, or water, or stone, or ice faster and better than any Observer, you could make all manner of other things as well, from the simplest blade to creations more intricate than the machines Lord Ferros builds! Why, who knows, perhaps you could even create life itself! The possibilities for you are nearly limitless, Arlette. As long as you have the power and the will, you can make... well, you can make just about anything.¡± She felt him root around in her clothes for a moment before he withdrew his hands and placed something in her right hand¡ªsomething small that felt cold, smooth, and hard against her palm¡ªand closed her fingers around it. ¡°Anything at all.¡±
Arlette felt the last of her energy evaporate, and she fell into a deep slumber.
Arlette Faredin let out a soft groan as she slowly regained consciousness and her hangover first made its presence known. It had been a long time since she¡¯d had so much alcohol in one day, and while it had felt wonderful to just let it all go for a little while, the bill always arrived not soon after. She thought back to the day before and the wonderful time she¡¯d had: traveling, drinking, relaxing, drinking, fishing for the first time, drinking, making love, drinking, eating, and more drinking. The two of them had been so sloshed by the end that it was a miracle they¡¯d made it back to the fortress at all.
She couldn¡¯t remember much of the trip back, and the gaps in her memory grew larger as the evening went on until all she could remember of the end of the night were small blips surrounded by mental fog. She could remember Peko, and... knives? And... there was something else, something confounding but important that eluded her no matter how hard she tried to recall it.
Oh well, it couldn¡¯t have been that important, she decided. It would come to her eventually, most likely. For now, though, she needed to get up and do something about this blasted hangover before it made her regret having fun.
Rolling over, Arlette went to push herself up, only for her hand to come into contact with something unexpectedly cold and hard where her bedding should be. Four throwing knives lay on her bed, though she had no idea why. They looked like her throwing knives, but why had she left them beside her pillow, instead of putting them away like she normally did? Had she really been that drunk?
Sitting up, she went to rub her face with her hands but stopped just before. Her left hand, still injured and wrapped in fresh bandages¡ªby Tehlmar, most likely; how sweet it was of him to care about her health so much¡ªwasn¡¯t the best choice for any assertive face massaging just yet. It would be another day or two before her bones were fully healed again.
That left her right hand, but that hand was, for some unknown reason, clenched into a fist. It had been like that since she¡¯d awoken, she realized, and judging by how her hand felt, probably the entire time she¡¯d slept as well. However, she couldn¡¯t recall even the slightest hint of what she held so tightly. It felt smooth and dry, but that alone didn¡¯t tell her much.
Slowly and carefully, Arlette loosened her grip, unfurling her fingers until she could finally see what she¡¯d held in her grasp the whole night. She gazed at the small object with puzzlement. The longer she looked, the more her confusion grew.
She held in her hand her small glass vial, the same one she¡¯d shown Tehlmar the day before. Except now, instead of the expected glint of light shining through a container with a single drop of black inside, she found nothing but darkness. A tenebrous liquid filled the space within the crystal, an ooze that seemed to suck the light out of the world around it as it beckoned with promises of untold power. Somehow, someway, she now held in her hands a vial filled to the stopper with chimirin.
Chapter 116
Gabby stood outside the door and shuffled her feet. She didn¡¯t know why she was so nervous about the idea of talking with a priest of sorts, but she was. Even though it was an Otharian priest instead of a Catholic priest, and even though he came from a religion fairly dissimilar to her own, she found herself dreading the conversation. She felt like she would be judged, and facing judgment from a clergyman of any faith felt different than from everybody else. Maybe it was just because of how she was raised.
Finally, taking a deep breath, Gabby pressed the doorbell. She heard the doorbell¡¯s familiar insistent beeping start up¡ªall the rooms had the same chime, hers included¡ªfollowed by a series of thumps. The door slid open, giving Gabriela her first-ever view of the office of Leo Feldmanis, Chief of Staff under Blake and arguably the most important and powerful person in the country. While Blake could destroy Otharia through action, it was said that Leo could destroy it through inaction. All it would take for the nation to fall to pieces would be for him to take a week or two off.
One look inside at the man¡¯s office suggested that it was all true. Piles of paper covered practically every flat surface in her vision, stacked high enough that she worried she would knock one over just from stepping too hard as she walked by. At least, to her comfort, there existed a cleared path into the chamber so she wouldn¡¯t have to step over any paperwork. The worst of it all was the desk in the back of the room. Much of it was covered in paper stacks so high that they threatened to touch the ceiling.
From that desk, two eyes peered at her between the stacks. ¡°Madam Carreno? Is it already time for... ah yes, I see it is. Would you give me several moments to finish this up?¡± Gabby nodded. ¡°Thank you. I¡¯ll be right with you shortly.¡±
The door slid back shut, leaving Gabby once more at the mercy of her thoughts. Thankfully, the door reopened not more than five minutes later and the Otharian beckoned her inside. He¡¯d somehow cleared off much of his desk, giving her a window through which to see him in full for the first time¡ªthe two of them had not ever had the need nor opportunity to meet until now.
Between growing up at the orphanage and the rather devout lifestyle such an upbringing had imparted on her, Gabriela Carreno had met more than her fair share of priests, and so she knew that they came in all manner of shapes and sizes. However, somehow, they all managed to look like priests. While not Catholic, Leo also somehow appeared entirely priestly.
The man looked to be in his late forties, with a round head lined only on the sides with short brown hair in a classic example of male pattern baldness. He was just about as tall as she was, as far as she could tell, which was actually a bit above average for male adults she¡¯d seen in Otharia¡ªbut not elsewhere; Otharians tended to be shorter than the rest, probably at least in part due to the decades of food supply issues. Her gaze was drawn first to his broad, flat nose, and then upwards to his eyes. They looked kind but tired and a little worried. She found no judgment in them¡ªnot yet, at least.
¡°I am sorry to intrude,¡± she began as she laid her sword down beside the chair he gestured her towards and lowered herself down into it. It was a comfortable chair, lined with soft fabric and stuffed full of something plushlike. ¡°I know that you are always very busy.¡±
¡°Nonsense!¡± he replied, waving away her apologies. ¡°It¡¯s nice to engage in the primary purpose of my profession for once. Though administration is¡ªwas¡ªa standard aspect of a Voice¡¯s responsibilities, that was not what drew me to the vocation. I joined because I wanted to help guide people through the trials of life. Things did not exactly turn out as I had expected, but...¡± He let out a long exhalation through his nostrils. ¡°Anyway, you¡¯re not here to listen to me prattle on. Lord Ferros said you desired my counsel, is that right?¡±
¡°Y-yes... We are supposed to talk with holy men of other religions if... if there are no Catholic priests available and we... and we need... guidance.¡±
¡°Well, I am more than happy to give whatever guidance I can. Please, tell me what troubles you so.¡±
Gabriela found herself tensing up. Why was it so hard for her to speak about this when she¡¯d spoken about it several times before?
¡°I don¡¯t know what to do to... move past what I¡¯ve done. It sounds wrong to even say it. I know I don¡¯t deserve to be forgiven. I did... terrible things. Much of the time, I think that I shouldn¡¯t be allowed to escape this burden, but... I can¡¯t keep living every day like this, either. I don¡¯t know what to do.
¡°I thought that if I helped the people here then some of the pain would go away, but it didn¡¯t. I hoped that maybe once we saved Pari that I would feel a little better, but I don¡¯t. I can still feel sin on my soul. I feel... lost.¡±
¡°I see,¡± came the reply. ¡°I have an idea of your actions already, but I would like to hear them from you, if you would.¡±
The man¡¯s stern gaze pressed down upon her, its weight overcoming her hesitation to once more put words to past events. And so, slowly, one word at a time, she began to tell her tale, starting from the very beginning.
When she was finally finished, the Scyrian steepled his fingers and gazed at her solemnly for a moment. ¡°Madam Carreno, let us imagine that you are back on your world. Tell me, in a simplified sense, how you and your faith would address this.¡±
¡°Well, first I would confess my sins to my priest. Then, he would assign me a penance to perform to match the level of my sins. Upon completing the penance, I would be forgiven in the eyes of the Lord.¡±
¡°I see. A simple structure¡ªfar simpler than the Church of Othar¡¯s, to be sure¡ªbut a workable one. However, given what you have told me today, I fail to imagine what sort of actions would match the magnitude of your deeds well enough for you to earn this forgiveness.¡±
As much as she had expected to hear something along those lines, the words still felt like a punch to the gut. Gabby involuntarily shrank a little into the chair.
¡°However, if I may be so frank, I highly doubt achieving a state of forgiveness from and being cleansed of sin by the deity you worship would accomplish much of what ails you. It would help somewhat, I¡¯m sure, but I don¡¯t see it addressing what I believe to be the core issue here.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure what you¡¯re trying to say.¡±
¡°Then, I shall say it clearly. You say that you feel lost, and this is because you are searching for a way to accept the deeds which you have done. However, you cannot accept them because you have yet to accept the truth about yourself: you have changed. You are clinging to an image of the person whom you once were, the person before you came here. You feel lost because you hate the person you have become, and yet you cannot find a way back to the person you used to be¡ªand you won¡¯t. As much as you might wish it wasn¡¯t true, the Madam Carreno of the past is not somebody that you can return to.¡±
¡°Then, what am I to do? How can I go on living with this torment burning inside me?¡±
¡°You must learn to accept who and what you are now, not your idealized past self. It will not be easy. I believe your best option is to seek forgiveness of a somewhat different sort¡ªpersonal rather than spiritual, though there is a good deal of overlap between the two. Unfortunately, the forgiveness you require cannot be found in this room, nor anywhere in this nation.¡±
¡°W-what do you mean?¡±
¡°I mean that the forgiveness you seek cannot come from me, or Pari, or anyone else in all of Otharia, for that matter. It can only come from the people whom you wronged, directly and indirectly¡ªpeople, I must note, that you have gone out of your way to avoid.¡±
¡°B-but I¡ª!¡±
¡°During the war, you were kept in a bubble. You did not have to face the ramifications of your actions. The one time that was not the case, you retreated into yourself for days and days instead of dealing with what you found. Now that the war is over, have you stepped into Eterium or Gustil even once? No, you have not. You have chosen to hide away here and stew in your guilt rather than reckon directly with the pain you¡¯ve brought into this world, and until that changes, your suffering will continue. Only out there will you find the forgiveness that you are searching for.
¡°I can¡¯t tell you what you will find out there or what you should do with what you encounter¡ªthat will be up to you. Still, it is the only way. There is no amount of penance I can prescribe that will bring you to where you desire to be. I can only point you in the right direction, and that direction is the war-ravaged lands beyond our borders. Do you understand?¡±
¡°I...¡± Gabby wanted to protest but found herself unable to. Something about his tone and the stern authority with which he spoke forced her to accept his words not just as true, but as something she¡¯d known for a long time but refused to acknowledge. He truly was a priest. ¡°I understand, Father.¡±
Gabby winced at the slip at the end, but the Otharian either didn¡¯t notice or didn¡¯t care.
¡°Excellent!¡± he said with a warm smile. ¡°I wish you luck on your travels, wherever they may lead you. Now, if you don¡¯t mind, there is still much more that I must do before my day is over.¡±
¡°You¡¯re doing what?¡± Blake sputtered.
¡°I¡¯m leaving Otharia.¡±
¡°When, now?¡±
¡°Yes. Right now.¡±
¡°...are you coming back?¡±
Gabriela shrugged. ¡°I can¡¯t say. We both know that I stayed here more than anything else because I didn¡¯t know where else to go, not because you all wanted me here.¡±
¡°I guess that¡¯s true, but... I don¡¯t know, it hasn¡¯t been so bad having you around, really. You¡¯re welcome to come back whenever.¡±
¡°Only God knows what the future holds, but I will keep that in mind.¡±
¡°Oh! Here!¡± Blake pulled a small chunk of metal from his desk as if it were made of dough and fiddled with it. A moment later, he handed her a thin disk about six centimeters in diameter with a tiny crystal embedded in the center. ¡°Take this with you, just in case.¡±
¡°What is it?¡±
¡°I guess we¡¯ll call it the ¡®Gabby Summoner¡¯. If you feel it buzzing, it means we need you back here asap. Just in case we need you. I won¡¯t use it unless there¡¯s an absolute emergency, I promise.¡±
¡°Alright.¡± She tucked the disk into a pocket.
¡°Good luck,¡± he offered. ¡°I hope you find what you¡¯re looking for.¡±
¡°Thanks,¡± she said. It was a shame she couldn¡¯t say the same.
Gabriela paused outside the large and lavish inn located in the southwest quadrant of Wroetin. She adjusted her pack, making sure it wasn¡¯t rubbing up against the Sword of Eternity¡ªnot for the first time, she found herself wishing that the Sword had come with a Sheath; its incredibly sharp edge had the annoying tendency to carve through things like backpacks and other important items if she wasn¡¯t careful with it. Even so, she refused to leave it back in the fortress, no matter how much more convenient it would be. Ever since that terrible day when she¡¯d watched Pari die, all because she¡¯d left the sword locked away deep in the fortress, Gabby had sworn to never let it leave her side again. It didn¡¯t matter how inconvenient it was or how much she hated it; better she be inconvenienced than another innocent child die because she couldn¡¯t stand how the blade reminded her of her past choices.
Once the pack and sword were back in order, Gabby prepared herself for the conversations ahead, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. The lobby interior looked to be constructed entirely of marble polished to a glistening sheen, something found only in the poshest locations in the nation. Such wealth was considerably more common and exorbitant elsewhere; the janitor¡¯s closet in the Ubran Imperial Palace made this place look like a hovel in comparison. Still, for Otharia at least, this inn easily placed in the top five most luxurious businesses. That, Gabby had no doubt, was why Chitra had decided to stay here.
The receptionist eyed Gabby with suspicion, his gaze flickering¡ªin that way she had grown so used to now, much to her dismay¡ªbetween her face and the gleaming blade poking out from behind her body. ¡°What business might you have here, madam?¡± he inquired none too politely.
¡°I¡¯ve come to visit Chitra Batranala,¡± she informed him, ignoring his tone. As an Elseling, some combination of hostility and fear was the standard reaction she received from strangers. In this case, Gabby assumed that the man¡¯s disapproving tone came not just from the fact that she was an Elseling but even more so from the fact that she in no way appeared wealthy. It was the same look she had sometimes gotten from CEOs and other ¡°important¡± business types while cleaning office buildings. Though they¡¯d needed her, they¡¯d resented her presence.
At her words, the man¡¯s eyes went wide with recognition, and a wide grin sprouted where his scowl had been just a moment ago. ¡°Ah, yes! Now that I recall, Lady Chitra did leave instructions to allow someone resembling your appearance to visit her chambers at any time. My apologies, madam. The Lady should be in her chambers on the fourth floor. Just head up those stairs and take a left.¡±
Gabriela resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It figured that, while just as much an Elseling as the rest of them, ¡°Lady¡± Chitra would get special treatment. Not that Gabby didn¡¯t understand. She¡¯d watched the woman melt men into puddles with nothing but a smile. Nobody was immune to the former Batranala¡¯s beauty. Even Gabby occasionally found herself forgetting what she was doing and just staring at the woman, most especially during the rare occasions when she¡¯d dance. The way that she¡¯d step and sway... Gabby shook her head to clear those thoughts from her mind. She had come here on a mission, and the sooner she completed said mission, the better.
The double doors to Chitra¡¯s quarters were two full-sized doors made from some sort of solid hardwood, the surface of each carved with exquisitely detailed depictions of leafy vines winding around them. Gabby gripped the knocker and, after a slight moment of hesitation, knocked twice.
The left door opened not more than a second later, revealing the Ubran woman in all her grace and glory. She gasped in surprise, flashing that trademark man-slaying smile, and swept Gabby inside.
¡°I had not expected you to come and visit me like this, Gabby,¡± Chitra admitted. ¡°Though we spend so much time together, it¡¯s always at the orphanage or other such locations, but never here. I was starting to think you were spurning my invitations.¡±
¡°I feel unwelcome in places like this,¡± she confessed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to intrude without warning.¡±
¡°Oh, enough with the humility! Your arrival is a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. Come, take that off and sit down.¡±
Chitra practically ripped the pack off of Gabby¡¯s back, grabbing the sword with care and laying it carefully on its flat side beside the pack. She then promptly ushered her visitor to a nearby chair. The seat was upholstered with fine, supple leather and stuffed to capacity with something even softer and more comfortable than the chair in Leo¡¯s office.
Sitting down, Gabriela truly looked around at the room for the first time. Somehow, the place she found herself in was many times more ostentatious than the rest of the inn that she¡¯d seen combined. Plush carpet covered the floor, silks hung over the windows, the furniture was covered in ornate engravings and lined with gold... even the candlesticks looked to be made of solid gold!
¡°This room is... quite something,¡± she remarked.
¡°It is, isn¡¯t it?¡± Chitra agreed as she walked out of Gabby¡¯s view and started doing something with what sounded like water and china. ¡°The dears here are so sweet. They work hard to help make me comfortable, and I can¡¯t help but appreciate their tireless efforts. It really makes me feel at home.¡±
Right, Gabby remembered. Even this room couldn¡¯t compare with the Ubran palace, where Chitra had spent much of her life. ¡°How did the innkeepers manage to afford all of this?¡±
¡°They didn¡¯t,¡± Chitra informed her. ¡°They made some important contributions, mind you, but they are merely innkeepers in the end¡ªOtharian innkeepers, at that.¡±
¡°But then, where did all of this...¡±
Her question faded off as Chitra walked back into view, two steaming cups in her hands and a grin that looked downright predatory on her lips. She handed Gabby one of the cups filled with a brown and purple liquid that passed for tea in Otharia.
¡°You¡¯d be amazed at the sorts of wealth that wealthy men will give away to curry favor with a pretty face,¡± she snickered as she seated herself opposite Gabby. ¡°They¡¯ve made me rather comfortable, enough to live well here for quite some time.¡±
¡°I see.¡±
¡°Honestly, given how long I¡¯ve been here now and how often we see each other, I¡¯m surprised that it took so long for this to come up.¡±
Gabby set down her untouched drink onto an adjacent side table. ¡°About all that. I came to tell you that I¡¯m leaving. I wanted to say farewell before I go.¡±
Chitra cocked an eyebrow. ¡°Gabby, dear, you¡¯re going to need to give me at least some details to work with, here.¡±
Quickly, Gabriela explained her conversation with Leo.
¡°It¡¯s a real shame that you are still suffering from these... issues,¡± Chitra sighed when Gabby¡¯s story had drawn to a close. ¡°We¡¯ve already talked about this enough to drive one mad. You did not single-handedly start an invasion, you merely sped up the inevitable.¡±
¡°I know you think I shouldn¡¯t feel so much guilt-¡±
¡°I do,¡± Chitra interrupted. ¡°It¡¯s foolish and counterproductive. But, that is beside the point right now. Despite knowing the truth, your hangups persist, so it would be wise to try to deal with them and halt this mental anguish you insist on needlessly inflicting upon yourself. If there is a chance that this dubious quest you seem so set on will cure what ails you, then it¡¯s at least worth attempting.¡± She stood up, seemingly having decided upon something. ¡°Very well. Give me a few moments to pack, if you don¡¯t mind.¡±
¡°Wait wait wait!¡± Gabby sputtered. ¡°What do you mean, pack?!¡±
¡°I¡¯m coming with you, obviously,¡± Chitra stated as if it were the most natural thing in the world before disappearing into an adjacent room.
¡°But this is my journey! My responsibility! There¡¯s no reason you have to come too!¡± Gabriela objected, jumping up and chasing after the Ubran. Following her footsteps, Gabby found herself in a large bedroom that rivaled the living room in its affluence.
Chitra stood by the opposite wall facing an open wardrobe, carefully considering the variety of outfits held within.
¡°Really, Chitra,¡± Gabby protested as she marched around the massive four-post bed to where her companion stood. ¡°This is too much!¡±
¡°Is there a requirement that you partake in this alone?¡± Chitra responded, still inspecting dresses. ¡°Just wandering around Nocend by yourself, confronting your victims on Gabriela Carreno¡¯s Grand Suffering Expedition?¡±
¡°Well, I mean, he didn¡¯t say I needed to do it by myself,¡± Gabby admitted.
¡°Then why must you insist upon subjecting yourself to potentially ruinous emotional stress all on your lonesome when isolation is not required?¡±
¡°I...¡± Gabby didn¡¯t know how to put her hesitation into words.
Somehow, though, Chitra did. ¡°You worry that my presence will disrupt things, that I¡¯ll keep you in too high spirits and somehow shield you from the heartrending encounters that you are leaving to find.¡±
¡°Well, basically...¡±
¡°In that case, if you worry that my presence will only interfere, I will simply remove myself when the time comes. Or, if you so desire, I can involve myself by your side as well and take on the culpability allotted me.¡±
¡°What culpability? I¡¯m the one who killed thousands upon thousands of people there, not you.¡±
¡°Come now, dear. If we must operate under this foolish premise of blame, then did I not push you to go down your path? Did I not support you all the while? Strange, that you would think me blameless in all that happened.¡±
¡°But you were just doing your job!¡±
¡°And you were merely performing your role as much as I. Face it, Gabby; as set as you may be on creating blame and then taking it all upon your shoulders, by your logic, there¡¯s more than enough for all of us¡ªyou, me, the Emperor, his generals, every soldier, and perhaps even all of Ubrus itself. We are all guilty... by your definition, at least.¡±
Gabriela let out a heavy exhalation of defeat. ¡°Well... if you really insist-¡±
¡°I do.¡±
¡°-then... alright. I guess you can come as well.¡±
¡°I¡¯m glad we could come to an understanding. Now go relax on the bed or something until I¡¯m finished. I¡¯ll be ready before you know it.¡±
Not more than half an hour later, the two of them stood outside the inn. They presented a study of contrasts¡ªGabby, with her somewhat frumpy appearance, rugged clothes, giant sword, and massive backpack, standing next to Chitra, with her gorgeous looks, elegant Chinese-style dress, and smaller, fashionable pack hanging off one shoulder. Few people seeing them would assume they were together.
¡°So, I just thought of a problem,¡± Gabby said, turning to look up at the taller Scyrian. ¡°How are you going to keep up with me?¡±
¡°Were you not going to use one of those walking machines?¡±
¡°No, I was just going to run. I¡¯m much faster than those things.¡±
¡°Well then, I guess there is only one option left: you will have to carry me.¡±
Gabriela choked on her saliva.
A few hours later, the pair crossed the Otharian border into Eterium, and for Gabby, it wasn¡¯t a moment too soon. Despite Gabby¡¯s protests, Chitra had not just insisted on being carried, but that it be a certain way: like a princess, with Gabby¡¯s one arm around Chitra¡¯s back, her other arm beneath Chitra¡¯s legs, and Chitra¡¯s arms wrapped around Gabby¡¯s neck. It was like she was reclining in a lawn chair made out of Gabby¡¯s limbs. The significance of this carrying method seemed lost on Chitra, but it left Gabby mortified every time they passed by somebody.
¡°We should be nearing Obosall any time now,¡± Chitra spoke into the wind. ¡°Did you desire to stop there?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know. I didn¡¯t really have a concrete plan,¡± Gabby admitted.
¡°I believe it would be best for us to tarry there at least for a moment. The people here would know the state of their nation better than Otharia. What they tell us would likely help you find what you seek more quickly.¡±
¡°You have a point.¡±
¡°Then, let me down here where nobody can see us and let us walk the rest of the way. You can leave the negotiating to me.¡±
Gabby consented and set the Ubran daintily down on her feet.
¡°Gabby, dear, you¡¯re bright red,¡± Chitra observed. ¡°Are you all right? Carrying me shouldn¡¯t have been that taxing for you, could it?¡±
¡°No, no,¡± Gabby replied, perhaps too quickly, ¡°I¡¯m fine.¡±
¡°Gabby, now, especially, is not the time to keep your pain to yourself. If there¡¯s something wrong, say so.¡±
¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡±
Chitra didn¡¯t respond with anything more than an unconvinced look. The gaze was stern enough that Gabby wilted within short order.
¡°I-It¡¯s... just that... the way you insisted I carry you was... really embarrassing,¡± Gabby confessed.
¡°Embarrassing? How so? It¡¯s nothing more than a simple way to carry a person, is it not?¡±
¡°W-well... on Earth, it¡¯s... it¡¯s how a groom carries his bride when they get married,¡± she squeaked out.
After a moment of stunned silence, Chitra burst out in riotous laughter.
¡°Oh, Gabby, sometimes you can be such a little honey bud. If I can get this adorable reaction from accidentally teasing you, maybe I should start doing it on purpose.¡±
"No, thank you,¡± Gabriela groaned.
Chitra¡¯s laughter continued for some time as they walked the final kilometer to Obosall. It wasn¡¯t until they crested a small hill and spotted the low city walls in the distance that she adopted her usual decorum.
Gabby said nothing as her friend suddenly shifted from snickering jester to elegant temptress. She knew from many months shared together that the Batranala¡¯s usual persona was a front of sorts, a sort of social armor constructed to do battle in the high-pressure courts of the Ubran Imperial Palace. In a way, Gabby treasured those extremely rare moments when her companion was either comfortable or off-balance enough that the mask would momentarily slip. She had seen more glimpses of the enigmatic woman¡¯s ¡°true¡± self than perhaps anybody¡ªassuming, of course, that the persona revealed during these moments was, in fact, the real Chitra and not just another front. All this supposed that the Chitra projected to the world ninety-nine percent of the time was nothing but a big ball of lies, which really wasn¡¯t fair to presume and it wasn¡¯t like the public Chitra was terrible or anything and-
Gabby fiercely shook her head to stop that train of thought before it jumped the tracks. None of this mattered, anyway. What mattered was that Chitra was her beloved friend, the person who had, almost single-handedly, kept Gabby sane during the most trying times of her life. As terrible as she¡¯d felt recently, it couldn¡¯t hold a candle to those torturous first few weeks, when every waking moment had been nothing but emotional agony. She didn¡¯t know what would have happened to her if Chitra had not been at her side to support her through those terrible days.
Gabriela distracted herself from her thoughts by looking around and taking in their environment as they approached the city. The first big difference she noticed between Obosall and cities in Otharia was the quality of the roads. Most of the roads in Otharia were little more than packed dirt; even the roads leading into Wroetin were mostly gravel. The roads approaching Obosall¡ªuntil very recently the least important major city in Eterium, if Gabby understood correctly¡ªeasily outclassed the roads around the Otharian capital. The one they walked upon, for example, was wide enough for three carriages to travel down it side by side, their wheels barely bouncing on the smooth, flat paving stones that made up the road¡¯s surface.
¡°Of course,¡± Chitra responded when Gabby vocalized her observation. ¡°Eterium was a country that thrived on trade. Good, well-maintained roads can be expensive, but the quick and efficient movement of goods that they enable generates profits that greatly exceed the cost. That friend of yours would be wise to invest more in the infrastructure of his roadways."
¡°I feel like he has other priorities,¡± Gabby told her. She looked around some more, noting the mostly barren earth surrounding the city. She could spot plant life fighting to reclaim the dirt as its own, but for the most part, little greenery could be found. All there was to see was desolate ground all the way to the ring of wooden buildings erected around the city walls. She could see what looked like normal dwellings, as well as a few shops and even an inn or two, almost like a second smaller, poorer town had grown up around the first.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
¡°This place must have been built after the war began,¡± Chitra mused, evidently on the same mental wavelength as she. ¡°Initial reports never mentioned the construction outside the walls. They must be new. I heard there was a massive influx of refugees to this area. Perhaps some decided to stay and make something more permanent.¡±
The pair passed through the shantytown, ignoring the stares of the locals as they went. Approaching the gate, Gabby fell back and let Chitra do what she did best. The gorgeous woman worked her magic as only she could, unlocking the gate with little more than a smile. A moment later, they ambled into the city without even having to pay the standard entry fee. Gabby couldn¡¯t help but notice with amusement how the heated stares of the three male guards locked on Chitra¡¯s back were matched by the single female guard¡¯s intense yearning gaze. Chitra was, if anything, an equal opportunity seductress.
Immediately, the Ubran beelined for the most luxurious inn in the city, renting them a room at a discount earned by a pleading frown and some non-specific promises of gratefulness. There, they dropped off their equipment¡ªincluding the Sword of Eternity; despite her great reluctance to leave it, the weapon would call too much attention to her tonight¡ªand quickly cleaned themselves before heading back out into the town for what the Batranala called ¡°reconnaissance¡±.
The Chitra show continued as they proceeded to visit several upscale taverns scattered throughout the city. Each time, the woman would single out a particular person in the tavern as her target¡ªsomehow always a merchant, though Gabby hadn¡¯t the foggiest idea how Chitra could tell at a mere glance; most of them weren¡¯t dressed any different than the other patrons¡ªand within minutes, said target would be spilling their deepest, darkest secrets.
Gabby couldn¡¯t help but stay out of the way and be impressed at how easily the Ubran wrapped them each around her finger; a shy smile here, a petite laugh there, a subtly worded question to get the conversation flowing in the desired direction... Gabby was truly watching a master at work.
That night, the pair sat in their posh room in the city¡¯s most luxurious inn and went over what information Chitra had managed to gather, poring over a detailed map of Eterium that one of Chitra¡¯s victims had insisted she accept as a gift. Combining all the things they¡¯d learned, they¡¯d managed to construct a fairly good picture of the country as seen through the eyes of the traders who¡¯d been traversing it since the war¡¯s conclusion.
¡°I suggest we start by heading northwest to visit Krinallen and then proceed to Hankala. Both villages were utterly ravaged by the war, so you¡¯re very likely to find what you are looking for there. I was told that Hankala is barely a village anymore; most of the adults had to leave to join the war effort, and only one or two returned alive. What¡¯s more, that direction will put us in a good position to push into what used to be Gustil, as you said you wanted to do.¡±
Gabby repressed a flinch at the way Chitra called it ¡°what used to be Gustil¡± instead of just ¡°Gustil¡±. She¡¯d done more than anybody else to destroy that country, personally slaying the vast majority of its leaders and elites, including the royal family.
¡°Why these smaller villages instead of the cities? Wouldn¡¯t we find more people we¡¯re looking for in the cities?¡±
¡°Several reasons. First, the cities will still be around later, while these villages may not be. From the sounds of it, some of the smaller towns like these have been hit so hard that we cannot assume they won¡¯t fall apart entirely in the near future. Second, you wanted to do this in a personal fashion, right? Just you and somebody whose life you impacted? Because going to the cities right away is a surefire way to not get that. I personally think it would be wise to at least start with smaller groups of people before stepping into a place where your being recognized could cause either mass panic or a riot.¡±
¡°You have a point,¡± Gabby admitted.
¡°And as to Krinallen and Hankala?¡±
¡°Makes sense. Let¡¯s do it.¡±
Krinallen was located near the very center of the nation, right on the western edge of the country¡¯s breadbasket and right in between the nation¡¯s two most populous cities¡ªor, most populous before the war, at least. From there, they could continue traveling northwest to Hankala, going north of Crirada and approaching the Deadlands and the border with Kutrad. From there, it would be a straight shot west through the Deadlands and past Begale to Gustil.
Begale... It was the one place where she¡¯d already come to face the consequences of her crimes. She absolutely had to return there in the future, no matter what, even if she dreaded it.
¡°So, now that we have a plan for where to go,¡± Chitra began, ¡°I must confess my curiosity as to your plan for what to do when you arrive.¡±
¡°Uh...¡±
¡°Gabriela Carreno, are you seriously about to tell me you didn¡¯t think about it yet?¡±
¡°I mean, it¡¯s not like I haven¡¯t thought about it some,¡± Gabby bashfully confessed, ¡°but I¡¯m not sure what to do because I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m walking into.¡±
¡°Hmm, you have a bit of a point, I suppose.¡±
¡°What do you think I should do?¡±
¡°Well, it would probably be best to take things somewhat slowly. Don¡¯t be too forceful. Just enter the village, perhaps strike up a conversation.¡±
¡°But, then what? Just declare who I am? That seems... too awkward.¡±
¡°I would suggest using the sword. It¡¯s a very unique, eye-catching, and, dare I say, now infamous weapon. If there are veterans of the war there, one of them should notice it fairly quickly. Then, work with their reaction and go from there.¡±
¡°I see. That would work, I guess. It¡¯s better than anything I have come up with so far. Thanks.¡±
¡°Now, aren¡¯t you glad I came along?¡± Chitra said with a cheeky grin.
¡°Yes, thank you,¡± Gabby admitted. She couldn¡¯t help but recognize how much help Chitra had been already, just on this first day. Without her, Gabby¡¯s journey would have surely been far more chaotic and confused.
Chitra sighed and gave a tired smirk in return. ¡°You¡¯re so genuine, Gabby. Hopefully, one day, you¡¯ll learn to play the game¡ªif only just a little. Though, I do appreciate the straightforwardness.
¡°Now, with all that worked out, I think it¡¯s time I got my beauty sleep. With all of this beauty, I need a lot of sleep, wouldn¡¯t you agree?¡±
With that said, Chitra left to prepare for bed. After her nightly prayers, Gabby followed suit.
The next morning, the pair left the same way they came, walking out of the city and down the road until they were out of sight of everybody. With an evil giggle, Chitra climbed into Gabby¡¯s arms like before, wrapping her arms around Gabby¡¯s neck and pulling her head up to the side of Gabby¡¯s head.
¡°Carry me with care, dearest husband,¡± Chitra whispered into Gabby¡¯s ear.
Gabriela immediately went beet red and Chitra fell into another fit of laughter. Gabby sighed. This was going to be a long trip. Still, teasing travel partner aside, Gabby had a feeling that it would also be a good and fruitful one.
There was a pitchfork lodged in Gabriela¡¯s kidney. She ignored it for the moment, taking in her situation.
She¡¯d walked into the quaint little town no more than ten minutes ago, her steps fueled by a potent mix of anxiety and hope. Krinallen would have looked almost picturesque in a better time, Gabby could tell. A collection of old-fashioned wooden homes dug into the sides of shallow hills to protect against the winds of the rolling plains, the village was surrounded by verdant crop fields that swayed gently in the soft breeze. In another reality, in another time, she could imagine the place as a very minor tourist destination, the sort of place someone might visit when they just need total relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life.
In the present day, however, not so much. The place had clearly been through some hard times, and with clear signs of neglect visible even to her layman¡¯s eye. It didn¡¯t take a genius to figure out what would have caused these hard times.
The village had not been very populated when Gabby had strolled in. Most of the inhabitants that she¡¯d been able to see had been out in the fields, working their trade. The few who had been in the village had given her wary but curious looks, but that was all. Then, a teenage boy had stepped out of a nearby home, taken one look at her¡ªor more accurately, the Sword of Eternity strapped to her back¡ªand gasped. His eyes had gone hard and his face had flushed with anger before he¡¯d sprinted out of sight.
Only a minute or two later, he¡¯d returned, ¡°armed¡± with a pitchfork and accompanied by a dozen other villagers. In the blink of an eye, Gabby found herself facing a semicircle of angry villagers. Gabriela Carreno had been confronted by large groups of hostile people many times since the start of the invasion the year before; this was the first time, however, that her opponents wielded farm implements instead of weapons. The sudden escalation had been so swift and off-putting that she¡¯d barely noticed the teen boy¡¯s thrust until it stabbed into her side.
¡°Leave our village alone, you fiend!¡± the teen, no more than fourteen years old by his appearance, shouted from behind one of the other villagers as he retreated, presumably to find a second makeshift weapon. The others quickly added their voices in agreement.
¡°You fools! What are you doing?!¡± a middle-aged man as he sprinted in from the fields. The newcomer took one look at her and visibly paled.
¡°It¡¯s the Undying Monster, the one you and the others told us about!¡± the boy shouted back. ¡°Look at the sword on her back and her black hair! Who else would have a sword like that?!¡±
¡°I know who it is, you stupid boy!¡± the man spat back. ¡°You¡¯re going to get us all killed!¡±
Gabby glanced down at the pitchfork embedded in her kidney. Two of the coarse iron tines were buried deep into her torso, with the third scraping the skin of her back. In another time, she would be on the ground, howling in pain, but she had a very different relationship with pain now. With a sigh, she restored her flesh, eating away at the farm implement until all the metal inside her ceased to exist. What remained of the pitchfork fell to the dirt with a clang, two tines suddenly missing.
A murmur arose from the small crowd and the looks of fear on their faces only intensified and they all took a step or two back. This was very much not how she¡¯d hoped this would go.
The older man, seemingly now the leader of the group for no other reason than his obvious experience in the war, weakly pushed through the loose ring of villagers. ¡°Why have you come here?¡± he asked, his voice quavering slightly. He was clearly putting a large amount of effort into not appearing too afraid of her, but his trembling hands betrayed his nerves.
Gabby opened her mouth to respond but found herself lacking a proper answer. Nothing she could think of really sounded good or right in the moment. After a long, tense moment, all she managed to get out was ¡°I just want to make things right... undo my mistakes.¡±
¡°Make things right?!¡± the boy howled. ¡°Bring me my brother back, then, Monster! You killed him, so make it right! Or are you only good for killing people who didn¡¯t want anything to do with any of you bloody Ubrans?!¡±
Gabby could only hang her head in response.
¡°The boy¡¯s right,¡± the man told her, his voice finding more steel than before. ¡°There¡¯s nothing you can do here other than hurt us more than you already have. We can¡¯t stop you, but I humbly beg you, if you have a heart in that undying body of yours, that you leave this place and never come back.¡±
¡°Yeah... alright,¡± she sighed. Without another word, Gabriela turned around and started to walk, before pausing and looking back. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±
¡°¡®Sorry¡¯ won¡¯t bring back the dead,¡± the man said.
Gabby had no reply.
Continuing up the road and over the closest hill, Gabby came across a scene that felt like it was from a completely different world than the one she¡¯d just left behind. When she¡¯d left Chitra, the Ubran woman had been all alone. Some time since she¡¯d left, however, Chitra had gained three new companions. The trio of young children, perhaps five or six years old, ran about the slope, giggling as they stayed just barely out of reach as the Batranala chased them¡ªor rather, as she moved just slowly enough to be unable to catch the stubby-legged tykes.
The Scyrian noticed Gabby¡¯s presence quickly and shooed the children away. They waved as they ran off, and Chitra waved back, a pleasant smile on her face.
¡°I didn¡¯t know you liked children,¡± Gabby commented.
¡°Children are wonderful; they¡¯re incredible mounds of potential. It¡¯s adults¡ªthe vast majority of them who fail to realize even a drop of that potential¡ªthat irk me,¡± came the reply. Chitra¡¯s brows furrowed and she frowned as she spotted the two new holes in Gabby¡¯s outfit. ¡°I see things went worse than hoped.¡±
Gabby¡¯s face fell.
¡°I can¡¯t say I¡¯m surprised, but it is nonetheless disappointing. Are you done with this place?¡±
¡°Yeah...¡± Gabby sighed.
¡°Shall we continue onward, then? Or have you finally reconsidered this whole endeavor?¡±
¡°No, let¡¯s keep going,¡± she replied with a determination she wasn¡¯t quite sure she still felt.
¡°Are you sure you want to do this?¡± Chitra whispered as they huddled behind a rock out of view of Hankala.
¡°Yes, Chitra, enough,¡± Gabby testily answered. ¡°I cannot just give up because the first time went poorly. It should go better now that I¡¯m leaving the sword with you, anyway.¡±
Chitra let out a noncommittal hum and said nothing more.
Still, despite what she¡¯d claimed, Gabby¡¯s worry, reinforced by the events in Krinallen, bore down on her as she approached the broken-down hamlet. She¡¯d been told that Haleakala had lost even more from the war than Krinallen, and from what she could see so far, this seemed depressingly true. Would the people here be even more desperate and ready to lash out?
Lit well by the rays of the morning sun, Hankala looked to be a tiny village ringed by a wooden wall. She spotted maybe thirty small houses within the walls, all of them beaten down and dilapidated. The wall looked even worse for wear. In fact, on second thought, the term ¡°ringed¡± didn¡¯t really apply here; at least half of the wall was effectively missing, having fallen or broken for reasons unknown. Much of it appeared fairly recent, including what she believed had in the not-so-distant past been the hamlet¡¯s gate.
Slowly, cautiously, she stepped into the village proper. She looked around for anybody still alive. At first, she found nobody, until a small hint of motion caught the corner of her eye. Sitting on a simple stool outside a nearby house was an old man, one so still that she hadn¡¯t even noticed him at first. He turned to her, as if just noticing her as well, and smiled wearily but warmly.
¡°Well, stars above, a new face!¡± the elder chuckled. ¡°I apologize for the lack of welcome, but we weren¡¯t expecting anybody. Nary a person comes to our little home, save a couple of merchants twice a year and, of course, the tax collector. Even the merchants have stopped now, it seems. Not that I blame them, with what happened with the war and all...¡±
¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m here actually,¡± Gabby told him, glad for a way to tell him that wasn¡¯t too direct. ¡°I heard that this place suffered from the war worse than most.¡±
¡°Aye, that we did,¡± the man confirmed, his voice filling with sorrow. ¡°Twenty-four of us left to defend our homeland, nearly one person for each family. Only one returned, if you can even call it that.¡±
Gabby let out an involuntary hiss of pain and dismay.
¡°Aye, you understand. This place, our home... it doesn¡¯t have long left. Any village would suffer losing so many able-bodied adults, and life was hard here even before. Now, we don¡¯t even have enough people to maintain the wall, and without the wall, there is no Hankala.¡±
¡°Really? That bad?¡± Gabby asked, puzzled by such a dire statement.
¡°The winds here can be wild and strong¡ªfar too strong for us to survive unprotected. The storms, they come through from the Deadlands filled with a powerful rage. The wall protects us, keeps our homes from being blown down. But, it takes a lot of work to keep up. We could never afford a stone Observer, so we¡¯ve had to make do with wood, but even that isn¡¯t easy to get. We have to travel north to Kutrad each year to harvest what we can afford and hope it will be enough to fix the damage built up since the last trip. It always is, barely. Or, always was, for generations.
¡°Without our people, we couldn¡¯t afford enough wood to fix the wall this year¡ªand we didn¡¯t have enough people to carry it all back, even if we had the money. Hankala¡¯s death was written at that moment. The storm that blew through two nights ago sealed the fate of this place. After a year of punishment, our protector finally fell. There¡¯re a few foolish holdouts, but most of the people here are preparing to leave in search of a new home. Where, I cannot say.¡±
Gabby swallowed, a bottomless pit of guilt forming within her stomach. She hated hearing these words, but she knew that she could not run from them. This was what she had left Otharia to find.
¡°But where are my manners?¡± the elderly man scoffed. ¡°You can call me Osaba. I¡¯m the head of the village these days, or of what¡¯s left of it. Too old to do anything actually useful, so they stuck me with this.¡±
¡°I¡¯m Gabriela.¡±
¡°Now, if you came because of the war, then that means you must be here to see Aurken, yes?¡±
¡°Is that the man who returned?¡±
¡°Aye, though... well, you¡¯ll see soon enough.¡±
The man pulled out a walking stick from behind the stool and stood up. Together, they walked to the other end of the cluster of houses and stopped at one. The home looked no different than the others. They were all equally ramshackle to her eyes, little more than some wooden boards sloppily formed into four walls and a roof to form a single room. The only difference between them was their relative locations.
Osaba rapped on the door of this particular home with his stick. ¡°Oi, Aurken! Come out! You have a visitor!¡±
Gabby heard the sounds of shuffling from within and stepped to the side, out of the way of the door. Slowly, the door opened and a man soon replaced it. Gabby understood with a single look what Osaba had been alluding to. The man looked like he¡¯d just woken from a terrible nightmare. Thin and disheveled, he looked at the elder with a gaze haunted by the ghosts of events past.
¡°Aurken, lad! How fare you today?¡±
¡°I¡¯m alright,¡± Aurken replied, though he sounded less than convincing. He looked like he hadn¡¯t slept and Gabby could hear his breath shudder when he inhaled. Her understanding of Scyrian hardiness told her that he should have healed from any war injuries he might have suffered long ago. So, why the hitches in his breath?
¡°Well, look lively, now. This lass came all the way here to see you.¡±
For the first time, the man seemed to notice Gabby¡¯s presence off to the side. The moment he saw her, Aurken went stiff as a board. The moment between them went still as he seemed to stare both at her and past her, some phantom unknown filling his vision. Then, he shrieked, shattering the moment like a brick through a glass window.
¡°No! Stay back!¡± the man cried, darting back inside. Cacophonous sounds of objects crashing to the floor could be heard from within.
Gabby and Osaba rushed inside to find the inside of the home a mess¡ªthough how much was new, she couldn¡¯t say. Broken pottery littered the ground beside upturned furniture. The main piece in the home, a rough and crude but solid-looking table, lay on its side like a barricade. Aurken himself cowered in the far corner, a small knife clutched desperately in his hands.
¡°Stars above, where did he get that?¡± the old man muttered to himself.
Gabby stepped forward, her heart aching for the man before her. ¡°I¡¯m not going to hurt you,¡± she said as calmly and reassuringly as she could manage. Her words seemed to have no effect. She wasn¡¯t even sure that he was able to hear them.
¡°No, no, no! Stay back!¡± he repeated, the terror in his voice and on his face growing with every step she took. He shrank back, seemingly oppressed by her mere presence, until he slipped on a piece of a broken pot. Landing with a wicked thud, something inside him seem to break and he curled up into a ball, his arms protecting his head. ¡°No! I can¡¯t- I can¡¯t breathe! The mist, it burns! I can¡¯t breathe! Stop! Please, stop! I can¡¯t-¡±
Aurken¡¯s desperate pleading fell away, replaced instead by piteous sobbing as he trembled on the dirt floor. The knife fell from his hands as all resistance within him evaporated.
Gabby stood over him, unsure what to do. Did he actually recognize her? Had she done something to him and his brethren? Or was he just mixing some memory he had of her during the siege with other trauma he¡¯d received during those terrible days? He¡¯d mentioned mist that burned, but that hadn¡¯t been her. Several of the more powerful Ubran Observers fought using a poisonous mist, but she¡¯d never worked with them, nor had she wanted to. But still, he and the rest of this village had only come to harm because of her. If not for her selfishness...
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she finally said. It wasn¡¯t much¡ªnot nearly enough, in truth¡ªbut it was all she could find within her to say. Just her proximity to him was making things worse. Maybe the people in Krinallen were right. Maybe this whole trip was worse than just a fool¡¯s errand. Maybe it was actually harmful to those whom she¡¯d already hurt. Maybe she was just making things worse.
Turning back, Gabriela strode from the shack, tears in her eyes and a storm in her heart. In her selfishness, she¡¯d played a part in the mental destruction of that poor man, and she bore some responsibility¡ªif not all of it¡ªfor the death of this community. Back during the war, she¡¯d been able to distance herself from the horrible consequences of war. But now, with what she knew today, every bit of suffering she saw that was even remotely connected to the invasion felt like rubbing sandpaper on an open wound in her spirit. But what could she do? All she was good for was slicing things up.
She felt so powerless.
¡°I apologize for that sad display,¡± Osaba said, coming up behind her. ¡°We thought we took all his blades away after the last time, but he must have hidden one somewhere. He always liked his knives.¡±
¡°It¡¯s alright. I¡¯m not the one hurt here,¡± she sniffed, wiping her face on her sleeve.
¡°You act like you are the one that did this to him.¡±
¡°I played a part in it, and maybe more than a part. I hurt a lot of people; too many to ever remember,¡± she admitted. ¡°The uncertainty just makes it worse. I can never be sure I¡¯m not responsible for somebody¡¯s suffering.¡±
The old man didn¡¯t respond.
Gabriela looked around again at the run-down shacks and the broken wall that made up the small village of Hankala. By all rights, the place shouldn¡¯t have existed in the first place. The soil was rocky and bad. There weren¡¯t many large animals to hunt. Nature itself seemed to despise the village¡¯s existence, as demonstrated by the need for the wall in the first place. Hankala was, if anything, a testament to the human spirit. These people had lived here, eking out a paltry existence, for generations, refusing to give up¡ªuntil she¡¯d set into action a course of events that had managed to do what wind, rain, poor harvests, and any other number of hardships had been unable to achieve. The end of a community¡ªall because of her and a wall.
Unless...
She turned back to the old man, who looked at her with a wariness that hadn¡¯t been there before, though that was all. She didn¡¯t see much else in his eyes but the burdens of sadness.
¡°Osaba, tell me truthfully: if the wall was intact, would Hankala survive?¡±
¡°I would say so, aye,¡± he replied after a moment. ¡°A few would probably still leave, but most would stay. We¡¯re an ornery lot. A village like this doesn¡¯t survive so long otherwise. But, what does it matter? The wall is broken beyond repair.¡±
A lightness filled her soul as she finally saw a path forward. She could not save the villagers who had died in the war, but she could still save their legacy. ¡°Then I¡¯ll make you a new wall. One bigger and stronger so you won¡¯t need to keep fixing it every year.¡±
¡°Madam Gabriela, you would do that for us humble folk?¡± he asked with surprise.
¡°I will. Just give me...¡± she looked at the sun¡¯s position. I was still early, perhaps eight in the morning. ¡°...I should have it done by nightfall if all goes well.¡±
¡°You mean to say you will do it all by yourself? Surely you jest!¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t joke about something like this, Mister Osaba.¡±
¡°Either way, we cannot pay you what you would need¡ªnot even if we were still whole.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t need payment. I only need two things from you.¡±
¡°Yes?¡±
¡°First, I need people to keep my companion entertained while I¡¯m gone. Second, I¡¯m going to need all the rope you have.¡±
Wind whipped through Gabriela¡¯s hair as she blurred through the steppe-like terrain north of Hankala, moving at a velocity that would have terrified her not too long ago. The land was mostly vacant¡ªlittle more than empty plains with only the occasional road running through it¡ªbut had anybody been around to see her, they would have witnessed quite a strange sight. It wasn¡¯t often that somebody could watch a woman carrying a giant ball of rope over her head zip past at well over a hundred kilometers per hour. If said watcher was observant enough, they might even notice an impossible sight. Gabriela had something almost resembling a smile on her face.
For perhaps the first time since arriving here, she was using her power entirely in service of a constructive goal. Even when she¡¯d done good other times, she¡¯d done so by killing. This time, however, there would be no death¡ªexcept the death of trees, of course. The feeling filled her with a thrumming excitement and pushed her faster. The power beating inside her wasn¡¯t as strong as it had been back during the invasion, but there was a vigor within it that had been missing since her battle with Blake, the day when she¡¯d learned the terrible truth.
Entering the southern forests of Kutrad, Gabby zipped about until she found what she was looking for: a section of large, strong trees, wide enough and tall enough to work for what she had in mind. The Sword of Eternity made the greatest woodcutter¡¯s axe imaginable. Every swing felled a tree, and within moments she had felled dozens. She moved on to the next step, slicing each one into huge, rectangular columns over ten meters long and more than a meter wide. Lastly, she stacked them on top of each other, using the rope she¡¯d brought with her to keep them together as she lifted them over her head, and began the task of carting them back south.
Once Gabby returned to Hankala, the last process was simple: first, dig hole¡ªonce again made easy by her strength and her tool; being seemingly indestructible, the Sword of Eternity made quick work of the earth. Second, embed giant wooden plank into hole so that plank is over three meters into the ground and secure against winds. Dig second hole next to the first hole and repeat process until out of wood or town fully encircled.
Gabby spent her day rebuilding the wall, running back and forth between the village and the Kutrad forest to the north. As she had predicted that morning, the task took but a day. Just before sundown, she placed the final post and stepped back to admire her handiwork to the cheers of the locals.
The entire village of Hankala was encompassed by an array of massive carved tree trunks placed in a mostly circular fashion with just millimeters of space between them. Well over ten times thicker than the previous wooden boards¡ªand much taller as well for better wind blockage¡ªthey would stand against the storm far better than what they had before.
To make it even better, while she¡¯d been busy running around, Chitra had shown some villagers how to make a sort of resin out of some of the local grasses, which they had used to fill the gaps between the wood. Other villagers had spent their day constructing a thick, sturdy gate out of the remnants of the original wall. Once she had cut them a hole, they could put it in.
All in all, the wall was not a master class in carpentry or civil engineering, but it would do the job. Looking at it, she even felt a little pride. The village, or at least what was left of it, could be saved.
That last thought soured Gabriela¡¯s mood, bringing her back down to reality again. Yes, she was saving the village, but she was saving it from a fate she had thrust upon it, and the place would still be crippled. The joyous looks on the villagers¡¯ faces no longer gave her the high they had earlier that day. No amount of Osaba¡¯s frequent thanks made her feel much better. She¡¯d done good this day, but it was but a single mark on the proper side of a very unbalanced ledger.
As night fell, Gabriela found herself on a straw mattress on the floor of an empty house that the villagers had let her and Chitra use for the night. Sleeping in a home that was likely vacant due in some part to her deeds only served to drag her mood lower. Chitra had left several hours ago, saying she wanted to go for a walk under the moonslight, but Gabby had felt too drained¡ªemotionally, if not physically¡ªto accept the invitation to join her. So, instead, she lay there on the mattress, eyes closed as she tried to fall asleep, much as she had for the last hour or more.
A quiet footstep outside the shack¡¯s door graced her ears. Chitra had returned. Ever so slowly, the door opened, the wooden hinges creaking softly. She heard a shuddering breath.
Gabby involuntarily tensed as she realized that it was not Chitra at all; it was Aurken, and she had a strong feeling that he would not be sneaking into the home where she slept with anything but bad intentions. But, what to do?
Gabby decided to do nothing for the moment. She knew that Aurken presented no threat to her. She figured that she would just pretend to sleep for now and hope he left, as interacting with him was far more likely to go bad. She could always change her mind and engage at any time.
The steps grew closer until they stopped right by her side. Gabby listened to the shuddering breaths, each ragged inhalation bringing to mind the agony Aurken had suffered during the war.
She heard the man lower himself down to his knees, his hitched breathing even closer to her now. Still, she continued to pretend to sleep.
The breathing picked up, becoming more forceful and rapid until it bordered on hyperventilation. Gabby finally found herself too overcome by morbid curiosity to keep her eyes closed any longer. She opened them just a sliver, enough to make out the man kneeling beside her.
Aurken stared down at her with manic despair, a toothy grimace shining in the dimness beneath frantic, bloodshot eyes. A glint of metal flickered above his head as he brought his arms down with everything he had.
Gabriela made no effort to stop the blade from plunging towards her heart. With a wet thump, Aurken buried it to the hilt into her heart. She accepted the pain without even a twitch, welcoming it as she had all the agony she¡¯d suffered these last months. It was just one more deserved punishment.
Aurken let out the air he¡¯d been holding with a loud, heavy exhalation. He took another breath, drawing it in smoothly for the first time that Gabby had heard since they¡¯d met, as if by slaying her, he had slain the demons plaguing him. He exhaled without a shudder again, and Gabby could practically hear the relief and joy in every breath.
But then, on the fifth breath, the ragged shudder returned¡ªfirst just a hint of it, but growing with each successive breath.
¡°N-no...¡± Aurken gasped. ¡°No!¡±
Gabby opened her eyes fully as she felt him rip the blade from her chest. With frenzied strength, he plunged it back in.
¡°Make it stop!¡± he cried, his arms working like a piston as he struck her over and over and over. ¡°Make it stop! Make it stop make it stop makeitstop makeitstop makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop! MAKE IT-!¡±
The hand of a shadowy figure grabbed the mad villager by the neck from behind. With a simple but powerful motion, the figure launched Aurken through the air and against the opposite wall with such force that he crashed through the flimsy wood and fell still on the ground outside.
¡°Chitra!¡± Gabby hissed, her wounds healing in an instant as she stood up to confront the shadowy figure. ¡°What was that for?¡±
¡°What do you mean, ¡®what was that for¡¯?!¡± her friend shot back. ¡°He was stabbing you!¡±
¡°So? It¡¯s not like he was actually doing any real damage.¡±
¡°So, what, you were going to just let him keep doing it until he got bored?!¡±
¡°Why not? After what I did to him-¡±
¡°For the love of Nartrill, you didn¡¯t do anything to him!¡± Chitra hollered. ¡°Almost all the gas Observers were on the eastern side! I doubt he ever got within a thousand paces of you! Face it, Gabby, there are probably thousands of people who came back from the war not entirely right! What are you going to do, find them all and let them massacre you until they all feel better?!¡±
¡°Well, I mean-¡±
¡°Stars above, Gabby! It was hard enough back then seeing them carry you into our tent every day, your body bloody, headless, and full of holes! Now, you want me to watch as you wander around the continent, letting every single veteran in Eterium with a twitch or a bad cough turn you into mincemeat?! No! I won¡¯t stand for it!¡±
¡°Oh, now you¡¯re having second thoughts? You knew what this was from the beginning! If you had such a problem with it, why did you even demand to come along, then?!¡±
¡°Fine, fuck it. Why don¡¯t you figure that out?¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Tell me, Gabby, why would I decide to throw away perfectly good opportunities to live a wonderful, comfortable life in a proper country like Kutrad or Eterium and instead move to a shithole like Otharia? Why would I go through all the effort of finding a way past an army of murderous machines, just to get into a country most famous for hating anybody who isn¡¯t a native? Well?¡±
¡°Wait, I thought you said that you wouldn¡¯t be welcome anywhere but Otharia.¡±
¡°That was a lie to make you feel better, and you should have known it the moment I said it. Somebody with my looks, knowledge, and skills? If I left for Kutrad tonight, their King would welcome me with open arms tomorrow! But that¡¯s beside the point right now! Think it through, Miss Can¡¯t Take A Fucking Hint! Why did I do that?¡±
The answer was obvious, of course. What else could it be? ¡°Because you¡¯re my friend, right?¡±
¡°Yeah? Is everything I said before the sort of thing that friends do? Do friends drop everything in their lives to walk around the middle of nowhere and sleep in shacks? How much more obvious do I have to make it?!¡±
Gabby went quiet as she pondered Chitra¡¯s anger. All this time, Gabby had thought that Chitra was acting this way out of her friendship with Gabby. If that wasn¡¯t the case, then what other reasons could there be?
Immediately, her mind went to manipulation, which was no surprise, given recent history. Chitra was, she knew, a master manipulator. She¡¯d seen it in action dozens of times, just on this one journey! Yet, that didn¡¯t seem to mesh with what was happening right now. If you wanted to use somebody, you wouldn¡¯t want them thinking about the reasons for your actions, right?
But then, what else could it be? Was somebody paying her to be by Gabby¡¯s side? Technically, it was possible. In a way, that was what had happened in the beginning, right? But, it didn¡¯t feel right. Gabby couldn¡¯t help but feel that the Chitra she knew now wouldn¡¯t do that¡ªand, as before, alerting Gabby to all of this would just defeat the purpose.
Gabriela considered several other possibilities and discarded them all as well. Nothing seemed to make sense in this context. Not a single thing.
Well... except for one thing, that is¡ªsomething she¡¯d shoved away and out of sight long ago because it was both impossible and because it was... The more she thought about it, the more fearful Gabriela became. Within a moment, distress threatened to overwhelm her.
¡°N-no, Chitra, you can¡¯t be serious!¡±
¡°Why not?! Everybody always desires me, but it¡¯s always about them! Why can¡¯t I have my own desires?! My own wants and needs?! Don¡¯t I get to have a say in my life?!¡±
¡°But I¡¯m not-¡± Gabby tried to interject, but Chitra had already built up a head of steam and would not be denied.
With a graceful but quick and fluid motion, she reached up and delicately cradled the sides of Gabby¡¯s head with her dainty hands, her slim, smooth fingers running gently through Gabby¡¯s hair. The caress felt like caustic sandpaper against her skin.
¡°Do you have any idea how appealing I find you, Gabby? You decided that you needed something, and then you fought like a martok to get it, and woe to anybody foolish enough to get in your way. You stomped an entire nation under your heel to get what you desired! It was the most attractive thing I have ever seen!
¡°You spend all this time bemoaning your choices, but all I see is somebody who had a goal and let nothing stop her from working towards it. That¡¯s not something to be ashamed of, that¡¯s what you should do! That¡¯s how you have to live in this world! You should be holding your head high!
¡°Nobody understands you like I do, Gabby. We were meant for each other. I know you think I¡¯m beautiful. I¡¯ve seen the way you look at me when you don¡¯t think I¡¯m paying attention, and I like it, even! Don¡¯t you see? We could just leave and-¡±
¡°No!¡± Gabriela snapped, her disgust reaching a breaking point. She shoved Chitra away. ¡°No no no NO!¡±
Chitra seemed stunned at the rejection. ¡°If this is about your dead husband, I¡¯m female, so it¡¯s not like you are dishonoring him or-¡±
¡°It¡¯s not about that! Homosexuality is a great sin, Chitra! It¡¯s sinful and wrong and gross and I want nothing to do with it!¡±
Chitra rolled her eyes. ¡°Nobody bats an eye at same-gender romance here, Gabby. Besides, murder being a sin sure didn¡¯t stop you, did it?! Suddenly you care again about those silly superstitions of yours?!¡±
The words came like a slap across the face. Gabby felt her anger rise towards another for the first time in a while. ¡°After everything you did to help steer me down that path, you have the nerve to say that to me?¡±
¡°Oh, now you suddenly don¡¯t want to take all the blame for yourself?
¡°I think it would be best if you went back to Otharia now,¡± she growled.
¡°I¡¯m not leaving here until you see reason!¡±
¡°Fine, if you won¡¯t leave, then I will.¡± Using her unparalleled strength, she pushed through Chitra¡¯s feeble attempts to hold her back and marched out the door, ignoring the stares of several nearby villagers who¡¯d come out to see what all the ruckus was about.
¡°Gabby, wait! Where are you going?!¡± Chitra pleaded, chasing after her.
¡°Away,¡± Gabby snarled. ¡°Go back to Otharia¡ªor any of those other places that you¡¯re so sure would welcome you with open arms. Go anywhere you want, just as long as it¡¯s not near me.¡±
With that said, she took off, leaping easily over the tall new wooden wall and heading west towards the Deadlands at speeds nobody could hope to follow. However, no matter how fast she ran, she could never outrun the conflicted fury in her heart.
Chapter 117
Leo Feldmanis hated the chairs in the Otharian Cabinet¡¯s meeting room.
Like nearly everything in the fortress, they were made from metal¡ªtucrenyx, to be precise. The dull grey mineral no longer scared him the way it once had. Every Otharian¡ªand all other Scyrians, most likely¡ªgrew up associating the cursed metal with pain, evil, and prisoners. After all, to even attempt an Observation, even something as minor as a candle flame, while in contact with the metal was to invite excruciating pain unlike anything else one could experience.
Leo had had the poor fortune to experience the joys of tucrenyx firsthand more than most. His first experience had come during an educational seminar in his Voice training as a young man. The instructor had passed around a small chunk of the metal for each of the students to try Observing with. The pain had appeared the instant his Observation had begun, a debilitating pain that broke all his concentration. His singular thought at the time had been that he would never touch the terrible stuff again.
How foolish he¡¯d been.
Less than a decade later, he would find himself wearing that same metal all day, every day, for years and years. It was how Scyrian societies controlled their prisoners. Just a simple thick band was all that was needed to keep an Observer from utilizing their abilities. Feelers, on the other hand, needed much larger and sturdier setups. He¡¯d heard that Feelers suffered less than Observers, though as an Observer he didn¡¯t know for certain.
One thing he did know for certain was what it felt like to Observe in shackles. The pain went beyond the physical, striking seemingly at the soul itself. Adding to the pain was the unnatural and unpleasant sensation of one¡¯s soulforce going awry, as if something was ripping the internal energy from powering the Observation and redirecting it elsewhere.
None of that had stopped Leo from trying to power through the pain. He tried and tried and tried, working on his willpower, concentration, and pain tolerance. None of it had worked. After about five futile years of trying, he¡¯d given up, utterly defeated. What had followed were years of unceasing malaise, where every day was indistinguishable from the one before it¡ªuntil, one day, a man covered in tucrenyx came and freed him.
Leo had been too overwhelmed at the time to realize that the armor was a sign of things to come. As if Othar himself was taunting him, he¡¯d wound up in a place where everything was made from tucrenyx. And yet, things were different here. It was alright that the large circular table in front of him was made of the metal, as he had little need to Observe here, the free man that he was. In Lord Ferros¡¯s castle, the prevalence of his crystalline lights and ¡°plumbing¡± meant Leo didn¡¯t even need to conjure up a candle flame to read or water to clean.
Even if he did, though, the tucrenyx here didn¡¯t seem to cause interference and pain for reasons he could not fathom. He¡¯d seen several other ministers Observe while touching the meeting table and nothing had happened. It was like the rules were different here.
So no, while Leo Feldmanis did despise tucrenyx for its part in his years of suffering, he did not hate the tucrenyx chairs in the meeting room because of their material. He hated the chairs simply because they were bad chairs. They were hard and flat and cold and your back hurt after sitting in one for just half an hour. For all the wonders of Blake¡¯s powers and talents, his limited furniture design skills didn¡¯t seem to place much value in comfort. Sometimes Leo wondered if the man¡¯s paralysis meant that, since he didn¡¯t feel the discomfort himself, he just didn¡¯t give it much consideration.
He knew about the ruler of Otharia¡¯s injury, of course¡ªSamanta had told him very early on¡ªthough he wasn¡¯t sure that Blake knew that he knew. Leo suspected that Blake suspected, but neither of them had ever broached the subject and they both saw fit to leave it that way. It was for the best.
A reasonable person would probably ask, if he hated the chairs so much, just why he insisted on being the first person in the council chamber and sitting for any longer than need be. There were many reasons for this, of course. First, it was better to be early than late. Arriving early lent an air of competence and seriousness to his image, which was important for somebody like Leo who relied in part on his authority to manage the ministers. Arriving late imparted a message to all present that either you thought the meeting was not worth your time, you were too disorganized to be punctual to a regularly scheduled gathering, or you were so selfish that you didn¡¯t care if others had to wait for you. Arriving on time didn¡¯t do much of anything other than blend you in with the other attendees. All things considered, it was clear that arriving early was always best.
Being the first in the room had the added benefit of allowing Leo to study the other ministers as they came in and perhaps glean some information from casual conversation before Lord Ferros arrived. The various ministers¡¯ guards were always at their highest when Lord Ferros was present, and there was very little to gather then.
The shuffle of feet pulled him from his musings. He looked towards the room¡¯s single entrance and, as expected, Fricis Upeslacis walked in. Leo always found it amusing how the old man still wore rough farmer¡¯s clothes¡ªcomplete with thick, durable boots¡ªto cabinet meetings. The farmer did presumably still go out into the fields enough to justify it, but Leo suspected that it was more just a product of habit than anything else.
Surprisingly, Lord Ferros did not take issue at the unorthodox outfits Fricis and some of the other ministers preferred.
¡°As a programmer and engineer, I understand the importance of wearing what feels good,¡± he¡¯d said. ¡°Just try to keep it more formal than pajamas, please.¡±
Leo still didn¡¯t know what being a programmer had to do with outfit choices, but he wasn¡¯t going to argue with leniency. The Lord had only insisted that they each wear a large, intricate badge pinned to their clothes, which marked them as high-ranking members of the government and people of authority. Naturally, Leo and the rest usually took them off when going outside in public.
Along with his usual thick farming clothes and the badge, the farmer also wore his trademark disgruntled scowl. Leo took no umbrage with the way the older man glared at him as he entered; he knew from experience that Fricis didn¡¯t mean anything by it. The man¡¯s mannerisms were nothing more than a combination of his stubbornness¡ªgreatly enhanced now by old age¡ªand his unending drive to pull his people out of the pit of mass starvation.
It was that drive that had told Leo that Fricis would accept his offer back when he had first started assembling a Cabinet to help administer the country under Lord Ferros¡¯s rule. Leo had met Fricis soon after leaving the academy and becoming a full-fledged Voice, as the best farmer in one of the villages not far from his assigned town. At the time, he had be struck by the man¡¯s surly demeanor, but he¡¯d soon come to realize the truth: Fricis Upeslacis was a man on a mission, one practically impossible to achieve. He would never be satisfied until every person in Otharia had not only enough food to survive, but enough to thrive.
It was no surprise that Fricis was the first person to join him. The man was a farmer, after all. Unlike Leo, who needed to use an alarm clock¡ªan incredible invention that everybody should have, in his opinion¡ªFricis had been getting up at or before the crack of dawn for his entire life.
The man lowered himself into a chair on the other side of the table and offered Leo a terse nod, which he returned. No words were spoken; none were needed. Still, Leo couldn¡¯t help but feel like something was wrong. Fricis was an uptight man, yes, but Leo could see a tension in his neck and face that was not normally there.
Leo liked to believe that he was rather good at reading people. Reading others was important as a Voice, and he¡¯d been passably good at it then, but he¡¯d discovered it to be even more important as a prisoner. It was during those terrible years when he¡¯d truly learned to read others, as properly doing so had been a matter of life and death. His place in that world had been... unusual to say the least. Unlike most of the other prisoners, he¡¯d rarely been allowed to leave the confines of his small cell. The isolation from the other prisoners meant he¡¯d had fewer chances to get attacked, but also prevented the rest of them from really getting to know him and the reason for his presence there. As such, they¡¯d seen him as less of a fellow prisoner and more of a symbol of the authority that had locked them away. Nothing good had come of that.
These prison-honed instincts told Leo that something was wrong with the farmer-turned-administrator¡¯s world. Leo struggled to divine what it was though... so he simply asked. It was Fricis, after all.
¡°Something wrong?¡±
Fricis grunted in a way that Leo would describe as ¡°begrudgingly affirmative¡±.
¡°Crop related?¡±
¡°The drought,¡± the old curmudgeon replied. ¡°They always put me in a mood.¡±
¡°Ah, yes,¡± Leo nodded, letting the room fall back into silence. He knew to what Fricis referred, so he left it there. It would come up during the meeting.
Only a little while later, another person entered the room, somebody Leo hadn¡¯t expected.
¡°Heya, everybody!¡± Martis Tievais called out with a boisterous grin and a quick wave. Casually, he slid into a chair beside Fricis and lounged back against the backrest, his bulky, muscular arms hanging casually over the back of the chair.
¡°I didn¡¯t expect to see you this morning,¡± Leo admitted.
¡°Yeah, well, I finished things at Nartung a bit faster than expected, so I figured, since I was going to be coming back tomorrow anyway, why not come back early? Wouldn¡¯t want to miss an important gathering like this, now would I?¡±
¡°Pah!¡± Fricis spat. ¡°You just wanted extra time to see that little seamstress lass you have a hankering for.¡±
¡°GAHAHAHA!¡± Martis guffawed. ¡°You got me!¡±
Martis Tievas was an average-sized man by Otharian standards when it came to height, but he was wide like a garoph, with strong, broad shoulders that looked like they could bear a house. He¡¯d confessed some time back that his father had made him train his body since he was a boy in preparation for joining the army, but he¡¯d ended up enjoying both the process and the results, and so continued to work out each evening. At the prime age of twenty-seven, he appeared the ideal example of a powerful combat-level Feeler, the sort of shock troop used to break through the enemy¡¯s most fortified positions with sheer force. Given his father¡¯s stated goals, this was not surprising. So, of course, he had grown up to become a stone Observer, architect, and builder instead.
In Leo¡¯s mind, Martis had been much more of a reach to be the Minister of the Interior than Fricis as Minister of Agriculture¡ªeverybody but Fricis had been a reach, if he were to be honest with himself. Still, of all of them, Martis was probably the reach that had worked out the best on a personnel level. The jolly man absolutely loved his job, which, he would readily admit, was the reason he¡¯d agreed to serve.
Martis¡¯s job had two main parts. First, he led and oversaw all large engineering projects, be it digging canals or extending a city¡¯s walls to create more room. Many of Lord Ferros¡¯s projects also required a large amount of work beyond the metal that he was so good at using, like building the foundation beneath his vaunted railway travel system. Martis led and oversaw those parts as well.
The second half of his responsibilities were the various mines scattered throughout the nation. He and those working for him had to scurry around the nation, checking on mine production, solving problems, and the like. As such, he spent a great deal of his time on the road, as evidenced by the durable traveling clothes he currently wore. Most notable was his thick leather vest, which sported a multitude of pockets stuffed with a variety of tools and measures; Leo hadn¡¯t the foggiest idea what most of them were for.
The combined responsibilities kept Martis very busy and meant that he missed the vast majority of these meetings, but such sacrifices needed to be made. If the mines, especially, were to fail, then... Leo didn¡¯t want to even think of the repercussions.
Lord Ferros relied greatly upon the mines to provide new tucrenyx and cantacrenyx crystals for his projects and the like. In a way, that made Martis the most critical minister of them all¡ªother than Leo himself, of course¡ªwhen it came to what mattered: keeping Lord Ferros content to the point that Otharia remained not-on-fire and they all kept their lives. Even though they¡¯d all been in their positions for over a year, none of them could afford to become lax. There were already enough examples of Lord Ferros¡¯s wrath; they had no illusions as to what would happen should his displeasure grow too great, and nothing made him more aggravated than not having the materials he needed to do what he desired.
Leo studied the younger man for a moment. Martis seemed relaxed and confident, which was a good sign.
Leo stood up momentarily to stretch and massage his aching back while Martis tried to engage in idle conversation with the cantankerous old farmer. Fricis wasn¡¯t in the mood, giving even shorter and snappier responses than normal, but Martis seemed unable to take the hint. Leo was about to chime in and rescue the poor old man when a new arrival appeared in the meeting room doorway.
¡°Gentlemen,¡± came Zigmars Vietnieks¡¯s tepid greeting, the word spoken halfheartedly as a matter of obligation and nothing more. After a moment of standing within the door frame, staring into the room like a man staring at a freezing cold river with the dreadful knowledge that he needed to jump in, he stepped inside and walked over to the table.
Zigmars was kind of a physical opposite to Martis. While the tallest of the ministers¡ªalmost as tall as Lord Ferros himself¡ªhis body was thin and gangling, and drooped in a way that reminded Leo of one of the mournful trees found in the southwest of the country. The effect was magnified by the excessively loose outfit he wore, with long, hanging sleeves that fluttered like leaves in the wind when he moved¡ªa recent fashion of the wealthier Otharians that Leo was convinced existed for no other reason than to show how much cloth they could waste on one outfit.
¡°Aaaayyyy, Minister Vietnieks! How are you holding up?¡± Martis asked, patting the sullen man on the shoulder as he took a seat. Zigmars flinched from the contact and scooted further away from Martis and closer to Leo.
¡°Is it too much to ask that you not touch me with those filthy hands, you oaf?¡± Zigmars sniffed.
¡°Of course, how silly of me,¡± Martis replied. ¡°Sorry, I forgot. After all, it¡¯s been a long time since I¡¯ve seen you, Ziggy.¡±
¡°My name is Zigmars!¡± the Minister of the Treasury spat. ¡°And even a buffoon like yourself should be capable of remembering something as simple as basic manners!¡±
Leo sighed. As always, Zigmars was Zigmars. Leo wasn¡¯t quite sure if the man was suffering from a severe lack of social skills or if he genuinely detested the rest of them, though in a sense, the result was the same. Dour and antisocial, the thirty-four-year-old former accountant¡¯s distaste for the other Cabinet ministers was largely returned in kind. It came in several forms, from Martis¡¯s semi-benign teasing to Gunta Izkapts¡¯s refusal to even acknowledge his presence unless she had no other choice.
Yet, as much as they all disliked him, Leo and the other ministers couldn¡¯t help but respect the man for one simple reason: Zigmars Vietnieks told Lord Ferros ¡°no¡±. Repeatedly¡ªfar more often than Leo did, even. The man possessed a sort of nihilistic courage perhaps found nowhere else in the realm, and he made ample use of it to the point of Blake¡¯s frustration.
It had gotten so bad, half a season in, that Blake had started muttering things to himself about ¡°kicking the fucker out¡± and ¡°leaving him face down in a ditch¡±. It had taken several days of lobbying to stave off disaster. Leo¡¯s argument had hinged on Blake¡¯s strong preference for straight-talk and an equally strong professed hatred of ¡°bullshitters¡± and ¡°yes men¡±. Zigmars was a man who only knew how to talk straight. If Blake were to act against him, wouldn¡¯t he be sending a message that, despite his claims, he wanted his staff to be yes men? To his credit, Blake had conceded the point and Zigmars remained the Minister of the Treasury to this day.
All that being said, respect could be given from afar, and even Leo preferred to minimize interactions, though their roles made such a preference mostly impossible.
Luckily, another minister entered just moments later, providing a welcome distraction. Leo felt the collected Otharians tense slightly as Arlette Demirt stepped through the doorway, her distracted gaze focused on a knife in her hand.
The other ministers were usually tenser than normal when she was around for several reasons. First, she was newer than the others, having only joined a few seasons ago, so they were all less accustomed to her. Second, she was an Elseling, a mercenary personally selected by Lord Ferros himself. This created an chasm of distrust between her and them that was hard for the others to overcome. There was little doubt in their minds that her loyalty lied with her employer over the country. Third, she was the one now in charge of all of the weapons. Everybody in the chamber had seen firsthand just what the Lord¡¯s creations were capable of, and the thought of what she could do to any of them only served to widen the gap between them.
Not that she would even need her Lord¡¯s weapons, as she had her own personal ones right at hand. Leo glanced at her outfit for a moment, searching for the usual band of knives she strapped somewhere on one of her legs. He spotted it easily on the left thigh today, half-concealed beneath the loose cloth of her pant leg¡ªcut above the knees for easy movement¡ªand just below the bottom of her short sleeved woolen tunic. He could see the subtle glint of three blade, with likely many more hidden within arm¡¯s reach. As the only trained fighter in the room, with years of battle experience to boot, she would likely have little trouble murdering the rest of them all on her own if she so desired.
Still, those weapons had always stayed strapped to her body. For her to actually brandish a weapon in front of them... well, that was a new development, and it only served to send a shock of alarm running through the others. Without so much as a word of greeting, the Minister of Security plopped down beside Leo and continued to study the blade intently, turning it slowly as she studied its intricate details. Then, as if intent on making the situation even more unsettling, she pulled out a second identical knife, one in each hand, and began inspecting them both.
¡°Minister Demirt,¡± Leo muttered, leaning towards her, ¡°is there truly a need for such behavior here at the council table?¡±
¡°Huh?¡± came the reply.
Arlette looked around and seemed to become aware of the environment for the first time.
¡°Oh, right,¡± she said, her face growing red as she quickly put the knives away somewhere. ¡°My apologies.¡±
¡°Is there something bothering you, Miss Demirt?¡± he inquired. Always important to keep track of your subordinate¡¯s issues¡ªand she was his subordinate. Though handpicked by Lord Ferros, her reports still went through him, as they should.
¡°No, no,¡± she insisted, perhaps a tad too quickly. ¡°There¡¯s just something personal I¡¯ve been trying to figure out since yesterday, that¡¯s all. Nothing important.¡±
¡°Very well.¡±
¡°A good morning to you all,¡± a new voice said, the words sounding empty, more formality than something sincere. Gunta Izkapts strode purposefully into the room and sat down two seats to Leo¡¯s left, the open seat furthest away from Arlette. The only person in the room wearing the ¡®official¡¯ Otharian high-level minister¡¯s uniform¡ªa heavy dress uniform made from off-white wool with a green sash tied from left shoulder to right waist¡ªthe short and stocky woman looked about with her stern gaze like a prim and proper instructor surveying a classroom of rowdy students.
¡°I see that Simona is tardy once again,¡± she noted.
¡°Nothing wrong with that,¡± Zigmars snorted. ¡°The less time I have to spend around that crazy woman, the better.¡±
¡°Punctuality is the foundation of order,¡± Gunta replied with a disapproving gaze. ¡°Such indolent behavior should not be tolerated, especially not from somebody in our position.¡±
¡°You would think that, wouldn¡¯t you.¡±
When Leo had needed somebody to be in charge of the country¡¯s law enforcement institutions, he¡¯d found the pool of willing, capable, and qualified candidates to be depressingly small. The only people truly qualified and capable for the role were those already familiar with maintaining order, upholding the law, and managing the country¡¯s penal system¡ªin other words, those who¡¯d worked in law enforcement for the Church. Unsurprisingly, the overlap between the group of people who¡¯d run the Church¡¯s legal and penal systems and the group of people willing to work with the lawless Elseling who¡¯d slaughtered the Church¡¯s high and mid-level staff had been exceedingly slim. Gunta, then a thirty-year-old constable for the Church, had been the least bad candidate he could find.
Leo wasn¡¯t entirely sure why the woman had agreed to the position. It was abundantly clear to everybody just how uncomfortable she felt serving somebody who¡¯d torn down the established order that she¡¯d spent her adult life learning and enforcing. Perhaps it was a sense of duty, or an attempt to limit the damage¡ªin a way, not dissimilar to Leo¡¯s own motivations. Or, perhaps, she simply believed in maintaining order no matter what. That sort of fetishization of order was all too common among those in her discipline, in his experience.
Whatever the reason, Gunta remained, doing what Leo might charitably deem a ¡°serviceable job¡±. She followed Blake¡¯s orders to the letter, but rarely to the spirit. She was quick to revert to the way things used to be done when left to her own decisions, and she often displayed the noted lack of leniency and a strict interpretation of the law that the people in her line of work were so infamous for. Her schoolmarm-like, prudish attitude was bad enough when directed towards the administration of Otharia in the abstract, but it especially rubbed the others the wrong way when she directed it at them as people. Leo had no doubts that she would be the most unpopular person here, even more than Arlette and Simona, if Zigmars did not exist.
The chatter around the table sputtered out as the last of the ministers finally entered and everybody got a look at her. Simona seemed on edge today, even more so than usual. Her short hair was messier than normal and she seemed to have dressed quickly judging by her rumpled clothes. The Minister of State glared at them all with evident contempt, her gaze lingering on Arlette the longest as per usual, then sliding to Leo as she sat down. Was it his imagination, or had he detected more wrath directed his way than usual?
Leo averted his eyes and tried to ignore the zealot¡¯s stare as the room settled into an awkward quiet. He¡¯d always had a complicated relationship with zealotry, given that at least a bit of zealotry was required to become as member of the Church as he had, but his perspective had shifted fairly significantly after being locked away for years for the crime of helping his suffering constituents.
¡°He¡¯s late again, isn¡¯t he?¡± Zigmars sourly observed, breaking the tension Simona¡¯s arrival had created.
Right, there was still one more person they needed before they could begin. With a sigh, Leo realized that Blake was indeed late. His recent streak of missed meetings had grown to the point that Zigmars¡¯s ¡°again¡± was now accurate and well-justified.
¡°Tardiness is most unbecoming of a leader,¡± Gunta stated with a disapproving frown.
¡°I¡¯ll go-¡± Arlette began.
¡°No, allow me,¡± Leo insisted, rising to his feet and heading out into the hallway.
Anything to get out of that chair.
Leo strode through the fortress halls quickly. He wanted to run¡ªhis schedule was packed today, like every day¡ªbut as the Chief of Staff and now Prime Minister of Otharia, running through the halls would be unseemly, so he had to make do with a brisk walk instead. It was alright, however. He¡¯d memorized the current fortress layout and knew the most efficient route to his destination.
A boom echoed through the halls, followed by a rapid series of smaller explosions, then finally a high-pitched, ethereal, whistle-like shriek. Leo ignored the clamor; such hubbub was the norm in this area at this time of the morning and was nothing to worry about. To prove that point, he passed by a window that provided an open view of the inner courtyard¡ªperhaps the best design feature Blake had added since the redesigns began¡ªthrough which he spotted Samanta and Pari covered in blood-
No, wait, they were laughing, and that wasn¡¯t blood, it was some sort of red dye¡ªa dye that they¡¯d splattered all over the courtyard wall. Leo added ¡°dye bomb¡± to his mental ¡°Things To Be Wary of¡ªPari Clansnarl¡± list and continued on.
¡°Good morning, Leo¡±, Sofie Ramaut said with a nod as they passed each other a few moments later.
¡°And to you,¡± Leo returned cordially.
Leo liked Sofie. She was polite and respectful, which was more than he could say about most of the people here. What¡¯s more, despite being a witch who literally controlled minds, she had somehow arguably caused him fewer headaches than any of the other people who lived in this place. That, sadly, said a lot about his life that he really didn¡¯t feel like unpacking right at that moment.
¡°I¡¯m looking for Lord Ferros.¡±
¡°Blake¡¯s in his rooms. I just dropped off some new translations.¡±
¡°Thank you. By the way, I recommend you check in on the children soon.¡±
¡°Why, what are they...¡±
Sofie ran off down the hall, heading towards the courtyard. Leo couldn¡¯t help but smirk at the squawk of dismay that graced his ears a few moments later.
The door to his Lord¡¯s quarters was shut. This was normal but still annoying. No matter how many times Lord Ferros reshaped the fortress layout, he always put layers of metal between himself and people like Leo who needed to talk to him. He claimed it was for security, but Leo believed that he did it mostly to keep from being bothered about such unimportant things as ¡°governance¡± and ¡°leading a country¡±.
This recent run of tardiness and missed appointments, however, was relatively new, having begun after Blake returned from his trip north. The man that had left for the journey was a different person than the one that had returned, and to his surprise, Leo found himself wishing for a return of the old Blake¡ªor, more accurately, parts of the old Blake.
The old Blake had been angry, bitter, and inconsiderate of others when their wants and needs conflicted with his own. The new, improved Blake was... still all those things, but to a far lesser degree. That was good; it meant fewer migraines, at least. However, the man¡¯s drive seemed to have mellowed along with the rest of him. There had been a fire within the old Blake that Leo had respected. The man had been proactively engaged with the world and the responsibilities he¡¯d assumed¡ªoften too proactive, but that was a different matter. The new Blake largely stayed inside his chambers unless dragged out by somebody like Leo, just like what was about to happen now. In Leo¡¯s eyes, the new Blake was, by and large, the better person¡ªnot a great one, necessarily, but still better¡ªbut the old Blake had been, for a lack of a better term, more effective, and when it came to running a country, effectiveness mattered.
Leo pressed his palm against the sensor outside of Lord Ferros¡¯s chambers. The sound of a peppy jingle leaked through the door and into his ears. Strange, he¡¯d never heard that before. It must have been added quite recently.
The door slowly slid open, revealing Lord Ferros¡¯s antechamber. Leo strode in with purpose, moving past the seats and into the main ¡°office¡±, if you could call it that. Leo didn¡¯t know much about what Lord Ferros spent his time doing in this large room. The walls were lined with machines of unknown function, and he¡¯d never been present to watch the other man use any of them. However, Leo did know that some small amount of light administrative work was also done here, so an ¡°office¡± it was.
What few administrative duties were performed here took place at the large metal desk on the far end of the room. It was there that Leo found Blake. The man sat on the other side of the desk, his upper body hunched over a ¡°pad¡±, as he called it, intently reading. His helmet was missing, revealing the top of his head and giving Leo a good view of his thinning yellow-brown hair and pale scalp. This sort of sight had once been unthinkable. Blake had always made sure to wear his helmet when interacting with others, to the point that Leo had never even seen Blake¡¯s face until the night when Sofie¡¯s powers had been revealed. Now that the morkut was out of the sack, Blake no longer saw the need to always hide his face when the two of them were alone, though Leo suspected it was a decision born more out of laziness than some desire to connect or open up.
¡°Forget something?¡± Blake asked, not looking up.
¡°No,¡± Leo replied, ¡°though perhaps you have.¡±
Blake raised his head, surprise clear on his face. ¡°Oh, it¡¯s you!¡± He paused, looking at a clock hanging on the left wall. ¡°Already? Damn.¡± Reluctantly, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way around the desk, metal flowing up his face to form the helmet and mask that everybody in Otharia knew all too well. ¡°Alright, let¡¯s get this over with.¡±
¡°What are you doing, that you are losing such track of time these days?¡± Leo asked as they exited Blake¡¯s chambers.
¡°Eh, you know... stuff,¡± Blake deflected with a shrug.
¡°Lord Ferros, you have been late to or completely missed almost two-thirds of all your appointments since you started whatever it is that you are working on now. While this is not the first time you have obsessed over a project so much that it has impacted the functioning of the Otharian government¡ªand, might I add, made my life significantly harder¡ªthis is without a doubt the worst it has ever been. And yet, I do not even know what it is that has monopolized your attention so. I had hoped, after so many seasons of loyal service, that you would trust me enough to keep me apprised of things like this, but you have almost deliberately avoided doing so.¡±
¡°Not ¡®almost¡¯. I am deliberately not telling you.¡±
¡°Is there something I have done for you to keep this from me? Have I displeased you in some way?¡±
¡°Not at all. I¡¯m just not telling anyone. Keeping it close to the vest for the moment.¡±
¡°...I see.¡±
¡°I just don¡¯t want to jump the gun with this, is all. It¡¯s better if I don¡¯t say anything until I¡¯m as sure as I can be that I¡¯m right, and I¡¯m not that sure yet¡ªnot even close.¡±
¡°If you insist, Lord, then I will wait until you are ready.¡±
¡°Thanks.¡±
¡°But, answer me this, at least: this thing that has consumed your time and attention so completely¡ªshould I be worried about it myself?¡±
¡°You?¡± Blake considered for less than half a beat. ¡°Nah, there¡¯s not much you can do about it, really.¡±
¡°Then, should I be concerned about it in my capacity as the Prime Minister of Otharia?¡±
Blake paused for much longer this time, and Leo could see him mentally vacillating. ¡°...maybe.¡±
That was far too distant from a solid ¡°no¡± for Leo to feel comfortable.
¡°But anyway, Leo, you¡¯re right. I¡¯ve been a bad boss,¡± Lord Ferros quickly continued, making no attempt to conceal his effort to change the subject. ¡°How are you handling the workload right now? Have you taken a day off in the last few weeks? How are you liking that stapler I made you?¡±
¡°I¡¯m fine, no, and it¡¯s a wonder. I don¡¯t know how I ever functioned without it.¡±
¡°Well, that¡¯s good to hear, except for the middle part. What am I going to have to do to get you to chill out once in a while?¡±
¡°I took some days off almost two seasons ago,¡± Leo pointed out.
¡°I don¡¯t know which is worse, what you just said or the fact that you somehow think it helps your argument.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll take it under advisement.¡± Both of them knew that it was a lie. A part of Leo did indeed desire to step away from the daily toil, but after witnessing the disorder brought about by his last, brief hiatus, he could not help but worry that any sort of vacation long enough to be worthwhile would result in the total collapse of the Otharian government. His worries might be unfounded¡ªhis staff and the ministers were neither idiots nor fools¡ªbut the potential consequences were dire enough that he felt he could not dare to risk it and find out for real.
¡°By the way, any progress on the wife search? I haven¡¯t heard you mention it in a good while now.¡±
A spike of anxiety shot through him, but he pushed it down before Blake could notice. ¡°Nothing to report.¡±
¡°It¡¯s been, what, over a year and a half now? Are you really sure there¡¯s anything to even find at this point? What if she¡¯s just in some unmarked grave somewhere?¡±
¡°She knew too many people to just disappear. Even if she¡¯s dead, somebody should know what happened to her.¡±
¡°But then, how have you been unable to find any of these people after all this time?¡±
¡°It¡¯s complicated. It seemed that she moved around a lot after I¡ªafter we were separated. I can find people who saw her after I was locked away, but so far I have not found what I¡¯m looking for. There are a lot of people in Otharia, after all, and unfortunately, I have had less and less time recently to devote to it. As for a record of her death, well... need I remind you of what you did to the Church¡¯s official records?¡±
¡°Right, yeah, sorry. Let me know if you need something more to help.¡±
¡°Of course.¡±
Their conversation petered out as they approached the meeting room and they walked in to silence. Nobody seemed surprised at their sudden arrival, which made sense, given the noise Lord Ferros made walking through his halls.
¡°Alright, ladies and germs,¡± the armor-clad man said as he plopped down into the seat beside Leo, ¡°let¡¯s get this over with. Leo, would you do the honors?¡±
¡°As always,¡± Leo returned. ¡°Let us begin with new developments, starting with one distressingly close to home. After receiving numerous reports of kashkuli sightings, I commissioned an investigation. I regret to inform you that we have a massive infestation in the city sewers.¡±
The collected people groaned as one, with the exception of one person.
¡°Kash-what-now?¡±
¡°Kashkuli are little brown lizards with tan spots,¡± Minister Demirt informed their employer. ¡°They¡¯re rather small, growing up to maybe two-thirds the length of my hand, but they eat seemingly anything and everything and they reproduce like nothing I¡¯ve ever seen. To make matters worse, they love to dig, and if they get into farmland, they make homes under the topsoil and kill all the crops by tunneling around and feasting on the roots. I¡¯ve never seen an infestation myself, but one hit my home village about ten years before I was born and the elders would talk about it like it was the end of days.¡±
¡°The lass is right, Lord Ferros,¡± Fricis chimed in. ¡°I¡¯ve seen what a kashkuli swarm can do to a village¡¯s crops. We have to wipe them out now before they spread to the farmland.¡±
¡°And how do we do that?¡±
¡°Well, normally I would say germa root extract. Poisons them quickly and effectively. But germa root has always been in short supply and we don¡¯t have nearly enough right now. I¡¯ve heard of several other options but they don¡¯t do the job as well, from what I know.¡±
¡°Nah, no half measures unless we have no other options. Does it grow elsewhere? Maybe we can buy some?¡±
Collectively, the group looked over at the one person in the room who¡¯d spent most of her life outside of the country, who just blankly stared back at them.
¡°Why are you all looking at me? I never farmed; I stabbed things for a living,¡± Minister Demirt sighed. ¡°Fine... uhhhhhh... if I remember right, Eterium used to grow a decent amount of it.¡±
¡°My Lord, given Eterium¡¯s broken state, now would be a perfect time to push them hard,¡± Simona advised, no small amount of relish in her voice. ¡°Let me twist their arms and make those greedy Eterians scream. They will be so desperate that we will be able to name our price. We will pay them a pittance!¡±
¡°After all the suffering that they went through¡ªthat I went through and witnessed¡ªduring the war, you want to just make them suffer more?¡± Arlette noted with scathing scorn. ¡°I would ask if you had any shame, but we all know the answer to that.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t think I will tolerate your disrespect, Elseling!¡± Simona snarled, rising from her seat.
¡°Both of you CHILL! Act like fucking adults, god damn!¡± Blake snapped. Simona flinched slightly, reluctantly and resentfully lowering herself back down. Blake looked to Arlette. ¡°Would Eterium even be able to supply us with the root now, after the war and shit?¡±
¡°I highly doubt it. The places I remember it being grown were in the southwest plains, which was under Ubran control during the invasion. There would not have been many people left to farm, and those that did would have focused on food crops, I would imagine.¡±
She glanced over to Fricis, who nodded.
¡°I think I remember some farmers in Kutrad also grew it. They are probably your best bet. That¡¯s all I have.¡±
Lord Ferros turned to Leo. ¡°Get on it. Top priority.¡±
Leo nodded, ignoring the huff from Simona. ¡°Very well, next item: New Plontas is currently suffering through a dry spell that has lasted long enough to become a drought. Minister Upeslacis, please tell us more.¡±
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¡°Aye,¡± the old man began. ¡°That area has always had less rainfall than most of Otharia, but it¡¯s been worse than normal there for a while now. The crops are withering under the sun and the soil¡¯s dry as a grandmother¡¯s teat. New Plontas¡¯s beets are their main export, and the whole area is in trouble if things don¡¯t turn around soon. We¡¯ll have to rework a lot of our food distribution plan to cover for it, and any more large issues put the whole country¡¯s food supply at risk.¡±
¡°Are there any good water sources in the area?¡± Blake inquired. ¡°Show me where this is.¡±
The center of the circular table they sat around shifted, the large, flat panel in the center lighting up like the street lamps outside. A picture formed on the panel, shifting quickly between various images until stopping on one of a map of Otharia. Seasons ago, such displays of technological wizardry would have unnerved every person in the room but one; now, it was so commonplace that nobody batted an eye as the Lord summoned documents without moving a muscle.
Leo recognized the map as the most recent map the Ministry of the Interior had created a season ago. He rose out of his chair and indicated a spot a good deal southwest of Nont. ¡°New Plontas is right about here.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not seeing much else out there,¡± Lord Ferros noted. He pointed at a black squiggly line nearby that ran northwest, starting deep in the center of Otharia and winding its way to the sea near the border with Eterium. ¡°This river¡ªwhat¡¯s it called, and how big is it?¡±
¡°That would be the Bhoresta,¡± Leo told him. ¡°As for how big...¡±
¡°Depends on what part, Lord,¡± Martis helpfully chimed in. As the person out and about the country, he knew the lay of the land best. It was part of Leo¡¯s job to know where his people lived, but less so the land they lived on. ¡°It¡¯s fairly large by the time it meets the ocean, maybe twenty to twenty-five strides wide, but often less than ten the further in you go.¡±
¡°And, this area here,¡± Lord Ferros continued, circling an area about thirty leagues to the east of the drought-stricken area. ¡°If I¡¯m reading this right, it¡¯s basically unpopulated, right?¡±
¡°Correct,¡± Leo responded. It¡¯s largely undeveloped for now, with, I believe, at most a few villages within the bounds you indicated. This will change as your land development project moves to that part of the country in...¡± He mentally went through the current deforestation and development timetable. ¡°...four and a half years, barring unforeseen setbacks.¡±
The image shifted, another map coming into existence on top of the first. This one did unnerve Leo, despite having seen it before. It was an image of the nation as if viewed from the eyes of a god floating high above the world. Leo could see all the colors of the land, from the multi-hued forests to the brown and grey badlands to the large grey monstrosity that was the very building that they sat in at that very moment. Created by stitching together images taken from the swarm of tiny hovering machines Lord Ferros had built and deployed around the country, it served as a stark reminder of the reach he had at his disposal. It didn¡¯t matter where you were; Lord Ferros was watching.
¡°Yeah, yeah, the terrain looks good,¡± the armor-clad man muttered to himself as he looked over the area again. ¡°Alright! Here¡¯s how we¡¯re going to solve this: we¡¯re going to build a lake.¡±
The assembled ministers, Leo included, looked at him as if he wasn¡¯t making any sense, because he wasn¡¯t. The words each made sense individually, the understanding conveyed within each one seeming perfectly sensible¡ªtogether, however...
A lake was not something that could be built. It was a lake.
¡°What, don¡¯t tell me you all have never made a reservoir before,¡± Lord Ferros wondered in disbelief. ¡°You can grow stone and you¡¯ve never dammed up a river? Seriously?¡±
Perhaps it was just because he¡¯d worked directly with the man more than the others had, but Leo was the first to regain his balance. ¡°Lord Ferros, are you saying you desire to... stop the Bhoresta?¡±
¡°Yeah, what else would I be talking about?¡±
¡°...why?¡±
¡°To help with the drought problems, Leo. What else? Look, we dam up the river somewhere around here,¡± he explained, pointing at a spot along the river roughly eleven leagues¡ªor thirty-five ¡®miles¡¯¡ª due east of New Plontas. ¡°With the terrain layout, we should get a nice reservoir that fills up all of this here.¡± His finger circled an area south of the focal point that encompassed perhaps six square ¡®miles¡¯ of terrain. ¡°We¡¯ll have to check the terrain in more detail on the ground, of course.¡±
¡°But even so, that¡¯s still over thirty ¡®miles¡¯ from the drought area. How would it help anything?¡±
¡°Sure, but that¡¯s why we¡¯ll then run pipes and irrigation channels from the reservoir to that area. That¡¯s the point of this whole thing. We build up the water and use it as needed for these sorts of problems. It¡¯s of more use to us there than draining into the sea.¡±
¡°What about the river, then?¡± Minister Demirt interjected, her voice revealing her to be as stunned as Leo felt. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t it dry up?¡±
¡°Only until the reservoir is done filling. Then you let it start flowing out through the dam and it¡¯s back to normal, or maybe just cut the flow in half for a while instead of cutting it off completely. There¡¯s a lot you can do with that pressure, you know. We could even put in some turbines for electricity generation, though an electrical grid is still a long way out for this place.¡±
¡°What about the people currently living there?¡± Minister Izkapts asked, a rare contribution from her when talking about matters unrelated to the law and criminal system.
¡°I¡¯m not going to abandon important progress just because a few people would be inconvenienced,¡± Ferros said dismissively. ¡°Move them elsewhere. Build them a new village or whatever.¡±
¡°And what of the people downstream?¡± Leo pressed.
¡°I thought you said the area was basically undeveloped.¡±
¡°There are still a collection of smaller towns closer to the ocean, where the soil is healthier.¡±
¡°Well... it¡¯s not like the whole river will disappear...¡± Blake reasoned. ¡°There are tributaries and stuff like that, or it wouldn¡¯t widen like Martis says it does, right?¡± He let out an annoyed grunt. ¡°Look, I¡¯ll make a bunch of water tank skitters and we can supply them with water temporarily if they need it, alright? I¡¯ll do the same for the drought area. It¡¯s not like the reservoir will be ready next week or anything, anyway. There¡¯s going to be a lot of planning and surveying that needs to happen first. Martis, you handle that. Get it done sooner rather than later if you can.¡±
¡°Of course, my Lord. I will take care of that as quickly as possible. Let me think... it¡¯s only an hour from Moltik, so I can tackle it after that.¡±
¡°Moltik? What are you doing going to Moltik? We don¡¯t have any projects in Moltik.¡±
A spike of alarm lanced through Leo as he heard the sudden deep suspicion in Blake¡¯s voice and realized the precarious situation Martis had accidentally stumbled into. In his confusion, the minister had accidentally broken the first rule of being Lord Ferros¡¯s subordinate: never, ever, mention anything that was a part of what was known as, for lack of a better name, the Unspoken Agenda.
The Unspoken Agenda was nothing sinister¡ªit was created more from necessity than anything else¡ªbut Lord Ferros could still never be allowed to learn about it. Revealing its existence would shatter the fragile trust that had been built between them and their ruler, not only jeopardizing the functioning of the nation, but their freedom, safety, and perhaps their very lives as well. And yet, the Unspoken Agenda had to exist to allow the government to run. Leo saw little choice in the matter.
Very early on, Leo and several of the others had each independently concluded that it would be best if many of the smaller problems that could be dealt with using proven, existing strategies were taken care of without being brought to Lord Ferros¡¯s attention. This was because Lord Ferros had a well-documented record of being very, well, ¡°Lord Ferros-y¡± when it came to solving problems. The man liked to apply large, bold, and brash methods to almost every issue, including those that very much did not require society-shifting solutions. The conclusion that Leo had come to was simply ¡°if he doesn¡¯t know about it, he can¡¯t make things worse¡±. Eventually, when he had realized that some others were each doing their own version of the same tactic, he¡¯d brought them together to better coordinate the strategy between them, and the Unspoken Agenda was born.
As dangerous a strategy as it seemed, the alternative was to risk bringing about all sorts of unnecessary upheavals that would only make their lives and the lives of their people more difficult. This could perhaps be best demonstrated by what had just happened moments ago. What had begun as a discussion on ways to help the communities dealing with a rather severe but likely temporary drought had ended with talk of creating lakes and massive, league-spanning irrigation systems. Had they known that a report of a mid-sized drought would turn into geoengineering on a scale they had never before even conceived, then they would have probably done their best to address the issue without the Lord ever even knowing of the drought at all. After all, it wasn¡¯t like the man was sitting around with nothing to do. He was already juggling a large assortment of tasks that only he could do; they were performing a service by keeping him from adding to that assortment until it became unmanageable even for him.
Now, though, after Martis¡¯s screw-up, things looked dire. As far as Leo knew, Lord Ferros¡¯s cabinet had been able to conceal their side activities until now and had avoided suspicion as a result. Martis, however, had always been the weak link. Given that he was so busy traveling the country that he rarely attended the meetings, it figured he would be the most likely to accidentally let something slip.
¡°U-uh...¡± the Minister of the Interior floundered, aware of his error and unsure of how to get out from under it.
The truth was that Leo had found signs that indicated significant corruption within the Moltik government, but did not yet have the proof needed to act. The best possible outcome would be that Leo would acquire the needed evidence and Gunta could then act on it. The second-best outcome was that he would be unable to find the evidence. The worst possible outcome would be if Blake found out about there being possible corruption. Leo and Gunta both agreed that his finding out would spark a massive purge of the municipal governments, something that would take up a massive amount of time and do far more damage to the country than good.
The problem was how to get the evidence in the first place. Ordering the town government to send records to Wroetin would cause the possibly corrupt officials to simply send only the documents that looked good, and might spook them enough to cause them to destroy anything incriminating as well. The same could be said if Gunta sent investigators. The problem with being an investigator in Scyria was that everybody could easily create a flame using nothing but their own will. Any government official with a secret to keep could send all their incriminating records up in smoke before they could be seized, as long as they had even a few moments of advance notice. Gunta didn¡¯t have any people to spare at the moment, anyway.
Martis, on the other hand, was perfect. He was already set to travel close by, he had no law enforcement connections that would make him appear threatening, and he had a plausible excuse both to be in the town¡ªplanning for some made-up new, just-decided-upon construction project¡ªand to be in the town hall¡ªrequisition supplies and the like. He and his underlings would be able to get themselves into the right rooms before anybody would be the wiser, and by that time it would be too late. They would be able to seize everything in one fell swoop. It was a convoluted plan, but such was the reality of working behind the scenes with limited resources. Anything more overt ran the risk of being noticed by Blake.
Surprisingly, Martis had been not only agreeable to the idea but downright eager. Leo suspected that the spycraft-esque mission excited him in a way his normal work did not. It was that excitement, however, that had likely led to the current situation. Leo needed to act now before one simple slip of the tongue brought everything crashing down.
¡°Please excuse the minister, Lord Ferros. He is simply doing me a favor,¡± he cut in.
¡°Yeah?¡± came the not-quite-convinced response.
¡°Indeed,¡± he replied, the falsehood coming out as smoothly as the truth. ¡°During the census completed last season, the responses from Moltik were lost in an accident during transfer here. Given that he would be traveling somewhat close to the area already, I asked him to make a short detour and deliver replacement forms for me.¡±
¡°Ah, well, alright then,¡± Blake acquiesced. ¡°But I¡¯m not a fan of using you all this way. Martis is busy enough as it is. We should have a department designed around transporting and delivering¡ª¡± Abruptly, he straightened, snapping his finger and then pointing it in Leo¡¯s face. ¡°A Post Office! We need a Post Office!¡±
¡°A Post Office?¡± Leo repeated with confusion, trying to grok the full meaning of the term. ¡°Some sort of alliance of couriers?¡±
¡°Kind of, yeah!¡± came the excited response. ¡°A whole system dedicated to letter and parcel transport and delivery that anybody could use.¡±
¡°Preposterous. And how would you propose to pay for such a grand expenditure?¡±
Leo let out a tiny sigh as Zigmars entered the fray in the only way he knew how.
¡°What grand expenditure? I could handle most of it myself!¡±
¡°Oh, really?¡± the Finance Minister replied with mocking derision. ¡°Please, do tell.¡±
¡°Well, ninety-nine percent of the work could be done by skitters¡ªI would just have to modify them to be able to carry cargo and letters. People would just come up to a mail skitter and give it a letter in an envelope¡ª¡±
¡°What would this letter and envelope be made from?¡± Zigmars cut in.
¡°What else? Pap... paper isn¡¯t widely available, is it?¡± Blake realized. ¡°We use it here so much that I forgot.¡±
¡°Outside of Wroetin, paper is a highly-priced luxury good,¡± Leo informed him. ¡°Parchment is more readily available, but still outside the budget of the vast majority of people.¡±
¡°Make a note to work on paper milling in the near future,¡± Blake instructed him with a small groan of resignation. ¡°With all the deforestation we¡¯re doing, we should have plenty of wood to work with.¡±
¡°Noted.¡±
¡°Anyway, lack of paper is but a temporary issue!¡± Lord Ferros pressed onward. ¡°Once it is plentiful, all a citizen would have to do is get an envelope, write the destination address¡ª¡±
¡°Ignoring just how few people can write,¡± Zigmars broke in again, a wisp of a smile mixed in with his trademark scowl. It was as if the man was actually enjoying himself by antagonizing somebody who could kill him without a second thought or a single consequence. ¡°I must ask: address? What would that be?¡±
¡°I know you¡¯re not the brightest bulb in the bunch, Captain Buzzkill, but don¡¯t act like you don¡¯t know what an address is. Nine-fifty-seven Mulberry Street, Wroetin. That sort of thing. With the flitters and the overall system to help guide them, it wouldn¡¯t be too much of a stretch to get automated pathfinding working. I have a more rudimentary version of it in action already.¡±
Zigmars¡¯s smile widened in victory. ¡°Prime Minister, if you needed a courier to deliver something to a home in the poorer northwest area of this city, what would you tell him?¡±
Leo understood the minister¡¯s point and let out a tired breath. ¡°Probably something like ¡®second house with the yellow door and round windows in the third alley past Ansler¡¯s Tailor Shop on Kruchern Avenue¡¯. Otherwise, they would have no idea how to find it.¡±
¡°You... you guys don¡¯t even have, like, real addresses?¡± Blake realized with disbelief. ¡°Jesus Christ! Alright, fine, it would take a bit more work than I initially thought, but¡ª¡±
¡°And that¡¯s not to mention that your robot would have no idea if the person receiving the package is even the correct person,¡± Zigmars continued. ¡°That is, assuming anybody would be willing to approach one of your terrifying creations in the first¡ª¡±
¡°My creations are not terrifying!¡±
¡°Is that so? Then why is your vaunted city-to-city transportation system so empty and unused?¡±
Zigmars was clearly in a wild mood today; while adversarial, he did not normally take such joy in tearing down Blake¡¯s ideas. Going after the train system, however, was a bridge too far. Leo saw the armored man¡¯s right hand twitch and decided to intercede before Minister Vietnieks finally got the bullet in his skull that the rest of them had expected him to get for over a year.
¡°What the minister is trying to say,¡± Leo jumped in, ¡°is that while a system such as you describe could theoretically be constructed, your machines would be the poorest fit for it. To do it properly would require hiring people¡ªhundreds, if not thousands, of people, all of them employed in perpetuity as long as this Post Office remains. This isn¡¯t like creating a lake, which only would need you and perhaps some stone Observers. This would be a massive, constant expense.¡±
¡°In other words,¡± Zigmars chimed in, ¡°a grand expenditure.¡±
Lord Ferros harrumphed and crossed his arms combatively. ¡°Then, so what? Raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it. The economic benefits alone would be worth it.¡±
¡°We¡¯ve raised taxes on them and audited them several times already,¡± Zigmars reminded him. ¡°Are you trying to get them to revolt?¡±
Blake scoffed. ¡°Let them fucking try. If they want to give me a reason to take everything they fucking have, I won¡¯t say no. It¡¯s not like anything would be lost, anyway. The rich are all just asswipes with too much cash. I¡¯ve seen it time and time again¡ªthey just throw money around and let others do all the real hard work that matters, then they claim all the glory when all they did was write a fucking check. They treat everybody under them like they¡¯re nothing but replaceable cogs in a big money machine. Fuck ¡®em.¡±
Leo coughed. ¡°That being said, it would still be unwise to further antagonize them and risk driving them towards helping the terrorists.¡±
¡°They¡¯re already helping the terrorists.¡±
¡°Minister Demirt and I have told you time and time again that we have no proof that your hunch is the case, and not for lack of looking.¡± Arlette nodded in concurrence. ¡°Perhaps there are other ways to raise the coin we would need?¡±
¡°What about exports? I can set up some manufacturing real quick. Something like... paper! We could make paper¡ªhigh quality paper, better than anything out there now¡ªand export it!¡±
¡°I doubt we would be able to supply the wood fast enough with our current manpower,¡± Leo informed his leader. ¡°Even if we could, exporting is not something that would come as easily as you hope. We have no history of exports, no contacts, no agreements, and all the rest that I would imagine comes with centuries of exports. What¡¯s more, given the devastated economic situation outside of the country, there aren¡¯t enough potential customers to finance what you have in mind.¡±
¡°Damn, you¡¯re right, there¡¯s nobody to sell to right now,¡± Blake acknowledged. ¡°Then, what else could we do?¡±
¡°The quickest action we could take would be to cut costs,¡± Zigmars asserted. ¡°There are a wealth of areas that could be trimmed down. For example, maybe if you did not insist on wasting money on frivolous items like constantly restocking the soap in the public toilets¡ª¡±
¡°Well, people keep fucking stealing it!¡± Blake heatedly shot back. ¡°Sanitation is important, and I¡¯m not going to have my most-used creation be constantly soap-less. Maybe if we actually cracked down on those fucking thieves, it would finally stop!¡± He shot a pointed stare in Gunta Izkapts¡¯s direction.
¡°W-with all due respect, my Lord, there are more important uses of my department¡¯s limited resources than soap theft,¡± the minister hesitantly replied.
¡°You could also reduce spending on the mining operations,¡± Martis offered. ¡°With your machines and equipment, we are already many times more productive than even the richest mine was before. With even just half the current budget, we could keep a steady flow of new material coming in-¡±
¡°Absolutely not!¡± Blake declared with finality. ¡°I need all the metal and crystals you can pull out of the ground. They are the most vital resource we have, and I want as much coming in every day as we can manage¡ªno ifs, ands, or buts. Understood?¡±
¡°Of course, Lord,¡± Martis replied.
¡°Good. Anyway,¡± Blake huffed, ¡°I don¡¯t care what Captain Buzzkill has to say, I¡¯m putting my foot down on this, too! We¡¯re going to create a Post Office!¡±
¡°And I¡¯m telling you, in as simple terms as I can manage, that no matter how much you want such a thing, no matter how much you claim it will help in the long run, we do not have the funds to even begin such an endeavor! As wonderful as it would be to be able to make something from nothing, this is the real world, and¡ª¡±
What had surely been winding up to be a Zigmars tirade for the ages was cut off abruptly as Arlette Demirt let out a gasp and shot to her feet without warning. Leo and the others all recoiled as she whipped out a knife in each hand before staring at both of them with wide, unfocused eyes. Nobody said a word for a long, tense moment while Minister Demirt continued her vacant-eyed examination, seemingly oblivious to her audience.
¡°Arlette? What the hell are you doing?¡± Lord Ferros asked. When she did not react, he reached out and gave her a tap on her side. ¡°Yo, Earth to Arlette?¡±
Even his prodding did not seem to reach her.
¡°Alright, fuck this,¡± he grunted. The knives drooped like flowers under the hot sun, slowly losing cohesion and melting through her fingers.
That finally was enough to drag the Elseling woman back to the present. She quickly assessed the situation and had the decency to look embarrassed. ¡°A-ah, I¡¯m sorry, I, uh-¡±
¡°Look, if you¡¯re gonna be a distraction, I¡¯d rather you do it somewhere where you won¡¯t be slowing down this already-too-long meeting. Go take five or whatever you need to do.¡±
¡°Yes, sir,¡± Arlette acknowledged before striding out of the room with that hurried gait people used when they really wanted to run but knew they couldn¡¯t where others would see them.
¡°The hell is going on in here today? Sheesh...¡± Lord Ferros muttered to himself with a small shake of his armored head. ¡°Well, whatever. What were we talking about again? Oh, right! Post Office!¡±
Leo remained trapped in that Othar-forsaken chair for another hour and a half.
The afternoon had grown long in the tooth as Leo finally left the House of Manys and made his way back towards his office, his mind filled with the seemingly endless list of tasks that still needed doing before the end of the day. Leo had expected it to take a few hours to negotiate the acquisition of the germa root, but his estimate had proved to be sadly optimistic.
¡°There you are,¡± Martis said as Leo rounded the final hallway corner before his office. ¡°I knew I¡¯d find you around here.¡±
¡°Is there something the matter, Minister?¡±
¡°Not at all! I wanted to ask you to join me for dinner later. I made a reservation at Matcha¡¯s Alehouse.¡±
¡°A tempting offer, but I have far too much¡ª¡±
¡°Come now, my friend,¡± the well-muscled man said, placing a hand on Leo¡¯s shoulder and giving it several hard pulsing squeezes, ¡°I haven¡¯t seen you in more than half a season. Take a break for one night.¡±
Leo paused for a fraction of a moment. While he and Minister Tievais maintained a healthy professional relationship, they were by no means friends. Both of them knew this. The excessive squeezing only confirmed that there was something more to this than a friendly invitation, though Leo did not know what it might be. Whatever it was, it was something Martis didn¡¯t feel safe enough speaking aloud here, which narrowed it down somewhat.
¡°Well, Lord Ferros keeps telling me to stop working so late,¡± Leo allowed.
¡°Wonderful! I¡¯ll see you there tonight.¡±
With that said, Martis walked away and Leo entered his office, plopping down into his soft, comfortable chair with a large sigh of relief.
¡°You.¡±
The word was laced with enough venom to kill a dozen garophs, and to Leo¡¯s dismay, he knew exactly who¡¯d spoken it.
¡°Can I help you, Minister Jumala?¡± he asked before even looking up. The unhinged woman glared at him from the office doorway, naked hostility in her eyes.
¡°Don¡¯t give me the innocent act, you worm!¡± Simona snarled. ¡°I represent Otharia in negotiations, not you! That¡¯s my responsibility!¡±
¡°And yet, he instructed me to handle this matter, instead of you. Perhaps you should consider why that is.¡±
¡°I already know what¡¯s going on!¡± she spat, stepping into the room with no regard for the carefully sorted stacks of records placed in strategic locations on the floor.
Leo sighed as several stacks fell over; now he¡¯d have to re-sort those. He really needed to stop putting off speaking to Lord Ferros about a more extensive filing system. Already, every wall was completely obscured by floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, all of them completely full. He¡¯d been so busy that he¡¯d always had something more important to do, though he¡¯d been saying that for a while now. Now he was paying the price for his negligence.
¡°Do you think I¡¯m not wise to you and your plans?¡± she continued, jabbing an accusatory finger in his face. ¡°You might have the others wrapped around your finger, but I see through all your lies!¡±
¡°And what, pray tell, would these plans be?¡± he asked, unable to contain his morbid curiosity against his better judgment.
¡°Don¡¯t play coy with me! I see how you worm your way into the Lord¡¯s ear! I see how you organized everything so that you have a finger in every pie! You¡¯re consolidating power so that you can warp Otharia into something that fits your twisted vision, all to get revenge on the country that locked you away for your deviancy!¡±
Leo hadn¡¯t known what he¡¯d expected to hear, but this was leaps and bounds more deranged than anything he would have imagined. He should have known better than to try to reason with a zealot. ¡°Alright, that¡¯s enough,¡± he said, rising to his feet with anger, but Simona¡¯s tirade continued.
¡°I know you were the one who convinced the Lord to embrace the Elselings over our own people! You want to undermine what makes us great and turn Otharia into a vassal of the other nations! You¡ª¡±
¡°SIMONA JUMALA, THAT IS ENOUGH!¡± he roared, activating his Voice for the first time in many years for maximum impact.
A Voice was the sonic Observation technique taught to all Voices¡ªnobody knew if the name of the role or the name of the technique came first. A multipurpose technique, one¡¯s Voice was mostly used to imbue one¡¯s words with otherworldly, divine power and authority, and was most often employed when giving sermons. However, it could also be used for sonic assaults that could discombobulate and disable attackers, for shouting long distances, or a variety of other uses. In a way, mastering one¡¯s Voice made one something akin to a sound Observer.
Leo had refrained from using his Voice for a long time. In a sense, he felt that his Voice was irrevocably tied to his role as a Voice. As he was no longer a Voice within the now nonexistent Church, using his Voice felt wrong, like treading on the grave of his old self. However, the moment now called for it, and he was not one to avoid the right tool for the right job.
As expected, Simona recoiled from the sudden verbal assault. He could see it impact her in a different way, as well. For all that she was, Simona was still an Otharian. For any Otharian, a lifetime of sermons lent a Voice a strong subconscious authority, one that was to be obeyed and never questioned.
¡°One of my greatest regrets is bringing you to Lord Ferros¡¯s attention. You should feel blessed that he somehow still considers you an asset, because if I had my way, you¡¯d have been carted off and dumped in the middle of nowhere seasons ago! Get out of my office this instant, and do not return until you have regained what little sense you once had and are ready to apologize for such baseless slander!¡±
Simona seemed to recover a bit from the initial shock of Leo¡¯s Voice, her obstinance starting to return. ¡°You can¡¯t¡ª¡±
¡°OUT!¡±
The Minister of State¡¯s poise finally fully broke and she quickly scarpered out of the room.
With a huff, Leo pressed the button beside his desk that closed the door and let out a heavy sigh. It seemed that he would need to have another talk with Blake about Simona, but that would have to come later. For the first time in a while, he didn¡¯t feel he had the energy or right mind to be productive. Perhaps Martis¡¯s ¡°invitation¡± had come at a convenient moment after all.
¡°You came earlier than I¡¯d expected,¡± Martis said from the other side of the table.
¡°There were some... personnel issues that came up that made continuing my work... difficult,¡± Leo responded as he sat down on a rough wooden chair. Matcha¡¯s Alehouse was not exactly a high-class place, but the drinks weren¡¯t bad. Plus, for an extra fee, you could reserve a back room away from the main tavern, giving you a place to drink and talk in privacy¡ªsurely why Martis had chosen this place. Other more expensive establishments offered similar accommodations, but Martis struck Leo as a man who preferred the rougher things in life, so it did not surprise him that the other man had chosen a place like this.
Martis groaned. ¡°Simona?¡± He gave a sheepish grin when Leo sent back a questioning cock of an eyebrow. ¡°I passed by her on my way out. She looked mad enough to strangle a dozen infants, so I just thought a prayer for you and got as far away as I could.¡±
¡°A wise move, I would say.¡± Leo picked up his mug and took a large gulp, savoring the burn of the alcohol as it streamed down his throat. ¡°A shame that I could not do the same.¡±
Martis put his stein down for a moment, his expression shifting into something more serious. ¡°I originally wasn¡¯t going to invite you to this, to be honest. I thought you were too close to him, even though we¡¯ve cooperated behind his back before. Wasn¡¯t sure if it was worth the risk. But, after what you did for me today, I reconsidered.¡±
Leo¡¯s pulse quickened as the still-murky reason for this meeting became clearer, his unease growing along with it. ¡°I was the one who selected you all to work for Lord Ferros. It¡¯s only natural that I should shield you from undeserved danger. A proper leader protects their subordinates, though admittedly, I was protecting the others and myself as well. That being said, I must admit that your words leave me highly concerned.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll explain when the others arrive.¡±
¡°And these others would be?¡±
Circumstance answered Leo before Martis could, as the door opened and the perhaps the most unexpected person entered.
¡°This had better be good, Tievais,¡± Zigmars Vietnieks sniffed, eying the pair of them seated at the table as he set down a tankard of mead.
¡°Patience, Zigmars.¡±
Zigmars stopped for a moment, surprised. ¡°You¡¯re addressing me properly for once,¡± he noted before turning around and heading back out the door. ¡°I see that I¡¯m going to need a stronger drink.¡±
Over the next few minutes, the room filled as not only Zigmars returned, but Fricis and Gunta arrived as well¡ªthe entire cabinet minus Arlette and Simona, meaning the five people involved in the Unspoken Agenda. Leo did not see this as a coincidence.
¡°We¡¯re all here now. Tell us why you asked us here,¡± Zigmars prodded.
¡°Why not relax for a moment first,¡± the well-muscled man suggested, taking a sip of his drink.
¡°No, I have places to be,¡± Zigmars insisted, ¡°and they are most definitely not here.¡±
¡°I have to agree,¡± Fricis added. ¡°I have to get up early tomorrow, like always.¡±
¡°Alright, then.¡± Martis leaned back and poured what remained of his alcohol down his throat. Placing the stein down gently, he stared at the wooden table before him, seemingly struggling to find the words he was looking for.
¡°Did you know that Otharia used to do surveys of the land, looking for potential places to mine?¡± he began. ¡°Through a stroke of luck, around four hundred years of these surveys were stored in a closet in one of the few side buildings to survive Lord Ferros¡¯s takeover. They¡¯re good, too¡ªas good as any I or my people could make now. They even make note of tucrenyx and cantacrenyx deposits. They are wonderful.¡±
¡°A proper man gets to the point, Martis,¡± Gunta said.
¡°The point is that these surveys are not just highly detailed, but when combined, they essentially cover the entire country. That includes the unsettled lands¡ªthey had four hundred years to check everything, after all. Just to be sure, I had several groups of my people canvas the areas marked as empty. They found two¡ªtwo¡ªdeposits, both so tiny that they were probably just too small to include in the surveys. I have great confidence in this data.
¡°What I am trying to say is that these surveys give me an essentially complete map of all the tucrenyx and cantacrenyx deposits in Otharia, which is why I can tell you now that we have somewhere between three and five seasons before we run out.¡±
¡°Wait, what do you mean ¡®run out¡¯?¡± Zigmars demanded.
¡°Already the production is slowing in the older half of the mines. They¡¯re starting to run dry. Soon, the newer mines will follow suit. There might be a few hidden veins discovered in the existing mines¡ªthat¡¯s why I said three to five instead of just three¡ªbut none of it will be big enough to fundamentally change the outcome. There¡¯s only a certain amount of any metal in the ground, you know, and both tucrenyx and cantacrenyx are fairly uncommon as minerals go. With all the people and machines we have digging away, we will soon have it all dug out. Three to five seasons.¡±
Leo felt a massive headache forming, perhaps the worst one he¡¯d felt in ages. Impulsively, he decided to treat it with alcohol, taking a large gulp. When that didn¡¯t work, he took a second, even larger one.
¡°That is what you made us come all this way to hear?!¡± an irate Zigmars snorted, rising from his seat to leave.
¡°Are you daft? Sit down, you fool,¡± Fricis growled, grabbing the younger man with his wrinkled hand and keeping him from leaving with his old man¡¯s strength.
The Treasury minister seemed unwilling to give in to such rough methods, but while he couldn¡¯t walk away, he refused to sit down either, leaving him stuck in an uncomfortable-looking half-squat position above his chair.
Fricis nodded at Martis. ¡°So, this is why you proposed cutting your own budget this morning.¡±
¡°Right. I was hoping that it would let us push back the inevitable.¡±
¡°What? What in Othar¡¯s name has you both so terrified?¡± Zigmars asked. ¡°From what I see, it would be a blessing. That lunatic would finally have to cease starting crazy new projects every ten days and actually focus on fiscal responsibility.¡±
¡°You really don¡¯t get it, do you?¡± Gunta cut in, her face pale. ¡°Have you not witnessed the way the man works? Did you not hear what he said in the meeting this morning?¡±
¡°I try to keep myself removed from such nonsense as much as possible,¡± Zigmars said defiantly. ¡°My role does not require that I deal with that sort of thing, and staying removed helps keep my judgment pure.¡±
¡°Even so, you should understand that tucrenyx is the Lord¡¯s lifeblood and cantacrenyx is his beating heart. Everything I¡¯ve ever seen him make or do involves them.¡±
¡°Then he will just have to learn to use other materials.¡±
¡°No, she¡¯s right,¡± Leo finally chimed in. ¡°Lord Ferros is a man who is, at least in part, quite stuck in his ways. No other materials can do what tucrenyx and cantacrenyx can in his hands, so he will not give up on them easily. When our supplies run out, rather than moving on to other metals and techniques, he will try to acquire more.¡±
¡°Then, he can just purchase it from elsewhere.¡±
Martis shook his head. ¡°Not feasible. The other nations are no different than we were just a few years ago. They have little use for the stuff, so why bother mining it?¡±
¡°Plus, once mines are established, they will still be far away, slow to produce, and expensive,¡± Leo added. ¡°There¡¯s no world where Lord Ferros would consent to share his mining machines with the other countries¡ªI think we can all agree on that. So if he cannot get what he wants using peaceful means, that leaves only one other option.¡±
Zigmars¡¯s eyes went wide, and Leo could see he was finally coming to the same realization that Leo and the others had already arrived at. ¡°You don¡¯t mean...¡±
¡°That¡¯s right. When we run out of new tucrenyx and cantacrenyx, Lord Ferros will decide that the only way to get more will be to take it from others. But these materials are not something you can just gain by raiding a city; no, they require new mines, which take seasons to develop and produce, and that requires holding the land¡ªa permanent military presence. He will, almost without a doubt, invade the rest of Nocend and make much of it his. And when that happens, Otharia will cease to be Otharia.¡±
The petulant minister finally sank back down into his seat. ¡°But, then... what do we do? What can we do?¡±
¡°Can we get more help? What about the other one, Sofa or whatever her name is?¡± Martis proposed. ¡°He seems to listen to her for some reason.¡±
¡°You want to ask an Elseling for help?!¡± Gunta gasped. ¡°Are you mad?! They¡¯re Elselings! They¡¯ll just stab us in the back!¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t be so sure,¡± Leo told her. ¡°I know for a fact that Sofie would oppose any sort of invasion, but whether or not she could keep our secret is another question. Still, she could definitely stop him if she wanted to, so we should at least keep the option open. Doing so would burn every bridge we have, however, and we would need to be prepared for what would come from that.¡±
¡°What other options are there?¡± Fricis wondered aloud.
The table went quiet for a moment.
Zigmars coughed. ¡°There¡¯s always... you know...¡±
¡°No,¡± Fricis immediately cut the younger man off, his voice hard as stone.
¡°Really? I¡¯d always thought you¡¯d be more amenable to the idea,¡± Martis commented.
¡°Why, because I¡¯m old?¡± the elder scoffed.
¡°Well...¡±
Fricis scowled and leaned in, giving both Martis and Zigmars a hard stare. ¡°Listen up, then, brats, and I¡¯ll tell you what wisdom my age has gotten me. Back when I was a child, I lived in the town of Chastorva. Does that name ring a bell, lad?¡±
Martis scowled. ¡°No, I can¡¯t say it does. I¡¯ve never been there.¡±
Minister Upeslacis took a long drink before continuing. ¡°That¡¯s not surprising. The place hasn¡¯t existed for decades. It was a small farming village out past Eflok. Like everybody else there, my family and I were farmers. We tried our best, but the land wasn¡¯t very bountiful and every winter was harsh on all of us. Then, one summer when I was just six years old, our crops were hit by the red rot¡ªa nasty disease, a fungus of sorts that grows on leaves and slowly eats them away. Naturally, the village¡¯s crops suffered, and our low yields were sure to put us in danger for the coming winter... and then the drought hit. The village fared so poorly that the Church¡¯s tax collector couldn¡¯t even take anything from our harvest that year; there was nothing to tax.
¡°By the middle of winter, our stores were exhausted. My family and the rest of Chastorva had no choice but to survive on nothing but hunting and whatever we could scavenge out in the wilds, like tree bark. It still wasn¡¯t enough. My mother refused to eat until my younger brother and I had been fed enough to stay healthy. With how little food we had, that meant she would starve. My father and I begged my mother to eat more, but she refused because she understood the truth of the situation: the only way three of us would survive would be if the fourth starved.
¡°I will never forget that winter, watching her wither away until there was nothing left of her, up until the night she stopped breathing. I swore then and there that I would do everything in my power to never allow this sort of thing to happen again.
¡°You might be wondering, what about the Church? Didn¡¯t they help us in our time of need? No. They didn¡¯t. We were nobodies, just a tiny village on the edge of civilization. They couldn¡¯t be bothered to care about what happened to us. By the spring, everyone still alive had left to look for a better life, and the village disappeared for good.
¡°The Church¡¯s lack of interest didn¡¯t change as I grew up. I worked hard to become the best farmer I could, experimenting with different techniques to find ways to grow more food and protect the plants from pests and harsh conditions others. Some worked, most didn¡¯t, but the Church wouldn¡¯t listen to anything I tried to tell them either way. They didn¡¯t care that people¡ªwhole villages, even¡ªstarved every winter, as long as they stayed in power.
¡°Now, look at where we are today. It was close, but we managed to feed the entire country last winter, and this year looks even better... and you know what? As much as many of us don¡¯t want to admit it, it¡¯s because of him.
¡°Lord Ferros made food security a top priority from the start, and he has never failed to give me all the support I needed and more. We¡¯re able to clear farmland with ease and harvesting can be done many times faster than before. Problems are dealt with instead of being left to fester. Just look at today! He is using his flying machine to get the germa root as quickly as possible before the infestation can spread, and he¡¯s even going to build a moons-be-damned lake to fight the droughts. Say what you will about everything else he¡¯s done, but Lord Ferros has been committed to ensuring that nobody in this country ends up like my mother. That means a lot to me, and it should mean a lot to the rest of you, too.
¡°Am I over the moons about him? I¡¯m not. By some measure, you could argue that he¡¯s only doing what any proper ruler should. But still, he is doing it, which is more than I can say about those who came before him. That¡¯s why I won¡¯t condone any rubbish talk of coups or whatever¡ªnot unless you can show me that the replacement will be better. I refuse to go backward after all the progress I¡¯ve finally made.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that you went through such a terrible time,¡± Leo consoled his associate. Though he¡¯d known Fricis since years ago, the old man had never told him the story he¡¯d told them all just now. It was a story that harmonized with his own more than he¡¯d expected.
The crotchety elder waved him off. ¡°I don¡¯t want your pity. I was trying to make a point.¡±
¡°A point well-made, though one I somewhat disagree with,¡± Martis added. ¡°It¡¯s interesting... I realize now that I have no idea how the rest of you see our illustrious ruler. Maybe that¡¯s just because I miss so many meetings, but I can¡¯t help but become curious.¡±
Zigmars let out a snort. ¡°You can¡¯t ask something like that without at least going first. You¡¯re the one who said you disagree.¡±
Martis shrugged. ¡°My perspective is a bit different from the rest of you, I would think, since I get to see so much of what is being done with my own eyes. Yes, I see much of what the old man was talking about. Crops are good this year, better than any I can remember... but at the same time, it¡¯s hard to ignore how the people are still afraid. His four-legged sentries are always there, watching from off to the side. It constantly reminds me that no matter how much he seems to trust me and the rest of us, that trust only goes so far.
¡°And then, there are the many projects that keep me so busy. I have a hard time sorting out my thoughts, I must admit. Some of them, like the sewers we built beneath every city, seem both useful and necessary; others, like the lake from this morning, feel neither useful nor necessary. But, the one feeling that I have been unable to rid myself of for a year now is that he sees them less as improvements to the country and the lives of its people, and more like monuments to his brilliance¡ªendeavors motivated less by concern or altruism and more by arrogance and pride. Sometimes, I wonder if the distinction even matters, but either way, it does not entirely sit well with me.¡±
He poured himself another drink and leaned back. ¡°Your turn, Ziggy,¡± he said before taking another large swig.
¡°Haaaahhhhh... fine,¡± Zigmars sighed. ¡°When I was a child, I had a cousin two years younger than me. She was a genius at Observation¡ªnot as strong as an adult, mind you, but easily equal to five children or more. You would think that this would make her the pride and joy of the family¡ªand to some extent, she was¡ªbut really, what it made her was a problem. The issue was that, for as smart and talented as she was, she was still a child and she acted like it. She yelled, and she screamed, and she threw massive tantrums when she didn¡¯t get what she wanted... and that made her dangerous. One time, she gravely injured a servant in a tantrum she threw because she didn¡¯t like the taste of the bread in the meal they brought her.
¡°Whenever I see that man, I cannot help but think of her every time. He is nothing more than a man-child powerful enough to rule a nation, constantly ready to scream and break things when the world isn¡¯t willing to do exactly what he wants. My cousin grew up; she matured into a well-functioning adult. He, on the other hand, has already grown up, and yet he remains an overgrown child who sees Otharia as a toy for his amusement, throwing fits whenever he doesn¡¯t get what he wants. I have seen little improvement since I came here and I highly doubt that will change any time in the future. It gets at me so much sometimes that I can¡¯t help but relish the chance to rub his nose in reality from time to time and teach him that being Lord of Otharia doesn¡¯t make him Lord of Everything. Makes my job feel almost worth it sometimes.¡±
¡°It takes courage to stand up to him the way you do, that is true,¡± Gunta agreed.
¡°Indeed,¡± Leo nodded. ¡°However, I must warn you that there is such a thing as pushing back too hard. You overplayed your hand today. Be more careful in the future; I might not be able to come to your rescue every meeting. It is hard enough keeping you here and employed rather than tied up and thrown into the ocean.¡±
¡°Meh,¡± came the reply.
¡°I am closer to Minister Vietnieks than the rest of you,¡± Gunta offered without being prompted. ¡°I think he is a dangerous man with no respect for the righteousness of the law. To him, the law is whatever he wants it to be at the time¡ªwhatever is most convenient for his goals. It is the sign of a poor ruler, one whose subjects would be right in removing from power if they had the means¡ªwhich we, unfortunately, utterly lack. He is just too strong.¡±
¡°I must admit, your outlook does not surprise me,¡± Martis told her, ¡°but it makes me wonder why you would agree to work under him at all.¡±
¡°Order must be maintained. It¡¯s as simple as that. Without order, society crumbles into anarchy. If I must work for a man such as him to ensure that order survives, then so be it. We all must do what must be done for Otharia to survive.¡±
The group grew quiet for a moment, and Leo found the others looking his way, their expectations clear. So, after taking the final sip from his nearly empty cup, he gave them what they wanted.
¡°Lord Ferros has always been many different things in my eyes, and I believe my answer would change depending on when you asked. He is the man who destroyed much of my home and butchered the people who live in it. At the same time, he is also my literal savior, the man who pulled me out of the hole where they locked me away and let me see the sky again after all those years. He can be a demanding and difficult ruler who burdens me with a dozen new tasks one day and then changes his mind the next, but he can also be a concerned man who worries that I work too hard and never relax enough. In my mind, he is all these things and more all at once.
¡°But despite all of that, I have a new and different answer for you. A few days ago, I learned of a peculiar notion found in an Earthling religion. It is called ¡®penance¡¯, and it boils down to the idea that bad deeds can be cleansed by undergoing punishment. Before one can enter paradise, so they say, one must atone and wipe one¡¯s debt by suffering through this ¡®penance¡¯.
¡°After learning about this concept, a funny little thought entered my mind. At first, it was just that, but in the days since, it has grown and set down roots, refusing to leave. I spent a long time sitting in a cell with little better to do than to contemplate my life, my country, and everything in between. Was what I had done wrong? Was the Church wrong? Was Otharia wrong? Eventually, I decided that we were all wrong¡ªthe country, the Church, and even the people, but that is perhaps a discussion for another time.
¡°I believe now that Othar agrees with me. I believe that he looked down from his hallowed halls and became displeased with what he saw, with how we lived our lives and with how the Church altered his teachings to suit their needs. I believe that Lord Ferros was brought upon us to be Othar¡¯s punishment for our digression. He is our punishment, the instrument of Othar¡¯s justice, and to endure his rule is our ¡®penance¡¯. It is through this that we, as a nation, will be cleansed of Othar¡¯s displeasure and eventually be pure once more to enter His Golden Halls to sit by His side. That is my answer.¡±
The others looked rather stunned by his admission, and nobody said a thing for more than ten breaths¡ªperhaps simply not knowing what, if anything, to say.
¡°As for the original reason for this gathering,¡± Leo finally told the assembled Otharians, breaking the silence, ¡°we do not have to come up with solutions today. We have at least three seasons to work with, more than enough time to ponder every option. I suggest that we all go home for now and think about it. We can meet up again another time later once we have put enough thought into the problem.¡±
The others welcomed the suggestion. Zigmars excused himself and left immediately. Gunta and Fricis followed not long after, leaving just Martis and Leo to finish their drinks.
¡°This matter... why did you not report this to me earlier?¡± Leo asked.
¡°I told you, I wasn¡¯t sure I could trust you to not inform Lord Ferros. That, and I didn¡¯t want to say anything until I was absolutely sure.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve been hearing that a lot lately,¡± Leo sighed.
¡°I should head out. Thank you for coming,¡± Martis said, standing up. ¡°I have to be on the road fairly early tomorrow.¡± He stopped after a step, seeming to remember something. ¡°Oh, by the way, I¡¯m sorry, but I have still not heard anything about your wife. I¡¯ve been keeping an ear out and an eye open as I¡¯ve traveled, but nothing has come of my questions.¡±
¡°That¡¯s alright. I appreciate that you continue to assist me, even if we have little to show for it.¡±
¡°We¡¯ll find her one day, I¡¯m sure. Have a nice night, and I¡¯ll see you when I return.¡±
With that, the man walked out of the room, leaving Leo alone with his thoughts.
Later that night, Leo Feldmanis walked into a tailor¡¯s shop just off the city¡¯s main north-south boulevard. The day had grown old, but the shop remained open, though it would surely close soon. As if to prove the point, an attendant poked his head around the corner from the back room.
¡°Hello, we¡¯re just about to close up¡ªoh,¡± he said, recognizing Leo mid-sentence. ¡°You¡¯re here to pick up, yes?¡±
¡°That¡¯s right.¡±
¡°One moment.¡±
The man¡¯s head vanished again, and several moments later, the whole of him came around the corner carrying a folded set of workday clothes.
¡°Please try them on in the fitting room over there,¡± the attendant said, ushering him toward something that was far more of a stall than a room.
Leo obliged, entering the small wooden enclosure and unfolding the clothes. Reaching into the inside pocket, he withdrew a small folded slip of paper. Frowning, he read the message written on the paper. Then, with a sigh, he Observed a small flame. Within a moment, the paper was no more.
¡°It fit well?¡± the attendant asked as Leo walked back out into the front room.
¡°Yes, thank you,¡± Leo replied as he left the shop.
The walk back to the fortress was not a long one, but to Leo, it felt like forever. He stopped before the entrance, his mind going through the conversations of the day once more as the ever-present pit in his stomach grew. A question bothered him, the same question that bothered him every night. Twice today, important people in his life had brought up his missing wife. It was the one constant, the one thing that everybody remembered about him. If only he could tell them the truth: she¡¯d been found seasons ago.
Chapter 118
Gabriela Carreno had never really been to Gustil. Sure, she¡¯d been within its borders before, and had even stepped inside many of its most prominent cities, but she¡¯d never really experienced the place. Instead, she¡¯d spent her time residing in a bubble, only leaving it momentarily to go topple a city or rout an army. The Ubrans had preferred it that way, and if she had to be honest, she¡¯d preferred it that way as well. It had made it easier to wall off those thoughts so she wouldn¡¯t start questioning herself as she performed atrocity after atrocity.
Still, after wandering aimlessly through the land for several days, even she could tell just how fractured and chaotic the place had become. From what she¡¯d seen, it was a stretch to even call Gustil a single country anymore.
Many of the larger towns she¡¯d come across had largely barricaded themselves in with wood, stone, or whatever they could find to protect themselves¡ªand had plenty of reason to do so. Marauding bandit gangs roamed the trade routes, attacking merchants and plundering any town or village without the means to effectively defend itself¡ªwhich was a lot of them. That alone would be enough cause for Gustilians to fear, but sadly, it seemed that bandits were the least of their problems.
The Ubrans¡¯ retreat had created a nationwide power vacuum, and vacuums existed to be filled. If the Gustilian royal family had still been around, they might have been able to use their cultural authority to regain control of the nation, but they weren¡¯t¡ªGabby had ensured that herself. The same could be said for the governors of the largest Gustilian cities and the military commanders¡ªto her knowledge, none had escaped her blade. The rest of the Gustilian army hadn¡¯t fared well, either.
The end result was that the remaining lower nobles and the like had gone on to carve up Gustil¡¯s carcass into tiny city-states and small fiefdoms. With nobody above to keep them in line, they were each using their relatively paltry power to grasp at greater influence, strength, and riches. Skirmishes, raids, and outright war blazed across the land as the various petty lords fought over borders and control. Already, Gabby had witnessed two minor clashes during her travels, though she¡¯d kept her distance.
In a way, Gustil was lucky that their neighbors were Stragma and Eterium. Eterium was so busy trying to hold itself together that it didn¡¯t have the means to capitalize on Gustil¡¯s anarchy, while Stragma continued their jungle-bound way of life. Still, just because things could have been worse didn¡¯t mean that they weren¡¯t bad enough as it was. Everybody¡¯s lives in Gustil were a mess.
Gabriela would fit right in.
Her stomach rumbled as she approached another town. She hadn¡¯t eaten in over a day and hadn¡¯t changed her clothes since she¡¯d left Chitra at Hankala five days ago¡ªthe best she¡¯d managed was to wash them once in a stream. This was because of one simple mistake: she¡¯d been so angry and distressed that night in the village that she¡¯d forgotten to take her pack and sword with her when she¡¯d fled. All she had was what she¡¯d had on her at the time, which was nothing but the clothes on her back. Unfortunately, this slip-up meant that she had little choice but to rely on the kindness of strangers when it came to food and shelter, and such kindness was at an all-time low.
She could always have gone back and grabbed her stuff, but Gabby had no intention of ever doing such a thing. Firstly, she wasn¡¯t sure she¡¯d be able to find the place now; she¡¯d needed Chitra to guide her there through the nondescript, barren plains the first time. But more importantly, Chitra would probably still be there. Gabby had no desire to see the Ubran woman again, not for... she didn¡¯t know how long, actually. Maybe forever.
It was a weird feeling, being angry about being loved. It left her feeling frazzled and frayed, and a little betrayed. She and Chitra had had a wonderful friendship, but now Chitra had ruined it. No matter how much Gabby might want it, their relationship could never return to the friendship it had once been. That undercurrent of knowledge would always be there, lurking in the dark recesses of her mind, reminding her that her former friend wanted something more from her than she could allow herself to give... and if Gabby weren¡¯t careful, Chitra might get what she wanted and bring even more sin upon them both.
That was the other part that chilled her. She¡¯s seen, time and time and time again, just how good Chitra Batranala was at getting exactly what she wanted. She was like a predator relentlessly stalking her prey until she caught it, except her prey was information about Eterian villages, or swank accommodations at a luxury hotel, or expensive meats, or... or Gabby. Chitra always seemed to get what she wanted in the end, and Gabby couldn¡¯t allow that. Not this time. Staying far away was the only guaranteed method to ensure she didn¡¯t fall into a second terrible pit. The first pit had been bad enough; the whole reason she was in Gustil in the first place was that she¡¯d thus far been unable to climb her way out of it.
An arrow slammed into the ground in front of her, shocking her back to the present. She looked up to find five people perched atop the wall in front of her, each of them holding a bow fully drawn and pointed in her direction. Belatedly, her mind processed the various noises her ears had picked up while she¡¯d been deep in her own feelings, identifying them as the guards atop the wall barking orders at her and getting angrier and angrier as she unintentionally ignored them.
¡°Are you flipping deaf?!¡± the one guard snarled. He seemed older than the others, so Gabby assumed he was in charge. ¡°Don¡¯t take another step closer!¡±
¡°Uh... I¡¯m sorry, I wasn¡¯t paying attention,¡± she called their way.
¡°We don¡¯t care!¡± another called back. ¡°Turn back now!¡±
¡°Please, can I come in? I¡¯m really hungry and need to eat,¡± she pleaded. ¡°I can work for it! I¡¯m very strong!¡±
¡°Doesn¡¯t matter! No strangers get into town right now!¡± the first guard told her. ¡°Now, turn around before we turn you into a pincushion!¡±
Another person came rushing into view, panting from exertion. The leader leaned over, intent on having a private conversation, but Gabby could still barely hear enough to catch a few bits of their hushed conversation. Something about somebody missing? And... ears? And blades? Barbed blades?!
¡°Um...¡± Gabriela piped up, ¡°you¡¯re looking for somebody, right? I can help!¡±
¡°It¡¯s none of your business!¡± another guard hollered. ¡°We don¡¯t want your help!¡±
Her words seemed to remind the lead guard that she was still here. He scowled at her and said, ¡°You have until the count of five before we open fire.¡±
Gabby looked around, surveying the situation. She didn¡¯t know the name of this town, but it looked to be faring decently relative to some of the other towns she¡¯d run across. The ¡°wall¡± that surrounded the place, if it could be called such, was a patchwork of wood and stone sections stitched together into a cohesive whole. Parts were made of one cohesive piece of stone like Gabby was used to seeing, while others looked to be made of stone pieces that looked almost half-fused together¡ªalmost like old stonework from her homeworld, but without the mortar. She¡¯d never seen that sort of thing here before.
It went without saying that there was nothing these guards could do to stop her if she wanted to get inside, but that wouldn¡¯t help any of her current goals. So, as the guard said ¡°three¡±, she turned away and headed elsewhere, off into the wilderness. There was a decently large forest nearby; perhaps she could find something to eat in there¡ªnot that she had much hope, in all honesty. She wasn¡¯t especially skilled at foraging, and hunting with her bare hands was not an enjoyable experience.
The forests of this world only made it harder. With the exception of the Stragman rainforest, where all the trees were a blessedly normal shade of green, the forests on Scyria were a confusing rainbow of different tints overlaid on top of each other. A plant here could seemingly have leaves of any hue it wanted and still perform photosynthesis. The only thing keeping it all from becoming a blinding mish-mash of color was that each species seemed to share a color¡ªthe most prolific tree here was a pleasant cyan. Still, the variety of shades made it harder for her brain to process her surroundings and spot food, be it vegetable or animal.
Gabriela wandered through the forest for some indeterminate amount of time¡ªit was hard to tell where the sun was, and she¡¯d been too busy looking for things to eat to spend brain cells on much else¡ªwhen she picked up the sound of someone or something making its way through the forest not too far away. Whatever it was, it didn¡¯t sound too large¡ªdefinitely not like a human adult, at least.
Gabby moved closer, moving in a way that, at least for her, counted as ¡°stealthy¡±. That turned out to be not stealthy enough, however. Just as she rounded a tree and spotted her quarry, it turned and spotted her.
Gabby came to a halt, staring in incomprehension at what looked to be a tomboyish girl perhaps eight or nine years old. The girl had short-cut warm pink hair and a thin, almost wispy build. She wore a thick woven shirt and pants combo, a coat made from pelts sewn together, and a backpack that would look normal on Gabby¡¯s back but looked almost comically oversized on hers¡ªan unplanned woodlands excursion this was not. Her most notable feature, however, was her long, pointed ears. An elf, here?
The child took one look at Gabriela and immediately sprinted away, hightailing it through the woods as quickly as her little legs could carry her. This posed little problem for Gabby, of course. The girl flailed wildly as Gabby zipped beside her and pulled her into the air by the collar of her coat.
¡°Let me go!¡± the little gremlin yelled. She fished something out of a pocket with one hand and swung her arm in Gabby¡¯s general direction.
Gabby caught the arm mid-swing and found the girl¡¯s tiny fist clutching a long, thin stone. As she inspected it, she noticed how it looked like it was slowly sharpening.
¡°Child, what are you doing all the way out here, alone?¡± she asked, lifting the child up to head height.
¡°I said, let me go, bandit scum!¡± the child cried, thrashing about and adding some almost comically weak kicks in for good measure.
¡°I¡¯m not a bandit, child.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t lie! Why else would you be out here?!¡±
¡°Why would you be out here? A child, alone in the middle of the forest?¡±
Gabby inspected the child more closely. She didn¡¯t look especially dirty, like she would have had she been out in the wilderness for long, nor did she look undernourished. In one hand she held the stone she¡¯d tried to use as a weapon a moment ago, and in the other fist, she clutched... something. Gabriela couldn¡¯t see enough of it to make out what it was; all she could see was what looked like thread and something else protruding from the fist¡ªstraw, maybe?
Wait, hadn¡¯t the guards been talking about somebody being missing? And she was sure she¡¯d heard the word ¡°ears¡± in there too, and this girl was an elf, with those pointed ears elvenkind were so famous for.
¡°Are you the person the townspeople are looking for?¡±
The girl went stiff. ¡°No,¡± she lied, poorly.
¡°Alright, I¡¯m taking you back. This is no place for a kid.¡± She slung the child over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes and turned towards the town¡ªor where she thought the town was, at least; she¡¯d been meandering for a while.
¡°NO!¡± The child returned to her desperate thrashing. ¡°NO! I won¡¯t go back! I won¡¯t! Those cowards just care about themselves!¡±
Gabby¡¯s stride slowed to a halt, and she lifted the girl off her shoulder and held her in front like before. Unlike before, however, the child had tears in her eyes and her lips were twitching like she was going to break down at any moment.
¡°What¡¯s going on? You live in the town, right? Are the people there mistreating you?¡±
The child broke into sobs. ¡°The... the Barbed Blades took Temel... and... and they won¡¯t do anything to save him!¡± she choked out. ¡°He got taken and they don¡¯t care! They say I¡¯m too important, but he¡¯s all I have left, and¡ª¡±
That was the last the girl could manage before the remnants of her emotional control shattered and she began to fill the forest with her cries.
Gabby pulled the child close and held her to her chest, offering her loving words and soothing strokes on her back and head, just as Chitra had done for her every night when she¡¯d first arrived, back when Gabby had had nothing to do but wail her sorrow to the world.
¡°I need you to explain everything,¡± she said when the girl had calmed down enough to talk properly again, finally setting her down on her own two feet. ¡°But first, what¡¯s your name?¡±
¡°Aysen,¡± the child answered, wiping her runny nose on her sleeve. ¡°Aysen Ercetin.¡±
¡°It¡¯s nice to meet you, Aysen. You can call me Gabby, alright?¡±
The child nodded.
¡°Now, please tell me what is going on.¡±
¡°Did the townspeople hire you or something?¡± she asked, still a bit suspicious.
Gabby let out a sad bark of a laugh. ¡°Hire me? They wouldn¡¯t even let me inside! Heavens, I don¡¯t even know its name!¡±
¡°Kagos,¡± Aysen informed her. ¡°I¡¯ve lived here all my life, me and Temel and Mom and Dad. I liked it here. But, then Dad died in the invasion, fighting the Ubrans¡ª¡±
Gabby involuntarily tensed, but luckily Aysen didn¡¯t notice.
¡°¡ªand Mom died while the Ubrans were still around. Then, the Ubrans left, and at first, I was happy those bastards were gone, but then, everybody started fighting each other instead! That¡¯s when everyone started to change. They kept telling me I couldn¡¯t go outside anymore, that I was too important.¡±
¡°Why?¡±
¡°Because I can do this.¡± Aysen held up her stone, which now very much looked like a knife.
¡°You¡¯re a stone Observer,¡± Gabby realized.
¡°I¡¯m still learning, so I¡¯m not that good at it yet, but there¡¯s nobody else to keep the wall standing.¡±
Well, that explained the weird, half-melded stone that made up parts of Kagos¡¯s wall.
¡°There¡¯s really nobody else?¡±
¡°Why would there be? Every stone Observer worth anything leaves for the cities as soon as they can. Dad told me that¡¯s where you make all the money.¡±
¡°And, what about Temel? Who is he?¡±
Aysen opened her other hand and revealed to Gabby the contents of her fist. Within it were two crude but incredibly charming little dolls made from what appeared to be scraps of cloth and some straw. The pair each sported pink hair of a shade quite close to Aysen¡¯s, and looking at them, it wasn¡¯t hard to guess who they were supposed to be. The larger one had short hair that matched Aysen¡¯s haircut, while the smaller of the two had long hair that went down past the hips, all the way near the knees. The two figures were holding hands and sported wide, roughly-stitched smiles.
When Gabby looked at the pair of little figures, she could almost see a different version, one where the two had black hair instead of pink and the genders were reversed¡ªno! She couldn¡¯t let herself follow that trail again.
¡°He¡¯s my younger brother. They don¡¯t care about him because he¡¯s just a Feeler and he¡¯s still young. When the bandits captured him, nobody would help! They said it would be suicide and won¡¯t go rescue him, and they wouldn¡¯t let me out either! They¡¯re just leaving him to die! That¡¯s why I had to sneak out. If nobody else will save him, then I will!¡±
Blazing fury ignited in Gabriela¡¯s soul. Part of her wanted to go back to Kagos and beat the ever-living crap out of every single person there¡ªand maybe she would, later. Right now, there were much more pressing matters.
¡°Where are the bandits? Where are they holding him?¡±
¡°Why?¡±
¡°I¡¯ll save Temel for you.¡±
¡°All by yourself? You don¡¯t even have a weapon,¡± came the skeptical response.
¡°Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯m very strong. No stupid bandits have a hope of stopping me. So, just point me to where they are hiding and head back to Kagos where it¡¯s safe. I¡¯ll bring him home for you, I promise.¡±
The girl crossed her arms. ¡°No, I¡¯m coming with you.¡±
¡°Aysen, a bandit camp is no place for an eight-year-old girl to be anywhere near.¡±
The child glared at her with visible annoyance and perhaps even outrage. ¡°I¡¯m not eight, I¡¯m fifteen!¡± she huffed.
Gabby blinked. ¡°Well, you sure don¡¯t look or act like it.¡±
¡°Our bodies grow slower than humans or beastkin,¡± the girl¡ªno, teenager, apparently¡ªcontinued. ¡°Moons above, have you never met an elven child before?¡±
¡°Well...¡± Gabby guessed it made sense to look at her like another Pari. Pari was also older than she seemed, and she also didn¡¯t act like it, probably because her brain was developing at the same speed as her body. So, more than the usual experience, but still the same usual level of maturity.
Aysen groaned in frustration. ¡°I¡¯m coming with you,¡± she declared with finality. ¡°You would probably just get lost without me, anyway.¡±
¡°Eight, or fifteen, or whatever, you¡¯re not a fighter. What were you even going to do when you got there all on your own?¡±
The girl looked away. ¡°I don¡¯t know... I¡¯d think of something...¡±
Gabby placed her head in her hands. ¡°You can¡¯t be serious...¡± She looked back up, having decided. ¡°Alright, you can guide me there, but then you have to stay as far away as you can and hide until I get back, understand? Otherwise I¡¯m going to take you back to Kagos.¡±
Aysen slumped in defeat. ¡°Okay... Can you really save him, though?¡±
Gabby walked over to a nearby tree with pretty indigo leaves. A fairly old tree, by the looks of it, its trunk looked to be a bit under a meter in diameter. With almost contemptuous ease, Gabby grabbed the tree with both arms and yanked it from the soil, roots and all, and balanced it upon her right shoulder. She looked back and tried not to grin at the teen¡¯s stupefied expression before tossing the tree off to the side like it was made of paper mache. ¡°You don¡¯t have to worry about it.¡±
"H-how are you so strong?!¡± the girl gasped, her eyes sparkling with sudden excitement. ¡°Were you one of Gustil¡¯s generals?! How did you survive fighting the Ubrans?! Are you on a secret mission?! Have you ever¡ª¡±
¡°It¡¯s complicated, okay?¡± Gabby replied, trying to dampen the child¡¯s sudden fiery enthusiasm. ¡°We have more important things to talk about, right? Like, saving your brother?¡±
¡°Oh, right! Let¡¯s go, right now!¡±
¡°Here,¡± Gabby said, crouching down, ¡°climb on my back and tell me where to go.¡±
¡°Right!¡± The girl, pack and all, clambered onto Gabby¡¯s back and wrapped her arms around Gabby¡¯s neck with newfound confident enthusiasm. She pointed forward and to their left. ¡°It¡¯s through the valley over there.¡±
Gabby wrapped her arms around Aysen¡¯s legs and tensed her legs. ¡°Alright, get ready and hold on as tight as you can.¡±
¡°Okay, I¡¯m ready. Let¡¯s go-oooooooaaaaahhhhhh!¡±
Gabby shot forward towards the valley.
¡°Huh, that¡¯s... bigger than I¡¯d thought it would be,¡± Gabriela muttered.
The two of them crouched on a branch two-thirds of the way up a tall tree, peering through the leaves towards the buildings where they believed Temel was being held.
The Barbed Blades¡¯ hideout was closer to a mini fortress than the collection of huts that Gabriela had expected. The Blades had cleared out a large area of the forest, using the wood to construct a whole host of buildings and surround it all with a sturdy fence over three meters tall. Gabby could make out what looked like a headquarters of sorts, a storage building or two, some living quarters, some sort of kitchen possibly, an armory, and... was that a stable? While bandits, by definition, took other people¡¯s money, this still seemed to Gabby like a lot of money for bandits.
¡°So, where would they be holding your brother?¡± she wondered quietly.
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Aysen replied, her legs wrapped for stability around the branch they sat on.
¡°I¡¯ll just have to clear out the whole place until I find him, I guess. Let¡¯s back off for now.¡±
Picking up the child, she quickly descended the tree, stopping for a moment to grab Aysen¡¯s pack. Retreating from their position, they moved away from the camp, stopping two large hills later at a small ravine. This was the closest that Gabby felt safe leaving the child alone.
¡°Right. Now hide here where it¡¯s safer, while I go handle this.¡±
¡°What? But I wanted to watch you beat up the bad guys!¡± Aysen objected.
¡°Absolutely not. It¡¯s too dangerous, and it¡¯s not neat or fun to watch. It¡¯s ugly and brutal, and will scar you for life.¡±
¡°But¡ª!¡±
¡°I said no, and that¡¯s final!¡± Gabby declared. ¡°Just wait here and I¡¯ll be back soon.¡±
Having put her foot down, Gabriela strode off, leaving the girl behind to head back towards the bandit hideout. For the first time in a while, she found herself wishing she had the Sword of Eternity with her, as opposed to the rest of the time that she resented its presence. Still, there was no use in crying over it now. The question was what to do instead.
She could always rip out a tree to act as an improvised club of sorts and do her best Chos impression. Her mind still boggled at the durability of that overgrown baseball bat. Gabby had never before encountered something the Sword of Eternity couldn¡¯t slice, and that alone had thrown her off immensely during the spar. She¡¯d become so used to just swinging through her opponents that she hadn¡¯t known how to react to somebody who could block. The trees here, however, lacked that unreal invulnerability. Just a few swings would probably shatter the wood into pieces and render the whole thing useless.
Also, swinging a whole tree around would be hard to control. While it would utterly wreck any bandits within range, she couldn¡¯t guarantee that she wouldn¡¯t unintentionally knock over a building or two at the same time. The last thing she needed right now was to accidentally crush the little elven boy she was here to save.
That left going in barehanded¡ªa less appealing but viable option. With her strength and healing, she wouldn¡¯t need to worry about losing even against well-armed opponents, but her eventual victory would come far slower. Every moment that chaos reigned within that camp was a moment that something bad might happen to Temel. What if one of the bandits figured out why she was there? What if they took Temel hostage?
As she pushed through the underbrush, Gabby had a moment of inspiration and smacked herself on the forehead. How had she forgotten? The bandit fort had what looked like its own armory¡ªshe¡¯d watched several people enter with weapons and depart empty-handed, so that was surely what it was. She¡¯d just help herself to one of their weapons, either from the armory or whoever was unlucky enough to run across her before she made it there.
Gabby caught sight of the sun as she approached the bandits¡¯ clearing. Judging by its position, she estimated that the day was in the mid-afternoon now, perhaps around the Earth equivalent of three or four PM. While she would have preferred to do this in the semi-darkness of the moonslight, it would be too long to wait.
Gabby pulsed the power within her¡ªthat power that not only healed her but also took her already strong body and amped up that strength to ridiculous proportions¡ªtensed her legs, and leapt into the sky. While the act of hurling yourself through the air in great bounds was the sort of thing that could be boiled down to mathematical formulas and the like, Gabby had always found it to be more of an art than a science. You pointed yourself in the direction you needed to go and let intuition take care of the rest.
She¡¯d gotten fairly good at it over the last year or so, and it showed. Gabby fell towards the encampment like a rock, her momentum carrying her towards the suspected armory. Her trajectory seemed largely on track; the only question was if she would land in front of it or behind it.
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It quickly became clear that the answer was neither. Gabriela braced herself as the roof grew closer with frightening speed and it became apparent that she was going to crash straight into it with all of her considerable velocity. The wooden frame appeared relatively new and decently sturdy, but no roof was built to withstand full-grown adult humans falling onto them from fifty meters above.
With the thunderous crack of wooden beams shattering in a single blow, Gabriela crashed right through the roof and tumbled into the single-chamber, single-story building beneath it. Pain lanced through her as she landed awkwardly, a multitude of bones broken, ligaments ripped, and tendons torn. A quick pulse of power righted all of that in a flash.
Gabby pushed herself to her feet and looked around. The first thing she noticed was the large, sharp spear beside her that would have impaled her if she¡¯d been only half a meter to the right¡ªit appeared that this was an armory after all. The second thing she noticed was the man not more than three meters away, staring at her with a slack-jawed expression on his face.
The two of them reacted at the same time, which meant that the man barely got to move before Gabby blurred forward, grabbed him by his throat, and slammed him up against the nearest wall.
¡°Where is the child?¡± she growled.
¡°W-which one?¡± the bandit gasped.
Gabby¡¯s vision went red. Which one?! There were multiple kids held here?! It took everything she had not to squeeze her hand until the man¡¯s neck was little more than paste.
¡°ALL OF THEM!¡± she snarled, adding a bit of extra force to her grip for good measure.
¡°T-that way!¡± he choked out, his arm pointing wildly towards her right. ¡°Third b-building. P-Please, don¡¯t¡ª¡±
¡°Don¡¯t choke you to death?¡± Gabby finished. ¡°Alright, since you¡¯ve been so helpful, I won¡¯t.¡±
With her other hand, she grabbed him by the arm, turned, and hurled him across the chamber. The bandit hurtled into the wooden wall with enough force to splinter it to pieces and crash through as a broken, crumpled mess. She figured there was a tiny chance the man remained alive, Scyrian hardiness being what it was, but she had more important things to do than to waste another thought on him. After all, she had a weapon to select.
A moment later, Gabby kicked the down door to the armory and stepped out into the camp, a huge battle axe in her hands. The largest weapon in the place, with a head nearly a meter long, it had been the quick and easy choice. Clearly made for a large Feeler, it was still fairly light and small compared to the Blade of Eternity, but it was by far the closest she could find. It would match her fighting style well enough for the moment. The other options had been poor fits for her training and experience, with the possible exception of the long spear she¡¯d nearly impaled herself upon when making her sudden entrance.
It had been about a minute since her unannounced arrival, and the little fort was in a state of confusion. People from all over the camp were converging upon the small armory, drawn by the sounds of breaking wood echoing through the quiet forest. Gabriela flashed forward, her newly acquired axe slicing through anybody in her way. She didn¡¯t bother to go around massacring everybody¡ªnot yet at least. She had somewhere to be.
Coming to a halt before the cabin the bandit had described, Gabby grabbed the door and, with a single quick tug, ripped it from its hinges. Tossing it away, she stepped inside, her heart pounding with apprehension at what horrors she might find within.
The interior could best be described as ¡°sparse¡±, with little more than five rough cots placed around the single room atop a dirty straw floor. Sitting or laying on these cots were five children. On the left was a boy with brown hair who appeared to be only about six years old. Beside him sat a girl with the same shade of brown hair and a similar face¡ªsiblings, most likely¡ªwho Gabriela guessed to be around eleven, making her the oldest child there. Another girl, maybe seven, with black hair lay on a cot in the far left corner.
But, what truly caught Gabriela¡¯s eye were the two off to the right. The larger of the two was a boy, perhaps nine, with bright red hair and an even brighter outfit. The others wore what Gabby would describe as ¡°normal commoner¡± garb, but this kid¡¯s clothes¡ªornate, embroidered, and flashy even with all the dirt on them¡ªscreamed ¡°rich kid¡± with a megaphone.
And then, there was Temel. The shortest, smallest child there, with long warm pink hair that covered his eyes and nearly hid his ears as it flowed down to the straw below, Temel sat beside the rich boy, his hands holding a wooden needle and several pieces of cloth resting on his lap. Frozen mid-sew, he joined the other kids as they all looked up in surprise at Gabby¡¯s sudden noisy appearance.
All of them appeared filthy and miserable, though it appeared that the bandits had at least fed them all well enough. Long tucrenyx chains ran from the back wall to each of the children, terminating in a single brace wrapped around each of their left legs.
¡°Hey there, don¡¯t worry,¡± she told them quickly before they could be too terrified of her and the blood-covered axe propped up on her right shoulder. ¡°I¡¯m here to get you all out of he¡ª¡±
Something slammed into Gabby¡¯s back, sending her lurching forward. Blood sprayed across the room, splattering over the cots and children alike. Righting her balance, Gabby looked down to find the blade of a familiar spear protruding from the center of her upper chest. The children screamed in horror at the sight, and Gabby¡¯s fury returned, renewed and reinforced, as she realized the emotional scarring the experience would create on the poor things. Her power throbbed within her and she embraced it. Crimson smoke burst forth and destroyed the bottom half of the spearhead and part of the shaft in a blink.
The kids looked on with confusion as the remaining pieces of the weapon fell to the floor with a clatter, confused as to why the woman they¡¯d just watched die did not seem dead at all.
¡°You kids hold tight. I¡¯ll be right back once I¡¯ve taken out the trash,¡± she told them, clutching the axe and stepping back outside.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s get you out of here,¡± Gabriela said as she strode back into the cabin not too long after, leaving the axe outside and out of view this time. Perhaps it wouldn¡¯t matter, with how much sticky blood she had on her now¡ªthe vast majority of it not hers¡ªbut every little bit helped.
The children had barely moved since she¡¯d left. Only the fact that they¡¯d wiped her blood from their skin told her that they¡¯d moved at all. None of them smiled or looked happy about her presence; they all just seemed confused and a little distrustful. Gabby didn¡¯t blame them.
Bending down beside Temel, she tried to flash him a reassuring smile. It didn¡¯t work; he scooted back instead, but not far enough to avoid Gabby¡¯s reach. She grabbed the ankle cuff as gently as she could with both hands.
¡°Hold still,¡± she told the elven child, who stared back through his mess of hair before nodding slightly.
The metal was tight against his skin, but it didn¡¯t stand a chance against Gabby. Even taking care to not overdo it, her fingers peeled the tucrenyx back like tin foil. Within a few heartbeats, the restraint fell to the ground. Temel pulled his leg in and started rubbing the spot where it had been with his tiny hands.
¡°Hey! What do you think you¡¯re doing freeing him before me?!¡± the redheaded boy said with an affronted scowl. ¡°Father paid you to save me, not them, fool! How dare you make me wait!¡±
Gabby did a double-take. Who the heck was this brat? Whoever he was, Gabby decided he could wait.
¡°The proper thing to say to somebody who rescues you from bandits is ¡®thank you,¡¯¡± Gabby replied, turning to free the brown-haired siblings instead.
¡°You¡ª!¡± the boy snapped with a stamp of his foot. ¡°Don¡¯t you know who I am?!¡±
¡°Not a clue,¡± she answered, peeling away the shackle around the young brown-haired boy¡¯s leg.
¡°I am Dost Simsek, son of Haldun Simsek!¡± the spoiled brat declared as if that explained everything.
¡°Who?¡±
The third restraint bounced against the straw.
¡°Don¡¯t lie, peasant! Nobody doesn¡¯t know of Viscount Simsek, Viscount¡ªah, King of Markura!¡±
¡°Never heard of him,¡± she stated. She went to make her way to the black-haired girl in the corner, but the child had already approached her, eager to be free of her chain. Gabby freed her quickly and turned to the one remaining, indignant, red-faced child, who glared back at her with full-blown suspicion.
¡°Who do you work for?¡± Dost demanded to know. ¡°The Akarsu¡¯s? Or the Cagatar¡¯s?¡±
Gabby squatted down next to the obnoxious child and grabbed his chin with a firm grip. ¡°Listen up, kid. I didn¡¯t know any of you were even here until I opened that door, got it? I came for one reason, and that was to save little Temel because Aysen asked me to. Now, you can either shut up and behave and I¡¯ll take you to Kagos, or you can keep up this attitude and I can leave you here, alone, in an empty camp in the middle of the forest. Understand?¡±
It was a bluff¡ªmostly¡ªbut it worked. The twerp gulped and looked away from her blood-speckled visage the moment she released him.
¡°I will allow you to lead me to Kagos,¡± he reluctantly assented.
¡°Well, in that case, all you need to do is say the words and you¡¯ll be free.¡±
¡°The words?¡±
¡°Say ¡®thank you for saving me¡¯.¡±
¡°You¡ª! I will not forget this humiliation!¡± Dost fumed through clenched teeth.
Gabby just stared at him and his ire withered quickly. ¡°Thank you,¡± he managed to grind out.
Gabby tore the cuff like tissue paper. ¡°See? Was that so hard?¡±
Temel tugged on the hem of her shirt, his adorable tiny hands barely able to reach. The boy looked up at her with excitement that had been entirely missing before, and she couldn¡¯t help but smile. He really was tiny, she mused. Had she not known better, she would have assumed that he was maybe four or five years old. Given Aysen¡¯s fifteen to eight age to appearance difference, Gabby guessed that he was actually more like seven years old, or perhaps even a year or two beyond that.
¡°Do you really know my sister?¡±
¡°I sure do,¡± she told him. ¡°She¡¯s out in the forest waiting for us, so we shouldn¡¯t waste any more time. Everybody follow me!¡±
Gabriela took a step towards the door and stopped again, an ugly realization rearing its head.
¡°On second thought, I want all of you to form a line and hold each other¡¯s hands, then close your eyes until I tell you to open them, alright? It¡¯s better if you don¡¯t look until we¡¯re gone from this place.¡±
The children, thankfully, cooperated, forming a cute little human chain starting with the tall brown-haired girl holding her hand. Even Dost only gave her a quick suspicious glance before following the others. Slowly, Gabby led them outside and grabbed the axe, just in case she¡¯d missed somebody. Finally, she began to guide them toward the forest.
Gabriela thanked the Lord that she had thought to have the kids close their eyes before they stepped out into the camp. The sight of her impalement had done too much damage to their young psyches already, but that paled in comparison to their surroundings now. Gabby¡¯s fighting style did not really know the meaning of the term ¡°restraint¡±, but she had especially not held back this time¡ªnot against child kidnappers.
Blood and assorted viscera coated the ground and buildings. Limbs, or sometimes entire bisected corpses, littered the area, making navigation a bit of an exercise. To her knowledge, she¡¯d slain every single person in the camp, messily and mercilessly. The only living souls left were her, the children, and the four animals¡ªthree garophs and a vekkel¡ªstill tied up in the stable off at the far end of the camp. If any bandits had escaped somehow, then... maybe she¡¯d try to hunt them down later if she could. Maybe. She had more important stuff to worry about now, like getting the children to safety.
They moved slowly, but soon enough, the group made it to the still-closed front gate. Gabby threw them open, led the kids through, and shut them again.
¡°Alright, you can open your eyes now.¡±
The boys and girls all opened their eyes and visibly relaxed, except for Dost, who looked rather green around the gills¡ªno doubt he¡¯d disregarded her instructions and snuck a peek. Well, he had nobody to blame but himself.
¡°Now, stay close to me as we go through the forest,¡± she continued. ¡°We have to go get Aysen, and then we¡¯ll all go¡ª¡±
The sound of a branch snapping beneath something¡¯s foot brought her to a screeching halt. Something was nearby.
¡°Aysen?¡± she called out on the off chance that it was her, though the snap has sounded too loud to be created by somebody her size.
The leaves rustled and surprisingly, about twenty meters away, Aysen did emerge... only she wasn¡¯t alone. A hulking brute of a man held her in front of him, one massive mitt keeping her in place and the other holding a blade to her throat. The blade was small, almost pocket-knife-sized, and would have looked comical in his huge hand had the situation not been so dire.
¡°Don¡¯t move, or she dies,¡± he said in a gruff, guttural voice.
Gabriela didn¡¯t know what to do; there were no good options. She cast her mind about, trying to figure out what to do, but came up empty. She could cross that distance in a flash if she had to, but it would only take a fraction of a moment for his blade to do its work. Even if she managed to kill him before he could react, his blade was so close to Aysen¡¯s neck that he might slit her throat unintentionally as his body jerked from Gabby¡¯s strike.
Once more, she wished that she could have received any other powers than the ones she had been given. Blake would have been able to snipe the man¡¯s head off from half a kilometer away; the Stragman would have been able to just let her die, take out the bandit, and then revive her; she¡¯d heard tales of an old woman in Drayhadal who could have daydreamt the situation under control; and Sofie could solve the entire problem with a single sentence. But not Gabby. She¡¯d been blessed with the powers of ¡°hit hard¡± and ¡°never die¡±, and neither of those abilities mattered from a twenty-meter distance. All she could do was sweat and seethe with toothless fury.
¡°What do you want?¡± she ground out.
¡°Hand over the noble brat and my axe,¡± he instructed.
¡°And then you¡¯ll let her go?¡±
¡°What!? You dishonorable wench!¡± Dost spat. ¡°You would trade me for¡ª¡±
Gabby slapped her hand over his mouth.
¡°Not a chance,¡± the man growled. ¡°I know who you are, and if having her here keeps you away, then she stays with me until I¡¯m so far away that you¡¯ll never find me in your life.¡±
¡°How do I know you won¡¯t just kill her later?¡±
¡°You don¡¯t,¡± he said with a nasty grin. ¡°Enough wasting time. Hand them over, or¡ª¡±
As the man spoke, a well-manicured hand reached out from behind him and grabbed the wrist of the arm holding the blade. Suddenly, his voice cut off and his whole body shuddered violently before collapsing unceremoniously like a puppet with its strings cut. Gabby gasped, visions of the giant falling atop Aysen and crushing her playing through her mind, but she need not have worried. Instead, he was yanked neatly to the side to reveal a blade buried to the hilt into the back of his neck and a chipper-looking figure standing right behind him.
Chitra Batranala looked at the dying man and let out a self-satisfied hum.
¡°Looks like I arrived at just the right time!¡± she chirped.
Dueling waves of relief and dismay crashed against each other in Gabby¡¯s mind, making her feel like she was going to split in two. On the one hand, somebody had saved Aysen when Gabby could not. On the other hand, that somebody was the person she least wanted to see and the one she¡¯d specifically told to stay away.
Aysen rushed forward in tears, putting Gabby¡¯s warring feelings on hold for the moment. She could deal with her own roiling emotions later. She crouched down to give the traumatized girl a hug when Temel shot past her and the two siblings wrapped themselves in each other¡¯s arms.
Oh, right... she¡¯d momentarily forgotten about him. Looking at the pair, wrapped in each other¡¯s arms, she decided to let them be and not intrude for the moment. That, however, meant she had nothing better to do than reckon with the unwanted woman approaching her.
¡°I thought I told you to leave me alone,¡± she said.
¡°You were so worked up when you said that. I thought you would have calmed down and reconsidered by now.¡± Chitra replied, drawing closer with that accursed gorgeous smile on her face. ¡°After all, I spent seasons working towards this. Why would I give up over a minor quarrel?¡±
Gabby crossed her arms and put the full brunt of her displeasure into a mighty glare. ¡°I have calmed down, and I still don¡¯t want to be anywhere near you. And it wasn¡¯t minor.¡±
¡°Here,¡± Chitra said, striding up next to her, the glare having no effect on the chipper Ubran. She reached into a small pack strapped to her hip and pulled out something wrapped in thin cloth¡ªa sandwich. ¡°I thought you might need this.¡±
Gabby redirected her glare towards the proffered food and shook her head vehemently. ¡°I don¡¯t need anything from you.¡±
¡°Are you sure?¡±
Perhaps it was the waning adrenaline, or perhaps it was just the reminder to her body that food was a thing, but it was then and there that her gut decided to object to her refusal with a loud gurgle. Well, it was the case that she hadn¡¯t eaten anything substantial in days...
Grumbling, she snatched the sandwich from the other woman¡¯s hand, unwrapped it, and took a huge bite. Like everything Chitra made, it tasted delicious.
Chitra turned to Dost, taking out several more packages.
¡°You look like a man who can take charge,¡± she said to him.
Dost flushed redder than a strawberry. ¡°Y-yes miss. H-how can I help y-you?¡±
She handed him the packs. ¡°I need you to distribute this to the others, alright? A good lord makes sure that all his subjects are well fed.¡±
Dost straightened up to his full height. ¡°Yes, of course!¡±
¡°Good. Make sure that you all eat nice and slow and civilized, unlike this barbarian here.¡±
¡°You can count on me!¡±
Chitra smirked as the boy raced off to do her bidding. She turned back to Gabby and her face softened and she sighed as she gave Gabby a once-over.
¡°Look how messy you got,¡± Chitra noted, pulling out a waterskin and another cloth. Wetting the cloth, she stepped forward and Gabriela, busy enjoying the first real food she¡¯d eaten in far too long, subconsciously tilted her head to give the Batranala a better angle to clean her, just as she¡¯d done so many times before after a battle.
The sensation of cold wetness against her cheek brought Gabby to her senses, and she stepped away.
¡°Gabby, be reasonable,¡± Chitra chided.
¡°I¡¯m being perfectly reasonable. You¡¯re the one who won¡¯t leave me alone.¡±
¡°Gabby, you¡¯re bloodier and filthier than I¡¯ve seen you since the war ended. Do you think the guards are going to want to let you in looking like that?¡±
Gabby grunted in frustration. Chitra had a point. She always had a point. Gabby decided to save their upcoming argument until they were alone. She didn¡¯t want the children to hear whatever might be said.
¡°Fine, but that¡¯s all, understand? I¡¯m only tolerating you because of the kids. The moment we¡¯re alone, I¡¯ve got words for you.¡±
¡°Of course. Now, hold still.¡±
Chitra began stroking Gabby¡¯s face, slowly rubbing off some of the blood and grime while Gabby devoured the sandwich. Within moments, Gabby swallowed the final bite. She glanced at the beautiful woman tending to her and her emotions regained their earlier vigor, only this time with a strong undercurrent of confusion added in.
¡°How did you find me? How did you even get here so fast?¡±
¡°What do you mean? Kagos is a fair distance, to be sure, but nowhere near outside the bounds of a highly motivated traveler on a vekkel.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t give me that, Chitra. Even with a vekkel, there¡¯s no way you could have covered the distance that I did. I went from Chanomere to Hventa to Montorost to Klimben to Gouth to Kagos. That¡¯s much farther than even a vekkel could handle in the time you had.¡±
Chitra¡¯s smile split into a wide, amused grin and she began to giggle.
¡°What¡¯s so funny?¡±
¡°Gabby, you went in a circle. Chanomere is about an hour south of here. I was just there this morning.¡±
Well, now Gabby sure felt stupid. But, that didn¡¯t explain the rest of it.
¡°That still doesn¡¯t explain how you found me. And, how in the world did you get a vekkel?¡± Though far faster than a garoph, vekkels were rare and expensive. They were largely used only by the very rich and for military purposes.
¡°Let¡¯s just say that I got lucky and happened upon an opportunity to ¡®borrow¡¯ one,¡± replied Chitra. ¡°I had to leave it in Chanomere, however. As for finding you, I just asked people. You¡¯re a rather memorable person, Gabby. You stand out. It wasn¡¯t too hard, especially for somebody with my expertise.
¡°I encountered a traveler who saw you arriving at Kagos just before they left for Chanomere, so I traveled up here myself. Outside the inn, I overheard the guards talking about you and a missing child. I knew that you¡¯d be out here searching for her, even though they wouldn¡¯t let you inside, because you¡¯re precious that way. So, I did some quick preparations and made my way here as fast as I could. Unfortunately, I had to leave your stuff back in town to do that, but it looks like it was the right decision.¡±
¡°Wait, they let you in?!¡±
¡°Of course they did. Did you expect anything less?¡±
¡°Stupid jerks,¡± Gabby grumbled.
¡°There, that¡¯s as good as I can manage here,¡± Chitra declared with one final stroke of her wet cloth behind Gabriela¡¯s ear. ¡°We should head back before the sun begins to set.¡±
Gabby checked the elf siblings and found that their crying had come to an end and they were eating their food like the rest of the children.
¡°How much food did you make?¡± she couldn¡¯t help but ask.
¡°Plenty,¡± answered Chitra. ¡°From what I overheard, I figured that these bandits were the hostage-taking sort, and those types rarely keep only one or two hostages. This is all of them, yes?¡±
¡°Yes, I checked around,¡± Gabby confirmed as she approached the kids cautiously. ¡°Are you alright, Aysen?¡±
¡°Yeah...¡±
¡°How did he find you when you were hiding?¡±
Aysen immediately looked away.
Well, that was an admission of guilt if she¡¯d ever seen one. For a child, Aysen really was a terrible liar.
¡°Aysen, did you leave the hiding place?¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± the child said as she hung her head. ¡°I just wanted really badly to watch you fight the bad guys, so I tried to sneak closer but the bandit caught me.¡±
¡°How could you do something so stupid?!¡±
¡°That¡¯s hardly fair, Gabby,¡± Chitra chimed in. ¡°Who wouldn¡¯t want to watch you at work? It¡¯s truly an unforgettable sight.¡±
¡°You shut up!¡± Gabby snapped Chitra¡¯s way before turning back to Aysen. ¡°You could have died! If she hadn¡¯t shown up when she did, that man would have taken you off somewhere and then probably would have killed you! All you had to do was listen to me and...¡±
Gabby¡¯s voice died off as she caught the telltale glint of tears. Suddenly, she felt like a fiend for making the girl cry. She¡¯d been through a lot already, and Gabby didn¡¯t need to make it worse.
Gabriela squatted down to Aysen¡¯s height and reached out to gently brush away the tears. ¡°Do you understand what you did wrong?¡±
The child morosely nodded.
¡°Well, alright, then. Everybody makes mistakes. What matters is that you learn from it so that you never make that mistake again. That¡¯s how you grow and improve. Understand?¡±
¡°Yes...¡±
¡°Good. I¡¯m sorry for yelling at you.¡±
The child sniffed. ¡°Really? You forgive me?¡±
¡°Yes, I forgive you. Now, how about we get out of here, hm?¡±
Aysen¡¯s face brightened like the sun rising from under the horizon. ¡°Yeah! Follow me!¡±
¡°Everybody makes mistakes? What matters is that you learn from it?¡± Chitra parroted as the elven girl sped off into the forest. ¡°Why can¡¯t you take your own advice?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t want to hear it,¡± Gabby said as she entered the brush to follow the hyperactive girl home.
¡°So, you play with dolls, Temel?¡± Gabby asked as they neared the town at last.
¡°I make them also,¡± the elven boy told her from just above her head.
To help the trip go faster, Gabby had spent the hike carrying the smaller of the children on her shoulders. Temel, being the smallest even though he wasn¡¯t the youngest, got more time on her shoulders than the others. She had to admit, however, that she found watching him churn his tiny legs to keep up with the rest of them to be utterly adorable. With the thin body and long hair, it was very much like what she imagined Anahi would look like in a few¡ªnope. She forcefully stopped herself from going down that mental road before it got too much for her to handle.
¡°I know, Aysen showed me. But, don¡¯t you think it¡¯s wrong for a boy to play with dolls?¡±
¡°No?¡± he answered, confused.
¡°No?¡± she repeated, now also confused. ¡°It¡¯s not weird? Wouldn¡¯t you rather have more manly toys?¡±
¡°I like making dolls and playing with them. It makes me happy. Why would it be wrong to be happy?¡±
¡°I...¡± Gabby began, but her words fizzled away. It didn¡¯t really matter anymore, anyway, as they had finally arrived at Kagos.
Not surprisingly, the guards let them all in immediately, even Gabby this time. There were frank exchanges of words between Aysen and the present guards¡ªGabby found herself aghast at the sort of insults in the girl¡¯s vocabulary¡ªand then Gabby, Chitra, and the other children were taken to see the Captain of the Guard to get everything sorted out.
Shortly, Chitra and Gabby found themselves alone in a small office¡ªthe Captain¡¯s, Gabby presumed¡ªwaiting for the townsfolk to finish dealing with the children. A tense silence filled the room, as Gabby, at last without anything to demand her attention, finally had the opportunity to work up a good seethe over recent events. Chitra, on her end, seemed lost for words¡ªan exceedingly rare occurrence. Gabby would have been happy to let it stay that way until the end, but unfortunately, she needed to know one thing before the Captain arrived.
¡°Do they know?¡± she asked.
¡°I don¡¯t believe so, no,¡± came the reply. ¡°Not unless they went into my room at the inn and searched through your things, and even then, perhaps not.¡±
Gabby let out a sigh of relief.
¡°Gabby¡ª¡±
¡°If what you¡¯re about to say isn¡¯t the mother of all apologies, then don¡¯t talk to me.¡±
¡°Come now¡ª¡±
¡°What did I just say!?¡± she snapped.
Wisely, Chitra decided to keep her mouth shut this time, so Gabby returned to her seething. The atmosphere returned to its former heaviness and stayed that way for some time until Gabby found herself unable to hold back any longer.
¡°I just want to know, what am I to you? Do you have any respect for me, whatsoever? Because it sure doesn¡¯t feel like it!¡± she began. ¡°If you respected me, you wouldn¡¯t be here right now. You would have taken what I said to heart and left me alone. But you didn¡¯t, because, thinking it through now, I realize that you see me like a child¡ªsomebody whose thoughts and feelings exist but don¡¯t matter, because you¡¯re Chitra Batranala, and you know what¡¯s best for me and everyone else!¡±
¡°Should I have just left you to wallow, then? Is that what you wanted?¡±
¡°I wanted you to treat me like I¡¯m an adult and an equal and understand that when I say no, IT MEANS NO!¡±
The sound of somebody coming to a halt on the other side of the room¡¯s door forced Gabby to realize that she was now standing and hollering at the top of her lungs. Mortified, she quickly sat down again as the door opened, and in walked the captain¡ªthe man who¡¯d first kept her out of the village.
Looking at him now up close, Gabby realized just how old the man was. Tired and worn down, he looked to be in his late sixties--the sort of man who should be enjoying late afternoons in a rocking chair and telling stories to his grandchildren, not still actively working such a demanding job. Gabby could only guess that he¡¯d been pressed back into service by the town¡¯s lack of younger people.
¡°I apologize for interrupting,¡± he began, closing the door behind him.
¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± Chitra told him. ¡°The two of us were simply discussing... personal matters.¡±
¡°If it pleases you. However...¡± He turned to Gabriela and bowed deeply. ¡°I must beg for your forgiveness. I was wrong to chase you away, and yet, you saved us anyway. I speak for all of us when I say that you are a hero and we will do everything we can to repay you.¡±
Her mind still dizzy from the heavy emotions of the previous moment, Gabby managed to mumble out something about not needing anything.
¡°You can provide us with free lodging and food, to start with,¡± Chitra interjected. ¡°I imagine neither of us will be here for more than a day or two.¡±
¡°Of course, of course. It is the least we could do,¡± the man agreed. He proceeded to take a seat across from them, his face now all business while still managing to seem deferential.
¡°What of the children?¡± Gabby asked. ¡°Can you help them?¡±
The man sighed. ¡°It will take a little doing, but yes. Each of them is from a different town. We¡¯re going to send all of them except the Simsek heir home tomorrow.¡±
¡°Do you mean Dost? Why not him?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°Because he¡¯s too valuable to be sent back with only the few people Kagos can spare,¡± Chitra answered for him. ¡°You¡¯re going to send a messenger instead and have his father send his forces here for a trade, are you not? Perhaps some needed supplies or assistance that you couldn¡¯t afford on your own?¡±
The man nodded. ¡°That¡¯s right. The other towns can owe us a favor later and we¡¯re fine with that for now. We have no quarrel with our neighbors; they¡¯re not the ones making a mess of the place. It¡¯s the nobles that are the problem. That¡¯s why the Viscount will need to pay upfront. The messenger has already left, actually¡ªit¡¯s more than a day¡¯s run to his domain. Almost everything is taken care of, for now. All that is left is you.¡± He leaned forward, a deepening frown on his face. ¡°This entire situation is... odd, and it bothers me. Bandits taking hostages is not unheard of, but the son of a Viscount is another story. What makes it stranger is that Viscount Simsek¡¯s territory is not that close to us, either. You would have to travel northwest through most of the Baroness¡¯s lands to arrive there. It doesn¡¯t add up. Is there anything noteworthy you can tell me?¡±
Gabby and Chitra shared a momentary glance.
¡°I didn¡¯t even see inside the place, so I don¡¯t know what I can add,¡± Chitra admitted. ¡°My friend here saw it all, however.¡±
Gabby bristled at the use of ¡®friend¡¯ but pushed it aside. ¡°I haven¡¯t been in many bandit camps, but this one seemed very... well-funded?¡±
When the others gave her inquisitive looks, she pressed on. ¡°Like, vekkels are very expensive, right? But they had one in their stable. They had a stable. A lot of things felt less... rough, I guess. That¡¯s about all I can say, really.¡±
The guard captain leaned back with a concerned expression. ¡°I see. Thank you. And once again, thank you for rescuing the children. It shames me to admit, but we would have been too weak to manage it ourselves. There are not many fighters here, at least, not anymore.¡±
¡°About that...¡± Gabby wondered, ¡°don¡¯t you have a ruler? What about this Baroness? Shouldn¡¯t she have soldiers here to help protect you and hunt down the bandits?¡±
The man grimaced. ¡°You truly aren¡¯t from around here, are you? The borders in this land right now are... fuzzy,¡± he explained. ¡°In the time before the invasion, we paid our dues to Count Ytrec, though the border with Baroness Coban¡¯s lands was very close by. After the count perished fighting the Ubran horde¡ª¡±
Gabby kept her face as neutral as possible.
¡°¡ªthe lower nobles have expanded their territories, the Baroness included. However, we and the other towns in this area have no desire to live under her banner. She is not well-liked, and the taxes we would have to pay are ruinous, from what I¡¯m told. And yet, just yesterday, we in the council and the mayor decided that we had no choice but to submit to her rule and pay what we must. She is the only noble close enough and strong enough to protect us from the bandits and marauders that seem to fill Gustil these days, you see. With the Barbed Blades gone, however, perhaps we can reconsider our options. Just one more thing to thank you for, it seems.¡±
Chitra let out a soft hum but said nothing.
¡°Anyway, you¡¯ve given me a lot of work tonight,¡± the man chuckled. ¡°Thank you for answering my questions. I will make sure that Carmus gives you only the best room at the inn, and all you can eat, free of charge, of course.¡±
¡°Uh, two rooms, please,¡± Gabby said. ¡°One for each of us.¡±
The captain looked back and forth between them with visible confusion. ¡°...are you two not¡ª¡±
¡°No,¡± Gabriela cut in with finality. ¡°We¡¯re not.¡±
¡°It seems I have blundered once again. My apologies. Two rooms, then. I hope you enjoy your stays here in Kagos.¡±
The two of them got up and left the room and the building, emerging to find an evening sky. It was late¡ªlater than Gabby had wanted.
¡°What will you do now?¡± Chitra asked.
¡°What¡¯s it to you?¡±
¡°All your supplies are still in my room, Gabby. Unless you plan on breaking in, I¡¯ll need to be there.¡±
¡°Fine, Aysen invited me to dinner after you went into the guard station, so I¡¯m going to her place. I¡¯ll stop by after that.¡±
¡°Very well. I¡¯ll be waiting.¡±
Without making a fuss, Chitra walked away. Gabby watched her leave, taking in the way she stepped, the lightness of her feet as she almost pirouetted around a man who wasn¡¯t watching where he was going, the almost hypnotic sway of her ample hips with every confident strut.
Gabby had admired the Ubran¡¯s incredible beauty ever since the first day they¡¯d met, but looking at her felt unusual now in a way that left Gabby feeling uncomfortable. She¡¯d long ago discerned that Chitra¡¯s grace and poise were part of a never-ending performance, but she¡¯d always thought that the audience for said performance was the world and all its people. Now, she realized that she, and she alone, was the only intended audience for the Batranala¡¯s every elegant action. Though the performance was the same, it hit very differently now than it had even a week ago.
She shook her head. There was no point in putting any more thought into that devious woman¡¯s actions. She had far more important things to think about, like remembering the directions Aysen had given her.
Chapter 119
Aysen and Temel¡¯s house turned out to be an unexpectedly nice cottage in the more well-to-do¡ªfor a random mid-sized Gustilian town, anyway¡ªside of Kagos. At least four rooms, sturdy wooden walls, what appeared to be some sort of clay tile roofing, and even a nice stone walkway leading to the front door. As she approached, Gabby could see smoke billowing out of a chimney on the right side, and she caught the sight through a nearby window of a shadow flitting about inside.
¡°You came!¡± Aysen greeted her with a gigantic smile and ushered her into the home. ¡°Please, sit. I¡¯m almost done.¡±
The inside was just as nice as the outside. She sat down on a strong, well-crafted wooden chair placed beside a thick and sturdy table. This seemed to be a combination kitchen, dining room, and living room. Solid stone tile covered the floor from wall to wall, a vast improvement over the dirt and straw most commoner houses seemed to have. Several large candles added light to the room, their light illuminating the many carved ornaments that hung from the walls. Somebody was¡ªor had been¡ªa very accomplished whittler, it seemed.
The wooden ornaments hung on every wall except near the stone hearth in the kitchen where a healthy fire crackled under a sizzling... something roasting on a spit. Some kind of large, skinned lizard? Whatever it was, it smelled rather good, almost like roasted chicken.
There was more to the meal than just that. What went for a Scyrian salad sat in a large wooden bowl in the center of the table, its leaves a kaleidoscope of color. To its side sat a large loaf of bread and some butter, and even what looked like a small jar of jam. For the circumstances, it seemed like quite a lavish meal.
Gabriela immediately became guilt-ridden at the sight, and that guilt only intensified as she watched Aysen climb up a stool to get high enough to turn the spit. Though supposedly nearly an adult, her body was still that of a prepubescent girl who, in Gabby¡¯s judgment at least, was far too small to be taking care of herself and her even smaller brother all on her own.
¡°Let me help you with that,¡± she said, getting out of her seat.
¡°No, no, it¡¯s alright!¡± the elf vehemently insisted. ¡°It¡¯s done, anyway.¡± She paused for a moment of consideration, looking at the tall spit and the just-as-tall table, which went up to her eyes. ¡°I guess you can help me get it off.¡±
Gabby did just that, picking up the spit, bringing it over to a large cutting board on the kitchen counter, and smoothly sliding the lizard off the rod. She turned to look for a knife, but Aysen shooed her away.
¡°I don¡¯t need your help with this. I can do it myself,¡± she said, dragging the stool over. ¡°I cook a lot now that¡ªnow that it¡¯s just the two of us.¡±
Gabby noticed the way her voice hitched when the topic of her parents came up, and it took everything Gabby had to not wrap the child in her arms, but she didn¡¯t. She didn¡¯t feel like Aysen wanted that right now, and also, the girl was holding a rather large knife and Gabby didn¡¯t want her to cut herself. So, instead, she stepped back and made small talk while the child deftly cut into the meat.
¡°So, is it just you and Temel here? The town is alright with that?¡±
¡°Mostly. Some of the neighbors help us with washing the clothes and they give us food a lot, which is nice.¡±
¡°They wanted to make us live with another family, but sister refused.¡±
Gabby jumped so high that she nearly hit her head on the ceiling. She looked across the room to where the voice had come from and found Temel hidden in the gloom of the far corner, his small form curled up on a heap of clothes as he worked on sewing something that she couldn¡¯t quite make out in the dim light.
¡°She told them that if they made us leave our home, she¡¯d crumble the wall and nobody would ever be able to fix it,¡± he continued, not once looking up from his work. ¡°So, we didn¡¯t move.¡±
¡°Mom and Dad were really proud of this place,¡± Aysen added as a leg fell to the cutting board and was placed on a nearby platter. ¡°I don¡¯t want to lose it. It¡¯s important.¡±
¡°You¡¯re right, it is important,¡± Gabby agreed. ¡°Are you in need of money?¡±
¡°No, the town pays me a lot because I¡¯m the only one who can keep the walls repaired,¡± the elven girl bragged. ¡°I¡¯m really important.¡±
Gabby couldn¡¯t help but laugh. ¡°Well, that¡¯s good.¡±
Aysen hopped down from her stool, the now-full platter in her hands. ¡°Alright! Time to eat!¡±
The three of them settled around the table. Gabby expected them to tuck in immediately, but instead, they both put their hands over their hearts, tilted their heads back to look at the ceiling, and closed their eyes.
¡°Ancestors, thank you for passing down the gift of life and stuff so that we can all eat this delicious food together,¡± Temel said to the air. ¡°And, thank you for guiding Gabby to rescue me so I don¡¯t have to be dirty and listen to Dost complain all the time. Okay, let¡¯s eat.¡±
What sort of prayer was that? Gabby didn¡¯t know much about Nocend traditions, other than their reverence for the spirits of those that came before them, but she still doubted such worship would have flown anywhere but at this table.
Now, the two of them started to eat. Aysen piled an assortment of dishes onto her plate, while Temel took some of the bread and started to make a sandwich of sorts with it, using some meat, a bit of the salad, and some jam. Gabby, for her part, decided to start with some vegetables first.
¡°How can I be like you, Gabby?¡±
The question blindsided Gabby so heavily that she almost dropped her plate. She gave Aysen a dismayed look. ¡°You don¡¯t want to be like me. It¡¯s not nice or fun.¡±
¡°But you¡¯re all mighty and cool!¡± Aysen objected. ¡°I¡¯d rather be like you than a stupid stone Observer.¡±
¡°Stone Observers are respected and appreciated,¡± Gabby argued. ¡°You just bragged about how much they pay you.¡±
¡°Yeah, but they¡¯re not strong and powerful. Respect didn¡¯t get me anywhere when Temel was kidnapped. I couldn¡¯t do anything. If I was like Dad, I would have been able to save Temel on my own!¡±
¡°You would have died.¡±
¡°Then I would have died with honor! Mom and Dad used to say that if you died with honor, then you could always hold your head high among the other spirits.¡±
Gabby decided to try a different tack.
¡°Stone Observers can be strong and powerful just as much as anybody else. I heard of a stone Observer so strong that the rock flowed like a river,¡± she told them, recalling an old conversation she¡¯d had with Blake in the Flying Toaster as they¡¯d flown north towards the dragon¡¯s lair. ¡°One of the most powerful people in the world fought him, and that person told me that the only reason he beat the stone Observer was that the Observer got overconfident. He said the man was terrifying.¡±
¡°Really?!¡± The child¡¯s eyes sparkled in the light of the fire.
¡°Yep. So, don¡¯t give up on the good thing you have going. Get better at controlling the stone and who knows what you might be able to do someday?¡±
Anything to keep her from trying to become a fighter. It was better if she stayed safe and got rich than ran off to some battlefield on some misguided quest for honor or excitement or whatever.
¡°So, you know super-powerful people? What are they like? Are they stronger than you? What¡¯s it like fighting them? Did you fight against the Ubrans? They were strong, right?¡±
Gabby reeled from the deluge of questions spewing from the hyperactive child¡¯s mouth.
¡°There are a lot of strong people,¡± Gabby hedged.
¡°Like what?! Tell me! Who¡¯s the strongest!?¡±
Gabby let out a long breath. ¡°Well, there¡¯s no one answer to that. You can¡¯t boil it down to a single number where one person¡¯s is higher than the other¡¯s. It¡¯s complicated and lots of different things¡ª¡±
¡°Laaaammmmeeee! You¡¯re just trying to avoid answering the question.¡±
¡°It¡¯s a bad question. Strength doesn¡¯t work that way. Look at what happened with you today. I¡¯m stronger than Chitra in all the ways that people normally think about this sort of thing, but I couldn¡¯t save you from that bandit while she did. How much I can lift or how hard I can hit didn¡¯t matter. What mattered was her ability to sneak up behind him without anybody knowing.¡±
¡°I guess you¡¯re right,¡± Aysen begrudgingly admitted. ¡°Then, who would it scare you the most to fight?¡±
¡°Gosh... there¡¯s a couple, I guess, both kind of the same. I¡¯ve never met the person, but supposedly the Drayhadans have this person who traps you in a dream.¡±
¡°Wooaaaahhh! That¡¯s awesome!¡±
What was with this kid? Gustil didn¡¯t have comic books, right?
¡°What about the other one?¡±
¡°The other one is a woman who can kill you with words. If you are close enough to hear her, you are only alive because she hasn¡¯t decided to kill you yet. Or, she doesn¡¯t need to kill you. She could make it so you can only speak in rhyme, or turn you blind, or make you think things you wouldn¡¯t otherwise think, or all sorts of other weird things¡ªand you can¡¯t disobey, or you get hurt.¡±
¡°Wooooowwwww! That¡¯s really neat!¡±
¡°It¡¯s not neat, it¡¯s scary. Fortunately, she¡¯s actually very nice and doesn¡¯t like hurting people, but if I had to fight either of them, I don¡¯t think I¡¯d be able to make it close enough before they got me.¡±
¡°Yeah, that does sound super scary,¡± Aysen said, though the way her eyes glittered with awe suggested that she was feeling something very different.
¡°There are a lot of strong people in the world. There¡¯s a man in Otharia who can build an army out of metal. There¡¯s a man in Stragma who can bring back the dead. There¡¯s a little girl like you can blow up this whole town with a bomb. There are beasts so large and strong that they could destroy all of Lita in minutes, and they can even fly. Who knows what else might be out there?¡±
¡°What about the Crimson Reaper?¡± Temel inquired.
Aysen¡¯s mood immediately soured.
¡°Who?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°That¡¯s what our uncle who lives in Chanomere calls her. She fought for the Ubrans, and they say she would be killed a hundred times every battle but would never die. Nobody could stop her,¡± the boy clarified.
Gabby¡¯s blood went as cold as a deep winter¡¯s night. He knew.
¡°Every swing of her giant sword would fell a hundred people, and crimson smoke flowed around her like it was alive,¡± he continued. ¡°Then, she disappeared, and nobody knows where she went. Some people say she finally died for real; others say she went back to Ubrus. Either way, everybody is afraid she¡¯ll come back.¡±
Gabby could see it in Temel¡¯s eyes. He knew. He¡¯d seen her die. He¡¯d seen the smoke. He was young, but even a child could put something that obvious together.
¡°Other people call her the Monster,¡± Aysen spat, like the words tasted bitter in her mouth. ¡°She killed Dad¡ªUncle saw it happen.¡±
Gabriela swallowed, her throat feeling like it was going to close in on itself. This all just kept getting worse and worse with every sentence. What did Temel want? Why was he saying this? Why did it seem like he hadn¡¯t told his sister? And... how was she supposed to reply?
¡°The Monster is the worst,¡± she finally managed to say. ¡°All she ever did was ruin people¡¯s lives.¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± Aysen agreed. ¡°I hope she rots.¡±
¡°This is really good red lambak, sis,¡± Temel said, grabbing another chunk of lizard meat and changing the subject with the subtlety of a rampaging garoph. ¡°It¡¯s better than you normally make it.¡±
The jarring topic switch didn¡¯t seem to bother his sister one bit. She smiled brightly, breaking out of her funk like it had never been there. ¡°Thanks! I tried really hard because Gabby was coming.¡±
¡°You did a very good job,¡± Gabby agreed, though she could hear the hollowness in her words.
What in the world was she doing here, Gabriela asked herself. For what purpose had she come to this place? At first, she¡¯d found herself unable to crush the hope in Aysen¡¯s eyes when the child invited her over, or at least, that¡¯s what she¡¯d told herself at the time. Later, she¡¯d told herself that she was coming to check in on them and make sure they were doing alright on their own. Now, though, those justifications rang hollow. So, what, then, was her purpose here? Was this a part of her quest to reckon with the consequences of her actions? To right her wrongs somehow? Because she knew, for all the talk of strength, she lacked the strength to admit her true nature to this energetic, impulsive girl who idolized her. Aysen deserved to know, but no words would come out.
Or, was she just utilizing these kids as temporary surrogates for the family she¡¯d left behind? Were they just one-time plugs for a hole that could never truly be filled, to be used and discarded? Was that all this was?
The longer she thought about it, the worse she felt. She shouldn¡¯t be in this house. She didn¡¯t deserve to be here, in the home of people who¡¯d died by her hand, chatting with the children who had to live with the consequences of her actions. She was trespassing on forbidden ground.
She took a bite of the juicy, savory meat. It tasted like ashes.
The rest of the dinner passed with more small talk. Gabby kept a smile on her face for Aysen¡¯s benefit, but with every passing minute, she died inside a little more. Meanwhile, Temel didn¡¯t say another word the entire time, strangely content to let his sister prattle on in ignorance.
The Gabby that left the house that night was a dispirited shell of the woman who¡¯d stepped inside. She wandered the streets of Kagos for a little while, half-cognizant of where she was going, until finally heading to the town¡¯s single inn.
As she stepped inside, she suddenly recalled what more she needed to do tonight and felt the little strength that remained leave her. After speaking with the innkeeper¡ªwho was exhaustively effusive in thanking her¡ªand getting the key to her room, she headed upstairs. Praying that Chitra had gone to sleep, she fumbled with getting the key into the lock.
The door next to hers opened.
¡°Have a good¡ª¡± Chitra¡¯s words screeched to a halt, her eyes going wide at Gabby¡¯s appearance. She rushed forward, placing a hand on Gabby¡¯s cheek. ¡°Are you okay? What happened?¡±
Gabby squirmed away. ¡°I¡¯m fine. Leave me alone.¡±
¡°You are clearly not fine.¡±
Gabby sighed. ¡°Just give me my things. Let¡¯s get this over with.¡±
Chitra stepped aside and Gabby entered the Ubran¡¯s room. There, in the far corner, sat Gabby¡¯s pack and the Sword of Eternity, neatly covered in burlap to help obscure its nature. Gabby wondered how Chitra managed to get it past the guards, but she already knew the answer.
¡°Well?¡± Chitra asked as Gabby gathered her belongings. ¡°I believe you said you had words for me.¡±
¡°I...¡±
The anger from before, then overflowing, was now conspicuously absent, replaced by guilt, weariness, and exhaustion.
¡°I¡¯m just... I¡¯m glad you saved Aysen. Thank you for that. But at the same time, I never wanted to see you again. And I still kind of don¡¯t. You were my friend¡ªmy best friend. But now that¡¯s gone, and I don¡¯t know how it could ever come back. You shouldn¡¯t have followed me.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t see why I should just give up after a single refusal,¡± Chitra rebutted. ¡°A hunter doesn¡¯t give up the hunt if their prey escapes the first ambush. Persistence is the key to everything.¡±
¡°That¡¯s called stalking, Chitra.¡±
¡°Of course. A hunter stalks their prey.¡±
¡°No! That¡¯s not what love is! You¡¯re so smart about everything else, why don¡¯t you get this?!¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand what it is that you think I don¡¯t get. I understand this perfectly well.¡±
¡°No, you¡ª¡± Gabby exhaled and rubbed her face, her vigor flagging with dismay. She picked up her things and started for the door. ¡°It¡¯s late. I don¡¯t have the energy for this right now.¡±
Chitra stepped in front of her, blocking her passage.
¡°Hold on, what about the original goal of this journey? Have you given up on that?¡± she inquired.
Gabby paused for a moment and found she didn¡¯t have a concrete answer. ¡°...I don¡¯t even know now. You made it all too complicated. But either way, it¡¯s not your business anymore.¡±
¡°Wait!¡± Chitra¡¯s arm shot out and grabbed Gabby¡¯s arm as she passed, and initially, the only reason Gabby didn¡¯t slap her into next week was that Gabby¡¯s hands were full of her supplies. However, that urge faded quickly when she noticed how the Ubran wasn¡¯t even looking her way. Her body tense, Chitra stared out towards the windows across the room. ¡°Did you hear that?¡±
¡°What?¡± Gabby asked tiredly. ¡°I don¡¯t hear¡ª¡±
Gabby¡¯s annoyed pronouncement was cut short as she picked up something just on the edge of her hearing. ¡°Was that a scream?¡±
The answer came in the form of an alarm bell ringing somewhere outside, off in the distance.
Chitra grabbed her two trademark long daggers and strode out the door. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±
¡°Go where?¡± Gabby asked. Dropping her pack onto the floor and strapping the Sword of Eternity to her back, she chased after the Batranala.
¡°Don¡¯t you think it¡¯s odd that Kagos is under attack now, all of a sudden? After you wiped out the local bandits?¡± Chitra wondered as they exited the inn onto the dark street dimly lit by moonslight obscured by cloud cover. ¡°This can¡¯t be a coincidence.¡±
¡°Then what¡¯s going on?¡±
¡°The noble boy. They¡¯re trying to take him.¡±
¡°Who¡¯s ¡®they¡¯?¡±
¡°There¡¯s no time. If we delay too long, all your work today will be destroyed. Do you want that?¡±
¡°No!¡±
¡°Then, what¡¯s the most luxurious home in Kagos?¡±
¡°Uhhhh...¡± Gabby considered the question for a quick second. ¡°The Mayor¡¯s home, probably. It looked the nicest of all the homes I saw.¡±
¡°Perfect. That would be where Dost is. Pick me up.¡± Chitra wrapped her arms around Gabby¡¯s neck and leaned against her.
¡°Wha-wha-wha¡ª¡± Gabby stammered, backpedaling from the sudden intimacy, but Chitra held on.
¡°It¡¯s faster than us both running, and you know it! Now stop wasting time and let¡¯s move!¡±
Gabby decided to humor Chitra just this once¡ªonly because of extenuating circumstances, of course. Lifting the Ubran into the princess carry that they¡¯d used before, she shot off like a rocket towards the Mayor¡¯s residence. Gabby knew the way, as she¡¯d passed by their destination on her way to Aysen¡¯s home, which was coincidentally down the same street. It said a lot about how well Aysen¡¯s family had been faring for them to be in the same small neighborhood, now that she thought about it more.
The Mayor¡¯s estate, like most of the richer houses in Scyria, was fenced off by a stone wall, this one about four meters high. Many Feelers would be able to leap or climb over such a piddly impediment with little trouble, of course, but Observers would have more trouble. Unless attackers wanted to split up, they¡¯d have to get through the front gate. When Gabby and Chitra first spotted the villa off in the distance, they spotted several people surmounting the wall around the entrance gate as others battled outside it.
The area outside the estate was largely clear, with a dirt street that was nevertheless smooth and well-maintained running through the large space between residences. Large trees were placed at set intervals lining the street, each of them large¡ªfor Earth standards, anyway¡ªwith trunks about a meter thick.
The estate itself, like most Gustilian architecture, reminded Gabby of Roman architecture, with its seeming obsession with stone columns, statues, and the like. Most eye-catching, however, was the statue of a man holding an axe and riding a very regal-looking vekkel¡ªsome war hero of the past, or perhaps, a testament to the mayor¡¯s ego. Behind the base of that statue crouched a terrified guard, quaking in her boots as fireballs and the like flew by, her hands clutching a large bow so hard that Gabby was surprised it hadn¡¯t snapped.
From this distance at least, Gabby couldn¡¯t spot a single other guard still alive. Between some of the attackers getting behind the guards and into the estate and the others keeping up the pressure from the outside, the situation looked dire for the town¡¯s defenders.
¡°Throw me over the wall,¡± Chitra yelled over the wind.
¡°What? But¡ª¡± Gabby hesitated; they were still more than two hundred meters away.
¡°I¡¯ll be fine! I¡¯ll stop those that got in before they can open the gate from the inside, you take care of the rest! Throw!¡±
Now perhaps fifty meters out, Gabby did as instructed and hurled the woman through the air. Chitra spun, twisting about like a high diver as she arced over the wall and disappeared from view.
Gabriela refocused on the scene in front of her. Unfortunately, getting a closer look had only driven home just how dire the situation here seemed. The single woman behind the statue looked to be the only one still alive, or at least conscious. Gabby spotted two other bodies lying on the ground, one with a broken skull, the other still smoking, his clothes and flesh charred terribly. If there were other guards, she couldn¡¯t spot them.
What she could spot, however, were the marauders attacking the place. From what she could see, they appeared to be bandits judging by the roughness of their garb, though she didn¡¯t get a good look at any of them. She spotted four total people, each of them crouched behind various bits of cover provided by the city street, be it inside an open doorway or behind a tree. It reminded her of the way urban warfare was depicted in modern media back on earth, with everybody hiding for most of the time and then popping out for a moment before going back behind cover, except instead of guns, everybody had bows, or fireballs, or shards of ice.
As she approached, two of the invaders ran from a tree on the opposite side of the street to another closer to the estate. As the guard peeked out to maybe take a shot while they were out in the open, another attacker launched a fireball her way, forcing her back behind the stone. They were surrounding her, using their superior numbers to tighten the noose.
Not if Gabby had anything to say about it. The two attackers stopped behind the tree and turned Gabby¡¯s way just in time to see the face of their executioner. The Sword of Eternity sang as it sliced effortlessly through both them and the tree behind them. The tree toppled towards the middle of the street, but Gabby ignored it. It posed no danger to her¡ªif anything it would be a useful distraction.
Quickly, she rocketed across the street towards the location of the fire Observer, who foolishly tried to put their tree between them and her. One swing later, they learned that it made no difference.
She spotted the fourth attacker closer to the wall. The man panicked at the sight of her and ran for the estate entrance, perhaps hoping to group up with his cohorts inside. Gabby didn¡¯t give him the chance. Zipping forward, she swung her blade upward vertically, almost like a golf swing, splitting the man apart lengthwise.
Easy. So trivially easy.
Gabby surveyed the area, making sure that she hadn¡¯t missed anybody, but if there were any more enemies, they were well hidden and not showing themselves any time soon. At least, there were no enemies outside the estate. Gabby trotted over towards the gate to see how Chitra was faring inside. It turned out that she didn¡¯t even need to open it up; made out of a series of vertical bronze poles, the gate let her gaze right through the large gaps and see everything.
What she saw took her breath away.
Gabriela had never seen Chitra Batranala fight. Sure, she¡¯d experienced the woman¡¯s grace up close during all manner of activities, but this was something else. This was on a level Gabby had never imagined.
Chitra stood just steps away from the other side of the gate, surrounded by five of the enemy. Every one of the bandits was injured, with bloody gashes all across their bodies. Another half dozen bodies littered the ground around her, covering the dirt with pooling blood. And yet, despite the carnage all around, she stood in the center of it all totally pristine, the only blood near her dripping from her blades.
The Ubran swayed and spun to a beat that only she could hear, dodging her opponents¡¯ furious and desperate strikes by the slimmest of margins. Moving with fluidity and poise unlike anything Gabby had ever seen, she effortlessly drew the others into a deadly dance, one where only she knew the steps. Even surrounded and outnumbered, she was in complete control.
Gabby watched, completely mesmerized, as Chitra toyed with her prey, utterly humiliating and humbling them. They were powerless to touch her, absolutely impotent, and she seemed intent on driving that home. As performances went, Gabby found it enthralling, the sight sending a thrill running through her.
After what felt like an hour to Gabby but could only have been a few seconds, Chitra decided to stop toying with her adversaries. Flowing like water, she stepped forwards, bending her legs while simultaneously arching backwards so far that her head was level with her knees. With that one single lithe movement, she avoided both an axe sweeping towards where her knees had been and a mace swinging for her head, and as the weapons each whooshed through nothing but air, she almost casually reached up and plunged both of her oversized knives into the axe wielder¡¯s chest.
The bandit staggered from the deadly blow, clutching their chest and staring at the deadly wound with shock, but Chitra did not release her hold on the handles. Instead, using them momentarily for balance and leverage, she swept one foot upward to crack into the mace wielder¡¯s chin, sending them to the dirt. The second foot followed as Chitra launched her off-balanced body into a backflip with strength that only a Feeler could possess. Soaring upside-down over the stabbed bandit, her hands still clutching the blades embedded within their chest, she ripped the weapons violently from her victim¡¯s torso, sending a spray of blood spurting forth away from her. A knee to the back upon landing sent them to the ground, and they did not get back up.
The Batranala was on the move the moment she landed, swerving around her third victim¡¯s guard like a serpent and piercing their skull with a knife through the ear faster than one could blink. Desperate, the two remaining bandits both attacked, trying to get her while her one blade was still stuck in the third bandit¡¯s ear. Chitra pirouetted to the side, deftly parrying one blow while avoiding the other. As she did, she made eye contact with Gabby for the first time and winked playfully at her before taking her fourth life with a stab to the back of the bandit¡¯s neck.
She could have taken them all out before Gabby had come to look, Gabby realized. Instead, she¡¯d waited until Gabby was there to watch her finish her meal. Chitra wanted Gabby to see this, to watch her turn the act of bestowing death into an exquisitely graceful and elegant art form.
It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing Gabriela had ever witnessed, an unspoken audition, invitation, and promise all rolled into one. In any circumstance, it would have been spellbinding, but right now, to Gabby, it was so much more. This performance was meant for her and her alone, and that made all the difference in the world.
The final fighter turned and ran¡ªa wiser move than fighting, but still a futile one. Without even turning to look, the Ubran whipped her arm towards the retreating bandit. The blade in her hand blurred towards the fleeing man and pierced straight into the middle of his back. He tumbled to the ground, unmoving.
Gabby found herself flushed at the sight of her companion standing unmarred in the center of a yard full of bloody corpses. Her whole body felt heated, her heart raced, and her breath was shallow. She wanted to rip the gate between them off its hinges so that nothing separated the two of them. She wanted to¡ª
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She gulped, blinking and shaking her head as the magic of the moment began to fade. Her mind spun and her emotions roiled as she tried to reckon with all that she had just experienced. Where had that yearning come from? And that entrancement? Were her deep-seated fears coming true? Did she... desire Chitra?
Sure, Gabby had always known how physically attractive the Ubran was, but she¡¯d always done her best to appreciate it platonically. Chitra was captivating in a way that transcended normal boundaries, to the point that most anybody would feel a pull, and any hint of desire Gabby may or may not have felt over their long friendship could be attributed to the natural human yearning to be close to beauty. Or at least, that was what she¡¯s always told herself, for no other explanation could be allowed.
Only now, after Chitra¡¯s confession had dredged the concept of romance from the swamp of the forbidden, was Gabriela able to wonder just how truly platonic the feelings thrumming inside her were. It felt different than the needs that had blossomed within her during those passionate nights with Juan years ago, but, as much as it pained her to admit it, not anywhere near as different as she would have liked.
Was this attraction? Or was there something deeper happening? Was her soul responding to the desire infused in Chitra¡¯s performance, her yearning to be wanted harmonizing with Chitra¡¯s powerfully-expressed want? Or, was she just a prisoner of the moment, and all of this would fade into nothingness if she just took a few deep breaths and centered herself? Was¡ª
Bound by her chaotic, rampaging thoughts and feelings, Gabriela didn¡¯t notice the arrow headed for the side of her head until it hit her. She staggered, her awareness cutting out to the sounds of metal slicing through skin, shattering bone, and a high-pitched shriek off in the distance. For a moment, she found herself completely disoriented as her perception of existence warped as it always did when the soul and mind were no longer in sync. Oddly enough, she found it worse to deal with when her brain was merely damaged, rather than completely destroyed like all the times she¡¯d fought Blake¡¯s robots. When it was just her soul, things were simpler and she could ¡°think¡± more clearly, letting her flex her powers fairly easily. With a brain damaged like it was now, there was still enough signal coming from it to confuse her thoughts. It was like trying to concentrate with a broken speaker; it was a lot easier when it was so broken it couldn¡¯t make a sound than when it could still warble loud, ear-splitting noise.
Existing consciously only as a soul was always a weird experience, no matter how many times she¡¯d been in this situation. While it provided proof of existence beyond the corporeal, buttressing her faith, everything felt off in a way that unnerved her. Other than her one extended stay in this state, she generally tried to return to normal as quickly as she could.
After a moment, Gabby managed to filter out the errant signal and focus on her self. She channeled her powers, summoning the crimson smoke to eat away the arrow and rebuild her head like she always did, only this time, there came a new sensation along for the ride. It was like heat, but not; burning... but different in a way that she couldn¡¯t quite find the word for. Perhaps the closest thing she could liken it to was like a very mild case of heartburn... except for the soul? Whatever it was, it was definitely not pleasant. Then, after only a moment, it vanished, as if it had never existed in the first place.
Whole once more, Gabby opened her eyes and pushed herself to her feet. In the short span that she¡¯d been down¡ªit was hard to tell the flow of time when only a soul, but it couldn¡¯t have been more than a handful of seconds¡ªvery little had changed. The only notable difference was that Chitra was now outside the estate, holding a very shaken guard up against the nearby wall while ranting at her. That must have been where the arrow came from, she realized. The guard, still in a panic, had seen her standing there, bloody and holding a huge, menacing sword, and shot her in the head with her bow.
Still, that didn¡¯t explain the high-pitched shriek Gabby had heard just before conscious thought had ceased. The sound worried her, as it had sounded to her mother-trained ears like a child in distress somewhere not too far away. Scanning the area, she spotted a figure in the distance, and her blood ran cold.
Down the street, close to her home, stood Aysen. The girl stood aghast, her eyes wide, her jaw clenched, her face pale. It was like she¡¯d seen a ghost, except Gabriela knew that, no, she¡¯d seen something far worse. She¡¯d seen a Monster.
She had witnessed the death, the smoke, the revival¡ªall of it¡ª and now... Aysen knew.
Making eye contact seemed to break the child from her paralyzing dismay. She turned and ran back towards her home as fast as she could.
¡°No... nononononono!¡±
All other things flew out the window as Gabby saw her turn into the walkway to her house, tears streaming down her cheeks. Gabby sprinted after the girl, her heart now pounding in her chest in a very different way than moments before. The front door hung open and she entered, following the sounds of a broken heart to another room¡ªher and Temel¡¯s bedroom, judging by the twin beds. She found Aysen curled up in a ball on the bed furthest in, weeping openly and loudly.
Stepping into the doorway, Gabby opened her mouth and... and what? What was she even doing here? She¡¯d followed Aysen almost without thinking out of some sort of desperate, misguided instinct, but... now what? Nobody wanted her here. What could she say? What words could possibly make everything alright? The words Gabriela needed did not exist. All she found herself able to say were two words.
¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±
Aysen jumped at the sound and scrambled off the bed, putting it between them. She glared at Gabby, shouting, ¡°Go away, you villain! You fiend! You... you liar!¡±
As much as Gabriela didn¡¯t want to, as much as she knew it would hurt to her core, she forced herself to meet Aysen¡¯s hollow, frightful gaze. She still wasn¡¯t ready for what she found. In those eyes, Gabriela saw something worse than the anger, sadness, and fear she¡¯d found in Eterium¡ªthough those were both present in abundance as well. She saw betrayal. She saw the shattered hopes of a little girl who¡¯d just found out that her newfound idol was the same person who¡¯d taken her family and robbed her of a normal, happy life with the people she loved. She saw a single, haunting question: ¡°Why?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t want any of this to happen,¡± she softly said, as if it made a single bit of difference. ¡°I just... wanted my children back.¡±
¡°Was it fun, pretending to be my friend?! Did you have a good laugh?¡± Aysen spat between sobs.
¡°I... it wasn¡¯t like that,¡± she lamely replied.
The elf¡¯s head sank down to the bed in front of her as she continued to bawl. ¡°I¡¯m so stupid,¡± Gabby heard her mutter under her breath.
Part of her wanted to just give the child a knife and let her just go to town¡ªlet her stab and slice and slay the Monster over and over until she was sated. But she couldn¡¯t do it; she couldn¡¯t take a single step forward. An invisible barrier blocked her, one that no amount of physical ability could ever overcome. So, she just stood there, blood splattered across her body, massive crystal sword still in her hand, and powerlessly watched the elven girl cry.
Soon, quicker than Gabby had expected, Aysen¡¯s tears slowed. She pushed herself back to sit against the wall with her face between her knees and she sank into a sullen silence. Still, Gabby did not, could not move. Finally, after an interminable pause, the child spoke again, this time her voice quiet and drained.
¡°Did he die honorably, at least?¡±
Gabriela wanted to answer ¡®yes¡¯ more than anything, but looking at Aysen¡¯s vacant expression, she couldn¡¯t do it. Even though it was what the girl wanted to hear, she couldn¡¯t bring herself to lie.
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she admitted. ¡°I¡¯ve killed so many people that I can¡¯t remember them individually anymore. It¡¯s all just a terrible blend of nightmares and blood now.¡±
¡°Good!¡± Aysen snarled, blazing hatred resurfacing. ¡°I hope it eats away at you until there¡¯s nothing left and you fall into the ocean and a leviathan eats you and you¡¯re stuck there until the end of time!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Gabriela dully repeated.
¡°I don¡¯t care,¡± came the gutting response. ¡°Just go far, far away, and leave me alone forever.¡±
And so, that was what she did.
The bark was rough against her back, the gnarled knots scraping away her skin. Gabby didn¡¯t mind; it was better this way. It was what she deserved. Her only complaint would have been that it didn¡¯t hurt enough, but that was more of a problem on her end than anywhere else. She barely felt anything anymore, her mind, body, and spirit a void of numbness.
Leaving Aysen¡¯s home, she¡¯d done what she always did, be it physically or metaphorically: run away. She¡¯d streaked past Chitra, leapt over the wall, and just run and run and run and run away from everything as fast as her legs could carry her. She didn¡¯t know where she was, nor what she was going to do from now on, but those were concerns for another time, a time that felt an eternity away.
For how long had she been sitting here, devoid of sensation? For how long had she fled once more from the endless parade of blunders, poor decisions, and downright sins that was her life? She couldn¡¯t say. The moons remained covered by a blanket of clouds, and time seemed to hold no meaning for her in this state. The answer to the question wouldn¡¯t have changed anything, anyway. She would have just sat there, empty, regardless.
The soft rustle of leaves caught her barely existent attention and she turned her head towards the noise just in time to watch Chitra Batranala somehow emerge from the gloom. Gabby blinked, sure that this was some sort of trick of the mind, when Chitra let out a breath of relief.
¡°There you are.¡±
A modicum of energy returned to her, enough for her to gape in utter confusion. ¡°H-how did you get here?¡±
Chitra returned her confused gaze with one of equal confusion. ¡°What are you talking about? We¡¯re maybe a quarter-hour walk away from the bandit camp at most.¡±
¡°B-but, that can¡¯t be!¡± Gabby declared, nervous energy flowing into the void. ¡°I ran so far and fast! I ran through the forest, over a lake, through some fields, across a river, through more fields, across another lake, and¡ª¡±
Chitra pinched her nose and sighed. ¡°Gabby, you ran in a circle again.¡±
¡°...Oh.¡±
Chitra stepped closer, but then stopped just shy of Gabby and hesitated. ¡°May I?¡±
Gabby didn¡¯t feel like answering, and Chitra took her silence as assent. She daintily lowered herself to the ground beside Gabby and leaned back to look at the cloudy sky through the canopy.
¡°I...¡± the Ubran began after a little while, only to fade away without saying more.
¡°You...¡± she started to say a little bit later, only to give up again.
For maybe the first time that Gabby could remember, Chitra Batranala seemed completely unsure of herself.
¡°These feelings will fade,¡± she finally said. ¡°I know it feels like the end of the world, but it¡¯s important that you give yourself time to get some perspective.¡±
¡°Perspective on what, how many more people¡¯s lives I¡¯ve ruined? All the children I¡¯ve orphaned? Her life is ruined, Chitra! All of it, destroyed because of me!¡±
¡°You always focus on that, but what about the other side of it all?¡±
¡°Like what?¡±
¡°Like Temel, and Dost, and the other children. Or everything you did for Pari.¡±
¡°Those are just drops in a bathtub.¡±
¡°Even a tidal wave is just made of many drops put together. They matter just as much as anything else. They matter to the children.¡±
Gabby shot Chitra a scornful look. ¡°And you would know?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t take my word for it if you don¡¯t want to. Just ask him yourself.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not going back there.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t have to.¡± She turned to face the woods. ¡°Temel, enough is enough! Come out!¡±
There came a soft, momentary rustle to their left, then nothing.
¡°Temel, don¡¯t think I didn¡¯t notice you following me! Come out! You trailed me for a reason, right?¡±
More rustling, after which a tiny figure entered view. It was, indeed, Temel, dressed in what counted for Gustilian pajamas, which were now covered in bits of leaves, sticks, and dirt.
¡°Temel, what are you doing here?!¡± Gabby gasped with alarm. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be out here¡ªit¡¯s dangerous! Aysen¡¯s¡ª¡±
¡°I wanted to see you again before you left, but you ran away too fast,¡± the young child cut in. ¡°I need to give you something.¡±
¡°Temel... I...¡± Gabby swallowed, her throat feeling dryer than the Deadlands. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you tell her?¡± she croaked.
¡°Because she was happy when you were here¡ªthe happiest since Mom died. And, because I don¡¯t think you¡¯re a monster, even if you did kill Dad.¡±
¡°But I am! After all that I¡¯ve done, what else could I be?¡±
Temel shrugged. ¡°You¡¯re a nice lady, and you saved me. So, I made this for you. Thanks for saving me and for being nice to Aysen even when she¡¯s angry.¡±
With a wide smile, he reached out and put something in her trembling hands.
¡°I should go back now before Aysen gets too upset. Goodbye.¡±
And with that, the child turned and quickly walked back into the brush and disappeared.
Gabriela felt like she was barely holding on. After all the anger and hate she¡¯d not only experienced but come to expect, Temel¡¯s simple words of gratitude and happiness were almost too much to bear, an emotional whiplash that threatened to tear her in two.
Finally, after a couple of deep breaths to collect herself, Gabby brought her hands up to see what the young boy¡¯s gift was.
In her hands were a pair of dolls¡ªdolls of her and Chitra. Sewn together from straw and bits of cloth, the crude simulacra still somehow captured their essence perfectly.
The Chitra doll wore the near-scandalous Chinese-style dress she wore today¡ªa soft blue one this time¡ªand the straw even nearly matched the color of the real Chitra¡¯s amber hair. Her eyes had an almost predatory slant to them that Gabby couldn¡¯t help but find familiar, and a wry smile sewn with red thread.
The Gabby doll was shorter, with her usual black hair and little scraps of actual leather for the leather armor she wore. Like the Chitra doll, the Gabby doll was smiling, but Gabby couldn¡¯t help but think that it was a sad smile.
She tried to hand Chitra her doll, only to find that she couldn¡¯t separate them. The two dolls were holding hands, and Temel had sewn the hands together.
The boy must have worked non-stop all day since his rescue to make these, she realized. The amount of care he¡¯d put into them, the warmth and joy... it went beyond words.
She couldn¡¯t handle it. She just couldn¡¯t. The dolls were the final straw that broke her, except that straw was more like a sledgehammer driven straight into her soul, sundering it with a single earthshaking blow.
Gabriela cried like she had not cried since her first days on Scyria, her body shuddering with tempestuous emotion. She didn¡¯t know how to feel anymore, so she simply felt everything together, all in one overwhelming, unstoppable, seemingly endless eruption.
She felt the guilt of her crimes, the loss of her family, the loneliness of solitude, the fury of the people of Krinallen, the hatred of Aysen, the gratefulness of Temel, the joy of the villagers of Hankala, the fellowship of her friends back in Otharia, the affection of Chitra, and so much more, all at once. It was enough to crush most anybody, and she was no exception. She clung desperately to Chitra as it all washed over her, again and again, shaking and trembling in the woman¡¯s arms, her cries so anguished that they had turned into little more than dry, raspy wheezes into her companion¡¯s welcoming shoulder.
Eventually, as all things do, the waves receded, and Gabriela found herself utterly spent. She let her upper body limply flop to the ground like a dead fish and looked up at the blood-orange leaves of the tree above her, her mind still reeling.
¡°Feel better?¡± Chitra asked.
¡°Yes. No. I don¡¯t know.¡±
The two drifted back into silence for a while, until finally, Chitra spoke again.
¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±
Gabby blinked. That was not a phrase she had ever expected to hear from those lips.
¡°You know how I am. You know how hard I train to master every facet of my life¡ªhow much practice goes into everything I do.¡±
Gabby did know. She¡¯d witnessed, even before the invasion, just how hard the Ubran pushed herself in training when she wasn¡¯t busy helping Gabby with her mess of a life. She honestly found it hard to believe that Chitra ever slept, given how few hours were in every day.
¡°I thought that love was no different. All I had to do was practice until I mastered it, I told myself. Looking back now, it¡¯s easy to see just how blind I was. The people I used for practice, my ¡®training dummies¡¯, in a sense, barely ever put up a fight. Most fell for me after a single smile. It was just... too easy. Those people weren¡¯t special, not like you. They didn¡¯t stand a chance against my charms.¡±
Special? Gabby wasn¡¯t special¡ªnot in the way Chitra meant, at least.
¡°But no matter what I did, nothing ever worked with you. It was like trying to climb an endless mountain; no matter how much progress I thought I might be making, the peak was always so far away that I could never see it. And it made me... frustrated. Angry. Bitter. For the first time in what felt like centuries, I finally had something I wanted just for me, and no matter what I did, I couldn¡¯t get it.
¡°That all just built and built inside me until... I snapped. I snapped and I said things that I had no right to say. I ruined our friendship because I was only thinking about myself, and I¡¯ve only made it worse since by doubling down and refusing to listen. I¡¯m sorry. I hope that, perhaps one day, you will be able to forgive me.¡±
¡°Please, don¡¯t apologize,¡± Gabby told her. ¡°It¡¯s not your fault for having feelings. It¡¯s mine for blinding myself to them, and selfishly using you for everything while never bothering to think about what I was asking of you.¡±
¡°Gabby¡ª¡±
¡°I mean, look at me!¡± Gabriela continued, plowing through Chitra¡¯s objection before it could even begin. ¡°Who am I kidding? I¡¯m a mess! Heavens above, I can¡¯t even run in a straight line without help!¡±
She chuckled ruefully before continuing. ¡°I need you, Chitra. I¡¯m lost on my own. Just look at this whole journey. I wouldn¡¯t have had the slightest idea of what to do if you hadn¡¯t come along and helped me through everything. And this whole time, I¡¯ve just taken you for granted and didn¡¯t consider even the possibility that you might have feelings and motivations that I was constantly trampling over.¡±
¡°That doesn¡¯t make me innocent.¡±
¡°But¡ª!¡±
¡°How about we trade, then, your apology for mine?¡±
¡°...I guess.¡±
The apologies and arguments faded as they both sank into their heads. Gabby found herself wrestling with her thoughts, facing an uncertain future with nothing to work with but conflicting desires and needs.
¡°What do you want to do now?¡± Chitra eventually inquired. ¡°Go back to Otharia?¡±
¡°All of this has been an absolute mess,¡± Gabby stated. ¡°Perhaps it was all a fool¡¯s errand after all.¡±
Chitra hummed thoughtfully. ¡°I don¡¯t know. It seems to me like you ended up doing more good than bad, wouldn¡¯t you say? Saved a village, rescued some children... none of that would have happened if you¡¯d stayed in Wroetin.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, I guess,¡± Gabby allowed. ¡°It still just... I don¡¯t know. I guess, after seeing first-hand all the consequences of my choices, saving a person or two doesn¡¯t feel like it makes much of a difference. What¡¯s one person when whole towns are being killed off by bandits because there¡¯s no Gustil to protect them anymore?¡±
¡°Then, let¡¯s just stop thinking so small. There is a simple way to make a bigger difference.¡±
¡°How? All I¡¯m good at is killing people!¡±
¡°Once again, not true, but now is not the time to have that argument for the tenth time. If that is you want to believe, then we just need to kill the right people¡ªthe people who need to die.¡±
¡°What are you talking about?¡±
¡°I¡¯m talking about the petty nobles currently running roughshod over the people here, Gabby¡ªthe nobles who care only about power and are willing to do anything, no matter how terrible, to get more of it. For example, the Baroness.¡±
¡°What about her?¡±
¡°I¡¯m convinced now that the Barbed Blades were actually under the Baroness¡¯ employ.¡±
¡°What?!¡± Gabby sat up in shock.
¡°All the signs point in that direction. As you noted, their encampment was far too nice for a bandit camp. No bandits that I have ever heard of would be able to care for a vekkel without outside support.¡±
¡°I thought that maybe they just got lucky in a raid or something.¡±
¡°A possibility on its own, perhaps, but not after what happened later. The people who attacked Kagos were dressed like bandits, but bandits they were not. They were too clean, too well-kept, too coordinated. Those were soldiers¡ªor mercenaries at the least¡ªwho were trying to appear to be bandits and had too little time to manage it. Think about everything. That was no simple bandit raid. They were going for the Mayor¡¯s estate for a reason.¡±
¡°They wanted Dost.¡±
¡°Exactly. That raises a multitude of questions, none of them good for the Baroness. First, with the local bandits wiped out by your hand, how did these faux-bandits arrive so soon? Word of the Barbed Blades¡¯ demise would not spread through normal channels so quickly, not in only half a day. The only explanation is that whoever was employing them had a way to communicate directly, perhaps by bird¡ªthey¡¯re fast and work well for clandestine messages. They found out what happened and had no choice but to act before their plans fell apart.
¡°Second, how did they know where to go? If these were just random bandits from somewhere, they wouldn¡¯t know where to find Dost, because they wouldn¡¯t have any connections within Kagos. They wouldn¡¯t even know Dost was there at all. But no, those soldiers¡ªbecause that¡¯s what they were, I believe; survivors of the Ubran war¡ªthey had a very specific goal, and the way they acted says that they wanted to get in, grab Dost, and get out before anybody could stop them.
¡°Third, and perhaps most damning, who benefited most from Dost and the other children being held hostage? The Baroness. Dost¡¯s father is her primary rival for power in the local area. With his son in her possession, she would have a great amount of leverage over him. What¡¯s more, I spoke to the other children. Do you know what they all have in common?¡±
¡°What?¡± Gabby could feel anger inside her heating up and getting closer and closer to boiling.
¡°They all were children of important people in the still-independent towns down here, the places on the edge of her domain that she wants more control over. It all fits. She pays the bandits to work for her. They harass the towns, making the townsfolk afraid for their lives, then she comes in offering protection against her own minions. For the towns where that isn¡¯t enough, she has them kidnap the children to apply more pressure. Take Temel for example. What would have happened if they¡¯d told Aysen to collapse the wall or they would kill her only remaining family? All of this benefits Baroness Coban more than anybody else. And, do you know what makes a great place to hide a high-value hostage like Dost from the eyes of his father¡¯s spies? A hidden camp on the opposite side of her lands, so far from both hers and Viscount Simsek¡¯s territory that it technically isn¡¯t even in the Baroness¡¯s domain!¡±
¡°That... bitch!¡±
A loud snap from nearby made Gabby jump, only for her to realize it was her own doing. She¡¯d had her hand around one of the tree¡¯s large roots and had inadvertently squeezed it so hard that she¡¯d broken it in two. The sudden violence served as a reminder of her past actions and pulled her back, offering her some vital perspective.
¡°Wait, no,¡± she said, shaking her head. ¡°I caused all of this by killing people based on lies. I need more than a big hunch from you, even if it is pretty convincing.¡±
¡°Of course! You¡¯re right. That¡¯s why we need to go and find out for ourselves, right? The city she rules isn¡¯t too far away, not with your speed. We can take our time and research until we are sure we¡¯re right. Then, when you¡¯re satisfied, you can do what you feel is right.¡±
¡°Alright, that would work. But... is killing more going to solve the problem or just make it all worse again somehow? I came here to try to atone for my sins, but I feel like I''m just making more sins.¡±
¡°These people are kidnapping children, extorting villages, and sending people to die for petty power grabs. Whatever repercussions we might cause would be far less harmful than the current reality. Wouldn¡¯t it be more sinful to know what they are doing and simply stand back and allow them to keep doing it? To let them expand their power and hurt more and more?¡±
¡°Yeah... you¡¯re probably right. But... just this once, okay? Just the bad ones. Anything more, and I might as well just rule Gustil myself.¡±
¡°Well...¡± Chitra said with a wry smirk.
¡°No. Just no.¡±
The Batranala laughed.
For a third time, their conversation faltered, and they each retreated into their thoughts. Gabby was tired¡ªexhausted, even. Every last cell in her body felt spent, and they had it good compared to her less corporeal side. She wanted to sleep, but she couldn¡¯t. Not yet. Not while the most important question still hung over them, unspoken but not unasked. It was a question that she knew she needed to answer, one way or the other. If she didn¡¯t, then, despite all that had been said, the two of them would never be able to move forward.
Gabriela was afraid.
She couldn¡¯t deny anymore that she felt something for her beautiful, reliable, knowledgeable, wonderful companion. But still, to even acknowledge these feelings felt like knowingly parachuting into a minefield. Once she crossed the line, there would be no going back. If she were to recognize these feelings, she would not be acknowledging a newborn yearning but rather something ancient¡ªsomething birthed upon their first meeting, stuffed into a pandora¡¯s box and buried deep, deep down where it could never, ever tempt her. So much of her faith told her that to open that box would be wrong. Sin was sin, and she could not plead ignorance.
But... she didn¡¯t want to be alone anymore. She just wanted to be happy. She looked at the dolls again, as a memory bubbled to the surface. As a certain elven boy had so blithely put it, why would it be wrong to be happy?
She didn¡¯t know. Her mind felt far too muddled, her beliefs, desires, and impulses all pulling in different directions so hard that she felt like she was going to rip apart inside. There was just too much for her to work out. As much as she wished for one, no concrete decision would be coming today.
¡°I... I can¡¯t give you an answer right now. I need time to think about you... and me, and... everything,¡± she finally said, haltingly and unsure. Giving a non-answer felt like a cop-out, a way of avoiding the issue even longer.
¡°Very well. If that is what you need, then I will oblige,¡± Chitra replied without a hint of anger than Gabby had expected.
¡°You¡¯re really alright with it?¡±
¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I be? There¡¯s no rush. I have all the time in the world,¡± Chitra assured her. ¡°Besides, compared to your original reaction, even this noncommittal response counts as a massive improvement for my chances, is that not so? Take your time and tell me when you know.¡±
She gently placed a hand on Gabriela¡¯s and gave it a light, encouraging squeeze. Her skin felt warm and smooth. Though she did not squeeze back, Gabby decided to let it be.
Gabriela looked down at the pair of dolls in her hand once more, stroking the Gabby doll¡¯s black strips of hair with affection as she leaned her head back and rested it against the gnarled trunk. Finally closing her eyes, it only took a moment for her to fall into a deep and quiet sleep.
Gabriela Carreno backhanded the soldier across the jaw, shattering it with a single blow and sending him sprawling. The man¡¯s saber fell to the floor with a muffled clang, the thick carpet covering most of the hallway absorbing much of the impact. The man himself was not so lucky, as only the hard stone floor was there to greet him where the wall met the foundation. Still, Gabby was not concerned. He would live and his jaw would heal with time.
Onward she strode, following the baying of her prey as they fled through the manor. The sound of hysterically shouted orders drew her to a stairwell that led to the fourth and final floor. They had nowhere left to run.
Her present for the Baroness squirmed as it thumped heavily against every step, its bound legs kicking ineffectually as she dragged it along behind her. Though her struggling cargo was quite heavy, she did not worry that the rope she held would snap under the strain. They¡¯d made sure to use thick, strong cords for this and all the other ropes that would come into play soon. Nothing short of a Feeling-boosted strike would be enough to break it.
Surmounting the stairs, Gabby heard a sound to her left and spun to face it, only to find no opponent waiting for her. A twitch of movement alerted her to a servant cowering behind an ornamental suit of armor, the hyperventilating boy¡¯s trembling body and wide eyes broadcasting clearly just what he feared would happen to him now. Gabby turned away, content to ignore him. Though the boy did not know it yet, she had yet to kill a single person in the Coban estate. That would be changing shortly.
¡°Kill her!¡± the Baroness shrieked from down at the far end of the hall. The pudgy woman, over sixty years old according to her and Chitra¡¯s research, pointed Gabby¡¯s way with a hand covered in glittering rings. The gemstones laid within them sparkled in the late-afternoon sun that shined in through the windows set in the door behind them. ¡°Kill her!¡±
The smattering of men and women around her¡ªone of her two boorish sons and the few guards who had yet to flee from Gabby¡¯s slow but unstoppable journey through the three lower floors¡ªall shifted with fear and uncertainty.
¡°A year¡¯s wages to whoever kills her!¡± her son beside her hollered when none of them moved. Younger, with a large gut, flabby arms, and a double chin, the man had clearly not suffered from the food shortages that had afflicted so many of his countrymen. ¡°Two! Two years¡¯ wages!¡±
The promise of that much money was enough to get several of the remaining guards to momentarily overcome their fear. They both rushed forward, shouting more to themselves for courage than at her.
With the calm confidence and certainty that had infused her since she¡¯d first set foot in this place, she continued forward, her one hand still grasping the rope as she dragged her package across the carpet. She brought up her free hand and smacked aside the left guard¡¯s axe, then swung it to the right and blocked a spear thrust with her palm, arm straight out. The spearhead pierced straight through her hand and slid deep into her forearm, slicing through cartilage and bone.
Gabby called upon the crimson mist, and it answered her call this time without the odd, burning sensation from before. The spearhead and the top of the shaft evaporated into nothingness, and she grasped the end of the remaining shaft with her now-whole hand. Wrenching it from the right guard¡¯s grasp, she drove it into the side of the left guard¡¯s helmet, sending them to the ground. A swift follow-up kick to the right guard¡¯s side sent her crashing through a nearby door.
Stepping past the foolish guards¡¯ bodies, Gabby met the eyes of the others and tossed the improvised club aside. ¡°Walk away now and leave them, and I will spare you,¡± she promised them.
The remaining guards finally came to their senses and bolted for the closest doorways they could find¡ªexcept the very closest doorway, which was right behind them. There was a simple reason for that, one that became clear as the Baroness, screeching something about ¡°disloyal trash¡±, turned the handle and opened the double doors. On the other side was a dead end in the form of a balcony overlooking the town. There was no way to escape in that direction.
That simple fact did not stop the Baroness and her son from rushing through the doorway anyway. She didn¡¯t blame them; nobody would be thinking straight after being herded through their own house to the top floor by a seemingly invincible invader. Still, it only took one look at the fall just one hip-high railing and four stories away¡ªand the large crowd of curious onlookers gathered below, gathered by Gabby¡¯s very attention-grabbing associate¡ªfor them to realize their mistake.
¡°Who hired you?¡± the noblewoman desperately squawked, turning back toward Gabby with her back against the stone railing. ¡°Tozlu? Simsek? Ozdemir? I¡¯ll triple whatever they offered!¡±
¡°No amount of money can save you, Baroness Esen Coban,¡± Gabby told her plainly. ¡°I am here to put an end to this¡ªbut first, I brought you a gift!¡±
With a satisfied smile, she pulled on the rope, hauling the struggling form more or less upright so the pair could get a better look.
The Baroness gasped as horror and recognition played across her visage. ¡°Bugra!¡±
The youngest of the family, Bugra was known throughout the area as a spoiled, arrogant lush who regularly used his power and position to force himself on any woman that caught his eye. Somehow, being a serial rapist who had his bodyguards¡ªperhaps more accurately, his goons¡ª¡°disappear¡± any man who tried to stop him from claiming their partners still made him the least evil of the three.
Nabbing him had been child¡¯s play. All they had needed to do was make Chitra¡¯s presence in the town known and he¡¯d brought himself to their metaphorical doorstep, demands on his lips and alcohol on his breath. His goons were still tied up back in the shack where the pair had dumped them. Gabby would probably let the townsfolk decide their fate.
The chaos that his disappearance caused within the town had only helped Gabby and Chitra further their plans, leading up to this point. Gabby had been able to practically walk right into the estate with almost nobody bothering her until she made it to the front door.
¡°When I was split from my family, it tore me to pieces,¡± she explained. ¡°The uncertainty of it all, not knowing the fate of the people I loved¡ªnot even knowing if they were still alive¡ªwas more than I could bear. It ate away at me, it hollowed me out from the inside until I started to lose myself. I began making... terrible choices¡ªchoices that I knew deep down were wrong even at the time¡ªjust to feel some hope that I would ever feel whole again. I wouldn¡¯t want to inflict that on anybody, not even somebody as wicked as you lot.¡±
Gabriela tossed the writhing Bugra forward so that he bounced and rolled to a stop at the Baroness¡¯ feet.
¡°Your line ends here, together. That way, you will die knowing the fate of all you care for. It is the one mercy I will grant you, after all that you have done.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t think you¡¯ll get away with attacking a noble, you dirty whore!¡± the other son snarled. ¡°The others will hunt you down for this, mark my words!¡±
Gabby snorted. ¡°I watched the King of Gustil¡¯s life slip away at the other end of my blade. Do you think I¡¯m scared of some small fry like you?¡±
The baroness gasped, her terror multiplying. ¡°Impossible! They said you were dead!¡± she cried out.
¡°Besides,¡± Gabby continued, ignoring the woman¡¯s outburst, ¡°who said I would be the one killing you?¡±
Had the two nobles been of sound mind and unpressured, there was a good chance they would have noticed the three ropes tied around the bases of three central railing posts behind them. Still, even if they had, they would have never understood in time what it meant for them. Even now, as Chitra swung up behind them, alighting atop the railing as lightly as a bird to the sounds of gasps from the crowd below, they had no idea. It wasn¡¯t until she slid the nooses over their heads that they even realized she was there, and by then, it was far too late.
Gracefully diving off the side to the cries of the townspeople, a rope in each hand, Chitra sent the Baroness and her elder son tumbling over the rail. Screaming like banshees, they plummeted through the air until, very suddenly, they didn¡¯t. The ropes creaked as they went taught, but they and the knots held.
The townspeople were in a frenzy as Chitra used her grip on the ropes to redirect her momentum like an Olympic gymnast doing a rings routine and flung herself most of the way back up. Catching the balcony floor with one hand and effortlessly flipping up and over the railing, she flashed Gabby a vicious smile that made her want to melt into a puddle.
There was just something different about Chitra when she was like this that made Gabby tingle¡ªa dangerous, predatory aura that only emerged when she fought and killed, one that transformed her already stunningly graceful and elegant movements into something that sent Gabby¡¯s heart beating faster than a hummingbird¡¯s. Maybe it was the fact that she¡¯d never gotten a chance to see this side of Chitra before; though all Batranalas received ample combat training, they never needed to use it¡ªthat was what guards and soldiers were for. Or, perhaps more likely, Gabby postulated, there was just something messed up with her mind. Why else would these displays of power and skill get her so bothered?
¡°That was easy,¡± Chitra commented.
¡°Y-yeah,¡± Gabby managed to get out.
The Ubran looked back over her shoulder and chuckled over the roar of the people. ¡°Look how happy the people are. They¡¯re even throwing rocks at the bastards.¡±
Gabby took a peek and found that the crowd had become a roiling mob, finally taking their chance to vent years of accumulated rage upon their hanging oppressors. More than just rocks flew now; the people hurled anything they could get their hands on.
Chitra bent over and picked up the struggling third Coban. ¡°I think it¡¯s time we gave them all their targets, don¡¯t you think?¡±
Not long after, Gabriela looked back at the raucous town in the distance with a bit of a frown. On the one hand, there was the satisfaction of a job well done. She had no doubt now that the Baroness deserved what happened to her. Some of the things they¡¯d uncovered were so heinous that she had trouble finding words to describe her disgust, and to make it worse, they seemed to make little effort to hide it. It was like they relished flaunting the impunity their power gave them.
Still... Gabby found herself feeling conflicted... about a lot of things.
Chitra noticed her frown and poked her in the side. ¡°You just succeeded in your goal and you¡¯re already starting to mope.¡±
¡°Sorry, I was just... thinking about who I am as a person.¡±
¡°Is that so?¡±
¡°Yes.¡± She took a deep breath. ¡°All my life I was raised with my faith and the values that hold it together. But, every time I have to choose between those values and something I want, I choose what I want. That¡¯s probably how it will go the next time too, and the time after that. I guess the values I thought I believed in my whole life don¡¯t actually mean much to me after all¡ªeven the clearest, most basic things like ¡®do not kill¡¯. I am a hypocrite and a horrible Catholic, and maybe it¡¯s time I finally accepted that fact instead of running from it.¡±
Chitra clicked her tongue.
¡°Is that all? To be a hypocrite is to live. That¡¯s just how it is; reality isn¡¯t a fan of simple, clean, and easy choices. If that is all it takes to sin, then every one of us is guilty beyond measure.¡±
¡°That¡¯s not what I¡¯m trying to say.¡±
¡°Well, then speak clearly.¡±
¡°What I¡¯m trying to say is...¡± She hesitated, finding the words hard to say even after all they¡¯d been through together. ¡°I don¡¯t know how much I can love you, but I can try.¡±
Her statement caught the Batranala off guard, a rarity in the time they¡¯d spent together. A moment later, a wide smile bloomed on Chitra¡¯s face. It was bright, joyous, relieved, and the first true, genuine, pretense-less grin Gabriela had ever seen her make. For a fleeting moment, that smile became Gabby¡¯s entire world. Then, it vanished, turning back into Chitra¡¯s normal, standard beautiful bewitching grin as the magic faded.
¡°That¡¯s... I¡¯m glad,¡± the Ubran finally said. Chitra reached out and grabbed Gabby¡¯s hand, intertwining their fingers and giving it a gentle squeeze. Gabby squeezed back.
A moment of silence passed, a moment of happiness where Gabby allowed herself to feel just a little bit better about herself and the life she now led. Maybe, just maybe, she could still salvage something from the train wreck that was her decision-making track record.
¡°Shall we go?¡± Chitra eventually asked. ¡°There are still many more nobles to look into.¡±
¡°Yes, let¡¯s¡ª¡±
BZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT! BZZT! BZZT! BZZT!
Gabby nearly jumped out of her boots as the world¡¯s most excited bee began buzzing away against her torso. Digging into her outfit, she fished around and eventually withdrew a small disk with a smaller crystal in the center. The chip vibrated with the frenzied energy of a man who''d just downed twenty cups of espresso as if to better drive home the dire significance of its message. Cold dread filled her as she remembered what Blake had told her about the disc and the very specific reason it would be used.
¡°What in Nartrill¡¯s name is that?¡± Chitra wondered, flabbergasted.
¡°We have to go back to Otharia. Something terrible has happened.¡±
Chapter 120
Today is an important day, and I cannot say that my heart is still. My traditional schooling is complete, and so today begins my [two-person study¡ª¡°training¡±/¡°apprenticeship¡±?]. [Friend 1¡ªusing the translations found in the Emperor¡¯s Tome, I¡¯ve started trying to figure out phonetics, but it¡¯s still early and I don¡¯t know if I am even close to being right. Still, my best guess right now is ¡°Ardemun¡±] believes that my choice to study plants is a poor one. He thinks that I will squander my life with my head buried in a bush. I can tell that [Friend 2¡ªthis one my best guess is ¡°Pionmi¡±] agrees, though she, at least, has the tact to keep it to herself. They each seem to think that I would be better suited entering a field like the ones they chose, and perhaps they are correct. Ardemun is surely correct, as studying the reproduction of a meadow flower will never impact the world in the way that the constant rapid advancements in [cantacrenyx-technology¡ªI¡¯ve managed to confirm that the first word is definitely referring to the same crystals you use. Still just calling it cantacrenyx technology like it is here is rather blah. Let¡¯s call it ¡°Crystech¡±. That reads better] change our society every day. I find myself wondering every night what new marvel will be revealed the following morning in the papers. Still, Ardemun seems to forget my thoroughly mediocre grades in all technical subjects. He has managed to go his entire life so far without learning that things that are easy for him are not always easy for others, and I do not see that changing any time soon.
Pionmi is under no such delusion, which only makes her sentiments all the more puzzling. She knows full well that I am not suited for the study of [tiny-object-existence-movement-space¡ª¡°physics¡±, maybe? ¡°Tiny¡± suggests perhaps ¡°particle physics¡± but it might be something a bit different. Hard to say]. I wonder if, perhaps, she simply fears being alone again. I may be wrong, but I believe she will find far more comradery amongst her peers than she ever did with the other schoolchildren. The others could never understand just how frighteningly brilliant Pionmi is¡ªor perhaps they could, and that is why they [hate-ignore-avoid¡ªI think this means ¡°shunned¡±... poor Pionmi] her so mercilessly. We are all but animals, after all, and animals fear what they cannot understand.
Ardemun thinks it¡¯s simply because Pionmi is one of the rare girls here, and I have no doubts that her gender does her no favors. Most people I know still believe that women have no place outside the home, my parents included. I, myself, believed the same for much of my life. However, that alone does not explain why she was treated so much worse than the other girls. I think it was that she made the boys feel [bad-short¡ªeither ¡°insignificant¡± or ¡°inadequate¡±, I think] intellectually. Her name atop the student rankings year after year¡ªwith Ardemun right beneath her¡ªsurely hurt their collective pride.
Looking at the last sentence, I once again laugh at all who lumped me in with that pair simply because we spent time together. How I became friends with such a genius pair, I cannot say. I lack their intelligence and their intuition, and even my best efforts, combined with their ample assistance, barely put me [ancient math notation is kind of weird, but if I understand it right, he¡¯s saying basically ¡°three-quarters¡±] of the way up the rankings. Still, I cannot say that I regret whatever [missing-plan-blind-event¡ªso, if I understand this one, an unplanned, unforeseen occurrence... ¡°happenstance¡±, perhaps?] led to our association. I will miss them both dearly.
As for their thoughts on my choice of vocation, I will allow the possibility that they are correct in some aspects. It is very possible that I will grow old and die without a notable [big-action-permanent¡ª¡°achievement¡±] to my name. Almost every [plant-scholar¡ª¡°botanist¡±? Or maybe just ¡°plant scholar¡±. Not sure what we think of as a botanist matches this perfectly] devotes their [life-labor¡ª¡°life¡¯s work¡±? Or just ¡°career¡±?] towards creating new and better crop strains, but such endeavors do not excite me. I just love plants. I want to discover their secrets, not just breed better crops.
I never thought I would ever willingly go to [Place 1¡ªOh boy, this is a reach, but by my current phonetic attempt is... ¡°Trazac¡±? Feels wrong but it¡¯s what I have]. I have heard little good about the place from those who have visited. The facts seemed impossible when I was a child. An entire country that is nothing but [a double one for you:still-water-land-together and still-many-water-land-meet¡ªI think this means swamps and marshes. This place sounds horrible. Let¡¯s never go there]? How could that be possible? Where would they build their towns? How would they farm their food? I struggled to imagine how such a place could ever function then, and even now it strains credulity.
Still, when I heard that the Trazac Assembly had founded an Institute dedicated to the deeper questions of plants, I knew it was where I needed to go. It is the only place under the Great Ones¡¯ skies with others as interested in this as I, and so it is my only choice. I can only hope that Trazac is not as miserable as the stories say.
Blake leaned back and rubbed his eyes. Whether he was coding or reading, his eyes always got dry and tired when he spent too long staring at a screen, and he¡¯d been doing that a lot recently¡ªtoo much, if you asked the others, but he wasn¡¯t asking. It needed to be done, to soothe his persistent worries if nothing else.
The texts were finally becoming fully intelligible, and he could not be more relieved. He¡¯d been waiting for this moment for weeks now. When Sofie had scanned in her first translation, Blake had found the documents to be an unreadable mess of brackets upon brackets. Now, it finally looked like actual text!
Sofie¡¯s system consisted of several steps. First, she would take one of the unknown squiggles found within an ancient text and try to parse it using her existing lexicon. If she didn¡¯t know for sure what the word was, she would put it in brackets and add notes, guesses, and the like within. The problem at the start had been that her knowledge at the time had been so measly that what were now simple sentences like ¡°Father says that I must attend a preparatory school for the next four years¡± had started as ¡°[??-??¡ªperson/authority figure of some kind??] [speak/say?] I [??-??] [live?-move?¡ªvery not sure on this one] [??-??-??-??¡ªnoun?] [??] [front?] four [cycles¡ªI think a cycle is a ¡°year¡± but not 100% on that yet]¡±. There was no way Blake, or any sane person for that matter, could parse meaning out of that mess! He¡¯d seen spaghetti code that was easier to parse than that!
The good news was that, as Sofie had plugged away at it with the help of the Emperor¡¯s Tome and some other texts that Blake had acquired from the old man at the archive, everything had slowly shifted into good old understandable English, meaning that Blake was finally able to use the documents in his inquiry. The bad news was that nothing he found within the texts refuted his worries. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Of the documents translated or currently in translation, despairingly few had ended up being relevant to his current interest. The main text for his needs, the one he combed through with every new update, was the rambling, rarely updated journal that Sofie had found somewhere in Stragma, written by an ancient scientist who seemed to think that slathering one¡¯s prose with layers of meandering pretension made better writing than just fucking saying what you meant like a normal person. Like, what sort of twit would write ¡°As for their thoughts on my choice of vocation, I will allow the possibility that they are correct in some aspects¡± instead of ¡°As for my job choice, maybe my friends are right¡±? The answer was the millennia-spanning duo of this dude and Sofie Ramaut, who was certainly adding her own ¡®delightful¡¯ flavor to it all.
Still, as Sofie had updated the various documents she had over time, the journal of this scientist¡ªwhose name neither of them knew, as it seemed he did not ever mention it in the journal itself¡ªhad floated to the top, becoming his go-to source. While it was maddeningly vague in regards to certain important topics, it was still written in the time frame he was most concerned with and had given him some great insight into much of that era.
There were other documents from around that time¡ªbooks he¡¯d acquired from the archive, mostly¡ªbut while written in that era, they did not provide anything of value. One had even turned out to be an invoice for fabric delivered to a tailor, which told him nothing worth knowing at all.
There were a few other documents that he¡¯d found worthwhile enough to not dismiss outright, though they were far less reliable. One was an old offshoot of the Work of Othar¡ªa second one, somehow. The Revised Writ of Otharon was the most recently written document in his research material, several centuries newer than the other offshoot that he knew of, the Writ of Otharo. Still, he found it at least somewhat useful because it hit an important middle ground between the Word of Othar and the Writ of Otharo when it came to content and completeness.
The modern Word of Othar was the the longest and most complete version of the three, but it went to great lengths to whitewash everything and present Othar as nothing less than the infallible god the Church had professed him to be. In contrast, the Writ of Otharon talked about bad things during the time of his presence as well as good. While it still presented Othar¡ªor Otharon, to be exact¡ªas a great being and god, it also mentioned suffering and pain during his time on Scyria, which the Word of Othar never talked about except to stress how his arrival brought an end to all that bad stuff.
The Writ of Otharo, on the other hand, was older and likely even more accurate than the Writ of Otharon in its depiction of events, but what he had in his possession was just not complete enough to use. Infuriatingly, it was cut off at the part he wanted to read the most. So, the Writ of Otharon would have to do.
The second document was a book that Sofie had acquired after the Ubran¡¯s defeat at Crirada, which had no official name that he knew of. Sofie and Blake called it the Emperor¡¯s Tome, and it was the Rosetta Stone of ancient script that had allowed Sofie to make so many leaps and bounds in her translation progress these last weeks. While only the first few entries were written in both the ancient squiggles and the other old but still existing language, that had been more than enough.
Unfortunately, the actual contents of the book were less helpful for Blake¡¯s needs, and that was because, well...
He brought the start of that document up onto the screen.
[Blake, the first few entries here were written both in the ancient script and a more modern and normal common trade script, a dialect of which Arlette says is still used on both continents today. I¡¯m translating these from the latter language for accuracy, since I have verified that, as best I can tell, the contents are identical. I¡¯m also going to stop putting stuff in quotes because thanks to Arlette I can actually know how to pronounce these words.]
Harken, all who follow in my path, for I am Rahul Batra, First and Founding Emperor of this great empire! It is I who united the Six Tribes, I who conquered the wild north, I who forged order from more than four centuries of chaos! Heed my words, for to know my deeds is to know true sovereignty!
Born the first son of the Batra [huh, I guess this is where the last name came from] Clan patriarch, I was raised for greatness from the moment I first took breath! I slew my first mishna at age six, caught and tamed my life-long vekkel partner Locura at age ten, killed my first enemy at twelve, and conquered the Ruovi Clan before I reached fifteen years of age!
None can stand against my might! I can lift a boulder the size of a hut and leap ten men high with a single bound! Whether it be the sword, the spear, or the bow, I am unparalleled! My roars make the heavens tremble!
The entire book went on like this. It was nothing but a giant dick measuring contest¡ªpage after page of people proclaiming how much more awesome they were than the people who came before them or would come after. After reading the entirety of the tome, he felt like he better understood the last emperor¡¯s decisions. From what Arlette had told him once, the tome had been physically attached to the man¡¯s body with chains. If Blake had been forced to spend his entire life chained to a book filled with ancestors telling him he sucked ass, he would probably have tried some wild shit too.
Still, exclamation-clad proclamations about striving against the heavens didn¡¯t provide much clarity, and the contents had been written centuries too late to provide much worthwhile data. All of the insights he was able to glean from it were extrapolations, one or two leaps of logic removed from the simple confirmation he still sought.
Everything he had found so far, after poring through every document he could get his hands on and constantly updating his understanding of them with each new translation, combined to paint a blurry picture¡ªthe sort of image that could be a variety of different things depending on what angle you viewed it from and how hard you squinted at it. Blake had his theories, but he wanted to be sure¡ªno, he needed to be sure.
Blake massaged his forehead with both hands and let out a sigh. All this reading had given him a headache, and he was starting to have trouble focusing both his vision and his attention. He needed to get out of this room for a bit¡ªtake a walk, perhaps.
With a groan and a stretch, Blake levered himself to his feet and moseyed out of his sterile office space. As he meandered through the hallways of his fortress, he noted that traversing them was getting to feel rote and mundane. He¡¯d have to restructure the layout again¡ªto keep the others on their toes, of course.
Not having anywhere to go, he found himself drawn to the sound of voices not too far away. Soon enough, he arrived at one of the internal courtyards, the one Sofie had convinced him to turn into a test yard for the minuscule menace in order to keep all the various explosions, poisonous gasses, and other war crimes contained in one place. There, he found both of the aforementioned people ducked behind a safety barrier as they looked through a slit in the metal toward something placed out on the field. It wasn¡¯t much of a field anymore, he noted. What had started as flat earth covered in lush green grass meticulously imported from the nearby farmland had devolved over many days into a war zone devoid of plant life. To his eyes, it appeared now to be more crater than ground.
Blake¡¯s gaze fell upon a long wax cylinder lying lengthwise on the testing platform. It had a similar diameter to the candles that the rambunctious rapscallion usually crafted but was far longer, its overall shape more resembling a tube than the compact can-like form he was used to. One end, pointed away from the three of them, sported a large wick that was quickly burning away.
The flame sank into the tube and a moment later the burning end of the tube erupted, shooting something bright out at high speeds. The projectile struck the far wall and rebounded off it before bouncing several times against the ground, all the while blazing with a bright, near-blinding purple flame. The tube erupted a second time, launching out another item that similarly bounced off the far wall with a loud ¡®pang!¡¯ Blake recognized this one easily; it was a slightly smaller version of the diminutive demon-child¡¯s usual fare, its wick somehow already lit. The boomcandle went off a moment later, the sound of its explosion echoing off the courtyard walls while the tube belched forth a third payload. This time, the projectile did not bounce off the far wall. Instead, a large mass of flaming goo stuck onto the metal and hung there, burning with gusto.
¡°You losers branching out into roman candles, now?¡± he called out.
The pair turned around and Blake felt a small, unwelcome tingle of terror run up his spine when he met the furry-eared fiend¡¯s glare. He had nothing to fear from the little miscreant, he reminded himself. Sofie had clearly instilled in the pint-sized pyromaniac an understanding that they¡¯d both be thrown out if she tried to gas him again. Still, part of him still felt like she might try it again anyway. She clearly still wasn¡¯t happy with him, and he couldn¡¯t help but remember just who had raised her and the philosophy he¡¯d espoused to her. If she saw weakness, well... there was no guarantee that he¡¯d ever get the smell off him the next time.
¡°Metal meanie go away!¡± the dragon-raised devil called back.
¡°Stuff it, twerp,¡± he shot back. ¡°I just want to talk to your minder for a minute.¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes but came over, joining him as he retreated to the adjacent hall.
¡°Did you seriously just teach that lunatic how to make fucking napalm?!¡± he hissed.
¡°Blake, come off it. She already knew how to make napalm.¡±
¡°That¡¯s... even worse, somehow!¡±
Sofie sighed. ¡°Blake, what do you want?¡±
Blake shrugged. ¡°Just taking a break from reading your latest translations.¡±
¡°If you¡¯re going to ask for another pass, think again. I already told you I¡¯ve hit the limit of what I can reliably translate without more documents to work with.¡±
¡°I know, I know. As I said, I¡¯ve given you every book in the archive. If I find more, I¡¯ll let you know. I just needed to clear my head, that¡¯s all. That bastard¡¯s journal is so aggravating. Now that I can finally fully understand it, it¡¯s driving me up the wall.¡±
¡°About what?¡±
¡°Plenty of stuff. Like, reading about cantacrenyx technology¡ª¡±
¡°Call it ¡®Crystech¡¯.¡±
¡°I¡¯d rather stab out my own eyes than call it ¡®Crystech¡¯. And you tell me my naming sense is bad,¡± Blake huffed. ¡°Anyway, reading about cantacrenyx technology makes me want to scream. I mean, I knew that the ancients knew how to make it, of course. But reading about it now and learning about how common and fundamental it was to their everyday lives just makes me want to tear my hair out sometimes.¡±
¡°What? Why? Isn¡¯t that basically your goal?¡±
¡°Because they figured out a way to mass-produce it, that¡¯s why.¡±
¡°Wait... you have no idea how to mass-produce Crystech? Seriously?¡±
¡°Of course not! I¡¯ve tried a whole bunch of things, but nothing worked. The only way I can create the energy channels is with my powers. What the hell did you think? That I knew how to but just didn¡¯t?¡±
¡°Yeah, I thought you didn¡¯t like the loss of control, with you being you and all,¡± Sofie snorted.
¡°Are you kidding me?! Do you know how annoying it is to have to make every single machine myself? I¡¯m making fucking bespoke robots here! If I could just make a factory and crank them out, I¡¯d have done it ages ago!¡±
Sofie couldn¡¯t keep from her face her amusement over his frustration. ¡°Looks like there were people out there smarter than you after all.¡±
¡°Oh, give me a break. Those people figured out how to make a machine that pierced through goddamned dimensions. I¡¯m not going to act like I¡¯m their intellectual superior.¡±
¡°So, you just think you¡¯re the intellectual superior of everything alive today.¡±
Blake patted Sofie on the shoulder. ¡°Exactly. You¡¯re finally starting to get it.¡±
Sofie rolled her eyes again. ¡°Anything else you want to waste my time with?¡±
¡°Nah, not really. Well, I was wondering if you know what¡¯s up with Arlette. She¡¯s been acting weird ever since this meeting we had a few days ago.¡±
¡°I¡¯m not sure,¡± Sofie admitted. ¡°I doubt it¡¯s anything to worry about.¡±
¡°It¡¯s probably all the drinking. You know what I always say: alcohol is a crutch relied on by the weak and weak of spirit.¡±
¡°I have never heard you say that.¡±
¡°Well, I think it, and that¡¯s what counts.¡±
¡°Are you seriously telling me that you¡¯ve never gone drinking before?¡±
¡°I consumed more than my share of alcohol back in the day¡± Blake admitted. ¡°That¡¯s why I know enough to not bother with it anymore. Haven¡¯t had a drink since college and not going to start now.¡±
¡°Cool, great, good for you. If you have nothing to say worth hearing, I¡¯m going to go back to having fun with my sister, thank you.¡±
¡°Since when have you had fun blowing up dirt?¡±
¡°Since I started imagining your face on the target. Bye.¡±
Blake watched the two inspect their roman candle for a moment before heading back to his rooms.
I hate this place. I came here to study plants, not bugs, and yet insects are what have taken over my life. I understand now how the Trazacs never starved. Anybody who is hungry need only run with their mouth open for a few moments and then chew on the fresh and crunchy feast caught between their teeth [ewewewewewew nooooo this place sucks so bad! Blake, I don¡¯t care what you try, you¡¯re never getting me to go there. Stragma was bad enough]. To make matters worse, the heat here is sweltering and the food lacking in any sort of spice or worthwhile flavor. Before, I wondered how Trazacs didn¡¯t starve. Now, I wonder how they don¡¯t all kill themselves out of sheer boredom. I find it hard to interact with most Trazacs when a [double-speaker¡ªa ¡°Many¡±, I think? Since a Many is two people speaking together] is not available, and stay within the Institute as much as possible.
Right, Blake remembered this entry. There wasn¡¯t much in this one worth rereading that he could recall. He skimmed ahead until he found a certain section that had heretofore been still only halfway translated. Seeing that the section¡¯s translation now appeared nearly complete, he dug in.
Riben is gone. The little-people are all dead, slain by the Great Ones. Almost the entirety of their species is gone forever, their lives lost and their land burnt to nothing but lifeless rock. They say that even their great underground city is no more, incinerated to ashes by the Great Ones¡¯ wrath.
I remember, back when I traveled to what was known to outsiders as the ¡°Shrunken City¡±, being struck by the beauty of their lands. Their fruit orchards, in particular, were impressive and pleasing to the eye. I cannot imagine what the land looks like now. I have heard reports that nothing remains, not even a blade of grass.
I weep for the fate of the remaining little-people. They were a very concentrated society, far more than the rest of us. Very few little-people moved elsewhere to live amongst those twice their height or taller. My single vacation to Riben told me all I needed to know to understand why that would be. They built their cities scaled around their height, and just moving around the place was a nightmare for me. I can only imagine it would be equally obnoxious the other way around, when every door handle is too high to reach.
There are, actually, two little-people here in the Institute, though neither are in my department. I do not really know either of them, but I cannot imagine their pain right now. I would not be surprised if they were to leave, nor would I blame them. In my view, their best course of action now would be to meet up with what scant few little-people remain and try to do whatever they can to rescue their race from extinction, though I imagine that would only be possible if the Union created a program to support them and their breeding efforts.
I don¡¯t know what to think anymore. For so long, I have been able to live my life as if the Great Ones did not exist. The same could be said for practically everybody. Outside of our tribute, they have never seemed interested in even acknowledging that we exist. They seemed content to live in their own world and leave us all alone.
Now, nobody can say that ever again. For seemingly no reason, they descended as a swarm to destroy an entire civilization, wiping everybody away and then leaving without a word. Does the same fate await the rest of us in the near future? Nobody can say. In a way, the not-knowing is the worst part. I find myself tensing at every unusual noise from above, half expecting it to be the [disaster-warning-omen¡ª¡°harbinger¡±] of our doom.
Nobody knows what to do, and I am no different. For now, at least, I will try to carry on as normal, for my own sanity if nothing more. Uncertainty has a way of corroding from within.
There it was: the annihilation of an entire society¡ªthe spark that ignited everything. After Blake¡¯s experience with several Great Ones¡ªhe didn¡¯t have to think long and hard to know who the author was referring to with that term¡ªthe idea of them wiping out an entire city seemed very much the sort of thing they might do. Actually, now that he thought about it, they had destroyed a city recently, back when he¡¯d been running around the countryside with Sam and building an army to overthrow the oligarchy. This latest incident felt different than the one talked about here, though. There was no mention of there being a crater, nor any dragon dying.
He skimmed ahead some more and stopped when he found the next section that he recalled still needed work in the previous revision.
A long time ago in a previous entry, I mentioned a project in Riben that I found particularly [outside-reason-funny¡ª¡°ludicrous¡±]. It was a project to create a flying machine, and the very idea at the time seemed laughable. I even got a look at it in its early stages when I visited and seeing it in person did nothing but reinforce my opinions, regardless of how excited Ardemun was about it. Well, surprise, surprise, it seems that the Crystech creator¡¯s thoughts on the feasibility of a Crystech project are worth more than those of a simple scholar of plants. Somehow, the project succeeded.
The test of the craft came on that very fateful day. According to Ardemun¡¯s one surviving Riben contact, the craft managed to take flight and they ran several successful low-altitude flights. Then, for the third test, they decided to see how high it could go and still function. As Ardemun tells it, the craft flew higher and higher until disaster struck. A rare occurrence came to be at the worst possible time¡ªa Great One decided to fly through the area. Great Ones do not usually bother to fly over Riben, but for some reason, this time one did. It saw the flying craft and, with a single snap of its massive jaws, broke it in half.
Then, as if nothing had happened, it just kept flying and left the area. The project members were devastated, of course, but that was all. Given the lack of reaction from the Great One, few if any little-people thought that dozens of Great Ones would descend upon them that night.
It is clear as day to me now what caused the Scouring. It was a punishment. A few little-people dared to dream. They dared to try to make a world where they could soar through the skies like the Great Ones, and for that daring, the Great Ones decided to wipe out the near entirety of their race. This was more than just retaliation for a non-existent slight. This was meant as a message to the rest of us.
The Great Ones want us to know our place.
The last few decades have been a time of massive technological and social progress for all of us who lack wings and scales. Our capabilities have grown immensely and the speed of our progress only continues to increase with each new discovery or innovation. Is it any shock that our ambitions would grow to match our potential?
But no, the Great Ones cannot tolerate that. They cannot tolerate anybody being able to explore the skies but them. They cannot tolerate the thought of us being their equals. It would mean that they would no longer be revered, worshiped, and bribed with gold and gemstones. Their pride cannot allow it.
Well, that explained a lot. Blake couldn¡¯t help but think about the dragon word for all non-dragons. The meaning conveyed through speech whenever Bazzalth said the word was not reminiscent of what Blake received when anybody else spoke of people. No, he remembered how the concept of personhood and the respect that came with it could only be found in their word for themselves. The word they used for everybody else was something far more demeaning: crawler.
The difference in their minds was stark. Crawlers were not people, or else they would be referred to as such. No, they were silly little things, unable to soar through the skies, stuck forever pathetically crawling about on the surface with their sad little limbs¡ªso very much unlike themselves, the noble and powerful ¡°people¡±.
Blake knew in his bones that the author of the journal had the right of it. If this airplane trial had happened and events had truly unfolded as described, there was no doubt that the dragons had struck that night because the idea of crawlers not crawling would be anathema to them.
He made a mental note to park his airship farther away from their territory the next time... much farther.
I believe firmly that the [many-pieces-join-one¡ª¡°consolidated¡±] races, given time, would be able to create an age of wonders, to ascend to a level of greatness that eclipses anything the Great Ones are capable of. The Great Ones have declared that they will not allow that to happen. They want to put a ceiling on our progress, and they are willing to destroy an entire civilization to make that happen.
And yet, progress cannot be slowed so easily. There will be more discoveries. What will the Great Ones do? Which discoveries will trigger the next Scouring? There is no way of knowing, other than the knowledge that it will happen again eventually. We are all seated beneath a precariously-balanced boulder. The question is not if the rock will tumble down to flatten us, but when. The only way forward is to move ourselves... or destroy the boulder.
Of course, none of this would be knowledge I would normally be allowed access to, and Ardemun would get in massive trouble for telling me, except I¡¯m now involved in this whole mess myself. The Union has decided to relocate the Institute to a different part of Trazac¡ªa brand new facility hidden in an undeveloped valley, isolated from most of civilization. What¡¯s more, we have a new mission. No longer are we dedicated to largely scholarly pursuits. Now, we are to leverage our amassed knowledge to create new crops and other plants that can be used to sustain a [hurt-tired-worn¡ª¡°beleaguered¡±] populace through hard times. My department, in particular, is tasked with creating new types of wood that can be used in places where metal would normally be needed¡ªwood that is strong, durable, and if possible, fire resistant. This is because the metal will be needed for something else.
We are going to war.
Stolen novel; please report.
Blake had to hand it to the ancients: they had courage coming out of their ears. The thought of going to war with the dragons¡ªone where the penalty for losing would almost surely be total annihilation, at that¡ªwas enough to make even him think twice. Yet these people had done it. They could have bowed their heads and accepted their place below the dragons, but they chose to reject their oppression and vie for their futures with everything they had. He couldn¡¯t help but respect the hell out of that.
Still, this scenario left a lot of questions that he still had no answers to. For example, the journal¡¯s entries spoke of vibrant societies and large cities, with a large enough total populace to be able to take on many dragons, and yet there seemed to be far too few ruins these days for that. Where had they all gone? What had happened to the rest of their civilization? If they could construct bunkers like the one he¡¯d first arrived at and, according to Sofie and the others, a large metal building that still stood and even somewhat functioned after so long, where were all the other buildings? So much still didn¡¯t add up.
The several entries that followed were ones that Blake knew well, having read them many a time. In them, the author described the state of the ongoing war, or ¡°Grand Crusade¡±, from his vantage point tucked safely away in his research institute, securely hidden and far from danger. The entries lacked details about the state of the struggle, but that made sense given the author¡¯s circumstances. There were plenty of interesting other details to be found in them, but he didn¡¯t find much that felt particularly relevant, sadly. It was also filled with line after line of the author bemoaning his own inadequacy like a little bitch, so Blake didn¡¯t mind skipping over them for the moment.
But then, there came a certain entry, one that he made sure to read every time so he always had every detail in his mind straight. He noted that the end had finally been fully deciphered, and so, his heart pounding with anticipation, he dove in.
A journal can be useful for venting one¡¯s feelings, allowing one to release pent-up emotion and clear one¡¯s mind. It can also be vital for chronicling one¡¯s thoughts to create a record for the future. As I sit down tonight, however, I hope to use this journal for a third use: to lay out my scattered thoughts in the hopes that, by doing so, I can finally resolve the confusion that has plagued me these last few days. To put it simply, recent events have left me confounded. Hopefully, everything will seem far more clear by the end of this entry. I supposed we shall see.
If you had told me thirty days prior that the Crusade would be saved¡ªmore than saved, [strength-return-more¡ª¡°revitalized¡±]¡ªby the sudden, unexplained appearance of a handful of [many-heard-tale-focus-person¡ªahaha, if I¡¯m right, he¡¯s literally calling these people protagonists of well-known stories or myths, which I guess would be the ancient equivalent of saying that they¡¯re the main characters of superhero movies on modern Earth. That¡¯s why I¡¯m just going to shorten it to ¡°heroes¡±] with strange and formidable abilities, I would have determined that you had secretly continued the [think-see-hear-change¡ª¡°psychotropic¡±] specimen study that was put on hold after the relocation and were currently trying out the results. Yet, somehow, this is essentially what has happened. The Union armies once more gain ground, slowly but steadily reclaiming territory lost in the couple of years since our winged adversaries¡¯ resurgence. At their head are some of these heroes, while others protect the people from attack.
Othar and company, saviors of the ancient realm. Blake didn¡¯t know what to think about how their origins seemed to have been kept secret from the public. Had the Union been trying to keep the locations of the bunkers a secret, perhaps? Had they feared the dragons somehow learning of them and destroying them?
The next few paragraphs were newly updated, Blake noted with relish. He quickly resumed his reading.
I have not seen one of these heroes in person, but the talk of the town has been about nothing but them since their appearance. I know not to take most of what I hear as the unvarnished truth, of course, but given the sudden turnabout, it seems that there is more truth to these stories than one such as I would normally give credence to.
For example, one story is that one of them appeared when [Place 7¡ª¡°Ghuvan¡±] was assailed by a group of twelve Great Ones. It would normally take a major city¡¯s defense force, fully equipped and fully manned, to have a chance at fighting off that many at once, and we have not had a garrison at that strength in years now. This one hero, according to the tale, single handedly slew seven Great Ones and forced the others to retreat. Even if it is an exaggeration and they only slew five, or even four, that is still a mind-boggling feat. I literally cannot comprehend how such a thing could be possible.
¡°You and me both, bud,¡± Blake muttered.
Seven dragons? Seven?! What sort of gods were these people to be able to take on twelve dragons at the same time, alone, and singlehandedly kill seven of them?! He¡¯d had trouble just dealing with a single one, and he¡¯d had help!
Still, I am not one to reject fortuitous events merely because they bewilder so heavily. The appearance of these saviors could not have come at a better time. I, and so many others, had all but consigned ourselves to our inevitable defeat. The [consume-always-no-full¡ª¡°insatiable¡±] hunger of the war effort has been eating away at our society and our quality of life for years now, finally reaching even me and my family here at this high-priority base. Outside the Institute itself, you will find nearly no Crystech. All of it has been taken to be converted into weaponry and other machines to hold off the Great Ones¡¯ assault for one day more. It is like we have all traveled back a century into the past.
In a way, it is often worse than I would imagine it would be living back then. Societies of the past were structured around the realities of the time, and the people there were comfortable with their capabilities. Nobody today knows how to live without Crystech. It has become such an important part of our lives that many of us barely know how to function now that it is mostly gone. Life skills common back in the day are now mostly lost. Everybody is struggling.
Well, this was new. It helped explain why there wasn¡¯t cantacrenyx technology everywhere, given how it had supposedly been widespread back then.
Whoever these amazing people are, the Union is very clearly involved with them. As the head of the Institute, my ability to acquire answers to things is stronger than ever, and yet I find myself running into insurmountable walls whenever I try to learn about the heroes. The same is true for Ardemun, who is far more important and influential than I could ever hope to be. My best guess¡ªand the guess of many, I would suspect¡ªis that these people are the product of [best-strong-best-sharp-blade¡ª¡°superweapon¡±?] research that has been underway since the beginning of the Crusade. That would explain why the Union leaders are being so secretive, I assume. If only I could figure out why Pionmi would be involved in all of this.
Pionmi¡¯s latest letter is the first in years where her calligraphy has returned to the smooth, precise strokes that I knew from before, as if a massive load has been lifted from her spirit. That this happened concurrently with the arrival of the heroes feels significant, but I don¡¯t understand where the overlap would be between them and her. Her area of expertise has nothing to do with experimentation on people. Perhaps her project was needed to supply something to the other projects? Or maybe it provided energy somehow? It¡¯s hard to say without knowing what she was working on. She even expressly told me she cannot tell me what she worked on, which feels almost like a confirmation that it was related to our new champions. She did, however, finally send me the energy sensor suite that I asked for over two years ago, saying that she made enough improvements to the new design that they don¡¯t need this old one anymore. Though late, it will still come in handy given the direction our research has headed.
I must admit, it feels awkward getting Pionmi¡¯s hand-me-downs. It¡¯s like I¡¯m back at the preparatory school all over again, constantly walking in the shadows of my pair of friends. Ardemun contributed greatly to our armies, while Pionmi helped bring forth our saviors. Meanwhile, I, while somehow stumbling into positions of higher and higher influence, have managed to contribute practically nothing¡ªsome crop strains with improved yields, plenty of theoretical research, and little else. Our primary mission remains unfulfilled, despite the wealth of time, people, and resources thrown at it. As always, it just goes to show that I never deserved to walk alongside them.
Pionmi.
The woman was one of only two people who got mentioned in nearly every entry during the war and pre-war sections, along with this dude Ardemun who sounded to Blake like a total chad. Their inclusions felt like such incredible teases to him, as having to hear about them through the words of a plant-obsessed luddite only made him crave the journals they might have written all the more. Ardemun would have surely given him incredible new understanding of cantacrenyx technology, and Pionmi had most definitely played a part in bringing him to Scyria.
What would Pionmi have been able to tell him? Would she have been able to answer the important questions that plagued him? The ones keeping him up at night?
Surely, she would have been able to give him more concrete answers than this stupid journal and the annoying rambling found within. The author had this annoying habit of spending paragraphs recounting some lame story or pseudo-philosophical musing while in the middle of writing about important subjects. The next entry, one of the most important in the journal, was a perfect example. Instead of just getting straight to the good stuff, it started with him reminiscing about his childhood sports fandom for half a page, filling it with bland, nostalgic remembrances like ¡°Unable to watch my chosen team during the most crucial time, I sat outside the stadium and stared at the stones in the wall as I listened to the cheers and roars of the crowd, trying my utmost to glean from my ears some understanding of the action within. All the while, my insides churned like the clothes in my family¡¯s clothes washer.¡±
Perhaps that was just the point of a journal¡ªBlake wouldn¡¯t know; he¡¯d never written one, himself¡ªbut for the hundredth time, he wished this man had had an editor. Still, the rambling got to the important stuff eventually.
The final push has begun. The town is noticeably quieter now than it used to be, as the draft has slowly drained it of people until a final massive sweep took away all non-essential people of fighting age who still remained a season ago¡ªincluding Chevet. I know that I should have been mentally prepared for this for a long time, even since the gender restriction was lifted two years ago, but I foolishly believed I could protect her. Just one more failure to add to the list.
The commanders have decided it is time to end the Great Crusade once and for all. With the heroes, we finally have the advantage and the opportunity for total victory, but as I understand it, our window is relatively small. Our saviors arrived too late to avoid the [material-move-location-need¡ª¡°logistical¡±, I think] resource nightmare that was already developing. Every city and town has been pulled apart and entirely relieved of its metal, just like ours was. Ardemun says that all that metal went straight to the remaining factories and that once a factory uses up its intake, the factory itself is disassembled and sent to another factory to squeeze another half dozen weapons of war or wagons full of ammunition. The finality of this shows how serious the upcoming assault is. Other than the rare specially designated locations like the Institute, essentially every single resource that we have has been taken and reworked. When I say we are throwing everything we have at the Great Ones, I am being very nearly literal. We do not have the luxury of holding even a single weapon back.
Each of these buildings is a monument to our advancement as people, and it hurts to know that we are losing them all to this blasted war, but I remind myself that the earliest metal building was only constructed a few years before my birth. Even now, wood and stone remain the main materials for construction. After we win the war, we will be able to rebuild with great speed what we have had to demolish, so it is no big loss. And make no mistake, we will win.
Perhaps I am a fool to write this, but despite how my guts seem to want to rip themselves in half with worry, I am confident that we shall emerge victorious. Despite a sustained and frenzied assault from our adversaries, the Union armies have pushed forward every day since the time the heroes appeared almost a year ago. Though I do not doubt that the resistance in the upcoming fight will be fiercer than anything that our valiant troops have ever seen, I know that we shall prevail.
But, then what?
This will be an unpopular opinion, but I worry that, once the Great Ones are gone, the heroes will fill the gap left behind. If they all worked together, I have trouble believing that our armies could defeat them, so what is to stop them from ruling over the rest of us? Would we not be simply trading one set of tyrants for another?
Perhaps I am overthinking this. It is one thing to fight a single [large-horn-lizard¡ªsome kind of... large horned lizard, duh. Pronunciation: ¡°trallak¡±], and another thing entirely to battle a frenzied swarm of [spotted-venom-wasps¡ªnopenopenope not even thinking about this another second]. Plus, unlike the Great Ones who live, soar, and rule from the skies high above, these heroes would rule among the rest of us. They could be disposed of in time. After all, while we as a people have become rather accomplished these last few years at slaying a Great One, that aptitude still pales in comparison to an entire history spent getting better and better at killing each other.
Still, that is all for another day, a day that may never come. As for now, I find myself paralyzed, unable to focus, even while there is work to be done. Even though half of the scholars are now in the army, those that remain have made great progress recently. We may be finally close to achieving our goal... now that it is no longer needed.
Blake hummed and scratched his chin as he considered the entry. Bits of it were freshly translated and new info, like the part about needing metal so badly that they salvaged their own buildings. Along with the earlier part about cannibalizing cantacrenyx appliances, it laid out just why he wasn¡¯t stumbling over ancient ruins everywhere he went.
The fact that they needed to stoop to such drastic measures, even with people on their side capable of killing seven dragons by themselves, made him ponder just how strong the dragons must have been back then. Clearly, they had been a terrifying force.
What about now? Blake was reminded of just how little he knew about the dragons of today. He knew there were some¡ªmore than two, at least¡ªbut how many, exactly? Five? Five hundred? It all tied in with one of the biggest questions bouncing around in his mind: who had won the war?
The fact that both people and dragons still existed made it hard to know for sure. Looking at a map of the world today and seeing how the ¡°crawlers¡± dominated all of the lands but the northeast mountains suggested that the ancient people had won. Yet, the author clearly made mention of the dragons¡¯ homeland being the northern highlands, and those mountains were most definitely highlands and the most northern of them, so the dragons¡¯ presence there today meant that the invasion of their homeland had ultimately failed. Neither party had been wiped off the face of the world, as had seemed so inevitable in the journal writer¡¯s mind at the time.
And yet, to Blake¡¯s utter frustration, there was no answer to be found within the journal. No, instead, the next entry¡ªand all the ones that followed¡ªonly brought a hundred more questions. He scrolled down to it and read it again anyway, hoping that the final translation would offer him something new to work with.
It is cold. So cold. I am so very tired, but I know I cannot sleep here or I will never wake up. So, with nothing better to do, I return to you, my trusty journal. Perhaps writing within you will keep my mind occupied enough to stave off eternal slumber until the sun rises once more from its home somewhere beyond this cloud-covered sky. If I am to be honest, my poor journal, I brought you with me on a whim, telling myself that your pages would make good kindling if needed. I regret to inform you that you are not safe from such a fate just yet.
Speaking of kindling, I cannot feel my feet. It seems that the small fire I was able to create from the remnants of dead branches has finally gone out. It did its job, at least, melting the nearby snow down to the ash so I have a small hollow to shelter from the wind. The ash grinds against my skin, and I have to be careful that I do not sink too deeply into it lest I get stuck. Still, it remains better than freezing to death. I have used up all the wood I foraged during my travels yesterday, so I must bear with the cold for now. Dawn will come soon, and then I must strap on my [big-wide-float-snow-feet¡ª¡°snow shoes¡±?] and venture forth once again. I do not have time for dalliances.
Traveling through Trazac was hard enough before. Now, it feels almost impossible. The ash layer rendered the terrain [see-not-know¡ª¡°unrecognizable¡±], and that was before the constant blizzards deposited dunes of snow atop it everywhere. Before, I had to be somewhat careful where I stepped lest my feet end up in a bog. Now, every step is a potential hazard. I have no idea what I am walking over. Is it solid ground, deformed by layers of ash and snow, or a pond, frozen over below my feet but cracking little by little with every successive step?
Like with so much of my life, I look to the trees to help guide me as I continue south. There are many species of tree that grew in shallow freshwater like that found in the Trazac swamps and marshes, while other trees need firmer soil. Other people would not be able to identify which are which, especially not with only the bare, leafless branches visible above the snow, but I can.
I am near my objective, or so I believe. Central Trazac is home to a [below-ground-hot-rock-pit¡ªit has been years since I learn geology, but I think he¡¯s referring to a ¡°volcanic caldera¡±]. I remember hearing about it from geologists during a convention before the war. The subterranean heat warms the local area, creating heated pools and even a handful of geysers. It is the only place I know of that is both close enough to reach and potentially warm enough for plants to grow in this eternal winter. But I have to be sure. Aytra is suffering every day, and if I am going to spend a single moment in the laboratories, away from her bed, then I must be sure that my desperate hopes rest upon a stable foundation.
I cannot dally any longer. The light grows bright enough for travel again, and the snowfall has lessened. Time to go.
Blake let out the world¡¯s longest groan as he finally acknowledged that the information he sought was not hidden in the final untranslated bits and pieces. It just wasn¡¯t in the journal at all. It was almost like the author expressly avoided talking about the outcome of the final invasion, as if it were a bad omen or something.
That wasn¡¯t to say he had nothing to go on. There were mentions elsewhere, most notably in the various Otharian bibles. He still didn¡¯t entirely trust their versions of events, however. They were far more Othar fanfiction than authentic historical records, and it didn¡¯t take profound wisdom to be able to spot how they twisted everything to better serve the narratives they wanted to push.
A series of beeps and boops interrupted his musings to remind him that it was time for Sam¡¯s class. Even when busy, he tried to make time to educate the girl, as he still hadn¡¯t forgotten what he¡¯d said to her back then. He was going to ram enlightenment into her tiny skull until she finally understood the totality of her crime and repented in full. Now, that would be a fine day.
Blake found Sam waiting in the classroom, which was not surprising these days. She¡¯d become very diligent about class, which was a nice turnaround from those loud and contentious early days. It was especially good today, given how drained he felt right now.
¡°Alright, Sam, where are we on the subject wheel today?¡±
¡°Yesterday was Math, so...¡±
¡°Ah! Physics, then.¡±
To keep the lessons from getting too same-y and stuck on a single topic, Blake had decided to rotate through a series of subjects, with a different one every day.
¡°Well, then I have an idea. We¡¯re going to be building a lake in the near future¡ª¡±
¡°Building a lake? How?¡±
¡°Very carefully, Sam. So, let¡¯s talk about water pressure and fluid dynamics.¡±
The lesson went well, Blake thought. It was nice to not have to think about those stupid documents for just a little bit.
¡°Alright, that¡¯s enough for today,¡± he said, disassembling the hydraulic piston filled with liquefied metal that he¡¯d constructed to demonstrate many of the day¡¯s lessons. ¡°Go blow shit up with the giggling goblin or whatever.¡±
Sam got up and headed towards the door.
¡°Oh, one more thing...¡±
The girl slowed to a stop near the entrance.
¡°Sofie says you were really helpful with translating the Writ of Otharon, so I, uh... wanted to say thanks. I know you don¡¯t like the non-canon versions, so I appreciate you helping us anyway.¡±
Sam¡¯s face scrunched up like she was eating a lemon. Clearly, she hadn¡¯t liked reading the apocryphal text much... or she didn¡¯t like him thanking her. Probably both. They got along better now than before, but better was a very relative term, and before had been quite atrocious if he had to be honest.
¡°You¡¯re... welcome,¡± she muttered.
¡°You did a great job,¡± he told her, trying to be supportive and all that. ¡°It¡¯s just a shame that the other one, the Writ of Otharo, is unfinished. It might have been able to help me fill in the blanks I still have, even after Sofie translated all the ancient documents in that archive.¡±
Samanta¡¯s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ¡°He really gave you all of them?¡±
Blake ground to a halt as Sam¡¯s words drilled into his brain. ¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean, Sam?¡±
Simultaneously, Sam seemed to realize her mistake, her face going pale. ¡°Nothing, I was just joking,¡± she quickly responded, hastily making for the exit.
The door slammed shut in her face and melded with the wall, locking her inside with him.
¡°Sam, is there something you¡¯re hiding from me?¡± Blake asked, slowly approaching the child who seemed to shrink under his gaze more and more with every step he took.
¡°N-no...¡±
¡°Sam, after I just complimented you for being so helpful, if it turns out that you¡¯ve been keeping something important from me, I¡¯m going to be very, very upset.¡±
He bent down and grabbed her shoulder, trying not to let weeks of frustrations get the best of him. The child flinched and looked away, avoiding his intense gaze. Just as he was about to reach out with his other hand, seize her chin, and force her to look at him, she spoke up.
¡°It¡¯s just that...¡± she began, her voice quavering, ¡°...back when we first went there and you told the elder to bring you all the oldest books, I don¡¯t think he brought everything. You couldn¡¯t see it but I saw it from my angle through a gap in the shelves. He definitely took some things and tucked them away instead of bringing them over.¡±
¡°Is that so?¡± His grip on her shoulder tightened and she squirmed.
¡°I think so! I didn¡¯t get a good look at what it was! That¡¯s all, I promise!¡±
¡°Hmmm. Hmmmmmmm.¡±
The door reappeared and slid open. Blake released his grip on the girl and stood back up.
¡°Go have fun, Sam. I have to go pay a geezer a visit.¡±
Arriving outside of the archives, Blake stared at the entrance door and fought back the urge to kick it in. As tempting as it was to make a cinematic entrance, he was a world leader. As the ruler of Otharia, he had an image to maintain, and gallivanting about and kicking in doors in full view of the public was unbecoming of his position. Also, because the archive was a building constructed by the old regime, it had a thick, sturdy stone door that would probably stand up to a kick or two, and that would just make him look silly. No, as satisfying as it would be, he would not be busting through said door using sheer calf and thigh power like an action hero today.
He had a skitter do it instead.
The large machine¡¯s bull rush shattered the stone door, and Blake entered right behind it, stepping through the now-empty frame and over the rubble to survey the scene.
¡°You been holding out on me, old man?¡± Blake called out, spotting the Otharian document keeper on the other side of the main chamber.
The elderly librarian recoiled from Blake¡¯s sudden invasion like a Floridian finding a hungry gator waiting for them in their living room.
¡°N-N-No, Lord! I would never!¡± he sputtered as Blake quickly advanced on him.
¡°Yeah? Because a little birdie told me that there might be some bits and pieces you¡¯ve kept to yourself. I told you to give me all the ancient stuff you have.¡±
¡°Books!¡± the old man managed to get out.
¡°What?¡±
¡°Y-You told me to get all the ancient books, Lord!¡± he pleaded. ¡°I-I-I was merely following your command!¡±
Blake paused for a split second. Had he said that? Now that he thought about it, the geezer might be telling the truth. Still, he couldn¡¯t get rid of the feeling that the old man was hiding something.
¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he decided. ¡°Get me everything this time.¡±
¡°L-Lord Ferros, what remains is of no worth to you, I can assure¡ª¡±
¡°You don¡¯t get to tell me what I care about! Everything, now!¡±
Blake wanted to haul this insolent old geezer into the air by the front of his shirt and give him a couple of solid shakes for emphasis, but it would probably just break the man. Bent and withered by age, the geezer looked like he would crumble from little more than a stiff breeze.
¡°E-Everything, yes,¡± the archivist wheezed. ¡°...p-please don¡¯t hurt me.¡±
¡°Go. I don¡¯t have all day.¡±
Not too much later, the man returned pushing a rickety wooden cart covered in large sheets of the ancient people¡¯s durable document material¡ªhalfway between paper and plastic, but not quite either¡ªand several long, thin metal tubes. He walked like a man being marched to his own execution, with a hint of sadness mixed in that reminded Blake of a someone saying goodbye to his beloved for the final time.
Blake took one look at the cart contents and the geezer¡¯s behavior suddenly took on a much different light.
¡°Pfft! Hahahaha! You perverted old fart! Snrk! Why didn¡¯t you just say so in the first place! Bahahahaha!¡±
Blake¡¯s chortles grew quickly to full-blown guffaws as the Otharian deflated under Blake¡¯s ridicule. Blake found himself fumbling for a seat before he fell over from laughing too hard.
Laying on the cart were ancient posters, but not just any sort of poster. No, they were lewd posters¡ªthe sort that you found hanging on the walls in the dorm rooms of male college students, the sort that were just an inch away from being straight-up pornography, and, apparently, the sort prized by lonely old perverts working alone in a long-ignored document archive.
¡°Ooohhhh, Sofie will have a fit when she sees these!¡± he cackled as he inspected poster after scandalous poster of scantily clad women in various inviting poses¡ªonly to check for information, of course. Interestingly, they all looked like prints, but prints of paintings. Of the twenty-odd posters here, none of them looked like photographs. Nor had he found a single photo in any of the other texts, now that he thought about it.
Finally, when his laughter had died back down to giggle-level, he waved the archivist away. ¡°Don¡¯t worry, you old lecher, you¡¯ll get your wank material back eventually.¡±
In all honesty, he could probably just leave them here; he doubted they would help him even the slightest in his quest. The mental image of Sofie having a conniption over them, however, was too good for him to pass up. He put them on a nearby table for the moment and turned his focus to the three tubes.
Each tube was made of smooth bronze¡ªnot tucrenyx, he noted¡ªand looked to be airtight except for what appeared to be a screw cap on one end. Carefully, he unscrewed one and removed the contents. Unrolling the bundle of documents inside, he found... advertisements? After a moment spent sifting through the collection, that was all the sense he could make of them. Made of cheaper-feeling material, the flyers all seemed to be hawking a different product, from appliances to what Blake guessed was a farm tool.
Having seen enough, he rolled the advertisements back up and put them back into the canister before opening the second canister. This batch proved harder for him to figure out. They were a collection of posters, but they varied in quality and size, and most of them just had large ancient script plastered over brightly colored backgrounds. Still, something about their styles felt familiar, prodding the back of his mind at some long-buried memory. It wasn¡¯t until he got near the end that he realized what he was looking at.
One of the last posters had more than just words on it; it had a drawing of what could only be a squad of soldiers striking a valiant pose. Each member of the squad was a different species: a human, an elf, a beastkin, and... a fourth, smaller person who resembled a normal human in all aspects that Blake could see. Was this one of the ¡°little-people¡± mentioned in the botanist¡¯s journal? Either way, all four wore matching red and white uniforms with spiffy-looking, tall hats with a feather sticking out of each.
If their uniforms and general demeanor weren¡¯t enough to mark them as soldiers, there was the large weapon behind them that sealed the deal. Large and boxy, the machine reminded him almost of a World War One-era tank, with massive treads and four massive gun barrels pointing upward at a high angle like artillery pieces or an anti-air battery. The whole design seemed strangely high-tech and low-tech at the same time, almost like steampunk designs back home except without the steam¡ªcrystalpunk?
This poster finally clicked all the pieces in place and he found the connection that had eluded him. The bright colors, the bold, striking text, the martial themes... these were propaganda posters, possibly for some sort of war effort. He couldn¡¯t read any of it, but even so, he could almost feel the exhortation in their script urging the reader to do... something patriotic.
He flipped through the last few posters just to be sure and came to a halt on the second to the last one. Here, there was another drawing, but the image was not that of a soldier¡ªor at least, not the sort from the previous poster. No, this person looked more like a knight, clad in full plate armor and holding two massive swords, one in each hand. The thing that brought him to a halt, however, was the color¡ªeverything was pitch black, almost crystalline, just like Gabby¡¯s sword. In fact, the two blades this figure held even somewhat resembled her weapon, except they appeared far more sophisticated. Gabby¡¯s sword was simplistic to the extreme, with a blade that was little more than a rectangle with a triangle stuck on top. If he were to be honest, it looked like what you would get if you asked a first grader to draw the shape of a sword. These blades looked far more advanced, with smoother gradients, a more rounded outline, and more.
These blades and the armor had to be related to Gabby¡¯s sword, Blake had little doubt. The artist had captured that telltale black crystal gleam that Blake would never be able to forget, no matter how hard he tried. But what did it mean? He wasn¡¯t quite sure. Tucking the posters back into the tube, he moved on to the final canister.
The last of the containers held only a single item. Curious, he pulled it out and found a roll about five feet tall, taller than the tallest posters¡ªand equally long, as he discovered as he unrolled it. Moving it to another, larger table, he opened it fully and gazed down upon... an ancient map of the world, printed in color, filled with precise depictions of even tiny geographic features, and covered with ancient writing.
¡°Oh...oh, no.¡±
He couldn¡¯t read the ancient squiggles that covered the document, but he didn¡¯t need to. His mind went back to Bazzalth¡¯s words, the words that had placed these worries in his mind, and suddenly, things started to click together. He needed to read through the documents again, right away.
Blake leaned back in his chair and took a swig of Otharian brew. The liquid tasted unctuously sweet, though the cinnamon-adjacent aftertaste wasn¡¯t half bad.
He wasn¡¯t horizontal enough. The metal of his chair shifted, letting him lean back even more¡ªfar enough that, when he let his arms hang limp, he could easily set touch the floor with his palm.
Blake felt tired¡ªso very tired. He had so much on his plate already; what was he supposed to do with this on top of all the rest?!
Nothing, he decided¡ªat least for a bit. He needed a break. He¡¯d already spent the last few hours rereading literally everything he had with his new knowledge and perspective, and everything only served to further cement his theory. Even the journal entries that he¡¯d once thought largely irrelevant read differently now that he knew what to look for.
He was done with reading for now. Maybe forever. Letting his body go limp, he set the bottle on the floor beside him and let his mind drift slowly along the lazy currents of inebriation.
Far too early, a loud chime shattered his reverie. He jerked in surprise, his hand knocking the bottle over and spilling its contents onto the cold metal floor.
Blake hurriedly tried to grab the bottle with one hand before he lost too much alcohol while fumbling with the intercom control panel with the other hand. A moment later, he lurched upright, a slightly-lighter bottle in one hand and the fingers of his other on the intercom camera button. A screen rose up behind the control console and lit up, revealing the visage of one Sofie Ramaut sporting her usual infuriatingly discontent scowl.
Ugh, not her, not now! He had more than enough to deal with without more annoying demands and questions... unless she was here to deliver more texts? No, she¡¯d already done so this morning.
A finger depressed the talk button and he distilled all of his considerable irritation into a single slurred ¡°What?¡±
¡°Blake, let me in,¡± she said in that insufferable tone of voice that she loved to use with him.
¡°No, go be annoying somewhere else,¡± he replied.
She paused for a split second. ¡°Blake, are you drinking?¡±
¡°What¡¯s it to you?!¡± he shot back. ¡°Fuck off!¡±
¡°Alright, if you¡¯re going to be like that... let me in or I¡¯ll tell Pari that you were a big meanie to me.¡±
The threat gave Blake pause. The last thing he needed piled atop all his other problems now was the tiny terror¡¯s wrath. Maybe if he let Sofie in just for a little, he considered, he could appease her enough that she would then go away. As unpalatable as the prospect seemed, it was orders of magnitude better than another incident involving the cat-eared catastrophe.
With great reluctance, Blake let Sofie inside. The gadfly marched quickly through the intermediate chambers and arrived at his room. Immediately upon entering, her nose scrunched up and she grimaced.
¡°What the hell, are you bathing in alcohol?¡± she coughed.
¡°I had an accident, shut up.¡±
¡°So, you really are drinking, then. What happened to all that stuff you were spouting about weakness of spirit?¡±
¡°Why do you care, Sofie? Did you just come to bother me or something because you¡¯re bored?¡±
Sofie marched up to Blake¡¯s desk, placed her palms down upon the smooth metal, and leaned in. ¡°I¡¯m here because you¡¯ve freaked Leo out so much that he begged me to find out what¡¯s gotten into you, that¡¯s why.¡±
¡°That¡¯s it?¡±
¡°Blake, you¡ªthe man who nobody has ever seen take a drink of alcohol and was being insufferable about it not even a day ago¡ªwent to Leo after days and days of acting all weird and cagey and asked him not just to get you booze, but to, and I quote, ¡®get the hardest shit you can find, and lots of it¡¯. What is he supposed to think after that?¡±
She leaned in more.
¡°I¡¯m trying to not freak out myself, Blake, and seeing you like this is not helping. You found something, didn¡¯t you? In the texts. That¡¯s what this is about, isn¡¯t it?¡±
Blake poured some more booze down his gullet, avoiding her worried gaze. Why did she have to be so perceptive all the time?
¡°Don¡¯t want to talk about it,¡± he grunted.
¡°Why not?¡±
¡°Nothing to say. Don¡¯t know what it means, don¡¯t know what to do, don¡¯t know anything.¡±
¡°No, no, stop it with the cryptic vague crap. What is going on and how bad is it?¡±
Blake took another gulp and said nothing.
Sofie groaned with exasperation and turned towards the door. ¡°Alright, have it your way. I¡¯m going to go see Pari.¡±
Blake sighed. ¡°You suck. Fine.¡±
¡°Well? Spill it.¡±
Blake shook his head, causing the room to swim a bit even after he stopped. ¡°Not now. Wait until Gabby gets back. She needs to hear it too and it¡¯s... it¡¯s going to take a while.¡±
¡°Blake, Gabby might be gone for months!¡±
Blake let out a grunt. As much as he didn¡¯t like to admit it, even Sofie made a good point every so often. He reached down to a desk drawer to his right and fumbled it open. Pulling out a small bot the size of a deck of playing cards, he opened it up and pressed the single button inside.
¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Sofie inquired.
¡°It¡¯s a... a signal. For emergencies. She¡¯ll be back soon.¡±
¡°An emergency signal? You know how important her mission or whatever is to her, right? Is this an emergency?¡±
Blake burped. ¡°Depends on your definition, I guess.¡±
Sofie pinched the bridge of her nose while biting her lip so hard that it drew blood. She slammed her hands down upon the table and shot him a heated glare.
¡°Blake, you cannot tell me that something is an emergency, while also refusing to tell me anything about it and making me wait in ignorance like this for who knows how long. Tell me something. Anything. Just one sentence.¡±
He stared back at her for a moment. He knew she was right; he couldn¡¯t keep it all to himself forever. But, he still didn¡¯t want to say it¡ªnot until he¡¯d double-checked, no, triple-checked the other texts. Not until he was one thousand percent, undoubtedly sure that his findings were correct. Still, if he gave her just a little bit now, maybe he¡¯d get some peace and quiet again.
¡°Fine, but it stays in this room.¡±
¡°What about Leo?¡±
¡°Tell him whatever you think is best, as long as it¡¯s not this.¡±
¡°Blake, I¡ª¡±
¡°Promise me, or I won¡¯t say anything.¡±
¡°You¡¯re obnoxious, you know that? Okay, I promise I won¡¯t tell Leo about this.¡±
¡°Or anybody else.¡±
¡°Yes, or anybody else.¡±
Blake lifted the bottle to his lips and let more liquid burn its way down his throat. Judging by the weight and how high he had to tip it, the bottle was nearly empty, and he was nowhere near sufficiently drunk. He needed something stronger than this. Maybe it was his upgraded body, or maybe Otharian booze just sucked¡ªprobably both.
Staring past Sofie at the wall over her shoulder, he let his alcohol-addled mind slowly sift through everything he¡¯d learned and distill it down into a single thought, something good enough to appease her so she¡¯d leave him alone for a while. A few moments later, he tipped back the bottle and let the last remnants of the grog enter his system. The bottle wobbled as he set it down rather indelicately upon his desk. He had his answer.
¡°I know why we¡¯re here.¡±
Chapter 121
Gabriela¡¯s legs blurred, kicking up a kilometers-long dust trail behind them as she shot southeast through the Otharian countryside. As when they¡¯d left Otharia not too long ago, she carried Chitra in her arms, the Batranala¡¯s arms wrapped around the Earthling¡¯s neck. Every so often, the Ubran would release her grip with her left arm and use it to point in the right direction, correcting Gabriela¡¯s course to prevent any circular navigation mishaps from occurring.
They¡¯d made the trip back in just a handful of hours, traveling at well over two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, the wind howling in their ears so loudly that it drowned out all other sound. Gabriela¡¯s chest felt tight with worry. The little chip continued to vibrate in her pocket even now, a constant whine urging her to go faster. She did, the landscape blurring by as she streaked through farmland and along dirt roads.
The landscape was growing familiar even to her. If she was correct, then Wroetin would be visible any moment now. True to her expectations, they flew over the crest of a hill and the Otharian capital did indeed come into view far off in the distance, the city and the land surrounding it as pristine and calm under the cloudless sunny sky as she¡¯d ever seen it.
Her stride faltered and she almost tripped as the urgency bled from her, confusion and anger rushing in to fill the void. They came to a halt and Chitra slipped out onto her own feet while Gabriela searched the landscape for signs of a struggle, an emergency, anything that would justify that man calling her back like this. She found nothing.
¡°Are you sure you understood the meaning of the message?¡± Chitra asked.
¡°I was very clear with him and he agreed. Only ¡®absolute emergencies¡¯,¡± she responded.
¡°Mmmm,¡± the Ubran hummed. ¡°Well, emergencies can come in many forms, I suppose.¡±
¡°Not the kind they would need me for.¡±
¡°Perhaps. You go on ahead and find out,¡± her partner said, slipping her supplies off of Gabriela¡¯s back, making sure to not slice anything on the Sword of Eternity as she did so. ¡°I¡¯ll traverse the rest of the way on my own.¡±
¡°You sure?¡± Gabriela wondered.
¡°You¡¯re the person they summoned; I was just along for the ride. I¡¯m not very popular in that place, anyway. I¡¯d only be a distraction.¡± Chitra leaned in suddenly and gave Gabriela a quick peck on the cheek, causing her cheeks to flush so hard they felt like they were burning. ¡°Now, go¡ªand perhaps give them a moment to explain before you show them your displeasure, alright?¡±
¡°Uh...¡± Gabby stammered, her thoughts still focused on the feeling of the Scyrian¡¯s soft lips on her skin. She had not been ready for their first kiss of sorts to be a surprise attack.
Chitra poked her in the side. ¡°Go on. I¡¯ll see you later.¡±
¡°Alright,¡± Gabby capitulated, adjusting her pack and weapon. With a nod, she kicked off the ground and hurled herself towards Wroetin.
¡°Oh, you¡¯re already here! Thank goodness!¡± Sofie greeted Gabriela as she landed on the inside of the outer wall.
What was Sofie doing here? Had she been waiting for her to arrive?
¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± Gabriela demanded to know.
¡°Come on,¡± Sofie said, turning away and heading toward the fortress proper. ¡°Do you have to go to the bathroom or anything? I imagine you were running for a while.¡±
¡°I¡¯m fine.¡± She grabbed Sofie by the wrist, causing the other woman to spin around. Gabriela studied her face for a moment, noting the tightness around her eyes and the way her jaw clenched. ¡°Tell me what¡¯s going on.¡±
¡°It would be fastest for all of us to just go see Blake. He promised to explain everything once you got here.¡± She tugged against Gabriela¡¯s grip, but Gabby didn¡¯t let go.
¡°Sofie, you¡¯re afraid. What has you like this?¡±
¡°He¡¯s terrified, Gabby. So much that he started drinking. And he told me just enough to make me scared that he¡¯s scared.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°He said he¡¯d explain it all once you got here, so let¡¯s go. I need answers as much as you do.¡±
Sofie tugged her arm again and this time Gabby let go. They hurried into the fortress and made their way to Blake¡¯s quarters.
¡°Alright, she¡¯s here,¡± Sofie said into the microphone. ¡°Enough stalling, Blake.¡±
The door slid open and they went inside. They found Blake¡ªmask off but otherwise armor-clad¡ªin the farthest room, sitting behind an imposing metal desk that was far too wide and deep, nearly two meters in each direction. Several empty bottles stood near the edge of the desk, but she didn¡¯t smell much alcohol in the room and he didn¡¯t seem drunk at the moment. Looking at the bags under his eyes and his generally disheveled appearance¡ªor as disheveled as one can look wearing a suit of metal¡ªset her on edge.
Sofie sniffed the air with a disapproving scowl. ¡°I thought I told you to stop drinking,¡± she said, her gaze settling on a small pile of bottles in the far corner. Gabby counted at least seven empty bottles in the pile.
¡°Anybody would need to drink after dealing with you,¡± Blake grumbled in reply.
¡°I swear, if you¡¯re drunk right now,¡± Sofie began, but Blake pleadingly raised his hands.
¡°I¡¯m fine. This stupid body burns through alcohol way too fast,¡± he insisted. ¡°I¡¯ve been sober for the last two hours or so. Two long, interminable hours that would have been better served being drunk.¡±
¡°Would somebody please tell me what¡¯s going on?¡± Gabriela interjected. ¡°You called me back when I was busy with important work, and I can¡¯t help but notice that nothing is on fire.¡±
Blake looked at her with deadened eyes and said, simply, ¡°I know why we¡¯re here.¡±
Any thoughts of haranguing the man vanished in an instant. She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn¡¯t figure out what, so nothing came out. The way he was acting, combined with Sofie¡¯s demeanor, set her on edge, a bad feeling welling up inside her. The two of them sat down in a pair of chairs on the other side of the desk from Blake and together, they looked at him expectantly.
¡°Well?¡± she pressed after he didn¡¯t speak for a few moments.
¡°Fine,¡± Blake sighed, leaning forward. He paused again, and Gabriela felt her ire rising at his constant delays. ¡°Alright... so... this is going to take a while. There¡¯s a lot to go over.¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t run all the way back here for a lecture, Blake,¡± she snapped. ¡°Just tell us the part that matters.¡±
¡°I... don¡¯t want to,¡± he returned weakly. ¡°If I just lay it out like that, you¡¯ll just tell me I¡¯m a nutcase.¡±
¡°Blake, come on,¡± Sofie joined in.
¡°Look, if we have to do this, this is how I want to do it. I¡¯m going to walk you through everything¡ªall my reasoning, all my evidence¡ªand you¡¯re going to poke holes in it and tell me how and why I¡¯m wrong, and then we¡¯re all going to forget about all of this and pretend it never happened, alright? Please.¡±
¡°Just... whatever,¡± Gabriela grunted. ¡°Start talking, then.¡±
¡°Alright, so... I haven¡¯t really put much thought into how to best explain this, so it¡¯s going to be messy and unorganized¡ª¡±
¡°Blake, you¡¯ve had all day to think about it!¡± Sofie moaned in frustration. ¡°What the hell have you been doing instead?!¡±
¡°I¡¯ve been not thinking much at all and very much enjoying it,¡± Blake replied. ¡°But since we¡¯re doing this, I guess the best way to do it is to break it down into two parts. Who brought us here, and why would they do it? Let¡¯s start first with the question of who.¡±
¡°Last time we spoke about this, you told me you thought our arrival here was a glitch. An accident of the machines,¡± Sofie recalled. ¡°Now you¡¯re talking like you think it was done on purpose by somebody? What changed your mind?¡±
¡°New information, time, a bunch of things. Maybe the biggest thing was just learning more about the creation of the bunkers. Pionmi changed my thinking a bit.¡±
¡°You¡¯re both losing me already,¡± Gabby told them.
¡°So, you know how I¡¯ve had Sofie translating things for the last... however many days?¡±
¡°Not particularly.¡±
¡°Well, she¡¯s been working on a bunch of different old documents, making them make sense for me. The biggest one is this journal that Sofie found in an ancient ruin a while back.
A vertical panel grew from the desk, complete with a screen that lit up, showing a large block of text.
¡°This is an example from the journal. It was written by a botanist¡ª¡±
¡°As I said in my notes,¡± Sofie interjected, ¡°I¡¯m not sure if botanist is the proper term¡ª¡±
¡°It¡¯s close enough for our purposes. Now, calling him ¡®the botanist¡¯ a thousand times as we go is going to get annoying, so I¡¯m going to call him, uh, ¡®Larry¡¯.¡±
Sofie sniffed. ¡°Larry? Really?¡±
¡°We can go with ¡®Curly¡¯ or ¡®Moe¡¯ if you care so much.¡±
¡°Fine, Larry it is.¡±
¡°Anyway, as you can see¡ª¡±
¡°Um...¡± Gabby cut in.
¡°What now?¡± Blake groaned. ¡°You people want me to explain it all but you won¡¯t even let me finish a sentence!¡±
¡°You know I can¡¯t read that, right?¡± Gabriela said, indicating the block of English text on the screen.
¡°...Shit. I forgot. I guess we¡¯ll have to read it out loud then,¡± Blake sighed. ¡°This is getting better and better...¡±
He rubbed his eyes for a moment before continuing.
¡°Anyway, Larry had a friend named Pionmi, who, despite being very dead, might be one of the most impactful people in our lives.¡±
Gabby cocked an eyebrow.
¡°You see, Pionmi was a genius, and not just an ordinary genius¡ªshe¡¯s an Einstein, prodigy in the field of dimensional physics,¡± he continued.
¡°Particle physics,¡± Sofie corrected.
¡°Well, yes, your translation in Larry¡¯s journal is ¡®particle physics¡¯, but you would agree that ¡®dimensional physics¡¯ more accurately matches her work, right?¡± Blake argued.
Sofie cocked her head in thought for a moment. ¡°The literal translation is definitely closer to particle, but... I guess they¡¯re close enough.¡±
¡°Cool. Let¡¯s do a quick run-through of what Larry tells us about her after they both graduate.¡±
The text on the screen shifted and he began to read aloud.
¡°Pionmi, as I alluded to, had to travel even farther than I, going all the way across the Great Range to the western end of the world to join Imbran Empire¡¯s Imperial Academy [yes, Blake, I checked¡ªfrom what I can tell from the Emperor¡¯s Tome, this is not the Ubran Empire. This is something from before that, though I think that their lands at least partially overlap. Even the Emperor¡¯s Tome doesn¡¯t really mention past nations and whatnot]. At least according to her, it is the only institution with the funds, expertise, and interest in her chosen field. As such, our correspondence comes with significant delays, but that has not affected the frequency. As I hoped, she has already found others who can see past her gender and recognize her abilities. Perhaps attitudes towards the weaker gender are laxer over there.¡±
¡°So, Pionmi moves west. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s a stretch to assume that the Great Range is the Divide, meaning she relocated to Obura.¡±
¡°Alright, so what?¡± Gabriela asked.
¡°We¡¯ll get to that in a minute.¡±
The text shifted again.
¡°I have not heard from Pionmi in a little while, which is not entirely surprising given the news that she and the other researchers in her department are busy relocating. As she said last, they have depleted all that they can study while in the capital. They are moving to a small town southeast where the conditions will be far more optimal. I cannot profess to understand much of what she tells me when she speaks of the knowledge she and her cohorts are mining from [space-matter-energy¡ª¡°reality¡±? More of a guess here than I would like. Still not entirely sure what it is that Pionmi is working on] itself. If I had to try to explain it simply, it seems that there are places where certain energies converge and said energies weaken the [edge-membrane-be¡ªto keep it matched with my last guess, we¡¯ll go with ¡°boundaries of existence¡±], or perhaps the boundaries are already weakened and bring about said energies? I am not sure.¡±
¡°So, here we learn that there are apparently places on Scyria where the boundaries of reality are weaker than elsewhere. Sofie, I think your interpretations here are spot on. She is a dimensional physicist and she¡¯s looking into places where the dimensional edge is weaker. Do you see where this is going? If you were to build a machine to pierce the boundaries of your reality and pull something through from a different reality, where would you do it?¡±
¡°Somewhere where the boundary is weak,¡± Gabby answered. ¡°I¡¯m following so far. This person built the machines that brought us here.¡±
¡°Well, helped in some way, at least,¡± Blake said with a nod. ¡°Next part.¡±
¡°Ardemun continues to do what he does, creating greater and deadlier machines. As for Pionmi, I finally heard from her again after what must have been a year. She has been very careful not to tell me the details of what she is doing these days, though she told me she is still at the site with the anomaly, doing whatever it may be that she does.
I can not just feel the stress she is under in her writing but also see it. Reading her emotions through her script has always been easy. Whenever she was tense or worried about an upcoming exam or the like¡ªwhy somebody like her would ever worry about school exams, I cannot say¡ªshe would grip her quill harder and it would show in her form. Her straights become harsher, her curves distorted and often sharp. I don¡¯t think she realizes it, or perhaps she does and simply doesn¡¯t care.
The script of the last letter was the worst I¡¯ve ever seen her handwriting. She must be abominably stressed right now. I can relate.¡±
¡°Now, a crucial thing I haven¡¯t told you yet is that during Larry¡¯s life, a huge war breaks out between the people and the dragons.¡±
¡°Huh?¡± Gabby blinked in surprise.
¡°Yeah, we¡¯ll get to that in a bit. But from what we can tell from this, Pionmi and her group seem to have been conscripted into the war effort. Suddenly she isn¡¯t telling Larry anything about what she¡¯s working on. So, what she¡¯s building or studying is top secret. This will be important in a minute.¡±
The text scrolls.
¡°Pionmi continues to stress about things she refuses to talk about.¡±
¡°Okay, this one doesn¡¯t really matter, but once again, she isn¡¯t talking about her work. Now, here¡¯s where things get very, very relevant to us.¡±
Again the text scrolled.
¡°I¡¯m going to skip part of this for now. The short version is, the first Earthlings appeared and helped fight the dragons. It¡¯s a big, huge thing, but the government won¡¯t say where they came from. But Larry... he has a very strong hunch.¡±
¡°Pionmi¡¯s latest letter is the first in years where her calligraphy has returned to the smooth, precise strokes that I knew from before, as if a massive load has been lifted from her spirit. That this happened concurrently with the arrival of the heroes feels significant, but I don¡¯t understand where the overlap would be between them and her. Her area of expertise has nothing to do with experimentation on people. Perhaps her project was needed to supply something to the other projects? Or maybe it provided energy somehow? It¡¯s hard to say without knowing what she was working on. She even expressly told me she cannot tell me what she worked on, which feels almost like a confirmation that it was related to our new champions.¡±
¡°So, there we have it. Pionmi and her cohorts designed, built, and probably operated the machines that brought the first Earthlings, and later us, to this world. If you need more proof, I even have something in the Ubran Emperor¡¯s Tome that suggests their site is the one that brought you here, Gabby.¡±
¡°Really?¡±
¡°Yeah, check this bit out.¡±
A new document appeared on the screen.
¡°Now, the Ruovi, Sheno, Wellira, Epp, Qid, and even the bloodthirsty northern Mu bow before my eminence! All who know me know fear! Even the southern barbarians shudder when they hear my name!
Not even the realm of the ancients could evade my grasp! That¡¯s right, I, in my great wisdom, located the legendary realm of the ancients, that mythical place spoken of in the secret legends of the Batra, passed down from patriarch to patriarch! Now, the great working, the object of legend that brought forth the Champions of old, belongs to the Batra! When the working reawakens, it will once more summon a Champion chosen by the spirits, and that Champion will lead this empire to heights beyond your comprehension!
To my future descendants, I lay down an insurmountable challenge! Live a life that can best mine! Entertain my spirit as I watch you struggle with this impossible task! Most of all, guard the great working with your life and prepare for the Champion that shall one day come!¡±
As Blake read the words, a chilling recognition formed in Gabriela¡¯s mind.
¡°The Prophecy...¡± she said softly. ¡°The Emperor would speak of it from time to time, but I never heard it directly before.¡±
¡°There¡¯s another entry later about it too,¡± Sofie noted.
¡°Right,¡± Blake agreed, triggering another screen change.
¡°Harken, forefathers and offspring, for I am Sharad Batra, Fourth Emperor of this abundant Ubran Empire! It is I who transformed Ubrus from a society of nomads living in sorry yurts to a strong people living behind impregnable walls of stone, unconquerable by even the fiercest of foreign armies!
My exquisite, unrivaled Imperial Palace stands atop the ancients¡¯ divine device, the greatest protection the ancients could ever ask for! It is the perfect site for the founding of Ubra, the eternal capital of my great nation! We shall protect their great workings with our unbending fortress until the prophecy comes to pass! With the blessing of the spirits below, Ubrus shall prosper forevermore!¡±
¡°Alright, so Pionmi worked on Gabby¡¯s portal machine,¡± Sofie agreed. ¡°But what does that matter? You had a point about all this, right?¡±
¡°I bring all this up because you asked about why I don¡¯t think the machines just activated on their own, like a misfire. There was plenty of good reason to believe this, in my opinion. No disturbances in the dust on the floor, no sign that the door to the outside had opened in millennia. The same was true for you too, right, Sofie?¡±
Sofie nodded. ¡°The place definitely felt entirely abandoned,¡± she admitted.
¡°Right. So, Pionmi is what first made me doubt my conclusion. Scientists love control. It¡¯s fundamental to the scientific process. What¡¯s more, the military loves control. Nobody likes a gun that goes off on its own. The more I thought about it, the less plausible it felt to me that they would build a machine capable of such a... well, dangerous function and not make absolutely sure that it¡¯s only doing its thing when they want it to.
¡°So, I went back and checked. I missed it the last time¡ªthough I wasn¡¯t really looking for it back then¡ªbut there¡¯s actually a piece in the system that would prevent any uncontrolled activations. There¡¯s no way that we got here by pure accident. And no, there was no multi-millennium-long timer set to count down, either.¡±
¡°Which means...¡± Gabby began.
¡°That somebody activated the machines,¡± Sofie finished. ¡°Somebody brought us here.¡±
¡°Right, but back to the first question at hand: who?! Let¡¯s break down the question even further. First, who would even know the facilities exist? Look at the Pionmi passages again. She is tight-lipped. The government is tight-lipped¡ªso much so that Larry and Ardemun, who had considerable influence, couldn¡¯t find any direct information. The public knew nothing about where the Earthlings came from. There¡¯s no mention whatsoever of where Othar came from in any of the different versions of the Otharian bibles, other than some vague stuff about him descending from the mountains or hills or whatever. Nobody knows about these places!¡±
¡°The Ubrans know,¡± Sofie pointed out.
¡°They know about one, not all of them,¡± Blake argued. ¡°And that brings us to the second half of this point. Let¡¯s say you know where every single one of them is. Is that enough? No! You need to be able to turn the machines on! Gabby?¡±
Gabriela shook her head. ¡°I don¡¯t think the Ubrans know how to activate the machine, no. Other than when they... pretended, at least. Just look at the prophecy¡ªit¡¯s about waiting for the machine to turn on by itself. If they could have activated it, they would have long ago.¡±
¡°So, you¡¯re now at an important point, the same one I was at before. Who else could it have been?¡± Blake pressed.
¡°Some kind of secret society?¡± Sofie suggested. ¡°A Scyrian Illuminati of sorts?¡±
¡°You can¡¯t prove a negative, so I can¡¯t declare with a hundred percent certainty that what you say can¡¯t exist, but I find it hard to believe for a dozen reasons. For one, this would need to be a world-spanning organization, which seems nearly impossible. Not only would communication be a huge challenge, just being world-spanning would be practically impossible with the Divide blocking travel. Cross-Divide travel only opened up in the last millennia, right?¡±
¡°I think that¡¯s accurate,¡± Sofie replied, sounding perhaps half-certain.
¡°And then, there¡¯s the whole aftermath of the war, which would make organization of any type difficult.¡±
¡°That¡¯s true.¡±
Gabby, for her part, didn¡¯t have much to contribute. She hadn¡¯t spent much time learning Ubran history or Scyrian history in general, and she¡¯d never laid eyes on the contents of Sofie¡¯s books. As such, she felt somewhat left out of the conversation, unable to contribute or keep up with the others as they discussed things she didn¡¯t have knowledge of. Still, she tried her best.
¡°What do you mean by the aftermath of the war?¡± she asked.
¡°Right, we haven¡¯t mentioned that yet,¡± Blake acknowledged. ¡°We¡¯re going to get into that soon, but the relevant thing is that basically, after the war, all of civilization collapsed, which is why we lost all this history and knowledge.¡±
¡°Oh... that sounds bad.¡±
Blake snorted. ¡°Oh man, you just wait.¡±
¡°But Blake, if it isn¡¯t some secret society preserving knowledge, then there¡¯s no way for anybody to know about the facilities and the machines,¡± Sofie protested, still pondering the question at hand. ¡°No country could do it. There¡¯s nobody.¡±
¡°What about the dragons?¡± Gabby wondered.
¡°Indeed, Gabby,¡± Blake replied, a grin growing on his face. ¡°What about the dragons?¡±
¡°Sorry, huh? That makes no sense,¡± Sofie protested.
¡°Why not?¡± Blake returned. ¡°Think about it. They live for thousands of years¡ªBazz told me he¡¯s the youngest dragon, and he¡¯s over three thousand years old. They are intelligent. They can travel across the whole world without issue. They would know about cantacrenyx technology when others would not. They would have thousands of years to track down all the bunkers. If you consider it, they¡¯re the single faction that has all the factors needed to pull something like this off.¡±
¡°But... but they were the first Earthlings¡¯ enemies! Our predecessors killed more dragons than anybody! Why would the dragons want to bring in more?!¡± She shook her head. ¡°It doesn¡¯t make any sense. You¡¯re right, I guess, in that they had the opportunity, but there¡¯s no motive. In fact, I¡¯d say there¡¯s the opposite of motive.¡±
Blake¡¯s smile faded into a frown.
¡°And while we¡¯re at it, how would a dragon even accomplish something like this?¡± Sofie pressed on. ¡°You said your facility was covered in dust and untouched, right? So was mine. Wouldn¡¯t there have been some sign if a freaking dragon somehow got inside? And how would a dragon get into the basement of the Ubran imperial palace without anybody noticing?¡±
¡°That¡¯s true,¡± Gabby added. ¡°It is very deep beneath the palace.¡±
¡°Alright, let¡¯s go through this one at a time. One,¡± Blake began, holding up a single finger, ¡°there were actually signs, we just didn¡¯t know to notice them at the time. For example, I¡¯ve been back to my bunker multiple times, and it¡¯s always looked and sounded like normal nature. You can hear insects and see birds flying and lizards chilling on rocks and all that nature-y stuff. But, when I first came out, the area around my bunker was as silent as a morgue. Not a single animal to be seen or heard anywhere.¡±
¡°Well, I did hear the people who caught me mention something about not being able to find anything to hunt near the place, and it was super quiet,¡± Sofie allowed.
¡°But wait, there¡¯s more. The village I first stumbled into had been devastated by something they called a ¡®beast wave¡¯¡ªin other words, a giant stampede of all manner of animals trampling their crops and the like as the creatures ran through. Now, combine that with the eerie silence, and what do you get? The animals all hightailed it out of there as fast as they could. Now, what would trigger all manner of animals to run for their lives like the devil¡¯s on their tail? I don¡¯t know, maybe a giant, terrifying super-predator that probably triggers every flight instinct that they have?¡±
Sofie still didn¡¯t seem convinced. ¡°But if that were the case, wouldn¡¯t we have seen evidence of that happening elsewhere? It wouldn¡¯t have just been just here in Otharia. We should have seen weird animal movements...¡±
She fell silent for a moment, then gasped. ¡°The ranutepos!¡±
Blake leaned forward. ¡°The what?¡±
¡°Big, giant, acid-spitting toad things in Stragma!¡± Sofie explained with nervous excitement. ¡°They migrate into the caves where the Stragmans make their summer city, which is what makes the Stragmans move to the fall location. But last year, the ranutepos migrated early by more than a month, and nobody knew why! But if they were running from a dragon...¡±
¡°And the Stragmans have their own Earthling,¡± Gabby stated.
¡°See? It¡¯s all piecing together,¡± Blake said. He held up a second finger. ¡°Two, what if I told you that a dragon wouldn¡¯t need to enter a bunker to trigger the machines?¡±
Sofie gave him an incredulous look. ¡°What? How?¡±
¡°Apparently, it is possible to trigger cantacrenyx circuits from afar using specific energy pulses.¡±
Gabby didn¡¯t feel any more convinced than Sofie looked. ¡°And you know this... how?¡±
¡°Bazz told me. He discovered it while researching. Made a device that could do it and everything.¡±
¡°Did you see it?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°No, because he doesn¡¯t have it anymore. He traded it to another dragon for some materials or something. But, he wouldn¡¯t lie about that sort of thing, and I can see it being real. I¡¯m able to send signals between machines in a similar way, I believe. It¡¯s how my whole system communicates. So yeah, if they wanted to, they could force an activation from a distance by triggering the activation mechanism.¡±
¡°Does Arlette know about this?¡± Sofie asked.
Blake rolled his eyes. ¡°All it does is force a circuit to activate. It can¡¯t make something not work. Her bullshit about my tech being hacked or whatever is off the mark and also not on the docket right now.¡±
Gabby rubbed her chin, thinking through everybody¡¯s arguments. This was all so much information, so quickly. It was hard to keep it all straight. ¡°So, let¡¯s say everything you said is right, and the dragons did cause us to come here. Sofie still has a major point. Why would they want that?¡±
Blake frowned. ¡°And that brings us to the second part of all this: the question of why. This is where it gets complicated.¡±
¡°It wasn¡¯t complicated already?¡± Gabby complained.
¡°Not like this. Buckle up, because I¡¯m about to throw a lot at you all at once. First, let¡¯s set the stage by going back to the start of the ancients¡¯ war, or, as they called it, the Great Crusade. Back before even that, the ancients lived all across Scyria¡ª¡±
¡°How far back was this, anyway?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°Unknown. At least three thousand or thirty-five hundred years ago, probably more. Long before the birth of the Ubran Empire for sure, which is the oldest contemporary event I can find¡ªunless either of you knows something more?¡±
Both Gabby and Sofie shook their heads.
¡°Alright, so... ancient civilizations. Here¡¯s some of what we know from Larry¡¯s journal. First, from what I can tell, they were mostly multi-species, or at least Larry doesn¡¯t really mention any societies that were exclusively a single species¡ªexcept for one that we¡¯ll get to in a second. He talks about beast people, humans, elves, and also another species that lived in their own society more than the others.¡±
¡°The little-people,¡± Sofie said with a sad frown.
¡°Right. Second, the societies, from Larry¡¯s descriptions, were in a weird state of rapid progress throwing everything out of whack. His society was just starting to move past patriarchal mores, and he mentions how there were still a lot of people who thought that a woman¡¯s place was only in the home.
¡°On top of social upheaval, they were also going through a technological revolution of sorts. Cantacrenyx technology was discovered only a few decades before Larry¡¯s journal entries and it spread far and wide. Soon, there¡¯s cantacrenyx washing machines and all sorts of other shit, and everybody is using it. There¡¯re even rudimentary computers popping up and everything. And they basically did it while skipping the industrial revolution the whole time. As far as I can tell, they never even invented the internal combustion engine¡ªhell, maybe they didn¡¯t even invent serious steam engines. The way I understand it, it¡¯s like if you took a European or North American society from the start of the nineteenth century and progressed it to where we were at a decade after the end of World War II, except instead of taking a hundred and fifty years, they did it in maybe thirty or forty.¡±
¡°Alright,¡± Gabby nodded. ¡°So, why does this matter?¡±
¡°What I¡¯m trying to establish is the vibes, the collective psyche of these people at the time. The lives of the people of this world were in a period of great expansion¡ªexpansion of living standards, expansion of knowledge, expansion in capabilities, and expansion of what was possible. They were discovering new things every day, advancing scientific knowledge and all that constantly. This was a global society hitting the afterburners. They were inventing all sorts of things. Cars, computers, and even... airplanes. And that¡¯s where shit hits the fan.
¡°There¡¯s one other group I didn¡¯t mention yet, of course: the dragons. Until now, the dragons basically ruled over the world. They lived high up in the northern mountains and, judging by what Larry writes and my own personal experience, they didn¡¯t really care much about what the people down below did on a day-to-day basis. Weren¡¯t worth thinking about, I imagine. The various nations paid them tribute and the dragons left them alone to spend their days ruling the skies and, I don¡¯t know, count their gold or whatever dragons did back then.
¡°But then, one day, a dragon was flying along, took a detour on a whim, and saw this thing buzzing through the air. It¡¯s those insignificant peons, except now they were flying around in the sky like a dragon. When you¡¯re a dragon, that sort of thing can¡¯t be allowed to stand. And so, the dragons did as dragons do and went full scorched earth¡ªboth figuratively and literally.¡±
¡°Scorched earth?¡± Gabby repeated.
¡°They killed them,¡± Sofie explained. ¡°The entire society of Riben, which is where the little-people lived. They killed everybody there and left the land itself uninhabitable. That¡¯s why we¡¯ve never seen a little-person. They almost all lived in Riben. After every little-person there was killed, there weren¡¯t enough left alive to survive.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t that too extreme, even for dragons? The one you¡¯re friends with seemed at least a tiny bit reasonable. He cares about Pari, too.¡±
¡°Bazz is... how should I put this... an eccentric, at least for a dragon, The others are less accommodating, I can assure you,¡± Blake informed her. ¡°You have to look at this from the dragons¡¯ point of view. Remember when we first found Bazz in his lair? Remember what he called us?¡±
Gabriela thought back to that harrowing day. In truth, what the dragon had roared at them had been one of the least important facets to remember about that time. ¡°Crawlers, or something?¡±
¡°Right. Crawlers. They only refer to each other as ¡®people¡¯, while everybody else is just a ¡®crawler¡¯. That isn¡¯t an accident of language. It¡¯s a distillation of what in their eyes makes them better than the rest of us. They are the ones who lord over the world from above, while we are just sad little things herping and derping around in the mud down below. So, this dragon encounters the unthinkable: crawlers with the gall to try to be people. And, well, they just can¡¯t have that, now can they?¡±
¡°So they wipe out everybody they think is responsible,¡± Gabby finished, following along in step with Blake¡¯s explanation.
¡°Right. A combination punishment, pest extermination, and show of force to the surviving crawlers,¡± Blake agreed with a nod. ¡°But, this is where the stuff I was talking about with the societal advancement comes into play. If this had happened forty years prior, all the other races would have kept their heads down and begged for forgiveness and that¡¯s the end of that forever. But at this point, it was too late. They¡¯d taken bites from the forbidden fruit and it tasted too delicious to stop chewing now. Their standard of living is shooting through the roof. The whole world is going through a knowledge boom, an economic boom, the works. For the first time ever, they¡¯re starting to feel powerful in their own right.
¡°And what¡¯s more, they don¡¯t know dragons like I do. They don¡¯t know exactly why the dragons wiped out an entire species, but they know that if the dragons are willing to do it once, they¡¯re surely willing to do it again. So, the nations come together and make a pact, and they start building weapons, and training armies, and more. And then, a few years later, they launch an uprising they call the Grand Crusade and kick it off by massacring a bunch of dragons in a massive ambush.¡±
¡°So, they haven¡¯t even figured out the internal combustion engine, but they can wipe out a group of dragons? That seems hard to believe, to be honest,¡± Sofie pointed out.
¡°That¡¯s a good point,¡± Gabby agreed, her skepticism growing as she recalled all that she¡¯d had to do just to chase off a single dragon. ¡°They had machines like yours, I assume? Because yours didn¡¯t really do much to stop Bazzalth.¡±
¡°Yeah, I know where you¡¯re coming from,¡± Blake acknowledged. ¡°The thing is, they had two things we didn¡¯t: numbers and prep time. They had years to plan, to make weapons...¡±
He swiveled his chair around and grabbed a nearby tube leaning against the corner of the room. Gabby had not noticed before, but several tubes rested there. Blake screwed off the cap of his chosen tube and pulled out a stack of something. After he flattened them out on the desk, Gabby realized they were posters of some sort. He shuffled through them too quickly for her to really take any of them in, until he finally stopped at a certain sheet.
¡°Look at this,¡± he said, holding it up for both of them to inspect.
The poster was a drawing of four people, each holding up their fists towards the sky. Gabby¡¯s gaze focused on each one. On the left, there was what appeared to be a human man, with features that vaguely resembled people from the Pacific Islands she¡¯d seen in magazines and television. To his right was a thinner person with sharp ears, about a head shorter than the human¡ªan elf. On the far right was a large beastkin man with tiger-like ears and hair, and even a striped orange and black tail peeking out from the side of the waist. The figure between the elf and the beastman, however...
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
¡°Is that a little-person?!¡± Sofie gasped, leaning in close to study the poster with wide eyes and rapt attention.
¡°Probably,¡± Blake responded with a shrug. ¡°Don¡¯t know what else they could be.¡±
The figure stood far shorter than the others, with the top of their head barely reaching the top of the human¡¯s hips. They didn¡¯t appear too similar to the stereotypical dwarf, like the ones she¡¯d seen in those Hobbit movies long ago. They weren¡¯t wide like in the movies, and there was no beard to speak of. In fact, it looked like they had no hair at all, which was a little off-putting. Also, their ears appeared to be fused to the sides of their heads instead of detached like a human¡¯s were, though Gabby wasn¡¯t sure if that was just a casualty of the artistic rendering or not.
¡°Woah...¡± Sofie breathed, tracing the person with the tip of her pointer finger, the original topic of discussion completely forgotten. ¡°This is so cool!¡±
Her finger slid over to a set of swirls lining the right side of the page. ¡°Stand... unbend... oppose... hold-beneath...¡± she slowly muttered to herself.
¡°It¡¯s a propaganda poster, right?¡± Blake asked.
¡°Something like that, yeah. Maybe a recruitment poster. Rough translation, it says something like ¡®Standing straight against the oppressors¡¯.¡±
¡°Cool... but anyway,¡± Blake pressed on, ¡°the reason I brought this up was not the people but what¡¯s behind it. See that thing in the back?¡±
Drawn in the background of the picture was a boxy machine, one that almost reminded Gabby of old-school construction vehicles, except for the four comparatively huge gun barrels sticking out. Pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle towards the sky, their purpose was clear to them all.
¡°One of those might not pose much of a threat to a dragon, but a hundred together? Five hundred? A thousand, even? That dragon¡¯s going to get messed up. And what¡¯s more, they almost surely had explosives, chemicals, and all sorts of other nasty stuff in their ammunition, while I¡¯m basically just throwing big, sharp rocks. I think that the course of events I¡¯ve laid out is very plausible.¡±
¡°These are so neat,¡± Sofie commented to nobody in particular as she leafed through the pile of posters.
¡°The old fart at the archive had them. He had some other ones too that I¡¯m sure you¡¯d just love,¡± Blake answered with a smirk and an almost-concealed snicker that oozed mischief.
¡°Totally! I can¡¯t wait!¡± Sofie obliviously chirped back.
Gabby decided to not get involved in whatever that was about. ¡°So, you were saying they tried to kill the dragons?¡±
¡°Right, right,¡± Blake said, sitting up straighter and returning to his more serious demeanor. ¡°So, yeah, big war, much killing, bad times all around. Even with their preparations, the people¡¯s momentum slowly grinds to a halt and then they slowly start losing the war. They lose land, they lose entire cities, and things look bleak. But then, Pionmi succeeds and our predecessors show up¡ªthe first Earthlings.
¡°Now, the first batch of Earthlings kicked ass, because once they showed up, the war does a complete one-eighty. Suddenly, the dragons are on the back foot again. Eventually, after, uh...¡± He quickly switched back to the journal and scrolled around for a few seconds before finding what he was looking for. ¡°After about a year of constant battle, the Earthlings and the crawler armies are knocking on the dragons¡¯ front door. They decide it¡¯s time to end everything, once and for all. One final full-scale assault¡ªpull the goalie, all-in. It¡¯s the global-scale war equivalent of the Thunderdome¡ªtwo sides enter, one side leaves. And then...¡±
He leaned forward, his eyes glinting with anxious energy as he tapped the tip of his armored pointer finger to emphasize every word.
¡°Something. Happened.¡±
Sofie scoffed at Blake¡¯s theatrics. ¡°Yeah, no shit. Got any more ground-shaking revelations for us?¡±
¡°What, I¡¯m serious!¡±
¡°You¡¯re telling me two plus two equals four and acting like it¡¯s the discovery of the century. Save the dramatics for something actually surprising, please.¡±
Gabby cleared her throat. ¡°Could you explain why this is so unimpressive? I¡¯m sorry I¡¯m so out of the loop¡ª¡±
¡°¡ªNo, no, you¡¯re right,¡± Sofie conceded. ¡°Sorry, it¡¯s just that I translated everything that Blake has been studying, so we both know these documents already. I keep forgetting you haven¡¯t seen them yet.
¡°The first thing should be obvious already. If the armies and the dragons had their final climactic battle and everything went as Larry foresaw, there shouldn¡¯t be any dragons left. Their armies would have slain all the dragons in their homeland and hunted down any stragglers in the days that followed. On the other hand, if the dragons had won, do you think there would be people still alive today?¡±
¡°Probably not,¡± Gabby answered. ¡°I mean, they could have forgiven the people¡ª¡±
¡°Would dragons do something like that, though?¡± Blake pressed.
¡°No, I don¡¯t think so,¡± Gabby admitted.
¡°Right,¡± Sofie continued. ¡°So, that¡¯s sign number one that, as Blake so astutely put it, ¡®something happened¡¯. But, there¡¯s much more direct evidence than that. Show her, Blake. Read her the first entry after the battle.¡±
Blake nodded. ¡°We don¡¯t know how long a gap there is between the final battle and this journal entry, but I would guess a few months, at least. Here we are...¡±
¡°It is cold. So cold,¡± Blake began to read, his already-weary voice seeming to take on an otherworldly exhaustion as he channeled the author¡¯s words across thousands of years. The world he spoke of was a nightmare, a dead and dying land covered in meters of ash and snow, where the sun itself had been seemingly smothered by an eternally clouded sky. The contents of the journal entry chilled Gabriela to her core, though the poor author had surely felt far more frozen.
¡°Terrible,¡± she muttered, shaking her head to banish the sights and sounds her imagination had cooked up for her as she listened. Still, one thing bothered her more than the rest. ¡°But... ash?¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± Blake nodded, his eyes burning with intensity. ¡°Larry complains a while back about how hot and sweltering Trazac is. Now, after the battle to end all battles, there¡¯s ash covering the land, unending clouds covering the sky, and terrible blizzards constantly piling layers of snow and ice atop the ash. Everything is dead. Something went down, something so big that even the Writ of Otharon mentions it. Check this out...¡±
He brought up a third document and quickly skimmed to the section he was looking for.
¡°And so, Otharon ventured north to the lands of the Elselings to slay the tyrant dragons and liberate the people once and for all. Otharon fought valiantly, but the Dragon King was mighty and fierce. There was a great battle as the Dragon King and Otharon fought for many days and many nights as the people prayed and watched Otharon¡¯s fires until, one day, Otharon¡¯s flames above vanished into nothingness. The people wailed and wept, and even the world itself cried out in agony, as the earth did shake and the winds did roar and the skies did tremble at the loss, but Otharon had not abandoned his subjects. With his great power, he slew the Dragon King and ascended to his great paradise, where he built his great halls to await his loyal subjects.
As the Dragon King lay dying, he howled out his vengeance at the Ascendant One. ¡°You have killed me! I curse you, Otharon, you who dares covet what is ours by right! This world and all things on it¡ªif we cannot have them, then no one shall! I curse it all! I shall steal the sun and bring about a great winter upon all peoples, and their bodies will grow weak and they will perish in pain and despair!¡±
And the tyrant¡¯s horrible curse did spread across the world, bringing death and destruction everywhere. The land became covered with darkness and shadow as the skies grew clouded. Snow that was not snow fell across the world, burying the land deep beneath its piles. The weight of the snow that was not snow crushed crops and collapsed roofs, forcing the people from their homes. The air grew colder by the day, and great storms swept across the land, covering the snow that was not snow with true snow and ice taller than a standing man.¡±
Though it was warm in the room, Gabriela shivered.
¡°That sounds like a volcanic eruption¡ªespecially the line ¡®the earth did shake and the winds did roar and the skies did tremble¡¯,¡± she observed. ¡°Seems simple enough.¡±
¡°No, that doesn¡¯t add up at all,¡± Sofie disagreed strongly.
Blake was about to say something, but stopped, surprised by Sofie¡¯s vehement rejection. ¡°Really?¡±
¡°Why not?¡± Gabby added.
¡°This comment here... ¡®The ash grinds against my skin, and I have to be careful that I do not sink too deeply into it lest I get stuck.¡¯ How deep would you have to be in ash before it got hard to climb out of? Up to your thighs? Your hips? Maybe higher? That¡¯s not a dusting; that sounds like a meter of ash, maybe more¡ªand that¡¯s an absurd amount. That sounds like multiple feet¡ªat least three, probably more. That¡¯s an absurd amount of ash. Normal eruptions do not spit out enough ash to deposit even a fraction of that anywhere.¡±
¡°Normal eruptions? And, since when did you become a volcano expert, Sofie?¡± Blake asked, skepticism in his tone.
¡°In my last year of school before university, we all had to do presentations on various natural disasters and other ways the world could end. I was assigned the Yellowstone supervolcano. You know of it?¡±
¡°Uh... sure...¡±
¡°I have not heard of this,¡± Gabby stated plainly.
Sofie rolled her eyes. ¡°See, Blake? At least one of you understands that there¡¯s no shame in not knowing something if you can admit it.¡±
¡°Fine, never heard of it either,¡± Blake sighed. ¡°Teach us, oh wise one.¡±
¡°Simply put, there is that there¡¯s a giant volcano under Yellowstone, a supervolcano. The last time it went off, it threw so much rock into the air that it left a hole fifty kilometers by seventy kilometers, spewing out over a thousand cubic kilometers of material. Think about how much that is.¡±
¡°Sounds like a lot,¡± Blake acknowledged, ¡°but it sounds to me like you¡¯re proving Gabby correct instead of debunking the volcano theory.¡±
¡°My problem is with the ash. I remember looking at maps scientists made about what would happen if Yellowstone erupted again. It would be really deep right around the eruption, about a meter of accumulation, then less than a meter for those further away, then less than a third of a meter outside that area, then less than a tenth, etcetera,¡± she explained, tracing larger and larger invisible rings on the desk with her finger. ¡°It drops off pretty fast. By the time you get to the eastern third of the United States, we¡¯re looking at a centimeter of ash at most, with the east coast getting even less than that.
¡°For an eruption to drop a meter or more of ash on all of Trazac would mean one of two things: either the eruption happened right on top of them, in which case they¡¯d be dead, or it would have to be something so large that it makes super-eruptions look like child¡¯s play. Add in the level of ash buildup in Otharia, and I just can¡¯t see it being a volcanic eruption. Not unless it was one that just lasted for multiple years, going and going and going. And, yes, Larry mentions a volcanic caldera, but it¡¯s clear from the later entries that it isn¡¯t what erupted or they wouldn¡¯t have moved there later.¡±
¡°That would mean that the ash would build up slowly over time, right?¡± Blake asked. ¡°Because I don¡¯t think that fits the timeline. Larry¡¯s town only had so much food saved up, and they hadn¡¯t run out when the ash was already deep. So it sounds like it would have accumulated very quickly.¡±
¡°Right,¡± Sofie confirmed. ¡°So, either we have an eruption so large that it would blow up an area bigger than all of Otharia, or it wasn¡¯t a volcano after all.¡±
¡°It wasn¡¯t a volcano,¡± Blake said with complete certainty.
Gabby and Sofie both paused for a moment.
¡°Weren¡¯t you just arguing that it was?¡± Gabriela inquired.
He nodded. ¡°I wanted to hear her reasons to shoot that theory down. Might I remind you that this is, in a way, you both checking my work? Finding flaws in my conclusions?¡±
¡°It¡¯s hard to check your work when you won¡¯t show it,¡± Gabby pointed out.
¡°Right! What brought you to my conclusion, if it wasn¡¯t my train of logic?¡± Sofie pressed.
¡°For a long time, I did think it was a volcano. After all, unlike a certain someone here, I¡¯m not a volcanologist, so I didn¡¯t know the problems,¡± Blake admitted with a bit of a cheeky smile. ¡°But, the conclusion always bothered me, because it only explained the ash and the winter. I spent a long time trying to get the rest of it to add up, but I just never could. To start with, how would a volcanic eruption cause the Withering?¡±
Gabby started to speak but Blake held up a hand, saying ¡°Yes, yes, Gabby, I know.¡±
The text on the screen blurred for a moment before reforming to another section of the journal.
¡°Sofie, my throat needs a rest. Would you mind?¡±
¡°Sure, just bring it closer so I can read it better, please,¡± she replied.
¡°Today is the first day in a long time I have truly felt hope. Today, Aytra took her first steps since becoming bedridden with [I think that the words used here are some sort of disease name, probably something scientific. Given the described symptoms, let¡¯s go with something more poetic, shall we? ¡°The Withering¡±] not long after that fateful day. Her case of the Withering has been one of the worst I know of, but it finally seems to be passing. She will live. The knowledge brings life to my weary, fatigued body and soul.
Watching her slowly waste away has been one of the worst experiences of my life, made worse by the fact that nobody knows anything about the disease, so we do not even know what it is or how to fight it. All we know is that every child contracted it around the same time.
We first knew something was wrong when they all began to bleed from their nose and mouth. Then, over the days, they became weak and their bodies began to thin as if their bodies were eating away at themselves. A large number of the children died, while others bounced back after a matter of days and seem completely fine now. Then, there are the ones like Aytra who have been stuck on the edge for what feels like an eternity. She has suffered so, so much. I am overjoyed that her pain is almost over.¡±
¡°We can come back to the rest of this later if we need,¡± Blake interrupted, scrolling down some more. ¡°Let¡¯s skip to the beginning of the following entry for now.¡±
¡°The Withering has returned, wreaking havoc across the survivors. The children seem unaffected this time. Now, it is the adults¡¯ turn. I have not done a comprehensive study, but the path the disease is cutting through us seems to follow our age. I and the two others who would have been drafted were the first to show signs, followed by those older, until it struck the eldest generation. I cannot explain this pattern or what it might mean. It is unimportant, anyhow. What matters is that our numbers fall with frightening speed. As deadly as the Withering was when it swept through the children, it is doubly so now. Perhaps we simply lack the strength of youth. Regardless, what remains of the town is starting to crumble as more and more people die, leaving behind children with nobody to care for them. We as a community have banded together to care for those left behind, but it is hard. Most of us doing the work are ill as well, including me.¡±
¡°So...¡± Blake began, ¡°that¡¯s what Larry has to say about that. The Otharians mention it too, writing: And the people did suffer terribly. First, the children became frail, then the adults, and last the elderly. The curse wreaked death and destruction upon the people, and they did despair as more and more died pitifully.
¡°Now, I ask again how a volcano can do something like that on a global scale?¡±
Sofie shrugged. ¡°Some sort of contagion in the earth, released by the eruption and spread through the air? An ancient bacteria or virus or something. Didn¡¯t they find some sort of ancient disease in the ground in Siberia? Could be something like that.¡±
Blake went silent for a few moments before meekly asking, ¡°...is that a thing?¡±
¡°Are you kidding?! Of course it is!¡± Gabriela scoffed. ¡°Have you never heard of tetanus? Botulism? Valley fever?¡±
¡°Alright, so it¡¯s Rub Blake¡¯s Ignorance In His Face Day!¡±
¡°We¡¯re just checking your work,¡± Gabby told him with a tight smile.
¡°Yeah, yeah, I get it,¡± he grumbled.
¡°It¡¯s only a possible explanation, mind you¡ªjust conjecture,¡± Sofie reminded him. ¡°You asked for a way to explain how it could happen, not something I can prove.¡±
¡°Yeah, but we¡¯re stuck working in the realm of theory for most of this exercise, so I can¡¯t deny that you might be right. See, this whole time, the symptoms reminded me of some sort of radiation poisoning.¡±
Sofie shrugged. ¡°That could also be a possibility, but what sort of event could cause global radiation poisoning?¡±
Blake opened his mouth to say something but then hesitated. After a moment his jaw clenched back shut, and he went quiet.
¡°Blake? What is it?¡± Sofie asked after several seconds of awkward silence. She eyed him with suspicion. ¡°What do you know?¡±
¡°I¡ª¡± Blake frowned and bit his lip.
¡°Enough with the delays,¡± Gabriela told him. ¡°Whatever it is, just say it. You called me back here saying it was an absolute emergency, and so far you¡¯ve done nothing but give me a history lesson and claim that the dragons brought us here¡ªwhich, while interesting, and maybe even important, is not an emergency. If you don¡¯t have something more substantial soon, I¡¯m going to be beyond angry.¡±
Blake held up a placating hand. ¡°Alright, alright...¡± He sighed again, his weariness clear to the others. ¡°So, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve been wondering why I¡¯ve been so... preoccupied recently. And why I needed Sofie to translate all this stuff in the first place.¡±
¡°Yes, it¡¯s been bothering everybody in the fortress,¡± Sofie told him.
¡°I know, but...¡± He shook his head. ¡°Anyway, it all started back when I was spending time with Bazz in his lair. You see, he builds machines too, just like me, except he makes them out of flesh.¡±
Sofie cringed and let out a grunt of disgust. ¡°Ugh!¡±
¡°Biotechnology is one of his fortes, you see. He¡¯s very capable with them; it¡¯s really impressive, actually. He does stuff that I would never have imagined you could do with just organic matter. But still, the process he had to go through to make new machines seemed really cumbersome¡ªhe had to grow what he needed, for example. So, at one point, I just asked him why he bothers with all of that when he could just use cantacrenyx technology like me.¡±
Blake leaned in again and looked them both in the eyes, his face grim.
¡°And he looks at me like I¡¯m a complete idiot¡ªan absolute buffoon¡ªand he says, basically, ¡®why would I put any trust into a technology that didn¡¯t even work until two years ago?¡¯¡±
Gabby shared a confused glance with Sofie.
¡°I¡¯m paraphrasing here, but that was the gist of it. He also said something about how there¡¯s corruption and how it¡¯s now weakened enough that it doesn¡¯t impede the energy flow anymore, and that cantacrenyx tech has not worked for his entire life.¡±
¡°But...¡± Gabby said. The rest didn¡¯t need to be spoken.
¡°Yes! I didn¡¯t know how to take such a statement at the time, so I kind of just shoved it out of my head for a while, but it wouldn¡¯t go away. It started needling me, bugging me more and more. I could feel that this was important somehow, but I didn¡¯t know why. There was something just out of my grasp, something crucial, but I couldn¡¯t say what it was. I just knew that I needed to find an answer, and to do that, I needed more information¡ªinformation about the past.¡±
¡°So you came to me,¡± Sofie finished.
¡°So I came to you. And you really have come through, I have to admit. I cannot thank you enough for this.¡±
The twenty-year-old harrumphed and crossed her arms over her chest. ¡°I was going to do it anyway eventually. Your documents helped too, I guess.¡±
Blake turned back to the screen and began searching through the text. ¡°So, first off, I found mentions of the phenomenon Bazz mentioned. Not much, but enough. Obviously, before the war and even up until the final confrontation, cantacrenyx technology was everywhere and working just fine. But after the ¡®event¡¯, we find offhand mentions like this...¡±
He gestured to Sofie, who cleared her throat.
¡°Perhaps the energy sensor suite Pionmi sent would have picked up something, but it ran dry a while ago. Almost the entire Institute is dead and dark now, with the last of our power reserved for lighting select laboratories, like the one I¡¯m in right now.¡±
¡°And then later, these little bits,¡± Blake cut in. ¡°¡®I would include more, but most of our data was lost when the mechanical brains died¡¯, and ¡®I can hear the others calling for me. It takes all of us now to properly seal the outer doors, so my presence is required¡¯. That last bit sounds to me like they had powered doors, but now they have to push them shut.¡±
¡°There were automatic doors there, yes,¡± Sofie confirmed.
¡°The way he¡¯s talking makes it sound like they had a limited amount of energy that they were trying to ration out, almost like a collection of batteries or something,¡± Gabby mused.
¡°Exactly,¡± Blake concurred, excitement clear on his face. ¡°What it sounds like, to me, is that all the cantacrenyx crystals suddenly stopped absorbing energy, meaning all the machines had to work with were the small amounts of energy still held within the crystals.
¡°So much clicked into place once I realized all of this. For one, there¡¯s been a lot of weird oddities with the ancient machines that didn¡¯t make any sense, like how it seemed as if somebody had wiped all the data from every one of the computers in the bunkers. But now, I can see it for what it really is: they designed all their technology with the assumption that the crystals and their energy flow would always be around!
¡°Like, back on Earth, you never saw normal cars with their own air tanks to feed oxygen to the engine, right? Why would you? We designed the machine with the assumption that the air that was all around us would always be there for the engine to use. It¡¯s the same with their tech. Their computers don¡¯t hold any data because their storage relies on a tiny crystal to constantly feed it a little drip of energy to maintain its state! Once those all ran out, the data just evaporated into thin air!
¡°Also, it totally explains why everybody has ignored cantacrenyx tech for all these years! This whole time, I¡¯ve just thought that the people of this world were idiots, but how would they discover something when it literally can¡¯t work?¡±
¡°Wow, it¡¯s a miracle that anybody survived, really,¡± Gabby observed.
¡°I know, right? First, they got ground down by years of war and attrition, then they¡¯re not just shoved into an eternal winter and deluged with ash¡ªnot to mention the mysterious ancient-ground-based contagion or radiation poisoning¡ªand to top it all off, all the technology their civilizations were built to rely upon for the last fifty years just stops working all at once! Can you imagine what would happen if everything based on electricity and fossil fuels on Earth just stopped functioning all at the same time? Planes falling out of the sky, pacemakers shorting out, people no longer able to order pizza delivery on the internet? It would be utter chaos!¡±
¡°But what could disable all the crystals like that?¡± Sofie wondered, the question tamping down Blake¡¯s sudden burst of enthusiasm. ¡°You say Bazzalth called it ¡®corruption¡¯?¡±
¡°Bazz calls a lot of things corruption, honestly,¡± Blake sighed. ¡°Here¡¯s what I can say about the energy that collects in the crystals. As far as I know, no material can prevent the crystals from accumulating energy. He said the corruption had ¡®weakened¡¯, not that it was gone, so if it was somehow something physical¡ªyou know, something absolutely insane like... nanomachines, or whatever¡ªthere should be something that we could detect. I haven¡¯t been able to detect anything, and I¡¯ve tried a variety of different ways over the last week.
¡°If it isn¡¯t matter, then that just leaves energy. What kind of energy and how it interferes with the crystal energy, I haven¡¯t a clue, but it would have to be incredibly strong to affect everything across the world. It¡¯s fading now, at least. If this were Earth, I would assume that means it¡¯s dispersing into space or getting absorbed somehow, but conservation of energy and conservation of mass seem to be suggestions at best in this place... so who the fuck knows, really. But, what I can say, fairly confidently, is that this energy wasn¡¯t around before the final battle and it clearly was after.¡±
¡°Some sort of dragon weapon, surely,¡± Gabby postulated. ¡°We know they can build things, why not a bomb?¡±
¡°Right, it¡¯s what any of us would start with, right?¡± Blake agreed with a nod. ¡°But, much like the volcano theory from before, a lot of the more peripheral aspects just don¡¯t add up in my mind. Where would the dragons get the frankly absurd amount of energy needed for something like this? And, perhaps most crucially, if you had a weapon that would shut down the entire opposing side for good, why wouldn¡¯t you use it as soon as you could to end the war in your favor? If the dragons had a bomb that could do this, the war should never have lasted to a final climactic confrontation!¡±
He exhaled deeply and leaned back, slightly spent.
¡°So... ash, winter, Withering, cantacrenyx. This place where we¡¯ve worked ourselves to now, this set of facts and theories, is what I was stuck on for days while Sofie steadily chipped away at the documents. I spent days reading through them all, checking the new passages as they came in, running experiments, and anything else I could think of, trying to find something to... to break the stalemate, I guess. It just didn¡¯t feel right, you know? I know we¡¯re practicing the most ghetto brand of archeology imaginable here, trying to divine the nature of events that transpired thousands of years ago from a handful of documents translated by someone who has been making it up as she went along, but still... I kept feeling like I was missing something really important.¡±
He reached back and snagged a second tube, the largest of them.
¡°And then, just yesterday, I got my hands on this... and my entire perspective changed.¡±
Unscrewing the cap, he slid out a single large rolled-up sheet and slowly unrolled it on the desk. Much larger than the posters, it covered almost the entirety of the desk. This was why the desk was so large, she realized. Blake had known he would be showing this today.
As the sheet unrolled, it became immediately clear just what sort of document this was: a map. Covered with the telltale swirls of ancient script, it depicted the world of that time in intricate detail. It was, without a doubt, an amazing document and a stellar find. There was only one problem.
There was too much land¡ªfar too much.
¡°What... what is this?!¡± Sofie gasped with a mixture of awe, puzzlement, and concern.
The screen beside her flashed and a depiction of the map she was used to appeared on it. As always, it roughly resembled a thick, bloated letter ¡®C¡¯ in Gabby¡¯s mind, with the letter rotated so the gap faced north, and with Otharia tacked on to the southeast part like a reflected, malformed Spain.
But on this new¡ªor, perhaps, old¡ªmap, that gap and the hollow it fed to, the one that formed the sea north of Gustil and the Divide, was nowhere to be found. Instead, the map depicted land. Thousands of square kilometers of high, mountainous land.
The vast majority of the land looked to be one massive mountain range, with some of the peaks in the center comparable to the towering giants of the Divide. While many dots of various sizes covered most of the map, showing the spread of the ancient peoples across Scyria, most of the land in the heretofore missing area was conspicuously empty. Almost all of the towns marked were fairly close to the edge of the section, with one massive exception.
While Gabriela tried to wrap her mind around what this meant, Blake placed his finger on a single, giant dot in the center of the mountains, located on the tallest peak. ¡°Sofie, is this what I think it is?¡±
The bookish woman didn¡¯t respond, her wide, overwhelmed gaze darting around the map like a starving man suddenly thrust in front of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Gabby poked her in the arm and she twitched.
¡°Wha¡ª! Um...¡± Her eyes refocused and she swallowed. ¡°Sorry... Yeah, it says, uh...¡± She mumbled under her breath for a few moments. ¡°Dvorga, Seat of the Great Ones. That has to be the home of the dragons.¡±
¡°And where the final battle took place,¡± Blake added with a nod.
¡°But... but what is this?¡± Gabby asked. ¡°I¡¯ve been to the northern cliffs of Gustil! There¡¯s nothing there but the ocean! What happened to the land here?!¡±
¡°It became ash,¡± Blake stated. ¡°It¡¯s the only explanation that makes sense. As Sofie pointed out earlier, even a supervolcano shouldn¡¯t be able to put out so much ash that it covered the entire world.¡±
¡°B-but, that¡¯s impossible! This area that is gone, it¡¯s huge! Maybe as big as all of Mexico, or bigger!¡±
¡°At least as big as all of western Europe,¡± Sofie agreed.
¡°Volcanoes can¡¯t do something like this, right? No matter how big?¡±
Sofie vehemently shook her head. ¡°Not a chance.¡±
¡°But... then, what did? Some kind of nuclear weapon?¡±
¡°I can¡¯t imagine a nuke capable of doing something on this scale,¡± Blake said.
¡°Then... then...¡±
Blake leaned forward again, resting his armored elbows on the cold metal, creating a pair of soft clanks.
¡°This blew my mind when I first saw it. It destroyed the volcano theory I¡¯d been working with, but more importantly, it showed me something very important: I¡¯d been operating on unacknowledged assumptions this entire time. Larry refers to the homeland of the dragons as the ¡®northern highlands¡¯, and I just assumed that what he meant was the mountains north of Kutrad. Obviously, that was wrong. But if I was wrong about that, what else was I wrong about? What other assumptions were in my head, unnoticed?¡±
He turned to Sofie with a cold intensity in his eyes.
¡°You¡¯ve read through everything as much as I have. You know it all as well as I do. Can you point to a single time that Feeling or Observing is mentioned in any of Larry¡¯s journal, or even the Otharian texts? Even in a way that doesn¡¯t use those terms? Any manifestation at all of the supernatural magic shit that we see everywhere these days?¡±
Sofie looked at him like he¡¯d gone crazy. ¡°What, are you serious?¡± she scoffed with a cocksure smirk. ¡°Of course I...¡± Her words faded into silence, and Gabby could see her mind churning madly behind her eyes, trying to find the thing she¡¯d felt so sure of just a second ago. She watched as the confidence on the woman¡¯s face slowly melted away and a hint of panic entered her eyes.
¡°I... I need to go get them,¡± she said, her voice tight as she stood up.
¡°No, stay,¡± Blake insisted. ¡°Here, just use the screen.¡±
A computer mouse emerged from the desk, popping out beside the screen, and Sofie seized it like a drowning man grasping at some nearby flotsam. She immediately brought up what looked like the journal document and began feverishly spinning the mouse wheel, scrolling through the text with a worried look in her eyes.
Gabriela leaned in closer to Blake, giving Sofie a concerned glance, and muttered, ¡°Could you please tell me what is going on?¡±
Blake wearily rubbed his eyes with his hands. ¡°From the start, we have been operating on the simple¡ªand entirely understandable belief that the world of the ancients is the same as the world we live in now, at least when it came to the simple, fundamental things. I mean, if you read a book about something that happened in, say, the Roman Empire, you would be perfectly logical in assuming that gravity worked back then the same way that it did the day you were swept here, right?¡±
¡°I guess I follow, sure.¡±
¡°I cannot find a single mention in anything of the sort of everyday superpowers that everybody has nowadays. Not a single one. There¡¯s even little, tiny things that I only noticed when I went back and looked for them.¡±
A second screen quickly rose beside them and flashed to life.
¡°I thought this section was just a bunch of useless rambling for the longest time, but check this out.¡±
¡°The championships were a different story¡ªeven the cheapest tickets were more than I, or even my parents, could afford. Unable to watch my chosen team during the most crucial time, I sat outside the stadium and stared at the stones in the wall as I listened to the cheers and roars of the crowd, trying my utmost to glean from my ears some understanding of the action within. All the while, my insides churned like the clothes in my family¡¯s clothes washer. The lack of knowing twisted me inside so strongly that I ended up vomiting onto the pavement and getting a stern lecture from a nearby [broom-warrior¡ªokay, this might be the funniest thing in the journal. I¡¯m totally calling every ¡°janitor¡± a broom warrior now].¡±
¡°Stones in the wall. Stones, as in plural. You¡¯ve seen the stadiums they have in this world, right? Would you describe one of their walls¡ªany of them; take your pick¡ªas made up of multiple stones?¡±
¡°No, that means something different to me,¡± she replied, her mind immediately jumping to the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. The magnificent stonework had been the product of nearly 250 years of labor, and the sweat that had gone into it made her look differently upon such grand Scyrian efforts as the grand Ubran Imperial Palace. While far larger and even more ornate, somehow the knowledge that it had been raised by a team of stone Observers over a comparatively short time with far less effort made it feel lesser. ¡°I see what you mean.¡±
¡°There¡¯re bits in the Otharian stuff too that I¡¯ve known about for a while and I just never put two and two together. In all the different versions of the Otharian myth, they always talk about Othar like he¡¯s performing miracles, right? Like this from the Writ of Otharon...¡±
¡°And so, Otharon did make many great flames to banish the darkness from the night, so that the people could rest without worry, for never again would the evil dragons strike from the darkness. And Otharon said, ¡°Heed mine fire, for as long as I still breathe, they shall burn with mine righteous fury.¡± And so it was, and it was good. The people rejoiced, for they no longer needed to fear the death that came in the darkness.¡±
¡°Or, if we want the older version,¡± Blake continued, switching to a second document, ¡°there¡¯s this...¡±
¡°And so Otharo said ¡®No longer need you fear the darkness, for the fires of Prometheus shall light your way.¡¯ And, lo, did the flames of the gods appear, so that the people would not fear the shadows along their path...¡±
¡°Even Sam thought it was odd at the time, and I didn¡¯t see it,¡± Blake sighed, rubbing his eyes again. ¡°I mean, sure, I¡¯m sure Othar¡¯s pyromancy or whatever was super impressive and all that, but everybody can make some sort of fire, right? If the people didn¡¯t want to fear the shadows along their path, they could just make light all on their own. The more powerful fire Observers, especially, are nothing to sneeze at; Othar was just a bigger version of stuff people had already seen and done a thousand times over. So, why did they act like it was the hottest shit ever¡ªpun very much intended?¡±
¡°Because they hadn¡¯t seen it before...¡±
¡°Exactly. And for that matter, why did they only fight with technology? I mean, I just went with it because I would have done the same as them if I were in their position, but it seems like there¡¯d be a few other tactics that could be used. Like, with enough volunteers and doses of chimirin, they¡¯d do quite well, I would imagine.¡±
¡°But, why does this matter?¡± she wondered. ¡°I mean, I guess it¡¯s a big thing, but you both seem to be freaking out over it a bit more than seems justified. Feelers and Observers exist now; why does it matter if they existed back then? Does this change our situation at all?¡±
¡°This alone? I mean, I guess not, at least not directly,¡± Blake allowed. ¡°But it¡¯s not alone, and it¡¯s scary to think about. Just how much power would be needed to literally change the laws of physics?¡±
¡°The¡ªthe Many,¡± Sofie sputtered, reentering the conversation. ¡°The only thing I can find is the Many, but it¡¯s something.¡±
¡°What about a Many?¡± Gabriela asked.
Sofie cleared her throat.
¡°I find it hard to interact with most Trazacs when a [double-speaker¡ªa ¡°Many¡±, I think? Since a Many is two people speaking together] is not available, and stay within the Institute as much as possible.¡±
¡°Ah, you caught that one. But... that¡¯s just more assumptions,¡± Blake pointed out. ¡°You decided that ¡®double-speaker¡¯ must mean a Many, because of what? Why wouldn¡¯t you jump to the more obvious interpretation: a translator? Look at the sentence and tell me that ¡®translator¡¯ doesn¡¯t fit the rest of it far better than Many would.¡±
¡°Wait, are you saying¡ª¡±
¡°That the ancestors didn¡¯t have today¡¯s incredibly convenient universal translation? If Scyrian magic didn¡¯t exist back then, why should we assume the translation existed?¡±
¡°Ugh, I¡¯m so stupid!¡± she groaned. ¡°How could I have missed this?!¡±
¡°Because you were operating on the same assumptions that we all have been. Why would anybody need a translator when the world takes care of it for us? I fell into the same trap. I distinctly remember reading that double-speaker sentence the first time and thinking ¡®Wouldn¡¯t translator make more sense here?¡¯ and then immediately saying to myself, ¡®No, you idiot! Why would they need translators?¡¯ The truth was shouting right in my ear and I just ignored it for weeks. If I hadn¡¯t found this map, I might have never realized it.¡±
¡°I have no idea what to think about this anymore,¡± Sofie sighed. She looked truly shaken by these revelations.
Gabriela, on the other hand, didn¡¯t understand all the hullabaloo even now.
¡°Maybe I¡¯m just not smart enough or something, but I still don¡¯t see how all of this qualifies as an emergency,¡± she told them. ¡°It¡¯s all things that happened a long time ago, but that¡¯s all. How does this affect me?¡±
¡°Well, it affects you because it has to do with why the dragons would bring us here,¡± Blake explained.
¡°Blake, that was, like, over an hour ago, and you haven¡¯t mentioned it since.¡±
¡°Well, it¡¯s about to come back around. I talked about all of this for a reason, you see. There¡¯s been a lot to go over: ash falling from the sky in unthinkable amounts; terrible winters caused by eternal cloud cover; the complete shutdown of all cantacrenyx energy accumulation, and the halting of all technology; the utter destruction of more than a quarter of Scyria¡¯s landmass; the war and the appearance of the first Earthlings; the old world lacking Observing, Feeling, and translation; and more¡ªa cornucopia of mostly unrelated things that all seemed to happen in the same time frame. Now, the ash and the destruction of the northern land are pretty clearly one event, but what I told you that I can give an explanation that explains every single one of these things and ties them to a single event?¡±
¡°I¡¯d say you¡¯re reaching,¡± Gabby replied. ¡°Only conspiracy theorists think the world can be that easily and neatly explained.¡±
To her surprise, Blake threw his head back and laughed for a little. ¡°Oh, that would be nice,¡± he snorted after his giggles faded away. ¡°But, unfortunately, I think you¡¯re off the mark this time. Here¡¯s what happened: the great final battle went down up at... what did you say it was called again?¡±
¡°Dvorga.¡±
¡°Dvorga, right. Giant final battle at Dvorga. All the heavy hitters are there¡ªthe armies, all the Earthlings, the dragons, all in one place. During that battle, there is an explosion¡ªa sudden release of concentrated energy¡ªone of a magnitude almost beyond comprehension. That explosion is so powerful that it destroys an area of land large enough to be a minor continent, sending at least some of it into the atmosphere and maybe vaporizing the rest. That energy spreads out, blanketing the world and interfering with the cantacrenyx crystals. What¡¯s more, the release is so apocalyptically destructive that it actually changes the very nature of reality itself! Things that were once impossible become possible, and Scyria becomes what we know today.¡±
The two women shared a look for a quick moment before turning back to the man on the other side of the desk.
¡°Blake, you just took the explosion that we figured out happened with the ash and the northern land and then said ¡®that also did all the rest of it¡¯,¡± Sofie sighed. ¡°That¡¯s not some galaxy-brain theory, that¡¯s just making things up.¡±
¡°We¡¯re dealing with an unknown exotic energy that can straight up shut down a fundamental energy process worldwide for thousands of years. Are you telling me that an event on that level, a release of that sort of energy at that absurd magnitude, couldn¡¯t also do the rest?¡±
¡°I mean, none of us has the expertise to know one way or the other, and to make it even more complicated, this place doesn¡¯t operate on the same rules as what we know. You say that there has to still be some of this energy around and it¡¯s still interfering, but you can¡¯t even detect it,¡± she reminded him.
¡°So, you admit it¡¯s possible,¡± Blake countered.
¡°Anything is possible. We¡¯re working on conclusions based on almost nothing. But, fine, let¡¯s say that the explosion caused it all¡ªas hand-wavey as it sounds, I can¡¯t come up with anything better right now. What about it?¡±
¡°The question that follows is, obviously, ¡®where did this explosion come from?¡¯ So, let¡¯s look at the possible suspects. First, you have the Scyrian people and their armies. It is hard to believe that they would do something like this. They were winning, so why would they destroy their entire world? Even if it was a desperation move from them¡ªsome crazy bomb of some sort¡ªit would have to be portable to get it to Dvorga, and if it¡¯s portable, then they would have been able to build a way to get it there without sacrificing everything they had.
¡°Second, the dragons. We¡¯ve gone over this already, but if they had something that could have singlehandedly won them the war, they would have used it, and not on top of their own home. There is, admittedly, a non-zero chance that they were able to finish something right in the middle of the battle while they were about to lose and so they set it off as some sort of giant middle finger to the rest of the world, but that sort of thing only happens in bad movies and shit.
¡°So, where else could the explosion have come from? There¡¯s only one other possible answer: the Earthlings.¡±
¡°Weren¡¯t the first Earthlings from thousands of years ago?¡± Gabby pointed out.
¡°Yeah, Blake, are you saying that a dude who literally worshiped Zeus and Poseidon built and exploded a bomb?¡± Sofie snickered.
¡°No, what exploded was not a bomb that they made. What exploded was them.¡±
For a long, tense moment, the only sound audible within the chamber was the soft sound of the air passing through the air vents.
¡°I¡¯m sorry, what?!¡± Sofie exclaimed.
¡°Here¡¯s the thing,¡± Blake explained. ¡°There¡¯s one more huge assumption that we all overlooked, one that is the key to all of this¡ªand one I should have realized long ago. You know how I started with Pionmi? This was why; we all made a mistake about Pionmi and her colleagues. We assumed that they were working on a project to bring Earthlings to Scyria to be supersoldiers, because that¡¯s what happened. But when you really think about it, there¡¯s no way that was the case.
¡°I mean, look at it this way. First, how would you even manage to specifically snatch people from across dimensions? I¡¯ve seen the machines; there¡¯s no precise aiming involved with those things. They¡¯re like... like if you threw one end of a garden hose into the ocean and then started sucking on the other end. You¡¯re going to get something coming through, but you don¡¯t have any control over what.
¡°Second, let¡¯s say that you do bring people to Scyria. How do you know that they¡¯re going to be superhuman? You don¡¯t. How would you even know they¡¯d be able to live in this world? For all they knew, the person would just melt upon contact with Scyrian air!
¡°And third, even if they could precisely target individual people and bring them here, and even if those people were guaranteed to be awesome, how could the Scyrians assume that those people would cooperate? ¡®Sorry we pulled you from your life! Would you please risk death every day by fighting all these giant killer murder lizards for us? That would be just swell!¡¯ I mean, come on, who would agree to that?! Especially when the people asking are the same people who ripped you from your life on Earth? They¡¯d be more likely to attack the Scyrians than help them. Hell, if there was really no auto-translation back then, how would they even communicate?¡±
¡°But, that¡¯s what happened, isn¡¯t it?¡± Gabby pointed out, not pointing out that he¡¯d nearly described both her and his experiences.
¡°In a way, yes, but my point is that no sane decision-maker would ever look at the various elements of this hypothetical proposal and think it was anything close to a good idea. It would never get the support it needed to get off the ground. So, clearly, Pionmi¡¯s goal was something else.¡±
¡°And you know what that is, do you?¡± Sofie said, crossing her arms. ¡°Is there some other new document you¡¯ve neglected to show us?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t need documents for this. There is nobody in the world more qualified to talk about the problems of the ancients¡¯ military machine,¡± Blake told her. ¡°Cantacrenyx technology is pretty amazing, and you can do some incredible things with it, but it is not without its issues. Namely, there are two things. First, the way their energy flows really changes the way you have to design things, and it can limit just what you can do. It¡¯s really hard to make things that can produce a burst of power¡ªyou can¡¯t ¡®hit the afterburners¡¯.
Second, your ability to make new weapons is limited to the quantity and quality of the crystals you have available. Don¡¯t have enough, or the crystals are the wrong size? Tough luck, you¡¯re boned. The bind this puts you in is not fun, let me tell you. Look at what they ended up having to do as the war dragged on.¡±
The screen closer to Gabby flicked and the text changed. With a quick cough, Blake began to read.
¡°The [consume-always-no-full¡ª¡°insatiable¡±] hunger of the war effort has been eating away at our society and our quality of life for years now, finally reaching even me and my family here at this high-priority base. Outside the Institute itself, you will find nearly no Crystech. All of it has been taken to be converted into weaponry and other machines to hold off the Great Ones¡¯ assault for one day more. It is like we have all traveled back a century into the past.¡±
¡°There¡¯s only so many crystals you can dig out of the ground every day,¡± he continued. ¡°And soon enough, they were losing more crystals each day than they could produce, to the point that they had to rip apart the machines of their daily lives to keep the flow of crystals going.
¡°What the ancient Scyrians needed, more than anything, was energy. They needed a new source of energy, one that could be used in ways that cantacrenyx crystals cannot. That was Pionmi¡¯s mission, I¡¯m sure of it. There were probably other groups with the same goal, all approaching it in different ways. Pionmi¡¯s group, being the dimensional physicists they were, approached the problem by trying to tap into the energies of other, highly-energized dimensions. And they succeeded, except that when they turned on the tap, instead of energy, people came out. So they just rolled with it.¡±
¡°But, what does that have to do with the people exploding?¡± Sofie pressed.
Blake blinked. ¡°...did I not mention that we¡¯re all crazy full of energy?¡±
¡°No, Blake!¡±
¡°Sorry, sorry, I got mixed up. So, according to Bazz, we are¡ªor at least I am¡ªjust stuffed to the brim with some sort of exotic energy. You know how higher frequency light is higher energy than lower frequency light? It¡¯s like that, I think. Bazz has this machine, and it measures like, soul energy frequency or something. The average Scyrian has a... a soul frequency or whatever¡ªhe used some fancy term that I¡¯m sure he just made up¡ªof somewhere in the high eighties, I think. Definitely lower than a hundred. Guess what I registered at.¡±
¡°Just tell us,¡± Sofie responded.
¡°So high that his meter couldn¡¯t measure it.¡±
After a moment of stunned silence, Blake continued.
¡°I mean, it makes sense. All of us are capable of doing some absolutely wild shit. Wouldn¡¯t we need some sort of energy to power it? I mean, Gabby, how in the world are you able to reform? And your strength, where does it come from? I¡¯ve never seen you fail to lift something, no matter how heavy it might be. It probably explains what happened to my body as well when I first came here. We all are filled with a tremendous amount of energy. Maybe our reality just is that way, and everything in it is incredibly energized relative to Scyria. I don¡¯t know.
¡°What I¡¯m saying is that Pionmi got what she wanted. She got the energy. It just came in humanoid form, so they changed plans and somehow convinced the Earthlings to be heroes, and everything was hunky-dory... until it wasn¡¯t.
¡°Look at it this way. If some energy blocked the function of cantacrenyx crystals, where did that energy come from? An amount of energy that massive... wouldn¡¯t it have existed in the world already? Wouldn¡¯t it have been known of already? How could it come out of nowhere like it seems to have? There¡¯s an easy explanation: the energy didn¡¯t exist before... or at least, not on Scyria.¡±
Sofie suddenly gasped, going as white as a sheet. ¡°No... you can¡¯t mean...¡±
¡°You see it now, don¡¯t you? The final destination of this long and convoluted journey.¡±
¡°But, then, the dragons, they¡ª!¡±
Blake nodded. ¡°They¡¯ve had thousands of years to research this and perhaps even first-hand knowledge from the time of the war itself. I am convinced that they came to the same conclusion as us. And if you think about it, it answers the question of why they would bring us here, given that they shouldn¡¯t want a second round of dragon-slayers running around. All they would have to do is sit back in the northern mountains, unknown to the world, and let us do the dirty work of bringing civilization to its knees a second time. Then, they could just clean up in the aftermath and have their revenge for all that the ancients did to them. And, let¡¯s be honest, there¡¯s a sort of appealing symmetry to be found in the idea of killing your enemies with their own weapons, wouldn¡¯t you say?¡±
Gabby watched Sofie¡¯s eyes become wider and wider, her face in her hands as she started to hyperventilate, and she frowned, feeling rather miffed.
¡°Would you please explain to me what I¡¯m missing, so I can be upset along with the both of you?¡± she asked Blake.
¡°Hmmm,¡± Blake hummed, thinking for a moment. ¡°So, Earth has much higher base energy than Scyria, right? It¡¯s what gives us our abilities. Another way to say it would perhaps be to say the energy ¡®pressure¡¯ is far higher on Earth. Now, you¡¯ve been to a carnival before, right?¡±
¡°Of course.¡±
¡°You ever see a kid lose their helium balloon and it just flies up into the sky, lost forever?¡±
¡°Yes? It happened to me when I was a child.¡±
¡°That balloon rises into the air, climbing higher and higher as the ambient air pressure lowers around it, slowly pushing back against the higher pressure inside it less and less, until, eventually, the pressure difference is too great, and... pop!¡±
A cold pit of dread formed inside Gabriela¡¯s gut, quickly growing wider and deeper until she felt like it could swallow her whole. ¡°And there¡¯s a lot of this energy ¡®pressure¡¯ inside us.¡±
¡°Exactly. The dragons knew this, and so they came up with a plan. As soon as the ¡®corruption¡¯ allowed them to, they would activate the machines and let nature take its course. It didn¡¯t matter who came through, only that there were people like you and me, running around Scyria, oblivious to the true nature of things. Then, all they would have to do is wait for the natural conclusion to our existence in this world.¡±
Finally, it all hit home, almost all at once. Gabby¡¯s heart thundered in her ears, her hands trembled, and she found it hard to breathe, like a vise was clamped down tight around her chest. It turned out Blake was right after all; this truly was an absolute emergency. ¡°We... we¡¯re...¡±
She couldn¡¯t finish the thought, but Blake sighed and nodded regardless.
¡°That¡¯s right,¡± he told her.
Her gaze met his, and within that gaze, she saw the hollow hopelessness of a man lost and terrified. It was the gaze of a patient receiving a cancer diagnosis, of a mother being told of their child¡¯s untimely death, of a deer staring at onrushing headlights only a few meters away.
¡°We¡¯re bombs.¡±
Chapter 122
Sofie Ramaut had felt fear many times since that fateful day when the ancients¡¯ machine had plucked her from the library and dropped her inside a dark and dusty underground room, but this time felt different. This wasn¡¯t the cold spike of terror that she was now all too familiar with, that adrenaline-tinted fright that accompanied those moments of sudden heightened peril. No, this was closer to a suffocating dread combined with murky hopelessness, like how she imagined she might feel if her doctor had told her that she had manifested a fatal and incurable cancer, except in this case the doctor couldn¡¯t say just how far along the process was or how much time she had left.
¡°What do we do?¡± she muttered into her hands. ¡°What do we doooooo?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Blake admitted. ¡°I¡¯ve been trying to think of something but...¡±
He shook his head wearily. ¡°I got nothing.¡±
Gabriela let out a long breath and rose to her feet.
¡°Gabby?¡± Sofie asked. The look of grim determination on the woman¡¯s face was like a shining lighthouse beacon piercing through the pouring rain of their despair.
¡°Blake, go get some rest. You won¡¯t be any more help as you are now.¡±
The man nodded silently.
¡°Sofie, I¡¯m sorry, but I need to be able to read everything you both read,¡± Gabby continued. ¡°Can you help me?¡±
¡°You¡¯re right,¡± Sofie sighed, ¡°but I can¡¯t speak Spanish.¡±
¡°Then you¡¯ll have to read it all to me and I¡¯ll write it down.¡±
¡°Give me a moment and I can make something for you to type with,¡± Blake offered.
¡°Fine, but then you go sleep, got it?¡±
¡°Yes, ma¡¯am. But, and I cannot stress this enough, no word of this leaves this room. If this got out, it could cause all sorts of problems. That means no telling Arlette, Sofie; no telling your hot friend, Gabby. I¡¯m not even going to tell Sam. Got it?¡±
¡°Wait, so you don¡¯t have any answers, but we also can¡¯t look for help from other people?¡± Gabby protested.
¡°Letting anybody else know right now is too much of a risk,¡± Blake argued. ¡°Even Arlette might tell her elf boyfriend; she trusts him too much and he might tell anybody if he gets drunk enough. If the public learns about this¡ªor even just the ministers, for fuck¡¯s sake¡ªI don¡¯t even know what might happen, but it wouldn¡¯t be good.¡±
¡°What am I supposed to tell Chitra, then?¡± Gabby objected. ¡°We ran all the way back here together; she¡¯s going to want an answer.¡±
¡°Lie, then,¡± Blake replied. ¡°Or just tell her that you can¡¯t tell her¡ªwhatever you need to do, as long as you just don¡¯t tell her the truth. If she¡¯s really your friend, she¡¯ll understand.¡±
Gabby scowled, clearly frustrated.
¡°Look,¡± Blake reassured her, ¡°I¡¯m not saying we don¡¯t tell anybody ever, just not yet.¡±
¡°...Alright.¡±
Not long after, Sofie found herself sitting in her chambers with her notes in her lap and a Mexican woman typing furiously beside her. Gabriela¡¯s gaze shifted back and forth between the screen and the keys with a near-myopic focus, her twin pointer fingers roving the keyboard for their desired targets. Sofie found Gabby¡¯s two-finger-search-and-destroy typing method absolutely adorable, and the sight made her want to giggle despite the tenor of the situation.
¡°Let¡¯s break for a little,¡± she suggested. ¡°I need to get some water.¡±
Gabriela leaned back and nodded, letting out a tired sigh. ¡°Just for a bit.¡±
Sofie wandered into the small kitchen that she¡¯d convinced Blake to add to her rooms. As convenient as it was to have others make your food all the time, she enjoyed the act of cooking. It helped take her mind off things¡ªusually, at least; she didn¡¯t see it working much for this particular ¡°thing¡±. She didn¡¯t know what in the world, other than hard drugs, perhaps, would be able to take her mind off this omnipresent, crushing feeling of vaguely impending doom.
Taking a recently cleaned cup, she filled it with water and took a sip, letting the cool liquid restore a measure of vitality to her parched mouth and throat. Thinking twice, she pulled out a pitcher and filled it, then grabbed a second glass before returning to the main chamber with both cups and the pitcher in her arms. If Gabby noticed her arrival, she did not show it as she pored over the Spanish words on the screen like they contained the secrets of life itself.
¡°I can¡¯t understand how you can be so... driven, I suppose, given what we just learned,¡± she confessed to Gabriela. ¡°It all feels so hopeless. I just want to curl up in a ball on my bed and never move again, you know?¡±
The woman hesitated for a moment, Sofie¡¯s words bringing a deep frown to her face.
¡°Never mind, it¡¯s none of my¡ª¡±
¡°When I first came to this world, I allowed myself to be overcome with despair, and it led to nothing but tragedy,¡± Gabriela cut in. ¡°I let myself feel hopeless and helpless. I let it control me, and... those feelings ate me alive. I made terrible choices, ones that I should have known better than to even consider, all just to make that terrible feeling go away.
¡°I understand why you feel the way you do. A part of me is with you, no matter how much I don¡¯t want it to be, but I can¡¯t let that part win. Not now. Too much is at stake. So, I¡¯m just going to keep plowing forward while I still can. I¡¯m going to open every door and chase every speck of hope until, Lord willing, I find some sort of answer before these feelings catch up to me. Once was one time too many.¡±
Tears in her eyes, Sofie put down the water, reached out, and pulled Gabby into a tight hug. ¡°You¡¯re right,¡± she sniffed. ¡°It¡¯s too early to give up, isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°I just hope I can find something. I know I¡¯m not the smartest person around, not like you or Blake or Chitra.¡±
¡°Stop thinking like that! You¡¯re something better: you¡¯re determined,¡± Sofie told her, pulling back and grabbing her by the shoulders so she could stare her in the eyes. ¡°No matter how many times you get knocked down, you never stop until you achieve your goal. And there¡¯s nothing we could use more right now than somebody too stubborn to know when to give up.¡±
A hint of an embarrassed smile flickered onto the woman¡¯s face before she looked away, avoiding Sofie¡¯s gaze. ¡°...Thanks,¡± she finally said, ¡°but we should get back to it.¡±
¡°Right,¡± Sofie agreed, her spirit bolstered by a small piece of Gabby¡¯s willfulness. She sat down and picked up her notes. ¡°Now, where were we? Oh, right...
¡°Well, this is somewhat embarrassing.
Despite my certainty, it seems that my demise is quite late. The townsfolk were just as surprised as I when they arrived to find me still breathing. Aytra cried for over a day and refuses to let go of me. She is currently sleeping by my side as I write this.
I do not blame myself or the others for what we expected. I was in a truly bad shape when they left and, by all rights, should have died. I would like to think that being in the tree¡¯s presence is what got me through to the other side of the Withering, but that is likely just [emotion-flood-drown-reason¡ªI¡¯m going with ¡°sentimentality¡±] speaking.
Strain 7 continues to grow at a downright unnatural rate. It is now easily more than three times my height and appears to be beginning to send up new, secondary trunks from the extremities of its root system...¡±
Together, the pair continued through the rest of the text, the clicking of the keys Sofie¡¯s voice¡¯s only accompaniment. The process was not a quick one, but as the day grew old, they ran out of words to translate.
¡°That¡¯s it?¡± Gabriela asked, studying the journal with a skeptical eye. ¡°Isn¡¯t there more than a third left?¡±
¡°There is, but it¡¯s not writing,¡± Sofie informed her. She turned the pages to reveal page after page of detailed sketches of plants and plant parts with bits of notation scribbled around the images. One particular species dominated the collection: a tree, strong and sturdy-looking with a thick trunk and a wide canopy.
Gabby leafed through the last portion of the journal, stopping finally on a page featuring a large drawing of the full tree from the base of the trunk to the tip of the highest leaf. The image covered nearly the full page, with only enough room beneath it for a single note: ¡°Strain 7¡±.
¡°This tree... isn¡¯t it...¡± Gabby wondered.
¡°Yeah, I think so,¡± Sofie replied. ¡°You can see in his notes the results of his tests on its durability, its growth rate... it all fits. Plus, given where I found the journal and how he says that he planted it to the south, that would put it in the middle of where Stragma is now.¡±
¡°And it looks just like it, only smaller.¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
Gabby leaned back and rubbed her eyes for a moment. ¡°It¡¯s hard to believe that something like that was made by people like you and me,¡± she admitted.
¡°I know how you feel. It¡¯s funny, though, how often he laments his inadequacy compared to his friends when he created a tree bigger than a mountain, though I guess he didn¡¯t know what it would become at the time.¡±
¡°Yeah... it really makes you feel insignificant, doesn¡¯t it? I might be the strongest person to ever live, but I could never do something even close to as incredible as what a small group of ordinary ancient scientists accomplished.¡±
Sofie hummed her agreement. ¡°Did you need anything else? I¡¯m feeling pretty wiped.¡±
¡°No, I have what I need now. I think I¡¯m going to rest for a little while, too, before I start going through all of this again. Thank you for helping me.¡±
¡°Of course! I¡¯m sorry I wasn¡¯t able to make a translation for you from the start. I had been planning on learning Spanish before I ended up here, but I just never got around to it.¡±
¡°Every one of us had plans and dreams and important things that were left behind,¡± Gabriela glumly reminded her. ¡°Given all that¡¯s happened, I would say that you have done rather well for yourself. Better than I have managed, at least.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve spent my time in Scyria surviving on little more than the goodwill of others. I wouldn¡¯t call that managing well.¡±
¡°Well, at least you managed to hold on to who you are through all of it. That¡¯s more than some of us can say. Thanks again, Sofie. I¡¯ll see you later.¡±
Once Gabriela had left, Sofie found herself pacing, her mind awhirl. Despite the small injection of aimless hope Gabriela had given her, the day¡¯s revelations were just too terrible and weighty to shrug off so easily. Thoughts of death and misery and extinction-level catastrophes looped through her head without end.
This wasn¡¯t going to work. She needed something to soothe her roiling spirit. And so, before she even realized it, Sofie found herself outside the door that connected her rooms with Pari¡¯s.
Though it was late, she knocked on the door; she knew the beastkin was still awake. Pari made sure to always say goodnight before going to sleep, and she had not yet done so this night. In reality, the child¡¯s visits were more of a poorly disguised attempt at getting Sofie to agree to let them sleep together for the night like they used to when on the road. Though Pari¡¯s bed-hog ways made it harder for anybody else nearby to get proper rest, Sofie found herself acquiescing to the girl¡¯s unspoken request more often than not. Growing children needed to be well-rested, after all, and her sister was used to sleeping with the warmth of another, be it human or something else.
The door slid aside, revealing a sleepy-looking Pari dressed in her nightgown. She rubbed her bleary eyes.
Sofie gasped. ¡°Oh no! I¡¯m sorry, sweetie. Were you sleeping?¡±
Pari hummed an affirmative.
¡°But you didn¡¯t say goodnight!¡±
¡°Pari not want bother Sofie-sis and Gabby-friend. Pari not know why but Sofie-sis and Gabby-friend very serious, and Pari not want to bother, so Pari just sleep.¡±
The child¡¯s words melted Sofie¡¯s heart and she struggled to not tear up. What a considerate and mature thing to do! Her little cutie-pie was growing up before her eyes!
¡°Sofie-sis want to say goodnight?¡±
¡°Well, I was hoping I could maybe sleep with you tonight.¡±
Pari¡¯s face lit up and, grabbing her by the hand, she practically yanked Sofie through the doorway. The girl was stronger than she looked¡ªshe had to be, to be able to lug that sack of equipment around on her own. Before Sofie knew what was going on, she found herself horizontal on Pari¡¯s bed with the catgirl snuggling up against her chest and purring up a storm.
While Sofie prepared herself for an extended soul-soothing cuddle session, the child¡¯s rumbling faded just a minute or two later.
¡°Sofie-sis still upset even after Gabby-friend left,¡± she stated with some concern. ¡°What wrong?¡±
¡°It¡¯s complicated, Pari,¡± Sofie replied. While she didn¡¯t entirely agree with Blake¡¯s desire for secrecy, she had agreed to his prohibition for the moment and had no intention of breaking her word. She wasn¡¯t sure that she could trust Pari to keep it a secret, anyway. While the child had a proven track record of keeping her dragon grandparent¡¯s secret for years, Sofie wasn¡¯t sure she could get the same level of commitment out of the beastgirl. Signs of growing maturity aside, Pari was still a child, and a fairly young one at that¡ªmentally, at least. In her limited experience, children were fairly hit or miss when it came to reliability.
Plus, if Pari were to decide that it was okay to tell somebody, it would be Samanta. If Samanta found out, Sofie had no doubts that Leo would know before the day was over, and from there, who could say how far and fast it would spread? Either way, it would be too late to contain at that point.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
¡°Sofie-sis still smells upset and afraid. Don¡¯t feel afraid, Sofie-sis! Pari here!¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, sweetie, but even with you with me, I can¡¯t help it. I¡¯m very scared right now, and I¡¯m at a loss as to what to do.¡±
¡°Grandfather told Pari that if Pari ever got too scared that Pari should just run away.¡±
Sofie giggled. ¡°Like how you ran from the ancient¡¯s robot vacuum cleaner?¡±
¡°No! Sofie-sis liar!¡± Pari insisted, her ears folding flat against the top of her glistening dark hair. ¡°Was not cleaner, was super bad meanie! Pari super scared!¡±
¡°Oh, for sure, for sure,¡± Sofie agreed, mollifying the indignant child with some precision behind-ear scritching.
¡°It true! People laugh but people not understand meanie truth!¡±
Sofie decided to drop the touchy subject and return to the original issue at hand. ¡°So you would just run away, would you?¡±
¡°Yes, Pari would run away until Pari not scared anymore.¡±
¡°But what if you were scared no matter where you ran? Would you just run forever?¡±
¡°Then Pari would just run home to Grandfather. Pari not scared when with Grandfather. Grandfather super strong.¡±
¡°Home, huh... wait, here isn¡¯t home?¡±
¡°Here is other home,¡± she stated like she was saying that the sky was blue. ¡°Home where Family is. Sofie-sis stop thinking now. Sofie-sis always thinking too hard. Sofie-sis hurt own head.¡±
Sofie chuckled. ¡°You know, you¡¯re probably right.¡±
¡°Of course. Pari knows best!¡±
¡°Yes, of course,¡± Sofie agreed, her hands stroking the child¡¯s long, smooth hair, setting her purring again. ¡°How silly of me.¡±
Sofie pulled her sister close and the two hugged in silence. Thoughts of what would happen to Pari should the worst come to pass entered her mind. The image of the poor thing stranded in a wasteland of snow and ash was more than she could bear. Yes, Pari was far more resourceful than most children¡ªmost adults, even¡ªand yes, she had a giant protective murder lizard that could keep her from harm, but Bazzalth was on the other end of the continent and sometimes resourcefulness just wasn¡¯t enough. What if¡ª
No, she had to stop. Pari was right, she was thinking too much, and it wasn¡¯t doing her any good. There was a time and a place for everything, and this time and place was not for thinking¡ªit was for loving and appreciating and maybe even sleeping, if she could manage it. As she lost herself in the sensation of the beastchild¡¯s soft rumbling against her chest, she found that she could, in fact, manage such a feat, if only for a little while. Before she knew it, a hard and long day¡¯s worth of weariness overtook her, and as she drifted off to sleep, Sofie¡¯s last semi-lucid thought was the realization that she had forgotten to brush her teeth.
The next morning, after a quick breakfast with Pari, Sofie decided to stretch her legs for a little bit. Walking through the fortress¡¯s hallways, she caught the sight of a familiar face stepping out of their room ahead of her and walking towards the elevator at the end of the hall.
¡°Arlette!¡±
The Scyrian heard her and slowed down for her to catch up.
¡°How are you?¡± Sofie inquired as they came to a halt by the elevator doors. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen you in a few days.¡±
¡°I¡¯m fine, you?¡±
¡°All good here,¡± she lied. ¡°You sure you¡¯re okay? Blake said you¡¯ve been acting weird¡ªrunning out of meetings, staring blankly into the wall, that sort of thing.¡±
¡°I said I¡¯m fine. Don¡¯t worry about it. It was just a little personal business and I hadn¡¯t gotten a lot of sleep, that¡¯s all. What about you? Scuttlebutt is that you, Gabriela, and Lord Ferros were holed up together for hours last night. Wasn¡¯t Gabriela supposed to be off somewhere out of the country? What¡¯s she doing back so soon?¡±
¡°Oh, uh, she finished what she set out to do faster than expected, I guess. You¡¯d have to ask her,¡± Sofie deflected as she quickly searched for a convincing explanation. She hadn¡¯t realized that their conference on its own would be notable enough to generate rumors. ¡°It¡¯s nothing. We were just reminiscing about Earth and stuff last night. We all get homesick once in a while and it helps to share with each other.¡±
The doors slid open and they both stepped inside.
¡°Haven¡¯t you ever gotten homesick, wandering around Scyria and all?¡± she wondered.
Arlette shook her head. ¡°Not particularly. I miss my family, but all that¡¯s left for me is my birth mother, and she¡¯s across the Divide. That is, if she¡¯s even still alive.¡±
¡°You have no idea what happened to her?¡±
¡°I haven¡¯t seen her since I was a child. I wasn¡¯t able to go home because of Sebastian, and there¡¯s no real communication between Nocend and Obura outside of strict official channels, anyway. Even if I could have contacted her, letting her know I was still alive would just have put her in Sebastian¡¯s sights. There was no other choice.¡±
¡°But what about now? Sebastian¡¯s gone, Arlette.¡±
¡°The Ubrans still hold Redwater. There¡¯s no way to get a message through the Divide.¡±
¡°You have access to an airship that can just fly around the Divide. That¡¯s not an impediment anymore.¡±
Arlette looked away. ¡°I... he wouldn¡¯t¡ª¡±
Whatever she was going to say was lost as the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors slid open to reveal the snarling faces of Simona Jumala and Zigmars Vietnieks. It seemed that, just as their conversation had been interrupted, so had some sort of vicious argument on the other side of the doors¡ªthat, or this was how they flirted; with these two, it was hard to say for sure. Whatever it was, Sofie didn¡¯t want to be anywhere near it.
¡°I¡¯ll see you later,¡± Sofie told Arlette as she ducked out.
That afternoon, Sofie sat on a bench in the pockmarked inner courtyard, watching Pari and Samanta have a grand old time across the way. Sometimes, she worried that Samanta¡¯s exposure to Pari would warp the Otharian child into some sort of crazy pyromaniac or something, but she had yet to see it. Sure, Sam often helped Pari with her alchemical shenanigans, but she didn¡¯t seem driven to travel down the same path on her own. The projects that she pursued with Pari¡¯s assistance were things like oils, soaps, and other stuff far less likely to explode than Pari¡¯s usual output. Well, there had been the acid incident, but...
Perhaps drawn by the youthful atmosphere, Gabriela wandered in. She looked tired, as if she hadn¡¯t slept well¡ªor at all, most likely. Wearily, she sat down next to Sofie, her body language suggesting little good.
¡°I hope you slept at least a little,¡± she offered.
¡°Not much, but some,¡± Gabby answered.
¡°...any luck?¡±
¡°I combed through everything four times, and... I want to be able to say that he¡¯s wrong, but I can¡¯t. There¡¯s just too much to support his theory. I¡¯ve spent all day trying to come up with an idea for what to do but...¡±
¡°You¡¯re coming up as empty as I did.¡±
¡°Yeah... I don¡¯t know what to do.¡±
They sat there, together, and watched the children play for a good span. All the while, the burden of knowledge bore down upon them with unbearable gravity.
¡°I envy them,¡± Sofie admitted eventually as she watched Sam chase a fiercely giggling Pari around the yard. ¡°They have no idea, but even if they did, I feel like they wouldn¡¯t let that stop them from having fun. Not like us.¡±
¡°Perhaps you¡¯re right.¡±
Sofie chuckled. ¡°You know what Pari told me last night?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°She could tell that something was wrong, so what I came up to tell her was that I was afraid and that no matter where I might run, I wouldn¡¯t be able to escape it¡ªwhich is, you know, technically true.¡±
Gabby grunted.
¡°And she looks at me and says, as if it¡¯s the simplest thing in the world, ¡®I would just run home to Grandfather, because he¡¯s super strong.¡¯¡±
Gabby blinked. ¡°Just run home?¡±
Sofie laughed. ¡°I know, that simple, huh?¡±
¡°Just run home...¡±
Gabriela stood up suddenly, her face alight with purpose.
¡°That¡¯s it!¡±
¡°Gabby?¡±
Gabby spun to face her, her gaze that of a woman who just stumbled upon an oasis in the middle of the desert. ¡°Just run home!¡±
Without a single word of explanation, Gabby took off, racing out of the courtyard. Sofie ran after her as best she could. Though she had no chance of keeping up with the superpowered woman, that was alright. She had a good idea where Gabby was headed.
Sure enough, she arrived at Blake¡¯s door just in time to catch Gabriela slipping past the opening door.
¡°What¡¯s gotten into you?¡± she heard Blake say several rooms away. ¡°Thought you were going to break the door in!¡±
¡°We have to go home!¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°It¡¯s the only way!¡±
¡°Sofie!¡± Blake called out as she rushed in, finding him in the same spot they¡¯d left him the night before. ¡°What the hell is she talking about?¡±
¡°We¡¯re balloons, right?¡± Gabby pressed.
¡°Kinda? More like bombs, but¡ª¡±
¡°Balloon-bombs, then!¡±
¡°I mean¡ª¡±
¡°Gabby, calm down!¡± Sofie told her as she tried to wrest the overly-excited woman into a nearby chair. ¡°You¡¯re not making any sense!¡±
¡°If you want to stop a balloon-bomb from exploding or popping from too much pressure, what can you do?¡± Gabby asked. When the others responded with little more than dubious stares, she answered herself: ¡°You can disarm it or you can move it somewhere where the pressure isn¡¯t a problem anymore.¡±
¡°I mean, duh,¡± Blake finally replied. ¡°You¡¯re not saying anything we don¡¯t already know, and you¡¯re saying it weird, too.¡±
¡°Can we be disarmed? Can you get the energy out of us?¡±
Blake paused. ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s possible, no. That¡¯s the problem. First, I have no idea how to detect this energy. Second, even if I did, I have no idea how to get it out of us. It¡¯s possible that by trying to do so, I¡¯d just release it by accident anyway; or, maybe the energy is actually held at bay by a second energy and I remove the wrong one and we explode; or¡ª¡±
¡°So, no, then,¡± Gabby interrupted. ¡°That leaves moving us. We need to pull ourselves back down to where the air pressure is greater, so we don¡¯t pop. We need to get back to Earth.¡±
Blake sighed. ¡°Give me a break. We talked about this, don¡¯t you remember? It¡¯s literally the reason you¡¯re here and not pillaging Eterium or whatever. We can¡¯t go home! It¡¯s not possible!¡±
¡°You don¡¯t know that,¡± Gabby insisted. ¡°We just spent hours yesterday talking about false assumptions.¡±
¡°She¡¯s right,¡± Sofie realized. ¡°Blake, you even admitted to being wrong¡ªsomething I had long decided was impossible. Who says the impossible can¡¯t happen twice.¡±
¡°Fuck you, Sofie,¡± Blake shot back. ¡°This is serious.¡±
¡°I¡¯m serious,¡± she shot back. ¡°You claim we can¡¯t go home, but you¡¯ve been wrong plenty. Why can¡¯t you be wrong about this?¡±
¡°Because this is different. This is about machines. I know what I¡¯m talking about.¡± He let out an exasperated breath. ¡°Think about it like this. Imagine, like... a... a municipal water tower, right? A big tank of water way up there, a hundred feet in the air¡ªlots of water pressure. That¡¯s Earth. The machines are like... a harpoon gun, a funnel, and a bucket. They shoot a harpoon up and pierce the tank and then the water flows out on its own. The funnel catches the water and it flows into the bucket. Maybe it¡¯s more like a hose than a funnel and the water flows out of the tank and through the hose into the bucket, but whatever.
¡°Either way, the point is that the machines make the hole and collect the energy, but that¡¯s it. They¡¯re just letting the forces of nature work their magic. They¡¯re not water pumps. They don¡¯t control the flow and they sure as hell can¡¯t fight the pressure and go against it. It¡¯s just not what they¡¯re designed to do!¡±
¡°Then we have to build something that is designed to do it!¡± Gabby argued.
¡°Just build it, huh? You got a dimensional physicist or two hidden away somewhere that you forgot to mention until now?¡±
¡°You¡¯re acting like Pionmi hasn¡¯t already done half the job done for us. We have a way to pierce through the dimensions and the machines already seem to connect to Earth, since it took people from there twice now. We already have the harpoon¡ªas you put it¡ªand the hose, and they¡¯re already aimed right where we want. All we need to do is build the pump.¡±
Blake leaned back with a groan and rubbed his face for a moment. ¡°I can¡¯t believe what I¡¯m hearing. This is nuts!¡±
¡°Well, I think she¡¯s making at least a bit of sense,¡± Sofie offered.
Blake rolled his eyes. ¡°You would. You¡¯re not the one who would have to actually build this proposed miracle device. Look, I¡¯m confident in my ability to create almost anything I can think up, but I do not have the knowledge, experience, and maybe even straight-up intelligence to be able to invent something like what she¡¯s talking about. It¡¯s nice to be able to say that the work¡¯s halfway done, but getting halfway into orbit is no better than being unable to get off the launchpad. Worse, arguably.¡±
¡°Why would it have to be just you? What about your best bud Bazzalth?¡±
Blake looked at her like she was delusional. ¡°Sofie, after everything we talked about yesterday, what in the world makes you think tipping off the dragons that we know of their plot would be a smart idea? Isn¡¯t the whole point of this discussion to look for ways to not die?¡±
¡°Not ¡®dragons¡¯, just him. I mean... he wouldn¡¯t have something to do with this, would he?¡±
¡°Bazz?¡± Blake paused for a moment. ¡°I would like to think he doesn¡¯t... but it¡¯s possible.¡±
¡°Really?¡± Gabriela interjected. ¡°Everything I saw of him would make me think he wouldn¡¯t accept something so risky and destructive. Not with Pari out here and all the data he would lose.¡±
¡°It¡¯s more complicated than that, though,¡± Blake explained. ¡°I don¡¯t think his personal thoughts are what matter here, not so long as his older sister exists. Look, you guys didn¡¯t see her, so I get it. You wouldn¡¯t understand, but she¡¯s a whole ¡®nother level past Bazz. She¡¯s an absolute unit of a dragon¡ªmakes him look like a newt in comparison. And there¡¯s just... something about her that is terrifying in a way that is hard to describe. When she was near me, my brain was just absolutely screaming at me that if she so much as heard a single breath I took, I¡¯d be snuffed out like a candle blasted by a fire hose. So yeah... when it comes to the two of them, she¡¯s the one who wears the pants in that relationship. She says jump, Bazz says ¡®how high?¡¯¡ªand honestly, I don¡¯t blame him one bit.
¡°The problem is, from what I¡¯ve seen of her opinions concerning us crawlers, I¡¯d put very good odds that she¡¯s involved in this plot in some way. If I reveal any of this to Bazz, there¡¯s too much of a risk that she would find out somehow¡ªand then we¡¯d all be up shit creek. I could contact him and try to be as abstract and tangential as possible or something, but it¡¯s way too risky and I¡¯m not ready to cross that bridge yet.¡±
¡°So then, what bridges are you willing to cross?¡± Sofie pressed. ¡°We¡¯ve all spent hours pondering our options, and I think Gabby¡¯s got the right of it: either we remove the energy from ourselves before it bursts out on its own, or we remove ourselves from this environment where the ambient energy is too low. That¡¯s our choice¡ªunless you¡¯ve thought of a third option?¡±
Blake sighed. ¡°No, not yet.¡±
¡°You said that your dragon buddy was able to measure your soul energy or whatever, right? Would he know how to remove our excess energy?¡±
¡°Not to my knowledge,¡± Blake told her. ¡°He¡¯s not even measuring it directly, from what I understand; he¡¯s measuring the ¡®vibrations¡¯ or ¡®frequency¡¯ of something or other. It¡¯s all very second-hand¡ªor third-hand, even¡ªlike measuring the size and speed of something under the water by tracking the ripples on the surface.¡±
¡°Well then, that leaves us with a simple choice,¡± Sofie continued. She started to tick things off on her fingers. ¡°Option one¡ªremoving the energy from us¡ªwould require a wealth of knowledge that neither we nor potentially anybody in this world possesses, might not even be possible, and also might end up backfiring and killing not just us but the entire world as well. Option two¡ªgetting back home¡ªis based in a field that was once actively researched, with existing and easily available machines that we can study and possibly documents we might be able to discover; its implementation is already partly complete; and if it backfires, it might just kill us in transit instead of taking reality with us. The choice seems pretty clear to me.¡±
¡°That¡¯s like saying it¡¯s better to take a shotgun blast to the face than be vaporized by a nuke. If those are our options, I¡¯m not ready to pick either. I need more time; maybe I¡¯ll think of something.¡±
¡°Then think, but I see no reason why we should wait,¡± Gabriela insisted. ¡°It¡¯s not like we¡¯re stuck with our decision forever. If we come up with a better solution later, we can just change to that.¡±
¡°She¡¯s right, Blake. Our decision isn¡¯t eternally binding, it¡¯s just something to work towards. We¡¯re not going to get anywhere by sitting around and moping all day every day. We need a direction. Hey, for all we know, researching this will reveal something better we can jump to.¡±
Blake placed his head in his hands and sighed again, louder and heavier than before. As Sofie watched, it was like the man deflated as the air left him. ¡°Fuck. Fuck!¡±
¡°Glad you finally see things our way,¡± Sofie smirked, victorious, though the victory felt hollow.
¡°Alright, then,¡± Blake said. ¡°If you¡¯re both so gung-ho about this, you can handle the research and planning and all the rest, since I¡¯m going to be too busy trying to pull a technical miracle out of my ass to do anything else.¡±
¡°Research?¡± Sofie repeated, puzzled. ¡°Aren¡¯t you the one who needs to study the machines and stuff? What would we have to research?
¡°Everything!¡± Blake shot back. ¡°There¡¯s so much we don¡¯t know besides the technical stuff. For example, it would probably be very useful to know just what triggered the last group¡¯s self-destruction, so we might have some idea of how close we are to blasting this place to smithereens. Is it just time and we¡¯re ticking clocks? Or is it something else, like how much we use our abilities? I imagine that fighting dragons every day would have caused them to use their abilities constantly. Or, maybe it¡¯s something that happens when we die. Anything you might be¡ª¡±
Blake cut off as Gabby began coughing so hard that Sofie could feel it through the floor. The two of them sat there for a few moments, watching as her fit died down.
¡°You alright?¡± Sofie asked when it was over.
¡°I...¡± The woman seemed to withdraw into herself, her voice quiet and weak. ¡°It... it doesn¡¯t happen... when you die.¡±
¡°Well, yeah,¡± Blake began, ¡°but you¡¯re a special case¡ª¡±
¡°I¡¯m not talking about me.¡±
The room went quiet for a long, cold moment.
¡°You didn¡¯t...¡± Sofie gasped.
Gabriela looked away.
¡°Huh. Well, that¡¯s good to know,¡± Blake stated nonchalantly, stroking his chin in thought. ¡°Though Bazzalth told me that souls persist after death for at least a few years, so maybe it¡¯s not the death of the body but the destruction of the¡ª¡±
¡°Blake, how can you be so blas¨¦ about this?!¡± Sofie cut in.
¡°What? How is this any different than all the other people she¡¯s killed?¡±
¡°Well... I mean...¡± Sofie paused. Why did she feel so appalled about Gabby¡¯s admission? She¡¯d known of the woman¡¯s appalling body count for months and had come to terms with it long ago. Yet, somehow this struck her anew.
¡°Deal with your crisis of conscience on your own time,¡± Blake told her. ¡°As I was saying, there¡¯s plenty of research you could do. But, as Gabby just reminded me, there¡¯s more important work for us: we gotta get the band back together. Or... get the band together for the first time, I suppose.¡±
¡°That¡¯s right, we can¡¯t leave the others behind,¡± Gabriela nodded. ¡°Both for their sake and this world¡¯s!¡±
¡°So wait, we have to find a way to bring both the Mother of Nightmares and that man in Stragma to Otharia somehow?¡± Sofie gulped.
¡°Yes, and find any other people from our world that we don¡¯t already know about,¡± Gabriela added.
¡°And, since souls persist and it¡¯s highly possible the destructive energy is stored in the soul, we can¡¯t let whoever Gabby killed stay dead either,¡± Blake concluded.
¡°Wait, you¡¯re serious?¡± Gabriela asked.
¡°Why, is something wrong?¡±
¡°Um, well, if you think it¡¯s necessary to save everybody, then I guess it has to be done, but...¡± She paused, some unpleasant memory replaying behind her eyes. ¡°...you¡¯re not going to like him.¡±
Chapter 123
A soft hum broke the relative silence of the cavern, letting Bazzalth know that one of the recombination tests had completed. For now, he ignored it; the result would remain stable for a few days and he wasn¡¯t yet finished with his current task. The idle musing that this wasn¡¯t his usual modus operandi crossed his mind, but he ignored it. Still, as the day went on, he found that the thought refused to leave him, perhaps because, upon further consideration, it was quite correct.
Bazzalth had always preferred to focus on a single avenue of inquiry, a single experiment, a single set of tasks. He liked to devote his entire intellect towards wringing every last drop of Knowledge from whatever his subject at the time happened to be. If, for some reason, the course of the experiment called for a period of idling, he would fill those gaps with a small project that didn¡¯t have a time limit, such as redesigning his tools for better efficiency or improved accuracy.
Looking back now at the last days, however, he realized that something had changed. He currently had three concurrent experiments running, each completely unrelated to the others. It had gotten to the point, he realized, that they were actively interfering with each other¡¯s progress as he was forced to juggle the time and resource demands of each. The whole process was highly inefficient and not something he¡¯d done before. So... why had he suddenly gone down this path?
A moment of introspection gave him an answer, one that he didn¡¯t much like but had trouble refuting. This irregular behavior of his had begun after Blake had departed, and after he¡¯d met with Pari after more than a year of separation. Thinking back, he concluded that he¡¯d started the second experiment to fill a moment of downtime during the first, then added a third when the second had proved unable to fill all of his idle moments. He was keeping himself busy, he realized¡ªso busy that he had no time to let his thoughts wander, so busy that there was no opportunity for the emptiness to sink in.
Bazzalth was lonely.
Being alone was nothing new for him, of course. He had spent the vast majority of his life in isolation, away from all the others who only looked down on him, mocked him, and treated him like he were little more than a tool and a toy. But there was something different to this solitude than all the centuries before. Something was missing now, something that perhaps had always been missing but had gone unrecognized until he¡¯d finally had a taste: companionship.
Though their time together had been all too brief, those few days with the sarcastic crawler had been some of the most enjoyable and memorable of his long life. And as for Pari, the brief re-convergence of their paths had reminded him of the way things had been when the small creature had called his dwelling home.
One time, she¡¯d released some sort of smoke that blanketed the test chamber¡¯s walls with a pink residue that had seemingly done nothing other than provide the lair with some additional color¡ªthat is, until they¡¯d woken to find the chamber covered in a thick layer of mold-like fungus. While the unforeseen interruption had hampered his planned studies, he could not deny that he¡¯d accrued much Knowledge of a different sort in his twelve-day war against the shockingly persistent invaders. Truly, fungal spores were the only form of life that could challenge dragons when it came to hardiness.
In the seasons after Pari¡¯s first reluctant departure, his sister Tavreth had consumed his every waking moment with demand after demand, to the point that he hadn¡¯t had a moment to process the void Pari had left behind. By the time his days had slowed down again, he¡¯d gotten used to the state of affairs again. This time, he was afforded no such luxury.
What did it say about him that the two beings in his long life with whom he¡¯d found the most companionship were a crippled crawler and a half-person hybrid creation of a past experiment? He preferred not to think about it. Instead, Bazzalth emerged from his lair into the evening air and took flight. It was time to do his rounds.
Bazzalth was about five peaks north of the southernmost edge of his usual route when he caught the telltale glimmer of a single crawler¡¯s soul far off in the distance. Quickly, he dove to the ground, swerving behind the closest mountain. Though he landed a long, long distance from the glimmer¡ªfar enough that even his superlative person¡¯s eyesight, powerful enough to be able to discern the individual leaves on the plant life growing eight peaks away, could barely make out the figure clambering over a boulder¡ªhe couldn¡¯t assume that distance alone would be enough to keep him hidden. His recent experiences had shown him that crawlers could still surprise him with their capabilities, and he dared not assume too much when it came to the Accord.
He hesitated as he noticed a second glimmer on an adjacent mountain, then a third in the opposite direction. What was this? Historically, crawlers traveling through these mountains preferred to travel in packs, but these were each alone. Something didn¡¯t feel right.
Filled with caution, he decided to get closer and see what he was dealing with before he acted. The list of things that people were not the best in the world at was a very short list, but moving stealthily was definitely on it. Still, using the fact that his soulsight cared not for physical obstructions, he worked his way nearer, making sure to always have at least a mountain between him and any crawlers that might be able to see him.
Finally, when he felt that moving any closer would be too much of a risk, he stopped and surveyed the mountains once more. Quickly he picked up more than ten souls slowly moving north. Like the first three, the other seven were each alone. Instead of the large group formation he was so used to, it was as if they were arrayed in a rough line that stretched east to west, with the whole line creeping closer.
While Bazzalth was not an expert on the habits and methods of crawlers¡ªthough his recent experiences put him on better footing than his peers¡ªsomething about this felt off. So many crawlers spread out so far suggested that they were surveying a large swath of land, but there was no need to do so if it was just these ten or so crawlers here. One would need to scout such a vast area only if more crawlers were coming behind them¡ªmany more.
Bazzalth pushed his soulsight to its limits, spreading it as far south as he could. His efforts were rewarded almost immediately, as suddenly hundreds of souls lit up on the very edge of his senses. A low growl escaped his lips. The force he saw at the limits of his perception was larger than any group he¡¯d encountered in his centuries patrolling the southern mountains, and by a massive margin.
This was big¡ªtoo big for him to be able to clean up on his own and guarantee he could prevent any witnesses. He needed to report this. Unfortunately, that meant he¡¯d have to do something he had avoided for the past two millennia. With great reluctance, he retreated and took flight. It was time to pay his sister a visit.
Bazzalth did not have a habit of visiting other abodes often, but he¡¯d done so enough to notice a few trends. First of all, most people tended to make their homes expressions of their hoard. Take Daravith, hoarder of Recreation, for example. Not only had she turned much of her lair into a pool for swimming and filled the rest with an endlessly growing collection of amusements, she had even reconfigured the terrain outside for use in games. While her case was on the more extreme side, it was not exactly an outlier.
Another example was Gretiem, hoarder of Friendship. What bit of her lair he¡¯d seen had been filled with mementos of her many relationships with others, objects that she said reminded her of the bonds she shared with their fellow people. Bazzalth was unable to say for sure what else she¡¯d done to her home, as Tavreth had arrived rather quickly and ejected him from the cavern before he could see more. He supposed he could always go back one of these days and see what else lay within, now that the lair lay empty. To his knowledge, it had remained uninhabited ever since the incident; while it was by most measures one of the best in the entire range, none wanted to tempt his sister¡¯s wrath. For all he knew, she¡¯d destroyed everything inside, anyway.
Tavreth¡¯s home, by comparison, was very spartan. As he entered the main chamber, he noted that even his lair had changed more than hers in the many years since he¡¯d last visited. At least in his dwelling the layout and composition of his equipment changed greatly every few centuries. His sister, however, had kept things largely the same as they had been over two thousand years prior.
Unlike crawler domiciles and Gretiem, most people tended to prefer a living space open and free from obstructions, meaning that Bazzalth could see almost the entirety of Tavreth¡¯s domain from the moment he entered. There was the sleeping area to the right, the bed made of fresh, clean, and unruffled furs. What would count as the living area could be found straight ahead of him, the surfaces spotless and the implements neatly and precisely ordered. Behind that, to the back of the cave, was what Bazzalth would call a training area. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure what actual training she did there, as he doubted his sister could use her true capabilities much while inside without collapsing the mountain down upon herself. Still, the area was largely cleared of anything but several crude crawler dummies, a handful of larger pieces that were shaped suspiciously similar to a person¡¯s throat and wing joints, and Tavreth herself. Standing near the center, surrounded by broken and crushed dummies, she faced away from him, either unaware or unconcerned with his entrance.
All of these were, for the most part, in line with his memories of his last visit¡ªincluding Tavreth standing in the training area. The one thing that he didn¡¯t remember was the mural covering nearly the entirety of the cave¡¯s ceiling. Vast, yet intricately detailed, it depicted a sprawling city built not on top of but from a gigantic mountain. The metropolis appeared empty, devoid of the inhabitants that make a city more than a mere collection of adjacent structures, and while the architecture struck him as vaguely familiar, he found that he could not place it.
Had Tavreth created this herself in the last two millennia? Or had she conscripted another, and if so, who?
His question died as his sister finally seemed to notice him. Quickly turning around, her nostrils pulsing with surprise and anger, she glared at him like she¡¯d spotted some fecal matter on her claw. He reflexively shrunk away from her gaze, catching himself too late to keep it from showing. He hated how, even after all these years, Tavreth could make him feel like a whelp without even having to move a muscle.
¡°Tavreth not give Bazzalth-brother permission to enter Tavreth¡¯s home whenever Bazzalth-brother pleases,¡± she rumbled.
Bazzalth did not comment on the fact that she entered his home whenever she pleased. ¡°Bazzalth has information. Information must be spread,¡± he replied instead. ¡°Crawlers come north¡ªmany crawlers. Bazzalth cannot guarantee Bazzalth can prevent all from escaping. Bazzalth... requests assistance.¡±
He held his breath and waited for the inevitable scornful comments about how weak he was and how much shame he brought upon their family for not being able to take care of some crawlers, but to his surprise, they did not come. Instead, his sister¡¯s gaze shifted to something else, something resembling a muted excitement.
¡°How many crawlers?¡± she growled, striding closer with purposeful steps that sent trembles through the stone beneath his feet.
¡°Bazzalth could not get close enough to know, but saw hundreds.¡±
¡°Hmmm... Tavreth must see with own eyes,¡± his sister stated, shoving him out of the way and pushing through the entrance. Ignoring Bazzalth chasing behind her, she emerged from her lair and shot into the air with a flap of her powerful wings.
Bazzalth did his best to follow, though she did not make it easy. Tavreth could fly far faster than Bazzalth, even with her increased size, and the air left behind in her wake was chaotic and hard to fly through. Still, she needed him to show her where the crawlers were, so she kept to a pace that he could match as long as he pushed himself to his limits.
That was how she always operated, he thought. Tavreth always seemed to act in ways that forced him to give everything he had to just keep up with whatever she was doing. It was like she was rubbing his weakness in his face every chance she got. He hated it, of course, but what could he do about it? She was right. They were all right. Even with his unique abilities taken into consideration, he was weak, and there wasn¡¯t much he could do about it.
Tavreth slowed down as they got closer to the area in question. By now, the sun had long since gone to rest, ceding domination of the sky to the lunar triad. In that semi-darkness, the two of them came to a soft landing¡ªor as soft a landing as a person could achieve, anyway¡ªand gazed southward.
Bazzalth did not focus on his soulsight; he had no need to. The glow of the fires burning in the crawlers¡¯ camp was visible many peaks away even to his eyes. Judging just by the small sea of fires filling a valley between two large peaks, his initial findings of ¡°hundreds¡± of crawlers looked to be off the mark by a factor of ten, if not more. This was not an expedition; this was an invasion.
He gave voice to the thought and Tavreth only chuckled.
¡°No, Bazzalth-brother, not invasion,¡± Tavreth corrected him, her throat rumbling with undisguised glee. ¡°Crawlers are invitation.¡±
The Confluence stood at the north end of the mountains, just south of the Hunting Grounds. In all of Bazzalth¡¯s long life, he had never seen it anything but empty; he had not yet hatched when the Accord had been created, and there had been no reason to use it since. The Confluence existed to be the neutral meeting ground of all people, but people as a whole rarely found the urge to congregate.
Now, for the first time in his life, Bazzalth stood within the Confluence, his body perched on one of the many flat slabs that encompassed the central orator¡¯s arena. He did not sit alone. On the slab to his right sat Tavreth, her eyes glimmering with anticipation for what was to come. Other slabs were slowly being occupied as more people flew in and chose a spot.
Bazzalth felt a twinge of awkwardness and anxiety as Daravith glided over him and lightly alighted upon a slab as far away from Tavreth as possible. She shot Tavreth a hostile glance before eying him with smug amusement. Bazzalth looked elsewhere. He had not seen her since his ill-advised trip to her lair, back on that night when he¡¯d tried to heal Blake¡ªa mistake he¡¯d tried to forget.
Thinking back, he could see now just how much his desperation at the time had clouded his decision-making. He¡¯d had a choice between two sources of lightning, Daravith and the great storm known as Chalacc¡¯s Fury. In hindsight, Daravith had been an option with great risk and little benefit. The only real benefit had been speed, but in the end he¡¯d been able to harvest what he needed from the storm even after wasting his time with her, so the only reason to try her first had turned out to be pointless.
In return, visiting Daravith not only damaged his ¡°battery¡± so that Blake¡¯s healing had failed to fully complete, but also exposed him to possible danger. His sister had forbidden him from visiting people like her from the opposing faction, and if she found out... well, it was a risk he¡¯d decided to take to save his friend. Luckily, the only people who knew were likely he and Daravith, and she wouldn¡¯t risk revealing this either. Tavreth already viewed Daravith with enmity; Daravith wouldn¡¯t want to give her more reasons to want her dead.
Daravith opened her enticing mouth and spoke, her voice lilting with amusement. ¡°Little Bazzalth, tell Daravith... did Little Bazzalth¡¯s find lightning after leaving Daravith¡¯s home?¡±
Bazzalth froze, alarm coursing through his veins. He¡¯d forgotten how Daravith¡¯s hoarding of Recreation often led to her making unwise decisions for the fun of it! She wasn¡¯t asking because she cared what his answer might be; she was asking to get a rise out of Tavreth at his expense!
True to form, his sister turned to him with barely restrained fury, and Bazzalth foresaw his end. ¡°Bazzalth-brother defies Tavreth to consort with enemy?!¡± she bellowed, the air around her radiating blistering heat.
Bazzalth cowered away from his sister¡¯s scorching rage. He knew that there wasn¡¯t much he could say or do to mollify her when she became like this.
For her part, Daravith just laughed. ¡°Tavreth worried Little Bazzalth having second thoughts? Afraid Little Bazzalth will switch factions?¡±
¡°Imbecile! Bazzalth-brother would not dare!¡±
Since before his hatching, the people had been split into two main factions, each led by one of the two mightiest people: his sister Tavreth and Gretiem. Each faction had been roughly equally matched; Tavreth¡¯s faction, with several dozen members, had not been quite as large as Gretiem¡¯s faction, but the average member had been stronger than the average of Gretiem¡¯s faction so it had evened out.
However, now that Gretiem was out of the picture, her faction was floundering as several other people vied for supremacy. While Daravith was the de facto new leader as of now, the future of their faction remained in doubt. How long she could maintain control was hard to say, especially to one as ill-equipped for social matters as he.
¡°Tavreth desire to know why Little Bazzalth visited Daravith while Tavreth slept?¡± she teased from across the hollow, clearly enjoying her view of both Tavreth¡¯s anger and Bazzalth¡¯s distress.
¡°Hmph! Tell Tavreth nothing,¡± a pearl orange dragon interjected as he settled down on a slab on the Daravith faction¡¯s side. ¡°As always, Daravith reveal too much to add mere crumbs to hoard. Unfit to lead.¡±
¡°Silence, Xaertra!¡± Daravith snapped back, shooting him a scathing glare.
¡°Xaertra!¡± Tavreth roared, the heat cascading from her body seeming to redouble as she spotted the newcomer.
Another high-ranking member of Gretiem¡¯s faction, Xaertra was easily the most reviled person alive. Everybody hated him, and for good reason: he hoarded Secrets. Driven by the same obsession to fill his hoard as everybody else, he dedicated his life to knowing all that he could that everybody else did not want known. Not surprisingly, this caused everybody else to view him in an adversarial light, something that he seemed to relish¡ªor at least, Bazzalth presumed from his mannerisms. It was hard to know what Xaertra really thought or felt about anything; like everything else about him, he preferred to keep his true thoughts and knowledge secret.
In a way, that was what everybody hated about Xaertra the most. He¡¯d revealed enough tidbits over the centuries to prove that he knew things that he should not know, but how many other secrets did he possess? Every other person had to ask themselves what else he knew. What other scandalous details of theirs did he possess? Xaertra remained tight-lipped about it and seemed to revel in the reaction this caused. Whether or not he actually knew something was another secret in and of itself for him to keep, after all.
Bazzalth was no exception to this paradigm¡ªif anything, he had more to fear than the others. His dirty secrets, while minor in impact, bordered on treasonous in nature. He had, in essence, broken the Accord while simultaneously being the single person most responsible for its upkeep. As such, Bazzalth despised Xaertra¡¯s existence with a fiery passion even though they never interacted.
Did Xaertra know about Pari? What about Blake? Though he¡¯d taken great precautions to hide both, precautions that only he with his Knowledge could manage, he still lived in fear of the day either came to light. Should they be revealed, the Daravith faction would jump on the chance to weaken Tavreth¡¯s faction and would demand his death for breaking the greatest of taboos. Perhaps the fact that these had not been used against him yet was proof that he was safe, but he could never be sure.
Still, his and the others¡¯ disgust with the orange dragon paled in comparison to Tavreth¡¯s outright hatred. Bazzalth didn¡¯t know why she loathed him so. Perhaps it was simply for the same reason as the rest of them, but he doubted it was so simple. She¡¯d already nearly killed him twice, with only the intervention of others allowing him to be here today. Still, if he felt fear at confronting the person who¡¯d nearly slain him two times over¡ªand he must, Bazzalth had no doubt¡ªhe hid it well.
¡°Faction is doomed if all bow to Daravith,¡± Xaertra sneered, ignoring Tavreth entirely. ¡°Daravith too enamored with own amusement to head faction.¡±
¡°Daravith will teach Xaertra who is fit!¡± the faction leader roared, teeth flashing with menace. She stepped out into the center of the hollow, her challenge clear. Just as Xaertra looked about to step forward and answer her challenge, they were interrupted by a newcomer landing behind Daravith with a loud slam that shook the entire arena.
¡°Fighting?! YES!¡± the new arrival cried, his hulking violet form towering over all but Tavreth. ¡°Zaivass will fight! Bring Zaivass glory of battle and bloodshed!¡±
¡°Sit down and be quiet, simpleton!¡± Tavreth snapped, causing Zaivass to hesitate long enough for the others to retreat to their seats, tails between their legs.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
¡°But Tavreth said¡ª¡±
¡°Time for bloodshed comes later,¡± she told him forcefully, ¡°should Zaivass even desire bloodshed later.¡±
¡°Zaivass will never tire in hunt for glory!¡± came the indignant response.
Tavreth chuffed in annoyance, as did most of the others. A person¡¯s hoard could have a deleterious influence on them, pushing them to act in ways that might not be fully optimal, but Bazzalth generally viewed them as beneficial on the whole. They gave people a sense of purpose, a drive that animated them day after day through their eternal lives. There were, however, a few people with hoards that Bazzalth would argue were actively harmful to them. The hoarder of Personality, Zaivass was one of them.
During Blake¡¯s visit, their conversation had at one point veered onto a tangent about mental illnesses. Blake considered hoards to be a possible manifestation of something he called ¡°Obsessive Compulsive Disorder¡±, a classification that made Bazzalth bristle with contemptuous disagreement. Zaivass, however, reminded him of another illness the crawler had mentioned: something called ¡°Multiple Personality Disorder¡±. He possessed an ever-growing collection of unique and independent personalities and switched between them seemingly at random. The list of personalities that Bazzalth had personally witnessed included one that loved terrible puns while also proclaiming imminent doom for the world over the slightest provocation; one that viewed even the most insignificant topic as something worth debating for days on end; one that spent hours concocting absurd hypothetical situations and repeatedly claiming he would turn them into stories very soon, yet never did; one scatterbrained and unable to focus on a single task for more than a few moments before becoming distracted by something trivial; one obsessed with sacs filled with lighter-than-air gas for some reason and who hyper-focused on inane details; one who delighted in disgusting others with vulgar images; and even one that was supportive and kind to him and his endeavors. It was a shame that, with the myriad characters bouncing around in his hoard-blighted mind, the odds were that the nice personality would never resurface again while Bazzalth was around.
Zaivass¡¯s condition meant that nothing he said or did could be trusted to last past the next breath. His allegiance to the two contesting factions varied depending on the active personality, meaning he was effectively on neither. The third largest person after Gretiem and Tavreth, he could have been quite a powerful and influential existence otherwise, but as he was, the others viewed him as little more than an annoyance¡ªunless he was manifesting a particularly violent personality like he seemed to be right now. In those cases, his strength and unpredictability made him frightening enough that most other people would balk at taking him on.
¡°No fight?¡± a voice muttered quietly to his left, causing Bazzalth to almost jump in surprise.
Turning his gaze in the voice¡¯s direction, he found the red-brown hide of Culros perched upon the slab beside him. How long had he been there? Bazzalth had not noticed his arrival.
¡°Such wasted opportunity...¡± the hoarder of Loss mumbled to himself, a look of ecstasy on his face. ¡°Exquisite...¡±
A member of Tavreth¡¯s faction, Culros lived in an ashen cavern that made even his sister¡¯s lair look luxurious. The one time Bazzalth had visited to deliver a requested creation, he¡¯d found the place entirely empty except for the thick layer of ash covering the ground. There had not even been a pile of furs to sleep on! This was because, to fill his hoard, Culros acquired things and then burned them to nothing but ash. Bazzalth had discovered this when, upon receiving Bazzalth¡¯s creation¡ªwhich had taken half a season of labor to manufacture¡ªCulros had inspected it, appreciated it for a moment, and then promptly destroyed it right in front of him. That was the day that Bazzalth had decided to never make anything for this muddy-scaled person ever again.
The sound of oscillating tones grew in intensity until a muted blue person alighted onto a slab across the Confluence. Gendayn, hoarder of Patterns, swayed back and forth as she smacked the stone beneath her with an ever-increasingly-complex beat that merged perfectly with the warbling sounds created by her ability. Loud and obnoxious, Gendayn lived the furthest north of all the people¡ªnot by her own volition, but because nobody wanted to deal with her constant noisemaking¡ªand often seemed lost in her rhythms. When she wasn¡¯t, she was usually wrapped up in her quest to ¡°find the Pattern¡±, a single, endlessly complicated pattern that explained all of reality. ¡°All is connected,¡± she like to proclaim, though little of what would follow made any sense to anybody but her. For example, she¡¯d once asserted that the red-topped chullubs, a species of small lizard commonly found in the northern hunting ground, were all actually incredibly sophisticated tracking nodes that interlinked to form a widespread surveillance network tasked with tracking the spread of mormott worms across the world. When met with Bazzalth¡¯s disbelief, she¡¯d simply told him that it was not her fault that he could not ¡°see the truth of the pattern¡±.
With Gendayn¡¯s arrival, Bazzalth looked around at all the occupied slabs. The hollow was nearly full now as many of the other people had filtered in during this time. Bazzalth even spotted both Nortam and Olzrynth, which surprised him. The reed green Nortam hoarded gemstones and other rare materials found beneath the ground. While some others derided his hoard as little more than glittering stones, that did not stop him from spending most of his time digging deep beneath the earth, hunting for more and better specimens with great gusto. An encrusting of just-cooled lava still caked onto parts of his body told Bazzalth that he¡¯d been far down below just a few moments ago.
Olzrynth, in contrast, barely moved at all. As one who hoarded Dreams, he spent nearly every moment asleep, waking only to do the bare minimum to not starve or die of thirst before returning to slumber for seasons at a time. Bazzalth liked Olzrynth more than most any other person present, simply because the granite grey sleeper left him alone.
The fact that Tavreth had managed to somehow wrangle even these two into attending this Congress spoke to its incredible importance. Though the others here did not know it, their lives were about to change drastically.
Looking around again at the host of people from all over the mountains, Bazzalth realized that everybody had arrived. Well, everybody except one.
¡°Where is Maylanth?¡± he asked Tavreth.
¡°Maylanth not needed this day,¡± came the offhand reply.
Not needed? The second-in-command of Tavreth¡¯s faction, the Daravith to her Gretiem, wasn¡¯t necessary? Bazzalth shook his head. Clearly, his sister had a lot of confidence in their position, something Bazzalth did not share. Though the news they had to share would shake the foundation of their society, ideological flexibility was not something he¡¯d noticed in most of his brethren.
¡°Silence!¡± Tavreth roared, bringing the cacophonous cross-chatter down to a low murmur. ¡°Tavreth shall speak!¡±
¡°Who says Tavreth speak first?¡± Daravith challenged.
His sister snorted. ¡°Has Daravith forgotten Accord? Tavreth called Rite of Congress; Tavreth speaks first.¡±
Unable to find a worthy retort, Daravith let out an indignant huff and backed down.
¡°Assembled people of Gholtenar!¡± Tavreth continued. ¡°I bring you joyous news! The days of the Accord will soon be over!¡±
The crowd erupted with a great clamor that was an approximately half-and-half mixture of cheers and irate disbelief.
¡°Big words!¡± Xaertra roared, his voice cutting through the din. ¡°Accord is pact decided by and bound to all! Now Tavreth thinks Tavreth can choose pact nullified? Or Tavreth faction finally become overconfident in strength?¡±
Tavreth laughed smugly. ¡°Tavreth not decide Accord nullified. Crawlers decide for all people!¡±
The assembled people exploded with roars of confusion and anger.
¡°Crawlers send incursion of great size into mountains! Army of thousands travels north as Tavreth speaks!¡±
Cries of outrage echoed off the hollow¡¯s slopes, and Bazzalth watched as she drank it all in.
¡°Tavreth asks, should crawler army be left alone?¡±
The assembled people answered loudly in the negative, with even most of the members of the opposing faction in agreement with their adversary.
¡°Hold!¡± Daravith cut in. ¡°Why should Daravith trust Tavreth¡¯s word?¡±
¡°No need! Tavreth propose hunting pack to exterminate incursion. Daravith can join and see for self.¡±
¡°Hmmm, if true, crawlers must be purged from mountains. Accord requires action,¡± Xaertra chimed in. ¡°Xaertra will go.¡±
¡°Daravith go as well,¡± the faction leader quickly chimed in.
Gendayn volunteered to join the hunting party, as did, to Bazzalth¡¯s surprise, Nortam¡ªdid he want to see what sorts of jewels might be found among the crawlers?
¡°Tavreth presents glory and bloodshed opportunity, as promised,¡± his sister said to Zaivass, but contrary to expectations, he shied away.
¡°Many crawlers sound bad. What if too strong? What if Zaivass get hurt?¡±
It seemed that he¡¯d switched to a new personality sometime during the assembly. Sadly, this one seemed...
¡°Pathetic,¡± Tavreth grunted turning away. ¡°Very well. Hunting pack is Tavreth, Bazzalth-brother, Daravith, Gendayn, Nortam, Xaertra.¡±
¡°Weakling not needed,¡± Nortam scoffed. ¡°Five is enough.¡±
¡°No, Bazzalth-brother comes,¡± his sister shot back. ¡°No witnesses.¡±
¡°So many,¡± Nortam commented as they all gazed down upon the mass of invaders taking a midday pause to rest and eat. ¡°Crawlers breed like tunnel moles.¡±
Having watched the crawlers all morning, Bazzalth had to admit that they were well-organized and coordinated. They moved through the mountains with slow but deliberate precision, their rows and files never losing cohesion as they marched along the thin passes. When they came upon terrain that would prove troublesome to a large group, certain crawlers moved forward to use those reality-modifying abilities they loved so much and alter the terrain just enough to allow passage without wasting more time than necessary.
The hunting pack flew far above the mountains¡ªas high as they could go and still see their prey below¡ªto keep their profiles so small that the nearsighted crawlers would never notice them, let alone make out their nature. As an added measure, they kept themselves between the crawlers and the high sun, just to be sure. Hunting worked best when the prey didn¡¯t see you coming.
¡°Is time,¡± Tavreth declared. ¡°All understand plan?¡±
The others confirmed they were ready.
¡°Hunt will be too boring,¡± Daravith complained. ¡°Daravith propose game: person with most slain wins.¡±
¡°Fah!¡± Bazzalth¡¯s sister snorted. ¡°Too easy!¡±
¡°Tavreth overconfident,¡± Gendayn countered. ¡°More to hunt than brute force.¡±
¡°Words too easy,¡± Xaertra cut in. ¡°Only actions matter.¡±
¡°Indeed! No more delay. Clear skies and good hunting,¡± Tavreth intoned.
The pack split, each of them diving towards the ground with a different vector, and the hunt was on.
The crawlers had stopped for their meal on a plateau surrounded by several mountains that created four different ways out: north, south, east, and west, roughly. The southern passage, through which the invaders had come, was by far the widest of the four. If the crawlers tried to escape en masse, they would most likely retreat in that direction.
Gendayn fell fastest and hit first, crashing down upon her preplanned spot on the southeastern edge. With a deafening bellow, she let loose a long blast of her frost breath, freezing hundreds of unsuspecting crawlers into solid white statues in a matter of moments. Nortam was not far behind. Channeling his momentum into his earth-shaping powers, his impact sent out an earthen shockwave that tore through the crawlers on the western edge like a tsunami, tossing them high into the air like leaves in an updraft.
Daravith came third, gleefully giggling as she swooped down over the and released blast after blast of lightning from her maw. Each of the countless bolts struck a crawler, superheating the water inside them as it passed through and bursting their bodies like overstuffed gall sacs before chaining into the next crawler, then the next, and so on. Xaertra finally landed on the eastern edge, his body spewing forth a voluminous and mysterious fog that quickly spread over the eastern camp. Even from above, Bazzalth had trouble seeing what happened inside, but he caught glimpses of crawlers writhing in the mist, faces red, eyes bulging, and hands clutching at their throats.
Last but definitely not least, Tavreth slammed down atop the northern side of the crawler formation, her massive size and weight causing tremors strong enough to knock over everything nearby. She practically glowed with outright fury, her body so hot that nearby items like bedrolls and packed tents immediately burst into flame. Opening her maw wide, she unleashed a roar that shook the mountains themselves, followed by a blast of her personal breath attack. The wrath of the earth made manifest, a cone of molten ash and flame wreathed in lightning erupted from her throat, sweeping over all before her and instantly incinerating everything to dust.
In no more than a handful of moments, the entirety of the crawler presence had been surrounded and a full fifth of them was dead. Bazzalth did not blame them for the frenzied terror that followed the sudden ambush. Swarming about like lechek beetles around a destroyed hive, they did everything all at once. Some ran about in a panic, others froze in place, many tried to flee, and¡ªto the crawlers¡¯ collective credit¡ªsome competent leaders even managed to quickly organize their underlings and attempt to fight back.
All of these proved futile, of course. The panicked crawlers found themselves running from person to person; they died still searching for salvation. Those that went still died just as fast. Those that tried to flee found themselves penned in, as each person knew to let none pass. They tried to climb the cliffs and mountainsides, but such a task was easier said than done and took time¡ªtime they did not have.
Those that resisted fought bravely, but it was for naught. Most of their weapons could not even pierce the peoples¡¯ tough hides, and the few that did found their blades quickly destroyed by the ichor they released. Their manifestations of fire, ice, stone, and the like proved equally ineffective. Even outnumbering their opponents a thousand to one, the damage they inflicted was inconsequential and each person would be finished healing before the end of their flight home.
Finally, as predicted, the remaining third of the crawlers broke and made a desperate bid to escape to the supposed safety of the south. This was, of course, the reason why the southern end was covered by both Gendayn and Nortam. They were, naturally, more than up for the task. Gendayn continued to freeze all who came near with her frost breath, all while she shifted and swayed to some sort of pattern that only she could hear or know. Her sonic ability manifested, sending out intermittent powerful low-frequency pulses strong enough to shatter her frozen victims into minute pieces. Bump. Bump-bump. Bump. It was like Bazzalth was listening to the heartbeat of the world itself wreaking havoc upon their enemies.
Meanwhile, Daravith began to blur, two afterimages that mirrored her body exactly appearing seemingly overlaid with her body except slightly out of position. Those afterimages split, sliding left and right until they no longer touched and there were three separate Daraviths standing side by side. Suddenly the two copies stopped mimicking the original Daravith¡¯s every move, as if they¡¯d been disconnected from the main body, and began moving separately. The three Daraviths each released their own blasts of lightning, and one swept out her tail to crush a particularly agile crawler against a boulder.
Bazzalth had always wanted to study Daravith¡¯s clones. Solid while not material, sentient but soulless, and lasting as long as she could maintain them¡ªa bit less than a day, from what Bazzalth understood¡ªthey fascinated him on multiple levels. They were extensions of her that were not her, with all her beauty and charm, and he¡¯d always wished he could have even half a day to study the mystery that they represented. Alas, she¡¯d refused, even after being offered a dozen creations of her choice, meaning all he could do was study them from afar as he did now.
Above the chaos he floated, his wings catching the many updrafts generated by the massacre below as he tore his eyes away from the intriguing doppelgangers. He made no effort to partake in the slaughter taking place below; his job was not to fight but to watch¡ªto spy every crawler who had enough speed, strength, and luck to successfully make it past any of the others and to erase any last hope those fortunate few might have of living to see the sunset.
After so many years of experience, he was very good at his job.
¡°Lies! Impossible Gendayn slay so many!¡± Nortam snarled.
The group soared north, victorious, on their way back to their homes. Almost predictably, the conversation had quickly turned to who had won Daravith¡¯s game.
Gendayn scoffed.
¡°Not fault of Gendayn that Nortam cannot count! Perhaps if Nortam spent less time crawling through dirt for shiny rocks, Nortam count past five.¡±
With a roar, Nortam veered hard right, slamming into Gendayn, who twisted just in time to catch the blow with her front claws. Tangled up, the two of them plummeted from the sky, a twisting ball of slicing claws and gnashing teeth hurtling towards an unlucky cliffside below.
The rest of them glided onward, unconcerned. Bazzalth barely blinked at the sudden outburst of violence. All of them were worked up from the hunt and needed a release. Gendayn had apparently decided that fighting with Nortam was her preferable method. There was a reason that she¡¯d used those specific words, ¡°shiny rocks¡±. Referring to his hoard as such was the most efficient way to trigger Nortam¡¯s aggression¡ªsomething young Bazzalth had found out by accident many centuries ago. This time, Gendayn would likely fare better than he had back then.
They¡¯d both probably be fine. People were hard to kill, after all, especially in a one-on-one fight. In fact, Bazzalth could count on one hand the number of people who had died at all. His sister was responsible for most of them¡ªat least if his suspicions were correct about a certain former faction leader.
For the first time since the battle ended, Bazzalth¡¯s sister spoke. ¡°Crawlers will not overlook and cannot ignore such loss. People cannot stay hidden any longer.¡±
¡°Yes, Accord has no meaning now,¡± Xaertra agreed.
¡°Accord clearly had little meaning for long time,¡± Daravith admitted with a frown.
¡°Good, others understand. Time comes soon to erase crawlers from world.¡±
¡°Absolutely not,¡± Daravith immediately spat back. ¡°Daravith will use crawlers to fill hoard. Will make excellent toys.¡±
¡°Whole world of new secrets to discover,¡± Xaertra added wistfully.
¡°Wretched fools! Why still not understand?!¡± Tavreth spat, seething so intensely that Bazzalth could feel the heat washing off her from more than a wingspan away. ¡°Tavreth explain over and over! Crawlers must pay for deeds!¡±
¡°Crawlers can pay from under Daravith¡¯s claw. Why waste valuable resources over events before Daravith¡¯s hatching!¡±
¡°Such thoughts led to death of people last time! People were complacent, and now see results! Confined to corner of world, trembling at thought of discovery while crawlers repopulate!¡±
¡°Tavreth always roaring about doom, doom, doom! Crawlers weak and pathetic! Daravith could have stomped every crawler today without help!¡±
¡°Daravith blind and stupid! Crawlers ambushed and unready! Others much stronger, and crawlers only get stronger with time! Crawlers must not be allowed to live! Too dangerous!¡±
¡°Other crawlers much stronger?¡± Daravith repeated. ¡°How Tavreth know?¡±
¡°Indeed,¡± Xaertra cut in, a smug, knowing grin plastered on his face, ¡°how Tavreth know about crawlers at all? Almost as if Tavreth secretly broke Accord multiple times...¡±
Even though he had also broken the Accord¡ªonce again, in a very minor and completely unimportant way¡ªBazzalth could not help but gasp. ¡°Tavreth-sister!¡±
¡°Xaertra! You dare accuse Tavreth!¡± Bazzalth¡¯s sister roared.
¡°Xaertra! You dare keep so important fact from Daravith!¡± Xaertra¡¯s faction leader roared.
Xaertra just looked at them both with an expression of sublime satisfaction.
¡°Need Daravith remind Tavreth that price for breaking Accord is death? Daravith will enjoy watching Tavreth¡¯s execution.¡±
¡°Tavreth should slay both mongrels here and now for such disrespect!¡±
¡°Does Tavreth truly think Tavreth alone can defeat both Daravith and Xaertra together?¡± Xaertra asked, his voice dripping with derision.
¡°Tavreth strong, but overestimates self,¡± Daravith added.
¡°What proof Xaertra have?¡± Bazzalth finally asked.
All three of the others turned to him as if they¡¯d forgotten that he¡¯d been there¡ªlikely, they had.
¡°Hmph! Bazzalth-brother correct!¡± his sister stated. ¡°Is only Xaertra¡¯s word! If Xaertra have proof of accusations, Xaertra accuse Tavreth long ago!¡±
¡°Matters not!¡± Daravith chuckled. ¡°Accused or not, rumors spread quickly. Tavreth¡¯s faction will falter and Daravith¡¯s faction will rise. Tavreth cannot stop Daravith¡¯s impending conquest. Clear skies, Tavreth!¡±
Laughing heartily, Daravith and Xaertra veered off and sped away with mighty flaps of their wings.
¡°Tavreth will win in end!¡± Bazzalth¡¯s sister roared at their retreating forms, but other than sending a scathing glower their way, that was all she did.
Seeing that they were near his lair, Bazzalth descended.
To his surprise, his sister followed. Upon landing, she glanced in the direction the others had gone and snickered, her rage seeming to have suddenly evaporated into thin air. ¡°Fools,¡± she muttered.
¡°Why Tavreth-sister happy?¡± Bazzalth could not help but ask.
¡°Daravith doing exactly as Tavreth wants, Bazzalth-brother.¡±
Bazzalth blinked.
¡°Let faction of fools grab crawler¡¯s attention,¡± she continued. ¡°When time comes, Daravith and Xaertra and crawlers will all burn to ash. And Daravith will never know... because Bazzalth-brother will never talk to Daravith again, yes?¡±
Before Bazzalth could even react, he found himself slammed against the mountain that housed his lair, Tavreth¡¯s massive body flattening him up against the pulverized stone. He gasped and squirmed as her vise-like hands latched onto his front left leg and the base of his left wing with bone-shattering grips, but her vastly superior size and strength rendered him as weak as a newborn crawler.
He could feel her crushing him with ease, her dominating pressure bearing down not only upon his body but more so upon his mind. She was serious this time. It became harder and harder to think as that oppressive weight bore down upon his thoughts, his sister¡¯s will overwhelming his own. No commands came through the link this time, only fury and an intense feeling of betrayal.
¡°Tavreth not forget Bazzalth-brother consorted with enemy faction. Bazzalth-brother knows Daravith is forbidden!¡±
¡°Bazzalth had no choice!¡± he gasped. ¡°Needed¡ª¡±
His words cut off, replaced by a cry of pain as her grip on the base of his wing tightened and she began to pull. He knew from experience that she could just slice through his flesh with her obscenely sharp claws, but that would be too quick and simple. Bazzalth recognized the kind of situation he was in all too well. This was not about inflicting injury; this was about inflicting pain. This was about reminding him of where he stood and venting her frustrations.
Though he¡¯d been through something like this many times before, Bazzalth had no answers. He was helpless against her and always had been. So, he did what he always did: he focused on breathing. Breathe in. The excruciating agony he felt as his skin began to tear wasn¡¯t real. Breathe out. That torturous feeling of the muscles and tendons that connected his wing to his body snapping one strand at a time was all an illusion playing in his mind.
Breathe in. This wasn¡¯t happening. Breathe out. This wasn¡¯t happening. Breathe in. This wasn¡¯t happening. Breathe out. This wasn¡¯t happening. Breathe in. This wasn¡¯t happening this wasn¡¯t happening this wasn¡¯t happening this wasn¡¯t happening this wasn¡¯t¡ª
¡°Tavreth will not tolerate betrayal,¡± she growled into his ear. She gave one final pull.
What emerged from Bazzalth¡¯s throat could scarcely be called a scream. No, it was more like an anguished whimper that wished it could be a howl¡ªthe sound of a person completely and utterly beaten. He writhed impotently, blood spurting from the socket where his wing should have been and flowing down his shoulder in large globs.
Holding out Bazzalth¡¯s now-detached wing, Tavreth bathed it in a blast of infernal flame before contemptuously tossing it aside and stepping away.
¡°Tavreth will be watching Bazzalth-brother closely from now on,¡± she told him. Spreading her wings, she took off with a massive blast of air. Within a moment, she was gone.
Bazzalth lay still for some time, panting and trembling as the blood continued to drip onto the earth and form large pools of sizzling rainbow liquid slowly eating their way deeper and deeper. The flow soon started to slow as his body began to stanch the bleeding and grow skin over the wound.
Eventually, the wound healed over, but he was now a one-winged person. His left wing would grow back eventually, but it would take days and days before it was fully whole again, and his body would require much more food in the meantime¡ªfood that he would have to hunt on foot now, a much more complicated and time-consuming process.
Still, though he no longer leaked and the entrance to his lair was just steps away, Bazzalth made no effort to rise. Instead, he thought about all of the sudden and monumental developments he¡¯d witnessed. Things were going to change very soon¡ªfor him, for the people, and for the crawlers. The world was about to become far more chaotic and deadly for those he cared about.
He wanted to warn them. He really did. Pari was going to be in danger. Blake, too. They had no idea what was coming their way, just like the crawlers the hunting pack had massacred. They needed to be warned.
But...
Bazzalth couldn¡¯t do it. His mind kept replaying his sister¡¯s final words. All his life, Tavreth had treated him like a disappointment, a liability, and a mark of shame. She¡¯d bullied him and hurt him more times than he cared to remember. But, even so, he was her brother, and as her brother, she¡¯d extended to him a measure of trust that she gave to no other person. That was gone, now. He¡¯d risked it to save Blake¡¯s life and it had come back to haunt him.
She was wary of him now. He wouldn¡¯t be able to get away with all the little breaches of trust he¡¯d gotten so used to. What would she do if she learned that he had a friend who was a crawler? What would she do if she learned that he¡¯d warned that friend about the people and about her? He could not imagine the magnitude of the agony she would inflict on him.
They... they would be alright, he told himself as what remained of his wing joint throbbed, a constant reminder of his helplessness. He didn¡¯t need to risk himself to warn them. Blake was capable and Pari was always full of surprises. They¡¯d be alright. Surely, they would be alright.
Chapter 124
Every time Tehlmar entered Lord Ferros¡¯s massive fortress was an experience. The Louring Hive, the locals called it, and he could understand why. Towering over the rest of the bustling metropolis¡ªor what passed for one in Otharia, at least¡ªthe hulking grey monstrosity exuded a foreboding aura that could not be ignored no matter where you stood in Wroetin. Its alien design, the constant bustle of mechanical beasts scuttling to and fro, and its overbearing size combined to lend an inescapable feeling of malevolent trespass. Set in the center of the city but very much not a part of it, the fortress served as more than a base of operations; it was an imposition, a demonstration of the Otharians¡¯ impotence, and most of all, a threat.
For Tehlmar in particular, however, it felt like he was sneaking into an enemy encampment, even though he was nominally allowed inside. The impression that he did not belong persisted even now, more than a season since his official employment under Lord Ferros began. The metal-clad man had never trusted him in the way he did Arlette or even a sniveling little shit like Sofie. His tasks seemed to be largely menial busywork and often made little use of his capabilities¡ªnot that he was good at much besides fighting. The fact that he had a job at all felt like more of a favor to Arlette than anything else. Tehlmar didn¡¯t mind; as long as he could stick around the love of his life, everything else was just details.
Stepping out of the way of a trio of machines as they rushed past, scurrying off somewhere to do whatever inscrutable assignment their creator had given them, he crossed through the outer courtyard that separated the large wall and the fortress proper. Today was an off day. Normally he wouldn¡¯t set foot within the place when he didn¡¯t have to, but today he had special plans for a day with Letty¡ªa picnic, just the two of them, followed by a show in the local amphitheater hosted by a highly regarded band of Otharian minstrels, and finally, a dinner at a place he¡¯d found on the south end of the city. The food there was quite good for Otharian cuisine, and the atmosphere was far more rowdy and boisterous, which was far more their style than the hoity-toity vibes of the more established venues on the north end.
Letty didn¡¯t know any of this, of course. She didn¡¯t even know he was coming over today. That was part of the surprise! He was sure that she¡¯d be delighted, regardless. Their last extended outing had gone so well, after all.
Working his way upward, he soon found himself outside his love¡¯s door. A short knock later, and he found himself face to face with a puzzled-looking Arlette Demirt¡ªor was it Arlette Faredin? Eh, didn¡¯t matter to him, really. Letty was Letty and that was all that mattered.
¡°Tehlmar? Why are you here?¡±
¡°Really wish you lived somewhere other than inside this dull grey maze,¡± he replied, walking past her into her abode.
¡°This is by far the safest place to be, not to mention the cheapest,¡± Arlette asserted. ¡°With the terrorists still out there, not to mention the people¡¯s general dislike of me, I¡¯d be too busy watching my back to sleep properly.¡±
¡°I¡¯d watch your back for you.¡±
¡°Then I¡¯d have to watch your back, instead. Actually, how come you aren¡¯t getting attacked in your sleep? You stand out here like a lone rain cloud on an otherwise sunny day.¡±
¡°Oh, they learned their lesson after the third attempt,¡± he told her with an easygoing shrug. Noticing she had a new, unusual chair standing beside her desk, one with a single central trunk beneath the seat that branched out near the floor into five horizontal arms, each with a wheel on the end, he plopped down into it. The seat and back tilted backward from the force, before swinging back upright as if pushed by an invisible hand.
¡°Third attempt? What did¡ªwait, we¡¯re getting off-topic. Why are you here, again?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not on the job today, so I came to surprise you with a day of fun, food, drink, and whatever else you might feel in the mood for by the end,¡± he said with a wink.
Arlette put her hands on her hips and hit him with a disapproving scowl.
¡°Tehlmar, you can¡¯t just decide this sort of thing on your own. What if I don¡¯t want to go with you today? What if I¡¯m busy?¡±
¡°You¡¯re not busy, though. You¡¯re off today too.¡±
The chair was not made for somebody of his limited stature, so he found his feet dangling just above the floor. Swinging his legs left and right, he accidentally hit one of the bottom branches with his foot and, to his unsuspecting delight, sent the chair and himself spinning merrily. He found himself grinning wildly. This thing was wonderful!
¡°Why would you be so sure of that?¡±
¡°Because I know your schedule, obviously.¡±
¡°Since when did you start learning peoples¡¯ schedules?¡±
¡°Since it started to determine when I got to see you¡ªand it¡¯s only your schedule I know,¡± he told her, kicking the chair again as the rotation slowed past an acceptable speed. ¡°Can¡¯t be bothered to care about the rest, to be frank.¡±
¡°That doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m free to be gallivanting about on a whim. I have more things in my life than my job and you, you know, and I¡ªwould you stop with the spinning!¡±
Tehlmar jammed both legs down as far as he could, catching them on the base of the chair. The chair and he stopped spinning¡ªthe world around him not so much. ¡°Woah, this is great!¡± he giggled as the dizziness hit full force. ¡°How are you supposed to get anything done in a chair like this when it¡¯s so much fun to just sit in it?¡±
¡°...It¡¯s hard,¡± Arlette admitted.
¡°So, what did you have planned today that is so much more important than me?¡± he asked.
¡°Don¡¯t put it that way,¡± she objected. ¡°And I was planning on... practicing.¡±
¡°Practicing what? If it¡¯s combat, we could do that too if you wanted. Wouldn¡¯t mind getting some exercise today.¡±
¡°No, not combat. It¡¯s...¡± She hesitated for a moment. ¡°I guess I can show you. But swear to me you won¡¯t tell a soul about this, alright? It¡¯s a secret!¡±
Now, that got his attention. ¡°Your secrets are safe with me, Letty. You know that.¡±
¡°Alright... watch this.¡±
Without any more explanation, Arlette held out an open hand, palm up, and stared intently at the air above it.
A moment later, an illusion of a pastry appeared in her hand and she let out a breath as if she¡¯d just lifted something heavy. The pastry resembled a flower just starting to bloom, with small gaps between the petals. Honey glistened all across the petals, dripping into the gaps, as wisps of steam drifted out into the air. Just the sight of it made him feel hungry.
Taking the illusion, Arlette grabbed it with both hands and split it in half. One half she took a bite from, putting on a show of ¡°chewing¡± on it with gusto, and the other half she held out for him to take.
¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± he said, reaching out to ¡®grab¡¯ the proffered false foodstuff.
He froze as his fingers met unexpected resistance. He could feel it¡ªthe sticky honey, the roughness of the crispy amber surface, even the warmth, as if it had just come out of the oven. If he didn¡¯t know better, he would have believed it to be real.
¡°You can do illusions with more than sight and sound, now?¡±
¡°Take a bite.¡±
Gingerly, Tehlmar grabbed his half of the... whatever it was and bit into a bit of it. Against all understanding, his mouth was filled with buttery sweetness.
¡°Before you say something stupid, no, I didn¡¯t learn how to make illusions that you can touch, smell, and taste. It¡¯s real¡ªand I made it from nothing with only my thoughts.¡±
¡°That¡¯s impossible,¡± he objected. ¡°You can¡¯t just make baked goods with your mind.¡±
¡°Why not? People make water, stone, fire, and other things all the time.¡±
Tehlmar paused mid-chew to consider her argument. She had a point, he supposed, but... ¡°Then why does nobody do it? Nobody would ever starve to death if people could Observe up some food during famines. Why are you the first person I¡¯ve ever heard of to do this?¡±
¡°I... I¡¯m not sure, to be honest. Any Observer should be able to do it.¡±
Tehlmar took another, much larger bite, savoring the fruity sweetness of the honey. ¡°However you made it, it¡¯s really good.¡±
¡°It¡¯s called a honey bud. It was a treat from my hometown.¡±
¡°The one in Gustil, or...?¡±
¡°My... first home. In Ofrax.¡±
¡°Ah... well, maybe one day you can take me there and I can see how these are normally made.¡±
Arlette sighed. ¡°What¡¯s with you all bugging me about my hometown all of a sudden?¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Never mind.¡±
¡°Alright... So, can you make other things besides desserts?¡±
¡°I sure can. Watch.¡±
She summoned a sheet of paper into her hand as naturally as she breathed, then flicked a finger through it without resistance to show that it was just an ordinary illusion.
¡°Hmmm,¡± she hummed, looking back and forth between the paper and him. ¡°No, the nose is too big. Maybe more like... there we go. Now for the final step.¡±
That look of concentration returned and a moment later she let out another heavy breath. Tehlmar sprang out of the spinny chair as Arlette staggered to the side before righting herself. She held up a hand as if to say she was fine, but he wasn¡¯t so sure.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°Nothing... I¡¯m just tired. Doing this sort of thing takes a lot out of me¡ªfar, far more than illusions do. I just need to rest a bit. I¡¯ll be fine.¡±
¡°You sure?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t know why that one took so much more out of me, but yes. Now...¡± She held up the paper, now slightly crinkled in her hand from her tight grip. It brushed against his arm and he felt its touch. ¡°Are you going to look at it or not?¡±
¡°Huh?¡±
Pulling the sheet from her fingers, he brought it up to his face and inspected it. He first noticed that it was, in fact, actual wooden paper instead of parchment or some other material¡ªand incredibly fine grain, at that. Paper as a whole was quite rare due to its obscene cost; paying so much for single-use material had always struck him as utter folly.
The second thing he noticed was the message written on it in the Nocend merchant script, the symbols large and heavy: ¡°Notice! Beware of local imp infestation! Imps appear without warning to monopolize your day without any thoughts to the consequences! Do not encourage or repeat behavior will occur! Also, will drink all your alcohol and then not replace it! If seen, contact local authorities! Imp likeness below!¡±
Beneath the writing was a doodled caricature with a large head as big as its entire stumpy, short-limbed body. The ¡°imp¡± had bright eyes, mischievous eyes; a wicked, toothy grin; and long, sharp-looking ears. It also just so happened to have a hairstyle that matched his. The little figure appeared quite cute, or so at least he thought.
¡°Hehe, look at this scoundrel. I suppose I should be flattered that you made me so roguish and charming,¡± Tehlmar chuckled. ¡°Wait a minute... I replaced all the booze I drank the last time!¡±
¡°No, that was three times ago now,¡± Arlette replied as she pushed herself back to her feet.
Tehlmar paled. ¡°Was it really?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s just say I¡¯ve been keeping track, and you owe me replacement booze five times over now. You wanted to spend the day with me, didn¡¯t you? Why don¡¯t we start by having a little chat.¡±
Tehlmar coughed to hide his wince. ¡°Well... um... I mean...¡±
The door to the hallway unleashed a loud, disruptive buzz, and he let out a relieved breath.
¡°Ugh, I asked Lord Ferros to make it easier to hear but he made it too loud,¡± Arlette groaned. She tried to cross the room but staggered after a step.
¡°Wait, let me,¡± Tehlmar told her as he caught her before she could fall.
After helping her to the neat spinning chair, he made his way to the door on the opposite side of the room and opened it. On the other side stood the one person he didn¡¯t want to see.
¡°Oh great, it¡¯s you,¡± he drolled.
¡°That¡¯s my line,¡± Sofie Ramaut shot back. She sighed. ¡°Well, I guess this will make things quicker, at least. Are you going to move out of the way and let me in or not?¡±
If he¡¯d had his druthers, the answer would have been a resounding ¡®not on your life¡¯, but it was not to be. With an exaggerated flourish, he stepped aside.
¡°Hey Arlette,¡± she said with a sniff, then a second, longer sniff. ¡°What smells so sweet in¡ª¡± She froze, her eyes going wide. ¡°Is that an office chair?! What? Why? How? When?¡±
¡°Lord Ferros gave it to me. He said it would help me work, but in my experience, that was a lie.¡±
She spun the chair around slowly, perhaps as a demonstration.
¡°He didn¡¯t give me an office chair,¡± Sofie fumed. She paused and shook her head. ¡°I¡¯m getting distracted.¡±
¡°Right. So, what brings you here today?¡± Arlette inquired.
¡°Well, I came because I need your help with something. Though actually...¡± She gave Tehlmar a side-eyed glare. ¡°What I really need is his help.¡±
¡°Nope,¡± Tehlmar immediately declared, crossing his arms in defiance. ¡°Don¡¯t know what it is but I¡¯m not helping you one bit.¡±
¡°How surprising,¡± she snorted.
¡°Tehlmar, you¡¯re older than the both of us combined, yet you¡¯ve been acting like a child far too much today,¡± Arlette told him sternly. ¡°Come on, now.¡±
¡°It¡¯s going to be something stupid or pointless, and we have things to do today,¡± he argued back.
¡°I don¡¯t remember agreeing to your plan just yet.¡±
¡°B-but Letty! I bought seats already and everything!¡±
¡°Hear her out at least and I¡¯ll consider it.¡±
¡°Alright, alright.¡± He turned to Sofie. ¡°Make it quick.¡±
Sofie looked back and checked the door, seemingly to make sure it was closed, which it was. ¡°First, I need you two to swear that you won¡¯t tell anybody what I¡¯m about to say¡ªespecially you, Mister Boozy McRamble.¡±
¡°No promises.¡±
¡°Alright, both of you, knock it off,¡± Arlette snapped. ¡°Seriously, why is it that you two turn into little brats when you¡¯re around each other these days? It¡¯s far too much aggravation for me to deal with right now. Sofie, you have my word and his that this won¡¯t leave the room.¡±
She sent Tehlmar a withering glare to drive home her words and he reluctantly nodded.
Sofie sat down on the edge of Arlette¡¯s bed and met Tehlmar¡¯s gaze. ¡°I need you to help me find the Mother of Nightmares. You know where she lives, right?¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s eyes narrowed and he felt a sudden anger rise inside him. ¡°No. No, I don¡¯t care what your reason is. You leave her alone, you hear me? She¡¯s just an old woman who¡¯s done nothing to you. You leave her the fuck alone.¡±
¡°Damn it all, Tehlmar, this isn¡¯t what you think¡ª¡±
¡°Yeah? Then what will you do if I tell you where she is? What¡¯s your next move? You going to go over there and work your magic on her or something?¡±
¡°It isn¡¯t like that!¡± Sofie insisted.
¡°Then why won¡¯t you answer the question?¡±
¡°Because you won¡¯t let me you¡ª¡±
¡°Enough! I¡¯m getting sick of this crap from both of you!¡± Arlette cut in. ¡°Tehlmar, calm down for a fucking moment and let her speak! Sofie, answer his question.¡±
¡°But¡ª¡±
¡°Answer the question or I¡¯m kicking you¡ªno, both of you¡ªout of my room and locking the door for the rest of the day like I apparently should have from the start.¡±
Sofie hesitated. ¡°We... uh... we need to... um... kind of... kidnap her.¡±
¡°I knew it!¡± Tehlmar cried.
¡°For good reasons!¡± Sofie shouted over him. ¡°It¡¯s not like I want to do this, but we have to before she explodes!¡±
Tehlmar and Letty shared a confused glance.
¡°Look, it¡¯s a really long story but the end result is that we have deduced that, in all likelihood, she¡¯s going to explode. Not just her. Me, Blake, Gabby, the man in Stragma¡ªall of us from Earth. We¡¯re going to blow up.¡±
¡°What exactly do you mean when you say ¡®explode¡¯?¡± Tehlmar asked, not entirely wanting to know the answer.
¡°You remember that dragon in Zrukhora? The one that turned the whole city into nothing but a giant crater?¡±
The two of them nodded. After all, how could either of them forget such a terrible, chilling day?
¡°Like that, but way, way, way, way bigger. Like, society-ending, world-ending sort of explosions.¡±
Tehlmar¡¯s blood went colder than the ice at the peak of the Divide and he took an unconscious step away from the girl. ¡°Wait, what?! Why?! How?! When?!¡±
¡°It¡¯s complicated and we can explain it all later. There¡¯s a lot we do not know, including how much time we have left before one of us goes off. What we are sure of is that just being here on Scyria makes us vulnerable to... popping.¡±
¡°So if just being here makes this happen, does that mean you can¡¯t stop it?¡± Arlette inquired.
¡°For all we know, not even death will stop this; Blake has it on good authority that souls linger in this world for years after the body dies. There¡¯s no guarantee that our corpses won¡¯t erupt well after we die. That¡¯s why we need to find the Mother of Nightmares and the man in Stragma. We need to get everybody together in case our one hope somehow succeeds.¡±
She laughed, somewhat sad and mournful.
¡°Remember when I made you promise to help me get home? That¡¯s our plan. That¡¯s the only hope we have: that somehow we can find or build a way out of Scyria entirely.¡±
¡°So your plan is just... to leave?¡± Tehlmar repeated, a realization forming in his mind.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Sofie nodded. ¡°We have no idea how to solve the problem here, and we¡¯ll never know for certain that any fix we try fully worked. There would always be the chance that we think we solved the issue, only to find out the hard way that we were wrong. That¡¯s part of the problem. We wouldn¡¯t know we failed to stop it until it¡¯s too late. The only way to make absolutely sure is to get us all out of Scyria entirely. For good.¡±
¡°Well, what are we waiting for?¡± Tehlmar asked. ¡°Give me a map and I¡¯ll tell you everything you need to know. Location, layout, the works.¡±
Sofie stared at him for a moment, seemingly unable to understand what he¡¯d just said. ¡°...Really? That easy?¡±
¡°Well, how am I supposed to take Letty to a show or a picnic or whatever if you destroy the world? I can¡¯t have that, now can I?¡±
¡°I...¡± Sofie coughed. ¡°Right. Well... I wasn¡¯t expecting this to go so smoothly. I, uh, have to go eat first, and Gabby¡¯s busy with something right now. How about we meet in one of the meeting rooms downstairs in two hours?¡±
¡°Sounds fine to me.¡±
¡°I¡¯m coming too,¡± Arlette definitively announced. ¡°Somebody has to keep the two of you from each other¡¯s throats.¡±
¡°We wouldn¡¯t dream of it!¡± Tehlmar declared.
Arlette rolled her eyes. ¡°I¡¯m sure.¡±
¡°Alright, I guess I¡¯m going to go, then,¡± Sofie stated, heading for the door. ¡°See you later. Oh, actually, do either of you have any maps? I wouldn¡¯t trust the old ones left here from the old Otharian regime further than I can throw them.¡±
¡°I have one,¡± Arlette told her.
¡°Alright. Bye.¡±
¡°You sure agreed quickly,¡± Arlette said once it was just the two of them left. ¡°What¡¯s going on? Your day plan is done for, and yet, you¡¯re almost giddy. What are you plotting now?¡±
¡°Me? No, no, nothing whatsoever, I swear! I can always make new plans another time. It¡¯s not that big a deal, really.¡±
She gave him a skeptical look. ¡°Is that so?¡±
¡°That is indeed so. Anyway, we have a few hours, so it¡¯s not like my plan needs to be entirely scrapped. Why don¡¯t I at least show you this one place I found on the south end while we wait? I bet their lunches are just as good as their dinners.¡±
Arlette stretched her arms up high and let out a grunt. ¡°Yeah, sure. I could use some food, anyway. Give me a moment and I¡¯ll meet you outside.¡±
Tehlmar left Arlette¡¯s quarters with a smile on his face. Yes, it seemed like his plans for the day were largely in tatters, but that was alright. A ruined day with Letty for a world without people like Sofie in it was a trade he¡¯d gladly make every single day.
Four people sat in a small room around a circular table, deep in discussion. A map of Drayhadal had been spread out in the table¡¯s center, the parchment worn but the markings upon it still legible.
¡°Where did you even find a map of Drayhadal in Otharia?¡± Sofie asked Arlette during a lull in the conversation.
¡°I didn¡¯t. I swiped it from the Eterians before we left Crirada, along with maps of everything else I could find. You learn quickly in the mercenary business that it¡¯s always handy to have a good map around, and my previous set was lost along with the rest of our stuff when that dick pulled his stunt with the Severed.¡±
¡°Makes sense,¡± Sofie nodded. ¡°Not that this map looks too great.¡±
¡°Well, what do you expect? It¡¯s Drayhadal.¡±
¡°Can you two quiet down for a little?¡± Tehlmar asked through a mouth full of half-chewed sandwich. ¡°I¡¯m trying to concentrate. This is hard enough without the noise.¡±
¡°That would be more convincing if you didn¡¯t say it while stuffing your face,¡± Sofie shot back.
¡°And waste all the food I bought for the picnic that didn¡¯t happen because of you? No, thanks. I lost enough money on the tickets.¡±
Staring intently at the northwest quadrant of the map, he had to admit that Sofie was correct in this case. There was no way that his people would have allowed outsiders to survey their lands, which was why the ¡°map¡± of Drayhadal consisted of nothing more than the outline of the nation¡¯s borders and its four capital cities.
Somehow, he was supposed to pinpoint the Mother of Nightmare¡¯s home¡ªa place he¡¯d visited all of twice¡ªon this blank parchment using nothing but the approximate location of Esmaeyae and his somewhat-vague memories.
Silently, he worked through the directions Artiermius had given him, which had done a fine job of getting him there both times. To make it easier on himself, he sliced a finger and extruded a small line of blood from it, which he formed into a thin, zig-zagging line just above the parchment. As he went through each step, he added his mental approximation of it to the line.
Five leagues south... then take the smaller of the two dirt roads southeast... three villages, then straight east, then...
Soon, he had narrowed it down to a certain area. That area was as much a guess as it was an estimate, but he wasn¡¯t going to tell them that.
¡°Here,¡± he finally announced, circling a spot in the middle of nowhere southeast of Esmaeyae.
¡°That is a very large circle,¡± Arlette noted.
¡°It¡¯s the best I can do with what I have,¡± he insisted. ¡°Give me a real map, and I¡¯ll narrow it down.¡±
¡°They say it¡¯s a poor carpenter that blames his tools,¡± Sofie commented.
¡°It¡¯s a stupid customer who asks a carpenter to build a cabinet with only a single stick and dried garoph shit,¡± he fired back. ¡°Look, there¡¯s pretty much nothing out there but grass and maybe two villages, so it shouldn¡¯t be hard to find. Just look for the single building atop a hill out in the middle of nowhere.¡±
¡°It will have to do,¡± Arlette decided with a frown.
¡°If you say so,¡± Sofie conceded.
¡°So, what now?¡± the Monster wondered. ¡°Should I just go fetch her? Wouldn¡¯t take a day, as long as I can find her quickly enough.¡±
Not for the first time, Tehlmar noted the quiet confidence the woman displayed. The two of them had not interacted very often since he¡¯d arrived in Wroetin, partially because their schedules and activities kept them away from each other, and partly¡ªreluctant as Tehlmar was to admit it¡ªbecause she terrified him.
She didn¡¯t look especially intimidating at a glance¡ªjust an ordinary woman in her prime, the sort you might find in most any human city in Scyria, one hand holding onto a rambunctious four-year-old¡¯s arm and the other cradling a basket of freshly-washed laundry as she maneuvered her way home through the busy city street. A closer inspection, however, revealed the hard, muscled body hidden beneath her outfit¡ªan outfit that seemed chosen largely to hide her build, he suspected. Still, try as she did to appear unremarkable, she still set off Tehlmar¡¯s threat instincts as loudly as anybody he¡¯d ever met.
The art of reading another person had been drilled into him as a child in the Masked Battalion training facility. They¡¯d trained him for years on how to observe all manner of physical and verbal cues and make a snap assessment of a person¡¯s traits, trustworthiness, and the like, for such determinations were invaluable in spycraft. Unlike others there, it hadn¡¯t come easy, and his instructors had considered his skill lacking even upon his ¡°graduation¡±. Yet, over the course of decades wandering from one battlefield to the next, where he¡¯d crossed blades with thousands of opponents and come out alive each time, his mediocre skills had combined with his years of combat experience to form something altogether different: an ability to judge somebody¡¯s threat level. In other words, while he still wasn¡¯t the best at knowing if a person could be trusted to not stab him in the back, he¡¯d know almost immediately just how well they¡¯d be able to thrust the dagger when they did.
It was that finely honed instinct that had told him¡ªcorrectly, in his view¡ªthat Sofie would be little more than dead weight in their escape to Stragma, while the tiny Pari was far more dangerous than she seemed. And it was that same instinct that screamed at him that this woman was known to many as ¡°the Monster¡± for very legitimate reasons and that he should stay as far away from her as he possibly could.
Maybe it was that Tehlmar had never seen anybody less afraid in his life. Every person carried at least a kernel of fear in their hearts¡ªeverybody except this woman, apparently. Or, perhaps it was the weapon she kept with her, that massive black crystal roughly shaped like a blade with an edge so sharp that it could slice through metal with ease. Even now, as it stood propped up in the corner point down, he could see how it had sunk at least a finger¡¯s width into the cold metal floor.
All the stories Arlette had told him didn¡¯t help, either. She¡¯d told him all about her rampages, from the siege of Crirada to the time of Pari¡¯s death, when, lacking a weapon, she¡¯d simply ripped people apart with her bare hands. Arlette had been very clear: while she might seem friendly and normal enough, she had a line that, if crossed, would transform her into something he didn¡¯t want to witness. Where that line lay was not entirely clear, and so Tehlmar would do best to step carefully and watch his mouth.
Tehlmar fully intended to follow his beloved¡¯s advice. He had already perished one too many times for his liking.
¡°And how would you do that without being hit by her powers?¡± Sofie asked, speaking aloud the question he was also thinking. ¡°She¡¯d knock you out before you could get within a hundred meters of her.¡±
¡°Only if she sees me coming. Strike at night when she¡¯s asleep. Get in faster than she can react, knock her out before she wakes up, grab her, and get out.¡±
Arlette shook her head. ¡°That¡¯s a lot of things that have to all go right. Any one of them goes sideways and you might not just fail; you might not even make it out.¡±
¡°Oh, come on, so she gives you a bad dream or whatever,¡± the Monster argued. ¡°How bad could it be?¡±
Tehlmar and Arlette shared a silent look.
¡°The thing is, even if you make it inside without waking her up, you¡¯re going to need to potentially hurt a poor old woman,¡± Sofie pushed back. ¡°Are you prepared to do that, Gabby? You might even hurt her or even kill her by accident. Elderly people are fragile¡ªespecially women. Ever heard of osteoporosis?¡±
The Monster frowned, uncomfortable. ¡°I thought you could make some sort of knockout gas I could use.¡± She looked Tehlmar¡¯s way. ¡°What about you? Aren¡¯t you a spy or something?¡±
¡°The only chemical he¡¯s good with is alcohol,¡± Arlette interceded.
¡°Then, Pari?¡±
Now it was Sofie¡¯s turn to look uncomfortable. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t want to get her involved with this,¡± she said. ¡°She¡¯d ask too many questions, anyway.¡±
¡°You haven¡¯t told her?¡± Arlette inquired.
¡°What am I supposed to say, ¡®Hey, sweetie, I¡¯m going to possibly explode and leave you alone even though I promised you I¡¯d be with you forever?¡¯ She¡¯d run away crying or something and then Sam would find out and then everybody would know. Blake said to keep it a secret, and so that¡¯s what I¡¯m going to do until I have something better to tell her.¡±
Arlette sighed. ¡°Maybe you¡¯re right.¡±
¡°Maybe I¡¯m missing something,¡± Tehlmar chimed in, ¡°but don¡¯t we have a perfect solution for this already? Your boss¡¯s machines don¡¯t have a mind, right? Wouldn¡¯t that make them perfect for this?¡±
¡°It¡¯s a bit more complicated than that,¡± Arlette explained. ¡°First, there¡¯s a pretty long delay between what you see and what is actually happening. What you see already happened a good handful of moments ago, so you can¡¯t give quick orders.¡±
¡°How long of a delay are you saying?¡±
¡°Depends on how far away it is. If her home is in that circle, then... maybe six, eight breaths. Somewhere around there.¡±
¡°Oof.¡±
¡°Exactly. The second issue is that all the images come from the airship, and that makes it nearly impossible to command the skitters inside a building where I can¡¯t see them. Third, I don¡¯t have much confidence that they won¡¯t just crush her when they try to seize her. These things are not built for delicate work.¡±
¡°Can¡¯t the boss man just... I don¡¯t know, make something to solve those problems?¡±
¡°Some of them, surely,¡± Sofie told him, ¡°but he¡¯s being moody and he¡¯s busy anyway with his side of all of this. We were trying to think of other strategies we might be able to go with instead of just relying on him.¡±
¡°Well, we tried, but I don¡¯t think there are any other good options at this point,¡± Arlette stated.
¡°I agree,¡± the Monster added.
¡°Fine, I¡¯ll call him over,¡± Sofie sighed. She walked over to a box embedded by the chamber¡¯s door and hit some buttons. A moment later, a tinny voice spoke out of the box, letting loose an unintelligible squawk of words with an indignant tone.
¡°Yes, yes, I know you¡¯re busy, but we need your help,¡± Sofie replied. Tehlmar caught how her speak changed to something somewhat different from how she usually talked.
The unintelligible voice, which he recognized as Lord Ferros, said something back, something impatient. Left without the ability to comprehend the words, he was forced to rely on the speak coming from the box and make determinations on tone alone.
¡°The four of us are planning out the mission to snatch the Mother of Nightmares and¡ª¡±
A sudden question, sharp and pointed.
¡°Me, Gabby, Arlette, and Tehlmar.¡±
A burst of exasperated words gushed forth.
¡°Well, he¡¯s the only person we know who knows where to find her, and you might be shocked to learn that knowing the location is rather important with this sort of thing. And there was no way he would cooperate without her. That¡¯s life, Blake.¡±
Another question, even more exasperated.
¡°Of course I told them! Did you think I could have convinced them to help me cause an international incident by abducting an old woman from her home with nothing more than ¡®just trust me¡¯?¡±
An irate reply, short and snarky.
¡°If you¡¯re going to throw a fit like a child over a simple request like this, I¡¯m going to treat you like one.¡±
A sigh, followed by a tired question.
¡°And maybe I¡¯d be able to tell you if you¡¯d stop complaining for one second and let me talk.¡±
A grumble of gruff capitulation.
¡°We¡¯re going to need special skitters designed to capture old ladies without harming them¡ªsomething that won¡¯t break brittle bones but won¡¯t let her run away. Also, we need a solution for the fact that she¡¯ll be indoors and there¡¯s no way good to control your robots from the Toaster when there¡¯s a roof blocking your view.¡±
A warning, or a reminder.
¡°Yes, that goes without saying. Delay or not, it would still be better than trying it blind.¡±
A reluctant concession, and then another weary question.
¡°That¡¯s basically it. Oh, make the retrieval robots smaller so they can fit through the halls and doorways without taking the whole house down. I¡¯d rather not collapse the roof and kill everybody inside.¡±
Agreement, followed by a short, dry statement, and finished by what was clearly Lord Ferros ending the conversation.
¡°Yeah. Thank you.¡±
She turned back to the rest of them. ¡°He¡¯ll make the special delicate skitters and he¡¯s going to hook up their front cameras so we can see what they see. He says he¡¯ll have it done in a few hours.¡±
¡°So, then... if we send the ship out as soon as it is ready, it should arrive in that area at around half-past two in the morning. Seems we can try tonight,¡± Arlette noted.
Sofie nodded. ¡°Tonight it is.¡±
¡°I mean... you simply sit there? That¡¯s it?¡±
¡°For the last time, yes. I fail to see what is so perplexing about this, Tehlmar,¡± Sofie scoffed as she leaned back in a large, high-backed chair too big for her. She rested her head on her left hand, her left arm propped up on one of the oversized armrests as her right cradled a panel of buttons and dials. ¡°Even you¡¯re not this stupid.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t insult somebody who is volunteering to help us,¡± the Monster chimed in from another chair of similarly silly proportions nearby.
Tehlmar frowned and decided to ignore the whelp¡¯s sorry attempts at provocation for the moment. Scratching the back of his head, he looked around once more at the various ¡°screens¡± covering the walls of the chamber. Moving pictures shone from each of them, their images striking him as off-putting and unnatural. It was as if somebody had taken the conjurations of a group of Manys and flattened them until they had the depth of a piece of paper, then framed them and hung them all around the room like a set of paintings.
¡°I¡¯m not confused; it just didn¡¯t truly hit me until now how... easy it all is. I¡¯d always thought there had to be some amount of work going on behind the scenes and I just wasn¡¯t allowed to see it. I never imagined it was as simple as hitting a few buttons and people die! It¡¯s... it¡¯s¡ª¡±
¡°Terrible,¡± Sofie interjected.
¡°¡ªincredible!¡± he finished at the same time, paying no heed to the hostile glare sent his way. ¡°It changes everything! Do you know how much work goes into the logistics of even a minor battle? The transportation, the food, all of it? It¡¯s enormous!¡± He chuckled. ¡°That¡¯s why I always let Arlette handle all that.¡±
¡°I handled it because you¡¯d spend most of the budget on booze and gamble away the rest,¡± Arlette told them, giving his ear a nasty flick with her finger. ¡°You¡¯re right though. It completely reshapes every facet of battle and warfare as a whole.¡±
¡°Kind of impersonal, though...¡± he added. ¡°Battle is supposed to be a contest of wills¡ªyou against your opponent, putting everything you have on the line to come out on top. Not something like this. This is too... too clean.¡± A frown grew on his face as he reconsidered and his mood grew sour. ¡°I¡¯ve changed my mind. I don¡¯t like this after all. It¡¯s not war; it¡¯s just killing.¡±
¡°What¡¯s going on? Have the moons aligned?¡± Arlette asked the Monster. ¡°They¡¯re agreeing with each other.¡±
¡°A true miracle,¡± the Earthling replied, ¡°but one that I doubt will last more than a minute. Either way, today will hopefully not involve any killing whatsoever.¡±
¡°Surely you don¡¯t think the guards won¡¯t try to stop us?¡± Tehlmar questioned.
¡°They can try, but I don¡¯t see how they can stop a wave of massive metal robots rushing towards them. Those things are as heavy as they look¡ªI would know, I¡¯ve lifted more than my fair share of them. All the guards combined probably weigh as much as a single skitter, and the airship has a whole bunch of those. Just rush in, snatch her, and leave. I¡¯m honestly more worried about knocking over too many walls and collapsing the building.¡±
¡°We¡¯ll be careful,¡± Sofie assured her.
Arlette hummed in thought. ¡°At least all the help will have left. The manor should be empty other than the Mother of Nightmares. It would limit the guards¡¯ options, as well. If they get too close, they will be hit by her dreams, yes?¡±
Tehlmar nodded.
¡°That¡¯s true,¡± Sofie responded. She hit a button and one of the images switched to a map of Drayhadal. A long, thin oval crept slowly across the nation from right to left towards a colored oval that stood for the area he¡¯d circled on the cloth map that afternoon. She looked towards Tehlmar, a twinge of nervousness in her eyes. ¡°Are you sure you can¡¯t give us anything more specific?¡±
¡°For the last time, no. I cannot make something from nothing. I fail to see what is so perplexing about this, Sofie.¡±
The Monster turned to Arlette with a wry smile. ¡°See? Only a minute.¡±
¡°The peanut gallery can shut their traps,¡± Sofie shot back. ¡°With everything he¡¯s said and done to me, I could make his life a living hell and he would deserve every last bit of it.¡±
¡°Big words from a big mouth,¡± Tehlmar scoffed.
She shot him a death glare, or at least her attempt at one. It didn¡¯t phase him in the slightest. ¡°Watch it! You¡¯re lucky that I¡¯ve sworn to avoid using my power from now on because I¡¯ve known for a long time now exactly what I¡¯d say to you first.¡±
¡°Yeah?¡±
¡°Yeah! Tell me, Tehlmar, do you like to poop?¡±
He scoffed. ¡°Not particularly. What sort of threat is...¡± A chill ran through him as he followed her insinuation to its conclusion. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t. You don¡¯t have the spine to do something like that.¡±
¡°You keep telling yourself that. All I¡¯m saying is that, should the situation with my power change, you¡¯ll be the first person I visit.¡±
Arlette let out a quiet little sigh. ¡°Both of you calm down before I make you calm down the hard way! Sofie, while I have no doubt he¡¯s been quite a jerk to you, let¡¯s concentrate on the mission at hand right now, yes?¡±
¡°Psh, fine,¡± Sofie replied, crossing her arms and looking away to performatively pout.
Tehlmar looked between the two of them in silent confusion. Had Sofie not told Arlette of his and her various... notable interactions? Given the girl¡¯s blabbermouth tendencies, he¡¯d always assumed that everything he¡¯d ever said and done to her¡ªeverything from when he¡¯d tried to chase her off on the day they¡¯d first met to the time she¡¯d threatened to castrate him with a broken bottle¡ªhad been relayed immediately to Arlette¡¯s ears. Perhaps his assumption was wrong? What would cause her to stay silent?
¡°And honey,¡± Arlette continued in a way that was just a little too sweet and made his hair stand on end, ¡°what happened to the hardened, focused mercenary I used to know? Because all I see right now is an immature disappointment.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± Tehlmar immediately replied, chastised and ashamed. She was right. He was older than everybody else in the room combined, and he should be the mature one who ignored distractions and paid attention to the mission at hand. In fact, he had been that person for years, back when he¡¯d been under the guise of Jaquet. Nothing stopped him from channeling that professionalism now except his own will.
Behind Arlette, Sofie smirked at him and flicked her wrist like she was cracking a whip. For a moment, he saw red. To think that bitch had the gall to call him whipped when she bent over backward every day for a spirits-be-damned child! But no! He caught himself and forced himself to calm down before it showed on his face. That twerp wasn¡¯t going to get to him anymore tonight, no sir. But later... oh, she¡¯d regret this. He didn¡¯t know how just yet, but he had plenty of time to figure something out. And if she ever tried to use her powers on him, well... he couldn¡¯t be held responsible for what would happen next. He had a right to self-defense.
The next quarter-hour was filled with the very familiar tension of an army waiting for a battle to begin, making small talk as they waited nervously for the promised time to arrive. It was a feeling he¡¯d experienced more times than he could count over decades of fighting, and even though the venue was very different, he found that the atmosphere remained strikingly similar. Practiced veteran that he was, he helped himself to a drink of water and let the time pass.
Soon enough, it was time, and the room grew quiet. All eyes were focused on the images displayed on the walls, each of them showing a scene one would see when riding in Lord Ferros¡¯s flying contraption¡ªone from somebody looking down from the front, another from the left side, etc. Tehlmar didn¡¯t know how the metal man was able to take such sights and show them here, so many leagues away, but it didn¡¯t matter much to him. He did find himself wishing that the images weren¡¯t silent, however. The lack of noise made everything he was seeing feel all the more unreal, as if what was about to happen was little more than a dream.
Luck was on their side, as the night was clear and the winds were gentle. Still, that was not enough to make things easy. The search area was many leagues in all directions. Moment after moment trudged along as they searched in the moonslight for something, anything, to guide them or narrow their search. Finally, after more than half an hour of fruitlessly looking at slowly passing terrain, they got lucky once more.
¡°Stop! There!¡± Tehlmar cried out, pointing at an image from the right side of the ship. ¡°See that?¡±
¡°What, that big stone with the hole in it in the ravine?¡± the Monster wondered. ¡°That doesn¡¯t look like any home I¡¯ve ever seen.¡±
¡°No, no, I remember this place. This is where I stopped to eat lunch the one time. We¡¯re close. Head south-southeast, maybe nine or ten leagues, and it should be there.¡±
¡°Excellent. Good job,¡± Arlette told him as she adjusted course, and he had to admit that her praise made him flush with pride.
Maybe Sofie was right. Maybe he was whipped. Well, there were worse things to be.
¡°Is that it?¡± Arlette asked sometime later, pointing at one of the side screens.
Tehlmar squinted at the tiny shape sitting atop a small hill far below and off in the distance. ¡°Yeah, that looks like it!¡±
¡°Adjusting destination and altitude,¡± Arlette said to nobody in particular as she fiddled with her control panel. Of all the people here, she was the only one who had any experience controlling the flying machine, and the rest of them were quite happy to leave her to it.
A few long moments after she finished her adjustments, whatever they were, the images all simultaneously began to spin, and Tehlmar had to close his eyes as the sight made him feel queasy for some reason. He opened his eyes again only when he heard Arlette say, ¡°Opening bay doors.¡±
The view had shifted, and they were hovering just outside of the Mother of Nightmare¡¯s large rear garden, complete with hedgerows and a collection of small ponds. If he had to guess, they were flying at most two hundred paces above the ground, giving him a grand view ahead of them of the Drayhadans¡¯ vaunted botanical prowess under the light of the three moons. Yet, something seemed off.
¡°Hold on,¡± he told her, grabbing her arm. ¡°Something¡¯s not right.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Go up.¡±
¡°I¡¯m about to release the¡ª¡±
¡°Move higher, quickly! I need to see more. This is important.¡±
Arlette looked around at the others, who looked back at her with unsure faces. With a twinge of pride, he watched as Arlette mentally switched into a leadership role and took charge.
¡°Tell me what¡¯s wrong,¡± she commanded, her hands flying around her control panel as she ordered the flying ship skyward. ¡°We don¡¯t have time to waste. If you can¡¯t figure out what¡¯s bothering you in less than a moment, we¡¯re going back in.¡±
¡°Hold on, I need to see,¡± he replied, staring hard at the screens around him, waiting for them to start to move. ¡°Damn it all, it¡¯s so dark!¡±
Arlette clicked something and, one interminable wait later, the images lit up in a bright, harsh white light that cast thick shadows across the landscape.
¡°Oh, right,¡± Sofie muttered. ¡°Of course he¡¯d put lights on it.¡±
¡°There!¡± Tehlmar pointed at a shape on the upper right. ¡°Can you move closer? I need a better look.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll try,¡± Arlette allowed, punching in some command that wouldn¡¯t show for another few breaths, ¡°but pinpoint maneuvering is hard enough with this thing without the delay. It¡¯s going to take a bit. This had better be good, Tehlmar. We¡¯ve lost all element of surprise at this point.¡±
Soon, the view on that screen shifted, sliding upward and slowly zooming in.
¡°When did you get so good with the Toaster¡¯s systems, Arlette?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°It¡¯s one of the most important tools for my job,¡± she answered. ¡°It¡¯s only natural that I would need to know how to use it to its full potential.¡±
The Monster let out a low grunt as the zoom came to a halt. ¡°Is that a body on the ground there?¡±
¡°Looks like a soldier,¡± Arlette observed. ¡°Shit! I¡¯m sending the skitters down now. We can¡¯t lose any more time if there was an attack.¡±
Tehlmar hummed in thought. The image before him didn¡¯t seem entirely in line with what he would have expected. After a moment, he placed it. ¡°Can you keep looking while you do that? The guards there worked in squads. There should be more nearby.¡±
Talented as she was, his request proved simple to accommodate. Not long after, Tehlmar had his confirmation.
¡°Three more dead!¡± Sofie gasped.
¡°No, they aren¡¯t dead, they¡¯re out cold,¡± Tehlmar corrected her. ¡°Look closer. There¡¯s not a spot of blood to be found, and they all seem fully intact. And see how none of them even have their weapons drawn? They weren¡¯t attacked... in a normal way, at least. Also, notice how far from the manor they are? That¡¯s about where I would have guessed their nighttime positions would be.¡±
Arlette went still, her thoughts following his. ¡°But then, the only other explanation is...¡±
She bent forward, her full attention now devoted to managing the machines that were just now landing on solid ground and sending them towards the silent manor. The floating craft lurched slightly, likely from a sudden gust, revealing a second group of collapsed elves in the same condition as the first.
He nodded. ¡°Right. The Mother of Nightmares did this.¡±
¡°What? But, why?¡± the Monster wondered. ¡°Aren¡¯t they there to protect her?¡±
¡°Well, it¡¯s hard to say without anything to go on. Perhaps she was attacked by an assassin and they were just in the crossfire,¡± Tehlmar offered, thinking back to his two visits to the old human¡¯s lodging. ¡°Still, I rather doubt that was the case. If I had to bet, she hit them on purpose¡±
¡°You think she¡¯s making a run for it,¡± Sofie stated.
¡°I do. Either way, we¡¯ll know for sure in a moment.¡±
¡°Way ahead of you. She¡¯s not inside,¡± Arlette confirmed, her gaze swapping between several screens, each containing images of what her machines could see. They stomped through various empty rooms, none of which contained a certain wrinkled old woman. ¡°I can¡¯t find her anywhere.¡±
Chapter 125
Air worked itself in and out of Mizuko¡¯s lungs in shuddering gasps and heaves. Her legs wobbled like gelatin, and her head felt like it was going to split open from the pounding sensation within her skull. Her chest felt like it was on fire.
Mizuko staggered to a stop by the half-decayed remains of a small tree and lowered herself onto the felled trunk. Living trees were a rare find on the plains that made up much of north-central Drayhadal. The winds grew quite harsh when storms swept through, and the harshest gusts found within had the strength to uproot or downright snap the trunks of any trees foolish enough to grow anywhere on these plains outside the most ideal, sturdy, and nutritious ground. This tree was one of those foolish ones, though it had survived longer than most, long enough to grow thick enough that its trunk could be used as a seat in a pinch. Still, like all the others in the end, it had overreached and paid the ultimate price.
Her body trembling as feeling slowly seeped back into her numb limbs, Mizuko felt a kinship with this tree; it seemed that she, too, had overreached. Though revitalized to the point where she felt as she remembered feeling in her early seventies, her body was still over a hundred years old. There were limits to how hard and long she could push her body, and she had overestimated how long it would take for her to reach those limits. In just a few hours, she¡¯d already driven herself to the point where she felt like she could barely move, and she could feel exhaustion lurking like a stalking predator just out of her vision.
Still, what choice did she have? The time when the guards surrounding the manor where she¡¯d lived since coming to this world would wake up from their involuntary sleep fairly soon. She and Vura had to get as far away as they could before then.
Speaking of Vura, the comely elf stood to her side with a massive pack filled with food and other supplies on her back and an expression of concern on her face. Though covered in sweat, her breath was steady and strong. All those days spent on her feet running about the manor to finish some chore or fulfill one of Mizuko¡¯s selfish requests had done her good.
¡°Madam, allow me to carry you!¡± the girl desperately pleaded once again. ¡°I fear you will not last like this! You must preserve yourself!¡±
¡°I will be fine in a moment,¡± Mizuko replied, her words coming in bits and pieces as she tried to get her breathing under control. Needless to say, her delivery betrayed the lie that was her claim.
¡°Please, Madam Mizuko! Look!¡± She reached out and grabbed Mizuko¡¯s hand and sandwiched it between her palms. Vura¡¯s hands radiated a pleasant warmth. ¡°See how cold you are? You must stop this!¡±
¡°It¡¯s not time for that yet. You¡¯ll be too tired when Pyria¡¯s troops show up later.¡±
¡°I will manage; you are lighter than you realize. Otherwise, we¡¯ll have to slow down too much and we¡¯ll be found too quickly.¡±
Mizuko sighed. Being carried around reminded her of her final years on Earth, where she¡¯d been too weak to walk and had needed to be wheeled or carried anytime she needed to leave her bed¡ªeven just to use the facilities. Stubbornly, and perhaps stupidly, she¡¯d wanted to avoid feeling that helplessness again for as long as possible. Right now, however, she had lacked the luxury for stubbornness nor stupidity.
¡°If we must, then I will allow it,¡± she reluctantly conceded.
So much of her behavior these days seemed driven by aversions to the experiences of her final years. This entire escapade was a perfect example. Her final years had seen her confined by her own failing body to her family home or the local hospital, and that was it. A feeling of being trapped had grown inside her over the years to the point where it made her want to cry, but there¡¯d been nothing to be done about it. Her body would not permit any sort of travel.
Now, however, she possessed a far more able body, and a world filled with wonders to see. Was it any shock that a similar feeling of confinement had taken root inside her after a while? Sure, she¡¯d been able to travel around much of the Esmae clan territory, from her manor to Esmaeyae and all of the surrounding towns, but she wanted more¡ªmuch more.
And so, her and Vura¡¯s secret planning had begun. Finding the opportunity had proven trivial. Every night, all the manor staff would leave and head for their homes in the quaint little village several kilometers away. Meanwhile, the night shift guards would set up a large perimeter far enough from Mizuko that her dreams wouldn¡¯t reach them. Vura, ever the loyal and wonderful girl, was always the last person to leave, meaning they already had plenty of time to conspire each night away from prying eyes and ears.
Once Mizuko had decided to leave, the first question had been, obviously, what her destination¡ªno, their destination, as Vura vehemently insisted on accompanying her¡ªshould be. Unfortunately, it turned out that good options were scarce. The other clans of Drayhadal were right out--too close, and liable to spark a civil war. As much as she would have liked to see the Casm¡¯s laketop capital, or the Astr clan¡¯s great city built into the side of an active volcano, she couldn¡¯t justify the potential blood on her hands.
Stragma was out for similar reasons. Assuming the forest dwellers didn¡¯t simply try to kill her for her past deeds, her relocation would probably spark another war between the two nations. As much as she wanted to get an up-close look at the fabled tree that towered over the rainforest, it wasn¡¯t worth the likely harm. Oh well, she¡¯d never dealt well with humidity, anyway.
That left only Eterium. The state of that war-torn nation remained unclear; Drayhadans typically cared little for the affairs of the ¡°barbarians¡± outside their borders. The attack against the invading Ubrans had changed this for a time. The returning soldiers had come back to Drayhadal bearing stories and experiences, which had spread all across the public, including the manor staff, and then finally to her ears. Unfortunately, these stories were now months old, and no new information had come since. The eyes and ears of the Drayhadans had turned inward once more.
In the end, even given how unclear the state of affairs was there, heading north towards Eterium remained the only viable option. Unfortunately, they were not the only people capable of coming to this conclusion. Pyria would know their general heading the moment she learned of their disappearance in a few hours, and the Esmae army had the trackers and scouts to confirm her suspicion with swift ease. That was why, when Vura and Mizuko talked about upcoming events, the framing was never if they would be found but when and where. In the end, the success of their unannounced journey would come down to brute force and an unwanted confrontation.
It wasn¡¯t the best of plans, but she¡¯d learned long ago that if you did not enter the tiger¡¯s cave, you would never catch its cub. What¡¯s more, knowing what was coming meant a narrowed focus for her power training. Ever since that first disastrous night, Mizuko had been trying to find a way to better control her ability. Every evening, she would devote the period between when the servants left and the start of her bedtime routine to training her control.
Progress came slowly, perhaps glacially. The biggest reason was that she had little actual sense of the extent of her ability, especially the aspects of it that she wanted more control over. To truly know if she was making progress in her control of factors such as the size of the area affected or the intensity of the effect, she needed volunteers¡ªpeople to get hit by her visions, report, and then do it again later.
Unsurprisingly, few were eager to volunteer for such punishment. Not even offers of money were enough to entice the more destitute locals to stick around after experiencing her ability once. Only Vura possessed the right combination of loyalty, stupidity, and a lack of self-preservation to willingly sign on for repeated abuse. She claimed that each subsequent mental assault affected her less than the last, and that experiencing ¡°her Madam¡¯s¡± memories helped her connect to Mizuko on a deeper level. Clearly, Vura needed to get out more and meet other people.
Still, Mizuko was always glad for Vura¡¯s near-constant presence. The elf was ever reliable and made pleasant company. After all that had happened to her, up to and including being mutilated by jealous rivals, Mizuko would have expected Vura to be a bitter husk of a woman, but she was not. That was a kind of strength that Mizuko herself did not possess, and she could not help but sometimes envy the younger woman¡¯s ability to smile so brightly.
It was thanks to Vura¡¯s assistance¡ªonly once every week, at Mizuko¡¯s insistence¡ªthat Mizuko had developed even the modicum of control she now possessed. She could contract or expand the area a bit now, which was how she¡¯d managed to disable the guards, who would normally be safe outside her supposed maximum range. She¡¯d also managed to develop one other technique that would be crucial should they be caught. However, the one thing she wanted the most, the ability to sleep and dream without hurting everybody nearby, still eluded her.
¡°How did they find us so fast?¡± Vura panted, staring out at the ring of soldiers encircling them. There were hundreds of them, all spread out and making sure to keep a far distance, well away from Mizuko¡¯s maximum known threat range.
¡°I don¡¯t know. Perhaps she was waiting for us to make a move this whole time,¡± Mizuko suggested. She began to climb down from Vura¡¯s grasp, and her companion did not resist.
¡°What do we do?¡±
¡°We wait.¡±
¡°But what about the plan?¡±
¡°Pyria will want to talk first, I¡¯m sure. It is what she is best at. Out of respect, I will give her one more chance to make this right.¡±
Sure enough, they soon spotted a small party consisting of a Many, a handler, and their escort slowing heading their way. Vura valiantly placed herself between them and Mizuko, even though, as nothing but an average Feeler with no combat training or experience, she wouldn¡¯t stand a chance against any one of the soldiers protecting the Many. Mizuko appreciated it all the same.
The party came to a halt near them, but not close enough to feel threatening. While the soldiers all had a massive combat advantage, Mizuko noticed how incredibly nervous they seemed, from their movements to the glints of sweat beading on their foreheads reflected in the moonslight.
They were afraid of her, she knew. Their mannerisms matched how she imagined a bomb squad would act when tasked with approaching and disarming a live explosive primed to go off at any second. And what better metaphor was there for her but a bomb?
Everybody here had heard of her and what she could do; perhaps some of them had even experienced it firsthand. With luck, the other soldiers further away were just as anxious. The fear her ability generated was one of the two cards in her hand, the other being the ability itself. Hopefully, playing the former would remove the need for playing the latter.
A hazy image appeared in front of the party, quickly solidifying into the upper half of the woman Mizuko once called a friend.
¡°Is this the thanks I get for all I have done for you?¡± she asked instead of greeting, as if she were a parent addressing a perpetually disobedient child.
The woman¡¯s manner brought forth a flash of indignation within Mizuko. ¡°Do not talk to me as if I have betrayed you suddenly. You have known my feelings for months and have done nothing. After our last ¡®discussion¡¯, I stayed true to my word and gave you more than enough time to work something out. Instead, all you have done is stall with excuse after excuse. You have no intention of letting me go anywhere. You want me here not as a friend, but as a weapon under your control.¡±
Pyria snarled with barely controlled rage. ¡°How dare you speak to me that way!¡±
¡°You¡¯ve changed, Pyria,¡± Mizuko stated, her voice hard as steel, though on the inside, she could not help but mourn the apparent death of their relationship. She would miss those days, filled with respect, friendship, and tea, but those days were over now.
¡°Silence! Don¡¯t speak of what you don¡¯t understand! If this is how you want it, then fine! You are too powerful! I will not stand by and allow you to fall under another nation¡¯s control! Captain, seize her!¡±
The captain¡ªand the rest of the party¡ªhad progressively become more and more alarmed as it became clear where this short conversation would end up. The captain nodded shakily and met Mizuko¡¯s eyes with a silent, desperate plea for cooperation.
Mizuko returned his gaze with unwavering determination. ¡°Captain, know that I do only what I must.¡±
She could see the warring incentives dueling behind his eyes, but there was no doubt which side would emerge victorious. The immediate danger that she represented would not win against honor, obligation, and the enduring threat of punishment to him or his family.
¡°My greatest apologies, Lady, but we can only say the same.¡±
¡°Then so be it.¡±
Mizuko closed her eyes.
Mizuko held on tight as she bounced against Vura¡¯s chest and shoulder, doing her best to vigilantly watch their surroundings as they sped northward as fast as her companion could run. Far behind them, maintaining a wide gap, were the majority of the troops who¡¯d surrounded them an hour prior. While Vura could run at an impressive clip¡ªrelative to Earth norms, at least¡ªthe soldiers matched their pace with ease. Some groups even sped ahead, circumventing Mizuko¡¯s threat radius with their vastly superior speed to lay ambushes ahead. It was these fun surprises that Mizuko had to keep an eye out for.
As if on cue, she spotted a squad of elves leaping out at her and Vura from a nearby rocky outcropping, nets and what she thought might be a bola ready to go. They were fast, far faster than Vura could ever hope to be, but not faster than thought. Drawing up another experience from her deep well of memories¡ªthis time, the anguish she¡¯d felt watching her favorite baseball team lose the championship in tragic, heartbreaking fashion¡ªshe focused with all her mind and let loose. The attacking troops dropped like sacks of grain, their restraints still stuck in their grasps, as Vura sped by unmolested.
This was the special trick that she and Vura had discovered about two weeks ago, the technique that let them truly believe they could succeed. On that night, while wrestling with her powers with Vura, she¡¯d accidentally discovered that she could create a dead zone around herself where others would not be affected. There were large caveats to it; at less than three meters around, the area was tiny, and it took every drop of concentration she had to maintain. Still, it meant she could defend them both without disabling Vura along with everybody else, which meant they could keep moving. And if they could keep moving, then they stood a chance. All they had to do was make it across the border.
This was, she knew, still a long shot. The border was not just over the next hill; they still had many kilometers of plains to go, followed by more kilometers of mountainous and hazardous terrain before they would find safety and freedom. Vura¡¯s stamina was her greatest strength, but she would begin to flag well before they reached the mountains. They would have to stop periodically to rest, eat, and replenish their strength, during which time Pyria¡¯s people would have ample time to do whatever they wanted, as long as they stayed out of her range. And, of course, there could be no sleeping until they reached their destination, however long it might take.
That was the plan at least, though she was reminded of a quote she¡¯d seen in an old war movie once which went something like ¡°no plan outlasts first meeting with the enemy¡±. How much longer would their plan hold? Not long, it turned out. Just moments after passing the last ambush, disaster struck. Maybe it was because carrying Mizuko for so long had worn her out, or maybe it was nerves brought about by a highly stressful situation, or maybe she just couldn¡¯t see her footing well enough with Mizuko partially blocking her view. Whatever the reason, Mizuko felt the shock run through Vura¡¯s body as her foot hit something hard suddenly and unexpectedly.
Unable to correct herself mid-sprint, Vura stumbled and fell forward. Twisting desperately, she managed to avoid falling atop Mizuko with the combined weight of her body and the gargantuan pack strapped to her back, but in the process, she lost her grip on the old woman.
Mizuko tumbled uncontrollably from Vura¡¯s grasp, and could only brace herself as the ground rushed towards her. The left side of her head and body struck the hard ground like a sack of potatoes.
Mizuko couldn¡¯t think. Pain lurked in the background, somewhere, but she could barely even process that. The world around her was little more than a mishmash of unintelligible colors in front of her eyes and a roaring in her ears growing louder by the second.
What was going on? Where was she? She¡¯d been doing... something... with somebody? And things were... significant? She felt like she needed to do something, but what it might be was currently beyond her.
There was one set of sounds that seemed louder than the rest, one that kept repeating with increasing urgency. Slowly, her mind focused on the sound.
¡°-up! Please! Madam Mizuko! Wake up!¡±
Mizuko let out a soft groan and shook her head to clear her mind. It only partially worked.
¡°Oh, thank the founders you¡¯re awake! They¡¯re coming! And that thing! It¡¯s almost upon us!¡±
That thing? Mizuko followed the elf¡¯s gaze upward toward the sky. Something floated up above, growing in size with every breath: a muted gray oblong shape cast in the red glow of the imminent sunrise, its many propellers churning against the stiff breeze. Belatedly, she recognized it as the craft they¡¯d seen flying by, far off in the distance, some weeks past¡ªthe clear creation of somebody from her world.
¡°Madam, we must run!¡± Vura shouted over the rising din, and only then did Mizuko notice the wave of Esmae troops closing in quickly. They¡¯d gotten quite close during her short period of discombobulation, and she could see the flush of imminent victory on their faces.
Mizuko tried to climb into Vura¡¯s outstretched arms, but a sharp shooting pain lanced through her left shoulder and she dropped to her knees. It seemed she¡¯d broken something in the fall.
¡°Madam Mizuko!¡± Vura cried in alarm, her panic deepening.
It seemed she had no choice but to use her powers again. But what of the people in the craft above, who were also close enough to be hit? They could only be working with Pyria, Mizuko decided after a moment. How else would they be here at this time? Their involvement would even answer how the Esmae had found her faster than expected.
Yes, Vura would have needed to stop for a rest eventually anyway. Why not now? With many of the Esmae troops now within her range, she could disable a large portion of the force chasing her, rest for a spell, and hopefully figure out what to do about her shoulder before¡ª
The earth quaked as a dozen massive metal forms slammed into the ground all around the pair, drawing a terrified ¡°EEEK!¡± from Vura as the resulting tremors threatened to knock her off her feet. Arrayed in a loose ring encircling them, the gray shapes unfurled, legs and arms extending, until the hulking machines towered over the oncoming elves. Understandably, the Esmae troops hesitated over their sudden arrival.
Was she wrong? Were the creators of these robots helping her?
As one, every machine turned to the pair. Their fronts sported several large arms held out away from their center, each equipped with an equally large weapon, from what looked like giant guns to what were clearly brutal, oversized chainsaws. Yet, what caught her eye were actually the smaller arms in the center. Long and thin, with dexterous-looking, multi-articulated graspers on the ends, they each held something tight: a net.
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They weren¡¯t on her side after all.
Vura wrapped her arms around Mizuko and held her close, leaning over her so Vura¡¯s body blocked the encroaching metal marauders. ¡°I-I¡¯ll shield you, Madam!¡± she squeaked. ¡°Save us, quick!¡±
Vura was right. She¡¯d gotten so discombobulated that she¡¯d forgotten what she should be doing! Focusing through a steadily increasing headache, she pulled once more upon her the threads of her past.
The machines closed in.
Despite how hard Mizuko tried, she couldn¡¯t filter out the drone of the propellers. It had been this way for her on airplanes too. She¡¯d always hated this sound, ever since the war¡ªtoo many bad, painful memories. It didn¡¯t help that, no matter how loud or quiet, and no matter where in the plane she might be, her ears always seemed to fixate on the engine noise and place it front and center. It grated on her and fouled her mood¡ªnot that she needed the racket to be in such a mood right now.
Everything that could have gone awry had gone awry, plus more. Instead of gaining their freedom, it seemed they¡¯d been scooped up by another party, trading one jailer for another. These new people, whoever they might be, had yet to show themselves, leaving her to stew for hours and watch the ocean through the large window slowly. A few hours ago, for a moment, she could have sworn she¡¯d glimpsed something beneath that sapphire surface¡ªsomething so utterly massive that she could not grasp its full size¡ªbut that moment had been fleeting, and she¡¯d spotted nothing else since. There was nothing down there to see now except blue, blue, and more blue.
Speaking of entities she could not see, it was possible they were not as alone as it seemed. She knew there was always the chance that somebody else was actually on this aircraft and she¡¯d rendered them unconscious, but she had her doubts. Anybody on this thing would have been taken out when she¡¯d used her powers back then, but the robots had continued to function even afterward¡ªthe ship, as well. That suggested some sort of remote control.
Were her deduction incorrect, the affected person or people would be waking up right around now. Then, perhaps, she¡¯d get some answers. What was the purpose of these people¡¯s actions? Why had they ¡°rescued¡± her from the Esmae, only to whisk her off somewhere else? She didn¡¯t know, though she had to reluctantly admit that her lack of understanding could be laid at least partially at her feet.
In the center of the cabin wherein the robots had deposited her and Vura, there stood a small circular table. On that table were several items: a covered metal pitcher of water and some metal cups; several small, lidded bowls containing snacks; and a sheet of paper covered with English writing and a drawing of a smiley face at the bottom. It was a shame she couldn¡¯t read English.
There¡¯d been a time, back in the mid-seventies, when she¡¯d been able to speak the language well enough to roughly understand her neighbor¡¯s American husband, but that had faded after decades of disuse. Reading, on the other hand, she¡¯d never really learned; she¡¯d never had the opportunity nor the need. Her children and grandchildren, having grown up in a world far different than hers, were all better English speakers at their worst than she¡¯d been even at her best.
That left only the smiling doodle. It boded well, she supposed, but she was hardly feeling charitable at the moment¡ªnot after the day¡¯s events.
The boredom, combined with that incessant drone, wasn¡¯t helping much either. There just wasn¡¯t anything to do here except watch the scenery or sleep, and sleeping would mean hurting Vura. The poor girl could be found passed out on the cabin¡¯s single bed¡ªmore of a fancy cot than a bed, really, given how narrow it was.
Mizuko couldn¡¯t help but feel guilty for involving her in Mizuko¡¯s scheme. The elven woman could have lived a perfectly decent life had she just stayed back at the manor. Now with serving experience, she could have gotten another job elsewhere in the Esmae territory and made a decent living as a servant in some rich household. She might even have been able to leverage her designation as the Mother of Nightmares¡¯s attendant to wrangle a better-paying position or spark a bidding war between wealthy households eager to snatch up as status symbols anybody favored by the hero who¡¯d saved the land from the barbaric Stragmans.
Instead, she¡¯d decided to throw that all away and help Mizuko escape, even though there was little for her in even the best of the potential outcomes. She¡¯d pushed herself to the absolute limit, risking life and limb, all for Mizuko¡¯s sake. Now, as Mizuko studied the elf slumbering like the dead and drooling into the pillow, the gratitude Mizuko felt was deeper than the ocean.
A twinge of pain hit her as she twisted too far in her effort to check on her sleeping companion. She was fairly certain that the fall had given her a hairline fracture. The level and character of the pain reminded her of the time she¡¯d suffered a similar injury in her leg back in ninety-four. She could handle the aching for the most part if she just kept weight off her shoulder and didn¡¯t move much, but that was about her limit.
Mizuko spent a few moments probing the limits of her shoulder¡¯s motion range, finding the points where the pain became intolerable so that she could make sure to avoid them later. The people responsible for this craft slowly pushing through the sky would not leave them alone forever. At some point soon, they would meet face to face; perhaps it was her pride getting in the way, but when that time came, Mizuko did not want to let the others see her pain. A samurai pretends, even when he is hungry, by holding a toothpick between his teeth, as the saying went.
As she probed, she considered her surroundings once more. This place was not meant for the both of them, that much was clear. A single bed, a single chair upon which she currently sat, and enough food for one person to consume over the course of several hours. Looking at everything there, it was hard not to think that the people who¡¯d taken her had not planned on Vura coming along for the ride. What would have happened had the elf not protected Mizuko with her body, saving her from much of the force of the nets? Would Vura have simply been left behind to face the incensed Esmae soldiers and their irate clan head alone? Mizuko shuddered to think of how that might have turned out.
No, she had enough to reckon with without adding already avoided hypothetical scenarios to the mix. Trying to realign her thoughts, she returned her gaze to the sea. The water and sky had adopted a hint of golden hue since she¡¯d last looked outside, as the sun was starting to set somewhere behind the dirigible. Her gaze wandered for some indeterminate amount of time, until, as the now orange world beyond the glass began its transition towards scarlet, she noticed something else far off in the distance: land.
As this landmass grew nearer, she saw in the dimming light a landscape that reminded her of Greece and Crete, one of the few international destinations she¡¯d managed to see back in her old world. Though the plant life here retained the multi-colored appearance of Scyrian foliage, rather than the simpler greens of the Mediterranean, the ecological patterns appeared largely the same. Rocky hills spotted with short bushes and lesser plants dominated what she could make out, with few trees, at least this close to the shore.
She noticed something else, as well: the droning was deepening. They were slowing down.
¡°Vura,¡± she called. No response followed. Rising from her seat, she strode over to the slumbering elf and poked her on the cheek with her pointer finger. ¡°Vura, wake up.¡±
With a massive gasp, Vura shot upright, panting and looking around at the cabin in a momentary panic. It wasn¡¯t until she turned and spotted Mizuko that she seemed to remember where they were.
¡°Feeling better?¡±
Vura nodded.
¡°You sound thirsty. Have some water before our hosts arrive.¡±
¡°Madam?¡± Vura asked, still rather confused.
¡°The engines are easing up and we¡¯re slowing down. That means we¡¯re close to our destination, and to the people who put us in here.¡±
¡°What should we do?¡±
¡°We wait. As it is now, we¡¯re at a disadvantage. They¡¯ve already shown that they can deal with us from a distance I cannot match. We must handle this with care.¡±
Vura nodded.
Soon enough, they were no longer above open water. Yet strangely, as the ship slowed to a crawl, they could not spot any signs of habitation nearby. A moment later, to her consternation, Mizuko found herself looking out at an empty beach while the zeppelin hovered motionless over the shore.
Vura¡¯s ears twitched. ¡°Madam, I hear something,¡± she said, pointing towards the zeppelin¡¯s rear.
Mizuko strained her hearing, but she detected nothing. ¡°Are you sure?¡±
¡°Yes, the timbre of the acoustics changed. It sounds more open now, like I can hear the wind better. There¡¯s also something else, like an... unwinding? No, it stopped now. I¡¯m not sure what it¡ªwait! It¡¯s back. But it sounds different. Slower, now.¡±
A few tense moments later, a loud ¡°chunk!¡± reverberated from the same direction as Vura¡¯s gaze.
¡°The timbre went back to before, more closed off,¡± Vura reported. ¡°I¡ª! I hear footsteps!¡±
¡°How many?¡±
¡°...one.¡±
Only a single person? Such confidence! Whoever dared come to visit her alone was surely a powerful person in their own right. What sort of person would they be? A towering knight, perhaps, able to turn themselves to stone? A poised lady of noble bearing, capable of summoning lightning? Or maybe the creator of this craft himself, the supposedly brutal dictator of this nation?
The footsteps became audible to her as they approached. They moved slowly and lightly, coming to a sudden halt outside the locked cabin door. After a fairly lengthy pregnant pause, a chime rang out from the door, followed by several polite but insistent knocks.
¡°May I come in?¡± a rather young adult female voice asked, muffled but still understandable through the metal barrier.
Vura and Mizuko shared a puzzled, yet trepidatious glance. The elf once again stepped between her and the latest threat. While her protection was likely superficial at best, Mizuko still appreciated the gesture of support.
¡°Enter,¡± Mizuko called back.
A moment later, the door slid open, revealing a startling normal-looking girl of European descent with long black hair and tired eyes. The only thing of note was the strange metal collar wrapped around her throat, the function of which eluded Mizuko¡ªa fashion statement, perhaps? The girl stepped inside and held up a large wicker basket grasped with both hands.
¡°Hello!¡± she said, giving them a warm but nervous smile. ¡°I brought food! I have plenty of meat pies and yellow partha leaf salad and gnotta¡ªthat¡¯s fried dough paired with a dip made of fermented willow reed bulb. I¡¯m sorry, Otharian cuisine leaves something to be desired in my opinion, but I got what I could. Hopefully, it¡¯s enough for everybody. I¡¯m really sorry about grabbing both of you, but the commands aren¡¯t that refined even without the delay and¡ª¡±
¡°Child, it is considered polite to introduce one¡¯s self first when meeting new people,¡± Mizuko couldn¡¯t help but chide, her tiredness weakening her wall and letting her irritation break through.
The girl gasped. ¡°Oh! Yes, I¡¯m so sorry!¡± she blurted, putting the basket down on the small table. She gave a slight bow and Mizuko noticed the weariness in her eyes. Perhaps Mizuko wasn¡¯t the only person worn out right now. ¡°My name is Sofie Ramaut. It¡¯s so good to finally meet you!¡±
The girl stepped forward and extended a hand. Like a flash, Vura stepped in between, practically growling with pent-up fury. With a startled ¡°eep!¡±, Sofie stumbled back.
¡°Calm yourself, my dear,¡± Mizuko said, placing a hand on Vura¡¯s shoulder.
¡°I don¡¯t trust her, Madam.¡±
¡°Neither do I, but there is no need to be rude.¡± She gave Sofie a slight bow. ¡°I am Yamanaka Mizuko. This is my companion, Vura. Please forgive her; she¡¯s quite a delightful young lady when not being chased, captured, and confined against her will.¡±
¡°Yes, we¡¯re very sorry about that. Were you able to read the note I left you? I tried to explain what I could there,¡± Sofie asked sheepishly, holding up the paper with the unreadable writing and happy face doodle.
¡°I cannot read English.¡±
¡°Ah... well, it was worth a shot. I¡¯m sorry again. We just didn¡¯t know how else to do it. Negotiating with your country wouldn¡¯t get us anywhere. If anything, it would just tip them off, and then who knows what would happen to you?¡±
¡°And what would push you to go to such lengths?¡±
¡°It¡¯s a long story,¡± Sofie began, letting out a tired sigh. ¡°How about I explain everything while we eat? I haven¡¯t eaten yet, either.¡±
¡°A fine idea,¡± Mizuko agreed.
Sofie pulled out the aforementioned dishes, along with a set of wooden plates and utensils. The cot was too narrow to be a bed for two, but it made a decent makeshift bench with Sofie sitting down in the single chair. Taking a plate, Mizuko helped herself. Luckily, she had little issue placing the plate on the table and filling it with her good arm.
¡°I¡¯m sorry the food is rather cold,¡± Sofie lamented. ¡°We used up too much stored energy tracking you down, so we had to run the engines at half-speed the whole way back. We hadn¡¯t planned on making you sit around for so long.¡± She gave Vura a quick glance. ¡°We hadn¡¯t planned on a lot of things. Actually, that reminds me. I¡¯m sure you¡¯d prefer we get to our destination as soon as possible, right?¡± She stood up. ¡°I¡¯ll be right back.¡±
Sofie left the cabin and, a minute later, Mizuko heard the drone of the propellers pick up again. The craft shifted and they began to move once more.
¡°Alright, we have another hour or so before we¡¯re in Wroetin,¡± Sofie said as she returned. She picked up her meat pie and bit into it, which drew a less-than-pleased expression across her face. ¡°Wish Blake had bothered to work out how to make a microwave.¡±
Mizuko didn¡¯t entirely agree; while cold, hers still had a quality savory flavor, along with a spice that reminded Mizuko of rosemary that she very much enjoyed. But, while tasty, the food was a distraction from what she needed most¡ªinformation. ¡°Well then, Sofie, let us begin with this. If you know of microwaves, then you are from my world, yes?¡±
¡°Yeah!¡± Sofie replied, then paused, thinking for a second. ¡°Well, probably. We can¡¯t really rule out that there are multiple Earths with slightly different realities, I suppose. Never really bothered to compare my history with the others, really. But yes, there¡¯s probably only one Earth and we¡¯re both from it. I¡¯m from Belgium. You¡¯re Japanese, right?¡±
¡°I am. How many others are there?¡±
¡°Well, there¡¯s you, me, Blake from America, Gabriela from Mexico... that¡¯s all of us here. Then, there¡¯s somebody in Stragma that kind of looked Indian to me? Probably? I didn¡¯t get to speak to him and I wouldn¡¯t want to jump to conclusions. There was one other we know about, but he¡¯s dead now, and then there might be any number of others we aren¡¯t aware of, though I kind of doubt we wouldn¡¯t have heard something about them by now.¡±
¡°Why did you capture us? Why are we here?¡±
¡°Well, first, I want to apologize again. I am really sorry about all of this. We¡¯re all sort of improvising as we go along, and things did not exactly go according to plan. But anyway... long story short, we discovered something terrible and we discovered it just recently. The only solution we can find is to get everybody from Earth together and leave Scyria for good.¡±
¡°You¡¯re going to have to be more specific than that, child.¡±
¡°As I said, it¡¯s long and complicated, so it¡¯s really better to just see it all for yourself when we get to Wroetin. You will likely come to the same conclusion once you see everything we¡¯ve found. If not, well... that would be nice. It would be better if we were wrong.¡±
¡°What if I don¡¯t want to leave?¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡±
¡°Do you know why you found me in the middle of nowhere, running from the Esmae army?¡±
¡°Tehlmar guessed you wanted to escape his sister.¡±
¡°Oh, that uncouth prince is alive? I was told he died in battle.¡±
Sofie frowned. ¡°It¡¯s complicated.¡±
¡°Well, anyway, you are essentially correct. I don¡¯t want to spend the rest of this new life I was given cooped up in a building. I want to see the wonders of this world while these old bones still move. I spent more than enough years stuck in a bed back home for two lifetimes. Now that I am finally free, you wish to lock me away again?¡±
¡°I didn¡¯t say anything about locking anybody up. Nobody wants to lock anybody up. We Earthlings need to help each other. Heck, perhaps you might even be able to convince Blake to make you a vehicle to make your tourism traveling easier. He won¡¯t do it for free, though¡ªjust letting you know. He¡¯ll want your help with the project.¡±
Mizuko¡¯s curiosity and annoyance grew in tandem each time Sofie mentioned this still-unexplained reason that had upended her life today. By now, it had grown too strong for her to hold back. ¡°You are all quite intent on this goal of yours. I would like to know why.¡±
¡°As I said, it¡¯s complicated and it would be best if¡ª¡±
¡°Simplify it if you must. I promise I will look at whatever it is you want me to see later.¡±
Sofie shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ¡°Well, if you insist, I guess the simplest way to put it is... we¡¯re all filled with massive amounts of Earth energy and, at some point, we¡¯re going to break and explode and destroy the world.¡±
Mizuko hesitated, not quite sure she¡¯d heard the girl correctly. She had not been expecting something quite so... apocalyptic. ¡°So you believe that, by returning to Earth, we can restore the balance within us?¡±
¡°Exactly! You catch on quick.¡±
¡°That would bring death upon me, I should think.¡±
Sofie¡¯s expression grew grim, and Vura gasped in shock. ¡°Madam!¡±
¡°I was dying when I came here,¡± she explained. ¡°Something about this place made me healthy again, healthier than I¡¯ve been in decades, but I would not imagine that will last should I return home.¡±
¡°Do not listen to her lies, Madam! She is up to something, I know it!¡±
¡°No, Vura, she believes what she says, at least.¡±
¡°Then we¡¯ll find another way! Some solution that won¡¯t end your life!¡±
¡°I would welcome that, my dear. But if, in the end, there are no other options, I will not allow my selfishness to doom this world. Sometime, Vura, I will share with you the tale of Hiroshima, a city from my homeland. I will not allow that sort of horror to be visited upon this world if I can help it. I will return.¡±
¡°But¡ª!¡±
¡°Hush. I have lived a very long life¡ªfar longer than nearly everybody in my world. I can only be thankful that I have been given a life so full. My time will come eventually, and when it does, I will face it with a smile.¡±
¡°We¡¯re still working on finding a way home, so it¡¯s not like we¡¯re talking about leaving tomorrow,¡± Sofie chimed in. ¡°We just need you and everybody else ready as soon as we find it¡ªand we could use any help you could provide, of course. Still, I doubt anybody will try to stop you from taking the occasional trip. I just hope you will be careful. It¡¯s...¡± Her tired eyes dulled as she seemed to recall something. ¡°It¡¯s not the best world out there. I also got a tour of much of the continent, but there wasn¡¯t much worth seeing, really. Just a lot of blood and death and misery.¡±
¡°It sounds like you had it hard.¡±
¡°You could say that. I arrived in this world in the middle of Kutrad, up north. The first people I met chained me up and sold me to a brothel as a sex slave.¡±
¡°How horrible!¡± Mizuko gasped, horrified, and Vura, despite her opinion of the Earth girl, let out a low hiss.
Sofie chuckled, but the sound lacked any real mirth. ¡°Funny thing is, in many ways, that was a high point of my life here. I escaped before anything truly terrible happened to me, but everything just got worse and worse from there.
¡°First, a dragon turned the city I was in into a crater. Then, the king of Kutrad accused my friends of being responsible for it all. Legions of bounty hunters stalked us across the continent, all the way from Kutrad to Stragma. Everybody wanted to get their hands on us for the reward. There was even this one time when a farmer drugged us all and then strangled me half to death.¡±
Mizuko couldn¡¯t believe what she was hearing. This girl, surely not more than twenty years old, was speaking of trauma that would scar anyone for life, but she was speaking of it with the glum tone of somebody who¡¯d discovered that the leftover sandwich they¡¯d planned to eat for lunch had gotten moldy. Mizuko knew about trauma, far more than anybody should have to know, and this struck her as incredibly disconcerting.
¡°And how could I forget about when we finally made it to Stragma, then hiked through a rainforest filled with bugs bigger than my head, only to be conscripted into a war against the elves the moment we arrived?¡± Sofie continued almost nonchalantly. ¡°Then there was the Drayhadan prison camp, followed by us getting captured and carted all the way back to Kutrad to be executed in front of the whole country. Oh, and once we got out, I got to live in a city under siege and eat pest lizards while praying every day that my friend came back in one piece. So yeah, Scyria is just a basket of puppies and flowers.¡±
Alarms kept blaring inside Mizuko¡¯s head. Just how strong did this girl have to be to not just live through all these absurdly deadly situations but do so seemingly unharmed? The odds of her survival had to be minuscule at best! Just what sort of obscene power did she possess to talk of this series of events like she were describing a bad day at work?
Mizuko didn¡¯t say any of this out loud, of course. She wasn¡¯t stupid. She¡¯d long known on some level that Scyria was a world where the weak were meat and the strong ate, and Sofie¡¯s tale had only underscored that. However, it was also told her that this principle applied to her fellow world travelers just as much as it did to those born here.
Meanwhile, Sofie shrugged and took a sip of water.
¡°It wasn¡¯t all bad, I suppose. I got to see a few stellar sights, like Ruresni¡ªthat¡¯s the mountain-sized tree in the center of Stragma. I also made friends and gained a sister, Pari. Speaking of Pari, I¡¯ll apologize now in advance for her behavior. She had a very... unique upbringing and isn¡¯t exactly up to speed on matters of etiquette, so please forgive her when she sees you and yells out ¡®Old lady!¡¯ or something, would you?¡±
Mizuko chuckled. ¡°She wouldn¡¯t be the first child to say something like that to me. My great-grandchildren were hardly better when they were young. Children these days...¡±
Mizuko had set her empty plate upon her lap as she conversed, and her laughter jostled the plate just enough to send it slipping. The soft clank of the wood hitting the metal caught everyone¡¯s attention. Mizuko bent down to retrieve it, but Vura had the same idea. In their uncoordinated efforts, Vura accidentally lightly bumped Mizuko¡¯s injured shoulder, sending a stab of pain through it that forced her to wince.
Sofie gasped in horror.
¡°You¡¯re hurt! Oh no, I¡¯m so sorry!¡± Like a flash, the girl was out of her seat and in Mizuko¡¯s face. ¡°Is it bad? What happened? Was it the robots? It was the robots, wasn¡¯t it? I told Blake they needed to be gentle! I told him, and he didn¡¯t fucking listen, like always! That¡¯s it! I¡¯m going to sock him in the face again¡ªno! One punch isn¡¯t enough this time. I¡¯ll beat his goddamned face in!¡±
The girl¡¯s sudden transition to seething anger caught Mizuko by surprise. It was as if a geyser of anger and frustration had burst forth from a seemingly peaceful landscape, long-buried emotions finally finding a crack and spewing forth. It served as a timely reminder that she hadn¡¯t known this girl for more than an hour, and that she couldn¡¯t afford to be comfortable around her or her compatriots just yet¡ªespecially not somebody as powerful as this girl.
Mizuko kept these thoughts under lock and key, decades of experience coming through. She decided that the most important thing she could do right now was to try to calm their host down before something unfortunate could occur.
¡°It is fine, Sofie. It¡¯s not too serious,¡± Mizuko assured her.
¡°It¡¯s not fine! And how can you say it¡¯s not serious when you were in pain just from a light bump of the shoulder?!¡±
¡°I am not as fragile as I once was. I will recover in time, as long as I receive medical attention soon.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll get a doctor as soon as we arrive, but... if we hurt you¡ª¡±
¡°You did not; I fell before your ship arrived. If you wish to apologize, do so to Vura, who shielded me from your robots with her body.¡±
¡°Ah... I see...¡± Sofie shifted uncomfortably, then turned to Vura. ¡°I apologize for any rough treatment you received at our hands. Blake¡¯s robots are not exactly delicate. I told him to create some that would be able to take a person without harming them, but in our rush, I did not get the opportunity to actually check them myself. I was so upset when I saw the nets...¡±
Vura crossed her arms and looked away. ¡°The bruises will be healed in a day. I do not need your sympathies,¡± she sniffed.
¡°Oh... well, good. That¡¯s good.¡± Sofie finally seemed to relax somewhat, her body drooping slightly from weariness. ¡°I¡¯m sorry for overreacting. This place... I¡¯m just so sick of seeing people get hurt or worse.¡±
Mizuko nodded with an understanding smile, but behind her mask, she couldn¡¯t help but wonder just what sort of situation she¡¯d stumbled into. It wasn¡¯t just the nature of what Sofie said and admitted to¡ªfrom her mention of castrating a royal sovereign to her comments about being sick of watching others get hurt ¡°or worse¡±¡ªit was the way she said it. It sounded as if Sofie had experienced enough suffering in her short time on this world to match Mizuko¡¯s entire life, yet she spoke of it as if she were almost numb to it all. Mizuko had been given the luxury of decades to learn to heal, and she still had nightmares sometimes, especially when stressed. Here was this child speaking as if it was all normal to her now¡ªa terrible kind of normal, but still the standard state of affairs. The only anger Mizuko had witnessed had been for Mizuko¡¯s condition. Everything else merely left Sofie tired.
What in the world had Mizuko gotten involved in? It brought about a question Mizuko never thought she¡¯d ever consider: would it have been better if she¡¯d just stayed at the manor?
Chapter 126
To say that Vura Nimilow Esmae was in a foul mood was the understatement of a lifetime. The last few days had been stressful, painful, and exhausting beyond words. She¡¯d been shot at, hunted, attacked by metal monsters, and practically run into the ground... all for what? All those nights of planning, all those days spent worrying that they would be discovered before they were ready... had there even been a point to any of it?
If she were to be honest, Vura had never wanted to leave Drayhadal¡ªno sane Drayhadan would. Everyone knew that the barbaric societies that populated the lands outside their haven were filled with bloodthirsty savages lacking even a semblance of culture or refinement. What even was there to see? Streets covered in the filth of animals? Laughable attempts at farmland? Or perhaps, the crude stone castles they were supposedly so proud of that they attacked each other for the right to control them? Who would want to go and see that, especially since you were as likely to end up gutted on the street by a random passerby as you were to make it to your destination? No, there was little reason to leave Drayhadal, in her opinion.
Her opinion, however, mattered little. As nice and civilized as a life with the Casm or Kechou would have been¡ªnot the Astr; far too dirty for her or her Madam¡ªit was not her role to choose. Her Madam wanted to see the world, and that was that. Vura¡¯s role was to follow, to assist, and to serve. This was something she¡¯d known and accepted from the moment she¡¯d agreed to Madam Mizuko¡¯s offer, and she did not regret her choice.
Vura¡¯s life had fallen to pieces well before her Madam had even arrived on this world. Born the third daughter of a local patrician, she¡¯d spent her studying the arts, beautifying herself, attending local parties and salons, and other activities meant to make her as appealing a bride as possible. Apparently, she¡¯d done a little too well.
She¡¯d never forget that terrible day. Her head had been in the clouds all morning, ever since she¡¯d heard rumors that the son of the region¡¯s administrator¡ªconsidered by most to be the most desired prospect available¡ªfancied her and was considering courtship. Still a naive young woman, she¡¯d never considered what that rumor might push her competition to do until the hired thugs were holding her down, their instruments of brutality gleaming in the moonlight.
Everything had crumbled to dust from that point. No longer able to conceive a child, her prospects of marriage were now zero. Gone were the dreams of high-status matrimony; not even a pauper would court her now. Her utility destroyed, she found herself deemed by her father as nothing more than a disappointing failure and a burden upon the family¡¯s finances and reputation. Soon after her body had fully healed, he cast her out on her own with only a small pouch of coin to her name.
Vura still did not know which party or parties had hired the attackers. In some ways, it didn¡¯t matter; all the possible families were too crafty to leave enough evidence to build a case and too well-connected to face consequences even if she somehow did find something incriminating. In other ways, Vura didn¡¯t care who did it. Having a name to blame wouldn¡¯t make her whole again. It wouldn¡¯t take away the sting of knowing that she¡¯d been seen by her own family more as a bargaining chip than a person worth loving. The damage was already done, her life and future destroyed.
The following few years had been a steady spiral downward, deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit of despair. Lacking employable skills, financial support, and a place to live, life had been harsh and she¡¯d suffered immensely. The things she¡¯d had to do and have done to her just to survive were, well... she preferred not to think about that any more than necessary.
Then, one day while washing her clothes far outside the latest town she¡¯d wandered to, her fateful meeting with her Madam had occurred, and everything had changed. Vura hadn¡¯t even recognized her Madam as a human at first, thinking it some sort of small, wrinkled, hunched-over gremlin. Only after thinking about it when going to report her sighting did she realize that the figure had been a person. Within a day or two, all thoughts of the old woman had left her mind. Life was hard and she had real problems to worry about, like finding a place safe enough for her to sleep at night.
It wasn¡¯t until much later, when she heard tales of a great hero who¡¯d saved the nation from the invading Stragman hordes, that she¡¯d remembered that old and wrinkled form. They called her the Mother of Nightmares, and it was said that this hero was a human of all things, one who looked older than the oldest elf and was powerful enough to knock out everybody in the entire imperial palace at once. They even said that she could share memories with her magic! Upon hearing this, a crazy idea had come to her¡ªa desperate one, for sure, but what did she have to lose?
Immediately, she¡¯d set out for Esmaeyae with a single goal in mind. Pyria was known among the people as a fair and just ruler. By presenting herself as the Mother of Nightmares¡¯s first witness who wished to apologize for running away, perhaps Vura could gain an audience with the old woman. Pyria had sniffed out her ruse immediately, of course, and Vura had been forced to reveal her true objective: to ask the Mother of Nightmares to show her memories of what it was like to have a child.
She¡¯d had to wait, but in the end, Vura had finally gained an audience with the fabled Mother. The elderly human had proved to be kind and generous, gladly giving Vura all that she asked for and more. What was more, Vura witnessed firsthand Mizuko¡¯s inherent dignity and culture, which in her mind put to shame any of the matrons and socialites she¡¯d known. Though Vura was only a few decades younger than her Madam, just a glimpse of the human¡¯s experience-packed life left her feeling like a toddler in comparison. Madam Mizuko had done and seen so much in barely more than a hundred years; what had Vura done in nearly that span? For that matter, what of her peers, or her parents, or even most people in Drayhadal? Vura doubted any of them could compare.
So, when the surprise offer of employment had come, she¡¯d accepted immediately. Even though becoming a servant would mean losing her independence and discretion, placing her squarely in the role of a follower, the decision had been the easiest one she¡¯d ever made. If she could no longer contribute to the future, then she would devote all of herself to the only being she cared about in the present. Wherever the Mother of Nightmares went, Vura would follow, and she would pour everything she had¡ªher blood, her sweat, her tears, even her very life¡ªinto her service.
But still! It would have been nice if all of her blood, sweat, and tears went towards something better than... than this!
First, they¡¯d had to listen to the life story of this Sofie woman¡ªwho Vura didn¡¯t trust for a moment; she smiled too easily¡ªwhich had done nothing but reinforce every bad thing Drayhadans said about the barbarians outside their borders. Then, they were taken to some podunk city in the middle of the night filled with weird ugly glowing rocks, which turned out to be the flipping capital of this sad place. The buildings comprising this city were simplistic and primitive, seemingly thrown together without regard for planning, safety, or aesthetics. Speaking of aesthetics, the worst offender by far was the massive eyesore planted smack dab in the center of the city. A drab, bland, uniformly gray monstrosity that seemed like it had been designed by somebody whose eyes had been cut out, the fortress stood out like a massive pustule on an already acne-covered face.
Now that she stood inside the garish thing, her impression had only soured more. Everything seemed to be made of the same metal, which she imagined must become unbearably hot under the summer sun. The decor was essentially nonexistent. The walls lacked any sort of decoration or even color. What furniture there was to be found seemed designed with simple utility in mind at the expense of everything else. The chasm between this hovel and the refined, artful world of Drayhadal, where even the lowliest of huts had style, threatened to give her whiplash.
This was what she¡¯d toiled to let her Madam see?
¡°Vura, what distresses you so?¡± Madam Mizuko asked, breaking Vura¡¯s internal ranting.
¡°Nothing, I¡¯m just worn out,¡± she lied.
¡°As you say,¡± her Madam responded. Vura could tell that she didn¡¯t quite believe her, but her Madam was courteous enough to not press at this time.
The pair had been waiting alone in this spartan room for several minutes since dismounting the eerie floating self-powered palanquin that had brought them here. The Sofie lady had left, saying that she needed to find several people. For some reason, she did not call a servant to do it for her, even though that sort of task was exactly what housemaids and the like were for. Was she actually a maid here? Vura doubted it. She and Madam Mizuko had spoken as equals, as much as it galled Vura to sit through. Still, Vura had remained silent as much as possible, regardless of how she felt inside. That was what a proper handmaid did, after all.
¡°We should be able to sleep soon, I would think. Just hold on a little longer.¡±
¡°I¡¯m more worried for you, Madam. I got some sleep, at least, and I will heal quickly, unlike you.¡±
Vura could still remember the time when her Madam had accidentally cut her finger with a small knife during lunch. The tiny wound, which would have been gone before the next morning on anybody else, had taken over a week to fully heal. At first, Vura had thought it the symptom of a terrible affliction, but she¡¯d been shocked to learn that all people from her Madam¡¯s world healed that slowly and poorly. It left her to wonder how anybody from there survived at all.
¡°The girl is fetching somebody who can help with that, I believe,¡± Madam Mizuko assured her, though that assurance rang hollow. Vura doubted whoever might come had any experience with her Madam¡¯s specific constitution.
A chime rang from a box beside the door, drawing their conversation to a close. After a moment, the metal panel slid into the wall, silent as the night. It was just one more eerie and off-putting thing about the place. Doors were supposed to make noise¡ªcreaking, whining, the soft ¡®shff¡¯ of a sliding door brushing against the wall and floor, anything!
A figure, clad in hideous armor from head to toe, stood in the doorway. From just a single glance, Vura knew that whoever had designed and built the fortress wherein they sat was the same amateur who had created this terribly unpleasant metal suit. The proportions were all off, for starters¡ªespecially the shoulders, which were almost comically broad. The entire ensemble was the same dull grey, having clearly never been within a hundred paces of a drop of paint in its entire existence. The helmet, however, was the most laughable. A crude depiction of a face, made up of nothing but two triangular crystalline eyes and a cartoonishly scowling mouth, glowered at the world in endless irritation. Who what this figure, she wondered, and how did anybody take them seriously?
¡°Well, you seem to be at least mostly in one piece,¡± a male voice spoke from behind the mask, his voice strangely unmuffled given the metal in the way. ¡°Welcome to Otharia. I¡¯m Lord Ferros, but you can call me Blake. I pretty much run things around here.¡±
It took all of Vura¡¯s self-control to not gasp. This fool was the local king?! No wonder Otharia was so mocked that even she¡¯d known of the ridicule. And, how dare he address her Madam without removing his helmet! The lack of respect made her steam inside, but she reigned it in before she lost her composure. Instead, she rose to her feet and moved to stand behind and to the left of her Madam, taking the proper position for a handmaid whose master was meeting with an important visitor.
¡°I thank you for your hospitality, as unexpected as it might be,¡± her Madam stated, giving the king a bow. ¡°I am Yamanaka Mizuko, as you surely already know. This is my companion, Vura.¡±
Vura bowed her head momentarily, just about the most deference she could manage towards somebody so embarrassing.
¡°Yamanaka-san, then? Or would you mind if we just dispensed with the formalities, given that there¡¯s only a handful of us?¡±
The question seemed to take her Madam by surprise. ¡°You may call me Mizuko all you like,¡± she told him. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect to meet somebody familiar with Japanese honorifics here.¡±
The king hesitated for a moment. ¡°Let¡¯s just say I¡¯ve... dabbled. Anyway, I¡¯d prefer to speak privately, just the two of us.¡±
Vura stiffened at the idea of leaving Madam Mizuko alone with this person of questionable taste and character, but as always, her Madam had her back.
¡°I would rather not. Vura is trustworthy and understands discretion. Anything you can say to me can be said with her present.¡±
The king hesitated for a considerable moment, seemingly stuck between giving in or doubling down. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision with a distinctly un-regal mutter of ¡°Ah, fuck it.¡±
To Vura¡¯s surprise and momentary revulsion, the helmet seemed to writhe as if it were alive. Then, almost as creepily, it melted away, revealing the king¡¯s face. The man did not appear as she had initially imagined. Deep, heavy black bags hung beneath green eyes. A mop of matted, oily dirty-blonde hair covered his head, desperately in need of a haircut, while similarly colored stubble dotted his face.
¡°Look, you¡¯re probably just as tired as I am, so how about we work out the sleeping arrangements now and push the important stuff until tomorrow?¡±
¡°A fine suggestion,¡± her Madam agreed.
¡°So I¡¯ve been informed of your, uh, unique sleep issue, let¡¯s call it. Finding a permanent solution will take some iteration. For now, the best and easiest option is to load you back onto the Flying Toaster and park it up in the sky outside the city.¡±
Madam Mizuko frowned and shook her head. ¡°I have no desire to set foot in that thing again for a long while. I¡¯m sure Vura agrees.¡±
Vura nodded. While she found the idea of floating through the air somewhat enchanting in the abstract, the circumstances of their ride on the strangely named craft had soured her on that specific vehicle. That, and she¡¯d found that the experience made her slightly nauseous¡ªnot enough to vomit, but just enough to feel continuously uncomfortable.
¡°As for a permanent solution, it is presumptuous of you to assume that I desire to stay here at all. Did Sofie not tell you?¡±
¡°Where else would you go?¡± Blake asked, frowning. ¡°This is where all of us from Earth are.¡±
¡°And you think that is enough?¡±
The king quirked an eyebrow. ¡°Isn¡¯t it?¡±
A quick knock at the door put a pause on the conversation. It slid open again, this time revealing a blue-haired woman holding a leather pack. Lithe and athletic, her eyes seemed to momentarily assess Vura and her Madam for threats before the impression vanished. Vura marked her as somebody to stay wary of; unlike the buffoon in the suit, this woman was dangerous.
¡°What¡¯s up?¡± the king asked.
¡°I¡¯m here to work on her shoulder,¡± the woman told him as she proceeded into the room, her hand already reaching into the pack to pull out a roll of bandages. ¡°Didn¡¯t Sofie tell you?¡±
¡°No. Why does everybody keep asking me that?¡±
¡°Are you a doctor, young lady?¡± Madam Mizuko inquired.
¡°No, but I have ample experience with tending to broken bones. Broken shoulders are more common on the battlefield than you think,¡± the woman responded. ¡°It¡¯s your left, yes?¡±
¡°I would still prefer to be seen by a professional.¡±
¡°Finding a medic in Otharia is easier said than done in the middle of the day, let alone the middle of the night. And regardless, it won¡¯t change anything. All you can do for a broken shoulder is immobilize the arm in a sling and wait for it to heal. Feel free to ask a doctor yourself tomorrow.¡±
Her Madam equivocated for a moment before reluctantly giving in. The unnamed woman moved Madam Mizuko¡¯s robe aside and began to slowly and carefully wrap her shoulder. Vura watched and found herself approving of the care this woman was putting in to not pain her Madam any further.
¡°Look,¡± the king butted back in, ¡°we can deal with the long-term tomorrow, but for now, is there anything I can do to get you to agree to sleep in the airship for the night? It would make things so much easier.¡±
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
¡°After all that you¡¯ve put me through today, I¡¯m well within my rights to finally put my foot down,¡± she sternly informed him. ¡°Surely there are other options available.¡±
¡°Not so much,¡± Blake sheepishly admitted. ¡°It¡¯s been a bit of a rush job.¡±
¡°Just take us to a house out of the city,¡± Mizuko told him. ¡°Surely you have a cottage or something away from people.¡±
¡°It¡¯s not a matter of housing, it¡¯s a matter of security. I can take you to a place, but it would be hard to protect you out there. We¡¯re having a bit of an insurgency issue right now, and as much as I¡¯d like to tell you my skitters can keep you safe one hundred percent, I can¡¯t guarantee it. The bastards are annoyingly slippery.¡±
¡°You think these people would already know we are here?¡±
¡°Well, no, but I¡¯d rather not chance it.¡±
¡°Your fancy robots will not be needed tonight¡ªI can guarantee that.¡±
The man let out an exhausted sigh. ¡°Well, if you say¡ª¡±
Vura missed the rest of what the man said, as the door behind him slid open almost silently once more. A new figure stood in the doorway, a tiny being of darkness complete with twitching triangle ears and thrashing tail¡ªa Stragman! This small child of the void, skin black as coal, hair like a shadow in the night, found Madam Mizuko immediately, her golden eyes lighting up like a thief spotting a prized jewel. She let out a gasp of delight and exclaimed, ¡°Old lady so old!¡±
Vura nearly had a heart attack. What disrespect towards her Madam! What absolutely stunning, bloodcurdling disrespect!
Before Vura could recover, the Stragman gremlin scampered forward. ¡°Old lady! Tell Pari a story!¡±
Vura¡¯s eyelid twitched. She was going to smack this child soon, she could feel it coming.
¡°Oh boy,¡± the king muttered.
¡°Pari!¡± Sofie wheezed, appearing at the door, bent over and leaning against the door frame as she panted. ¡°What did I say? Harassing our guests is a no-no!¡±
For once, Vura agreed with the Earth girl. Her Madam, however, seemed to find the Stragman youth¡¯s antics amusing, tempering Vura¡¯s indignation somewhat.
¡°Well now! You must be the fabled Pari,¡± she said.
The imp puffed out her chest proudly. ¡°Pari is Pari,¡± she declared. As if suddenly remembering something, she reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of... small wax cylinders? ¡°Pari trade with old lady! Pari give medicine for stories!¡±
¡°I see that Sofie¡¯s description was no exaggeration,¡± Madam Mizuko chuckled. ¡°You want to be paid in stories, do you?¡±
The beastkin gave a single emphatic nod. ¡°Sofie-sis and Gabby-friend have good stories, but Grandfather has best stories because Grandfather live lots! Old lady so old and wrinkled, must also live lots and have many great stories for Pari!¡±
Vura trembled at the sheer audacity of the swarthy Stragman, but her Madam chortled, once more tempering her simmering umbrage. Sometimes Vura wondered why it seemed as if her Madam cared less about the way others treated her than she did.
¡°Well, aren¡¯t you a delightful little munchkin! However, I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m quite fatigued tonight, and as you can see, rather preoccupied at the moment as well.¡± She turned her head and indicated the woman tending to her injury. The blue-haired woman had finished wrapping the shoulder and had moved on to constructing a sling to hold the forearm. ¡°Could I possibly owe you a story and tell it tomorrow?¡±
The child¡¯s face scrunched up in concentration for a moment before she replied, ¡°Pari wants two stories then! No! Three!¡±
¡°My my, what a shrewd businesswoman you are! But, where is the medicine you want to trade?¡±
The child held out the two wax cylinders. On closer inspection, Vura noticed each had a tiny wick sticking out of one of the flat ends.
¡°Candles?¡± her Madam asked, coming to the same conclusion.
¡°Make pain go bye-bye, Pari promise! Lots of happy-happy!¡±
¡°Is that so? Aromatherapy of some sort, perhaps?¡±
¡°Madam,¡± Vura cut in, finally feeling the need to voice her thoughts, ¡°surely trusting the medical claims of a child would be most unwise.¡±
¡°It¡¯s the best you¡¯re going to get on short notice,¡± the blue-haired woman informed them. ¡°The only widespread painkiller available around here is raw acasia root, which is hard to chew and barely does anything. Whatever Pari put in there will be more effective than that, at least.¡±
¡°Vura is correct, however,¡± Madam Mizuko stated, which made Vura stand tall with pride. ¡°These are the creations of a young child. You would vouch for her ability?¡±
¡°When it comes to chemicals, she¡¯s a savant unlike anything I¡¯ve ever known,¡± the woman replied. ¡°Let¡¯s just say that I¡¯ve seen her create things that shouldn¡¯t be possible using little more than random weeds she picked from the side of the road.¡±
¡°Not random! Pari very careful with picking!¡± the child claimed.
¡°Still...¡± Madam Mizuko said, clearly wavering to Vura¡¯s dismay. She realized she could not allow this sham to continue any longer, lest her Madam end up poisoned or some other horrible fate.
¡°Madam, at least let me test their claims before we put you at risk,¡± she insisted.
¡°That seems prudent, yes,¡± her Madam agreed, handing her one of the two candles.
Vura manifested a small flame above her finger, ready to light the wick, and extended that hand towards the candle clutched in the fingers of her other hand.
¡°Wait, wait, you¡¯re going to light it right here?!¡± King Blake exclaimed, bringing Vura¡¯s movements to a sudden pause.
Vura blinked, confused by the outburst.
¡°Aight, I¡¯m out. We¡¯ll talk tomorrow,¡± he continued, quickly making his way out of the room and not looking back.
¡°Sling¡¯s done. I should get going too,¡± the blue-haired woman said before hurrying out the door.
¡°I need to go check on Gabby,¡± Sofie told them before swiftly exiting the chamber, leaving only Vura, her Madam, and a grinning but confused-looking Stragman girl.
¡°Well, Vura, let¡¯s not keep the little one waiting,¡± her Madam said while rising from her seat and taking several steps back.
Suddenly, Vura had a very bad feeling, though she didn¡¯t know why. It was a candle. What was there to be afraid of?
She lit the wick and watched as it burned, the fire consuming the wick and wax at a far quicker rate than the candles she was used to. It almost seemed to burrow into the wax cylinder, disappearing from sight. And then... nothing.
For several moments, the candle seemed inert. Had the flame gone out? She¡¯d seen that happen with candles before, where the flam would dig a hole in the wax and eventually drown itself. Had that happened here? She held the candle up to her face to get a better look.
As if waiting for that very moment, the candle suddenly erupted, spewing thick, teal smoke straight into her face and up her nostrils. She hacked and coughed, the involuntary action only serving to give her a lungful of the noxious smog.
Her head was spinning. The candle fell from her hands and rolled off into a corner, the smoke still wafting out, though at a much slower pace. She felt her body loosen as she sank to the floor and slid onto her side.
She felt... good¡ªno, more than good... content. For once, everything was all right. She didn¡¯t have to worry anymore.
She didn¡¯t know how long she lay there, and she didn¡¯t care. She was too busy floating in an ocean of pure bliss, letting the gentle waves wash over her as she floated wherever the currents pushed her.
A voice called out to her, filled with concern. She looked up and saw a face she knew well staring down at her, one lined with years of wisdom and kindness. She reached out a hand and touched that face, her already wide smile growing even further.
¡°Mother... you came for me...¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve missed you so much...¡±
She could taste colors...
Mmmmm, pink tasted fantastic, but purple was still her favorite...
The last thing she sensed before she slipped into a peaceful slumber filled with sweet dreams was a childish giggle, followed by, ¡°Happy-happy!¡±
Vura had not expected it to be possible for her to be in a fouler mood than the one she¡¯d been in yesterday, yet somehow this accursed place had managed such a feat. It had started when she¡¯d woken up still in that accursed fortress with her Madam nowhere to be found. After getting lost in the labyrinthine halls for a quarter of an hour, she¡¯d finally run across Sofie, whereupon she¡¯d learned that her Madam had left that night to sleep in the remote location they¡¯d agreed upon, leaving Vura behind.
Vura felt ashamed that she¡¯d let herself become so incapacitated. She¡¯d been unable to render her services when her Madam needed them. Ignoring her aching hunger, she¡¯d skipped breakfast and headed immediately for her Madam, with Sofie in tow.
That was how she found herself riding atop a grotesque contraption of spindly legs striding over the land, the woman from Earth by her side, chattering away about... something or other¡ªshe hadn¡¯t been listening. It wasn¡¯t until the hideous vehicle rounded one final bend and Sofie called out ¡°There it is!¡± that Vura returned mentally to the present.
A tiny stone cottage, little more than a hut, stood beside an equally tiny creek burbling in the morning light. Not waiting for the wretched vehicle to come to a halt, she jumped down and ran to the hut, telling Sofie to stay in the vehicle¡¯s cabin. Inside, to her relief, she found her Madam, whole and hearty, sipping tea from a fairly crude ceramic cup.
¡°Have a nice rest, Vura?¡± Madam Mizuko asked with a slight smirk.
¡°Madam, I¡¯m sorry¡ª¡±
¡°Shush. There is nothing to apologize over.¡±
¡°But¡ª¡±
¡°There is no reason to agonize, Vura. Everything went just fine. You got good sleep, I got good sleep, and here we are.¡±
¡°Still, I should have never trusted that child¡¯s... whatever it was.¡±
Her Madam took a long sip of tea. ¡°Did it not work? How are your aches and bruises?¡±
¡°My aches...?¡±
For the first time that day, Vura looked within. What she found surprised her. She¡¯d been so focused on her failure and finding her Madam that she hadn¡¯t noticed how nice she felt. All the aches and pains from the day before were gone.
¡°The child knows her way around pharmaceuticals, no doubt, though I can¡¯t help but wonder how. My shoulder stopped hurting just from breathing in the mist in the room last night. Powerful.¡±
¡°At least my sacrifice saved you from trouble, Madam.¡±
Madam Mizuko took another sip of tea, longer, this time. Anybody else would not have noticed, but Vura knew her Madam inside and out. This was her masking hesitation, hiding a reaction. But why? Vura started looking around the small hut, trying to solve this mystery.
¡°Madam?¡±
There, on the side of the bed, Vura spotted the remains of a small wax cylinder.
¡°Madam!¡±
¡°You know, Vura, in all the time I¡¯ve known you, I¡¯ve almost never seen you smile. Last night was the happiest I¡¯ve ever seen you by no small margin. Is it so wrong that I wanted to experience that myself? You seemed just fine¡ªmore than fine, even.¡±
¡°Still, it was an unnecessary risk.¡±
¡°I need to take some risks now and again. That¡¯s part of why I wanted to leave the manor. Life there was just too orderly, too safe. I¡¯m no daredevil, but life needs a touch of spice or it just becomes bland.
¡°I¡¯m glad I took the risk. It helped me, let me make peace with some things I brought along with me when I came to this world, things I should have let go of long, long ago. I feel less burdened.¡±
Her eyes locked on Vura¡¯s as she took another sip.
¡°You also had an experience, did you not? I think we should talk about it.¡±
Vura flushed as the mention brought back a rush of memories and sensations from the night before, including some mortifying spoken words.
¡°Vura... you are a dear friend and companion. But... I will never be able to replace your mother. I¡¯m sorry, but that is not a role I can fill.¡±
¡°N-no! That¡¯s not... that¡¯s not it at all!¡± Vura protested.
¡°Then what am I to you, Vura? I want our friendship to be healthy, but I am concerned that it has become something in your mind that it can never truly be.¡±
¡°I¡ª¡±
¡°Hey,¡± Sofie said, opening the door, ¡°you two doing alright in...¡±
Her voice faded off as two hard stares swung her way.
¡°Uh... right,¡± she said sheepishly, quickly reversing course and closing the door again.
Taking advantage of the interruption to resettle herself, Vura sat down on the nearby bed and took a breath. For a moment, she delved down into her memories, dredging up remembrances that she would rather leave forever in the depths of her mind.
¡°I always knew, deep down, that my father¡¯s love was superficial,¡± she finally began. ¡°He always viewed me and my sisters as means of political advancement first and descendants second. We were disappointments from the moment we emerged from the womb and it became apparent that we were not the sons he wanted. He¡¯d even make comments to his friends about it¡ªabout how dismayed he was, about how it was an embarrassment¡ªand he¡¯d do so when he knew that we, including my mother, could hear him.
¡°Mother was different. I loved her, and she loved me, and I never had any doubt that that would ever be anything but the case. But... when he threw me out with little more than some clothes and a bit of money, my mother said nothing. She didn¡¯t argue, she didn¡¯t scream, she just looked at me with a tight frown on her face and didn¡¯t speak a single word of protest. It... it hurt more than I could ever have imagined.
¡°Before I met you, back when I had no future, back when I had no choice but to do... things that I will never be able to forget just to avoid sleeping in an alleyway in the middle of the winter, I would foolishly hope and dream that I¡¯d just misunderstood¡ªthat she had fought and argued with him for days and weeks before I was cast out, that she was out there searching for me, that one day I¡¯d feel her arms embracing me again. They were nothing more than the pathetic delusions of a wretched woman, but I clung to them for seasons. It seems that, deep down, I still might.¡±
¡°I¡¯m so sorry that you have gone through so much in your life, my dear. Such a needless tragedy...¡±
¡°It¡¯s alright, I don¡¯t need her anymore,¡± Vura stated, part of her even believing the words. ¡°I have a new life now¡ªa better one, with you.¡±
¡°Vura, as I said¡ª¡±
¡°I know, believe me. I understand. It is part of why I always think of you as ¡®Madam¡¯, because you are not ¡®Mother¡¯; you are Madam Yamanaka Mizuko, hero of the Esmae, the person who singlehandedly turned back the Stragman hordes, and... my savior. I owe my everything to you, Madam. It would take a lifetime to repay my debt, but I¡¯m alright with that.¡±
¡°Vura, I didn¡¯t do anything great enough to deserve praise and loyalty on that level.¡±
¡°But you did, Madam Mizuko!¡±
¡°All I did was give you a job¡ª¡±
¡°No! That¡¯s not it at all!¡±
Her outburst shocked them both into momentary silence. In that moment, Vura finally came to a decision: in for a drop, in for a bottle. She would tell her Madam the rest, the part that she¡¯d never told anybody. Still, it did not come easy; her breath shook and she needed to swallow several times before she could even speak.
¡°I... when...¡± Her lips felt like they were made of stone, for all that she seemed to be able to work them. ¡°When I... On the day we first met... that morning, when I woke, before I went to the stream... that... that was when I finally decided to... end my life.¡±
The sound of ceramic shattering on the hard stone floor nearly made her fall off the bed. Her Madam stared at her with wide, horrified eyes, her trembling hand missing its customary cup.
¡°No, no, no, Vura, no!¡± she implored, rushing to Vura¡¯s side. She cupped Vura¡¯s face in her shaking hands and stared at her with teary, pleading eyes. ¡°Do not speak such things! You mustn¡¯t!¡±
Vura had never seen her Madam so distressed. She pulled her close and
¡°Please, Madam, I must finish.¡±
¡°Vura...¡±
¡°I had suffered greatly, Madam. It relentlessly ground away at my spirit, until eventually there remained nothing left. But even after I decided I wished to end it all, I found that I could not bring myself to do it. Something was keeping me from taking the final step, something missing inside of me.
¡°It took me some time to realize what it was. All my childhood, I had been raised to be a proper mother and a wife. The virtues and joys of motherhood were drilled into my head and heart from the day I was old enough to understand others. It had created a hole inside me I could never fill, yet that yearning remained. I was stuck, unable to find the will to end my misery and blocked from finding it by the source of that misery. But then, I heard about you and your powers, and I saw the solution to my woes.¡±
¡°Vura, you didn¡¯t!¡±
¡°I did. I lied to the very head of the Esmae. I lied right into Princess Pyria¡¯s face. And, when she saw through that lie, I lied by omission. I never told her the truth. I never told her that I sought you out to fill the hole so that I could finally leave this world. And it worked.¡±
¡°But, then... why...¡±
¡°Because you saved me!¡±
Vura leaned in and touched her forehead against her Madam¡¯s, feeling the old woman¡¯s warmth directly. Her own tears began to well in her eyes, turning the world into a blur.
¡°Has anyone ever told you how it feels to be on the receiving end of your power? It¡¯s like recalling a memory from your past that you simply forgot. Everything feels so right, so true, as if what you share is more than just a projection. It¡¯s a moment once more remembered and reclaimed, except that the sensations are so terribly strong that it gets seared into your very soul forever. We feel those emotions as if they are our own, because they are.
¡°When I walked away from the manor that day, the hole within me had been filled, but I found that I no longer wished to die. There were new memories within me¡ªunforgettable, extraordinary memories that filled me with life again!¡±
Vura couldn¡¯t see a thing through her weeping, but it didn¡¯t matter. She could feel the warmth of her Madam¡¯s forehead against her own, reminding her of her savior¡¯s constant presence in her life.
¡°The joy you felt seeing your newborn daughter is my joy now! The will to carry on, to fight for her, it¡¯s my will now! That undying hope for a better future is my hope! All I have to do is remember and they all flood through me, washing away the despair, each one as legitimate and genuine as anything else I¡¯ve ever felt!
¡°Don¡¯t you see?! Memories are what make a person. By gifting me yours, you changed me irrevocably into somebody new and better, somebody able to overcome the ghosts of my past! I can be courageous because you were! I can be determined because you were! I can bear any burden because your strength is now a part of me!¡± She trembled, her quavering voice dropping to a whisper. ¡°How could anyone ever repay such a boon?¡±
¡°Oh, Vura, sweet child...¡± Madam Mizuko pulled her head away and gazed at her with sorrowful eyes that Vura could barely make out. ¡°You never needed to repay anything. Gifts given freely are just that: gifts. Watching you grow and thrive is already more compensation than I could ever ask for.¡±
¡°I know,¡± Vura sobbed, rubbing her eyes. ¡°I know.¡±
Her Madam reached out and grasped Vura¡¯s hand with her rough, calloused fingers, stroking it soothingly as Vura sniffled and tried to settle herself. The two of them sat in relative silence until the older woman finally broke the silence.
¡°I must apologize, Vura. When you said you wanted to die, the thought of another of my family taking their own life was too much to bear. I see now that perhaps I lied not just to you, but to myself. Perhaps I see you as one of my children after all, and I just did not want to acknowledge that.¡±
Vura shook her head. ¡°Mother, grandmother... it doesn¡¯t matter to me, Madam. Labels aren¡¯t important as long as I can continue to serve at your side.¡±
¡°Very well... but I want you to make me a promise, then.¡±
¡°Anything.¡±
¡°Miraculous physical rejuvenation or not, I am still far too old, Vura. There will come a day, perhaps soon, when I will leave this world one way or the other. Promise me, Vura¡ªpromise me¡ªthat you will not mourn my exit. Promise me you will move on and you will build yourself a new life filled with people who love you and care about you. Promise me that you will not give up on life ever again, no matter how tough it might seem!¡±
¡°Weren¡¯t you listening, Madam?¡± Vura chuckled. ¡°You are inside me now. I will never mourn your absence, for you will always be here with me, even long after you are gone. With all the memories you¡¯ve imprinted upon me over the seasons, it will be as if you never left.¡±
¡°I always viewed my ability as a weapon first and foremost. Perhaps I should reconsider that, if it can do you such good,¡± Madam Mizuko commented with an introspective frown.
¡°Yes, perhaps,¡± Vura agreed. ¡°But for now, I think it would be best if we focus on something far more pressing, Madam. You never got to finish your tea.¡±
Sometime later, the pair emerged from the small home, climbed into the grotesque transport, and began the journey back to the mound of garoph feces known as Otharian civilization. Sofie tried to act as if she wasn¡¯t curious about what had happened on the other side of the door as she¡¯d waited outside, but Vura could see the way it was eating away at her resolve. Vura chose to ignore the Earth woman and focus on the way the breeze blew over her face and hair. It felt like contentment.
¡°Sorry for barging in like that. You, uh, you alright?¡± Sofie asked after a little while.
¡°Of course,¡± Vura told the nosy girl with a slight smile. ¡°I have never been better.¡±
Chapter 127
Blake Myers had problems¡ªnot that this was anything new. It was just that these problems felt so much more unsolvable than their predecessors. The entire concept was patently ludicrous. Build a machine to send them back? Sure, the ancient machine already existed to handle part of the job, but having half an impossible task pre-done didn¡¯t make the rest any less impossible. Mentally, he ran down the list of insurmountable challenges still on his plate.
First, he had to build some sort of ethereal energy pump that would shove them back up to Earth against the push of energy which, if he was correct about how things worked, would be flowing powerfully against them. To make that work, he would first have to figure out how to move this mystical energy. To do that, he had to find a way to even detect said energy, something he had absolutely no idea how to accomplish. The ancient texts implied that at least one such sensor had been made, while Baz seemed to have some sort of measurement doodad of his own. Maybe he could use that, somehow?
Even were he able to detect and measure the energy from Earth, the same energy theorized to be inside them all, that didn¡¯t mean there was a way to manipulate it. Everything they believed true about the physics of their two worlds and the way the worlds interacted suggested no artificial manipulation was needed to pull him and his fellow Earth people here. That meant there was nothing in the ruins for him to steal from.
Then, there was the need for power to fuel this wonder-pump. Here, at least, he thought he had a solution, but the only way to know for sure was to solve the rest of this unsolvable puzzle first.
And, hypothetically, what if he did it? What if he got it all built? In that case, how was he to know that it actually worked? He could send as many test objects out as he wanted, but it wasn¡¯t like he¡¯d be able to get any data on success rates. The object would just disappear, most likely, and all he¡¯d know for sure is that the first part functioned. If he sent a fruit through, for example, would it appear whole on the other side, or would come out the other side as little more than pulp? For that matter, would the other side even be Earth? How did you aim something like this?
The fact that the machine had connected twice to Earth was a good sign, but he could not assume that it would work that way once modified. After all, if there were two worlds, why not three, four, or countless more? Should he miraculously create a way off this world, how could he guarantee that they¡¯d end up home instead of someplace where the air was chlorine gas? How could he say for sure that they wouldn¡¯t appear in another world with even lower energy density, whereupon they might just immediately explode? He just couldn¡¯t.
Blake felt like he was trying to grab a hologram in his hand. Try as he might, there just wasn¡¯t any substance there. And yet... he didn¡¯t have anything else to grab hold of, either. He¡¯d let himself get talked into accepting an impossible task in part because any other options seemed even more impossible.
The chamber he sat in served as his main development workshop, but it wasn¡¯t really much of a workshop. Thanks to his super powers, which did all the work one usually needed a suite of heavy machinery for, it was really more of a large room with a bunch of raw materials and a workstation to help with the design stage. For the nth time, he brought the schematics of the Otharian bunker up onto the design workstation and studied them, hoping for some sort of breakthrough or inspiration.
As always, none came.
He needed to clear his head¡ªa walk, or something, perhaps. Where to, he didn¡¯t quite know, nor care. Most everybody was busy at the moment, anyway.
Mizuko and Sofie were locked away translating the ancient documents into yet another language so that the old woman could finally understand the gravity of their situation. Meanwhile, the Japanese woman¡¯s servant was loose on the grounds, probably staring balefully at anybody who got too close. Sam had been playing with the cat the last time he checked, though he¡¯d have to round her up for a lesson soon. Gabby was doing Gabby stuff¡ªhe wasn¡¯t quite sure what, other than she was out of the fortress at the moment. Arlette was standing in the elevator as the door opened in front of him, her face a wrathful storm as she glared at the floor.
Blake stepped into the elevator, watching as Arlette didn¡¯t do so much as blink. All she did was flex her fist and stand there, motionless. What was going on here?
¡°Somebody spit in your lunch?¡±
Arlette practically reared back as she realized for the first time that he was even there. The look of surprise quickly faded as her foul mood reasserted itself, but she seemed at least slightly less rageful than before. ¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡±
¡°Yeah?¡±
She took a deep breath and steadied herself, and he could practically see the repression kicking in. ¡°Yes, my Lord.¡±
Blake frowned. ¡°Shall we talk in your office? I wanted to speak with you, anyway.¡±
¡°If you insist,¡± she reluctantly agreed.
Together, they stepped out of the elevator and made their way through the security department and into her large office. He hadn¡¯t stepped inside this place in a while, preferring to have Arlette brief him somewhere he was more comfortable, but she still had work to do, and Blake wanted to be somewhere different for a bit.
As he¡¯d passed by, he¡¯d noticed that the other people working there didn¡¯t seem as terrified as many of the office workers tended to be. Was his presence losing its edge, or was it just something particular to the security personnel? He hoped it was the latter. He wanted the Otharians to accept him to some degree, yes, but he didn¡¯t want them to stop thinking of him as a larger-than-life being to be feared. He knew deep down that the populace remained Otharian, and if he started to appear weak to them, trouble would start¡ªtrouble he didn¡¯t have the energy to deal with right now.
¡°Alright, so...¡± he began, gearing up for a difficult topic, ¡°I think it¡¯s time we discussed the insurgency and the limited progress you¡¯ve managed so far.¡±
Arlette tensed slightly, reminding him of a child waiting to be scolded by a teacher, which didn¡¯t help.
¡°First of all, I am not questioning the amount of effort you¡¯ve been putting into this, nor am I forgetting that it¡¯s only a single part of a much larger job. I also understand that quelling a rebellion in a country filled with people who disapprove of its government is not an easy task by any measure. That¡¯s largely on me, but it is what it is.
¡°That being said, the lack of progress has been... concerning. I heard there was another attack last night, with the terrorists once again disappearing into thin air before we could even respond. There is a point where it doesn¡¯t matter how hard the task is, it needs to be fixed. Excuses don¡¯t matter when your house is burning.¡±
Arlette hung her head and nodded solemnly.
¡°I understand, my Lord. It is clear that I do not have what it takes to protect this nation.¡± Reaching into her desk, she pulled out a piece of paper marked with words in a script he didn¡¯t understand. ¡°Here is my notice of resignation.¡±
Blake stared at the sheet in befuddled disbelief.
¡°What, are you joking? No, absolutely not. Resignation denied.¡± Grabbing the paper, he ripped it into pieces and tossed them behind him. ¡°The hell, Arlette, you even wrote something up? How long have you been thinking about this?¡±
¡°I¡¯m just a mercenary, my Lord. This sort of thing is too important to be placed in my hands.¡±
Blake rubbed his face with his hands and groaned. ¡°Have I ever told you why I hired you for this? It¡¯s been so long that I can¡¯t remember.¡±
¡°Sir?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s say that I appointed an Otharian as Minister instead. How would I know that this person would be working in my and my government¡¯s best interest? How would I trust that person with control over an army of killing machines, given the history of the people here? What about hiring somebody from outside Otharia, then? Could you fully trust that the outside person wasn¡¯t also working for the benefit of their home nation? Would you feel comfortable giving control of all of my armed forces to somebody who could very well be a foreign agent? I wouldn¡¯t.
¡°That¡¯s the biggest reason, really. You¡¯re competent and not crazy. You follow orders. You have experience leading men. All good. Sure you¡¯d never commanded a large force before, and maybe administration isn¡¯t your primary area of expertise, but I¡¯m fine with that because you are one of the only people in this world that fulfill the primary prerequisite for this job: you don¡¯t have a home to sway your loyalty and you don¡¯t have a secret agenda. At the very least, I can trust that if I give you the keys to the murderbots, you won¡¯t turn them on me or use them for some hidden end. I can count the number of people I can say that about on one hand, and none of the others have the temperament needed for the work.
¡°Personally, I think you¡¯re doing well in your other responsibilities. So you aren¡¯t perfect in every area, big whoop; no person or organization is. That¡¯s why consultants exist.¡±
¡°You are suggesting we find an... advisor of sorts?¡±
¡°Why not? Somebody to work on strategies to hunt these fuckers down, while you focus on other things and carry out the operations when it comes time. In all honesty, putting this burden entirely on your shoulders was unfair to you. The land I came from was the foremost military power in my world¡ªhead and shoulders above other nations. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and nearly unlimited resources at their disposal, and you know what? They can¡¯t win a single guerrilla war. Why should I expect you to be able to do better with so much less?¡±
Arlette stared off into the middle distance for a bit, thinking, and Blake kept his mouth shut and waited. Finally, she sat up straighter and nodded, a renewed determination in her eyes. ¡°Thank you for the vote of confidence, my Lord. I suppose I¡¯ve gotten too wrapped up in my failures and lost sight of the bigger picture.¡±
Blake nodded back, satisfied with how it all had gone. ¡°Glad we could correct that, then.¡±
¡°There is one new operation in the works I suppose you should know about,¡± she told him. ¡°Rather than spending all our manpower chasing their shadow, we¡¯re working on setting up false suppliers in the hopes of luring their organization into a trap. It¡¯s still going to take a little before it¡¯s all ready, but we¡¯re close.¡±
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¡°A sting operation? Do you think you can make it convincing enough?¡±
¡°I can only hope so. There was a lot of debate over the wheres and hows, but in the end, we decided on Nont¡ªclosest city to the border, most natural place for new smugglers and underground dealers to pop up. The only problem is that the scarcity of attacks there means there might not be a worthwhile insurgency presence there.¡±
¡°Hmmm, that reminds me, I wanted to talk about that. The vast majority of attacks have occurred in Wroetin, right?¡±
Arlette nodded.
¡°Proportional to population,¡± he continued, ¡°it¡¯s far off balance, yeah? Even with the much greater concentration of people here compared to the other cities and the countryside, we get far more than our fair share of incidents.¡±
¡°That is true, but there are plenty of reasons for that. Your presence here is paramount, I would imagine. Striking here does more damage to your resources, acts as a taunt of sorts, and makes you look impotent to boot.¡±
Blake hummed. ¡°All perfectly good reasons, but another one occurred to me recently. From everything you¡¯ve learned, would you say there¡¯s a coercive component to all of this as well? Attack people who benefit from my rule or cooperate with me? Make people afraid of not taking their side in this little struggle?¡±
¡°Yes, I think it¡¯s fair to say that is a component as well, though I would warn not to put too much credence in the claims of those we capture.¡±
¡°Yet, there¡¯s plenty of people outside Wroetin who have cooperated with me, profited off of me, and assisted me, such as all the various officials who maintain the provincial and local governments. Those are easy, less well-defended targets, and yet they¡¯re practically untouched.¡±
¡°That is true...¡±
Blake leaned forward, a finger repeatedly tapping on the desktop¡ªsomething that had replaced bouncing his leg as his nervous tic since the injury. ¡°What if they aren¡¯t coercing simply because they don¡¯t need to, because so much of the rest of the country is secretly already on their side? I¡¯m not talking so much about the general populace¡ªwe know they don¡¯t like me¡ªbut the local governors, administrators, influential business families, etcetera?¡±
¡°A potentially legitimate worry, I suppose, but one that is nearly impossible to disprove.¡±
¡°Yeah... still, I don¡¯t know... keep an eye or something, would you? I know I¡¯m sometimes Mister Paranoid, but one thing I¡¯ve always been right about is having more enemies.¡±
Arlette cocked an eyebrow. ¡°Sometimes, my Lord?¡±
Blake rolled his eyes. ¡°Ha ha, such comedian, very laugh. At least you¡¯re back to your normal self now. So, you wanna tell me what got you all in a huff earlier?¡±
¡°When did you become as nosy as Sofie?¡±
¡°Woah, hey, no need for insults, now.¡±
¡°Fine. It¡¯s just something stupid that happened earlier, is all. I went to have lunch with Tehlmar, and he was talking to that new elf¡ªthe old woman¡¯s servant. When he told her we were in a relationship, the look on her was just so... he might as well have said he was marrying a garoph for how she looked at me. I don¡¯t know why, but it really made my blood boil.¡±
¡°Yeah, racism sucks. Speciesism? Whatever.¡±
¡°Sometimes I wonder if life would be better if this world was more like yours, where nobody could hate anybody else because of ear shape or whatever.¡±
Blake couldn¡¯t help but snort out loud. ¡°Oh, Arlette, you sweet summer child. You really think we need actual anatomic differences to hate each other? Skin color, religion, favorite sports team... no matter how stupid, hate finds a way.¡±
¡°I know, but...¡±
¡°Let me give you some advice. Caring about what other people think will always be a mistake. Believe in yourself and your decisions, and if other people look down on you for it, they can get fucked. That¡¯s how I¡¯ve always lived my life, and see where it got me!¡± He smirked. ¡°Seriously, though... if there¡¯s one thing I¡¯ve always found true, it¡¯s that people suck. A person may impress you, surprise you, even delight you, but people will always let you down. Don¡¯t waste a single brain cell on them and you¡¯ll be all the better for it.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll... keep that in mind.¡±
¡°Great. Then, I¡¯m off,¡± Blake declared, levering himself up out of his chair. ¡°Keep me posted.¡±
Much like Arlette, Blake didn¡¯t much care for Mizuko¡¯s elf servant. The way she stared at him like he was lower than dirt disturbed him. She was doing just so right this moment while he tried to talk to her... employer? Superior? The particulars eluded him, but he had a feeling that the old woman wasn¡¯t paying the elf much of anything for her loyalty, especially not right now. The Drayhadan¡ªher name eluded him at the moment; Vara? Veri?¡ªreminded her of Simona in a way, which was not a compliment. Really, what had past Blake been thinking? Sure the fervor and hero worship had carried some appeal for a time, but the longer things went, the more she clashed with the others. The woman could still turn the screws on foreign negotiators like nobody¡¯s business, at least.
Blake sat down and removed his helmet. After hearing from Sofie that they¡¯d finished the transcription, he¡¯d given them a few hours to process everything and rest up before he swung by to visit. Now, sitting in the room he¡¯d reserved for their use during the daytime, he grabbed a slice of fruit from a nearby bowl, took a bite, and mentally prepared himself for one of his all-time favorite activities: small talk.
¡°So, how are you liking your stay here so far?¡±
¡°Your hospitality is much appreciated,¡± the elderly woman replied. She looked rather weary¡ªbeing around Sofie for an extended period would do that to anybody¡ªand her left arm still hung in a sling, though it seemed that Arlette¡¯s bandage sling had been replaced today with something more genuine. ¡°Everyone has been quite kind.¡±
¡°That¡¯s good to hear. Is the fortress to your liking? I hope you haven¡¯t gotten lost; people find the layout confusing.¡±
¡°Your home is truly a bold statement. Sofie has been kind enough to show me around, so I have had no issues so far.¡±
¡°Good, good. I take it you¡¯ve studied the material? What do you think?¡±
¡°I find your argument fairly compelling, in that it very well might be correct. However, I do not see what someone such as myself can do about it.¡±
¡°You still intend to travel, then?¡±
¡°When I decided to leave Drayhadal, I chose selfishness. I have lived my life in this world largely in service of others. Is it wrong to want something for myself for a time?¡±
Blake leaned back with a smirk. ¡°Hey, you¡¯re talking to somebody who has been called a ¡®selfish asshole¡¯ for his whole life and wears it proudly; I¡¯d be a hypocrite if I said you shouldn¡¯t look out for number one.¡± The smirk faded into a frown of concern and he took another bite. ¡°Still, it does present a bit of a problem, given the situation. We don¡¯t have the luxury to take things lightly.¡±
¡°I know. It burdens me, but if I do not consider my own desires now, I feel that I will never get another chance. I do not know what I could contribute to any of this, anyway. I am but an old woman.¡±
¡°You¡¯re selling yourself short, and you know it. Besides, I think I have a solution that will fit us both rather nicely.¡±
Both Mizuko and the dour elf perked up at his statement.
¡°Before I arrived here, Otharia was a very insular society¡ªperhaps even more insular than Drayhadal, from what I heard. Now that I¡¯m here, we are less insular, but only barely. We still lack much of any presence outside our borders. We don¡¯t even have ambassadors; all diplomatic conversations occur entirely by Many with people here in Wroetin. We need more direct and better communication, especially given our current goals.¡±
¡°You are asking me to fill this need?¡±
¡°Yes, a sort of roving ambassador position. You would speak for us as you travel around. I mean, it¡¯s not like you¡¯re going to steer clear of the capitals of the nations while you¡¯re there, right? Wouldn¡¯t want to miss out on all that history and culture and all that.¡±
¡°I am just a housewife. I could not possibly take on such a heavy responsibility,¡± Mizuko demurred. ¡°Besides, I only arrived here a day ago. How could I represent a nation I know nothing about, not to mention my ignorance about the world as a whole?¡±
¡°Nonsense,¡± Blake replied, waving away her concerns. ¡°You¡¯re hands down the most dignified person here, and you have the manners, formality, and tact needed for this sort of thing. I mean, you could have just said you don¡¯t like this place, but instead, you told me it was a ¡®bold statement¡¯. That¡¯s absolutely the sort of diplomatic crap we need. Whatever you lack, you can pick up.¡±
The old woman thought it over for a moment, clearly not sold on the idea, so Blake chimed in again to sweeten the deal.
¡°Here¡¯s what I can do for you. If you agree to take on this role, I¡¯ll create for you a huge custom transport vehicle that will carry you wherever you want to go in complete comfort. I¡¯m talking something so big that it will literally be a walking house, complete with a bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, you name it. Whatever you want, we can put it in there. We¡¯ll deck it out in luxury, make it as cozy as can be¡ªperhaps even put in an open top deck so you can get a nice, high view of the land as you go. We can even add in a bunch of defenses, just to be sure.
¡°Think about it. Every night, you can move your house away from people and sleep soundly, not having to worry about impacting others with your dreams. All while enjoying the best possible travel experience you could get on this world.¡±
That seemed to get her attention.
¡°And all you would require of me is to serve as your representative when I meet others in my travels?¡±
¡°Mostly. There are one or two other small things we¡¯ll need you to do as you go.¡±
She frowned. ¡°Name them.¡±
¡°First, we would ask you to keep an eye and ear out for any other possible people from Earth. Nobody knows just how many of us are here, and that¡¯s a problem if we¡¯re trying to get everybody out before we all go boom. If you do find anybody or even hints of somebody, help them out or pass the word along to me and we¡¯ll take care of it.¡±
Mizuko nodded. ¡°A fair request.¡±
¡°Second, we need you to go do some very specific sightseeing first, before you start meandering wherever your heart takes you. Now that you¡¯re free, we¡¯re gearing up next to rescue another one of us, this time in Stragma. We need to know the state of things there.¡±
The Drayhadan¡¯s eyes went wide, and Blake could see that she was just barely holding herself back from objecting to the idea.
¡°You are asking me to be a spy?¡± the elderly woman questioned.
¡°No, no, a diplomat and tourist is all. What we need to know is how close they are to packing up and migrating from their spring city, where they are now, to their northern summer home. This dude¡¯s situation isn¡¯t like yours. You were out in the middle of nowhere, in open space, while he¡¯s locked up and surrounded by guards in the middle of a city of millions. This is a legitimate rescue mission; everything we know about his situation says it¡¯s not good. We think our best bet is to steal him away in the middle of the migration, which should be coming soon, but we¡¯re not sure just when.
¡°All we need is for you to tell us what you find just by visiting the city. There should be signs all over; moving millions of people and property is not the sort of thing you can just keep under wraps. Besides, you¡¯re going to want to tour Stragma anyway; it¡¯s quite remarkable. Ruresni at night is almost surely the most beautiful sight in this world. I¡¯m just asking you to move up to the first item on your bucket list, and to tell me what you see when you get there.¡±
¡°Would the Stragmans even welcome me to their land? I imagine they are still quite angry about me.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve built up a lot of good will there, with helping the Chos¡¯s crippled husband and all that, so as my representative, that should count for a lot,¡± Blake considered aloud. ¡°More crucially, though, would they even know who you are? The way the others talk about the battle, nobody actually saw your face.¡±
The woman paused, surprised realization on her face. ¡°I was inside the palanquin the whole time. I suppose there would be no reason for them to connect the two.¡±
¡°Heck, just make up a fake identity and introduce yourself to them as a totally different person. How would they even know?¡±
¡°You have a point,¡± she relented, ¡°and it would feel nice to know that I am not leaving everything about this possible calamity to others. I will agree to your requests.¡±
¡°Excellent. How soon are you planning on leaving?¡±
¡°It will still be a few weeks,¡± she told him. ¡°I would like to experience this land first, and I need time for my shoulder to heal before I go too far.¡±
¡°Plenty of time to get acquainted with Otharian then, and to learn what you need to know.¡±
¡°I suppose you are correct.¡±
Blake couldn¡¯t help but grin. One more accomplishment on what was unexpectedly turning out to be a very productive day. ¡°Well then, I¡¯m glad we have a deal, Madam Ambassador.¡±
¡°Alright, kiddo. Today we finally get to start on something fun.¡±
Sam had done well with her studies. She¡¯d been attentive, asked questions, and hadn¡¯t been belligerent in a good while. Blake felt like it was time for a reward, something to catch her imagination. After all, from the start, he¡¯d started teaching her with eventual practical applications in mind. He¡¯d sworn, back then, that he¡¯d show her the folly of her actions, and to do that, she needed more than abstract understanding. She needed to see the knowledge in action.
Blake grabbed a piece of chalk and began to draw on the chalkboard. First, he drew a rectangle. Then, he erased bits on several sides, replacing them with some other things: a zig-zagging diagonal line, two parallel lines perpendicular to the rectangle¡¯s side, and a short line that veered away from the rectangle before terminating.
¡°This... is what is known as a ¡®circuit¡¯.¡±
Chapter 128
Sofie awoke that morning filled with the same emptiness that had pervaded her the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. It took her several hours before she finally managed to climb out of bed and get out into the world. Something just wasn¡¯t right.
The ¡°what¡± was easy: she was stuck in a rut. They all were, it seemed, except maybe Gabby; it was clear something had happened between her and Chitra, though they seemed reticent to discuss it. This whole revelation that they were all bombs primed to explode didn¡¯t really break her out of said rut so much as it just added a countdown timer to it all. Little had changed other than the undercurrent of anxiety lurking beneath every moment of every day.
The ¡°why¡±, on the other hand, was much harder to answer. By many measures, she should feel great about things. Despite some unexpected complications, they had managed to rescue Mizuko without too much damage to the old woman or the machines. Their ¡°damsel¡± didn¡¯t even seem that upset about their unannounced endeavor.
Meanwhile, work continued. It was too early to do more than the most long-term planning for the Stragman rescue operation, but others maintained their focus on progress toward the greater goal. Not Sofie, though. She¡¯d already gone through everything in the various remaining archives and libraries in Otharia, searching for anything of use that Blake might have missed, but he¡¯d been unfortunately thorough in his initial inspection. That left her with little to contribute.
Maybe that was it. Maybe she felt useless compared to everybody else. It wasn¡¯t like she had been contributing much to the cause before this, either. Without using her powers, she was just an ordinary person who lacked any real relevant knowledge or experience. The only thing she could really point to was that she was the one keeping Pari from blasting the fortress into a giant crater out of boredom. That was something, she supposed.
But then again, maybe there was more to her current malaise than a general feeling of inadequacy. The idea of actually returning home, something she¡¯d once written off as impossible¡ªand which still might be, but that was beside the point¡ªfilled Sofie with a rising tide of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she still greatly missed Earth and wanted to go back more than anything. On the other hand, not only would she lose several important and life-altering relationships, she¡¯d leave behind a slate of projects forever unfinished¡ªmost notably, her efforts to educate the children of Otharia.
To be fair, she had not held a class in a good while¡ªsince the disaster with her powers had revealed the damage she¡¯d unknowingly wrought upon her unwitting students, to be specific. The thought of facing those thousands of innocent children had mortified her for months, causing her to freeze up whenever she considered restarting the program. But, given time, she told herself, she¡¯d be able to find a way. Now, however, it did not seem like she¡¯d have that time.
Those lessons had been a net positive, she was certain. Sure, the nation¡¯s parents had opposed the idea of an Elseling gaining regular access to their children¡¯s minds, and the children hadn¡¯t seemed too hot on it either, but resistance on both fronts had greatly softened as the value of the lessons became apparent. Towards the end, she hadn¡¯t even needed Blake¡¯s robots to force the issue in most places. Now, she wasn¡¯t sure she would ever be able to start them up again, not with the knowledge that she¡¯d ensorcelled them all and that she still didn¡¯t know how to undo the damage.
Trudging through the halls, Sofie wandered aimlessly for a while in search of something to do but found little. Arlette was too busy with her day job for any more planning sessions, and they¡¯d exhausted every avenue for the moment, anyway; she didn¡¯t want to deal with Blake, and he needed to focus on solving the transversal problem; Gabby she hadn¡¯t seen in a few days; she¡¯d just get in the way if she tried to help Leo or one of the other administrators; and Mizuko was out sightseeing somewhere in Otharia.
That left Pari and maybe Samanta, but she wanted to avoid seeking them out if she could. Pari was her crutch, the one she relied on whenever she felt bored, useless, or inadequate. The kittygirl was more than just that, of course, but Sofie still couldn¡¯t help but feel a little like she was shattering the ¡°in case of unwanted isolation, break glass¡± glass far too frequently as of late. Today, she¡¯d find something else, something that would let her leave Pari alone and help foster the girl¡¯s growing independence.
...but where?
Sofie¡¯s steps slowed to a halt, and she looked around, a weary breath escaping her lips. During Blake¡¯s latest redesign a few months ago, he¡¯d reshaped the upper floors of the fortress into an equilateral triangle made of three separate towers, if structures so wide and stout could even qualify for such a classification. Whether to make it easier to get around or just because he thought they looked cool¡ªwith Blake and architecture, it was always hard to be certain¡ªhe¡¯d added skyways connecting each. When standing in the center of one, as she currently was, one could get a pretty good view through the chain link fence enclosing the bridge. It wasn¡¯t as grand as the central tower that served as the observation deck and airship dock, but it was high enough to see most of the fortress and the city.
Her gaze passed over the fortress with little thought. She¡¯d already been through most of it and failed to find what she sought. The city, on the other hand, beckoned with unknown possibilities. Yet, it was also manifestly dangerous and chaotic. Were she to venture out from these protected confines alone, she¡¯d have no way to ensure her safety save her horrid powers. No, she would not be leaving the fortress today.
Just as the emptiness of her existence started to hit home, her eyes spotted the matte grey and tan hues of stone half-hidden behind the far office tower. Of course! The House of Manys!
It was always so easy to forget about the House of Manys. The place existed in a strange sort of limbo, a small island of the old Otharia ensconced within the new one. Given that it was tucked off to the side and served an important but very narrow function, the vast majority of people within the fortress¡ªherself included¡ªtended to ignore it or even forget it was there at all.
Well, not today! Today, the House of Manys would fill another highly vital function: giving her something to do. She resumed walking, a new lightness in her steps.
Walking into the House of Manys was a jarring experience, almost akin to traveling back in time. She had never asked how old the building was, but she would have guessed that it had stood for several centuries, at least, judging just from the visible wear on the curved outside-facing walls. Things like the sconces on the walls, the simply-built wooden doors, and the fact that it initially lacked plumbing only drove home its age.
Now, the sconces stood empty, their existence made meaningless by the glowing crystal lights Blake had installed before she¡¯d first arrived in Otharia. He¡¯d added actual plumbing too but left the thick wooden doors untouched. She found it somewhat strange that this man, who seemed hell-bent on forcing modernity down Otharians¡¯ throats, had elected to keep these renovations modest, but he had. The structure was still, by and large, the same stone building it had been ever since it had been first constructed.
This, of course, meant that it was also the one place inside the fortress where she still had to wear her stupid restraining collar. Sofie dutifully strapped it around her neck as she walked through the short tunnel connecting the fortress and the last vestige of the old regime. Opening and walking through the main entrance, she immediately collided with a portly, balding man in his early forties hurriedly walking past. The two of them tumbled to the floor in a tangled heap, giving Sofie a very undesired whiff of pungent sweat and what she sure hoped weren¡¯t the smells of urine and fecal matter.
¡°Oh, I¡¯m so sorry, Bernards!¡± Sofie apologized, disentangling herself. She climbed to her feet and then reached out a hand to help the Many handler stand. ¡°Are you alright?¡±
Bernards Bergmanis seemed completely caught off-guard by her presence. The chubby middle-aged man looked around nervously, like a rodent scoping out an area for potential predators, before finally returning his gaze to her.
¡°M-Miss Sofie... We were not expecting you...¡± he huffed, his breath still a bit ragged. ¡°Have you come to resume your lesson broadcasts?¡±
The question brought a small, sad frown to her face, but Sofie quickly overwrote it with some forced optimism. ¡°Not today, but soon,¡± she lied. ¡°What about you, Bernards? You seem busy. Everything alright?¡±
¡°Ah, uh, yes, Miss, today has turned into quite a hectic day,¡± he confirmed. ¡°If you will excuse me, I must return to work.¡±
He gave a short bow and then quickly hustled off, returning to the trajectory he¡¯d been on before her sudden imposition. With a smile, Sofie jogged after him. Bernards looked back and paled slightly when he realized she wasn¡¯t going to go away.
¡°M-Miss, c-can I help you?¡± he weakly asked.
¡°It¡¯s not if you can help me this time, it¡¯s if I can help you,¡± she replied with a wry smile.
The man paled even further. ¡°N-no, Miss, I th-thank y-you f-for your k-kind offer, but¡ªah...¡±
The hallway came to an end, terminating at another thick wooden door. Bernards came to a nervous halt outside it, his body language clearly conveying that he very much wanted to go inside but feared that it meant Sofie would follow.
She decided to make the decision for him. ¡°Come now, I insist,¡± she said, pulling the door wide and stepping through. After all, what was in this room that could be so bad for her to see? Some shadowy cabal of people plotting to kill her and overthrow the government?
The sharp glint of a large knife caught her eye.
¡°Miss Sofie,¡± Agrits Ozers noted as the blade flashed down again and again, slicing a bunch of herbs into tiny pieces on a wooden cutting board in front of him.
Sofie glanced around the room, finding herself standing inside a modest kitchen¡ªa simple but seemingly complete cooking space.
¡°Hello, Agrits!¡± she replied.
¡°Starting lessons again?¡± he inquired.
¡°Not today,¡± she replied.
¡°Hm,¡± came the man¡¯s curt reply, though she thought she saw him frown a tad more for a moment. Just her imagination, perhaps?
¡°Seems like you could use an extra hand today,¡± she pressed on, ignoring Bernards¡¯s babbling, stuttered protest.
The laconic man paused for a moment, thinking, and then nodded. ¡°Sure.¡±
¡°A-Agrits, w-w-we can¡¯t!¡± Bernards protested, only for his brusque coworker to respond to his words with a dismissive gaze.
¡°With Martiz out, we need help. Especially today. You know this.¡±
Bernards wilted, letting out a defeated sigh that seemed to go on for over a minute.
¡°Just think of me as your apprentice for the day,¡± Sofie offered. ¡°Treat me like you would anybody here to assist you.¡±
¡°If you insist...¡±
The defeated man trudged over to the far corner and fetched one of several multi-shelved, wheeled carts that had been parked in a row. His hands moving quicker than she thought possible, he quickly grabbed several handfuls of wooden bowls and spoons¡ªenough to fill the cart¡ªand ladled out some sort of gruel from a nearby large pot into each bowl.
¡°Grab another cart and fill some bowls,¡± he told her.
Sofie did as instructed, covering her cart with gruel-laden bowls in the same way.
¡°Come with me, Miss Sofie.¡± Pushing his cart, he left the kitchen with Sofie following right behind. ¡°We need to feed the third floor by the end of the hour or we¡¯ll be behind.¡±
They rolled their carts along the smooth stone floor, navigating through several rounded passages until they reached something that stood out as new: a metallic elevator nearly identical to the ones in the main fortress.
¡°Lord Ferros replaced the original devices with his own not soon after coming into power,¡± Bernards told her, noticing her curiosity.
¡°I thought he didn¡¯t alter this building so drastically,¡± she admitted as they pushed the carts inside. The cabin was large enough that they and their carts could all fit inside at once.
¡°The Lord hated the elevators we¡¯d had before¡ªsaid they were too noisy and unreliable, with all the chains and gears. I can¡¯t say the Lord was entirely wrong...¡±
¡°You had elevators in here before?¡± she asked in disbelief.
¡°Of course! Manys struggle with stairs, and ramps would take too much room.¡±
¡°But still, that sounds like a major investment to design and build.¡±
¡°The House of Manys is a pillar of the nation,¡± Bernards stated with pride. ¡°We have always received whatever funding we needed because to give anything less would be foolish.¡±
¡°I see...¡± It made sense. The instantaneous communication that a Many facility like this allowed would easily pay for itself a thousand times over.
The door opened and they wheeled their carts out into a third-story hallway. Like the ones on the ground floor, it was a curved hallway lined with wooden doors and little else. This was because of the building¡¯s cylindrical design, where a large amphitheater used to broadcast to the entire nation stood. All the hallways were curved around that main theater chamber, like layers on an onion.
¡°This is where we need to start,¡± he said, opening the first door. The doorway was arched, just like the others downstairs. Unlike the others, this one had a wooden sign set into the stone above said arch. ¡®Ada - Nont #3¡¯, it read.
Instead of wheeling the cart in, he grabbed a single bowl and spoon¡ªfrom Sofie¡¯s cart, notably¡ªand walked inside with it.
The chamber inside was small, less than eight feet in both length and width. Unlike the broadcast rooms, this room appeared less spartan, with a narrow cot on one side and several large cushions on the floor. A small metal toilet bowl jutted from the far corner wall, one more of Blake¡¯s recent additions. Still, Sofie couldn¡¯t help but feel that it still felt like a prison cell, only one with a few accessories.
Resting against the back wall, their back propped up on a pillow, sat a twenty-something-year-old woman with short, almost buzzcut hair. She looked thin to Sofie¡¯s eyes, but not malnourished.
¡°Is she asleep?¡± Sofie wondered, as the woman¡¯s eyes were closed and it was hard to even tell if she was breathing.
¡°Not quite. Manys are taught how to slow their bodies and minds down for long periods. It helps them cope with the stimulus during the time they are not needed.¡± He bent down beside the Many and began stroking her arm from her hand up to near her shoulder. ¡°This is how you ¡®wake¡¯ them. Most respond best to the arm, but some prefer the back instead.¡±
The woman¡¯s eyes fluttered and slowly opened, her gaze blank and unfocused.
¡°Meal time,¡± Bernards said softly and almost musically as he scooped some of the gruel from the bowl.
The woman turned her head towards him slightly and her mouth opened just a tad. With practiced skill, he maneuvered the spoon to that small opening and tipped its contents inside. The woman swallowed, almost reflexively, and he repeated his actions until the bowl was empty.
¡°There you go, all full now,¡± he said to her, stroking her arm downward from shoulder to hand this time. Her eyelids fell and she seemed to reenter her strange hibernation.
Sofie was struck by the man¡¯s general demeanor as he did his job. He talked to the Many with a quiet and soothing voice, almost as if he were talking to a distressed child. ¡°You really care about these people, huh?¡± she asked.
¡°By some measures, I know these Manys better than I know my own family,¡± he admitted. ¡°How could I not care? I want them to be treated right.¡±
Sofie smiled. ¡°You¡¯re a good guy, Bernards,¡± she said with a friendly pat on the shoulder. ¡°I¡¯m happy you¡¯re finally comfortable enough around me.¡±
The Many handler stared back, confused. ¡°Miss?¡±
¡°You aren¡¯t stuttering anymore,¡± she pointed out.
The man flushed in embarrassment, seemingly not having noticed himself. ¡°Th-th-that is¡ª¡±
¡°A lot of people find me scary, I get it, but it¡¯s nice to have people treat you like you¡¯re just a person sometimes, you know? I¡¯m not anything to be afraid of; I¡¯m just your assistant! So, lead the way!¡±
Bernards paused for a moment, staring at her face, before ashamedly looking away. ¡°...right.¡± He stood up, his embarrassment gone. ¡°Let¡¯s go, Apprentice Sofie, we have work to do.¡±
¡°Aye aye, boss!¡±
¡°You saw how it was done,¡± he said, seizing the handle of his cart and pulling it away. ¡°I will take the far side of the hallway and you take this side.¡±
Sofie looked down the hallway, counting the doors until the curve of the passage made it impossible to see more.
¡°That¡¯s a lot of Manys,¡± she noted. ¡°And you need to do this for every Many multiple times a day?¡±
¡°Not always multiple feedings a day, no, but other things, yes.¡±
¡°How do you manage it?¡±
¡°The House currently employs ten handlers, which is generally enough to handle whatever is required,¡± the Otharian explained, ¡°but one of them got in an accident and broke his leg a few days ago, so we¡¯re undermanned and things are piling up.¡±
¡°Ah, well, I¡¯d better get started then.¡±
Bernards nodded. ¡°Call me if you have any problems.¡±
Sofie brought her cart over to the next door¡ªthe sign on this one said ¡®Boren - Eflok #1¡¯¡ªpulled out a spoon and bow, and headed inside. The chamber was essentially identical to the previous one, with the only difference being the occupant. A forty-something man with long hair and a well-trimmed beard¡ªgrooming was one more thing the handlers had to keep up with, she supposed¡ªsat cross-legged on a cushion near the center of the cell, seemingly just as asleep as the last Many.
Sofie approached and crouched down. A little nervously, she began stroking the man¡¯s arm upwards to bring him out of his slumber or whatever it was. After a little bit, the man had yet to respond to her. Remembering Bernards¡¯s words, she tried stroking the man¡¯s back instead, starting from the lower back and moving upwards. To her relief, that got a response.
¡°Meal time!¡± she sang as he seemed to slowly come alive. Her feeding technique did not hold up to that of a trained professional, but she was able to get the Many to eat and swallow fairly easily.
It was around the time when the bowl was two-thirds empty that disaster struck. Sofie¡¯s only warning was a gurgling coming from the Many¡¯s abdomen, followed by the sound of liquid splashing and dripping from down below. Then, the smell hit her¡ªa disgusting, rotten, almost sulphuric stench, like the smell of poop except ten times more putrid. In her shock, she accidentally inhaled a bit, causing her to go light-headed for a moment before letting out an anguished ¡°AUGH¡± at the top of her lungs. Sofie coughed and gagged, backing away towards the door as the sound of hurried footsteps quickly approached.
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¡°W-what¡¯s wrong?¡± Bernards asked anxiously, peeking around the doorframe. He surveyed the room, taking in the large puddle of toxic refuse; Sofie¡¯s recoiling, dry-heaving form; and the Many, who looked far more discomforted by Sofie¡¯s scream than by the biohazard they were sitting in, and visibly relaxed. ¡°Oh.¡±
¡°Wha... what do you mean, ¡®oh¡¯?! What in the world... is that?!¡± Sofie hacked, pointing at the pool of concentrated diarrhea.
¡°It¡¯s a rare side effect of their bodies slowing down. Every so often, their waste builds up over time instead of being released normally, until it eventually... all comes out at once,¡± he explained as if it wasn¡¯t the most wretched smell she¡¯d ever smelled. In her estimation, it even outclassed the Stinkcandle Incident! ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. As I said, it¡¯s rare. Probably won¡¯t see another one for a few weeks. Head outside and fetch the bucket and mop over by the elevator. Go fill the bucket with water and I¡¯ll show you how to clean it up.¡±
The next quarter hour was one of the least enjoyable experiences of Sofie¡¯s life¡ªand after the last few years, that was really saying something. Still, it could have been much worse, as it turned out that each chamber had a drain in the floor, which Sofie hadn¡¯t noticed before. She had to rinse down the entire area, flushing nearly all the excrement down the drain, then mop up the rest. After she washed down the Many and removed the soiled cushion to be disposed of. Bernards thought it could be cleaned, but Sofie did not care for his opinions on the matter. Only flames could truly cleanse concentrated filth of such potency.
Then, blessedly, it was over. Tired and disgusted, Sofie returned to her original task with a feeling of great relief. Now that this horrid ordeal was over, she could get back to work. She was behind, yes, but time still remained for her to catch up.
The next Many¡ª¡®Chyrik - Keqont #3¡¯¡ªwas the youngest one she¡¯d ever seen, a boy of perhaps seventeen years. He took to the meal well, and she finally felt herself relax.
Just as she was nearly finished, a loud gurgling sound echoed through the room.
Sofie stepped back and reconsidered her plans for the day. She hadn¡¯t checked on Pari so far¡ªthat was something that she surely needed to see immediately, right? It was never a good idea to leave that girl alone for too long; given too much free time and boredom, the fortress would become a smoking crater! Yes... it would be best if she paid her little sister a visit right this moment¡ªfor everybody¡¯s well-being, of course.
In the end, Sofie¡¯s guilt kept her in the House of Manys until the job was done. Two baths and a shower later, she thought she could still smell the stench on her, though she knew that was just her imagination. Finally clean, she put on a fresh outfit and headed out to pay a visit to her cute little sister. After that experience, she needed something to lift her mood.
Any day that it wasn¡¯t raining, Sofie checked the inside courtyard first. According to Arlette, the place had a variety of nicknames amongst the various staff and denizens of the fortress¡ªher favorite was Blake¡¯s nickname; he called it ¡°the Boom Room¡±. It occurred to her that she didn¡¯t really know just who worked on the other side of the assuredly mega-thick walls. Perhaps that was one of the silver linings to Blake¡¯s periodic ¡°redesigns¡±: the people who had to listen to the random assortment of bangs and booms got rotated out¡ªor, at least, she hoped they did.
Today, however, instead of explosions and giggles, her ears caught the sound of Pari¡¯s voice excitedly rambling at a million kilometers an hour.
¡°-and then Grandfather get very angry and yell at Sofie-sis but Grandfather was being big meanie so Pari throw stinkycandle into Grandfather¡¯s nose and Grandfather cough real lots and-¡±
¡°Pari! What are you saying?!¡± Sofie gasped, rushing out into the open in a slight panic. She knew how the child was when she got excited and began rambling. The girl¡¯s ability to hold in secrets decreased as the speed of her words increased. If she was recounting their last meeting with the dragon, then she¡¯d probably already sped through the trip north from Stragma, meaning she¡¯d likely spilled the beans about Sofie¡¯s powers and all the rest of the stuff that Sofie didn¡¯t want out in the open.
There was one person in particular, however, that Sofie didn¡¯t want learning about her abilities. To her dismay, that person¡ªknown to a certain catgirl as ¡®Mizuko-old-lady¡¯¡ªwas sitting nearby on a bench, a placid smile on her face as Pari rambled on and on. The old woman¡¯s elven assistant was there too, grim and disapproving as ever.
Pari jumped in surprise, letting out a startled tiny ¡°nya!¡± that Sofie couldn¡¯t help but find utterly precious no matter the circumstances; Sofie sometimes thought that she would still find the noise adorable even if she were to walk in on Pari murdering a litter of puppies in cold blood. The child¡¯s face lit up when she first saw Sofie, only to fall when she realized Sofie wasn¡¯t too happy with her behavior.
¡°What did I tell you about talking to others about that?¡±
¡°Pari sorry...¡±
¡°Come now, child, don¡¯t be so harsh on the poor little one,¡± the old woman chimed in. ¡°We were merely trading stories, as friends do. Am I untrustworthy in your eyes?¡±
Sofie caught the way that Pari¡¯s eyes lit up at being called a friend. Somebody was about to get a title upgrade.
¡°If we¡¯re being frank, I still feel like I barely know the real you. It¡¯s not like we¡¯ve spent that much time together yet,¡± Sofie admitted. ¡°But, it¡¯s not about that as much as it¡¯s just about limiting the number of people who know sensitive information. You know how the saying goes: if two people know something, it¡¯s not a secret. We can¡¯t risk letting them get out; it could spell disaster.¡±
¡°Of course,¡± Mizuko replied. ¡°However, you have already worked hard to include me in your greatest secret. If I am truly to be part of this group, is it fair to keep the rest from me?¡±
¡°Yeah... well...¡± Sofie hesitated.
¡°I will admit that I took advantage of the girl¡¯s nature to inquire about certain things, but I did so with pure intent. There was something I wanted to be sure of.¡±
Sofie frowned, not sure exactly where the old woman was going with this. She didn¡¯t like the way Mizuko had looked at her when she¡¯d said that last bit. After a short moment, she leaned down and affectionately ruffled Pari¡¯s hair. ¡°Sweetie, how about you go to the other side over there and blow some stuff up?¡±
Realizing this was one of the very rare occasions where her sister was telling her to explode stuff, rather than the usual not explode stuff, Pari lit up like a firecracker. ¡°Yeah!¡± she agreed, rushing off to the opposite end of the yard.
¡°Vura, be a dear and go make sure the little one keeps all her fingers and toes intact,¡± Mizuko added.
With a nod, the elf followed after the hyperactive child.
¡°I ask that you forgive my rudeness, dear,¡± Mizuko began once they were more alone. ¡°There were far better ways to go about this, I am aware, but I will be leaving for Stragma in just a few days, and our collective time could be up at any moment.¡±
¡°Whatever, it¡¯s fine,¡± Sofie responded, a bit more gruffly than intended. ¡°Just say what it is you want to say.¡±
¡°Very well. I am concerned about you, my dear. I fear that you are making a grave mistake by refusing to use your full abilities.¡±
¡°No. Stop,¡± Sofie cut in, her hackles rising. ¡°I¡¯m not talking about this.¡±
¡°You cannot keep running away.¡±
¡°I said, I¡¯m done. You have no idea what you¡¯re talking about,¡± Sofie snapped, turning away. ¡°It¡¯s fine. I¡¯m fine. We have it under control.¡±
¡°I know better than anybody else what I¡¯m talking about,¡± Mizuko maintained, her voice calm and measured but insistent. ¡°Did you forget what I do? And I¡¯m here to tell you that it is not fine. You do not have it under control¡ªnot in any way that will matter in the future. That hideous collar you wear is not a mechanism of control, it is a statement of defeat.¡±
¡°Yeah, and what do you think I should do instead, huh?¡± Sofie spat, spinning back around toward this nosy old lady trying to stick her nose where it didn¡¯t belong. ¡°Should I just go use it as I please? Should I go back to inflicting wanton misery on people¡¯s lives? Would that make you satisfied?¡±
¡°Of course not. Stop avoiding the issue, young lady,¡± the old woman snapped back with that stern tone that only a grandmother could wield. ¡°A sword is most dangerous not when it is wielded by a master, but when it is in the hands of a novice. As you are, you remain far more dangerous to the people you care about than you could ever be with mastery of your power. If nothing else, you owe it to them.¡±
¡°That sure is easy to say when you haven¡¯t seen the damage already done,¡± Sofie responded hotly. ¡°I¡¯ve destroyed people¡¯s lives with little more than trivial, off-the-cuff words. I can¡¯t do that sort of thing anymore.¡±
¡°And I¡¯ve scarred many thousands terribly, consigning them to years of nightmares and horrible flashbacks to traumatic memories they never even had. Has your elf friend not told you of what he suffers through thanks to me? If we want to compare records, I damaged more Stragmans in one single battle than all the people I¡¯d wager you¡¯ve hurt in your entire life. It is a guilt I will bear for the rest of my life.¡±
Her elf friend? Sofie didn¡¯t know of any elves that both she and Mizuko knew other than Tehlmar. Did the old woman think they were friends? It would have been an amusing thought in another circumstance.
¡°Back in the beginning, I could only harm all those around me. Now, I have more control,¡± Mizuko continued. ¡°I can control the size of my attack, exclude those near me, and most importantly, even render enemies unconscious without imparting lasting damage to their minds. This did not happen by accident, my dear. It only happened because I made an effort, regardless of the cost inflicted. Only by gaining control could I prevent undue harm. You must do the same before it is too late.¡±
Sofie shook her head and sighed, recalling that low point in her life from a few months ago. ¡°Even if I wanted to, it¡¯s not that simple. I¡¯d need a willing volunteer, somebody who would be comfortable with me doing the equivalent of blind surgery on their soul for who knows how long. Nobody would agree to me possibly inflicting permanent damage to their very being on them.
¡°Look, I already did this once, and it was terrible. It¡¯s not like what you do at all. You have aspects you can work on, stuff you can measure; I am not allowed that luxury. I¡¯d just be fumbling about in the dark, praying I get lucky and figure something out when I haven¡¯t even found a good way to measure if I¡¯m even doing something or what the effect might be. I wouldn¡¯t want to put somebody else through that again, and nobody is going to volunteer to be my guinea pig, anyway.¡±
¡°Not even the person you worked with the first time?¡±
¡°Especially not her. That was a very, um, unique moment in time that won¡¯t ever happen again. But that¡¯s beside the point. The point is that I can¡¯t take that risk again. I could wreak massive harm on somebody and neither they nor I would even know until it¡¯s too late. It would put them in danger.¡±
¡°But, haven¡¯t you already put somebody in danger?¡± the old woman asked, looking away.
¡°What are you talking¡ª¡± Sofie began, before realizing just where Mizuko was looking: right at Pari, who was blithely running around a very nonplussed-looking Vura across the yard.
¡°I started on this little inquiry several days ago because I wanted to know why that adorable child gave me such a strange, almost eerie feeling inside. It¡¯s a sensation that¡¯s hard to describe, because it¡¯s something outside the five senses¡ªsomething less physical and closer to spiritual, if I had to put it into words. I realized fairly quickly that I only get that sensation from two people: her, and you. So, I began to ask questions.
¡°By now, I¡¯ve heard the story about what you did straight from the child¡¯s mouth, as well as from another. It seems quite clear to me that you¡¯ve already altered her in a way that could very much put her in the danger you claim you wish to avoid. So, what then? Are you willing to let her remain as she is? You keep insisting that you don¡¯t even know what harm you might inflict, and yet you seem quite content with your sister¡¯s state. What if something is wrong with her already? Or what if something were to happen to her after you leave this world? Are you willing to take that risk?¡±
Anger flared up within Sofie all at once. The nerve of this granny, to use Pari in this argument! Guilt and grief quickly followed, however, and Sofie hung her head. She recalled once more the dragon¡¯s stinging accusations and couldn¡¯t help but feel shame. Fists clenched in frustration, she stood helplessly in front of the old woman. She wanted to argue, to spew out all her long-fermenting rage, to throw all of this wrinkled crone¡¯s arguments back in her face, but she could not. No words could escape her lips.
There were chains embedded in Pari¡¯s soul¡ªbig, massive chains that went right back to Sofie, chains that could be doing God-knew-what to her precious little sister¡ªand what had she done about it? Nothing. She¡¯d used her collar and Blake¡¯s general forbiddance as an excuse to leave it be. Because nothing seemed to be amiss. Because she wasn¡¯t allowed to. Because, as long as she didn¡¯t mess with this house of cards, she couldn¡¯t make things worse.
Because, deep down, she was terrified.
¡°I already killed her once,¡± she finally managed to whisper, tears blurring the world around her. ¡°What if I hurt her again?¡±
¡°It seems to me that she has already forgiven you for that, though I doubt she ever blamed you in the first place. If I may, it seems that in her you have a solution to your guinea pig problem. You need to better learn your abilities to fix her anyway, so why not use her? One stone, two birds. We both know she would readily agree to it. She trusts you wholeheartedly.¡±
¡°Yeah, I know. She¡¯d do anything for me. That¡¯s what makes it so hard.¡±
Mizuko was correct. Sofie knew this, deep down. And yet, try as she might, no amount of knowing would make the tears stop.
¡°What happened to you? Cut a few hundred onions?¡± Blake asked, taking a break from eating dinner in his workshop to take a jab at her puffy eyes¡ªa totally Blake move if there ever was one.
¡°Shut it,¡± Sofie replied, though her words lacked their usual sting. She¡¯d cried for a good time after her short conversation with Mizuko, and only now did she feel she had the energy needed to have this subsequent conversation... but only just.
¡°Whoa,¡± Blake said, his fork momentarily pausing halfway up on its journey to his mouth. ¡°Something really did happen. Somebody get hurt?¡±
She noted how he had the presence of mind to appear at least mildly concerned, something that the Blake she¡¯d first met wouldn¡¯t have bothered with. Either he actually felt a little worried, or he¡¯d gotten better at faking it. Right now, either felt like an improvement.
¡°No. I¡¯m going to start training my powers.¡±
The fork halted again, just in front of his open, dumb mouth. ¡°What?¡±
¡°I want you to remove the restriction in the fortress so I can start working out the rest of my powers and get a handle on it all.¡±
¡°Helllllllll no!¡± Blake replied, staring at her like she¡¯d grown two heads. The fork quickly descended back to the plate on the table in front of him. He pushed himself to his feet. ¡°The fuck are you smoking?!¡±
¡°You know this stupid collar arrangement can¡¯t last forever,¡± Sofie retorted, her voice containing more venom than before. Leave it to Blake to bring out the piss and vinegar from within even her tired soul.
¡°Why not?!¡±
¡°Because we¡¯re going to need every weapon we have when the dragons come for us! Come on, you aren¡¯t that stupid!¡±
¡°What, you think they¡¯ll let you get close enough to shout at them? No, they¡¯ll roast you from a thousand feet above!¡±
¡°Then you make a megaphone or something and¡ª¡±
¡°That¡¯s not how sound works here! You¡ª¡±
¡°Like you know all the rules to how everything works¡ª¡±
¡°I know more than you!¡±
¡°¡ªespecially with my power that I¡¯M NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO FIGURE OUT! I¡¯M FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF BEING TREATED LIKE THIS!¡±
Blake fell silent as something within Sofie snapped and a mass of long-simmering fury finally boiled over, her voice rising to a hoarse scream.
¡°I¡¯M NOT SOME GODDAMNED ANIMAL! FINE, MAYBE YOU WERE ALL SCARED AT FIRST, BUT IT¡¯S BEEN FUCKING MONTHS! I¡¯M DONE WITH THIS SHIT!¡±
Blake hesitated, his body sinking back into this seat across the table from her. ¡°You almost killed¡ª¡±
¡°SO DID GABBY, AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE ABOUT HER?! MINE WAS AN ACCIDENT! SHE FUCKING WRECKED YOU ON PURPOSE, BLAKE! ANY ARGUMENTS THAT THIS IS ABOUT SECURITY ARE BULLSHIT AND YOU KNOW IT! ALL GABBY WOULD HAVE TO DO TO KILL YOU TODAY IS DECIDE SHE WANTS TO! ARLETTE COULD BURY A KNIFE THROUGH YOUR EYE BEFORE YOU BLINK! TEHLMAR TOO! FUCKING HELL, WE INVITED IN A FUCKING GREAT GRANDMOTHER WHO COULD TAKE OUT THIS ENTIRE FORTRESS AT ONCE WITH A FUCKING THOUGHT, AND I¡¯M THE ONE THAT¡¯S GOT YOU SHAKING IN YOUR UGLY-ASS METAL BOOTS?!¡±
She leaned over the table, as Blake unconsciously leaned away from her, and hissed, ¡°This has always been just as much revenge over our ¡®disagreements¡¯ as anything else, and I fucking dare you to try to tell me otherwise. You took advantage of me at my lowest because you could, you petty bastard. Well, it ends today. You get me?¡±
Blake stared at her in shock for several beats.
¡°Jesus Christ, that was really something,¡± he finally said. He shoveled a forkful of food into his mouth and chewed. ¡°Feel better now that you let it all out?¡±
¡°Blake...¡± she growled.
¡°Look, I¡¯ll make you a deal¡ª¡±
¡°No ¡®deals¡¯. I want the same respect everybody else gets, and that¡¯s the end of it.¡±
¡°You ever think that maybe respect is a two-way street, Sofie? From the moment we met, you¡¯ve been giving me shit, and only me. Oh, I¡¯m ¡®a mass-murderering ghoul¡¯, but somehow Gabby¡¯s just ¡®a poor woman who made some unfortunate choices¡¯. Give me a break and stop playing the victim.¡±
Sofie glared a disdainful gaze in his direction. ¡°You want to know why I treat Gabby differently than you, when both your hands are stained with blood?¡± she asked through grit teeth.
Blake chewed on another mouthful, trying his best to act unruffled by their confrontation. ¡°Sure, hit me.¡±
¡°It¡¯s simple. She¡¯s the only one who had the basic human decency to feel guilty about her actions afterward.¡±
For such a basic truth, the answer seemed to catch the man off guard. He blinked, momentarily stupefied, before responding with a basic ¡°Huh...¡±
¡°Look, I¡¯ll make you a deal,¡± he said again after a moment.
¡°No deals,¡± she repeated.
¡°I will make a space where you can train or practice or experiment or whatever,¡± he pushed on, shamelessly ignoring her as he so often did. He paused for a split second, a thought coming to him. ¡°Do you even have somebody to practice on?¡±
¡°Yes. Pari volunteered.¡±
¡°What? Are you shitting me?! After all the work I put in to bring her back?!¡± He sighed and shook his head bitterly before pointing his currently bare fork tines-first in her direction. ¡°Whatever. Her funeral. I¡¯ll give you a space to work your shit out. Once you can prove to me that you¡¯ve figured everything out, including and especially whatever Bazz was talking about with the big ol¡¯ chains or whatever, the restrictions go bye-bye. Until then, the collar stays on outside, etcetera.¡±
¡°Blake, enough with this.¡±
¡°I¡¯m sorry, Sofie, but it¡¯s going to take more than a vehement rant to force me to do what you say. I still hold the cards here; it¡¯s my house, my country. You want to live here, you have to play by my rules. I suggest you take my offer. It¡¯s not like you need unlimited space for this; didn¡¯t you run all your first tests in a cave or some shit? All you have to do is accomplish the goals you say you want to anyway, and this all goes away. It¡¯s not a bad offer. I suggest you take it.¡±
Sofie¡¯s jaw clenched in anger, but eventually, she relaxed a bit and let out another forlorn sigh. It seemed she could only lose arguments today. ¡°Fine. Deal.¡±
¡°Great!¡± Blake replied, chipper and pleasant as if the last few minutes had never happened. ¡°Anything else I can help you with?¡±
¡°No.¡±
Sofie turned her back to the man and strode towards the door. Just before she left, however, she paused and turned back. ¡°Any progress on your end? With the machines?¡±
For the first time, Blake¡¯s expression turned sour. ¡°Not yet.¡±
¡°When are you going to reach out to your dragon friend? If it¡¯s gotten so bad that I have to pull out all the stops and take risks I never wanted to take, the same applies to you.¡±
¡°Soon, maybe,¡± he sighed. ¡°I¡¯m trying to do what I can, but if I can¡¯t make progress soon... I guess there¡¯s no helping it. It¡¯s a dangerous move, though; I can¡¯t just jump in willy-nilly. If his psycho sister discovers that we have a connection, we lose everything. So, I need to come up with something as foolproof as I can manage. That won¡¯t happen overnight.¡±
Sofie turned back towards the door, took a step, and then turned back to Blake a second time as she realized something. ¡°Oh... what area are you going to give me to practice in, and when will it be ready?¡±
¡°You can do it in the Boom Room,¡± Blake told her, stuffing his face. ¡°It¡¯s already ready for you, so have at it!¡±
¡°You did it just now, so quickly?¡±
¡°Oh, it was never set up for that. Too large an area, too much noise to deal with, too much work, so I just didn¡¯t bother with that part of the fortress.¡±
She froze. ¡°What?! This whole time?!¡±
¡°Yep!¡± he confirmed, a wad of food distorting the shit-eating grin on his face. ¡°Why put in all that effort when I could just tell you I did and get the same result?¡±
¡°I seriously hate you,¡± she told him before marching out of the room, Blake¡¯s mouth-filled cackles following her as she went. Perhaps, with luck, he¡¯d choke to death.
Sofie took a look around the amphitheater, taking in the thousands of young faces staring back at her through the many Many projections filling the chamber. In their expressions, she saw a panoply of moods. Some didn¡¯t want to be there, but her eyes caught hints of excitement in many of their eyes. She couldn¡¯t help but smile at the sight. What a fool she had been, to avoid these gazes for so long.
¡°Hello, everybody! I¡¯ve missed you all so much! It¡¯s been some time, so let¡¯s start with a review, shall we?¡±
¡°...and we must, of course, remember to carry the four, and¡ª¡±
An hour later, in the middle of mathematics review, Sofie hesitated, her ears picking up a sound just on the edge of her hearing. Had that been a shout? Between the thick stone walls and the sturdy wooden doors, sound did not travel much between rooms in the House of Manys. That was, in a large part, but design. This place had been used for centuries by people of the highest authority conducting important government business. It wouldn¡¯t do if a sensitive conversation via Many could be easily overheard by somebody unsuited to hear it. That was why she paused. A shout so loud that she could hear it in the middle of the building, in the most well-insulated room of all, would have had to be quite loud, and loud shouting did not usually indicate good things.
A second voice graced her ears. The message was short and largely unintelligible, but she picked up on the drastic urgency. She frowned.
¡°You know what, it¡¯s been an hour. Let¡¯s take a break for the next quarter hour, everyone. Be sure to drink some water and think over multiplication until we resume.¡±
With that said, she hurriedly walked toward the theater entrance. The Many handler assigned to watch over the collection of Manys here for her broadcast looked at her with confusion but stayed where he was. From his vantage point up on the third tier, it seemed he couldn¡¯t hear what she could from the ground. It was just as well; whatever was going on, his task was to monitor all the Manys in the room. Sofie had no such responsibility.
Pulling the door open, Sofie stepped outside, only to just barely avoid crashing into Agrits. The gruff man just barely managed to sidestep her as he sped past her at a full sprint. A foreboding feeling formed inside her gut. She¡¯d never seen the man move so quickly, and that face... Something told her that the apprehension she¡¯d seen in that split second before he¡¯d passed her had not been related to the prospect of colliding with her.
¡°Agrits!¡± she called out, running after him, but he did not reply. She sprinted down the hallway, just barely able to keep him in her sight, until he skidded to a stop and rushed into one of the Many chambers. Sofie swung around the doorframe and into the room soon after to find four Many handlers standing there, filling the small room. Through them, she spotted Bernards, on his knees, an upturned bowl on the floor beside him. Tears flowed down his chubby cheeks like waterfalls, falling onto the motionless form of a Many lying in his lap.
The Many, a forty-ish-year-old woman with curly green hair, stared out at the world with glassy vacant eyes. Something about her told Sofie that this woman was not in a state of slowed metabolism like the others. With just a glance, everything inside her told Sofie that this woman was deceased.
¡°What happened?!¡± she gasped.
¡°I-I-I d-d-don¡¯t k-know,¡± Bernards sobbed. ¡°S-She w-was f-f-fine, a-and th-then¡ª¡±
¡°She didn¡¯t choke?¡± one of the other handlers she didn¡¯t know inquired.
Bernards shook his head.
The handler¡¯s face grew grim. ¡°Then... that means...¡±
¡°Yes,¡± Agrits agreed.
¡°What?¡± Sofie asked, growing more and more worried. ¡°What does that mean?¡±
¡°Her other part died,¡± came the answer.
¡°The other...¡± Sofie paused and considered the implications of that statement, that foreboding feeling inside her growing stronger by the moment. All countries understood how valuable Manys were and protected them as best they could. There was always the possibility of a freak accident or a medical emergency, but Many Houses were designed to avoid freak accidents and Stragmans were almost freakishly sturdy. If neither of those was the cause, then that only left...
Her heart thumping in her chest, Sofie stepped outside and looked above the door. Like the others, this door had a wooden sign marking the occupant and their connection. Her breath caught and her chest tightened as she read the words over and over, alarm bells ringing deafeningly in her head. She couldn¡¯t prove it, but everything in her gut told her that her¡ªand everybody else¡¯s¡ªsituation had just gotten exponentially worse.
The sign read: ¡°Seren - Kingdom of Kutrad¡±.
Chapter 129
King Iorweth Morgan was having a good morning¡ªor a better one than usual, at least. His sleep had been surprisingly restful, his breakfast tastier than it had been in a while, and the weather seemed especially pleasant for the season. What¡¯s more, his Queen looked especially radiant as she sat in the main garden, enjoying the warm sunshine. He wrote as such to her, and she laughed at the statement.
¡°You¡¯re just in a good mood for once,¡± she told him. ¡°Not that I am not happy to find you so. I have not seen you in such high spirits in many days.¡±
Iorweth had not expected such a response. Was it truly all in his head? He wondered to her just what could bring about such a change, if so.
¡°Isn¡¯t it obvious, my dearest?¡± she asked with a wan smile. ¡°You¡¯re starting to feel hope.¡±
The observation shocked him¡ªnay, distressed him. He¡¯d told himself he couldn¡¯t allow himself to feel such things. He was embarked on a perilous mission to reshape the fabric of his society in ways that would threaten its very existence. The difficulty of the endeavor was high and the price for failure even higher. Should things go wrong, violent civil war was the best foreseeable outcome. He and his co-conspirators had to exercise every precaution to remain discreet, for if word of what he had planned were to reach the wrong nobles¡ªas in, almost any of them¡ªthen it would all be over.
Such caution slowed progress to a crawl... and yet, all that said, progress was being made. The plan was moving forward. If things continued as they were, he could envision a future where he succeeded and changed his nation¡¯s very foundation. The possibility for such an outcome existed, and he could acknowledge its existence.
But, to hope? That was a step too far¡ªnot when he knew, deep down, that the witch would never honor her words. She was a duplicitous creature, not to be trusted... but even so, the promise of his voice was too great for him to pass up. Until he had it back, he would never feel whole again. That was why he had decided to disallow hope, for it would hurt too much when that hope betrayed him.
He looked around the garden, taking in the pleasant greenery and his loving wife. His latest caravan of thoughts had indeed put a damper on his outlook, showing Tangwen to have been correct, but when he looked at her and saw the happiness in her eyes, he found himself reconsidering his position. If it let him find small dollops of joy in his life again, perhaps he could allow himself a smidgen of hope after all.
¡°I love you,¡± he scribbled out.
¡°I love you, too,¡± she replied, planting a kiss on his cheek, ¡°but don¡¯t you have some governing to do? The morning grows old, my dear.¡±
He smiled, sitting down next to her. ¡°They can wait a bit until I¡¯m ready. I am the king, after all.¡±
Governance was never the high point of Iorweth¡¯s day, but he didn¡¯t hate it either. Still, with his new extra mission, the combined workload often threatened to overwhelm him. Luckily for him, today¡¯s docket was relatively light, and even with their late start, there was still over an hour before dinner when they finished the last item.
The king¡¯s mood proved infectious, and everybody in the room seemed in good cheer by this point. Everybody, that is, except Prime Minister Connor Seare. The man was never one to stray too far from his calm and controlled emotional center, but with years of familiarity with his top official under his belt, Iorweth could tell that something was bothering the man beneath that cold exterior.
He was not, it seemed, the only one in the room to notice.
¡°What¡¯s got you so sour, Prime Minister?¡± one of the other ministers finally inquired. ¡°I¡¯ve been waiting for you to deliver some bad news ever since you walked in.¡±
Seare¡¯s face tightened slightly and he frowned. ¡°A possible matter has come up, yes, but details are still murky, so I had decided to wait until I had better information.¡±
All eyes turned to Iorweth, who decided it was better to hear it than not, even if the news threatened to foul his mood. He indicated such to his subordinate, who reluctantly nodded.
¡°The latest report from the northern expedition is late. The messenger did not arrive on time.¡±
It was like a chill swept through everybody in the room all at once, but nobody felt the cold dread quite like King Morgan.
The northern expedition had taken longer to organize and get underway than anybody had hoped. Still, it had eventually come together and the force had entered the mountains some days ago. Since then, they¡¯d been receiving daily written reports from the task force commander. A messenger from the force would travel south with the report, which would then be transmitted by a Many stationed at the southern edge of the mountain range. Directly receiving the commander¡¯s report via a Many would have been vastly superior, of course, but Manys did not travel well in the best scenarios. Taking Manys into the treacherous mountains with the expedition would have slowed the force¡¯s movement to a crawl. Kutrad did not have time to wait years for the expedition to complete its mission, so the choice had been made to leave them behind.
The commander was a competent and loyal man, and the mission was a simple and clear one. Iorweth and the others knew they did not need continuous live reports by Many. Still, regular updates were important to proper management, so the simple messenger system had come into being.
¡°The time it takes for each messenger to make it to the southern edge grows each day the force moves north, does it not?¡± one of the ministers asked. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that explain the delay?¡±
¡°Our expectations take into account the estimated added travel time,¡± Seare explained. ¡°Still, as I said, there remains too much unknown to just assume that something happened. Perhaps the force traveled much further than expected. Perhaps the messenger encountered especially harsh weather, or became injured traversing the dangerous mountain passes. The main force has already traveled far enough that the reports are more than a day old as it is. I did not want to alarm anyone until we knew something was actually wrong.¡±
Iorweth¡¯s gut twisted with anxiety, but he took a deep breath and steadied himself. His Prime Minister was right. This was a bad sign, but not proof of anything having happened to the expedition just yet.
¡°You are correct,¡± he wrote. ¡°There is no reason to assume disaster just yet. I¡¯m sure a messenger will come today.¡±
No messenger arrived to deliver a report that day. None appeared the next day, either, nor the day after that.
No matter how much he tried¡ªor how much Tangwen attempted to soothe his nerves¡ªIorweth¡¯s hands wouldn¡¯t stop shaking. It had been four days since the start of the expedition¡¯s sudden and unexplained silence, and he¡¯d barely slept a wink since. A fog of exhausted worry filled his mind to the point that sometimes he found it hard to think, but one thought¡ªnay, one word¡ªseemed ever-present.
Disaster.
He could feel it in his bones. His plan was ruined. His army was ruined. His nation was ruined. He was ruined.
Yes, he had almost no more information that he¡¯d possessed several days ago, but that alone spoke volumes. One day of delay could be explained away. Two, even, could perhaps be understood in the right circumstances. Four days, however, was far too long of a gap to explain in any way other than disaster.
A messenger was to be dispatched from the expedition force every morning before the force moved north. Even given the lengthy travel time needed to make it back south through the hazardous terrain, at least one messenger would have arrived by now if things were going well. Given the delay in travel, something must have happened perhaps six or seven days ago, and he still had no idea what.
Unlike with most things, it wasn¡¯t like he could just snap his fingers and get what he desired. Most of his best scouts had been on the expedition. The few still on hand had departed several days ago, but even at top speed, they would not arrive at the new Zrukhora until tomorrow. Then, they would still have to head into the mountains, assess the situation, and retread their steps back south. Iorweth would remain in the dark for a little while longer, and that assumed that these new scouts returned at all.
What had happened up there? Had anybody survived? Had they been attacked, or had they perhaps fallen to some horrible disease, like this ¡®leprosy¡¯ that had been rumored several years ago? Was the rest of his nation in danger from the same thing? He just didn¡¯t know. Nobody in the palace did.
What they did know, however, was terrible enough. Barring some massive miscommunication or miracle, a great swath of his military was no more. The resources he needed to continue his plan would not be coming. That alone spelled disaster. More worrisome, perhaps, was how weakened his armed forces were without this hardened, veteran core. They¡¯d lost troops not just in great quantity, but in great quality as well.
Eterium was an utterly battered nation, the blows struck by the Ubrans nearly enough to shatter it to pieces. Now, with what looked to be a potential civil war brewing and a desperate populace, certain elements of Eterium would start getting ideas if¡ªno, when¡ªthey learned that their northern neighbor was suddenly much weaker. While those mercantile bastards had suffered the most of any nation from the invasion¡ªother than Gustil, of course¡ªthey still had a massive advantage in raw population and remained dangerous. Things looked dire.
Meanwhile, all Iorweth could do was sit and wait, and it was eating him alive.
¡°Darling, please,¡± his beloved beseeched him. ¡°You won¡¯t help anything like this. You need rest.¡±
¡°It¡¯s barely evening. How could I sleep?¡± he asked.
¡°You look like you¡¯re about to fall over. If the light bothers you so much, take the yellow tonic.¡±
¡°The yellow tonic will leave me fuzzy-headed for more than a day,¡± he replied. ¡°I would be useless should something occur tomorrow.¡±
¡°With all due respect, my love, you¡¯re so worn down that you¡¯re close to useless now. You cannot keep going like this, tying yourself into knots for days on end.¡±
Iorweth let out a sigh. ¡°Perhaps you are right,¡± he allowed.
He slid open a side drawer in his bedside desk and pulled out an ornamental box containing a set of flasks. Each flask held a liquid of a different color, all various remedies concocted by his best royal alchemists. The yellow one was the most potent, and would act as both a powerful narcotic and sleep inducer. He¡¯d only ever taken it once before, and its after effects had been unpleasant enough that he¡¯d never tried it again. But perhaps¡ª
A loud knocking on the outer doors to his quarters interrupted his thoughts before they could transform into actions. Normally, he would become quite angry with being bothered at this time in his private rooms, but these were no ordinary knocks. There was an urgency within them that told him what was happening before he even rushed to the door. Sure enough, when he pulled the large, heavy door open, he found Prime Minister Seare on the other side. The older man appeared winded, and before Iorweth could even ask, he spoke the words the king had been both longing and dreading to hear for days: ¡°We¡¯ve made contact.¡±
It was hard to write while walking as fast as possible down the halls¡ªhis father had always drilled into him that a proper ruler did not run, for running lacked the dignity of a monarch¡ªbut Iorweth made do as he, the minister, and an anxious Tangwen just behind made their way to the side of the palace where the Manys lived.
¡°A messenger returned from the mountains,¡± the prime minister explained as they went. ¡°I believe it is the messenger who delivered the final report before all went silent, but I am not sure.¡±
¡°You¡¯re not sure?¡±
¡°I did not speak to him myself. I was told they were ¡®getting him ready¡¯, and judged the best use of that time would be to get you.¡±
His mouth paused for a moment while his legs continued to move.
¡°Your Highness, what of your voice?¡±
Iorweth understood the question immediately. The nature of his lost voice was not well-known beyond the palace and the higher-ups within. To hide it, Iorweth had stopped giving public speeches and instead spoke through proclamations that would be read out by criers. He didn¡¯t even need to be present for the proclamation, which he had to admit was a nice silver lining.
¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he replied.
¡°Are you sure? You could stay out of view and allow me to speak for you.¡±
¡°This is too important,¡± he told his subordinate.
¡°As you wish,¡± Seare conceded.
The Manys were kept in a basement facility under the palace¡¯s central hub, where the throne room and most of the offices of the main administrators were located. Once the three of them arrived, they proceeded down a guarded stairwell. There, a Many handler met them and guided them to the proper chamber.
Walking in, Iorweth immediately knew something wasn¡¯t right. What he had expected¡ªor at least hoped for¡ªwas to find one of his proud soldiers standing at attention, ready to report. What he saw instead was two large soldiers, their expressions an even mix of annoyance and worry, with their hand clamped onto a third middle man¡¯s shoulders.
It quickly became clear from the middle man¡¯s struggles that they were not helping him stand as much as they were keeping him from running off somewhere. His rugged woodsman¡¯s outfit was scuffed all over, and he was covered in mud and dirt. The way he kept muttering to himself did not help matters, either.
¡°Report,¡± the prime minister commanded as soon as they were all present.
¡°Sir! We captured this man trying to flee the mountains, sir!¡± one of the soldiers said.
¡°And you say you recognize him?¡±
The soldier stiffened. ¡°Yes, sir. He was the last messenger to return to the expedition before the messages stopped coming, sir. He just... wasn¡¯t like this when he left.¡±
¡°What is his name?¡±
¡°Kerrick, I believe, sir.¡±
¡°Messenger Kerrick!¡± Seare barked. ¡°You stand in the presence of your king!¡±
The man flinched at the use of his name and looked up, seeming to realize for the first time they were there¡ªin projection form, anyway. A scowl crossed his face. ¡°N-no, can¡¯t... can¡¯t be here...¡± he muttered, twisting frantically, but his struggles proved useless against his captors¡¯ strong grips.
¡°Messenger Kerrick!¡±
The man ignored him.
¡°By the stars, man, get a hold of yourself!¡± Seare roared. It fell on deaf ears. The man wasn¡¯t listening, or more likely, he wasn¡¯t entirely there.
¡°Hold on, I recognize this man. He lived a few villages from my practice a while back,¡± the queen said. ¡°My love, if I may?¡±
Iorweth nodded.
His beloved stepped forward and squatted down to better get in the messenger¡¯s line of sight¡ªwhen his head would stay still, at least. ¡°Kerrick? Kerrick, how is Ashlyn?¡± she asked in a soft voice.
The second name seemed to catch the man¡¯s attention.
¡°Did you make sure to change the bandages and wash them every night? Did you apply the nightwort paste as I instructed?¡±
The messenger¡¯s eyes focused on the queen, and an inkling of recognition showed in his gaze.
¡°H-healer Tangwen? W-what are you¡ª¡±
¡°That¡¯s a long story, but we have more pressing matters right now. Please, we need your help. What happened to the expedition? What did you find up there? Will you tell us?¡±
Kerrick¡¯s focus returned to something distant that only he could see, his gaze turning hollow as the blood drained from his face. For a long moment, it seemed as if he¡¯d become lost again, but then suddenly, he spoke.
¡°Dead. All dead,¡± he lamented, his voice so quiet that Iorweth had to strain his ears to pick it up. ¡°Fire. Ice. Craters. Corpses... so many...¡±
A violent hiss escaped Iorweth¡¯s lips.
¡°Death was there,¡± the man whispered. ¡°I ran. Death comes, healer Tangwen. Death comes. I must go.¡± He tried to twist free again, his voice becoming louder and more agitated. ¡°I must go! Death comes!¡±
¡°I think we¡¯ve gotten just about as much as we can out of him for now,¡± Seare advised him.
Iorweth couldn¡¯t help but reluctantly agree. ¡°Keep him locked up for now, in case he comes back to his senses later,¡± he wrote. ¡°Meanwhile, send a team north to survey the area where this happened.¡±
¡°My Lord, I must argue against such an order?¡±
¡°All this does is confirm what we feared!¡± Iorweth scrawled. ¡°We learned practically nothing new!¡±
¡°The mountains are deadly enough on their own for those without experience, and we don¡¯t have anybody left. If you send inexperienced soldiers north, even if they survive the trip up and back, it will take them tens of days without a guide to show them the way!¡±
¡°We have a guide. He¡¯s right there.¡±
¡°Sire, you cannot be serious! Just look at¡ªwhat?¡±
Both Iorweth and his advisor paused their nascent argument in surprise as the projection from the Many darkened dramatically and without warning. To King Morgan¡¯s eyes, it was as if somebody had come through and hung thick curtains across the windows, blocking out nearly all the light of the sun... except the men on the other end were not indoors.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
A low rumble traveled through the projection, and something inside Iorweth clenched almost instinctively. His breath caught, and his heart began to pound as adrenaline began to pour into his bloodstream. Looking around, he found that the others in the room were reacting in the same strange way.
The men on the other end, however, looked far worse off. The lot of them had gone white as chalk as they stared upwards at something with wide, terrified eyes.
¡°No!¡± Kerrick cried out. ¡°Death is here!¡±
The others released him and turned to run, but he didn¡¯t move. He just held his arms up protectively over his face and let out a terrified shriek.
¡°AAAAAAHHH¡ª!¡±
The projection vanished, the scream cut off, and the room plunged into darkness. Stunned silence was all that remained¡ªthat, and the soft rustle of the Many slowly toppling over. Even in the gloom, it was clear from their motionless, open-eyed body that they had left the mortal world to join their ancestors.
Iorweth felt like he was barely holding himself together at his point. It took everything he had to not give in to the frustration and mounting panic and just scream his head off. Everything was getting worse and worse by the moment.
Tangwen wasn¡¯t faring any better. She trembled by his side, biting her knuckles, her gaze locked on the Many¡¯s unmoving form.
Seare, on the other hand, largely maintained his aura of cold competence, even though Iorweth knew that there was no way he could feel so calm and collected after what had just happened. The tightness around his eyes betrayed him, but still to his credit, he was the first to move and speak. ¡°We have to warn Zrukhora,¡± he gasped.
The words sparked a flash of clarity, and Iorweth realized that there was no reason the situation couldn¡¯t still get far, far worse. Iorweth yanked the thick stone door open and the three of them sprinted from the chamber. Outside in the hallway, they grabbed the Many handler stationed there to retrieve the Many once they were done.
¡°Get every Zrukhora Many in action right away, as quickly as you can!¡± Seare barked at them. The handler rushed off to comply, leaving them to stand there impotently.
After a moment, Tangwen cleared her throat, seemingly having recovered her faculties. ¡°Do we have time to wait for them to bring the Manys here?¡±
Iorweth let out a hiss. She was right, they should have gone with the handler! Every spare moment might matter in this crisis. He rushed towards where the handler had gone, but they¡¯d already escaped their view. Though he had no knowledge of the layout of the Many Home¡¯s back rooms, he pressed onward regardless, the others hot on his heels.
It didn¡¯t take long to find the right place, thanks to a sudden cry of alarm. When Iorweth arrived, he froze, his blood going from hot to ice cold in an instant. The Many Home organized the Manys in groups by where their connected Many was stationed, meaning all the Zrukhora Manys were housed in the same large room. All of them were present in the chamber... or at least, their corpses were.
His breath caught in his throat. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His palms grew clammy.
It was happening again.
Iorweth had seen a sight like this once before just a few years ago, when his third-largest city had been wiped entirely off the map. Now, he was witnessing a repeat of that tragedy, and despite all that he had done since, nothing had changed. He could only stand and watch everything fall apart. What was he supposed to even do? What could he even do?
The cry had attracted a group of other handlers wondering why somebody had screamed. Seeing the devastation, they tried to push into the room, but the Prime Minister blocked them, commanding, ¡°Go wake the other Manys, now! As fast as possible!¡±
The handlers stared back in puzzlement and disbelief. ¡°...which Manys?¡± one asked.
¡°ALL OF THEM!¡± Seare roared. ¡°MOVE!¡±
The handlers shot off like arrows, but Iorweth, on the other hand, felt rooted to the floor, pinned down in the shadow of a past disaster. Things were too chaotic and frenetic for him to accomplish anything with a pen and paper. Though he might be king, nobody had the mind to stop and wait for his command right now.
He felt as weak as a child, still standing on the side watching his father tackle the crises of leadership. Instead of taking charge, he was forced to rely on Prime Minister Seare, one of the remnants of his father¡¯s regime, to carry the burden for him. On one hand, he was glad for the man¡¯s presence. On the other, it rankled Iorweth that he would need another man to do his job, leaving him to hold his distraught wife against his chest as she tried her best not to cry.
The witch. This was all her fault. Surely, even the attacks on his homeland were her actions, somehow. If¡ªno, when¡ªhe made it through this, he would find a way to seize his revenge on her.
¡°Your Highness!¡± a Many handler called to him from the doorway. ¡°Minister Seare needs you right away!¡±
Iorweth hadn¡¯t even realized the minister had left, but nevertheless followed the handler to another nearby room. There, he found Seare and the image of another familiar and friendly face.
Duke Larek Addison was in most ways Iorweth¡¯s greatest ally. He and his family had always held a close relationship with the king¡¯s line, and Duke Addison was by and large the most loyal and least problematic noble that Iorweth dealt with. Living to the southwest in the city of Yirith, the second-largest city in Kutrad, he held great influence over the entire region. Many would say that he essentially ruled the whole area through his political capital alone, even though he was in no way officially appointed to govern it.
The Duke, an elderly man of wisdom and character, did not greet Iorweth with his usually smile and pleasantries. No, in fact, he looked half-dead! Blood dripped from a nasty gash on the side of his head, and his left arm hung limply at his side. Red stains covered his front, and Iorweth thought he saw bits of flesh clinging to the overcoat the Duke always wore when it got cold at night.
He stood in a poorly lit room made up entirely of stone. Iorweth had never seen the likes of the place in his many stays in the Duke¡¯s Yirith estate, but he knew the general construction. This was likely a small room somewhere underground, perhaps a basement.
A mixture of desperation and relief crossed Duke Addison¡¯s face the moment he spotted Iorweth. He reached out toward the king with his good hand, as if trying to reach through the image, while shouting, ¡°Sire! Run! Flee now, while you can!¡±
A massive boom erupted somewhere nearby, shaking the image and nearly knocking the old man off his feet.
¡°We cannot stop them! They¡¯re far too strong!¡± he continued. ¡°You¡ª¡± His voice faltered and he began to cough heavily. Blood spurted from his lips, spattering the nondescript brown stone floor.
Iorweth scribbled out a plea for the old man to run himself, but Seare spoke first.
¡°Who is it?!¡± he asked urgently. ¡°Who dares attack us?!¡±
¡°We don¡¯t know!¡± the Duke told them. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen things so huge! They came from the sky without a moment¡¯s warning and set the city alight before we even knew what happened! Everything is gone now, sire! It is too late for us! You must escape before they come for you, too!¡±
Another boom shook the image, this one either closer or more powerful than the last. Iorweth scratched out another pressing question, but Tangwen already knew what he wanted and spoke without looking. ¡°How do you know they¡¯re coming for us?¡±
The old man swallowed. ¡°They said so.¡±
It would prove to be his final words. With a mighty, ear-rending crash, the entire room seemed to erupt, stone shrapnel ripping his frail body to shreds. The Many fared little better, but the image persisted just long enough for Iorweth to get a glimpse of several massive pearlescent sickles embedded deep into the floor. Then the image vanished, and the Manys¡¯ lives with it.
Nobody made a sound for what felt like an eternity. All three of them were in shock, unable to process all that was happening to them and their world. Iorweth felt empty of body and mind, as if some higher being had reached down and scooped out his innards. None of this felt real. It couldn¡¯t be real. It just couldn¡¯t.
In the end, Seare¡¯s voice, more brittle and shaken than Iorweth had ever heard it, broke the silence.
¡°Is this the end?¡± he asked himself, or them, or perhaps fate itself. ¡°Of our home? Of everything?¡±
¡°No!¡± came his Queen¡¯s unexpectedly ardent answer. In her eyes he found the determination and fire that had been one of the biggest reasons he¡¯d fallen in love with her. Like the rest of them, she¡¯d been overwhelmed by the onslaught of tragedy, but now, somehow, she stood tall once more. ¡°Kutrad is not the land, Kutrad is us! As long as we survive, the flame shall forever burn! Let us do as the Duke bade us and run. He gave his life to give us a chance to escape¡ªwe must not waste it!¡±
¡°Run?¡± Seare replied in disbelief. ¡°Where could we run to? The Eterians? Or should we hide in the woods like common bandits?¡±
¡°Yes! As long as we still breathe, we have the chance to find a solution. We will only truly lose if we die or give up, and I have no intention of doing either any time soon!¡±
¡°There is an escape tunnel in the tower that leads to the forest beyond the city,¡± Iorweth wrote.
¡°Perfect!¡± his wife chirped.
¡°But who do we bring?¡± Seare wondered.
¡°What do you mean? Everybody!¡± Tangwen exclaimed.
¡°Everybody in the castle? The city?¡±
¡°As many people as we can!¡±
¡°Are you daft?!¡± the prime minister snapped. ¡°If we must run, we need to be able to move quickly and below notice!¡±
¡°Then what do you propose?!¡± she shot back. ¡°Do you want to be the one to mark people for death?! Are you going to tell the people just outside this door that you¡¯re leaving them to die?!¡±
¡°Sacrifices need to be made in a crisis! That¡¯s just how the world works!¡±
Tangwen opened her mouth to fire back, but before she could voice her outrage, something else cut into their conversation. They all went still as a deep sonorous rumble from somewhere off in the distance sent minute tremors running through the palace¡¯s solid stone structure. The rumble continued unabated for many heartbeats, growing in pitch and intensity until Iorweth¡¯s conscious mind could finally recognize it for what the remnants of his primitive animal mind had identified from the start. It was a roar, the bellow of something so immense and powerful and dangerous that the ancient part of him was screaming endlessly in his ear to run, to abandon all that he had and flee as fast as he could, for only then might he stand a chance of living beyond the moment.
He and the others fled out into the hallway to find chaos. The normally placid Manys were now anything but, flailing about on their own as their normally levelheaded minders abandoned their charges and fled in every direction. Iorweth was no better, leaping over one of the Manys without a second thought as he sprinted down the hallway and up the nearest stairway.
Back up on the first floor at last, Iorweth threw open the doors and emerged from the stairwell into the north wing¡¯s foyer. He spotted a small crowd of people across the room huddled outside an open pair of double doors that led to the northern gardens. They were all looking at something off in the distance. Knowing the nature of that which they saw but unable to help himself, he crossed the chamber to witness for himself.
There, gliding above the western edge of Xoginia, he spotted a seemingly impossible being. An enormous creature hung in the air, a mass of pale orange scales glinting in the evening sunlight suspended by gigantic wings that could cover a dozen homes in shadow. At the front, a long, thick neck arched up and out ahead of the body, ending in a large head with an equally gaping maw that spewed a trail of smoke behind it. An even longer tail jutted out the other side, a jagged set of spikes jutting out along the top.
The reductive part of Iorweth¡¯s mind likened the sight to that of a wildly overgrown winged lizard, the sort that could be found anywhere in Kutrad sunning themselves on rocks or flitting through the air in short bursts to snatch flying insects for a quick meal, except this one was all muscle and anger. He had trouble understanding the creature¡¯s very existence. Sure, leviathans existed, but nothing on land could ever be so large as this! And for it to soar through the air like it did, it shouldn¡¯t be possible! How could something so loud and terrible have existed for so long without anybody knowing?
A shadow fell over Iorweth and the others, prompting him to look up to the sky above them. It was only then that he saw a second monster, much the same as the first except even larger... and plummeting towards them from straight above.
Everybody scattered, Iorweth grabbing his wife by the arm and sprinting across the foyer in the direction of the tower where his escape tunnel waited for him. Never before had his palace felt so large, his refuge so far away.
With a crash that would put thunder to shame, the mighty beast slammed into the palace behind them, crushing the stone beneath its obscene mass. The resulting shockwave sent the king and his queen tumbling across the floor like dry leaves lost in the breeze. Glass from a nearby window shattered from the force, spraying sharp shards across the floor.
Coughing from some accidentally inhaled stone dust, he risked a glance behind him as he pushed himself to his feet. A deep blue behemoth stood amidst the wreckage, its bulk so gargantuan that it stood taller than the multi-story structure it had just crushed like a pile of twigs. It reared back its massive head filled with teeth larger than any man and let out a series of low rumbles that shook the palace like an earthquake. A single eye, larger than his entire body, turned to stare directly at him and only him, the gaze of a predator sighting their prey. Within the darkness of that slitted pupil, he saw an intelligence, malevolent and cruel, that chilled him to his core. He was nothing to this creature, a speck of insignificance worth little more than a moment of amusement.
¡°Protect the king!¡±
¡°Slay the beast!¡±
¡°Attack!¡±
A swarm of palace guards rushed the giant lizard, swarming from all directions to the tune of a dozen different shouted orders and rallying cries. These were the troops chosen to guard his home and his life, some of the very best and most powerful warriors his nation had to offer. Iorweth didn¡¯t feel much hope of anybody stopping this rampaging marauder, but if anybody had even the slimmest of hopes, it would be them.
A man stepped between him and the beast, battle axe held ready¡ªVice Captain Murghan, second in command of the guard. ¡°Fall back, sire! We¡¯ll handle this!¡± he cried with much more outward confidence than he must have felt inside.
Iorweth didn¡¯t need to be told twice. He turned and ran, chasing after Tangwen, who¡¯d had the good sense to just get up and flee instead of glancing at their impending doom.
Unfortunately, that doom had other ideas. To his utter horror, it ignored the dozens of high-class soldiers heading its way, turned towards him, and took a step forward through the building. Iorweth redoubled his efforts to the sounds of stone, metal, and glass being slowly reduced to rubble behind him by little more than sheer mass and strength. Through room after room, through hallway after hallway they ran, always chased by the noise of destruction and death.
Every so often, he would risk a glance behind, and each time he would see the same thing: a monstrous scaled head not fifty paces away, seemingly keeping pace with him as he fled through the palace. Each time he checked, more rivulets of strangely colorful, shining blood dripped from an ever-growing amount of small cuts and gashes¡ª¡®small¡¯ relative to the size of the beast, at least¡ª on its head and upper torso. But one thing that remained constant was how both of its eyes were locked on him now, and he didn¡¯t know if he was losing it or if there really was a mischievous glint in them. Then, once he returned his gaze to his destination, the beast would exhale and Iorweth would find himself awash in steaming air and an acrid stench with a hint of sulfur. It made him want to cough and gag, but he knew that to do so would spell the end of him, and so he pressed on through the pain.
Through the palace they ran, out of the east wing, across the bridge, and all the way to the tower, their pursuer right behind the entire time. Only once they were on the other side of fifteen paces of solid rock¡ªa barrier many times thicker than any of the palace walls, and one that they might give them a moment of protection¡ªdid he allow himself to feel a modicum of relief. They were almost free. The hidden tunnel was just over there, on the other side of the tower. They could make it.
BOOM!
After the disaster with the witch, wherein the witch had somehow shattered the tower¡¯s solid and sturdy reinforced wood door and riddled his body with wooden shrapnel, Iorweth had demanded the replacement door be so strong and thick that nobody would ever be able to break it. That was how the new door had come to be, thick as a man was wide. But, in the end, it still had to be something Iorweth could open on his own, and stone and metal were just too heavy. Though it had been constructed of the strongest hardwood that money could buy, wood was still just wood.
A single claw was all it took. So large that it couldn¡¯t fit half of it through the door frame, the oversized nail crashed through the wooden obstruction almost like it wasn¡¯t there, exploding it into lethally sharp shards that rocketed all over the tower interior faster than Iorweth and Tangwen could ever react.
Iorweth grunted as the blunt end of a large wooden chunk hit him in the back of his left shoulder hard enough to knock him off his feet. He felt his shoulder blade crack, a spike of pain shooting through his shoulder, but he could still manage. He¡¯d been lucky.
Tangwen, however, fared far worse. She let out a cry as a long piece of hardwood pierced deep into the back of her thigh, running all the way through so that when it stopped a hand¡¯s width of wood poked out the other side. She collapsed, screaming in agony.
BOOM! CRACK!
Something struck the tower hard enough to shake it like a sapling in a winter storm. Iorweth stared, aghast, as a thick horizontal crack formed near the top of the doorway¡¯s arch, running a many paces both to the left and right of it.
The claw seemed to almost flex as it pushed against the top of the door frame. The crack began to grow, slowly succumbing to the beast¡¯s impossible power. As it grew and widened, a second claw shoved its way into the newly created gap, then a third.
It took Iorweth until the third claw showed itself to regain himself and shake off the mind-numbing shock and awe from the sight. He pushed himself up by his good arm and ran to his whimpering wife to help her up. The shard in her leg was too large to deal with in the moment. It would have to stay in.
Tangwen needed no encouragement; she knew how dire their situation was. She hobbled to her feet, clutching his arm and shoulder for support. Together they made one last bid for their lives, trying not to trip on the debris-littered floor as the crack grew ever-larger.
They were too late, the evening light signaling the end. Still steps away from the entrance to the hidden escape tunnel, they looked up to see the beast peering down at them from its self-created entrance. With one final flex, the last of the stone on the opposite end broke and the crack completed its circumference of the tower. The upper half of the tower, a seemingly immovable mass of crushing stone, tipped up and over like a felled tree. Landing out of Iorweth¡¯s sight, it shook the world with a massive crunch of stone on earth.
The beast let out a series of low rumbles as it reached down towards him with its powerful forearm. An equally large hand enveloped his vision, scooping up him and all the surrounding stone and squeezing the rough rock tightly against his body. He struggled, but found himself barely able to breathe under the pressure, let alone move.
The beast lifted him and his stone wrapping up into the air. Only then could he spot his dear Tangwen wriggling in the creature¡¯s other hand. She screamed and Iorweth redoubled his efforts to no avail.
¡°Forward, warriors! The King must be saved, even if it costs us our lives!¡±
The world lurched as the beast spun around, swinging Iorweth around along with it. Without its bulk blocking his view, he was able to see in its entirety the state of devastation that had been visited upon his home. Of what was once a grand and palatial place with four separate wings, only the north wing still stood largely unmarred. The rest was little more than piles of debris and the occasional free-standing wall.
Bodies were strewn about and around the debris. The unlucky ones had been crushed to death by falling stone or rampaging lizard. The lucky ones were merely knocked out, many of them having barely made it out before losing consciousness¡ªor at least, so he hoped.
Some people, however, still moved. At the fore stood a small group of battered soldiers, the last resistance still standing against the giant invader. Vice Captain Murghan, the source of that shout, stood defiantly in the center of the group, weary but somehow not out of the fight.
The beast arched its long neck upward, inhaling deeply, before whipping its head forward, mouth open wide. From that maw erupted a cone of ashen death, a torrent of white-hot cinder wreathed in thunder and lightning that reduced all it touched to dust and despair. Nature¡¯s wrath made manifest, it swept across the last living defenders and on to the palace itself.
Within moments, everything was gone¡ªall of it extinguished in a handful of heartbeats. Hundreds of lives incinerated into nothing more than sizzling soot. Hundreds of years of history reduced to puddles of molten slag. All of it with only a single breath.
Only now, as he surveyed the glowing remains through eyes filled with tears, did the terrible reality finally sink in. This monster could have destroyed them all in a single moment at any time¡ªit simply hadn¡¯t wanted to. It had chased Iorweth and Tangwen through the palace, crushing the building and the people in it beneath its incredible weight along the way, just for its own amusement.
The beast let out more short, low rumbles. Finally Iorweth understood the noises for what they were. It was laughing.
And then, it spoke, its words hammering into his mind like a sledge.
¡°FOOLISH CRAWLERS, DESPERATELY SCRATCHING AT TAVRETH¡¯S HIDE¡±, it chortled. ¡°CRAWLERS UNIMPORTANT, NOT LIKE IMPORTANT CRAWLER.¡±
It lifted its hands up to its face, leveling its gaze upon him.
¡°CRAWLERS DIE TO PROTECT IMPORTANT CRAWLER. IMPORTANT CRAWLER SPECIAL TO CRAWLERS. TAVRETH KNOW. TAVRETH SEE BEFORE, LONG AGO. TAVRETH NEVER FORGET WHAT SPECIAL CRAWLERS TOOK FROM TAVRETH. NOW, TAVRETH TAKE FROM SPECIAL CRAWLER.¡±
It brought its other hand inward, holding Tangwen up between them. His beloved still struggled, refusing to give up no matter how dire things were.
¡°Iorweth, help! Help, Iorweth!¡± she cried out.
The beast, this ¡®Tavreth¡¯, chuckled. ¡°NOISY CRAWLER IMPORTANT TO SPECIAL CRAWLER, YES? WHAT SHOULD TAVRETH DO?¡±
¡°Please, Iorweth, do something! Save me!¡±
Iorweth fought with all his might, to no avail. Unable to budge even a hair¡¯s width, he had never felt so feeble. His strength as a man was worth less than nothing. His strength as a king had already proven itself worthless. He might as well have been a limp blade of grass for all the difference it would make.
¡°SHOULD TAVRETH PEEL CRAWLER APART, LET SPECIAL CRAWLER WATCH? SHOULD TAVRETH IGNITE CRAWLER SLOWLY? SPECIAL CRAWLER, TELL TAVRETH! TELL TAVRETH HOW CRAWLER DIES!¡±
He couldn¡¯t stop trembling, despite being squeezed so hard he could barely breathe. He felt like he was losing his mind. How had it come to this? What had he done to deserve any of this?
The beast shook him violently. ¡°SPEAK, CRAWLER! CHOOSE! TAVRETH DEMANDS ANSWER!¡±
He wanted to speak, desperately so. There was ever so much that he wanted¡ªno, needed¡ªto say. And yet, in his darkest hour, he could not. No matter how hard he tried, the witch¡¯s grip on his voice remained. Maybe his body remembered the agony he¡¯d heaped upon himself the last time he¡¯d broken through the witch¡¯s curse, or maybe her grip on him had gotten stronger since then. In the end, it mattered not. His throat remained deathly silent.
¡°Iorweth, I love you,¡± Tangwen sobbed. ¡°Now and forever, I love you.¡±
A bellowing roar echoed across the landscape from across the city. ¡°TAVRETH! LEAVE CLAIM OF DARAVITH AT ONCE!¡±
Tavreth turned its gaze towards the other beast momentarily, and let out an annoyed grunt. ¡°CRAWLER TOO SLOW. TAVRETH HUNGRY, ANYWAY.¡±
The beast opened its many-fanged mouth and tossed her lightly into the air like Iorweth would toss a grape. Tangwen shrieked as she plummeted mouth-ward. Her scream cut off with a sickening squelch as the monster clamped down with its terrible blade-like teeth, leaving the sound permanently echoing in Iorweth¡¯s mind. Just like that, she was gone.
First his voice, then his people, then his home, and finally his love. Everything but his life had been taken from him now, and barring a miracle, not even that would remain much longer. He could do nothing. He was nothing. All that remained were tears.
The creature pulled him closer, inspecting him closely.
¡°NO WORDS, CRAWLER? NO BEGGING? NO PLEAS? NO CURSES?¡±
Tavreth let out a rumbling snort of dissatisfaction.
¡°TAVRETH WASTED TIME COMING HERE. CRAWLER WEAK. PATHETIC. BORING.¡±
It clenched its fingers.
Chapter 130
[Warning: the first section has some rather lewd stuff in it. I think it''s an important scene for the characters, but it''s not important for the plot, so you can skip it if you must and you should be alright.]
Gabriela blinked the sleep from her eyes, her vision slowly sharpening to reveal a view of a ceiling that was still somewhat new to her but getting more familiar by the day. Slowly and carefully, so as not to disturb her still-slumbering partner, she reached up with her free left hand and brushed away the hair plastered to her face with sweat. Her whole body was covered with the stickiness of a busy night¡¯s sweat compounded by early morning humidity. She needed a bath.
Unfortunately, getting up at that moment was out of the question, as her entire right side was currently busy acting as a makeshift pillow for a certain former Ubran. The Batranala had draped herself over Gabriela at some point in the night, likely aided by the way the mattress had sunk to the floor in the middle, squeezing them together.
She sighed internally. This was what, the fourth bed frame they¡¯d broken in a week? This one they¡¯d cracked right in two, straight down the middle, though the others had been pulverized in other ways. She imagined that replacing them so often had to be expensive, though Chitra would just laugh it off and tease her when she brought it up. For the moment, though, her partner remained largely silent, the only noise she made being the sound of her soft breathing into Gabriela¡¯s shoulder.
Gabby turned her head and studied her lover¡¯s face just millimeters away. Chitra¡¯s cheek smushed up against Gabby¡¯s shoulder, the pressure forcing her soft lips open so that she drooled all over Gabby¡¯s collarbone.
Gabby couldn¡¯t help but smile. In some ways, this was the view of Chitra that she loved the most, as it was the only time the other woman ever lacked that aura of dignity and competence, the one that said that broadcast to everybody around that she was always in control no matter the situation. Gabby felt as if she were witnessing something secret, something only she got to see.
The sleeping woman¡¯s eyes fluttered and slowly opened. She moved her head off Gabriela¡¯s shoulder and placed it higher on their shared pillow, the tip of her chin now just barely touching the top of Gabby¡¯s shoulder. She smiled, and Gabby felt her heart flutter. Gabby turned her gaze back to the ceiling, unready for such feelings so soon after waking.
¡°Sleep well?¡± Chitra asked.
¡°Well enough,¡± Gabby allowed.
¡°I can see that,¡± Chitra hummed. She pulled herself in against Gabriela¡¯s neck and inhaled deeply. ¡°Mmmmm... you smell wonderful.¡±
¡°I stink. I need to wash.¡±
¡°Why wash, when you will just get sweaty again right after?¡±
¡°What are you¡ª?¡±
A small nibble on her neck answered her question before she could even get it out. Her pulse quickened and her face grew hot. ¡°Already?¡±
¡°You know I can never get enough of you.¡± Chitra¡¯s hand caressed Gabriela¡¯s flank, slowly sliding up Gabriela¡¯s side before moving up and in to fondle her breast, her smooth fingertips running over the many teeth marks left during the night¡¯s escapades.
¡°I really should have known you¡¯d be a biter,¡± Gabby sighed.
¡°How else am I supposed to let all those trollops out there know that you¡¯re already spoken for?¡±
She bit down harder, eliciting a soft moan when she sent an equal mix of pleasure and pain cascading through Gabby¡¯s body and mind.
¡°You know full well that nobody out there covets me except you,¡± Gabby told her. ¡°They all just see something to fear, or maybe just a plain, ordinary woman at best.¡±
¡°Then they are blind¡ªblind to all that makes you the most wonderful thing I¡¯ve ever known. But...¡± Chitra reached out and gently turned Gabby¡¯s head back towards her, then leaned in again, lips meeting lips. The kiss was deep, passionate, and seemed to go on and on forever. When it finally did end, Gabby found herself panting, her heart racing and her body flush with heat and yearning. ¡°...that suits me just fine.¡±
Chitra slid an arm beneath Gabriela and rolled her up and atop herself, their two naked forms pressing against each other with unrestricted intimacy. She reached up to the edge of the mattress and grabbed an item, then pulled it down and slid it into Gabby¡¯s hand. Gabby didn¡¯t have to look at it to know what it was; the feeling of the hard length and the smooth straps against her palm told her all she needed to know.
¡°Now,¡± Chitra purred, her gaze overflowing with fervent desire, ¡°do what you do best and plant my hips into this mattress so hard that I fear my pelvis will shatter.¡±
¡°But...¡± Gabby hesitated, ¡°...we already broke the bed again...¡±
¡°Then we¡¯ll just have to break the floor this time.¡±
She leaned upward for another kiss, and this time Gabby leaned in as well, meeting her halfway. Their lips touched, and¡ª
BZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT! BZZT! BZZT! BZZT!
BZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT! BZZT! BZZT! BZZT!
Chitra¡¯s head plopped back down listlessly and she rolled her eyes. ¡°I thought you got rid of that thing.¡±
¡°He asked me to keep it in case we went out again,¡± Gabby explained as she climbed out of the wreckage that was their sleeping area, walked over to a small end table nearby, and pulled open the thin drawer where she kept most of her assorted knick-knacks. Within, she found the chip Blake had given her, the one that had summoned them back from Gustil what seemed like ages ago. It trembled and quaked with the same manic urgency as before, crying out to her that she was needed oh so desperately.
¡°They could have just sent a runner. We¡¯re not nations away this time. We can see them from the window.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe he wants it kept secret,¡± Gabby theorized as she hurriedly threw on some clothes. ¡°I¡¯d better go see what¡¯s going on.¡±
¡°Weren¡¯t you going to wash up?¡±
¡°No time,¡± Gabriela griped as she grabbed her sword and slid her feet into a pair of tough leather boots. She returned to Chitra, who was still sitting on the remains of their bed, and leaned in for a final kiss. ¡°I love you.¡±
¡°I love you too,¡± Chitra replied when their lips finally parted.
And then, Gabby was out the door.
Gabriela found Blake in the large room with the circular table, which she mentally thought of as the ¡®main conference room¡¯. Only Blake was present at the moment.
The man had his helmet off, a rarity for when he was anywhere but his most private areas of the fortress, and he looked tired and stressed. To be fair, the man always appeared tired and stressed, especially since the day he¡¯d come upon his whole ¡®we¡¯re all going to explode¡¯ theory, but today he looked even a step or two beyond that. The bags under his eyes were like black pits and his face looked pallid and clammy. Gabriela wondered how much he¡¯d slept recently.
Still, fatigue and stress never seemed to stop Blake from being himself. His gaze swept over her unkempt form before landing on the side of her neck.
¡°Are there some giant mosquitoes plaguing the city that I don¡¯t know about?¡± he deadpanned as she walked in.
Gabby instinctively slapped her hand over the mark, flushing with embarrassment. ¡°Shut up.¡±
The action drew a small, wry grin from the man and he chuckled like a big brother sensing weakness in a younger sibling.
She fished the chip out from a pocket, still buzzing away, and slapped it down upon the table. ¡°You going to explain why you set off this thing?¡±
¡°You weren¡¯t in your rooms and we couldn¡¯t find you when we needed to get a hold of you earlier. Eventually, we just gave up and adjusted the plan without you here. Maybe it¡¯s just because I¡¯m so tired, but I forgot all about you still having that thing until a little while ago. Better late than never, I suppose.¡±
¡°Wait, who¡¯s ¡®we¡¯? And what plan?¡±
¡°Me, Sofie, and Arlette, mostly. They¡¯re out preparing stuff right now, but they should be back soon, I imagine. And the plan is the whole Stragma plan.¡± He sighed. ¡°We gotta move it up and change some things around. We need you heading out on the ship before the day is over. You need to get ready ASAP.¡±
¡°What? But... I just... Blake, what¡¯s going on?¡±
He sighed again and took a moment to rub his face with both hands before answering.
¡°Kutrad¡¯s gone.¡±
¡°What?! What do you mean, gone?!¡± She
¡°Every Many we have with Kutrad died suddenly last night. I¡¯ve checked in with other nations and theirs also died all around the same time.¡±
¡°So, something happened in their capital? What was it called again?¡±
¡°Xoginia, and no, it was more than just the capital. I just got word from the Eterians, what ones still remain in power I suppose, that people are streaming across the border from southern Kutrad, all with tales of massive flying lizards and fire.¡±
¡°Oh, no... no, no, no...¡± Gabriela felt like she was going to be sick. She sank into the closest seat and put her head in her hands. ¡°This all just keeps getting worse.¡±
¡°Yep,¡± Blake replied matter-of-factly. ¡°So yeah, as I said, waiting is a luxury we don¡¯t have anymore. We have to act now, while the dragons are still busy consolidating their new territory and whatnot.¡±
¡°I understand,¡± she said with a nod.
Blake leaned forward, hands flat against the table top. ¡°Alright, then, here¡¯s the plan...¡±
Together they discussed the newly revised plan of action, from the moment she embarked to what to do once she succeeded.
¡°When do I have to leave?¡± she asked at the end.
¡°The sooner the better, I should think. Sorry it¡¯s so sudden, but what can we do?¡±
¡°Alright, I¡¯m going to need a few hours at least. Have to pack and say goodbye.¡± She rose to her feet. ¡°But before any of that, I need a shower.¡±
Blake snorted, that sadistic smile returning. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sure you do, after all that exercise.¡±
¡°Oh, be quiet and go take a nap.¡±
As she lay on the floor of her cabin, letting the drone of the propellers wash over her like so much white noise, Gabriela reflected on her recent life. So much had changed¡ªso much about her, her feelings, and her relationships. One thing that remained the same, however, was how much she hated traveling in this thing.
It would have been so much easier to just run there¡ªfaster, too. Unfortunately, the specifics of the mission¡ªand what followed after even moreso¡ªmeant that running wasn¡¯t an option. Instead, she was stuck on this infernal contraption, miserable as always.
The worst part was the swaying. It was subtle, just strong and varied enough to constantly remind her, as she lay there in her fully enclosed cabin with no windows trying to pretend that she was in a normal room on solid ground, that she was instead suspended hundreds of meters into the air by a few pieces of metal. The knowledge gnawed at her insides, threatening to give her ulcers.
Already she¡¯d been in this infernal contraption for half a day, but that meant there were still many, many hours left to go before she got to her destination. Perhaps only as a way to distract herself, she mentally went through her conversation with Blake about the plan one more time.
¡°Alright, so in a lot of aspects, we want to keep this as simple as it can be¡ªa quick smash and grab,¡± Blake began. ¡°Get in, grab him, and go. It¡¯s not that simple, of course, but that¡¯s the general idea.¡±
¡°Sounds good. Who is coming with me?¡±
He shook his head. ¡°Just you.¡±
¡°Just me?¡±
¡°The rest of us have our plates full here, and speed is the priority anyway. We can¡¯t even send a Many along; it would slow the trip down too much, and the Many handlers aren¡¯t in a state to travel anywhere with the sudden deaths and whatnot, anyway.¡±
¡°But what if I need somebody? What if I need help?¡±
¡°We¡¯re rounding up a bunch of tools for you, don¡¯t worry. Sofie¡¯s out right now getting the brat to make you plenty of explosives and whatever else you might need to take along. You¡¯ll be fine.¡±
¡°But how will we communicate?¡±
¡°Well, you have the buzzer, don¡¯t you?¡± he replied, pushing the chip back towards her. ¡°If for some reason we need you back in a flash, we¡¯ll buzz you.¡±
Gabby raised her head off the cold metal, her eyes scanning the room. What was that? She thought she¡¯d heard something, a new sound amidst the ever-present drone, but she couldn¡¯t be sure she hadn¡¯t just imagined it. Stilling her breath, she closed her eyes and focused on her hearing as much as she could.
There! It was barely audible over everything else, but she swore she¡¯d heard the sound of something banging against metal. She paled. If this machine were to come apart now, when Blake wasn¡¯t around to fix it, she¡¯d be in serious trouble.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself to her feet and stumbled out of her cabin. Slowly, she made her way around the ship, trying her best to locate the noise, but finding little success. She hadn¡¯t been able to tell which direction the noise had come from, so she had little choice but to survey the entire craft¡ªa terrible fate indeed.
The living quarters were as empty as ever. The front of the airship as well; the cockpit vacant as it had been from the start of her journey, the instruments moving on their own as the craft followed some sort of autopilot routine. It wasn¡¯t until she neared the rear that she heard another noise, a trio of three soft, low clangs of metal on metal.
Gabriela tensed. Normally, such a sound might be explained by a skitter somehow getting loose from its moorings slightly, enough to sway and tap against its neighbor. However, Blake had been very clear that they¡¯d be leaving the normal skitter contingent behind this time to lighten the ship and increase speed.
Several possible explanations crossed Gabriela¡¯s mind, some worse than others. With some trepidation, she opened the door to the skitter bay, looked inside, and let out a groan. On her list of possible explanations, this was quite likely the worst of them.
¡°Pari Clansnarl,¡± she snapped, ¡°what are you doing on the airship?¡±
Pari Clansnarl paused mid-scribble, her hand clutching some sort of waxy red crayon she¡¯d been using to doodle on the skitter bay¡¯s walls. The child turned around and beamed when she sighted Gabriela, letting out a delighted chirp of ¡°Gabby-friend! Pari miss Gabby-friend lots!¡± She rushed towards Gabriela with both arms reaching her way, ready to pounce into a warm embrace.
Gabby crouched down and stuck her arm out, blocking the child and keeping her at arm¡¯s length. Confused, the child pushed against her limb to no avail. With her other hand, Gabby reached out and grasped the top of Pari¡¯s head gently but firmly, tilting it back so that they looked each other square in the eyes. ¡°Pari, answer the question,¡± she said with as much motherly firmness as she could manage.
¡°Pari playing hide and seek with Sammy-friend!¡± the child told her with a wide grin. She giggled. ¡°Pari hide super great this time! Sammy-friend never find Pari now!¡±
Gabriela let out a groan and pulled the rambunctious girl in for her desired hug, a litany of curses she didn¡¯t dare speak aloud running through her mind. What was she supposed to do now?
¡°Listen up, Pari,¡± she said with as much seriousness as she could. ¡°I¡¯m currently heading out on a dangerous task, you understand? It¡¯s too dangerous for you to come along. We¡¯re going to have to turn back and...¡± She let out a groan and clutched at her temple with one hand. ¡°But that would cost a day and we might not have... crud. Crud crud crud.¡± She blew out a long exhalation from her nose. ¡°Okay... here¡¯s what we¡¯re going to do. Pari, you can come along with me to Stragma, but you have to stay on the ship always. Got it? Always. No leaving the ship until we¡¯ve left. This is for your safety.¡±
The child¡¯s ears perked up at the mention of Stragma, then wilted in disappointment as Gabriela continued.
¡°But Pari want go play in forest!¡± she whined.
¡°Sorry, but no means no.¡±
Pari¡¯s cheeks puffed out in indignation. ¡°Why Pari listen to Gabby-friend, anyway? Gabby-friend not sister or grandfather, just friend!¡±
Gabriela would have pinched the catgirl¡¯s cheeks¡ªeven her pouting was adorable¡ªhad the situation not been so important. Instead, she looked Pari in the eyes and spoke from the heart.
¡°Because I am an adult, and the most important job of adults is to keep children safe. And, because Sofie, and your grandfather, and me, and everybody else all worked really hard to bring you back after that terrible day, and if we were to lose you again, we¡¯d all be heartbroken and sad for a very long time.¡±
The girl took on a stricken expression, her eyes wide and quickly filling with tears. ¡°R-Really? P-P-Pari sorry...¡± she sniffled.
Gabby pulled the child in so fast she nearly blurred. ¡°Shhh! Shhh, it¡¯s okay. It¡¯s okay. We¡¯re going to keep you nice and safe in here and everything will be just fine,¡± she assured the tearful girl.
¡°R-Really?¡±
¡°Yes. Now, come. Let¡¯s move elsewhere. This place wasn¡¯t meant for people to be in for very long. It¡¯s too cold.¡±
Gabriela stood back up just as a gust of wind rocked the ship, sending her stumbling and her stomach lurching. She quickly leaned against the nearby wall, panting and struggling to hold her lunch down. She¡¯d been too distracted by Pari¡¯s unexpected presence to remember where she was for a few moments, but now, her problematic circumstances had reasserted their hold over her.
¡°Ah!¡± Pari gasped, her expression one of somebody coming to a sudden realization. Bouncing back to the doodle-covered side of the chamber, she ruffled through her sack¡ªGabby couldn¡¯t remember the last time she¡¯d seen the girl without it somewhere nearby. With a triumphant grin, she pulled out a handful of small candles and skipped back over. ¡°Pari make candles to help Gabby-friend after last time, but Pari forget to give to Gabby-friend until now!¡±
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
¡°Thank you, Pari, that¡¯s very sweet of you,¡± Gabby said, unsure whether to feel relieved or terrified.
¡°Come, come!¡± the girl bade, tugging on Gabby¡¯s pants. ¡°Pari show Gabby-friend!¡±
And that was how Gabriela ended up back in her cabin, in the same prone position as before, except now the air smelled like lilacs. The twisting in her gut remained, but ever since she¡¯d started breathing in the thin mist emanating from the candle, it no longer seemed like the world¡¯s most pressing and immediate concern. Mere existence was once again... well, not great, but at least tolerable. Gabby idly wondered just how much money Pari would have been able to make developing pharmaceuticals on Earth.
A yawn escaped her, unbidden¡ªit seemed that the child¡¯s creation was not without some side effects.
Pari stretched her arms toward the sky and returned her yawn. ¡°Sleepy Gabby-friend make Pari sleepy too.¡±
Just like that, the child plopped down, draping her upper body onto Gabriela¡¯s torso and snuggling against her, eyes closed and a blissful smile on her face. As if by instinct, Gabby reached out to pat her head and scratch behind her delightful little ears and was rewarded by the soft rumble of purring against her ribcage.
With her other arm, Gabriela reached out and just barely snagged the blanket from the cabin¡¯s nearby cot with her fingertips. Pulling it off the bed, she tossed it out, letting it unfurl and fall to cover her and Pari¡¯s lower bodies. She breathed deep, letting the floral scent permeate her lungs, and felt her body relax just a bit more. Things still didn¡¯t feel great, but for the first time, every moment up here in the air didn¡¯t feel like sandpaper scraping across her mind. There were worse ways to travel, she supposed.
¡°Once you¡¯re over there, the first thing you¡¯ll need to do is rendezvous with Yamanaka-san,¡± Blake continued. ¡°I already put the meeting location in as the ship¡¯s first destination. She¡¯ll meet up with you here.¡±
He pointed to a spot on the map in what was formerly Gustil directly north of the forest and past the smaller mountain range that lined the border between the two countries.
¡°Her sightseeing trip will have been regrettably short, but she¡¯ll still be able to give you the most up-to-date information we can get on the Stragmans and how much longer before they¡¯re ready to migrate north for the summer.¡±
Three people¡ªGabriela, Mizuko, and Mizuko¡¯s dour elven companion Vura¡ªsat on a verdant hillside north of Stragma, engaged in conversation, while a fourth person darted about the area, collecting samples from the local ecology. Nearby stood one of the largest skitters Gabriela had ever seen. Bulky and square, with a multi-storied cabin complete with windows, a door, and even what appeared to be a sun umbrella on the top floor, it reminded her almost of a house with legs rather than the usual transports or weapons of war. Meanwhile, the Flying Toaster hovered overhead, its drone reduced to a barely audible hum.
Circumstances had conspired to prevent Gabriela from ever meeting the Japanese elder until now. Though she¡¯d been told, Gabriela still found herself caught unprepared for just how ancient the woman appeared, though she got over it quickly. Mizuko seemed like a pleasant old grandmother to Gabby and even reminded her of the nice old lady who¡¯d lived next door back when... well, she didn¡¯t want to get sucked into that again. There was a time and place for remembrance, and this was not it. After a few minutes of introductory small talk between them, they got down to business.
¡°What can you tell me about the Stragmans? Have they started the final preparations for their migration?¡± Gabby inquired.
¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry to tell you, dear, but they¡¯re already migrating. They have been for several days now.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°They decided to embark early this year, I understand. Had to cut the visit short, sadly, though I must confess that the insects were wearing on me. Perhaps it¡¯s for the best.¡±
¡°They¡¯re¡ªthey¡¯re already moving?!¡±
¡°That¡¯s what I said. I sure hope my presence wasn¡¯t what caused this. That large polar bear woman allowed me in, but I don¡¯t think she trusted me too much.¡±
¡°Once you¡¯ve checked in with her and made sure everything¡¯s not on fire, head south over the border and into the forest. I¡¯ve talked with the others and we¡¯ve marked down on this map the approximate route their migration will take, along with estimates on how far they¡¯ll be after each day. The goal is for you to get to the ambush point here¡ª¡± He pointed to a small circled area on the map about a third of the way up from the southern end of the migration route. ¡°¡ªbefore they do. Both Tehlmar and Sofie say they¡¯ve heard about this area. There¡¯s a crapload of huge-ass roots sticking up from the ground with lots of little nooks and crannies to hide in. You get there, find a place to hide, and wait for them to come by. The sentries can¡¯t waste their time checking. It¡¯s also just around where they¡¯ll likely set up camp, so you can strike from there.¡±
¡°Crud crud crud,¡± Gabby muttered to herself as she pulled out the map. ¡°How many days, exactly?¡±
¡°Two, I believe.¡±
¡°Alright, I imagine that would put them around... here...¡±
Gabby let out a breath of relief. ¡°Alright, that¡¯s not that bad. If I head straight south and really book it, I can still make it in time, barely.¡±
The elf woman let out a skeptical hum. ¡°I would not be so sure. You are here to free the man they have locked away, am I correct?¡± she asked, speaking for the first time. Her voice sounded youthful but serious, and her gaze carried the steel of someone who¡¯s seen many things, much of them less than pleasant.
Gabby nodded.
¡°How important is it that they don¡¯t know you¡¯re in the forest?¡±
¡°Fairly important,¡± Gabby answered. ¡°They might try to hide him or something if they knew. It would make it all far more difficult, and maybe far more bloody.¡±
¡°In that case, entering the forest from the north would be a mistake.¡±
¡°You know something, Vura?¡± the elder inquired.
¡°I overheard several Stragmans talking as they escorted us north. The savages didn¡¯t think that I could hear them, but underestimating us is a national pastime of theirs. There was mention of their leader ordering a large increase in scouts monitoring the northern border. The odds of you entering from that direction are low.¡±
¡°Oh dear, it seems that we truly stoked her suspicions after all,¡± Mizuko sighed. ¡°My deepest apologies.¡±
¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Gabriela lied. She let out a grunt of frustration and consulted the map once more. ¡°Crud. I guess I¡¯ll have to go in from the east...¡±
¡°Also a poor choice,¡± Vura informed her. ¡°Did you forget who lives to the east? I remember my father once mentioned that the savages kept a heavy watch on the forest¡¯s eastern edge.¡±
¡°Did you talk like that in Stragma?¡± Gabby couldn¡¯t help but wonder.
The elf sniffed. ¡°I know how to hold my tongue when the situation requires it, but we are thankfully no longer within that overgrown thicket.¡±
Gabriela sighed. ¡°So I guess that leaves...¡± She looked at the map, then up at the horizon. A row of sharp, jagged teeth stabbed at the sky from the western horizon, from south to north as far as she could see. That oh-so-familiar tangle in her gut reappeared. ¡°...the Divide.¡±
Entering from the western edge of the forest by foot had ended up being almost as much of a nightmare as Gabriela had feared. To get west and south enough that she felt confident that nobody would notice her entrance, she¡¯d had to travel through Gustil to the Divide, then clamber along the Divide¡¯s edge across the sides of seven massive, treacherous mountains. She¡¯d hated every minute of it, but she knew it could have been worse. She¡¯d experienced the true terror of the Divide when she¡¯d had to cross it, and this was a lit match compared to that bonfire.
Once she felt that she¡¯d traveled far enough south to avoid detection, Gabriela turned eastward. She had no way of knowing for sure, which bothered her, but there wasn¡¯t much she could do about it. If some Stragman hiding in the trees saw her, she had no way of knowing, but really, who would spend resources to monitor a mountain range so deadly and impassible that it was literally called the Divide?
Now came the hardest part: finding her way. Gabriela carried a rather modern-looking backpack strapped to her back, its pockets filled with various devices to help her. The one that mattered most right now was the simple compass, which she needed to prevent herself from running in a circle, as past events suggested she was wont to do. Other than that, the only semi-reliable way she had to navigate was to climb to the top of the nearest tree, get through the forest canopy, and look for her relative position to Ruresni and specific mountains in the Divide. If she were to be honest, neither tactic gave her too much confidence. This forest especially wasn¡¯t like a prairie or a wooded hillside. Foliage grew absolutely everywhere, the forest floor was a chaotic mess of roots and other obstacles that threatened to trip you or worse, and you constantly had to navigate around massive trees ten meters thick.
It didn¡¯t help that she was majorly behind schedule. The detour and the Stragmans¡¯ early departure meant that the migration was likely at least a day past the planned ambush location. She was playing catch-up. After she located the moving city¡ªa stressful and dubious task on its own¡ªshe¡¯d then have to start to truly improvise. Things could get very... messy, and she didn¡¯t want that for plenty of reasons.
Eventually, after several trips and stumbles left her sprawling over roots and ferns, she decided she needed to stop for a bit. Night was falling, and the light in the forest had dimmed to a level that she couldn¡¯t see the ground well enough to move quickly. She set down her pack, pulled out a canteen, and drank several gulps of water.
Where even was she? She wanted to believe she was in the general area of her goal judging by the position of Ruresni, but she had little confidence. Navigating at night would be a nightmare in this place where everything looked the same and you usually couldn¡¯t see more than a few meters ahead. The only gap in the forest she could see right now was a small patch of sky south of her, where the giant leaves of Ruresni twinkled in the twilight.
Still, she had little choice. Even without considering the plan, she had a self-imposed time limit hanging over her head. Mizuko had graciously agreed to mind the child for a day¡ªGabby could imagine them now, enjoying a pleasant stroll through the Gustilian countryside as the little tyke rushed this way and that, pouncing on bugs and uprooting innocent flowers¡ªbut after a day she had to move on. That left an easily bored kitty child prone to concocting explosives all alone and unsupervised in a delicate¡ªat least according to Blake¡ªflying craft. How long before Pari blew a hole in the thing? A day? Maybe two? Gabby had to work quickly.
Still, she allowed herself a moment to rest, catch her breath, and let her thoughts catch up to her.
This had all happened too quickly. The idea that an entire country could fall in a single day... the Ubrans could only dream of such power. What did this all mean? Were the dragons launching a campaign of conquest upon the entire world as she and the others feared, or was this something else?
The world was in trouble. She was one of the few people who knew just how terrifyingly strong dragons were. Now that the rest of the world was learning about their existence, there would be some sort of response, but just what hope did ordinary people have facing such terrors?
Her thoughts turned to the King of Kutrad, that fearful, silent man she¡¯d played a part in coercing. The man was almost certainly dead now, never having recovered his voice. She couldn¡¯t help but imagine how he¡¯d likely died¡ªterrified, powerless, and without a voice; almost as if he was a slave in his own nation. Though she could empathize with his plight, she wouldn¡¯t exactly mourn his death.
The sky to the south was starting to brighten. Looking through the trees, she watched as Ruresni¡¯s glow slowly grew in strength, seemingly in time with the setting sun. The view brought back Mizuko¡¯s parting words.
¡°While you¡¯re in there, don¡¯t be afraid to take a moment and truly take it in,¡± she¡¯d said.
¡°The tree, you mean?¡± Gabby had asked.
¡°Yes,¡± she¡¯d replied. ¡°Such things are impossible where we came from. We should appreciate what makes this place wondrous while we have the chance. Don¡¯t you agree?¡±
Gabriela had to admit, the old woman had a point. Even though she¡¯d seen it before, and from a far better vantage point, the image had lost none of its enchanting beauty. Putting aside her current problems, she let herself take in the sight of the forest basking in the great tree¡¯s pale blue glow; the scents of the trees and the myriad different plants growing in, on, and around them; and the sounds of life all around her, be it the dozens of birds tweeting out for their mates, or calls of various other animals calling out their territory, or the rattling of insects buzzing all around her. The insects, in particular, were so numerous that it almost sounded like a symphony surrounding her, from the high-pitched chirps of crickets to what sounded like the rumble of a thousand low baritones far off in the distance¡ªdoubtless the chirps of some of the more massive bugs found in this place.
Gabriela froze, her mind rewinding. She closed her eyes and listened again, doing her best to filter out the other noises bombarding her ears. The low sound was just on the edge of her hearing, but she strained her ears, hoping to hear more. With each passing second, her heartbeat quickened. The longer she listened, the more she became sure: that wasn¡¯t the sound of insects. That was the sound of people, a whole lot of people.
Perhaps she¡¯d done a better job navigating than she¡¯d thought.
How does one sneak into and search a camp of several million people? It was a question Gabriela did not quite have the answer to. It didn¡¯t help that she was only making things harder for herself by bringing her massive and eye-catching sword along, but she would not be caught without it ever again.
Thankfully, she had several items that could help her. The first was an oversized cloak to conceal her and her weapon as much as possible. Basically just a large cloak with extra cloth sewn on by Sofie, it was big enough now that she could wear it over both her sword and pack. The pack¡¯s lumpy shape would alter her silhouette enough that it would hopefully not be so clear to observers that she had a giant blade under there. Cloaks were fairly common all over the world, including Stragma, and people carried all sorts of large things around, like the leg of a huge slain and butchered beast, for example.
Along with that cloak, Gabby possessed a set of powerful binoculars. A strong as they were, however, they would not magically provide answers on their own. Looking through them, she studied the encampment from afar.
This wouldn¡¯t be easy. Just in this one area, she could see dozens of soldiers a few dozen meters out from the edge, all fiercely watching the forest. Or maybe they were hunters, as they each carried a bow as well as a melee weapon, and held their bows in hand as if they expected somebody to try to sneak through. Did they know she was coming?
According to Sofie, Arlette, and Tehlmar¡ªthe three people closest to Stragma experts they had¡ªshe wouldn¡¯t have stood a chance of getting anywhere near the city unseen if the city had not been migrating. The Stragmans were just too good with scouting out their territory normally, and Gabby was not exactly the pinnacle of stealth. During a migration, however, they handled their scouting differently. Those that watched the borders remained, of course, but the other scouts were largely sent out on specific mission to monitor certain more dangerous aspects of the forest. That was one of the reasons that Gabby needed to move so hurriedly; the mission would be far, far harder when the migration completed.
Gabriela mentally ran through several scenarios, but so far, she didn¡¯t see a clear way through that wasn¡¯t likely to get her caught. They could sound an alarm if she tried brute force. She¡¯d considered trying to sneak through from above but scrapped that idea when she realized there were more hunters in the trees as well. There was a large amount of ground vegetation she could use to obscure herself and try to sneak through, but her pack and sword were not exactly made for stealth, and if she were honest, neither was she. Zipping through with great speed, on the other hand, she could do. If she knew exactly where her fellow Earthling was, then that would have been an option. Unfortunately, a city on the move was still a city.
Before she was able to find a solution, however, a solution presented itself to her. A loud barking howl from up in the trees to her right was quickly answered by what sounded like hundreds more that seemed to shake the forest. The hunters started hollering to each other and moved en masse in the direction of the clamor, their attention no longer anywhere near her.
The reason for this became clear when one of the hunters in the trees loosed an arrow. A cry of pain added to the noise and a shape fell from another tree further away. As it passed through a spot of light from the city shining through the trees, Gabby saw what looked like a huge, four-armed, saber-toothed orangutan plummeting to its death. The mass of apes, if that was what they were, howled even louder and attacked.
So, that was why the hunters were on the lookout, Gabby realized. The Stragmans were moving their city through territories, and the owners of those territories would not take that lying down. She wondered how many apes would have to die before they turned tail. Still, she wasn¡¯t about to waste this opportunity. Darting forward, she weaved her way toward the city, keeping the trees and other growth between her and the hunters as much as possible. It might not have even been necessary. None of them noticed her streak behind them, so focused were they on beating back the furious pack. Now she just had to find a single person among millions. How hard could it be?
Shockingly easy, it turned out. The Stragmans had decided on a strategy of maximum security and minimum duplicity. They hadn¡¯t bothered trying to hide the cell the man was kept in one bit, instead focusing on isolating it from the rest of the city via a buffer of troops by the hundreds to keep anybody from getting any bright ideas. Stuck directly in the center of the encampment, it hadn¡¯t taken Gabriela long to find it as soon as she¡¯d noticed that the Shells were all discretely glancing in the same direction. It made sense, she supposed, that the imprisonment of the most famous member of their caste would be flaunted in their collective face. The Chos wanted to use it as a demonstration to reinforce their powerlessness.
That was about to change. There had been some stumbles and a few unexpected detours, sure, but in the end, she¡¯d overcome those obstacles to make it to this point. Now, all that remained was the simple and easy part. The part she was good at.
¡°Once you find him, wait until they bring his girlfriend or whatever. We need to snatch both of them¡ªa two-for-one deal¡ªand that¡¯s the one time they¡¯ll bring the keys to the cell. Sofie¡¯s off getting Pari to make some knockout gas bombs for you to use against whoever is around. There¡¯s also going to be an... antidote bomb, I guess you could call it. The knockout gas will probably hit our friends as well as everybody else, so throw that in the cell to wake them back up while you¡¯re searching for the keys. Do you think your powers will be able to fight off the knockout gas or should we get her to make something for you as well?¡±
¡°Let¡¯s not take chances.¡±
¡°Yeah, you¡¯re right. I¡¯ll let them know.¡±
The city had settled down for the night in a large valley that was still dense with trees and undergrowth but had a much more level floor than most of the forest, making it a better site than most for settling down. Like everywhere else, the trees grew seemingly at random, but the city still somehow managed a somewhat organized layout even with the scattered obstacles. There were streets of a sort, for example. The Stragmans set up their tents and camps in such a way that there were straight-ish ¡®avenues¡¯ running through the city. These ¡®avenues¡¯ were filled with underbrush, of course, but people were slowly chopping it down as they went.
One nice thing about being stupidly strong was that Gabby could begin preparations for her attack from such a distance that no observer would connect her to her target. Finding a spot three football field lengths, more or less, from the cell and soldiers that miraculously didn¡¯t have any trees in between, she took off her pack and calmly removed four large candles, each so thick that she could just barely wrap her fingers around half of the cylinder. Placing them on the ground beside her, she then pulled out a single small candle and a set of three cloth and set them down as well. Lastly, she retrieved from the pack a special lighter that Blake had made just for this mission and tossed it with the rest. Sliding her sword into a large clump of ferns, she settled down to wait.
She did not go unnoticed throughout this time of course, but nobody seemed to think anything was off enough to say or do anything. She nodded to passersby, smiled to the occasional child, and otherwise just sat and waited, taking subtle glances in the cell¡¯s direction in the meantime. The secret, Arlette had stressed to her before she¡¯d left, was to act like you belonged there. If you projected that there was nothing wrong with your presence, especially in a massive city where it was impossible to know everybody there, people would just assume that nothing was wrong. The cloak also helped hide the lack of ears or tail¡ªthough there were enough humans in Stragma for that to be a believable explanation¡ªand nobody would guess that the weapons she was going to use were the harmless-looking candles sitting beside her.
The night wore on, and then the time for action arrived. Funnily enough, she ended up not having to watch the cell at all, as the procession to escort her fellow Earthling¡¯s friend to the cell passed right by her on its way. She took a swig from her canteen to hide her eyes as she searched for the man with the keys. She didn¡¯t see them hanging from anybody¡¯s hip or anything, so she instead memorized the face of the woman leading the procession. Gabby guessed that she was the one most likely to have it on her somewhere.
Gabriela waited for the guards to arrive at their destination before she stood up. First, she tied one of the cloths around her face so that it covered her nose and mouth, tucking the other two into a pocket. The cloth smelled like burnt hair, but Sofie had assured her that it would neutralize the sleeping gas¡ªfor a while, at least. After she strapped her sword back onto her back, she picked up the candles and the lighter and waited.
As soon as she saw the cell door open, she launched herself forward and up, arcing through the air towards the cell and its gaggle of guards. In three bounds, she was there, landing with a loud thump atop the wooden prison just as the door clicked back shut. Everybody turned to look in her direction, but she was already tossing out freshly lit candles into the crowd surrounding her. The candles, each made with incredibly short wicks to speed up activation times, burst into clouds of white smoke before anybody could react, blanketing the entire area in thick fumes and fog. She heard hundreds of voices cough and gag, followed quickly by the thumps of unconscious bodies hitting the ground.
Gabriela hopped down into the smoke, hoping that Sofie¡¯s promises about the cloth held true. They did, at least for the moment, and she quickly lit the small other candle and tossed it through the bars of the cell. An orange smoke began to fill the cell¡¯s interior and she turned away to search for the keys. She found the key bearer not far away, having stepped away from the cell just before she¡¯d landed atop it. Luckily for Gabby, the keys were still in the woman¡¯s hand, rather than in some inner pocket or something. Unluckily for her, they were on a large key ring with hundreds of keys, and she had no idea which one was the one she needed.
Gabby could hear all manner of shouts from outside the cloud, from cries of alarm to calls for reinforcements, though for now, the smog protected her. None could enter without falling asleep as long as the candles continued to spout their noxious haze. A pair of hacking coughs, one strong and loud and another much quieter and weaker, greeted her from within the cell as she began to fiddle with the keys. She tried one to no success, then another, also to no success.
Out of the orange gloom within the cell appeared a man, almost making Gabby jump. She recognized the massive, muscled man as her rescuee, of course, though judging from the look in his single eye, he didn¡¯t recognize her quite so quickly¡ªperhaps because of the cloth over her face. She fished the other two out of her pocket and handed it to him.
¡°Tie these over your faces. It will keep the gas out,¡± she instructed him.
The man seized the offered textiles and did as he was told, still looking at her with confusion. It wasn¡¯t until he noticed the sword on her back that he seemed to put it all together.
¡°You¡¯re that woman, the one who fought Palebane,¡± he said as he tied the second clothe over the face of a trembling and coughing woman with pale white ears and a drooping white tail.
¡°I¡¯m here to rescue you. Both of you,¡± she informed them as she continued to cycle through key after key. ¡°Just need to get this door open...¡±
The man reached out a hand. ¡°Give it to me. I know which key it is; I¡¯ve seen it a hundred times.¡±
Grateful for the help, she passed the key ring into his palm and he pulled it through the bars. He stepped back into the orange-white smoke, his figure slightly blurred and out of reach, and held the keys at his side with one hand while pulling the wolf woman against his other side protectively.
¡°What are you doing?¡± Gabby asked as the man made seemingly no effort to find the needed key. ¡°Come on, we need to get out of here before the smoke fades and things start to get messy!¡±
The man responded with a single word.
¡°Then you take them and run. That¡¯s that. No way anybody in Stragma can catch you once you get going. You can use this to call the airship to you,¡± he told her, handing her another one of his doodads, this one a small box with a single button on it. ¡°Twist it clockwise three full rotations until it clicks, then press it. You can keep moving; the ship will hone in on your location. Once you¡¯re scot-free, you can move on to that thing we talked about in Gustil, then after that, come home. Sound good?¡±
¡°What if they don¡¯t want to go, or something?¡± she idly wondered.
Blake stared at her like she¡¯d just declared that the Earth was flat. ¡°You serious?¡± he scoffed. ¡°He¡¯s been locked in a cell and treated horribly for months. What¡¯s he going to do, say no?¡±
Gabriela stared in disbelief at the huge man cradling the comparatively tiny wolf woman against his broad chest. ¡°What do you mean, no?!¡±
Chapter 131
Rudra¡¯s lungs ached, remnants of two separate smoke clouds still inside. His nostrils burned, partly from said smoke and partly from whatever acrid substance the cloth over his nose and mouth had been soaked in. His arm and side hurt as Tepin dug her sharp nails into his skin hard and deep enough to draw blood¡ªnot out of fear, he knew, but rather out of rage at him and his actions. Outside, alarm horns blew, their chorus growing more numerous and more deafening by the moment. And yet, despite it all, his mind remained perfectly clear.
¡°You foolish man!¡± Tepin hissed through her own cloth facial wrapped around her face as she futilely tried to wrest the key ring from his grasp. With her paltry strength, she had no shot at success, but she tried anyway. It was one of the things he loved about her. ¡°What are you doing!? The woman is right! We must leave now or it will be too late!¡±
¡°I¡¯m not going anywhere,¡± he told them both, his voice loud and unwavering. ¡°Not while the others continue to suffer. Only when the Shells are free will it be time to leave.¡±
¡°Have you lost your mind?!¡± the woman outside¡ªGabriela, if he remembered her name correctly¡ªsputtered.
A group of figures shrouded in smoke came into view. Gabriela spun around, her absurd sword already in hand. The blade flashed around in an arc from right to left so fast that it left a blur and a mighty clap of thunder, but Rudra noticed how tall that blur was. She¡¯d swung her weapon like a cricket bat, striking the forms with the flat side. The Stragmans practically doubled over around the huge blade from the power of the blow as she flung all three of them out of sight, but at least they were alive¡ªprobably.
¡°I¡¯ve had nothing but time recently to think about my failures. I know I¡¯m a fool; I¡¯ve wasted too many precious opportunities already. I will not waste this one,¡± he declared. ¡°If you want me out of this cage and going with you, then help me free these people. Until then, I¡¯m staying put.¡±
More came without pause. Before Gabriela could even finish her follow-through, another Stragman¡ªcheeks puffed out from held breath¡ªdarted in and slid a dagger into her back. If the woman even felt the pain, Rudra couldn¡¯t see it in the way she reached around, grabbed her assailant by their leather chest armor, and threw them away like a rag doll, only for them to be replaced by two more.
¡°You saphead! What in the howls do you expect her to do?!¡± Tepin growled as five loud thumps resounded from above.
¡°Yeah!¡± the woman outside yelled, jumping up atop the cage and out of view¡ªthough not out of earshot. ¡°Stop being an idiot and get out of there now, before the entire city comes down on us!¡±
¡°She¡¯s a mighty and unkillable warrior with the backing of an entire country and others like her and me, all probably just as strong,¡± Rudra explained his thinking. ¡°If anybody can do it, it¡¯s her. This is the only time I have leverage, and I¡¯m not going to pass it up.¡±
¡°We do not have that kind of time, you stubborn ass!¡± Gabriela snarled as she hopped back down into Rudra¡¯s sight again, her words barely audible over the clamor of thousands of Stragmans closing in. At least a dozen arrows stuck out of her, making her look like a human pincushion, but then she let out a grunt. A third, crimson smoke emerged from her body and the shafts fell off as if cut away.
Grabbing two adjacent bars, she strained mightily against them, trying to force them apart. The wood didn¡¯t move a single millimeter, nor did it creak or moan¡ªa total no-sell. ¡°This is lunacy! We¡¯re leaving!¡±
The woman swiveled her large pack to her front like an oversized fanny pack, then snaked an arm in between two of the bars. Suddenly, Rudra¡¯s world rotated ninety degrees as she seemingly effortlessly lifted the cage into the air. He hugged Tepin close, twisting so that his back struck the bars and his body cushioned Tepin¡¯s landing. Before he could even react and grab hold of a bar to steady them, Gabriela burst forward in a startling display of power and speed. Inertia threw them against the back wall, drawing a pained gasp from his delicate partner.
¡°Hey, stop!¡± he hollered. ¡°Stop! You¡¯re hurting her!¡±
Gabriela ignored him, her legs powering them forward at terrifying speeds. The cage tilted again as she found a balance with it, resting the slanted bars of the cell on the back of her shoulder like she was lugging a large sack. The way the cage¡¯s open side leaned forward meant that Rudra could see the ground and some of what stood before them, but anything above a level gaze was cut off by the cell¡¯s ceiling.
What he could see was enough to make him fear for his and his beloved¡¯s lives. The ground beneath them sped by in a blur. He could see the lower two-thirds of confused Stragmans yelling and screaming as they shot past. Wind whipped through the openings, filling his ears with noise and constantly pressing him backward. Without warning, Gabriela jerked to the left, throwing the pair of them into the cell¡¯s hard right side, only to snap right a moment later and send them crashing in the other direction. Rudra held Tepin tight against him, trying to shield her from the force of the impacts, but reacting to their kidnapper¡¯s sudden heading changes was no easy task. It didn¡¯t help how the cage rocked heavily with every step, or how it could randomly clip something on the way by and shake violently.
¡°Hold on!¡± the woman hollered over the wind. That was all the warning they received before they found themselves soaring through the air. The city opened up beneath them as Gabriela leapt high into the air, sailing over dozens of the modular structures that the Stragmans combined to build their homes and then disassembled when it was time to move again. Rudra cursed as he wrapped the fingers of his one hand around a nearby bar and threw the key ring up around his neck¡ªthankfully it was wide enough that his head barely fit through it¡ªso that his other hand was free to grasp his love as best as he could. Then, the city began to grow again, faster and faster. Tepin huddled against him, whispering desperate prayers against his chest. He turned so his back would take the blow.
They came down hard, crashing down atop an unlucky tent made of colorful animal skins sewn together. He never found out what was inside the tent, as Gabriela was an unstoppable freight train of destruction¡ªand they were the cargo. She powered through the poor skins like a boulder through a piece of paper. Meanwhile, Rudra let out a loud grunt as his whole body slammed into the bars, with his head taking an especially painful hit. Tepin had the wind knocked from her. Trying to breathe, she let out a pained wheeze that brought a great anger to his heart.
¡°You¡¯re going to kill her, you lunatic!¡± he hollered over the wind. Fed up, he tried to pry Gabriela¡¯s fingers free of the bar, only to find, to his shock, that he could not. Perhaps he merely lacked the leverage due to their frequent changes of direction, but even his great strength seemed too weak to dislodge her grip. Just how strong was this woman?
Suddenly, the surrounding encampment disappeared, replaced by even more plant life as they entered the forest. The cage bucked and juddered as the woman below practically dragged it forcefully through all manner of foliage, peppering her passengers with a near-constant spray of pulped vines, shrubs, ferns, and more. The violent swerves did not stop, either¡ªin fact, they became worse as the forest¡¯s more uneven terrain added vertical jukes to the woman¡¯s formerly horizontal-only repertoire.
Once again, Rudra found himself effectively powerless to remedy the situation. Yes, it was largely a situation of his own making, but that was beside the point. This woman was hurting Tepin and did not seem to care, stoking his indignation and buttressing his already ironclad stubborn will. Now, his refusal to cooperate had a second motivation beyond saving the Shells; he just didn¡¯t want to give Gabriela what she wanted.
At this moment, however, there was little he could do about it. His code prevented him from hurting the woman, not that he believed it would even do any good against her, and he was far too preoccupied just keeping his love alive and unhurt to do anything else, anyway. All he could do was wait it out.
And so, wait it out they did. Minute after minute, Rudra held on, his body gradually becoming covered in deep, painful bruises. Not for the first time, he wished he could use his power on himself. Finally, after what must have been more than half an hour, he felt them mercifully slowing, though not stopping entirely.
¡°Hey, have we traveled far enough that I don¡¯t have to sprint to keep away from the pursuers?¡± Gabriela called out.
¡°Yes!¡± Rudra cried out. His body ached all over from dozens and dozens of impacts, and he was thoroughly fed up.
¡°Not you, you nitwit! The wolf woman. She, at least, has some sense!¡±
¡°The name is Tepin Silverfall, and yes,¡± Tepin replied. ¡°You¡¯ve given us more than enough of a lead that we should have no issue as long as we keep moving, though I must note that you¡¯ve left a trail so bold that a blind man could follow it. We can¡¯t stay in one place for too long.¡±
¡°Won¡¯t be a problem. I¡¯m Gabriela, by the way. Now...¡± Her tone harshened, almost like a mother scolding her child, and it became clear that she was no longer speaking to Tepin. ¡°Have you come to your senses and decided to get out of this stupidly heavy block of wood yet?¡±
¡°No,¡± came Rudra¡¯s petulant reply. ¡°I told you my conditions.¡±
The pair rocked forward as Gabriela skidded to a halt. She swung the cell off her back and deposited it roughly on the ground in front of her.
¡°Listen here, musclehead!¡± she snapped, staring heatedly into the cell at him with each of her hands wrapped in a death grip around a bar. Her chest rose and fell as she huffed and puffed¡ªhow much from anger and how much from exertion, he couldn¡¯t say. ¡°I¡¯m sorry about these people you care so much about or whatever, but I have bigger things to concern myself with than your problems! You know what would be horrible for the Shells or whoever? What about if they all die because the world ends, huh? Is that what you want? You want them to die because instead of helping to stop the world from ending, I¡¯m stuck yelling at an idiot who locked himself in a cage and won¡¯t come out EVEN THOUGH HE HAS THE KEY?!¡±
Rudra could see the pulsating vein on the woman¡¯s forehead. It gave him a perverse, spiteful joy, almost as much as the way her fists tightening audibly around the bars did when he replied, ¡°I don¡¯t care about your problems. I¡¯ve made my position clear, and nothing you say is going to change it until it¡¯s done.¡±
The woman huffed silently for a moment, her wide, furious eyes sending him a death glare that Rudra found quite entertaining, though only because indestructible wood kept her from getting to him.
¡°Fine,¡± she growled, a determined expression setting on her face, ¡°I¡¯ll just take this whole thing onto the airship, then, if that¡¯s what it takes! I¡¯ll just load it onto the...¡± Her face fell as she took in the cell¡¯s dimensions with a more critical eye. ¡°...it¡¯s not going to fit, and it¡¯ll be too heavy...¡± The fire of determination returned as quickly as it left. ¡°Then, I¡¯ll just have to carry you both on my back all the way to Otharia and let Blake get you out! It should only take a few days!¡± She turned around, slipping her arm in between the bars like she had before. The cell lifted slightly before the woman froze mid-heave. Then, it fell back to the earth as she let go and slid down against the bars in defeat, her head in her hands. ¡°But then Pari will be...¡±
After a moment of sullen silence, Gabriela let out a frustrated roar, slamming her fist against the ground. ¡°Can¡¯t I have just one job where things just go right and everything works out?!¡± she bellowed to the canopy above. ¡°Is that too much to ask?! Huh?! Is it?!¡±
After a few moments of sullen muttering, she pushed herself off her rear, stood up, and gave them a weary glance. ¡°Whatever. I¡¯ll deal with this crap later. I¡¯m getting us out of this godforsaken jungle first.¡±
Perhaps he just hadn¡¯t been in the mood to see it before, but Rudra finally noticed just how tired the woman looked. He felt a twinge of sympathy for her, but only for a moment.
¡°Now... where are we?¡± Gabriela muttered to herself, pulling something out and consulting it¡ªa compass, on closer inspection.
¡°Gabriela...¡± Tepin finally said, letting go of Rudra and walking up to the bars.
¡°Hmm?¡± the woman replied. Rudra couldn¡¯t help but notice that she didn¡¯t sound so aggravated when talking to his love.
¡°Which direction did you run when you fled the city? This area looks familiar to me.¡±
She shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know, I just ran.¡± She turned around and stared back at the trail of devastation she¡¯d surely left behind¡ªRudra couldn¡¯t see it, but he could imagine it just fine; he had enough bits of leaves and twigs clumped together behind him to fill a mattress or two. Gabriela looked down at the compass, then back at the way they¡¯d come, then back at the compass. ¡°South, I think? I¡¯ve been known to meander a bit, so maybe not...¡±
Rudra saw Tepin tense when she heard the word ¡°south¡±. She leaned in close to the bars, trying to get a better look at their surroundings. Her ears pivoted back and forth as if searching for something.
¡°We must leave here at once!¡± she announced after a few moments. Her urgent and fearful tone birthed similar feelings within him.
¡°What? Why?¡± Gabriela asked.
¡°I¡¯ll explain later; there¡¯s no time!¡± she answered. ¡°Head east or west as fast as you can¡ªnorth, even, if you must! Just as long as you move swiftly and without delay!¡±
To her credit, the woman listened without argument. ¡°Hold tight, then.¡±
Rudra scooped Tepin up and held her close. ¡°Go slower this time,¡± he complained. ¡°I¡¯m already more bruise than man, and Tepin is delicate.¡±
¡°No!¡± Tepin immediately countermanded. ¡°Get us out of here as fast as you can! We don¡¯t have much time!¡±
The cage tilted and Rudra pulled Tepin close once more, this time holding her with one arm while grabbing a bar with the other to anchor them. Thankfully, Gabriela listened to him at least a little, accelerating slower than before as they started, though she did not hold back when it came to top speed. Within thirty seconds they were whipping through the jungle like before.
It was then that disaster struck. With the cage¡¯s downward tilt, Rudra got a close, firsthand view as Gabriela planted a foot on an emerged root as thick as his torso was wide, ready to launch off of it and leap over a ravine that blocked their path. It was only when she tried to push off of it did any of them realize the root was rotting. Instead of providing the proper support they needed for proper lift, it disintegrated under the force of her step. Her footing suddenly compromised, she spun out of control¡ªand the cell spun with her.
Rudra was man enough to admit that he screamed as they plummeted uncontrollably down the ravine, the cell ricocheting off various obstacles on its way down. The sudden shifts in direction made it hard to hold on to Tepin with only a single arm. When he realized she was about to slip out of his grasp, Rudra let go of the bar and grabbed her with both arms, resigning himself to a fate of ricocheting from one hard surface to another. His body cried out as he slammed into wall after wall at odd angles and dangerous velocities. Luckily enough, he managed to protect Tepin from the worst of it as they careened around the space a pinball bouncing off bumper after bumper. Then, without warning, the heavy block of wood they were trapped inside came to an abrupt halt. Rudra, however, did not. The back of his head crashed into something smooth and hard behind him, and the world disappeared.
¡°...wake up! Come on, you big oaf, open your eyes!¡±
Rudra let out a weak groan. He had a splitting headache and the world seemed to spin inside his head, but he opened his eyes anyway to find a blurry but worried sick Tepin staring down at him. Slowly pushing himself up into a seated position, he shook his head. His senses felt off from the blow¡ªfuzzy, almost, and hard to focus on. His hearing had been affected the most; no amount of head shaking would remove the static sound, like a million pins bouncing on a pane of glass, from his ears.
¡°How long was I out?¡±
¡°Too long! We need to get her out, quickly!¡±
¡°Who? What?¡±
Still trying to find his bearings, he looked around and found himself struggling to see much of anything. Why was the light so dim in here all of a sudden? It took him a few moments to notice the dim light of the forest at night leaking in from across the chamber. The shape was all wrong. Instead of a full square wall of light with some vertical bars to fill the space, the light only shone in from a long, thin triangle. Why? And why did it feel like the cell was smaller than before?
The answer presented itself as soon as he tried stepping forward. With a squish, his foot planted itself into something thick and sticky. Mud. Looking closer now, he could see how the scant illumination just barely lit what looked like a mini-mudslide inside their cell. The mire sloped upwards, climbing higher and higher as he pushed forward, until it reached the ceiling just around where the bar-covered wall should have been. On that end, every part of the cell save the triangle of light had been claimed by the thick muck.
The mud stuck to him as he pressed forward, almost like it were tar, and he could feel it sucking him down like quicksand. Still, with his strength, such things were a mere inconvenience. He reached the other side and pulled his way up to the gap.
The opening stood tallest on the left corner where the walls and the ceiling met, perhaps a third of a meter high. From there though, as one proceeded right, mud filled more than more of the space until, at perhaps a meter and a half away from the left wall, the gap came to an end. Those oh-so-familiar wooden bars were still there, filling the opening partly and obstructing his view outside, except now they were horizontal. Just how much had this cage spun?
Peeking through to the outside, Rudra found... more mud. They seemed to be at the bottom of the ravine Gabriela had tried to leap over, embedded deep into the side from the force of their collision. As for Gabriela herself, he couldn¡¯t see her anywhere.
Tepin crawled up the mud bank to join him. To his annoyance, she seemed light enough that she could slide atop the muck without sinking into it much at all.
Pointing out through the bars, she insisted, ¡°Hurry! Pull her out!¡±
Only then did he spy what looked like part of Gabriela¡¯s wrist sticking out of the side of the ravine. The rest of her appeared to be fully immersed in the sticky grime.
Luckily for all of them, that wrist was just within his reach. He wriggled his arm between the bars, grabbed it and tugged. The mud resisted, and he pulled harder, then harder still. Almost all at once, Gabriela¡¯s limp form popped out from its muddy entombment with a hefty ¡°splat!¡±, giving Rudra a splash of muck in his face for his efforts.
Gabriela didn¡¯t look too good. Her body appeared battered and broken. Her right arm, the arm she¡¯d used to lift the cage by wrapping it around the bars, had been terribly broken and dislocated. It appeared to Rudra like it was only attached to the rest of her by the skin of her shoulder and little more. Her left leg had fared no better. Knees were not supposed to bend a hundred and twenty degrees sideways like that. Somehow, though, her left hand, the one he¡¯d yanked on, still held her sword in a death grip.
That was the only item she¡¯d managed to hang on to, however. Her pack, which Rudra had last spotted hanging from her front, now laid open and empty a good seven meters away, its straps snapped and its contents strewn about the ravine¡¯s muddy side.
Still, she appeared to be breathing now, so that was good. Come to think of it, why was she unconscious at all? Should she have healed herself by now?
¡°Wake her up! We still have a little time!¡± Tepin hissed, her voice hard to hear over that annoying sound that still wouldn¡¯t go away. It was like the sound of a million pieces of paper being crumpled all at once.
Rudra tried his best. Tapping didn¡¯t seem to be doing much to bring her back to consciousness¡ªshaking, neither. With a grunt, he worked his other arm between the bars. With one hand, he covered Gabriela¡¯s mouth, with his other he blocked her nostrils. Her body spasmed, reflex taking over, and she came to with a shuddering gasp.
Rudra pulled his arms back in panic as the woman immediately began to scream, her eyes rolling up into her head as tremors wracked her body. Crimson smoke shrouded her like an aura, but it seemed to writhe as much as the rest of her. With a sinking feeling forming in his gut, Rudra realized that even with the haze around, she did not seem to be healing even a little. Something was wrong with her.
Soon, but not soon enough for his liking, she collapsed again, eyes unfocused. Her chest heaved as she whimpered plaintively to nobody in particular. ¡°Why now?¡± he thought he heard her whisper, but he wasn¡¯t sure.
¡°What are you waiting for?!¡± Tepin cried. ¡°Heal! Heal!¡±
¡°I can¡¯t...¡± Gabriela grunted out through clenched teeth. Her lungs heaved furiously as she tried to gasp for breath. Tears poured from her eyes, letting bits of mud and leaves stick to and dirty her face. ¡°It... hah... burns so much...¡±
The woman in front of him was nothing like the one he thought he knew. Gone was the rough and tough exterior; the all-business, no-nonsense facade; the unfeeling, unstoppable, unkillable butcher. All Rudra saw now was a person¡ªa person in distress, a person hobbled by extreme pain, and perhaps most significantly, a person who was afraid. The vindictive streak against her that he held within shriveled from the sight. Maybe Tepin was right... maybe he was too soft.
¡°Why not?!¡± Tepin hissed.
¡°The fire... I can¡¯t control...¡± she panted.
¡°You must! We need to leave this place!¡±
¡°Give... give me time...¡± Gabriela panted. ¡°It went away before...¡±
¡°We don¡¯t have time!¡± Tepin spat. ¡°Can¡¯t you hear that? It¡¯s almost on us!¡±
Rudra paused, his mind replaying her last statement again. ¡°Wait, that sound isn¡¯t because I hit my head?¡±
¡°No, you idiot! It¡¯s the Black Tide!¡±
Rudra blinked, her words clicking into place, her mood and actions suddenly making sense. ¡°Oh... oh boy...¡±
¡°...wha?¡± Gabriela managed to gasp out.
¡°Did you think we move our whole home four times a year because we just feel like it?!¡± Tepin snapped. ¡°We have to because there are real dangers here¡ªthings so dangerous that it¡¯s better to just move out of the way. Of all of them, the Black Tide is the worst.¡±
¡°Centipedes. Centipedes as far as the eye can see,¡± Rudra said. He¡¯d never seen them, but he¡¯d heard the tales.
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Rudra hadn¡¯t thought it was possible Gabriela could blanch any further, but she somehow managed it.
¡°Yes,¡± Tepin continued. ¡°Black ravagers as thick as an arm and longer than a man¡ªan endless wave of them sweeping north over the forest for league after league! We call it the Black Tide because there are so many that they cover everything you can see like a wriggling wave of darkness, eating all they encounter and leaving nothing but barren death behind! Do you understand, now?! You can hear them closing in, can¡¯t you?! They¡¯re almost upon us! So, for the love of Ruresni, FIX YOURSELF AND GET US OUT OF HERE BEFORE THEY EAT US TOO!¡±
¡°Hhnnrrgg...¡± Gabriela grunted as she tried to push herself to her feet¡ªor foot, to be more precise¡ªwith her one good arm. ¡°I¡¯ll... I¡¯ll try... AAAHHH!¡±
She toppled over, spasming once more, her mouth foaming as gravity took her and sent her rolling down the ravine to rest against the bars. Her trembling body completely blocked the larger left half of the open gap, dampening the light inside the cell even more.
¡°It¡¯s not working! What if I open the door and we run?¡± Rudra proposed, pulling the key ring from around his neck.
¡°No, you¡¯re too slow! We¡¯d be overrun in under an hour! Fix her! Change her to be the way she was before! That¡¯s the only way!¡±
¡°But...¡± Rudra hesitated. Gabriela was not dead but was in no condition to give consent. If he were to push her back, wiping away these last moments, would he not be cutting away part of what made her who she was? Was it not a form of violence? It was a quandary he¡¯d wrestled with before, and he had concluded that it did count as violence unless it was what the person in question expressly desired.
As per usual, Tepin knew what he was thinking just by looking at him. Her ¡°Do you really think she wants this memory?! Don¡¯t be absurd! Do it! Do it now!¡±
Crawling back up onto and into the mud, he reached out and grabbed Gabriela by the back of her shirt, holding her in place.
Immediately, he realized there was a problem.
Not long ago, Rudra had been taken from his cell to revive a dead Stragman child¡ªin Gabriela¡¯s presence, if he recalled correctly. The catgirl had appeared to be perfectly normal on the outside, but what awaited him inside had been something else entirely. Rewinding others had always been easy. Once he¡¯d gotten it down, it had taken nearly no effort at all. For example, rewinding Tepin¡¯s essence felt like pushing away a ping pong ball. Rewinding that child had been like trying to move a mountain with his bare hands. For a few days, he¡¯d worried his power had degraded somehow and that he¡¯d no longer be able to return people to life with relative ease, but he¡¯d never struggled like that again.
Until now. Rudra reached out with his spirit and touched Gabriela¡¯s, impelling it back down its personal time stream, and Gabriela¡¯s soul refused to budge.
If the catgirl¡¯s spirit had been Everest, this one was Kilimanjaro, or Aconcagua, or Fuji. Huge and heavy beyond measure, it convulsed chaotically like a hundred snakes trapped in an oversized burlap sack. What¡¯s more, it ¡°hurt¡± when he touched it¡ªit would be a great misnomer to call what he experienced ¡°pain¡±, but sadly his vocabulary lacked a better term for the sensation.
Letting out a strained grunt, Rudra put all he had into it. She slid backwards a marginal amount, barely enough for him to tell the difference. His concentration dropped and he found himself gasping for air, his heart beating like mad. All that effort, and all he¡¯d managed was to push her back a handful of seconds¡ªseconds that were being undone as he tried to recollect himself.
¡°I can¡¯t. She¡¯s too heavy,¡± he told his cell partner. ¡°I¡¯ll need hours. I can keep her in place, maybe, sort of like treading water, but that¡¯s all.¡±
¡°We don¡¯t have hours!¡± Tepin pressed. ¡°If you can¡¯t fix her, then all she¡¯s good for right now is something for them to eat first before...¡±
Her words slowed to a halt, but from the way her eyes darted wildly about, Rudra knew that her thoughts were now careening towards some wild and wonderful idea. He stayed silent and let her ponder, all the while listening to the ever-growing din outside. After a few moments, she set her face to a somber, serious expression and cleared her throat.
¡°I have an idea... but you¡¯re not going to like it.¡±
Rudra smiled. ¡°Anything that gets us through this can¡¯t be a bad idea.¡±
¡°We need to plug the hole so the tide can¡¯t eat you. As long as you survive, we survive. So, plug the rest of the hole with my body. Then, you can revive us over and over until the tide has passed.¡±
¡°You¡¯re right, that¡¯s the worst idea I¡¯ve ever heard,¡± Rudra stated. ¡°I hate it.¡±
¡°If we can¡¯t run, this is the only way,¡± Tepin insisted.
¡°But what about you? You¡¯ll be eaten alive! You¡¯ll suffer for what, hours on end?¡±
¡°It can¡¯t be helped. Besides, I won¡¯t remember it at the end, right?¡±
¡°But...¡±
The low rumble of billions of hungry insects had grown to a low roar.
¡°You¡¯re strong, Rudra. You¡¯ve stubbornly withstood so much, like a particularly annoying and unmovable boulder,¡± she said with a cheeky smile. ¡°You can withstand this, as well. Enough equivocation. Our time runs short.¡±
She crawled closer to the gap. ¡°Push me in tightly, then push the mud up on me to make a seal. We can¡¯t have any spot uncovered.¡±
With a heavy heart, Rudra did as instructed. He pressed her firmly against the opening, then pushed handfuls of the thick mud in around the edges until he could not see any light coming from around her body. Her position felt precarious, however, so he decided to keep a palm pressed up against her to hold her still.
With his other hand, he reached through the bars and grabbed the back of Gabriela¡¯s shirt again, pulling it in. The woman¡¯s body was much better positioned, with gravity doing most of the work for him. Just like that, the cell went completely dark. Now, all he had to do was make sure she didn¡¯t move, which might or might not be a simple task. He hoped she didn¡¯t start thrashing again.
The Black Tide did not give him much time to worry. Within moments, the cacophony of mandibles chewing on the world outside reached a crescendo. The cell became a box of noise as thousands upon thousands of chitinous legs hammered against every wall. A heavy weight pressed down upon his arm, but he was used to such things.
Listening to the woman he loved die, however, was something he would never be used to, whether he heard it once or a million times. Her groans of agony quickly transformed into rattling gasps that almost sounded like she was choking as the insects chewed apart her lungs. Unable to bear to listen any longer and knowing that the bugs would eat fully through her if he delayed too long, he shut out his ears and reached out with his heart instead.
Rewinding Tepin was as easy as it had been the last time. He easily pushed her backward and her essence provided no impediment. Her body reformed, the centipedes within being banished from existence or something along those lines¡ªhe had no idea what happened to foreign objects stuck in the corpses he revived, but it seemed to destroy them one way or another.
Gabriela, as he already knew, was another story. He strained against her seizing soul, pushing it back just enough to reverse the damage of the last few seconds.
Already, Rudra felt drained. His body was drenched in sweat and he panted uncontrollably. Still, he refused to give up. Tepin was counting on him, and he would not let her down again. Quickly pushing his lover back to full health, he took a peek at Gabriela while he did. A distant part of him wondered why she had not been fully eaten through already, as his rewinding was nowhere near enough to counteract the swarm on the other side. Only then did he notice the smoky aura surrounding her. He could tell that it wasn¡¯t healing her like before, but it seemed it was slowing the infestation down enough to give him a chance.
Once more, Rudra found himself reevaluating his opinion of the woman. If her abilities returned during this onslaught, then there was no doubt that she was the one person not actually under any threat from the Tide¡ªshe would be able to reform later, regardless. And yet, here she was, torturing herself to help provide him and Tepin a way to survive. She was giving her all for him. Could he allow himself to do any less?
No.
Rudra put everything he had into his task, pushing Gabriela backward in time bit by bit by bit. Each time, he exhausted himself, and each time, he found the resolve to pull strength from somewhere and give one more push. It wasn¡¯t enough to restore her fully, but between her efforts and his, it was enough to keep a fleshy shield between him and a swarm of ravenous centipedes.
Again.
He struggled and strained, constantly switching between his maximum exertions to bringing a feather¡¯s touch to Tepin¡¯s spirit; it wouldn¡¯t do to push her too hard and erase the last month of her life.
Again.
He was groaning, gasping, flailing against his limits.
Again.
Rudra lost count of just how many times he rewound Tepin. Five hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? He couldn¡¯t say. The ordeal seemed to stretch on forever, beyond measurable continuity, and everything blurred together¡ª
¡ªuntil something went horribly wrong.
Rudra gave Gabriela the latest of countless pushes when he felt his spirit buckle. Agony greater than anything he¡¯d ever known engulfed him, and he fell back, screaming.
Rudra understood, now, what Gabriela had meant by ¡°the fire¡±. It was like somebody was dragging his very being through a raging forest fire, or dropping him into a pool of lava, or even dipping him directly into the sun¡ªall three combined was a closer description than any on their own. Almost all thought became impossible¡ªany actions beyond screams, as well. But, there was enough of him left, for just long enough, for him to realize one critical thing: the fire was not coming from without; it was coming from within.
For the second time that day, Rudra fell into blackness.
Rudra was quite surprised when he opened his eyes and found his vision greeted by the familiar sight of flat, brown wood. He hadn¡¯t really expected to open his eyes at all, to be honest. When he¡¯d collapsed, he¡¯d thought that would be the end. Yet, here he was, somehow still alive. How?
Quickly sitting up, he found himself staring at a grisly scene. Tepin was nearly unrecognizable. Not only had her body been eaten through, but it also looked like it had been sliced into several pieces, with some of them rolling or sliding down through the mud. Mixed in with her body parts were dozens of dead centipedes, all chopped in half with bug guts and fluids dripping all over the floor. Their bodies varied in size, but even the smallest one he saw had to be nearly a meter long.
Outside the cell, a lone figure reclined with her side against the wood, still blocking some of the gap.
¡°What happened?¡± he couldn¡¯t help but ask.
¡°We made it,¡± came Gabriela¡¯s response. Her voice was steady, and he heard no pain in it, only weariness. ¡°You gave out right at the end. I took care of the last of the bastards, but I had to cut up your girl to get a few that got through before they could start eating you. Sorry about that.¡±
¡°Uh... that¡¯s alright. Thanks. How long was I out?¡±
¡°It¡¯s already morning. Can¡¯t you tell?¡±
Now that he thought to look for it, Rudra could indeed see a good deal more light streaming through the unblocked half of the gap. He¡¯d just been too distracted by other, messier things to notice until now.
Speaking of which, Rudra reached out and picked up Tepin¡¯s head, ignoring the wide-eyed look on her face, and took a deep breath. He fell within himself, entering with trepidation that state he¡¯d become so used to. Could he still work his magic? Would the fire return if he tried?
To his relief, he found that everything felt good and normal like it had always felt.
¡°¡ªcan¡¯t have any spot... Wha?¡± Laid out in his arms, Tepin stared at his dirt-smeared face and rubbed her eyes. The sudden transition in her existence confused her momentarily, as it did nearly everybody he returned. He lifted her into a sitting position, letting her scan the area more easily and reacquire her bearing. The first thing she noticed was the insectoid gore covering not just her surroundings but her clothes¡ªor what remained of her outfit, at least. ¡°Urgh!¡±
She gagged. Rudra didn¡¯t blame her. Centipede innards carried a rancid, acrid to them that he also found quite offensive. Still, Tepin being Tepin, she quickly composed herself.
¡°We survived, then,¡± she hummed.
Rudra pulled her into a hug. ¡°Your plan worked. Somehow.¡±
She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. ¡°It must have been hard for you. I almost feel guilty that I don¡¯t remember any of it.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t. Just never ask me to do something like that ever again.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve made a fool out of me often enough that I know better than to ever make such an open promise. It¡¯s only asking to be broken,¡± she remarked. Slipping out of his embrace and into Serious Business Mode, Tepin slid up to the opening. ¡°How¡¯s your condition?¡±
¡°Been better,¡± came the reply. Gabriela leaned over, letting her arm slide into view. It still appeared heavily dislocated. Though Rudra could not see her injured left leg at the moment, he assumed it was also in the same state as he¡¯d seen before.
¡°Aren¡¯t you in pain?¡± Tepin asked in disbelief.
¡°Eh, this much barely registers anymore,¡± she answered.
¡°You still can¡¯t heal?¡± Rudra inquired.
¡°I¡¯m close, I think. I don¡¯t want to chance it until I know it won¡¯t backfire on me again.¡±
¡°My powers seem fine now, even though I experienced the same fire you were talking about at the end,¡± he offered.
¡°You too, huh?¡± She suddenly sounded more interested. ¡°Have you ever had that happen before?¡±
¡°No.¡±
She sighed. ¡°Ah... well, this isn¡¯t my first time, unfortunately. It happened once before. The more you fight it when it happens, or try to use your powers again too early, the more it pushes back when you can use your powers again without problems¡ªor, that¡¯s the sort of impression I get after dealing with it several times, at least. I¡¯d rather not risk setting us back even more by trying too early. The last thing we need is for me to be screaming and spasming all over the place for another hour.¡±
¡°Oh, no, please do,¡± a chillingly familiar voice cut in from nearby. ¡°It would be the most entertainment I¡¯ve had in days.¡±
¡°She found us!¡± Tepin gasped.
¡°Tch! And she brought an army...¡± Gabriela added.
Rudra couldn¡¯t see much other than a cliff of mud, rocks, and assorted plant life from his limited viewpoint and angle, but he recognized the voice of Akhustal Palebane as easily as Tepin.
¡°You know, I don¡¯t quite get it,¡± the Chos continued, her voice growing closer. ¡°Between that elf bastard and this, it¡¯s like your boss wants to be on my shit list. And to think that, just a few days ago, I was defending him from those who said his ¡®ambassador¡¯ poisoned our Manys.¡±
A shroud of crimson haze wafted from Gabriela¡¯s body, thicker and more coherent than the last time but still not close to the fullness he¡¯d seen multiple times before. She gasped and thrashed about as the fire coursed through her, quickly falling to the side so that her chest and head blocked more of the gap, making it even harder to see out. What he could manage to see was the arrival of two large boots attached to a pair of even larger, heavily muscled legs. One of those boots into slammed Gabriela¡¯s torso; that probably didn¡¯t help much with her healing, either.
¡°I don¡¯t care if you¡¯re ¡®unkillable¡¯ or what, you¡¯re going to regret trying to take what¡¯s mine,¡± the massive woman snarled.
Once again, Rudra found himself wondering if he just wasn¡¯t cut out for this. As always, he¡¯d been wrong and Tepin had been right. He should have listened. Why did he never listen?
But, it was too late for such thoughts now. He needed to find a way out of this.
¡°Tepin, what do we do?¡± he half-whispered, trying not to be overheard by the Stragman leader. Given that she was preoccupied with kicking her anger out into Gabriela, that wasn¡¯t actually too hard.
Tepin shook her head. ¡°I don¡¯t know. It may be too late for us now.¡±
Well, his first method to find a way out was a dud.
Was there something else he could use, perhaps? Looking around, he spotted the key ring lying on the floor across the cell. His brain kicked into overdrive, trying to come up with a way to use that to his advantage.
The Chos wouldn¡¯t want Tepin in here with him indefinitely. But to get her out, they would need the key... unless they could make a new one. If so, that would still take time, he figured. If not, then they¡¯d probably try to use thirst and starvation to force him to give it up. Perhaps he could bargain returning the key ring and cooperating for a short time in return for some concessions on their and Gabriela¡¯s behalf. He didn¡¯t want anything terrible to happen to her¡ªthe last few hours had obliterated his animus.
Still, he knew the Chos well enough to know that she was not in a bargaining mood right now. Perhaps he could reason with somebody else? He looked back outside, but he couldn¡¯t see any of the others from his vantage point.
Then, as if heeding his bidding, a series of thumps from above signaled that some Stragmans had descended and jumped atop the cage. One person, however, came to a stop just to Palebane¡¯s side¡ªher husband, Caprakan Bloodflower. No longer confined to the movement-assisting getup he¡¯d been wearing the last time Rudra had seen him, the man squatted down lightly and studied Gabriela dispassionately for a moment before turning his gaze into the cage.
The man met Rudra¡¯s gaze with a cool expression, his eyebrows rising momentarily before falling back to neutral¡ªa sign of recognition, perhaps? The man had barely ever spoken to him, however. The only time had been their one long conversation a while ago, back when they¡¯d talked about strength, Ruresni¡¯s wood, how his wife had become the Chos, and...
His train of thought came to a sudden stop, then reversed back through their talk. He knew he was grasping, but he could feel something in the back of his mind¡ªsome half-formed idea that he felt he could connect if he could just remember. The general had mentioned something off the cuff when he¡¯d been talking about how the Chos had become the Chos. What had it been?
Then, he had it. He scrambled away from the gap for a moment, waving for his lover to join him. ¡°Tepin, what about the Challenge of Ruresni?¡±
Tepin looked at him like he¡¯d grown an extra thumb. ¡°Where did you even hear of¡ªno, never mind, not important right now. There¡¯s no way you could defeat her!¡±
¡°Not me,¡± he told her. He tilted his head towards a certain other woman. Though she had been kicked dozens of times, she had not once made a peep since ceasing her efforts to heal. Her left hand still gripped her enormous weapon, but she seemed content to let the Stragman leader pummel her without end.
¡°You would try to place an outsider atop¡ª¡± Tepin furiously hissed, only to quickly fall silent.
Rudra watched as she fumed initially, her outrage quickly evaporating until only sullen resignation. ¡°I suppose it¡¯s all or nothing now, isn¡¯t it,¡± she sighed.
She crawled through the mud, pulled her face up to the gap closest to Gabriela¡¯s ears, and started urgently whispering something to her.
Gabriela grunted¡ªnot in pain, but rather in acknowledgment. A moment later, the Chos found her boot thudding against not flesh but the flat side of a massive blade.
Palebane hefted her equally massive club with a sadistic glint in her eye. ¡°Finally ready to dance, are you?¡±
¡°Akhustal Palebane,¡± Gabriela declared loud enough for all to hear, her words slightly stilted as if she were reciting something she was not familiar with, ¡°under the watch of the Great Mother, I challenge you for supremacy over her children. Heed my challenge, or forever be judged a weakling and a coward.¡±
Other than a few immediately stifled gasps, the whole world seemed to fall into silence.
¡°You did not just say that! You can¡¯t do that!¡± Palebane snarled. ¡°She can¡¯t do that, right?¡±
¡°She can,¡± somebody atop the cage spoke up.
¡°Fernfeather-hono, you cannot be serious! She¡¯s not even Stragman!¡±
¡°Neither was the challenger in the Second Challenge, long ago. The Challenge still must be honored, Palebane-chos,¡± General Fernfeather stated. ¡°You both have a day to prepare. Then, we must leave for Ruresni.¡±
¡°You can¡¯t be serious! We¡¯re in the middle of a migration!¡±
¡°Palebane-chos, you know full well that I am the most knowledgeable Hono when it comes to ancient history and the like. The traditions are clear. We must leave tomorrow. Don¡¯t worry, the people will be alright even without us.¡±
Rudra knew the Chos well enough by now that he could hear how close she was to blowing a gasket. Yet, against his expectations, she managed to keep her lid on for the moment.
¡°I know they¡¯ll be alright. I didn¡¯t lead Stragma to turn us into a nation of weaklings!¡± she huffed. ¡°Fine, we leave tomorrow. They don¡¯t get to stay in the city tonight, though.¡±
¡°Tradition would allow this,¡± the general decreed.
Palebane squatted down and looked into the cell. ¡°Hear that, Tepin? You bought yourselves a few days, but that¡¯s all. After this is over, I¡¯m taking it out on your hides. Now, get up. You¡¯re sleeping in the jungle tonight, but I want you close by so I can keep an eye on you.¡±
With that said, she stomped away.
¡°Uh, what just happened?¡± Gabriela asked.
¡°You issued a challenge to become the next Chos of the country,¡± Tepin told her.
¡°I did what?!¡± She groaned. ¡°Why can¡¯t I just have one easy mission?¡±
¡°Crud, where are they!? Did I lose them?¡±
Gabriela, fully healed, sat with her semi-repaired pack open and empty once again. She rummaged through the pack¡¯s contents, now in pile form on the ground, with increasing franticness. They¡¯d set up camp not far from the city. Though it was only midday, she¡¯d already built and lit a large campfire, claiming it was to help keep beasts away.
Rudra doubted such strategies worked well in this particular forest, though he didn¡¯t much mind. The crackling helped soothe his spirit.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± he asked from inside the cell, which had been largely de-mudded the hard way over the last few hours.
¡°I can¡¯t find a few of my things. The airship caller, most of all.¡±
¡°Did you have them when you repacked?¡±
¡°I think so... but I was a little out of it, you know?¡±
¡°Yeah, I understand. What do they look like?¡±
¡°If you¡¯re going to be like this, why don¡¯t you just come out here and help me yourself?¡± she griped.
¡°You know I can¡¯t do that. You¡¯d take us and run.¡±
After the morning¡¯s events, Rudra had renewed his demands and re-donned the key ring, much to both Gabriela¡¯s and the Chos¡¯s displeasure. Gabriela still wanted to take them and make a break for it, and Rudra had made it clear that no such shenanigans would be permitted for the time being.
Palebane, meanwhile, wanted their cell returned to the city. Doing that, however, would mean going through a very disgruntled superpowered woman holding a massive and sharp sword. Since fighting between the two of them was forbidden until the time of challenge, they¡¯d settled on letting Gabriela set up camp just outside the city with Rudra and Tepin along for the ride and a small army of expert soldiers all around to keep an eye on them.
The only other person who seemed even marginally happy with the current situation was Tepin. Once furious at Rudra for his actions, she now supported his position wholeheartedly. After all, if Gabriela became the Chos, then she¡¯d be able to do everything that Rudra and Tepin wanted. They¡¯d all win, and everything would be wonderful. Not really, of course; life was never that simple. Still, such was the general thrust of it.
¡°Did you check the pack?¡± Tepin asked.
¡°I dumped everything out of the pack,¡± Gabriela pointed out.
¡°Check it anyway.¡±
¡°Why? There¡¯s not going to be anything in here... Oh. How¡¯d that get stuck in there?¡±
¡°Found it?¡± Rudra inquired.
¡°Found one of them, yes. The important one.¡±
She held up a box with a single huge button on it. Instead of pressing it, she twisted it clockwise three times. The device let out an audible click, and then she pressed it. Nothing happened, but she seemed satisfied, putting it away. Then, she peered back into the pack, shaking it several times, before sighing and dropping it beside her.
¡°What else is missing?¡± Rudra wondered.
¡°Just the buzzer. Can¡¯t find it anywhere.¡±
¡°The what?¡±
¡°It¡¯s this little disk thing, about this big,¡± she said, holding her finger and thumb apart just a bit. Not big, it seemed. ¡°It¡¯s supposed to buzz if some emergency happens at home and they need me to head back ASAP.¡±
¡°Think back,¡± Tepin instructed. ¡°Did you see it this morning? Are you sure?¡±
¡°I said no, I can¡¯t remember seeing it, but I was not fully there, you know?¡±
¡°Something that small was almost surely eaten by a centipede,¡± Tepin pronounced. ¡°Your pack was open and most of it had fallen out, remember.¡±
Gabriela snorted. ¡°So it¡¯s in some bug¡¯s guts? Figures. Eh, it¡¯s probably fine.¡±
She lay down using the folded empty pack as a makeshift pillow.
¡°So, now we wait, I suppose¡ªwait to go and become the Chos.¡± The last part came out like she had a bad taste in her mouth.
The group settled down and time passed as they each retreated into their thoughts. Finally, after what felt like an hour, Gabriela spoke up again.
¡°Are you sure I¡¯m the right person for this?¡±
¡°I cannot think of a better person for the task,¡± Tepin told her. ¡°We all saw what you can do when you fought her before.¡±
¡°Hm. I wasn¡¯t even in top form before, you know. I should be even better... unless the fire returns, I suppose.¡±
¡°Even better. All we need to do now is journey to Ruresni, have you take care of business, and then we all get what we want.¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t call ¡®becoming the leader of a country against my will¡¯ something I want. I have enough to deal with already, thank you very much.¡±
¡°Right, about that...¡± Rudra cut in. ¡°You were saying before about how you didn¡¯t have time and you had other things to worry about or something? I think you said something about everybody dying? Care to explain?¡±
Gabriela let out an amused snort. ¡°Nope.¡±
¡°Why not? Don¡¯t you think that if I knew what you were so concerned about, maybe I¡¯d be more cooperative?¡±
¡°A normal person? Sure. You? Not a chance.¡±
Tepin cackled. ¡°She barely met you and she¡¯s already figured you out.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll tell you soon enough, I suppose,¡± Gabriela continued. ¡°You¡¯ll need to learn about it soon. I¡¯m not going say it while the guards could hear¡ªor Tepin, for that matter. Also, you seem like you want to know, so now you have to wait until it¡¯s all over. It¡¯s a petty revenge, I know, but I¡¯ll take what I can get.¡±
A low drone entered Rudra¡¯s hearing, slowly growing louder. Judging from the reactions of the others, including the guards, he was not alone in hearing it.
Gabriela smiled. ¡°She¡¯s finally here.¡±
¡°Who?¡± he wondered.
¡°The last member of this merry little band,¡± she answered. ¡°She¡¯s even more of a headache than you, sometimes, but unlike you, at least she¡¯s cute.¡±
Rudra had been to many places in Stragma, but this was something else. Not even Titan Grove could compare to Ruresni itself up close.
The journey had been much more arduous than Tepin had made it sound. Massive dangers lurked near the Mother Tree, especially the huge predators who made their home here. They¡¯d had to fight off quite a few hungry or territorial beasts, and while his abilities had not ended up being needed, every kilometer had been a battle.
But now, here they were, situated just beside the impossible tree. Its trunk was so thick that he could not even see the curve; to him, it just looked like an endless wall of bark. The same could be said for the canopy kilometers above him. Try as he might, Rudra could not see the edge.
The others, both in his little group, and the entourage at large, were busy unpacking. That meant he had little to do other than watch everybody else do work. It always left him feeling a little guilty.
Right now, he was watching a precious little child pull from a bag of assorted monster parts harvested from the corpses of giants, her eyes glittering with excitement. Pari Clansnarl was her name, and he¡¯d come to understand Gabriela¡¯s comments about her quite quickly. The girl was in many ways a terror in that way only a child could be: too much energy, too little sense. It didn¡¯t matter where they were; the beastgirl constantly ran this way and that like a child in a candy store. If she were just collecting harmless things, perhaps that wouldn¡¯t have been a problem. The fact that what she was most interested in usually came from something dangerous made it a problem. The fact that she made those things even more dangerous made him glad it was somebody else¡¯s problem.
She also refused to call him by his name even after introductions, instead always addressing him as ¡°sad man¡±, which made Tepin nearly choke with laughter. Rudra didn¡¯t know what to think about that.
¡°So, where¡¯s the arena?¡± Gabriela asked, popping into view from the left.
¡°What arena?¡± Tepin asked back.
¡°I thought there was some ceremonial arena here or something, like we were supposed to fight under the watch of the Great Tree or whatever, but there¡¯s nothing.¡±
¡°The Mother Tree can see all that goes on in the forest,¡± Tepin informed her. ¡°Why would we need to travel all the way here for that?¡±
Gabriela blinked. ¡°Then... what are we supposed to battle in?¡±
¡°Battle? When did I ever say anything about that?¡±
¡°Uh... didn¡¯t you?¡±
¡°No. Sure, there may be fighting involved, but that is not the primary goal of the challenge.¡±
¡°What is, then?¡±
¡°It¡¯s quite simple. You and the Chos must each lead a small team to retrieve the petals of a special flower. The first to make it back with the flower petals is named the new Chos.¡±
¡°Flower petals? That doesn¡¯t sound so bad, I guess. But, that still doesn¡¯t explain why we had to come all this...¡± Gabriela¡¯s suddenly widened and she took a large gulp of air. ¡°Is what makes them special...¡±
¡°Correct. They only grow at the very top of the Mother Tree herself,¡± Tepin explained matter-of-factly.
Rudra watched, his concern growing, as the blood drained from Gabriela¡¯s face.
¡°A-A-And we have to...¡±
¡°Yes, of course you have to climb it yourself. What sort of challenge would this be otherwise?¡±
It was like the woman had seen a ghost, she was so pale. Her legs trembled as she slowly sank to her knees, one hand grasping a cell bar to barely keep her from completely toppling over. She began to take quicker and shallower breaths until her lungs were chugging like a speeding steam engine. Seeing this, Pari ran over, and Rudra got the rather unique experience of watching the world¡¯s foremost murder machine hyperventilate while being consoled by a child maybe seven years old.
¡°What¡¯s the matter?¡± he asked as she started to calm down a little.
¡°I, uh...¡± She took another large gulp. ¡°I might not be the, uh...¡± Another gulp. ¡°...the best with, uh, with heights...¡± she admitted.
Suddenly, Rudra began to feel very worried.
Chapter 132
BRRRRT! BRRRRT! BRRRRT!
The grating cry of Blake¡¯s morning alarm dragged him unwillingly from his much-needed slumber. Getting up on mornings like this was a much harder task than it had been on Earth. Back then, he¡¯d just stuck his cellphone across the room, forcing himself to at least climb out of bed for a moment to turn it off. That had usually been enough.
Now, however, he could just turn the noise off with his mind. The temptation was there and growing stronger by the second.
He¡¯d gone to bed extra late, largely because of all the work needed to get Gabriela and the Flying Toaster underway last night, plus other crisis-related activities. Then, despite trying his best to fall asleep¡ªor perhaps because of it¡ªhe''d spent far too long just staring at the ceiling and stressing about everything. When he¡¯d finally crossed into the land of slumber, it had been well into the early morning.
He glanced at the clock, blinking away the gunk blurring his vision. The numbers looked blurry, and he had to strain until he could see the time flashing from across the room. He cringed at the sight. Another night of practically zero sleep. Even with his upgraded body, he felt like a slug run over by a steamroller.
Still, despite the protests of his body and mind, he rolled out of bed. On another morning, when things weren¡¯t so dire, he¡¯d probably decide to throw his schedule to the wind and sleep until well past noon. Oh, how he missed those days when he could sleep far too late, spend the afternoon watching videos online, and then play games until it was almost dawn. Those good old days, when life was simple, fast food was a few taps on his phone away, and dragons weren¡¯t potentially going to invade the rest of the world.
Today, however, he needed to get up, regardless of his body¡¯s protests. Beyond the general dragon emergency, there was something else he needed to be awake for¡ªsomething specific. He was sure that if he thought about it hard enough, he¡¯d remember what that thing was.
It was...
It was...
Right, the cabinet meeting. Today was sure to be an interesting morning. After all, this was the morning of the first cabinet meeting since the dragons had made themselves known to the world. Blake would get the ¡°honor¡± of informing his subordinates that a portion of their stupid, silly religion was actually accurate. Dragons did, in fact, exist.
There would be so much to talk about after that; Otharia would have to enter as close to a pre-war state of readiness as the nation could manage and get there as fast as possible. The meeting was sure to go long, and then there¡¯d be follow-ups and consultations, and... He felt exhausted just thinking about it.
¡°WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE¡¯RE RUNNING OUT?!¡± Blake hollered, leaning over the table and pounding his palms against it so hard that it shook. ¡°HOW CAN WE BE RUNNING OUT OF CRYSTALS?! HOW?! THEY¡¯RE FUCKING EVERYWHERE!¡±
He felt stunned. Bushwhacked. Betrayed. He felt like he could barely think past his incredulous rage.
¡°L-Lord, I¡ª¡±
¡°WHAT PART OF ¡®THERE¡¯S A BUNCH OF HUGE-ASS DRAGONS THAT COULD FLY DOWN HERE AND ROAST EVERYBODY ALIVE AT ANY TIME¡¯ DO YOU NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND?! YOU THINK THEY¡¯RE GONNA STOP AT THE BORDER AND POLITELY WAIT FOR US TO GET READY?! NO! THEY¡¯RE GOING TO SHOW UP TO BRING FIRE AND FLAMES ANY TIME NOW, AND IF WE DON¡¯T HAVE A FUCKING ARMY READY TO MEET THEM, WE¡¯RE FUCKING TOAST! YOU UNDERSTAND YET?! CAN YOU GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SCYRIAN SKULLS?!¡±
¡°We¡¯ve been doing everything we can to locate more veins,¡± Leo informed him.
¡°OH REALLY?! BECAUSE IT SURE SEEMS TO ME LIKE ¡®EVERYTHING¡¯ WOULD INCLUDE TELLING ME ABOUT THE PROBLEM! DON¡¯T GIVE ME THAT ¡®WE TRIED SO HARD¡¯ SHIT! YOU DIDN¡¯T THINK IT WOULD MATTER! THAT¡¯S WHY YOU KEPT IT TO YOUR-FUCKING-SELVES UNTIL IT REARED ITS UGLY HEAD TO BITE ME IN THE ASS!¡±
A particular thought, long dormant, stirred. It poked its head out from its hole and found the current climate to be most accommodating.
¡°Or...¡± he continued, his voice dropping as his gaze traveled across each of them with quickly growing suspicion, ¡°maybe that¡¯s what you wanted all along...¡±
Before he even knew what he was doing, he had a massive handcannon in his grasp, pointed right at Minister Tievais¡¯s bug-eyed face.
¡°Yeah, you wouldn¡¯t even have to do much,¡± Blake continued. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t even have to actively sabotage things. All you¡¯d have to do is be somewhat inept. Let the output slow. Let the surveys take longer than they should and ¡®accidentally¡¯ miss some stuff. How would I know? I¡¯ve been cooped up in here, trusting you like a fucking chump!¡±
¡°Lord Ferros¡ª¡± Arlette tried to cut in, but he ignored her. Hell, he could barely even hear her over the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
The gun swerved as he changed his target. ¡°Or maybe it¡¯s deeper than that. Et tu, Leo? You picked him out. Maybe he¡¯s just doing exactly what you want him to. You said ¡®we¡¯ have been doing everything ¡®we¡¯ can. So, you knew too, then, didn¡¯t you?¡±
He slowly pointed the weapon at each of the people in front of him, watching them all for signs of... guilt? Fear? Anything that qualified in his mind as ¡®suspicious¡¯, he supposed.
¡°You¡¯re all in on it, aren¡¯t you? You¡¯re all in a conspiracy to depose me! To bring me down! I¡¯m on to you! I¡ª¡±
A hand grabbed his arm and pushed it upwards. It took him a moment to see through his anger and recognize Arlette standing in front of him, both of her arms pushing with all her might just to move his aim up a foot or two.
¡°Lord Ferros, calm yourself!¡± she grunted.
Part of him decided on the spot that this meant she was in on it. The rest of him wasn¡¯t so sure just yet. She wasn¡¯t connected to the others. Still¡ª
A loud, shrill alarm from inside his helmet took him by surprise, causing him to accidentally pull the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand and the small room was filled with an ear-splitting ¡®CRACK!¡¯, followed by screams and whimpers. Several of the ministers cowered in their seats, while others ducked under the table to cower closer to the floor.
Luckily for everybody involved, the bullet struck the far wall almost head-on and did not ricochet, instead practically melting against the surface. Perhaps he¡¯d put a little too much power into the weapon, he considered.
Before his thoughts could stray any further, a video feed popped up and began to play in front of his eyes. It took only a second for him to blanch and turn the feed off.
¡°Is this your doing too?!¡± he yelled at the others, his exhausted mind momentarily forgetting that nobody in the room but him could see what he was talking about.
After a few moments of confused and terrified silence, he grabbed Arlette by the arm and pulled her towards the door. She was probably still trustworthy.
¡°I¡¯m stepping out for a bit. You all fucking wait here until I get back.¡±
Deciding to enforce his order himself, he sealed all the doors as soon as he and Arlette stepped outside. That accomplished, he began to march down the hall with Arlette just behind him.
That didn¡¯t last long.
After several moments of quickly walking, Arlette shot in front of him like a bullet from his handcannon. She glared at him balefully as she set herself in his path.
¡°Alright, that¡¯s far enough,¡± she declared. ¡°What the fuck was that?! Stars above, have you lost your goddamned mind?!¡±
Blake ignored her and tried to step around her. When that didn¡¯t work, he decided to just go through her. The next thing he knew, he was face down on the floor. What had happened? He¡¯d tried to move his leg forward, and then it had hit something that had stopped it from moving properly, and...
¡°Look at you. Slow, uncoordinated, paranoid, hysterical. What happened to you?¡±
¡°Wha?¡± Blake managed to respond.
¡°You seemed alright yesterday, but now you look...¡± She crouched down and studied his face closely. ¡°...even more tired than usual. How much sleep have you been getting?¡±
¡°...Some.¡±
She glared at him in a way that reminded him of his strict middle school history teacher whenever he didn¡¯t do his homework.
¡°How many hours of sleep did you get last night?¡± she asked pointedly.
Blake pushed himself into a sitting position, leaning his back against the hallway wall. ¡°I don¡¯t know, one?¡±
¡°One hour?!¡±
He shrugged. ¡°Ish.¡±
Arlette began to massage the bridge of her nose with gusto. ¡°How about the night before.¡±
¡°Didn¡¯t.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Dragons invaded Kutrad,¡± he informed her. ¡°I was too busy.¡±
She groaned and rubbed her face. ¡°Yes, Blake, I know. I was in the crisis planning session with you! Don¡¯t you remember?! And, I still went to sleep that night! We all did!¡±
She exhaled sharply. ¡°How much have you slept in... I don¡¯t know... the last ten days?¡±
He mentally staggered through his foggy memory, trying to come up with a number. This was too much mental effort for him right now. ¡°Three hours a night?¡± he offered.
¡°Three?!¡±
¡°Maybe three-and-a-half?¡± he added, hoping to mollify her.
¡°Ancestors, give me strength,¡± she groaned. She pulled him to his feet with concerted effort. ¡°Come on. You¡¯re going to go apologize and beg the others to forgive you, and then you¡¯re taking a desperately needed nap.¡±
¡°Apologize?! Why should I apologize to backstabbers and traitors?!¡±
¡°Stop embarrassing yourself. You¡¯re so far gone that you¡¯re barking at shadows in your head. Why in the world would they do what you think they did? There are a thousand easier and more effective ways to undermine you if they want to. It wouldn¡¯t even matter, anyway. If they were undermining you to topple your rule, lowering crystal production wouldn¡¯t do much. The force that keeps you in power already exists.¡±
¡°But¡ª¡± he began, indignant.
¡°No. No buts. If we¡¯re in such dire straits that you¡¯re burning the candle at both ends and the middle too, the last thing we need is for you to alienate all the people keeping this place running on a day-to-day basis! Star above, if I were one of them, I¡¯d already be out of this place, with no intention of ever coming back!¡±
The heat of shame made him flush. Was what Arlette said true? No! No, she couldn¡¯t be right. What did she know about Otharians, anyway?
¡°That¡¯s easy for you to say,¡± he countered. ¡°You¡¯ve never seen what these people are like. They used to teach their own children to kill non-believers as an act of devotion! Why should I trust them at all?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe you should ask yourself that. The you that hired them, and the you that worked with them for more than a year without any of this bullshit. The you that has slept for more than two hours a night and has a properly functioning mind.¡±
Blake scowled at her¡ªnot that she could see it, but she¡¯d get the general impression¡ªand fell into a petulant silence. She had some potentially good points. Possibly. Maybe. He just didn¡¯t really feel up to determining just how good, and he wasn¡¯t in the mood to listen to her, anyway.
After a few moments of the two of them staring at each other, Arlette spoke again. ¡°Go apologize, or I tell Sofie.¡±
Blake went cold. ¡°Please don¡¯t.¡±
¡°Go back, apologize, and salvage whatever can still be saved with your relationship with them before it¡¯s too late, or I will go tell Sofie this instant that you pointed a fucking weapon at harmless civilian subordinates, and that if I hadn¡¯t been pushing your arm up, you very well might have splattered one of them across the wall. Now, before any more of them rightfully run away.¡±
He gulped.
¡°Oh, uh, they can¡¯t leave. I sealed them inside,¡± he helpfully informed her.
¡°Just more proof that you need to sleep as soon as we¡¯re through this. Let¡¯s go. Now.¡±
¡°Oh, wait, right. We can¡¯t. We have to deal with the other thing.¡±
¡°Now. Don¡¯t make me trip you again.¡±
¡°No, I¡¯m serious! We have to deal with the alarm. It¡¯s uh... what¡¯s the word... time-sensitive.¡±
¡°What are you even talking about? What alarm? And what does it have to do with me?¡±
¡°The one that went off in the meeting? Just come with me. It¡¯s important.¡±
She glared at him distrustfully, before giving in. ¡°You have five minutes.¡±
As quick as he could manage, he made his way through the fortress and came to a stop outside a large, thick bulkhead in the middle of the passage they were in.
¡°Wait, what¡¯s this? Shouldn¡¯t your workshop be here?¡± Arlette wondered.
¡°Hold your breath,¡± he told her. ¡°The vents should have sucked out all the gas now, but just in case.¡±
¡°Gas?¡±
¡°Yeah, I had the twerp make it.¡±
Without further ado, he toggled some switches within the walls and the bulkhead rose into the ceiling, as did its partner on the other side of the hall. Purple haze lingered at around ankle depth in the now-revealed space between, covering the floor and the bottom of the door to his primary workshop.
Arlette¡¯s eyes went wide when she saw the other thing of note within the fog. She let out a tired groan. ¡°It just keeps piling on...¡±
Passed out on the cold metal floor, just outside the workshop, lay a single unconscious form¡ªthat of one Chitra Batranala.
BRRRRT! BRRRRT! BRRRRT!
For the second time that day, the grating cry of his alarm dragged Blake unwillingly from much-needed slumber. He sat up and stretched, feeling... well, still not great, but better than before. The fog clouding his thoughts seemed to have largely dissipated; this morning, he hadn¡¯t even been aware of it.
He climbed out of bed. Though the day had grown older, there was still far too much to be done. After finding Chitra, he and Arlette had confined her in a cell down underground. The woman had received a heavy dose of the brat¡¯s sleep gas¡ªseriously, he¡¯d loaded the area with, like, twenty of them¡ªso there wasn¡¯t much else to do with regards to her for the time being. She¡¯d be out for most of the day. Then, he¡¯d returned to the meeting room and profusely apologized to his beloved underlings before being whisked away to bed.
Looking back now, Blake felt a mix of embarrassment and anger at how the morning had gone. He¡¯d made an ass of himself, and to make it worse, he struggled to find a way to blame anybody but himself. What had he been thinking? There was no way Minister Tievais had the balls to do anything like what Blake had accused him of doing. Perhaps the only Minister who did have the spine was the crotchety old farmer Fricis Upeslacis, except that the geezer probably liked Blake the most of any of them. After all, thanks to Blake and his efforts, Otharia was no longer in a constant crisis of food shortages and one bad season away from mass famines.
His only consolation, he supposed, is that it was Arlette who¡¯d confronted him. It could have been much worse; it could have been Sofie.
His doorbell rang. He didn¡¯t need to check to know it would be Arlette. She¡¯d decided upon his wake-up time, as well.
Looking around his bedroom, he decided the place was far too messy for others. Partially formed bits and pieces of machinery littered the tables and floor, and his bedsheets were in dire need of a wash. He meandered to his office, which he found to be only half as messy, and sat down with a groan before unlocking and opening the doors.
Arlette entered the room a moment later. ¡°Feeling better?¡±
¡°Yeah.¡±
¡°Good. We have a lot to talk about. While you were sleeping, I talked with Leo about everything. I suggest you go apologize to him when he gets in tomorrow and get his advice about how to convince the others to stay.¡±
¡°But, I already apologized.¡±
¡°Did you? A rambling speech where you repeatedly say ¡®mistakes were made¡¯ while barely acknowledging that it was you who made all those mistakes is not quite what I would call an apology, really. If it bought you any more time or goodwill, it was entirely because of how clearly unwell you appeared to everybody. The only reason I didn¡¯t make you do it again was because I realized that was the best I was going to get at the time.¡±
Blake groaned. ¡°Alright. So he¡¯s out now? That doesn¡¯t sound like him.¡±
¡°They all left early, and I don¡¯t blame them.¡±
He sighed, then shoved his feelings about it aside. This was now a problem for Future Blake.
¡°Anything else?¡±
Arlette nodded. ¡°We need to talk about Gabriela. She needs to know about her¡ª¡±
Blake shook his head vehemently and cut her off. ¡°No way. Not a chance.¡±
¡°She deserves to know!¡± Arlette insisted, equally vehement.
¡°First of all, there¡¯s no simple way to send her a message at this distance. The only way we¡¯d be able to tell her is to trigger the emergency alarm and have her turn around.¡±
¡°Bullshit. I¡¯ve seen what you¡¯re capable of. You could figure out a way in under an hour if you really wanted to.¡±
He crossed his arms. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t really want to.¡±
Fists clenched, she closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath.
¡°Why do you care, anyway? I thought you didn¡¯t like her,¡± he asked.
She glared his way, her frustration tinged with something else. Pity? ¡°You¡¯ve never really loved somebody, have you? That¡¯s the only explanation I can think of for why you would even ask such a thing.¡±
¡°Whoa, whoa, hey! I¡¯ll have you know that, back in college, I had more than my fair share of¡ª¡±
¡°Hey, have you seen Pari?¡± Sofie asked, walking in on the pair of them. Her brow was creased with worry and she looked as exhausted as Blake felt. ¡°I haven¡¯t been able to find her all day.¡±
Blake frowned as he watched the fortress¡¯s prime irritant invade his private quarters. He wondered how she¡¯d even gotten inside before realizing that he¡¯d forgotten to re-lock the doors after Arlette had entered. Stupid! Perhaps he needed to go back to sleep.
Arlette, on the other hand, seemed relieved. ¡°Sofie! Come help me explain to this heartless man that we need to let Gabriela know that we locked her partner up in the dungeon!¡±
Sofie gasped. ¡°What?! Chitra?!¡±
¡°No, her other girlfriend,¡± Blake snorted.
He mentally activated a nearby screen hanging on a wall, revealing the Batranala. Tied to the back wall of a cell through cables and cuffs, much in the same way that Tehlmar had been held, she hung limply, her head slumped against her chest. Other than the rise and fall of her chest, Blake could see no movement. Before going to bed, he¡¯d set up a live video feed, which he could access at any time. He could even display it in his HUD within his helmet if he wanted to, or have it pop up should she make noise over a certain level.
¡°She tried to sneak into my workshop and got hit with some of the brat¡¯s knockout gas,¡± he explained. ¡°We¡¯ll deal with her later, once she¡¯s awake.¡±
¡°And in the meantime, we must call Gabriela back here. It¡¯s not right for us to do this without her,¡± Arlette insisted. ¡°Right, Sofie?¡±
¡°Uhh...¡± the other woman hesitated.
¡°How do you think she¡¯s going to take it when she gets back days from now and we¡¯re like ¡®Oh, hey, sorry, but we imprisoned your lover and interrogated her while you were gone¡¯? What if something happens to her? What if we end up taking more extreme measures?¡±
¡°I get what you mean, but why would letting her know now make things better? You know how she is with sudden trauma. She¡¯s¡ª¡±
¡°Don¡¯t say ¡®delicate¡¯,¡± Arlette warned. ¡°I¡¯m glad she¡¯s on our side now, but nobody who is that much of a butcher gets to be called ¡®delicate¡¯.¡±
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
¡°Fine, ¡®emotionally fragile¡¯, then,¡± Sofie continued. ¡°She¡¯s already fallen into grief-spurred comas more than once, by her telling. We can¡¯t risk that happening again right now¡ªnot with all that¡¯s going on. If the situation wasn¡¯t so serious, I¡¯d agree with you, but we need her to complete her mission as soon as possible.¡±
Blake almost couldn¡¯t believe his ears. Sofie ¡°Bleeding Heart¡± Ramaut, the gadfly of his existence, was agreeing with him! Against her own friend! This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!
Deciding this was not a battle she could win, Arlette chose to voice her resignation with a harumph and a scowl.
Taking that as a cue that the argument was over, he inquired, ¡°Now, what were you saying about that twerp?¡±
¡°I said that I cannot locate my delightful and lovable little sister anywhere. I haven¡¯t seen her since last night. Neither of you knows where she might be?¡±
¡°Nope,¡± Blake said.
Arlette shook her head. ¡°Did you ask Samanta?¡±
¡°Yeah, that¡¯s the thing. Apparently, they were playing Hide and Go Seek, but after Pari went to hide, Samanta couldn¡¯t find her. I¡¯ve scoured the entire fortress. Maybe she somehow got into one of the places I¡¯m not allowed into?¡±
¡°Fine, I¡¯ll check,¡± Blake sighed, walking over to a nearby console and pressing a few keys to bring up the feeds from the surveillance cameras. Quickly, he began switching between them, until he found the feeds from the handful of spaces off-limits to Sofie and most others.
¡°Nope, nope, nope, aaaannnnndddd nope,¡± he stated.
¡°Wait, that¡¯s it?¡±
¡°I¡¯m not locking you out of half the fortress, Sofie. You¡¯re allowed almost anywhere these days.¡±
¡°What was that last one? I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve ever seen that one before.¡±
¡°This?¡± Blake flipped back to the feed coming from his crystal vault deep below the surface. It was there that he stored all the most valuable, and usually largest, cantacrenyx crystals, including his two remaining jumbo big boys. Originally, he¡¯d had three massive crystals on his hands, all three of them so large and powerful that he didn¡¯t know what to do with them. The smallest of the three had eventually become the main power supply for the Flying Toaster. The other two... well, aside from a single emergency use, the others were still waiting.
¡°This is my vault,¡± he told her. ¡°It¡¯s where I store the good stuff. Special projects need special fuel, after all.¡±
¡°How come I¡¯ve never seen it before?¡± Sofie wondered.
¡°Why would you bother? Nobody goes in there but me, and even I barely visit it.¡±
¡°I¡¯m just curious because I can¡¯t see where you¡¯d fit it.¡±
¡°It¡¯s past that huge door with all the security machines, isn¡¯t it? The one next to the elevator to the jail cells,¡± Arlette guessed.
¡°Technically, behind that door is another elevator which goes down to the vault, but yeah. Made sense to put it as deep as I could go, since that¡¯s the most secure floor in the fortress. Dozens of meters of solid tucrenyx all the way down, all buried fifty meters underground. Ain¡¯t nothin¡¯ getting through that. Not without me knowing, at least.
¡°Anyway, looks like she¡¯s not in there. If you still can¡¯t find her, then I¡¯d bet that urchin went and hid out in the city.¡± He patted her on the shoulder. ¡°Good luck with that!¡±
¡°Please, do you think I don¡¯t know her?¡± Sofie scoffed with a shake of her head. ¡°I made sure to establish a rule for that long ago. All hiding has to stay within the fortress walls.¡±
¡°Maybe she broke the rules.¡±
¡°Not a chance. She¡¯s a good girl who follows the rules, always.¡±
¡°She stink-bombed my bedroom.¡±
¡°Well, I never made a rule saying she couldn¡¯t, and you deserved it.¡±
He most definitely had not deserved it! Everything he¡¯d done had been fully understandable!
¡°Well, then have fun checking the whole fortress again,¡± Blake said with a casual shrug. If she wanted to be like that, she didn¡¯t need his help that badly.
¡°Sofie, when did they start playing, exactly?¡± Arlette interrupted, a worried look on her face.
¡°Uh, evening? I don¡¯t know the precise time. I was too busy trying to help with the last bits of Gabby¡¯s trip before she left.¡±
¡°You know one thing that is technically ¡®within the fortress walls¡¯? The Flying Toaster while docked.¡±
Sofie gave her a confused look for a heartbeat before the blood swiftly drained from her face. ¡°We have to call them back right away!¡±
¡°Pfft! What happened to your argument from a minute ago?¡± Blake snickered.
¡°That was before we realized that Pari is on the ship! She¡¯ll be in danger!¡±
¡°Meh, I doubt that,¡± Blake said dismissively.
¡°I agree,¡± Arlette chimed in. ¡°There¡¯s no way that Gabriela will let Pari get within a league of anything dangerous. You know how she is about children. She¡¯ll chop down the entire Stragman rainforest before she lets that girl get hurt.¡±
¡°Arlette!¡± Sofie cried, stomping her foot. ¡°I thought you were on my side!¡±
¡°You made a convincing argument. As much as I wish it weren¡¯t true, you¡¯re right¡ªthis mission is too important to risk it. We¡¯ll just have to prepare and be ready when she returns.¡±
¡°Yeah,¡± Blake chimed in, ¡°she¡¯ll probably just leave the little twerp on the ship while she takes care of things. There will be nobody within a mile in any direction from the brat. She¡¯ll be way up in the sky, all alone...¡± He began to break out in a cold sweat as he finally took his statement to its logical, inevitable conclusion. ¡°...with nobody to stop her from blowing my baby to smithereenswehavetoturntheshiparound!¡±
Images of silver wreckage strewn across a hillside filled his mind¡¯s eye, a massive chunk of the superstructure blown away with fire ravaging what remained.
¡°No!¡± Arlette harshly replied.
¡°Not if you¡¯re blaming Pari for it!¡± Sofie added.
¡°...urgh...¡± a third voice chimed in, cutting through Blake¡¯s sudden panic.
The three of them turned to the screen to see the image of Chitra stirring, her head lolling to the side. She did not seem fully conscious just yet, but that would not be far off.
¡°Oh, look who¡¯s finally waking up,¡± Blake quipped. ¡°I think it¡¯s time for a little chat, three-on-one.¡±
¡°Hold on, hold on. Is that the same type of camera you have all around the place?¡± Sofie asked.
¡°Yeah? Why?¡±
¡°You have microphones in all those cameras?!¡±
¡°What? Don¡¯t give me that look! It¡¯s for security! And, it¡¯s not like I¡¯m even recording the sound most of the time.¡±
¡°Most of the time?!¡±
In the end, cooler heads prevailed and the Flying Toaster was left to continue on its way unmolested. The three of them, meanwhile, headed down into the earth. First, they took the main elevator to the ground floor.
¡°Why is everybody scattering the moment they see us like we¡¯re carrying some sort of plague?¡± Sofie wondered.
¡°No real reason,¡± Blake quickly answered. ¡°They probably all heard I¡¯m not in a good mood today.¡±
¡°When are you ever in a good mood?¡± she shot back.
From there, they entered one of the basement elevators and proceeded down that as well. Most of the basement elevators went to various storage chambers. This one, however, only went to one relatively small room filled with boxy containers¡ªthe contents of which only Blake knew or cared about¡ªand with two doors on the other side.
The one on the right led to a special, high-security elevator that would only open to a small handful of his most trusted people and those involved in internal security. It kept a record of everybody who used it, so the comings and goings of prisoners and their jailers could be easily tracked¡ªnot that there was much to track; the jail was almost always empty. In fact, he¡¯d built a dozen cells, yet not once so far had more than one been occupied simultaneously. It made him wonder why he¡¯d bothered in the first place.
The door on the left, however, put its neighbor to shame. Bristling with weaponry and all manner of sensors and traps, the door to his crystal vault would only open for him.
¡°So, that door also leads down?¡± Sofie inquired.
Blake nodded, and she gave him the side-eye.
¡°So, you put your most valuable things right next to where you put your most dangerous criminals?¡±
¡°Did you think I hadn¡¯t thought of that? Look, there¡¯s only so much room down there for me to work with,¡± Blake argued. ¡°And, it¡¯s not like they¡¯re ¡®right¡¯ next to each other. There¡¯s nearly 5 yards of metal between them. Now, come on, I want to get this over with so I can eat something.¡±
They all stepped into the prison elevator, the door closing behind them.
¡°Are you going to be alright with... you know...?¡± Arlette asked Sofie as the lift slowly descended foot after foot.
The other woman nodded. ¡°I¡¯m alright. This needs to be done. Besides, she should be used to it after all I put her through before.¡±
¡°If you say so...¡±
Exiting the cabin many feet deep into the earth, they came upon another thicker-than-normal door¡ªthe entrance to his high-security jail. Others called it a dungeon, but Blake disagreed; this place distinctly lacked the rats, skeletons, and mold necessary to qualify for such status.
It lacked a lot of things, if he were to be honest. It had been a long time since he¡¯d last come here, and he¡¯d forgotten just how spartan the cells were. All they contained were a rudimentary toilet protruding from one side wall, a thin cot sticking out of the opposite wall, and a set of four thick cables with shackles on their ends coming from the wall in the back. Oh, and in this case, one Ubran failed thief restrained by those cables and cuffs.
The wires were usually slack enough to allow the cell¡¯s occupant enough freedom to be able to do their business, sleep on the cot, and move about a little. With the flick of a switch, however, they could pull the prisoner up against the back wall and render them unable to move¡ªjust like they were doing with Chitra right now. The Batranala stood against the back wall, her arms extended up and out, her legs held together. She almost looked like she was being crucified, he thought, except that her feet were squarely on the floor.
The array of thick metal bars separating them and their prisoner lowered into the floor and they approached until they were only a few steps away.
The gorgeous woman graced them with a hearty, unbothered smile. ¡°Why, Lord Ferros! Oh! And Arlette, and Sofie as well? My, my, to think all three of you would deign to grace me with your presence at the same time! To what do I owe the pleasure?¡±
¡°Yeah, yeah, can it,¡± Blake snapped. ¡°Sofie, do the thing.¡±
Sofie cleared her throat. ¡°Don¡¯t lie. Don¡¯t mislead with half-truths. Don¡¯t hold back information.¡± She glanced his way. ¡°Anything else?¡±
¡°Nah, that about does it, I think.¡±
¡°Oh, come now! You¡¯re taking all the fun out of it!¡± Chitra protested. ¡°What about the verbal sparring, the misdirections, the battles of wits?¡±
¡°Nope,¡± Blake simply stated. ¡°None of that crap today. We¡¯re just going to datamine you and be done with it.¡±
¡°You¡¯re all bores,¡± she lamented with a theatrical sigh. ¡°And you know it¡¯s true because you¡¯ve rendered me unable to lie.¡±
He clapped once, creating a clank loud enough that it made Arlette and Sofie wince¡ªthough Chitra didn¡¯t even blink. ¡°Alright, enough of that. Let¡¯s get this over with. The fuck you doing outside my workshop?¡±
The Ubran rolled her eyes. ¡°What do you think? I was trying to get inside.¡±
¡°Why?¡±
She gave him a disdainful scowl. ¡°To take what was in there. Come now, is your strategy to torture me by asking the most inane questions you can come up with? If you won¡¯t make this fun, at least make it interesting.¡±
Blake was almost amused at Chitra¡¯s attempts to carve out a bit of control of the conversation for herself, but he knew it was futile. Sofie¡¯s restrictions had defanged and declawed the woman, and she had little left to fall back on. Soon enough, she¡¯d figure out that even the taunting front she¡¯d put up was ineffectual.
¡°He means, who are you working for?¡± Arlette helpfully clarified.
¡°I¡¯m entirely self-employed right now, sadly.¡±
¡°But you are working with some person or group, yes? I can¡¯t see you trying this just on your own. Even if you were going to just sell whatever you find, you wouldn¡¯t take this risk unless you already have a buyer in place.¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
Blake let out a quiet grunt of annoyance. Even if she had to tell the truth, the Ubran seemed dead set on only answering their questions in as limited a scope as she could manage. ¡°Who are you working with?¡±
¡°A bunch of fanatics who call themselves ¡®Othar¡¯s Chosen¡¯. I hear they¡¯re making poor Arlette¡¯s life just miserable.¡±
¡°You¡ª!¡± Arlette lurched forward, ready to strangle Chitra with her own two hands. Sofie and Blake had to hold her back as she struggled against their grips. ¡°How could you work with them!? Don¡¯t you have any conscience?!¡±
Chitra shrugged. ¡°I never said I liked them. It was nothing more than a mutually beneficial arrangement between two parties. Living a good life in this place is very expensive.¡±
¡°How do you find them?¡± Arlette demanded.
¡°I don¡¯t. They would always find me.¡± The Ubran laughed. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, were you hoping I would be able to point you right towards their hideout?¡±
Arlette practically growled like an angry dog, but this time made no move forward.
¡°What did they want you to steal from the workshop,¡± Sofie asked.
¡°Anything would have done, really, as long as it would help them improve their machine designs.¡±
¡°They can make crystal machines?¡± Sofie gasped.
Chitra let out a laugh. ¡°Of course! Do you really think they would have been able to stay hidden otherwise?¡±
So, Arlette had been right all along. He could feel the burn of humiliation growing inside as he remembered all the times he¡¯d shot her down on this very subject. Even so, Blake could scarcely believe it¡ªif not for Sofie¡¯s restrictions, he still probably wouldn¡¯t. But, if they were making their own cantacrenyx devices, then that meant¡ªno. No, he was not going down that road right now. His spirit roiled, but he shoved it all down into a box and closed the lid. There was a time and place to reckon with such conclusions, and this was neither. Right now, he needed to appear unflappable above all else.
¡°What else have you done for them before this?¡± Blake inquired, noticing the way Arlette was glancing at him and hoping to change the subject.
¡°Oh, information peddling, basically. This was the first, and clearly the last, theft I¡¯ll be doing on their behalf.¡±
A spike of alarm shot through Blake. ¡°Wait, what sort of information?¡±
¡°Oh, you know, whatever I could learn. Merchant movements, trade secrets, all sorts of things.¡± She flashed a grin that showed off her perfectly straight, white teeth. ¡°For some reason, people seem to want to tell me all sorts of things they really shouldn¡¯t.¡±
¡°And when did you start this? The day you arrived?¡±
¡°No, not until about a season has passed.¡±
This did little to assuage Blake¡¯s worry. ¡°What about Gabriela? What has she told you?¡±
¡°She¡¯d told me nothing of note,¡± Chitra answered, her head tilting to the side as she looked Blake in the eyes. Her gaze twinkled with amusement. ¡°Why, are you saying my honey bud has been holding out on me? I wonder, what sorts of secrets would she keep from her own love?¡±
Whoops. Perhaps he had not thought that question all the way through.
¡°Her own love?¡± Sofie cut in. ¡°What about you, Chitra? Do you love her?¡±
For the first time, the Batranala seemed to lose her composure. She hesitated for a moment, before responding, ¡°Love? What even is love, truly? For someone such as I, ¡®love¡¯ is a silly, childish emotion, nothing¡ª¡±
Suddenly, she spasmed, her words cut off by a massive, full-body coughing fit. With each and every hack, she spewed blood on the floor between them, quickly turning the matte grey metal into a grey and red rendition of a Jackson Pollock painting.
¡°Y-Yes,¡± she eventually managed to gasp out between shuddering coughs.
Chitra¡¯s body immediately went still, the fit gone like it had never been there in the first place. Yet, the toll it had taken remained. No longer standing tall and composed, she slumped forward about a foot, her upper body hanging from the cables. Her long, silken hair fell over her face, but Blake could still see between the strands that blood still dripped from the corner of her mouth.
¡°Yes, damn you,¡± she repeated, her voice soft and weak. Gone was her condescension, her almost jovial attitude, her unbothered and relaxed affect. Instead, she glared at Sofie with eyes of hatred¡ªthe hatred of someone powerless and defeated gazing upon their victorious oppressor. It was the first time he¡¯d ever seen her ruffled in any way. ¡°Are you happy now?¡±
¡°Have you worked for or with any person or organization other than Othar¡¯s Chosen since the end of the Ubran invasion?¡± Blake jumped in, taking advantage of the woman¡¯s weakness before she could recompose herself.
¡°No,¡± she sighed. ¡°There is no one else. There has only ever been me.¡±
The cell settled into a momentary silence.
¡°Anybody have anything else to ask?¡± he inquired.
¡°I do. I¡¯m going to pull every last detail about those fuckers out of her,¡± Arlette said. ¡°But... it can wait an hour. I need to eat.¡±
¡°Yeah, I¡¯m hungry,¡± Sofie agreed.
¡°Alright, then,¡± Blake said. ¡°It¡¯s been fun. Enjoy your stay down here, Chitra. I have a feeling you¡¯ll be here for a long time.¡±
The three of them left the cell.
¡°I¡¯m sorry for doing that to you,¡± Sofie said to Chitra as the bars rose from the floor to separate them once more.
¡°No, you aren¡¯t,¡± Chitra replied.
The prison door slid closed behind them with a final, conclusive thump, and the tension Blake didn¡¯t even notice had built up inside him started to slowly drain from his body.
¡°Glad that¡¯s over with¡ªfor now, at least,¡± he said to nobody in particular.
¡°Hold on a moment,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°We¡¯re not done yet!¡±
One look at her smug grin told him exactly what was coming. He opened the elevator door and stepped inside with a sigh. He¡¯d dealt with a lot today. He didn¡¯t need this, too.
The Scyrian former mercenary stood tall, her back ramrod straight. She clomped into the lift with stiff, awkward movements that drew a chuckle from Sofie.
¡°¡®You¡¯re jumping to conclusions, Arlette.¡¯ ¡®You¡¯re just paranoid, Arlette.¡¯ ¡®There¡¯s no way the terrorists could manage something like that, Arlette,¡¯¡± she parroted in a low, mocking voice.
Dropping the parody, she jabbed his chest armor with a pointer finger as the door closed behind them and the lift began to move.
¡°I told you!¡± she proclaimed, triumphant. ¡°I told you that somebody was creating tech like yours! I was right! You were wrong, and I was right!¡±
Blake sighed, really not wanting to dwell on the issue. ¡°Yes, yes, good job,¡± he said rather dismissively.
Arlette shook her head. ¡°Oh, no. I told you for seasons, and you blew me off every time! You treated me like I was peddling absurd conspiracies! I¡¯m going to need more from you than that.¡±
¡°Fine, fine, I apologize,¡± he conceded.
¡°Not good enough. I want you to say I was right and you were wrong. I want to hear you say it from your own lips, mask off.¡±
¡°...You know, sassing your employer is usually not the best strategy for continued employment,¡± he said after an awkward pause.
¡°Mask off. Come on!¡±
¡°Let¡¯s be serious here. I promise to take your analysis of things into better consideration from now on, alright? You¡¯ve made your point.¡±
¡°Those sure are a lot of words that don¡¯t convey how right she is,¡± Sofie chimed in, smiling daggers his way.
¡°Sofie, stay out of this,¡± he said, both as a warning and a plea.
She giggled, her gaze growing predatory. ¡°Why? What¡¯s wrong, Blake? Something bothering you?¡±
He mentally reached out and dialed up the power sent to the lift motor to its maximum, increasing their speed by perhaps fifty percent¡ªbetter, but still not good enough for his liking. His mask flowed away to reveal his face.
¡°Fine, you were right, Arlette. I was wrong, and you were right. Happy?¡±
¡°Maybe you should say it a few more times,¡± Sofie snickered, enjoying the moment far too much for Blake¡¯s taste. ¡°We¡¯re both rather hard of hearing, you know.¡±
¡°Will you just drop it, already?¡± Blake snarled, the words coming out far more heated than intended and bringing forth ringing laughter from the pesky irritant. Already regretting his outburst, he quickly reformed his mask before he lost his temper even more.
¡°Never! Oh, how I¡¯ve been waiting for this day! The day that Blake Myers, Super Engineer was finally knocked off his high horse to fall face first into the sticky brown mud of humiliation. The mud of defeat!¡±
Blake¡¯s gut tensed up. Did she know?
¡°It¡¯s alright, Sofie,¡± Arlette told her. ¡°I¡¯m satisfied now.¡±
Sofie turned Arlette¡¯s way, her expression giddy, bordering on manic with glee. ¡°No, Arlette you don¡¯t get it. There¡¯s a reason he always insisted against your obviously correct conclusion. To agree would be to accept something he just could never accept, and now he can¡¯t deny it anymore and now look. He¡¯s just malding apart inside that armor and I am here for every second of it!¡±
She knew. Gods help him, she knew, and he could tell that she was going to make sure to twist the knife as hard as she could.
¡°What in the world are you talking about?¡± Arlette asked, not on the same page as her friend.
¡°Do you know what one of the biggest advantages of machines is?¡± Sofie asked, before answering herself. ¡°It¡¯s automated factories.¡±
Fuck.
¡°Uh, you¡¯re going to have to enlighten me,¡± Arlette said.
¡°Think about it. Sure, building all your machines by your own hand is cool and all, but that takes time. On the other hand, once you get machines sophisticated enough, you can use them to build more machines. Without you needing to do much of anything.¡±
Fuck!
¡°You can?!¡±
¡°Of course! We do it all the time in our world. They¡¯re not usually one-hundred percent automated, but the machines do the vast bulk of the labor and they do it faster than people could ever dream to. Think about how much easier everything could be for Blake¡¯s life if he didn¡¯t have to manually make everything he needed. What if he could just whip up a design and then have a machine make a hundred of them for him, instead? Wouldn¡¯t that save hours of his time every day?¡±
Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck! Blake took a deep breath and told himself to remain calm, despite the roiling frustration and anger growing inside him.
Arlette nodded in complete agreement. ¡°That makes a load of sense. Why don¡¯t you do that, Blake?¡±
¡°YOU THINK I DON¡¯T FUCKING WANT TO?!¡± Blake exploded. ¡°I¡ª!¡±
He clamped his mouth shut so hard that it hurt. With a huff, he crossed his arms and looked away from the two of them, inspecting the shaft¡¯s construction for signs of wear. He wasn¡¯t going to let these two get to him any more than they already had. He was going to control himself. He was going to control himself. He was an adult, and he was going to control¡ª
Sofie broke out into full-on guffaws that set Blake on edge. She shook so hard that she had to lower herself to the floor before she fell instead, her mockery like sandpaper scraping across his soul.
¡°Because he can¡¯t,¡± she explained mid-cackle, every word a splash of gasoline upon the bonfire. ¡°He¡¯s never been able to figure out how to make the energy channels that his tech needs the way the ancients were able to. The only way he knows how to do it is with his powers! Don¡¯t try to deny it, Blake! We both know I¡¯m right! Hahahahaaaaaa!¡±
Blake¡¯s teeth ground against each other so hard that they should have turned to dust. He was going to murder this woman. It wasn¡¯t like he hadn¡¯t killed anybody before; after all he¡¯d done, what was one more, really? Nothing of value would be lost. No, the world would be a better place, and he would be lauded for his noble deed.
¡°But now, look!¡± she continued, barely able to form words, let alone sentences with her heaving diaphragm. ¡°Somebody out there is making machines themselves! They don¡¯t have super special magic metal powers! They don¡¯t have years and years of experience with electronics and whatever else! And yet, here we are! The mighty Lord Ferros, Roboticist Extraordinaire, upstaged by one of the very same people he considers so backward that he¡¯s spent two years trying to shove his idea of progress down their throat! Some superstitious, ignorant, unenlightened Otharian has solved a puzzle that¡¯s stumped him from the very day he first got here, and he can¡¯t handle it! Look at him! He¡¯s absolutely dying inside! Ahaha! Aaaahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!¡±
The dam broke.
¡°SHUT UP! SHUT UP!¡± Blake hollered, his voice hoarse and his heart beating in his ears. ¡°FUCK YOU, SOFIE! FUCK YOU!¡±
Far too late, the lift came to a stop and the doors slid open. Not wasting a moment, he stormed out into the storage chamber, his one good hand balling into a fist with such furious strength that he was warping the gauntlet that encased it.
¡°I BET THEIR FUCKING SHIT SUCKS!¡±
Unable to contain himself, he grabbed a nearby container and hurled it across the room. It crashed into the wall and its lid flew off, sending hundreds of marble-sized crystals bouncing all over.
¡°BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!¡±
Fuming, Blake stomped into the upward elevator and triggered the door behind him, leaving the others behind. Judging by the final glimpse he got before the door closed, they wouldn¡¯t be joining him anyway. Sofie had gone fully non-verbal, pounding and kicking the floor with her fists and feet, rolling and flailing about with her face so red that it could pass for a ripe strawberry. She wouldn¡¯t be going anywhere for a good while.
A thunderous shout emerged from his throat. He struck the cabin wall with his fists and feet, venting his anger upon the innocent metal, but that accomplished little. Her voice echoed in his mind, taunting him, fanning the flames of his fury. Her laughter, her taunts, the glee at his frustration¡ªit all combined to push his indignation to new heights.
But, really, all that paled in comparison to the fact that he couldn¡¯t deny anything she¡¯d said. As much as he wanted her mockery to be a heap of poor logic and faulty conclusions, she¡¯d spoken the truth. Some nobody, some Otharian rube, had solved the greatest technical issue holding him back, one that had been a persistent roadblock since the day he¡¯d first discovered how to make cantacrenyx technology.
After months and months of beating his head against that wall, he still had nothing. He¡¯d failed. He¡¯d lost. And knowing it was going to drive him up the wall.
¡°Stupid Sofie, stupid Arlette, stupid... whoever they are... Think they¡¯re all that...¡±
Grumbling endlessly to himself, Blake plopped down in a chair in his bedroom and pulled a nearby terminal in front of him. Time had taken the edge off the sting of Sofie¡¯s truth, his rage dying out fairly quickly, but he remained frustrated and exceedingly grumpy. Luckily, he could think of one thing to cheer him up¡ªone person who he hadn¡¯t spoken with in a while, and who he¡¯d be able to chat with shortly. He launched a certain program on the terminal and leaned back.
Arlette had been partially right. He could create a communication system to contact Gabriela if he wanted to¡ªwhich, again, he did not. He¡¯d maintained a form of it throughout much of the siege of Crirada, utilizing a chain of small skitters and flitters that worked as information relays between him and the other end many miles away. The problem was that deploying such a setup took time, especially without the aid of the Flying Toaster. None of the skitters involved could move anywhere close to the airship¡¯s speed, so until she settled down in Gustil after completing the initial mission, he¡¯d have a hard time getting a hold of her, anyway.
Case in point, he¡¯d been working on setting up a communication link with Bazz for several days, and even after starting with a half-completed chain left over from the Ubran invasion, he was just finally nearing completion. Well before the recent attack, he¡¯d hemmed and hawed about whether to go through with contacting his dragon friend. As he¡¯d explained to the others, given the theory that the dragons were behind their presence in this world, reaching out to his buddy was an unfortunate risk. He¡¯d always been pretty sure that Bazz had little or nothing to do with it, but if another dragon found out, things would go south fast.
Now that the dragon-shaped cat was out of the mountain-shaped bag, however, he¡¯d decided that he had to chance it. Even so, there was a large difference between taking a risk and throwing all caution to the wind. As much as he¡¯d wanted to just fly robots north, anything airborne had a good chance of being spotted by a dragon. Instead, he¡¯d stuck to ground-bound units, sending them northward along a route designed to provide as much overhead cover as possible at the cost of speed.
Finally, in just a few moments, the last link in the chain would be within broadcast range of Bazzalth¡¯s mountain. He looked forward to seeing his scaly bud again, though communication would be a bit stilted for a while. When it became clear that they¡¯d be parting ways, Blake had spent a few hours teaching the dragon some rudimentary written English and built a communication unit for him to use for text communication. Bazz knew enough for a simple conversation¡ªenough to serve as a foundation to build on, at least. All that the unit needed was a connection to the rest of the system, one that his approaching skitter would soon provide.
Soon enough, the last robot was in position. Hiding it in a small crevice, he activated its stealth mode. Two large rounded metal pieces rose up from the small skitter¡¯s sides, fitting together to form a specially built and custom-painted shell made to look like another ordinary rock. When the machine crouched down, the shell concealed the rest of it entirely. Hopefully, that would be enough to keep it from being discovered.
Blake watched with satisfaction as the test ping signal traveled through the chain, each link quickly lighting up green on his display. Just to be sure, he brought up the live log and watched all the good messages roll in. A smile graced his lips as the final node went green and a message window opened. The communicator in Bazzalth¡¯s lair was successfully receiving the signal.
Real-time communication across thousands of miles.
¡°Let¡¯s see Mister Genius Scyrian manage that,¡± he muttered bitterly.
¡°hey bazz, what¡¯s up¡± he typed, before eagerly hitting send.
After nearly fifteen minutes, he was still waiting for a response.
Well... that was to be expected, he supposed. It wasn¡¯t like Bazz was just sitting around and ceaselessly watching the communicator for days on end, hoping for one of Blake¡¯s trademark punctuation-and-capitalization-optional missives to suddenly arrive. He surely had a lot on his plate as well, with the whole invasion and whatnot. Realistically, it would probably be hours at the least before¡ª
Ding!
The sound of a new incoming message caught him off-guard. His gaze flicked back to the screen to find perhaps the shortest reply possible.
¡°No¡±
Blake read and reread the dragon¡¯s curt response, trying to parse extra meaning from the pair of letters and failing. Eventually, he gave up and decided to just ask.
¡°no? no what?¡± he typed back, but the message refused to go through. Checking the live log again, Blake found a disconcerting message: ¡°Endpoint not responding.¡±
Blake sent several more pings, all coming back with the same result: Bazzalth¡¯s communicator was out of commission.
¡°Well, shit,¡± Blake muttered.
Now what was he supposed to do?
Chapter 133
¡°We faced aggression passing through Dekari Gorge and thumper territory, as expected,¡± the Blau reported through the Many¡¯s projection. ¡°All attacks were repelled successfully with few losses.¡±
Akhustal Palebane nodded curtly.
¡°Still no signs of unusual beast activity?¡± General Fernfeather-hono checked.
¡°No sign,¡± came the response, just like yesterday, the day before, and each day since they¡¯d split from the main migration. Still, Fernfeather-hono insisted on asking each and every time.
As annoying as it was, nobody blamed him. The strange, unexpected, and incredibly disruptive movements of the ranutepos the year prior had thrown their entire society into chaos. Nobody wanted to be caught unawares again. That was why, even though nobody had spotted any significant changes in the animal movements in any of the following migrations, they made sure to keep a careful watch.
She should have felt glad that things were working out, and deep down somewhere, she did. It was just that said feeling was buried deep under layers and layers of grievance, aggravation, and frustration. She shouldn¡¯t be here beside the Great Mother, as grand and holy as this place was. She shouldn¡¯t have had to waste days and days traveling here with the other Honos. All of this was a pointless waste of her time, and each successive wasted day put her in a fouler mood than before.
This was all their fault¡ªTepin, Rudra, that woman, and Fernfeather. She blamed them all equally.
Tepin had surely been the one behind this whole stupid formality; the way she¡¯d whispered instructions into the woman¡¯s ear had not slipped Akhustal¡¯s notice. That woman was to blame for showing up and trying to steal her special resource; Fernfeather was to blame for being a nerd who read the histories and a stickler for formalities; no doubt he was enjoying every moment of this stupid crap. Rudra was to blame for... for being Rudra. She didn¡¯t know how this was his fault exactly, but she had no doubt it was. That was just the exasperating nature of that man¡¯s existence; he was as stubborn as a tree, and as thick as one too.
¡°If that is all, then you are dismissed,¡± she huffed, bringing the report to a close. The Blau saluted as the image faded into the air.
With the end-of-day check-in concluded, the daily administrative meeting¡ªthe sort that she used to just let Tepin deal with because of how much she hated them¡ªbegan to wind down. She glared Fernfeather¡¯s way as he brought up something or other, keeping the assembled Honos stuck in this accursed tent another few moments.
¡°Enough hold-ups,¡± she barked. ¡°Let¡¯s get this farce over with.¡±
¡°Not yet, Palebane-chos,¡± Fernfeather tut-tutted.
¡°Why not?!¡± she snapped. ¡°We¡¯ve been waiting all day!¡±
¡°The texts are clear: the choosing ceremony begins at First Glow and no earlier.¡±
With a frustrated growl, she stomped her way out of the tent, only to take a turn and stomp into another one beside the first. Her personal tent was not very large; they¡¯d decided to leave the usual one with the main migration. Still, it was a few paces broader than the others, as befitting her station.
She knew the source of the soft pad of footsteps behind her without having to turn around.
¡°You look like you¡¯re ready to pop,¡± Caprakan teased.
Akhustal grunted as she dropped her club beside her bedding and flopped down atop it. Rolling onto her back, she held her arms out towards her special one. He gamely slid into her offered embrace, bringing his face up over hers and covering her head and shoulders with long, soft red-orange curls.
¡°It¡¯s so good to see you finally returned, both in body and mind,¡± she said, noting the smooth and easy way he¡¯d moved. ¡°Even after I got you back, I felt like you were lost.¡±
¡°I was lost,¡± he agreed. ¡°I didn¡¯t know what to make of anything anymore. It took me a long time, but now, I see the trail winding through the trees. I only wish I was fully recovered so I could aid you in the challenge.¡±
Caprakan¡¯s recovery had been long and arduous. Serious tendon and ligament injuries always took many times longer to heal than bones and most other injuries, and that was when there was just one. Pyria had ensured that basically every single one in his legs had been torn, among other terrible things. Without the Otharian¡¯s metal braces, he would never have come this far, this fast. This fact made that woman¡¯s actions all the more infuriating. She¡¯d thought that their two nations had begun building a mutually beneficial relationship, but like always, the rest of Nocend liked to look down on her nation.
¡°It¡¯s alright. We won¡¯t be needing you, anyway. It¡¯s not like anything will even happen with how the ceremony will go.¡±
¡°You never know what the future holds, dearest. Never forget that.¡±
¡°Yes, yes,¡± she grumbled. ¡°I¡¯m just glad you¡¯re here with me again. If you weren¡¯t, I¡¯d probably have smashed somebody¡¯s skull in by now. Thanks for... being you and being here.¡±
¡°Who else would take care of you and look out for you?¡± He smirked. ¡°Ruresni knows, you won¡¯t take care of yourself.¡±
Before Akhustal could speak some sort of unconvincing denial, he leaned in and surprised her with a deep kiss. He held it for several moments before at last pulling back with a shit-eating grin on his face. ¡°Feeling less ornery yet?¡±
¡°A little,¡± she allowed, ¡°but it will take much more than that to slay so many days of pent-up aggravation.¡±
¡°Well, give me a moment and¡ª¡±
A deep, reverberating roar strong enough to cause the tent¡¯s walls to ripple cut him off before he could say something cheesy. She sat up, the fact that he was on top of her providing little challenge, and grabbed her war club off the ground.
¡°Sorry, love,¡± she said with a feral grin, ¡°but sometimes the only way to feel better is to beat the absolute crap out of something. No hard feelings.¡±
He chuckled. ¡°I feel bad for whatever¡¯s coming. Go. Do what you do best.¡±
Akhustal stepped outside and looked out over the massive roots upon which they¡¯d made camp.
As awe-inspiring as Ruresni was, there were a handful of good reasons why Stragmans generally avoided the place. The biggest reason, and the one relevant to the moment, was the local wildlife. The plants and animals here took after the great mother, perhaps nurtured by her proximity, to grow to incredible sizes that put even the denizens of Titan Grove to shame. Sensing intruders, a variety of angry beasts continued to show up throughout the day to attack any who dared trespass upon their territory. Perhaps if they all struck at once the Stragman¡¯s position here would become untenable, but instead, they generally attacked one at a time. Her suspicion, fueled by the howls and screeches they¡¯d hear emanating from deeper into the forest, was that her and the others¡¯ arrival had thrown off a fragile balance, bringing about a war for territory between the most powerful creatures in the area. The beasts couldn¡¯t assault the Stragman¡¯s camp because they were too busy assaulting each other. Only the few who managed to win enough battles to get through were able to make it here.
The latest beast to show its face definitely looked like a winner. This towering behemoth looked like a serpent that somebody had stuck six powerful legs onto. Strangely, it had a hide of fuzzy brown hair instead of the usual scales. A gash in that hide above its middle left leg oozed crimson blood down its side, but the blood and viscera dripping from between the many teeth in its long snout made clear who¡¯d come out on top.
The titan crashed out of the tree line and began ascending the massive sloped root structure atop which her people had camped, its four eyes seeming to stare right at her. She stared back and smiled. She¡¯d never seen anything like it, but that didn¡¯t matter. It had never seen anything like her.
Eager to let it all out, Akhustal rushed forward, hopping, skipping, and sliding down the roots to meet the angry beast halfway. As she approached, it greeted her with a mighty hiss and slashed at her with its left front leg. The ferocity of the swipe showed that the creature was not slowed by its injury, but Akhustal evaded its mammoth claws with ease all the same. Giant beasts might pack a punch, but their attacks were just too slow and telegraphed to worry her too much. That was why she liked fighting other people so much more than beasts. The blistering speed of a great Feeler could push her far more than something like this ever could.
Yet, perhaps things were looking up for her today, as the monstrous creature pulled a surprise on her. Winding up for a swipe with its right leg this time, it opened its mouth wide as it did. A tongue, long and thicker than she was tall, shot out of its maw with delightful speed, forcing her to dodge to the side. Sticky-looking slime covered the muscle, and she knew to avoid touching it lest she get trapped. Its presence behind her ruled out the easiest direction to avoid the swipe, just as the right leg hurtled towards her. She still had a very short moment to dodge, but the claws and foot were just too long for her to get clear in time.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
That was just fine with her. She grinned wickedly as she reared back with her war club. If she couldn¡¯t dodge, then she just had to hit it harder than it could hit her. She swung with all her might, feeling her frustrations slough off her as she did.
Yet, before her mighty branch could connect with the oncoming mass of brown-fuzzed flesh, something flashed by to her left just within her peripheral vision. The beast¡¯s leg twisted and fell, bouncing against the ground as it lost much of its momentum. Still mid-strike, Akhustal found her weapon swinging through nothing but air. Shifting its weight as low as she could manage, she was able to recover with little more than a small stumble. Quickly, she threw out a rushed backswing with only her upper body behind it as the side of the beast¡¯s foot slid into her. With its weight increased dramatically, the club was able to bring the limb to a standstill, keeping her from being squashed into the gross tongue, but that was all.
A deafening roar drowned out the sounds of her battle, and the tongue behind her retracted as the beast threw its head towards the sky and cried out in agony. It wasn¡¯t hard to spot why. Its right leg had been nearly severed, a great cut slicing through about three-quarters of its diameter, including the bone. No longer a source of support, it hung from the remaining muscle and skin.
Before Akhustal could make another move, a figure landed atop its head and buried a giant blade into the top of its skull. The beast¡¯s roar cut out, replaced by a weak, pained, rattling screech. The monster shook its head, but it lacked the means to remove its assailant from the top of its noggin. The blade descended once more, then twice, and the behemoth fell limp.
Akhustal ground her teeth, the day¡¯s frustration returning to roost upon her. That woman had ruined her fight again! Practically every time a creature had attacked on the way here and since their arrival, she¡¯d gotten in the way of Akhustal¡¯s fun. She had to be doing it on purpose, the Chos knew. There could be no other explanation.
¡°Done with your little games for now?¡± the Chos called out.
The woman peered down from her perch atop the slain beast¡¯s skull and returned her glare with nervous confusion. ¡°The one general, Leaffeather or something, says it¡¯s time to start the challenge.¡±
Akhustal¡¯s mouth drew out into a tight-lipped grin as she glanced upward and spotted the beginnings of Ruresni¡¯s brilliant glow emanating from its grand canopy. Finally! She turned her back on the woman and began her hike back up the root to the camp. The woman did the same, quickly shooting past her with a series of long forward leaps. As aggravating as Akhustal found her, she couldn¡¯t deny that the woman was perhaps the greatest Feeler she¡¯d ever seen or fought. Still, she could see the tension in the woman¡¯s movements and the way she held herself.
The challenger was nervous, the Chos had no doubt. She had surely come to realize what Akhustal had known from the start: that her challenge would crumble here at the ceremony. They both knew this was all a big joke, but only one of them was looking forward to the punchline.
¡°As the highest of all uninvolved with the Challenge, I shall speak for the Mother,¡± Fernfeather-hono announced to the assembled crowd. He stood atop a long and thin raised platform that looked more grown than built¡ªsurely Caprakan¡¯s work, at least in part. He stood alone, but as far as she understood, that would be changing soon. ¡°Gabriela Carreno, step forward!¡±
Bidden by his call and gesticulations, that woman, Gabriela, walked up a ramp set into the far end of the platform.
¡°Under the glow of my great canopy, do you challenge Akhustal Palebane for the title of Supreme Chos, Who Reigns Over Stragma?¡±
The woman glanced out at the crowd of Honos and went nearly rigid. After a few halting breaths, she replied with an ¡°I do¡± so soft that Akhustal could barely hear it.
¡°Akhustal Palebane-chos, step forward!¡±
Unable to hide her smirk, Palebane strode up another, closer ramp and presented herself for all to see.
¡°On this momentous night beneath my bows, do you accept this challenge?¡±
¡°I accept!¡± she declared, her voice loud and strong for all to hear.
¡°The challenge is accepted!¡± Fernfeather-hono proclaimed, and the assembled crowd let out an uproarious cheer. ¡°Both the challenger and the challenged will demonstrate their strength at first light! They will ascend my mighty trunk, do battle with my guardians, and acquire my divine acunai petals at my peak! The first to return will prove they are the strongest, for they will have displayed speed, endurance, power, and skill greater than the other!
¡°However, strength exists in forms beyond the personal, and a Chos must do more than fight¡ªthey must lead! Those who desire to reign supreme must command with wisdom and have the support of the people! And so, the Selection will now begin!¡±
Another large cheer from the crowd. Akhustal rolled her eyes. Fernfeather-hono was having far too much fun doing this.
¡°The challenged by right shall begin the Selection! You, who stands with Palebane-chos, speak now!¡±
¡°I will!¡± a voice called out from the front of the crowd¡ªGeneral Cloudburner-hono.
¡°The first of three declares herself!¡± Fernfeather-hono proclaimed as Cloudburner-hono ran up the ramp to join Palebane.
¡°I will!¡± a second voice called out, also from the front of the pack. This was no coincidence; her party had been determined well beforehand.
¡°I will!¡±
In just a moment, three accomplished and powerful Honos stood behind her.
¡°Challenger Carreno, it is time to demonstrate your support! You, who stands with Carreno, speak now!¡±
The crowd fell nearly silent, of course. Nobody wanted to be on Akhustal¡¯s bad side when this waste of time was over. The quiet revealed that this would end just how she¡¯d foreseen. Without a party, Carreno¡¯s challenge would fizzle and she would lose by default. Of course, Palebane and her associates had not simply sat on their hands this whole time. Knowing that Fernfeather¡¯s faction might consider throwing support behind the newcomer, they¡¯d spent the journey making sure that none of them would dare.
¡°I will!¡± A deep voice cut through the quiet. Akhustal turned her gaze to the far side edge of the assembled Stragmans, where that woman¡¯s little posse could be found. As expected, barring any other options, Rudra had stepped forward to fill a spot¡ªmetaphorically, of course; he was still stuck in his cage, though now, as a potential party member, she had to let him out for the first time in seasons.
The door was eventually unlocked and opened, and the large man joined that woman on the opposite side of the stage.
¡°The first of three declares herself!¡± Fernfeather-hono proclaimed again. ¡°Will any other step forward?¡±
Akhustal¡¯s grin grew into a wicked smile as relative silence returned. Carreno had already played all her cards just to get one. Now, nobody was left. Who else could she take on, Tepin? There was no world where that would happen. Not even Fernfeather-hono, who Akhustal knew questioned her leadership, could volunteer, as he¡¯d taken himself out of the picture by assuming the role of the speaker.
She closed her eyes and reveled in the quiet. Not a single Hono dared even murmur; the only sound other than that of the forest was a slightly muffled voice from somewhere by Rudra¡¯s cell, but she could not make out its source.
¡°Oh! Oh! Me! Me, me, me!¡± the child-like voice shouted. Several people moved aside to reveal that woman¡¯s little beastkin child bouncing up and down like a hungry refferk, her hand eagerly waving back and forth above her tiny head.
Palebane didn¡¯t know what to think. She had known of the possibility but had dismissed it out of hand. This girl was so important to Carreno and her cohort that they¡¯d traded great value for her revival. She was clearly special to them, and now they were going to let her enter the most dangerous place in all of Stragma? It wasn¡¯t just crazy, it was negligent! Not even Akhustal had dared to climb Ruresni until she was twelve!
Akhustal had not ignored the child during their many-day trek; it had been damn near impossible for anybody to miss her antics as she ran this way and that, looking at and grabbing bits and pieces of most everything she found. Still, she¡¯d seen little to indicate that the child was anything more than a child, strange alchemical creations aside. She wasn¡¯t strong like Akhustal had been even when young. She¡¯d be a liability.
¡°Pari, no!¡± that woman immediately called out, putting a stop to that line of thought.
The child¡¯s ears drooped and she stopped hopping around and began to pout. ¡°But, I wanna¡ª¡±
¡°It¡¯s far too dangerous! I promised to keep you safe. There¡¯s no way I¡¯m letting you climb this thing!¡±
Putting aside her referring to the Mother Tree as merely a ¡°thing¡±, Akhustal couldn¡¯t help but approve¡ªnot only because it was the right choice, but because it meant Carreno was still left with only a single party member.
¡°Will any others step forward?¡± Fernfeather-hono asked.
Once again, nobody did.
¡°Challenger Carreno, should you be unable to field a full party, your challenge will fail here and now,¡± he said to her loud enough that all could hear.
Carreno stared out at the assembled crowd, looking, hoping for somebody to volunteer. Moment after moment piled on, but nobody responded to her silent plea. Nobody, except one beastkin child who apparently didn¡¯t understand the meaning of the word ¡®no¡¯.
¡°Oh! Me, me! I will! Me!¡± she started chirping again, sensing weakness in that way that only children could.
The woman deflated like a waterskin that just had a hole punched in it. Her emotions were writ plain upon her face as she struggled with her decision in front of everybody. ¡°Okay, Pari, you can come,¡± she relented at last, defeated.
¡°Yaaayyy!¡±
The child scampered up through the crowd and up behind Rudra. She clapped her hands together and giggled.
Akhustal, however, felt none of that joy. She disapproved of including a child in the Challenge, and she didn¡¯t like that Carreno¡¯s party only needed one more member. Still, she knew without a doubt that there would not be a third volunteer. Even after sacrificing her morals, that woman still could not produce a full party, and her Challenge was as dead as the beast she¡¯d slain. Akhustal¡¯s mocking smile did not fade.
Until a third voice spoke, and it suddenly did.
¡°I will.¡±
Everybody gasped at the sound of the voice, and Akhustal froze. Her world seemed to turn upside down as she struggled and failed to understand what she¡¯d just heard. No, her ears had surely lied to her, for what she¡¯d just heard was impossible, as the voice was not just a voice that she knew, but the voice that she knew better than anyone else.
There was just no way. There was just no way that he would do such a thing¡ªand yet, it was happening.
¡°Caprakan, what¡ª Why are¡ª¡±
The words wouldn¡¯t come out, the questions stuck in her throat. Her husband, the love of her life, the man she¡¯d sacrificed so much for to bring back in more than one meaning of the term, stalked up the far ramp and took position behind the others. He met her disbelieving gaze with an emotionless, unblinking stare of his own but said nothing to explain himself, steadfastly refusing to make any of this heart-stabbing betrayal make sense.
They must have gotten to him, somehow. It was the only way this made any sense.
Akhustal vowed to make this right. There were all manner of dangerous things that could happen up in the Mother Tree, especially when you were dealing with a Shell and a child. That woman would regret daring to touch Caprakan. She¡¯d make sure of that.
Chapter 134
Arlette sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes, momentarily taking her gaze off of the array of screens set out on her desk and hanging from the wall behind it. She felt like she could see their light even through her eyelids, and the headache brought on by hours of staring at their glow was not helping either.
Arlette still wasn¡¯t quite sure that she believed Sofie¡¯s claim that many people from her world spent their entire days doing this. She could not imagine any but the most broken of people ever willingly subjecting themselves to such a life. So, what did it say about her? That she was also broken?
No, she insisted to herself, she was not broken; she was just... getting somewhat desperate¡ªdesperate enough to pull another all-nighter, at least. So much had occurred recently, throwing everybody¡¯s lives into chaos, but that didn¡¯t mean her normal responsibilities went away. No, if anything, all that chaos just increased the importance of her role, and she had little to show for herself.
That wasn¡¯t to say that she or the rest of the Ministry of Security never accomplished anything¡ªfar from it. They¡¯d been highly successful in a variety of ways, from unmasking and destroying two separate black markets that dealt in all manner of unsavory and illicit goods and services, to discovering multiple embezzlers infesting the administrative ranks of several of the major cities, to locating a series of kidnapping victims and identifying a serial murderer. The problem was that none of these things was her department¡¯s mission. As if to prove the point, the Ministry of Justice had done most of the work on all of the aforementioned accomplishments once Arlette and her team had identified the relevant details. These were all just things they¡¯d stumbled upon while trying to tackle their true task: dealing with the sinister cabal of insurrectionists hiding amongst the public. When it came to that mission, she could only report continued failure.
There wasn¡¯t much she could blame but her own incompetence, either. They had all the newest and best tools with which to work, including an army of death machines that would do her bidding even from a distance and a surveillance network of flying drones that covered all of the inhabited parts of the country and most of the uninhabited parts for good measure. With just a few button presses, she could get a somewhat-real-time overhead view of a village of garoph herders east of Eflok or the recording of a busy street in Nont from two days prior. Such an unparalleled ability to watch over such a wide area would cause spymasters of other nations to froth at the mouth with jealousy, and yet her Ministry seemed incapable of performing its most pressing duty.
She could offer no excuses for her failure. Well, that wasn¡¯t entirely true; there was one area where, at least in her mind, the ministry was quite deficient: manpower. Arlette had always been a believer in people over machines, a view not held by her employer. However, staffing a high-security organization like this had proven to be a nigh impossible task. Most Otharians who could be trusted with such power did not want it, and most who wanted it could not be trusted. And so, she was left relying on the machines. Still, it made a rather paltry excuse.
Feeling the need to stretch her legs, Arlette pushed herself out of her padded chair and strode out of her office. That undercurrent of desperation drove her down, down, down, until she could go no lower.
¡°My, my... Keep visiting like this and a girl might start getting the wrong idea.¡±
¡°Shut it,¡± Arlette growled.
Chitra chuckled from her spot against the back wall, showing Arlette a glimpse of pearly whites. ¡°I thought the whole point of your visits was to get me to talk.¡±
Arlette frowned. Against expectations, while she had been able to pry many words from the captured Ubran over the last several visits, she still found herself without the information she needed to make progress in her campaign against the elusive resistance movement. That alone was bad enough, but Chitra¡¯s smug countenance made it so much worse.
The Ubran couldn¡¯t lie, tell half-truths, or intentionally leave out information, and yet somehow Arlette couldn¡¯t get much of anything useful from her even after several visits, and Chitra knew it. The woman delighted in her frustration, and it took serious willpower to not slug her in her perfect nose.
¡°Let¡¯s try this again¡ª¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know why you bother again and again. If I can¡¯t lie, you¡¯re just going to get the same response.¡±
¡°Let¡¯s. Try this. Again. How many times did you meet with a member of Othar¡¯s Chosen?¡±
¡°Five times.¡±
¡°How did you first come into contact with them?¡±
¡°They left a note in my chambers while I was out.¡±
¡°Did you contact them?¡±
¡°No.¡±
¡°They contacted you?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Every time?¡±
¡°Correct.¡±
¡°What did they want from you?¡±
¡°The first few times, they bought information. The fourth time, they hired me to kill somebody. The fifth time, well...¡± She chuckled again, as if her situation was just an amusement for her. ¡°You know the rest, but thanks to Sofie¡¯s delightful commands, I have to say them anyway. They wanted some of your employer¡¯s vaunted technology. I could have taken anything, but I wanted something good because they would pay me more. That¡¯s why I tried to enter the workshop.¡± She let out an overly melodramatic sigh. ¡°Mother always said money would be my downfall...¡±
¡°Why did they have you murder somebody?¡±
¡°It was a test, more than anything; it showed not only my competence and ability but also my trustworthiness.¡±
¡°How did you go about it?¡±
¡°I monitored the man¡¯s home for several nights until I found a window of time where he would be alone and his wife and children would be out. Sneaking in wasn¡¯t difficult for somebody with my ability. I located the target and introduced myself.¡±
¡°You revealed yourself to the man you were sent to kill? What if he alerted somebody?¡±
¡°Others, sure, but me? What can I say?¡± Chitra chuckled once more, her luscious lips curling into a seductive grin. ¡°I seem to render most men speechless without even trying. He was no different, like clay in my hands. Introducing the incapacitating agent in a way that wouldn¡¯t leave a mark was almost boringly easy, and the poison would be nigh undetectable for anybody in this backward continent. Nobody knows more about poison in this world than an experienced Batranala, after all. Those that enter the palace and fail to learn don¡¯t live long.
¡°Once he couldn¡¯t resist, I made it look like a suicide as stipulated. Rudimentary, but then again, the task was never meant to be a challenge. All in all, barely worth even mentioning.¡±
Arlette¡¯s frown grew into a scowl. Chitra¡¯s actions had created quite an inconvenience for Arlette and many others in the administration, and nobody had even realized the man¡¯s death hadn¡¯t been a suicide until she¡¯d heard it from the killer¡¯s mouth the day before.
¡°You killed the head of one of the largest merchant clans in Otharia, who just so happened to also be one of our regime¡¯s most reliable supporters. Yet you talk about it like you were killing a bug on the floor.¡±
¡°Yes, I found the whole endeavor quite tiresome, truly.¡± The Batranala yawned. ¡°Not entertaining in the slightest.¡±
Arlette¡¯s scowl deepened. ¡°I can never tell if you value the lives of others so little or if you¡¯re just talking that way to piss me off.¡±
¡°Can it not be both?¡±
¡°Do you really think so little of others?¡±
¡°Do you not? You¡¯ve traveled the world more than most. You¡¯ve seen much the same that I have. Humanity, elvenkind, beastkin... They¡¯re all so terribly... well, I would say ¡®mediocre¡¯, but that would be far too complimentary. Let¡¯s go with ¡®lackluster¡¯. It doesn¡¯t matter where you are, society is a muck-filled swamp¡ªsmelly, ugly, and wholly unpleasant to be anywhere near.¡±
¡°That¡¯s all we are to you? Muck? Even the one you claim to love?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong. Hidden in that muck are the jewels that make wading through the swamp worthwhile. They are the few worth treasuring, Gabriela most of all. She is the most brilliant jewel I¡¯ve ever known, shimmering in ways that you could never comprehend.
¡°That man, on the other hand, was nothing¡ªjust some puffed up merchant in a pissant city of a backwater country who had the poor luck of becoming a means to an end.¡± She scoffed. ¡°I¡¯ve killed far greater than him for far less.¡±
Arlette decided she¡¯d wasted enough time on a meaningless tangent and moved on.
¡°What did they look like? The people of Othar¡¯s Chosen who met with you.¡±
¡°Full-face covering masks, concealing robes...¡± Somehow, even while chained up, Chitra managed to shrug nonchalantly. ¡°You know, the classics. Couldn¡¯t get much from them other than voice, body size, and body shape¡ªnot that I wanted to.¡±
¡°They were always the same people?¡±
¡°The first four times, yes. A man and a woman, average heights and builds. Utterly unremarkable. The last time, however, a third man joined them. He was large, with broad shoulders. The cloak blocked my view of his body, but there was something subtly off about his gait on the right side, and the sound of his steps didn¡¯t match. His right footsteps sounded much harsher and more metallic.¡±
¡°Where did you meet?¡±
¡°In the basement of a tavern in the tradesmen¡¯s district. I assume you¡¯ve had the place practically torn to pieces by now. Find anything?¡±
¡°Don¡¯t act like you don¡¯t know full well that there wasn¡¯t a single clue left behind,¡± Arlette snarled.
That smug, knowing grin returned. ¡°Of course you didn¡¯t. That¡¯s why you came crawling back to me.¡±
Stars above, Arlette wanted so badly to beat the Ubran¡¯s face in with a hammer and let her discover what life was like when you couldn¡¯t just rely on beauty to get what you wanted. It wasn¡¯t like Arlette had never hurt a prisoner during an interrogation before. However, Sofie had forbidden it¡ªas she¡¯d expected¡ªand Blake had also forbidden it¡ªwhich Arlette had not seen coming. He¡¯d claimed that violence and torture didn¡¯t get reliable results¡ªan assertion that might be true but she couldn¡¯t say for sure¡ªbut Arlette thought that deep down the real reason was he was afraid of what The Monster would do to him if her lover ended up seriously harmed while in his custody.
Chitra was pushing her buttons, as her employer liked to say, and it was working as her frustration mounted with each successive visit. One of the fundamental techniques of interrogation was repeated questioning. The idea was that you asked the detainee the same questions over and over again in a way that wore them down mentally. Eventually, they would mess up and phrase something differently or let something slip that they hadn¡¯t meant to, which would become the crack in the wall at which you could then start chipping away.
Sofie¡¯s restrictions interfered in some ways with this technique, as Chitra was bound to provide significantly more information than Arlette thought she would otherwise. But even then, Arlette doubted that the geasa were completely airtight, ¡®don¡¯t hold back information¡¯ most of all. What qualified as ¡®information¡¯? What counted as ¡®holding back¡¯? Every detail was, by the general definition, information. Yet, clearly there was a line where it no longer became relevant enough that Chitra had to say it, or she would never be able to stop talking.
Doubtless, the Batranala was also using every mental technique in the book to narrow down the information she provided as much as she could. That gray area was what primarily interested Arlette. She was determined to sift through that remaining gray area and pull out whatever details that the Ubran didn¡¯t want to give.
Unfortunately, Chitra¡¯s training and experience in the Ubran imperial palace was too good for that. The woman didn¡¯t just keep all her statements consistent between interrogations, she used the exact same words and turns of phrase each time as if to rub it in. The only times she gave new information was when Arlette asked new questions.
What¡¯s more, she had gaps in her knowledge that could only be intentional. Only an expert in the clandestine world knew how important it was to sometimes avoid learning something.
It all added up to a prisoner who seemed almost to have been created in a workshop to waste her time while providing as little actionable intelligence as possible¡ªjust enough information to string her along and keep her coming back.
Arlette gritted her teeth and looked away. That damned smirk was driving her crazy. She thought she was soooo smart¡ª
Wait...
A new idea crossed Arlette¡¯s mind, one that appealed to both her desires for information and for putting this woman in her place. If Chitra was so smart, then why not put that smartness to work for her?
After taking a moment to formulate the question in her mind, she turned her gaze back onto her prisoner¡¯s face, a wicked grin of her own growing to match her counterpart¡¯s.
¡°I have nine subordinates available to head out for investigations at the moment. If you were in charge of my department instead of me, using everything you know about the Othar¡¯s Chosen organization, where and how would you send these subordinates to give us the best chance at finding useful information or evidence on that organization?¡±
Arlette took a perverse amount of pleasure as she watched Chitra¡¯s smirk falter and fall away. The Ubran¡¯s body trembled for a short span before she spat out glob of thick red blood that splattered on the floor and just missed Arlette¡¯s shoes.
¡°I guess there¡¯s a brain in there after all,¡± the Batranala grumbled. She let out a weary sigh.
¡°There are five places I would send them. The money lenders in Eflok are up to something. They¡¯re faking most of their competition and colluding while obscuring their true inflows and outflows. I would send the two people I had with the best understanding of financial trickery there¡ªmaybe call in a favor and grab a ¡®consultant¡¯ from the Ministry of the Treasury while I was at it.
¡°The Chosen are getting their cantacrenyx crystals from somewhere. While I suppose it¡¯s possible they built their own hidden mine somewhere, it¡¯s far more likely that they¡¯re skimming from of one or several of your mines. I would send a pair to Nont and a pair to Keqont to do an inventory and track just how much is being dug up versus how much actually makes it to Wroetin.
¡°The farming village of Reshim north of Nont has too many people living there for their level of production, but everybody there is supposed to be involved in the farming. If they¡¯re hiding something, it¡¯s likely out in the woods beyond the town, so I would send my best woodsman along with somebody fairly local if you have one.
¡°Lastly, I hear something strange is going on in Breah. Nothing with any real details, just little whispers here and there. Might be nothing¡ªthe cultural differences between the southern coast and the rest of Otharia means most of my contacts always view that area with suspicion¡ªbut worth sending the last person down there to see what they can find.¡±
Chitra took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. ¡°Happy?¡±
¡°Very,¡± Arlette replied. ¡°Even more than you think.¡±
Arlette stuck around for a little while longer to get more specifics before heading out in a better mood than she¡¯d been in in a good while. Whether she had what she needed would only become clear in the coming hours and days, but in some respects, just the sight of Chitra¡¯s white teeth stained red with blood had made it all worth it.
She had some orders to give out, and then... then it was time for a nap.
Unlike most of the ministries, with their many smaller rooms, the Ministry of Security was almost entirely one large chamber with only a few offices and meeting rooms attached. Within the main chamber stood rows of desks, most of them covered with screens much like her own. Bits of writing-covered parchment covered various sections of the walls, with thin strings connecting many of them to form chaotic webs of suspicions, inferences, and hunches.
The room was nearly empty, with her subordinates already out or having left the previous morning on their new assignments. Putting her trust in Chitra might prove unwise, Arlette knew, but she preferred to think of it as putting her trust in Sofie¡¯s domination of Chitra¡¯s free will. That way, her decision didn¡¯t feel like such a gamble. Still, she didn¡¯t know what other options she had anymore.
Not too long ago, she¡¯d had no doubts that ink was the lead she needed, the one that would finally blow this case wide open. It had made sense at the time¡ªink was not common in Otharia; there were few sources of it and getting a large amount of it would require actions that should have been traceable. Now, after well more than a season spent working that angle with nothing to show for it, she couldn¡¯t help but think that her lead had dried up.
Maybe it had never been real in the first place. Maybe it had all been in her head, the faulty creation of a mind blindly grasping for anything that might work. But then, her subordinates would have told her so, right? It wasn¡¯t like¡ª
No, she could not allow herself to spiral right now. She had to trust herself and her people, especially after everything she¡¯d said just a few days ago with Blake after the Cabinet meeting. The sting of Basilli¡¯s betrayal would never fully go away, but she¡¯d put a lot of time and effort into vetting the members of this organization.
Only one of her trusted subordinates was present at the moment: Fidsel Aigars, the department¡¯s bookish aide. Though he didn¡¯t perform inspections or investigate things on his own¡ªthat last raid in Cellvas notwithstanding¡ªhe filled the much-needed roles of administrative assistant, secretary, and communications coordinator. Arlette was about to ask him where Gvido¡ªthe stone Observer she¡¯d decided to keep here for deployment to whoever ended up needing his abilities¡ªmight be, but Fidsel was too busy feverishly scribbling away on parchment to even notice her approach. She realized quickly that he was deciphering a message.
Knowing the importance of speedy communication when it came to matters of security, Arlette had convinced Blake to create a way for her agents to send and receive messages from around the country. Given that he already had a whole system of flying machines that communicated across the nation, it had been a simple request for him to fulfill.
For such an easy task, however, convincing him had been harder than expected. He hadn¡¯t liked the idea of giving people who he didn¡¯t know direct access to his technology, which was why the machines were very limited. They only could transmit text, and only to a central receiving machine in the department. To add to the security, Arlette had insisted that all messages be sent in code; this had been after she¡¯d realized that the enemy had their own crystal technology but well before the recent acquisition of hard evidence.
Arlette¡¯s heart beat with a mix of anticipation, curiosity, and dread. Given the effort needed to encode a message, agents did not usually resort to using the machines unless they had something important to send, something that couldn¡¯t wait.
¡°What do we have, Fidsel?¡±
The man looked up with a start. ¡°Oh, Minister! I did not hear you approach. Yes, this just came in from Agent Berzina. One moment, I¡¯m nearly done.¡±
¡°A message? Somebody need me?¡± a mushy voice inquired from off to the side. Gvido Gailis, the brusque stone Observer who¡¯d accompanied her on her last failed raid, strode across the room, a bowl and spoon in his hands.
¡°It¡¯s Ramune,¡± Arlette told him.
¡°Where did you send her, again?¡±
¡°Breah.¡± The agent had drawn the short straw and gone alone to the southern town with the highly instructive directive to ¡®look for anything fishy¡¯.
¡°Already? She hasn¡¯t even been there a day.¡±
¡°I know.¡± It didn¡¯t bode well. ¡°We¡¯ll find out why in a moment, I suppose.¡±
Breah... a rather unique town, and one she had never visited. She glanced over at the large map of Otharia they had hanging on a wall nearby. Down at the bottom, along the southern shore, was a bit of land that could almost be called an island, if not for the thin isthmus that connected it to the mainland. The isthmus was low enough that it thinned even more during most high tides, and even became submerged completely for a short while when the three moons aligned in just the right way. Breah stood on the southern half of that sometimes-island, nestled into the hillside. The seaside town was not too large, by her understanding, but had been a favorite vacation destination for the most wealthy and powerful of Otharia¡¯s old guard. She wondered how it had fared since the takeover.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Fidsel cleared his throat. ¡°It¡¯s done. Let¡¯s see here... ¡®Requesting immediate assistance. Likely source of ink found.¡¯ Oh my...¡±
Arlette¡¯s heart skipped a beat at the words. Was this it? Was she finally getting her break?
¡°¡®Received tip from local, investigated location discretely but did not enter. Signs of very recent activity outside, possible enemy forces still inside. Require backup as soon as possible.¡¯ End of message.¡±
Arlette was heading for the door before Fidsel had even finished reading out the missive. ¡°Gvido, meet me at the transportation bay in a quarter-hour. Bring everything you¡¯ll need for a fight.¡±
¡°Understood,¡± he responded, his voice tight. He wasn¡¯t a terrible combatant¡ªshe made sure to test them all every so often¡ªbut he didn¡¯t enjoy fighting as much as some others in the department. That was fine; he wasn¡¯t in the department for that, anyway... but when the time comes, you have to use what you have on hand. ¡°Just us?¡±
¡°I¡¯m going to call in a big gun for this one,¡± she told him. ¡°Fidsel, you¡¯re on your own until somebody returns.¡±
Quick, long strides carried her through the halls. Arlette didn¡¯t quite know where to find her quarry. Usually, her first inclination would be to follow the sounds of mischief and destruction, but the source of said racket was currently floating somewhere above Stragma or thereabouts. Lacking any better options, she simply headed for her target¡¯s rooms and hoped she got lucky.
For once, fate was on her side.
¡°Hey Sofie, I need your help.¡± Sometimes it was better to just get right out with it.
¡°Huh?¡±
Sofie looked up from the mess of documents strewn across her bed, eyes bleary and unfocused. The bags beneath her eyes and her sallow complexion told Arlette that her friend, like her, hadn¡¯t gotten much sleep recently.
"Shouldn¡¯t you be, like, working or something?¡± Sofie grumbled, rubbing her eyes.
¡°I am. I was hoping to ask you to help me, but I¡¯m getting second thoughts. Are you alright?¡±
¡°I¡¯m fine, I¡¯m fine,¡± the Earthling repeated, perhaps to convince herself more than Arlette. ¡°I was just working on lesson plans for tomorrow. The teaching broadcasts are ramping up again now that I¡¯m back and no longer... distracted.¡±
¡°You don¡¯t look fine.¡±
¡°I¡¯m just...¡±
¡°You¡¯re worried about Pari, aren¡¯t you?¡±
The way she glanced away was all the confirmation Arlette needed.
¡°Why are you still so worked up about this? We already talked about it two days ago. Gabriela will keep her safe. She won¡¯t even let her off the airship, I¡¯m quite sure.¡±
¡°But what if she gets out somehow? You know how she can be when she gets bored. What if she¡¯s raiding a giant bee¡¯s nest for its super-honey, or fighting a pack of raving dire muskrats, or¡ª¡±
Arlette cut her off before she got caught in a spiral of worry. ¡°You know as well as I do that Gabriela won¡¯t allow any of that. There¡¯s no way that she would ever allow a child like Pari to do anything dangerous. Not a chance. Now, I need you for something. Would you be willing to do me a big favor?¡±
Sofie leaned back and raised her arms high in a full body stretch, letting out a tired grunt. ¡°What is it?¡±
¡°I need to take you to Breah, down south. There¡¯s somebody down there I want to question, and I need to know they¡¯re telling the truth.¡±
Sofie frowned. ¡°Arlette, I¡¯m going to say this now to make sure we understand each other. I do not want to turn into some magical truth-detector, running around wherever people need me to mess with somebody¡¯s head. I did it for Chitra for obvious reasons, but even that I still have regrets over. This can¡¯t become a trend.¡±
¡°But I¡ª¡±
¡°I¡¯m serious. A temporary restriction on somebody¡¯s behavior, one that is removed right after... that I can talk myself into. Stuff beyond that, it¡¯s just... too much. Not unless you¡¯ve exhausted every other option.¡±
Sofie slid off the bed and crossed the room to a dresser, whereupon she started pulling out an assortment of clothing. ¡°Give me a few minutes to get properly dressed. It¡¯s windy down south, right?¡±
Arlette paused for a moment, thrown off-balance by the seeming about-face. ¡°I thought you didn¡¯t want to come.¡±
¡°I¡¯m just trying to lay out the general ground rules now before expectations get set, you know? That doesn¡¯t mean I won¡¯t do it this once. This is related to those bastards, right? And it¡¯s important?¡±
¡°Right.¡±
¡°That¡¯s enough for me this one time. I need something to get my mind off of other things for a bit, anyway.¡± She paused for a moment, considering two different shirts. ¡°Oh, one more thing. I¡¯m not wearing that damned collar.¡±
¡°Sofie, Blake instructed¡ª¡±
¡°I know what he told you, and I could not care less. I¡¯m not dealing with that thing anymore. You all tell me I¡¯m soft and wimpy¡ªyou, Tehlmar, Blake, all of you. Well, that means more than just being willing to be violent. It means I need to stand up for myself, and so I will. Starting with this. It¡¯s demeaning and insulting, and I hate it. I¡¯m done with it. So, make your choice. I join you, sans-collar, or I get back to work on my lesson plan. What¡¯s it going to be?¡±
Arlette had always found her employer¡¯s long-legged transport machines to be fairly unsettling, but she understood why they were as they were. Being so high up allowed them to traverse through the many still overgrown areas of Otharia in ways that a more conventional low-to-the-ground method of transport, like a wagon, could not. That came in handy here in the south, an area that, from what she could tell, had not been considered important even back in the pre-Ferros era. There were no cities of note down here, nor even very large towns. The roads were fewer, thinner, and less maintained, and it barely needed saying that Blake hadn¡¯t bothered to build a railroad line in this direction. Needless to say, they had been traversing a good number of overgrown areas on their journey, the transports showing their utility once again. Arlette just wished they didn¡¯t sway so much.
¡°It¡¯s so empty,¡± Sofie remarked to the wind as she looked around at the passing scenery, her neck notably missing any thick grey circle.
Arlette had been somewhat worried that Lord Ferros would take issue with her decision to leave the collar back at base, given how very definitive he¡¯d been on this particular subject, but he¡¯d just waved her off and given her permission to ¡®do whatever has to be done¡¯. He¡¯d also been rather focused on some machine at the time, so Arlette gave it fifty-fifty odds he¡¯d even listened to a word she¡¯d said. Whatever worked, she supposed.
¡°You thought, what, there¡¯d be more people around here?¡± Gvido Gailis inquired.
¡°Well, yeah,¡± she admitted.
¡°Look around you. See any decent farmland?¡±
¡°I guess not.¡±
¡°And there you have it. Can¡¯t have more people than you can feed.¡±
¡°But what about fishing?¡±
¡°Fishing?! How could you feed a whole population with just fishing?!¡±
¡°You can¡¯t here? It is quite common where I¡¯m from.¡±
¡°There¡¯s no leviathans where you¡¯re from?!¡±
The man looked at her as if he couldn¡¯t tell if she was joking or just stupid. His expression reminded Arlette that Sofie was still largely a mystery to those outside the tiny circle of her friends and others from Earth. Everybody knew of her thanks to her efforts to teach the nation¡¯s children, but nobody knew where she had come from or just what she was capable of.
¡°She grew up by an inland sea well up north,¡± Arlette cut in. ¡°No leviathans.¡±
¡°Ah,¡± he simply said, accepting her word. For once, the Otharians¡¯ lack of interest in the outside world came in handy. There was a good chance he¡¯d never once seen a map of any land beyond Otharia¡¯s borders.
¡°Leviathans make it impossible to fish?¡± Sofie asked, slightly subdued.
¡°Not impossible, no, but they limit what you can get. The way it works is pretty simple. There¡¯s a line off the shore, an invisible line that you have to know by heart. If you cross that line and venture out of the shallows, you die. If you don¡¯t, you¡¯ll be fine... usually. The problem is that most fish live out past the shallows. There¡¯s not enough of what can be caught in the shallows to feed a town on its own.
¡°Sometimes, in times of hardship, somebody would get really desperate and row out past that line and cast their nets. Sometimes, they¡¯d even make it back, nets teeming with thousands of wriggling fish. In those times, they¡¯d be hailed as heroes. But those people would be the lucky ones, and they¡¯d only managed to come back once. A rare handful were able to do it twice in the last few generations. Nobody has ever survived going out there three times.¡±
¡°You seem quite familiar with all of this,¡± Sofie noted.
¡°Grew up in a place like this, just much further out west. Different area, same problems. Once I became a stone Observer, I got out of there as fast as I could.¡±
¡°I see,¡± she stated with a sage nod. ¡°And that¡¯s why you were willing to join Arlette¡¯s group, isn¡¯t it?¡±
¡°Huh?¡± He eyed her warily. ¡°What nonsense are you spewing?¡±
¡°You feel like you and your home were ignored and neglected by the old regime, don¡¯t you? That¡¯s why you¡¯re able to take this side instead of working to put things back as they were before or just staying out of it.¡±
He smirked Arlette¡¯s way and gestured with his head in Sofie¡¯s direction. ¡°Where¡¯d you find this one?¡±
Arlette rolled her eyes. ¡°In a city burning to ashes. It¡¯s a long story and not one I feel like telling any time soon.¡±
¡°Well, I guess you¡¯re right, at least in part,¡± he admitted, returning his attention to Sofie. ¡°We weren¡¯t exactly welcomed and respected by the Church, I¡¯d say¡ªmore like tolerated at best, abandoned at worst. It always felt like they would rather we just not exist in the first place¡ªlike we were a problem or a mess that they didn¡¯t want to bother with... other than Breah, I guess. I¡¯ve never had the love for them a lot of people still hold. You¡¯re pretty perceptive.¡±
¡°I just find it interesting what brings the people in your department to do what they do, is all. You¡¯re really putting yourself out on a limb in a lot of ways. I doubt that I would have the courage to do the same.¡±
¡°Yeah, well, we all have our reasons,¡± Gvido said, preening under the praise.
¡°Alright, look sharp,¡± Arlette cut in. ¡°I can see the land bridge. We¡¯re close.¡±
Indeed, they were close. The land bridge twisted its way out into the ocean, all the way to a small ¡®island¡¯ about two leagues out. For some odd reason, her mind likened it to a pimple protruding from a stretch of smooth skin, as unflattering as that comparison might be. Maybe it was just due to how tired she felt. They¡¯d been traveling for just about six hours now, and the trip had worn on her.
As they traversed the long isthmus and approached the quasi-island, Arlette slowed the transport and navigated it carefully along the thin, winding stone road. She couldn¡¯t help but peek at the ocean lapping at the land less than one hundred paces away on each side. She could spot several small boats out on the water; apparently, this area was shallow enough to be safe¡ªat least, at this tide. The sea touched the land a good thirty paces below them. If this thin strip of rock truly became submersed when the moons were positioned just right, then perhaps nowhere was truly safe all the time.
As if to imply an answer, a massive... something emerged from the water¡ªfar too distant for her to grasp anything about its nature other than its sheer size¡ªthen sank back beneath the surface. None of the fishermen in their small crafts even bothered to react.
Then, they were over the bridge and upon the backside of the sometimes-island. Arlette steered the transport carefully along the path that led around the steep side of the land. The hill that made up the whole of the place was greater than a normal hill, but not quite large enough to be a mountain. If it were placed elsewhere, it would surely be considered a foothill, but she wasn¡¯t sure the nomenclature worked here.
Finally, having circumnavigated the semi-island and reached the southern side, she got her first glimpse of Breah itself. Her first thought was both how similar yet different it appeared compared to the cliffside villages she¡¯d known in Gustil. Both featured architecture that avoided corners, with round, sloped walls to accommodate the winds sweeping in from the sea. Yet, the Gustilian villages had something to work with that Breah did not: space. Nearly every building she could see had a compact design. If more space was needed, it looked like the builders would build up rather than out, but even then, she saw few structures more than two stories tall. The singular exception was the old Church¡¯s villa, which stood up the hillside above the rest of the village, practically lording the Church¡¯s status over its followers.
A familiar figure stood at the edge of the village, arms folded and a worried scowl on her face. Seeing that her transport would have trouble fitting in the thin, winding streets of Breah, Arlette slowed her transport to a stop and lowered the cabin beside Agent Ramune Berzina.
¡°Report,¡± she commanded as she hopped over the cabin¡¯s side, unable to control her impatience.
The agent cleared her throat. Arlette could not help but notice the nervousness Agent Berzina seemed trying to hide, though she wished she could; it just made her more nervous.
¡°The trip had no complications to mention, and I arrived when expected,¡± Ramune began. ¡°The people here are largely distrustful of outsiders, but they seemed willing to talk, answer questions, and assist me once I showed my badge. At first, I was unable to find much of anything concerning the mission. It¡¯s bigger than most places down here, but Breah is, by and large, still just a slow-moving, isolated town.
¡°Then, this morning, I was approached by a local¡ªan old woman I hadn¡¯t met before¡ªwho wanted my help with something. She said that she was worried that her grandson had fallen into the wrong crowd. He would sneak off at night and go somewhere, only to return before morning with dark, black stains on his skin¡ªstains that looked like they were from some sort of liquid. It turns out that there¡¯s an underground trade going on, one that makes use of the squid caught in the nets to make ink.¡±
Arlette drew in a sharp breath. Could this be what she¡¯d been looking for? Still, something seemed off. ¡°Ink is made with black ash, though,¡± she pointed out. ¡°What do these squid things have to do with it?¡±
¡°You¡¯ve never heard of a squid before?¡± Sofie asked, surprised.
¡°No? Should I have?¡±
¡°I guess not. They¡¯re these tentacled creatures that live in the ocean. They have long, rubbery, wiggly arms with suckers on them. They¡¯re super gross to look at, actually. But, one other thing about them is they make ink in their bodies.¡±
¡°What?¡±
¡°Yeah, there¡¯s an ink sac with squid ink in them. They squirt it out to blot out the water and escape predators. Or, at least, that¡¯s what the squids I know of are like.¡±
¡°Hold on... with how big an emphasis we put on tracking ink in this nation, and with all the research I did on it¡¯s production, why have I never heard of this?¡±
¡°I looked into it, and apparently squid ink is only used in the southern coastal region,¡± Ramune told her. ¡°It¡¯s inferior in pretty much every way to the usual ink¡ªharder to make, degrades relatively quickly, and doesn¡¯t like to dry as well as the usual stuff. It¡¯s only used down here because normal ink is far too expensive for the people in this region and because their proximity to the ocean allows for it. I¡¯d bet the ink makers elsewhere don¡¯t even know about this little industry, or even consider what they make to be proper ¡®ink.¡¯¡±
¡°Still... Gvido, shouldn¡¯t you have known about this?¡±
The southern Otharian shrugged. ¡°Why would I? My family was too poor to ever need any sort of ink, and I was a child. I didn¡¯t even learn to read until after I moved north.¡±
Arlette frowned, but supposed there was nothing she could do about it now. She¡¯d have to have a talk with her department later, however.
¡°Anyway, that¡¯s about the gist of it,¡± Ramune continued, pivoting back to the original topic. ¡°I was able to track down the site to a single building near the shore. It seemed like nobody was inside, so I originally planned on sneaking in to investigate further, but every way in was trapped. That¡¯s when I sent in the request for backup.¡±
¡°Excellent, agent. Well done,¡± Arlette said with the calm and collected tone of a seasoned commander. But then, why was she so nervous? Arlette looked around the area and spotted the agent¡¯s ride parked up the hill nearby. However, that was all she could see when it came to her resources.
¡°Lord Ferros deployed skitters to Breah, correct?¡± she asked. Arlette had decided to forgo bringing her own this time. They couldn¡¯t move as quickly as transports, and she was still somewhat convinced that her raid at Cellvas had failed in part because of that added delay.
Ramune nodded, her mouth tightening. ¡°Two.¡±
¡°Where are they?¡±
The agent shifted uncomfortably. ¡°I stationed one at the other exit to the village and one at the dock to prevent anybody from leaving.¡±
¡°A sound decision. We wouldn¡¯t want any culprits to escape if we can help it.¡±
¡°Yes, but there¡¯s another reason. I knew you¡¯d want to interrogate the woman who tipped me off when you arrived, but... she¡¯s gone. I can¡¯t find her anywhere.¡±
A bad feeling started growing in Arlette¡¯s gut.
¡°At first, I thought that she¡¯d been killed, which would be bad enough,¡± Ramune continued. ¡°But, according to everybody else I¡¯ve spoken to since, she never existed in the first place. Nobody knows this woman, and everybody knows everybody here.¡±
That foreboding feeling grew heavy within her. ¡°Take us to the site immediately. Call in the skitters for support.¡±
¡°Understood.¡±
They arrived at the suspicious location quickly enough. Placed only a few dozen paces up the hillside from the town¡¯s relatively extensive docks and with a plain, nondescript wooden front, it looked like any of the other buildings standing down near the coast. Unlike most of the other buildings nearby, however, it seemed unoccupied at the moment, with no movement, sound, or light coming from inside.
The skitters arrived just moments later, so Arlette rounded everybody up.
¡°Alright, I don¡¯t want to waste any more time. Something¡¯s going on, and I don¡¯t like it one bit. Ramune, you¡¯re with me. We¡¯ll take the lead. Gvido, you take the rear with Sofie. We¡¯ll let you know when it¡¯s safe to come in.¡±
The fun thing about having two large metal murder machines at your beck and call was that it didn¡¯t matter if your adversaries booby-trapped every door and window when you could just make your own entrance with the push of a button. The robot crashed through the side wall with ease, the wood splintering with only token resistance. The roof wavered, tilting worryingly towards the newly created entrance, but stopped as the rest of the wall caught the load and held.
Carefully, warily, and with her weapon drawn, Arlette stalked into the supposed ink facility. With just a glance at the interior, she knew that Ramune¡¯s information was at least partially correct. Large wooden barrels lined the sides of the long, thin structure, each tall enough to come up to just below her shoulders. Black stains covered most of them, many of them so heavily that it was almost like they¡¯d been painted black. The stains weren¡¯t confined to the barrels, either. Several long wooden poles leaned against several barrels, just as dark as the barrels. Blotches marked the walls and the smooth stone floor as well. She¡¯d never seen an ink manufacturing facility before, but she imagined it would look like this.
She couldn¡¯t sense anybody inside. Still, though the place was rather tiny, it wouldn¡¯t be smart to assume the whole of the place was empty. She moved further in, Ramune alongside her. Some of the barrels she passed were not empty. Those on the right had varying levels of black liquid inside them, while several on the left contained a rather disgusting soupy mix of water, blood, and chopped-up pieces of white-grey creatures she¡¯d never seen before. The squid parts¡ªor so she assumed¡ªgrossed her out, adding a twinge of nausea to her already tense insides, and the less said about the smell, the better.
Slowly, the pair worked their way deeper into the building, disabling two traps they encountered along the way. Their designs were nothing special¡ªdecent setups, but she¡¯d seen much better throughout her years¡ªand neutralizing them proved to be fairly simple matters. They continued on, eventually moving into the facility¡¯s only other room, finding little of note¡ªjust a simple table and a couple of chairs.
Nothing, again? She sighed.
¡°Alright, Gvido!¡± she called out as she returned to the main chamber. ¡°Do your thing!¡±
Gvido came as bidden and got down on his hands and knees, slowly running his palms across the floor. Sofie nervously peeked her head around the hole in the wall.
¡°It¡¯s safe?¡± she asked.
¡°Just stay away from the doors and windows,¡± Arlette told her.
Sofie nodded and entered, looking about warily. She passed by the barrels, grimacing at the sight of the squid guts, and approached Arlette and Ramune. ¡°That face says you didn¡¯t find anything.¡±
Arlette spat on the ground and scowled as her way of answering.
Sofie scratched her head. ¡°I don¡¯t get it. Too much feels weird. No offense, but do you usually get normal people reporting things to you?¡±
¡°It¡¯s not unheard of, but it is extremely rare,¡± Ramune admitted.
¡°And then this mysterious tipster just disappears, and nobody knows who they are. So, either the townsfolk are lying...¡±
¡°Or somebody wants us here,¡± Arlette finished. ¡°Why I couldn¡¯t say. Unfortunately, I¡¯m not sure we can rule out lying locals. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time.¡±
¡°I wish I knew enough to say just how fresh these squid bits are,¡± Sofie sighed. She looked around once more, then frowned. ¡°Miss Ramune, are solid stone floors common for unimportant buildings in a village like this?¡±
The agent stiffened. ¡°I¡ª¡±
¡°No, they are absolutely not,¡± Gvido cut in. ¡°Even for a relatively well-off town like Breah, there¡¯s no way a place like this should have a ground like this. Something¡¯s definitely fishy here.¡±
Arlette mentally kicked herself. How had she not noticed that? Well, in her defense, it wasn¡¯t like she¡¯d ever spent much, if any, time in poor coastal hamlets.
Wasting no time, she grabbed one of the wooden poles and began to tap the floor, listening to the sound. Sofie joined in with another rod, while Ramune began moving the barrels to uncover more of the space. Meanwhile, they left Gvido to do his thing. She wasn¡¯t quite sure how he used his Observation skills to check for secret passages, compartments, and the like, but it worked.
For a while, they tapped away, working through the room, but found nothing. They moved to the smaller side room, and just as Arlette was starting to feel like this was another hopeless effort...
¡°Gvido! Over here!¡±
The man entered the side room and Sofie tapped on a spot where the table had stood. Though the sound it made was still quite dull and muted, it was noticeably brighter than everywhere else. He knelt beside the indicated spot and pressed a palm against the stone.
¡°Huh, there¡¯s a space maybe a hand¡¯s width down,¡± he said almost immediately. He slid his hand slowly back and forth. ¡°It goes from here... to here.¡±
A gap beneath the floor, its width maybe one and a half times the width of a man. A tunnel. It had to be. They¡¯d finally found something after fruitlessly searching for so long.
¡°Open it,¡± she told him.
¡°Might as well go sit down somewhere,¡± he told them. ¡°This will take a while.¡±
Sofie and Ramune took his advice, but Arlette was too anxious to sit down. And so, instead, she stood nearby, watching and waiting. Stone observation was always a notoriously slow process; perhaps it was merely an effect of the medium, but even a powerful and accomplished stone Observer would need several days to fully grow a foundation and even more to do the building atop. Still, with her heart thumping in her chest, Gvido¡¯s progress felt positively glacial.
Slowly, like wax melting on a lit candle, an opening formed and widened, until finally, at long last, she stared down a vaguely rectangular hole. Darkness had fallen back during the search and the moonslight could not reach inside, so she observed a small flame to light the way. The hole¡ªthe tunnel¡ªretreated straight down into the earth for about ten paces before taking a hard horizontal turn. Looking at the tunnel¡¯s side, Arlette was surprised to find that what looked like indentations for hands and feet built into the sides. She clambered down immediately, the others following quickly behind her.
The tunnel stretched out ahead of her, tall enough to walk down and seemingly perfectly level, for a good fifty paces. Arlette wanted to rush down the passageway, but forced herself to proceed with caution¡ªthere could still be traps. Yet, as she went, all she found was incredibly smooth rock.
She wasn¡¯t the only person to notice this. ¡°Whoever made this has unbelievable skills,¡± she heard Gvido say behind her.
Then, before she knew it, the tunnel came to an end, though not with what she expected. Instead of another shaft going back up, the passageway simply came to an end at a small chamber just eight paces wide and long. On the other end of that chamber stood a stone pedestal, and on that pedestal lay a piece of paper.
¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Sofie asked.
Arlette did not answer. She barely even heard her. Her eyes were locked on the paper, or more specifically the writing upon it. With a trembling hand, she picked it up and brought it up to read.
To my dearest princess,
Have you been having fun these last few seasons? I must admit, I¡¯ve enjoyed our little game immensely. It¡¯s been endlessly amusing to watch you flail about blindly like a child swinging at monsters in the dark, never even knowing your adversary¡¯s true face. Sadly, all games must eventually come to an end. I look forward to our upcoming reunion with great interest. Try not to die before then!
-S
Arlette clutched the note like the reins of a bucking garoph, her body shaking and her mind spinning out of control. Sebastian Cunningham was alive. It seemed impossible. She¡¯d witnessed him getting hit by that massive, tumbling, crumpled door¡ªa door that, even folded in, was the size of a house! It had happened right in front of her! Yes, his corpse had been lost in the following chaos, but... there was no way somebody survived something like that! Not a chance!
And yet... how else could she explain this? Could it be some impostor trying to pretend to be Sebastian? But first of all, why would anybody bother? And second, how could they impersonate him so perfectly? She couldn¡¯t imagine Sebastian telling others about her and how he used to call her princess, nor could she see how anybody could so perfectly mimic the distinctly precise handwriting she remembered from back in her youth, which she now saw years later on the paper between her fingers.
Suddenly, it all made sense: how the resistance was able to elude her so easily, how she kept finding clues that led to nothing but wasted time, how she¡¯d always had this feeling in the back of her mind that the resistance had had it out for her personally... She¡¯d always thought it was nothing more than a paranoid delusion, but somehow, it had turned out to be the truth!
Then there was Chitra, who¡¯d oh-so-conveniently set the events in motion required to get Arlette to this specific place. She¡¯d initially found it strange that Miss Perfect had been captured so easily after making such beginner mistake during her burglary attempt, but she¡¯d ended up attributing it to a Scyrian being unable to recognize and understand the bizarre contraptions that protected Blake¡¯s workshop, and therefore getting caught off-guard by them. Not even Sofie understood what half of them did, after all. But now? Now, Arlette saw things in a very different light.
Still, Chitra¡¯s involvement or non-involvement in Sebastian¡¯s plans wasn¡¯t that important at this very moment. The important question right now was what she should do. Sebastian¡¯s presence here meant that something more than just an underground resistance movement was in play. He surely had something greater in mind than creating chaos in this place.
She had to tell Blake about this. That man was paranoid enough that he would believe her without even arguing. She would need allies for this, whatever ¡®this¡¯ was. She¡¯d learned from the last time when she¡¯d tried to do everything himself.
A loud, pained gasp, followed quickly by a thump, brought her back to reality. Arlette spun around, hand flashing to her sword on her side, but the chamber still only held four people. Gvido and Ramune both stared in shock at Sofie, who shuddered on the hard stone floor. At first, Arlette¡¯s thoughts had jumped to the idea that one of the others was plants secretly working for Sebastian¡ªgiven everything that had happened to bring this about, she could not discount it, no matter how much she wanted to. However, they both seemed genuinely surprised, and she could not spot any sort of wound on Sofie¡¯s form.
Quickly crouching down beside the ailing woman, Arlette reached out to her. ¡°Sofie! What¡¯s wrong?!¡±
¡°I-Inside...¡± Sofie gasped out, taking Arlette¡¯s hand and shakily pushing herself up onto her hands and knees. ¡°I don¡¯t¡ª¡±
Suddenly, she began to cough and wretch. A moment later, with a loud hack, she vomited onto the floor and Arlette¡¯s shoes¡ªexcept, it wasn¡¯t semi-digested travel rations that were staining Arlette¡¯s footwear. It was blood. A lot of blood.
Chapter 135
Rudra Kapadia had never really understood the appeal of rock climbing¡ªor any other type of recreational climbing, for that matter. He¡¯d dealt with heights back in his time as a construction worker on Earth and had learned that they were something to be respected; he preferred to not think about all the coworkers, usually the newer workers who had not yet internalized the truth that construction could be a dangerous industry, who¡¯d suffered terrible injury or even died falling from a roof, scaffold, or the like. Those that instead thought of height as a game of sorts, or something to be conquered, would always be labeled weirdos in his mind. It was little wonder then, as he clung to the side of a stupidly humongous tree, several kilometers of open air between him and solid ground, that he was not exactly having the time of his life.
They had been ascending for many hours now, and even Rudra¡¯s empowered body was starting to feel it. His muscles ached from hours of crawling against gravity. His fingers felt like they had no skin left on them, all of it scraped off by the rough, hard bark that was their climbing surface. The wind buffeted him constantly, getting worse as they climbed higher so that he felt like he could never relax. It also seemed to delight in whipping the rope that connected the four of them into his face whenever it could. The bulky pack he wore chafed against his back. Oh, and how could he forget Pari¡¯s sack, which the child refused to leave behind, tied around his shoulders, pulling on his neck like a noose tugging in the wrong direction? Together with the pack, it shifted his center of balance backward, meaning he was always fighting the pull of gravity threatening to tip him back and away from the tree.
Speaking of things pulling him off the tree, as he pushed and pulled himself up another meter, the safety line leading beneath him went taut. He continued anyway, despite the whine of protest from below. With his strength, the added weight of a small child might as well be nonexistent. Still, just to be sure, he took a peek below.
As expected, he saw Pari hanging from the rope tied around her torso without a single hand or foot touching the bark, completely unconcerned for her own safety. Like the dozens of other times this had happened tonight, she was far more concerned with stuffing the latest bug, fungus, or whatever had caught her interest into one of the many pockets lining her clothes. Each pocket appeared to be stuff to its limits, the two dozen or so of them bulging out from her shirt and pants like relatively massive tumors. With other people and in other situations, Rudra would have found it bizarre, but Pari was very much not other people. Pari was... to put it politely, ¡®unique.¡¯
This time, the child seemed to be dealing with a conundrum¡ªshe¡¯d run out of empty pockets. Quickly and nimbly, she pulled various things from the many lumps protruding from her shirt like tumors and sniffed each, searching for something that only she knew. A moment later, she seemed to find whatever she was looking for. With a smile, she refilled the empty pockets until the only material left in her hands was the winning item¡ªsome sort of mushroom, it seemed. ¡®Winning¡¯ quickly proved to be a mislabel, however, as she then unceremoniously discarded the poor fungi, sending it on a multi-kilometer plunge to its doom.
¡°Hey! Careful!¡± General Bloodflower weakly complained from a few meters below her as the mushroom flew past, missing him by a few centimeters.
With both of them in view at the same time, Rudra found the juxtaposition of the two almost comical. The beastkin child, lumpy clothing aside, appeared fresh and energetic, quite the contrast to the red-faced and wheezing Caprakan. The Stragman, as proud and boastful of his strength as any of his people, looked like he was barely holding on, while Pari appeared dry, spry, and ready to climb for another day if needed. Part of this could be explained by the catgirl¡¯s youthful energy, the general¡¯s recent recovery, and the fact that he was an Observer rather than a Feeler. Most of it, however, was because Pari showed absolutely no shame, taking numerous breaks where she let Rudra do all the work. Caprakan Bloodflower, however, was a Hono, one of the most powerful and influential members of his nation and the husband of the nation¡¯s ruler. Though he could also have taken advantage of Rudra¡¯s strength, Rudra knew that his pride would not allow him to rely on another¡ªespecially not during a rite such as this, and especially not when that person was a Shell. And so, shackled thusly, the man was working himself to exhaustion instead.
Rudra mentally shrugged. If that was how the man wanted to be, Rudra wasn¡¯t going to get in the way. In fact, a worn out Caprakan might be preferable in this case; Rudra couldn¡¯t trust the man without knowing the motives for his unexpected presence, and he probably wouldn¡¯t even if he did know them.
The rite had begun immediately after the ceremony, as the glow of the Mother Tree provided more than enough illumination for their climb, so they hadn¡¯t had the chance to question him about it yet. Perhaps they would get the opportunity soon. They¡¯d taken the occasional break to eat and rest, but they couldn¡¯t continue like this forever. They had to be stopping for the day soon, right?
A drop of wetness splashed against the top of his head, then another. He sighed.
He turned his gaze back upward, first to the next handhold and then further up to the sight of their ¡°illustrious¡± leader. Gabriela cut a strange figure, especially now. The way her sword, encased in thick cloth and tied flat against the outside of her pack with what looked like a hundred loops of rope, overshadowed the pack and stuck out from the bottom like a diving board made her look almost comical¡ªor it would have, were she not raining a veritable downpour of sweat down upon him.
There were times when she seemed almost put-together¡ªrelative to right now, at least. Like many trees, Ruresni¡¯s bark was not uniformly smooth and whole. Cracks tall enough for them to stand inside and up to two meters deep intermittently wound through it, and it was sometimes possible to climb the slopes they formed rather than go straight up. Even when the crack went straight up, it helped just to know that their fall would be a few dozen meters at most, as opposed to the alternative. Between the easier movement, the added safety, and the decreased psychological burden on their leader, most of their altitude gain had come from these sections. The rest of the time, however, was when things turned especially ugly. For somewhere between half and a third of the time, they¡¯d had no option but to do things the hard way and climb.
In some ways, he had to respect her drive and determination. He could imagine just how torturous having to free-climb a mountainous tree might be for somebody with a phobia of heights, but he didn¡¯t have to¡ªhe could see it manifest in her. Her whole body trembled, her movements lacking even a hint of smoothness, rather coming in sudden spurts of blurred action. Sometimes, he thought he¡¯d catch a wisp of crimson haze in the glow of the tree or hear her mutter some sort of mantra under her breath. And then, as previously mentioned, there was the sweat¡ªfar more sweat than he thought could exist in a single person. This wasn¡¯t the sweat of exertion; this was the sweat of panic and terror.
He couldn¡¯t help but think that none of this should be happening¡ªthat this woman should, in absolutely zero circumstances, be a participant in this, let alone be leading it. He found it not just cruel but just plain unwise; if she had to be a part of this insanity, it would at least be better if she could take the spot at the bottom of the chain and let the rest of them do the work of leading. Yet, it could not be; the rules of the rite dictated that she, as the challenger, had to lead her team not just figuratively but in a very literal and physical sense. She was not cut out for the burdens of leadership in this scenario and they all knew it. With all this stress, it was only a matter of time before something snapped.
A moment later, something did. The loud ¡°CRACK!¡± and an earsplitting shriek alerted Rudra as he reached for a new handhold with his left arm. He immediately pulled himself as close to the trunk as he could, returning his left hand to its previous location and making sure that his grip was as solid and unshakable as possible. The periphery of his vision caught a chunk of brown falling by his side, while his ears told him all he needed to know of Gabriela¡¯s quickly declining altitude. As the scream whizzed past somewhere behind him, he braced himself for the coming tug.
Gabriela¡¯s screech terminated abruptly a moment later and Rudra felt the now-familiar pull on the rope. Holding fast, he looked down and watched her swing back and forth. The fall had lowered her all the way to hanging just above Pari, who looked on with confused concern as the nigh-unkillable warrior flailed and scrabbled almost ferally for the bark just out of reach. Below them, a tangle of thin branches jutted out from the formerly unadorned trunk.
With a sigh, he seized the taut rope with one hand and pulled it closer to the tree. Gabriela grabbed hold immediately and almost threw herself against the bark, practically wrapping her body around it like a sailor clutching flotsam after a shipwreck in stormy seas. Seeing that she wasn¡¯t going to be climbing back up right now, Rudra worked his way down to the pair. As he did, part of him wanted to ask whose stupid idea this whole ordeal might be but held off because then he¡¯d have to reckon with the fact that it was his.
¡°This can¡¯t go on any longer,¡± he sternly told her when he got there. ¡°We need to stop.¡±
¡°I-I can keep going,¡± she managed to gasp out between panicked exhalations.
¡°No, you can¡¯t,¡± he snapped, his patience coming to an end. There was no way that she would make such an absurd claim if she could see herself¡ªher pale face, wet from tears even more than sweat, said more than enough. ¡°This is the third time you¡¯ve fallen off!¡±
¡°I climbed the Divide, I can climb this,¡± she insisted.
¡°Well, the rest of us can¡¯t. We¡¯ve pushed ourselves to the limit today, and we¡¯ve climbed a third of the way up at most. We need to rest. We need to sleep.¡±
She let out a few deliberate breaths, looking around at their surroundings as if she was realizing just now how long they¡¯d been climbing and how late¡ªor early¡ªin the day it was. Doing so made her tense up again, but she quickly closed her eyes and steadied herself.
¡°Right... right. I saw another gap up ahead that might work. It¡¯s close. We can stop there, maybe.¡± She reached out and began to climb. Rudra followed after making sure the rope wasn¡¯t going to get wrapped around itself. As he did, he passed by the spot with the broken bark and shook his head. Ruresni¡¯s bark wasn¡¯t as strong as its seemingly indestructible wood, but that didn¡¯t mean it wasn¡¯t durable. He¡¯d tested it before the climb began, and even pulling at his full strength, he¡¯d been unable to do more than bend it slightly. Only Gabriela and her explosive burst of power could do something as seemingly impossible as breaking off a large piece with a single hand.
Just as she¡¯d said, not more than fifty meters above them but just out of sight from where he¡¯d been when she fell, there was a crevice in the trunk where the wood folded in on itself. Relative to the size of the rest of Ruresni, it was so minuscule that it wouldn¡¯t even count as a wrinkle, but for them, it meant a wooden cave of sorts a good ten meters deep and three meters high. Such formations weren¡¯t entirely rare. They¡¯d come across others like it several times tonight and rested at each one, though this particular indentation was the largest so far by a wide margin.
After frantically heaving the rest of them up, Gabriela immediately retreated as far away from the edge as possible. Rudra pulled Pari¡¯s bag off his shoulders and set it next to her before removing his pack and slipping out of the safety rope looped around him. Finally free, he went off to find his own space. In the center left of the ¡°cave¡±, the uneven floor rose to form a smooth mound of sorts about half his height. Perfect. With a weary groan, he settled down beside it, letting it act as a backrest. It wasn¡¯t the height of comfort, but anything was better than what he¡¯d had to deal with in that stupid cell.
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He took a deep breath and wiped his brow. His whole body ached from the hours of climbing, his hands worst of all. This had been the hardest he¡¯d physically labored in his life. The idea of doing it again tomorrow¡ªor later that day, technically¡ªheld little appeal.
Rudra could tell that General Bloodflower agreed. The man had barely moved from the edge, having chosen to splay out on his back not two steps from oblivion. His chest heaved desperately up and down like a bicycle pump trying to inflate a leaky tire, and he gazed skyward with eyes glazed and unfocused. Once again, in part thanks to the fiery hair matted to his head and neck, Rudra noted just how heavily the Stragman was sweating. The man was in dire need of a drink, and now that Rudra thought of it, he needed one himself.
Reluctantly, he pushed himself back to his feet and turned towards Gabriela and his discarded pack, where his waterskin was. Pari had joined the woman while he hadn¡¯t been looking. The child pulled something out and held it up to the quaking woman. Out shot a plume of translucent smoke that enveloped the pair. Rudra watched as the manic, mind-rending tension seemed to melt right off of Gabriela like butter on a hot summer¡¯s day.
Rudra frowned, making sure to stay out of the dispersing cloud.
The woman calmly turned her head his way and noticed him staring. ¡°Makes the screaming go away,¡± she finally said. Her words slurred ever so slightly, but she seemed lucid enough.
¡°Why didn¡¯t you use that earlier, then, instead of trying to force everything? You don¡¯t seem that intoxicated.¡±
¡°Wouldn¡¯t work. I can still think, mostly, but it makes everything all... blurry.¡± She waved her hand slowly in front of her face, staring at it blankly, then looked back at him. ¡°You, too.¡±
¡°We could just pull you along.¡±
She frowned. ¡°I told you, no. The rules say I have to lead or we lose. I won¡¯t risk it.¡±
¡°We¡¯re, what, three kilometers above the camp? Four? There¡¯s no way they would ever know.¡±
¡°I won¡¯t risk it,¡± she repeated emphatically.
Rudra sighed in defeat. He didn¡¯t have the energy to argue with her right now. Instead, he grabbed two waterskins and retreated to his resting place. He took a much-needed gulp from one and tossed the other onto the general¡¯s chest. The man responded with what he assumed to be an appreciative groan.
Taking a swig, he settled back down on his spot. It tasted terrible, but he¡¯d never loved water more than he did right now. His eye closed.
When Rudra¡¯s eye opened again, the day seemed to be in full swing. He groaned and stretched his stiff and aching limbs. Several gulps of water brought life back to his parched throat.
¡°How long was I out?¡± he asked.
¡°It¡¯s not much past noon...¡± Gabriela said. She shrugged. ¡°...I think. I slept for some of it too.¡±
Finally, Rudra¡¯s nose seemed to shake off the last of its slumber, and he noticed a strange smell in the air. He couldn¡¯t quite make sense of the scent with just his nose. Part of his brain thought it smelled good, almost appetizing, even; another thought it smelled acrid and a bit repugnant, like heated vomit. Where was it coming from?
He looked around and found that their little camp had changed in a few notable ways. The most obvious, thanks to the shadows cast, were what he could only describe as thick tree branches¡ªfor normal, Earth trees, not the monsters here¡ªsticking up out of the floor like support posts for a railing. They ran from one end of the ledge to the other and tapered off at around the level of his chest. A makeshift safety fence, he realized, and one that could only have been created by... Down by the fence, propped against the ¡®wall¡¯ of this indentation of theirs, snored one General Bloodflower.
¡°He grew those right after you went to sleep, then conked out himself,¡± Gabriela offered from somewhere behind him.
Well, that explained the improvised barrier¡ªa wise idea, he had to admit¡ªbut not the smell. Looking around some more, he quickly spotted the source. Near the center of the space sat the catgirl child, a long, thin stick in hand. Speared on the end of that stick and roasting over a flame far bigger than the candle it erupted from, was what appeared to his bleary eye to be a white grub as big as a kidney. The child hummed merrily as she slowly spun the grub over the heat, drawing crackles from the presumably dead insect¡¯s body. She pulled it back, blew on it, sniffed it, and finally bit off a large chunk with gusto.
¡°They taste better than they look,¡± Gabriela told him, and only then did he realize that she held her own larva, hers mostly consumed. She gestured towards a third stick leaning on a pack beside Pari, its baby insect still sizzling over the flame. ¡°We got one for you, too. Just go wake up Mister Shady first, please.¡±
Rudra woke Caprakan via a light toe kick to the ribs and returned to the others, sitting down near the flame. An unattended stick with a grub skewered atop rested beside the fire. He picked it up and eyed the so-called ¡®food¡¯ warily. It wasn¡¯t like they lacked food right now. Their packs had enough food for the whole climb in ideal conditions¡ªwere anything to go wrong, they¡¯d have to scavenge when they ran out, but that would still be a long way off. Water, on the other hand, was something they¡¯d have to find soon¡ªwithin a day or two if the rate they were going through their supplies stayed steady.
His stomach grumbled, but he resisted the call; he¡¯d rather not chow down on giant larvae if he could help it. He thought of grabbing something from his pack, but before he could, the final straggler joined them.
¡°A tap on the shoulder would have worked just fine,¡± Caprakan grumbled. ¡°Was that really necessary?¡±
¡°You tell me, husband of the Chos,¡± Gabriela replied. ¡°It¡¯s time we got some answers.¡±
He surveyed the scene and frowned in mock outrage. ¡°Where¡¯s my grub?¡±
¡°Get your own,¡± Gabriela told him, pointing towards the back of the cave. At the very back, Rudra could see a section where the bark had been cut out, revealing the impenetrable wood beneath, and the many grubs feasting on the bark¡¯s softer inner side.
¡°How did you know about that?¡± Rudra wondered.
¡°Pari sniffed it out,¡± Gabriela confided.
¡°Really?¡±
He looked over to the girl, who nodded energetically and swallowed her mouthful of insect. She puffed out her chest proudly and declared, ¡°Pari is best sniffer! Pari sniff and snoof better than even Grandfather!¡±
All Rudra managed was a confused ¡°huh.¡± He didn¡¯t know why having a better sense of smell than an old man was something to be proud of.
¡°What a delightful surprise,¡± General Bloodflower stated, plopping down beside the still-flaming candle with a stick in each hand¡ªfreshly grown, no doubt¡ªand a still-wriggling grub on each. ¡°I had no idea that such treats could be found so low. You truly are talented, little one.¡±
Pari giggled and preened at the praise.
¡°This low?¡± Rudra questioned.
¡°Once we¡¯ve gone a little higher, we will start trespassing through the various territories of the wildlife that make the Mother Tree their home,¡± the Stragman explained, bringing his catches over the flame. ¡°Only this lowest section is so empty, though it seems perhaps that this is simply because they reside within instead.¡±
Gabriela tensed up. ¡°By ¡®trespassing¡¯, you mean we...¡±
¡°Will be attacked, yes. Absolutely. The denizens of this place are strong¡ªup there with the strongest of all who dwell beneath the Great Mother¡¯s shade. Someone fit to lead our people should be able to survive that much, should they not?¡±
She gulped, her gaze flickering momentarily towards Pari, who was too busy chomping down on her grub to pay attention to the current conversation. She sighed. ¡°I never should have agreed to this.¡±
Rudra decided to change the subject before she fell too deep into her doubts. Besides, he could see what the Stragman was trying to do, and he didn¡¯t like it. ¡°Enough with the distractions. Explain why you volunteered to join us.¡±
The general brought a grub to his mouth and bit down. ¡°Mmm! So juicy!¡±
¡°Now.¡±
The man scoffed. ¡°Or what, pacifist? Threats mean litter when everybody knows you can¡¯t turn them from words to action.¡±
¡°He doesn¡¯t have to¡ªI will,¡± Gabriela growled. ¡°Spill it! Why are you here?¡±
Bloodflower took another bite in lieu of answering, chewing without hurry or any apparent fear.
¡°To help you win. Why else?¡± he finally returned.
Now, it was Rudra and Gabriela¡¯s turn to scoff.
¡°Ridiculous,¡± Rudra declared.
¡°I don¡¯t believe you,¡± Gabriela added.
¡°Why else would I be here?¡±
¡°To sabotage us,¡± Gabriela proposed.
¡°To what end? To make you fail? If I wanted that to happen, I would have let you fail during the selection. Then, I wouldn¡¯t have to do any of this exhausting work.¡±
¡°Maybe you want the Chos to win, but she has to win for real instead of by technicality,¡± Rudra considered. ¡°Victory in this ordeal would improve her standing in the eyes of the other elites and the people.¡±
Caprakan snorted. ¡°Her standing is fine as it is. Nobody doubts her strength or her rule since she got you to stop making trouble. If anything, the rite failing at the selection would only hurt your reputation. You two are the reason we all had to take a sudden, long, and arduous detour, after all.¡±
¡°Then, why?¡± Rudra reiterated. ¡°You saw how furious you made her last night. She would have bashed my head in if she could have reached me then.¡±
¡°Ooh, yeah, I saw. Hard to miss, really,¡± the Stragman agreed, taking another bite.
¡°That look she gave us is the only reason I¡¯ve let you go so far, Bloodflower,¡± Gabriela warned. ¡°It¡¯s the only reason I doubt she wasn¡¯t in on whatever crud you¡¯re trying to pull.¡±
¡°Oh, of course, she had no idea. She¡¯d never have agreed to it, and she¡¯d have just knocked me cold before the ceremony if I had told her. Sadly, that came at the cost of infuriating her instead. She probably thinks you forced me into it or something.¡±
¡°And now, thanks to you, she¡¯s extra pissed,¡± Gabriela pointed out.
¡°Well, that won¡¯t change much, I imagine. We need to make sure to always be prepared for her assault in the upcoming days.¡±
¡°She¡¯s going to try to attack us because of you?¡± Gabriela frowned.
¡°Oh, she was almost definitely going to try something either way. My actions merely made a near certainty into a certainty.¡±
Gabriela looked puzzled. ¡°She¡¯d have to catch up to us, though, wouldn¡¯t she? Or do you mean on the way back down?¡±
Caprakan shook his head. ¡°Oh, no. Barring some unforeseen disaster, they¡¯re surely above us already.¡±
¡°W-what?! But¡ª!¡±
¡°My wife has climbed Ruresni twice before. Unlike the rest of us, she has ample experience in doing this and knew just the right people with the right skills to add to her team. I have little doubt that, in a straight race, her team would win. So, I suppose it¡¯s a good thing that she¡¯s angry enough that she¡¯ll slow down and ambush you.¡±
¡°But, Tepin told me that even approaching Ruresni is forbidden outside of special times like this,¡± Rudra objected.
¡°Well, this was back in her teen years when rules didn¡¯t mean too much to her,¡± Caprakan explained. ¡°She was just bored and looking for anything to provide her with a challenge. At least she told me all about it, so I have some idea of what we¡¯re in for. Better than going in blind.¡±
¡°Still, this is bad,¡± Rudra lamented. ¡°Did we really come this far just to lose a stupid race at the end?¡±
¡°The outcome is not even close to fully bloomed,¡± the Stragman insisted. ¡°Anything can happen up here. Anything.¡±
With one last bite, the first of his pair of grubs was no more. He pulled the second, crispier one off of the heat and turned it over, inspecting it with a practiced eye. Rudra looked at his own, inspecting the browned carapace. It remained unappetizing.
¡°And when this attack you¡¯re sure is coming actually comes, whose side will you be on?¡±
¡°As I said, I am here to aid you in your upcoming victory.¡±
¡°Even if it means fighting your woman? Hurting her? Killing her?¡±
The general laughed. ¡°Of course not. What sort of person do you take me for?¡±
¡°The kind of person who I know has been up to something behind everybody¡¯s back,¡± Rudra told him. ¡°The kind who insists he¡¯s here to help us but won¡¯t tell us why or what he gets out of it. The kind that, I can¡¯t help but suspect, just ¡®happened¡¯ to randomly mention the Challenge of Ruresni in conversation with me in the hopes that I¡¯d invoke it later, leading to us being right here, right now. That sort.¡±
¡°You flatter me,¡± the man said, tucking into his second grub. The roasted insect let out a satisfying crunch as he bit into it. ¡°But, I¡¯m nowhere near crafty enough for such things.¡±
Rudra didn¡¯t believe that for a second.
¡°I don¡¯t believe that for a second,¡± Gabriela told Caprakan with a scathing glare. ¡°I¡¯m tired of you avoiding the question. Give me a straight answer or you¡¯re heading back down, either climbing on your own or the other way.¡±
¡°No.¡± General Bloodflower chewed vigorously, enjoying his meal far more than Rudra felt he should given the situation. He smiled, unbothered by the heat of the woman¡¯s anger. ¡°You need me for all sorts of reasons, and I doubt you have what it takes to throw me off the edge.¡±
He paused for a moment, thinking. ¡°I¡¯ll say this, I suppose. I¡¯m doing this for personal reasons¡ªnot for the country or that sort of thing, but for me. I readily admit that I¡¯m using you for my own gain, but I swear that I bear no sinister intentions toward any of you. This is merely me grabbing hold of an opportunity before it slips away. I¡¯ll get what I want in the course of you doing what you¡¯re going to do when you win anyway.¡±
¡°Even when you say that...¡±
¡°Alright, how about this? I do have one thing I want to ensure you do for me. I¡¯ll say it to you now, and then, when this is over, if you think that I¡¯ve kept my word, you will do it. Does that sound fair?¡±
¡°...perhaps,¡± Gabriela allowed, however warily. ¡°What is it?¡±
He told them.
Rudra rocked back in surprise. ¡°You¡¯re... you can¡¯t mean that.¡±
¡°I am entirely serious.¡±
¡°B-but, but... why?¡± Gabriela demanded to know.
¡°That¡¯s my business. You don¡¯t need to know. I remind you that you agreed to our arrangement just now. Are you going to back out or do you have a shred of honor?¡±
The two locked gazes for a tense moment, neither willing to budge.
¡°...fine,¡± Gabriela eventually relented.
¡°Glad that we see eye to eye on this. Now¡ª¡± He stood up and stretched, his spine letting out several loud pops. ¡°¡ªwe need to get going. We won¡¯t stand a chance if we dawdle while my honey climbs.¡±
Minutes later, they were on the move again, having quickly eaten, drank, and packed.
The grub turned out to be pretty tasty, after all.
Chapter 136 Part 1
As usual, Pari Clansnarl smelled it before she saw it. Like so many in the last few days, this was a new, unique aroma, one which had never before graced her nostrils¡ªacerbic yet fusty, with a slightly sour background and subtle hints of sweetness similar to lilyberries. It was a good, proud smell, though a little murky and muted. As she and her friends made their way up the steep, nearly vertical crack in the great tree¡¯s bark, the smell grew in intensity, calling out to her, until she could tell she was nearly upon it even though it was nowhere within eyesight. That could only mean one thing. With a quick leap to the left, she swung out of the crack, letting the rope connecting her to Ruddy support her. A resigned sigh came from above, but she had no time to ponder such uninteresting noises when something so fascinating, so unique, so filled with possibility was right...
There! The mushrooms, yellow-stemmed with pointed, speckled blue and black caps, grew from the great tree just a few Pari-lengths above her. Quickly and nimbly, she grabbed a hold of the bark and climbed up to face it. She sniffed again, taking in the thousands of nuances that she hadn¡¯t been able to before because of distance and the giant tree¡¯s pervasive scent blanketing everything.
Poisonous? No, not on its own at least; she noted seven different compounds within it that could make a fairly strong poison if combined with two or three other ingredients.
Potent? Definitely. She could name eighteen different aspects to it that she could use to make stronger candles than she could with only other ingredients.
Most importantly, new? Absolutely. There were at least five different notes to this fungi that she¡¯d never had the chance to explore yet. Several other mushrooms, doubtless cousins of this species, overlapped three of those paths, but there¡¯d been no time to have fun with all her new toys.
The overlap was a good thing, actually. It meant that she could use this mushroom to replace several of its relatives currently occupying her all-too-limited pocket space. One hand holding onto the tree, the other clutching her latest prize, she carefully fished out another, smaller mushroom of similar shape and sniffed it. No, this one still had one unexplored path. She tucked it back into its pocket and fished out a second one. Yes, this one was now redundant, as was this other one, and¡ª
Pari yelped in surprise as the rope went taut and she was unceremoniously yanked upward. Oh, right, she was climbing a supertree with her friends. She knew that, and it was hard to forget such an in-your-face aspect of reality, but sometimes the implications of such a situation flowed through her fingers as she focused on the truly important things, like this wondrous fungus. Oh well, she could just let Ruddy pull her up for a bit as she finished her sorting.
Soon enough, three separate mushroom variants were sent to the world below and their glorious new replacement was stuffed into one of her now-empty pockets, leaving two free for the next neat thing she came across.
Pari felt rather proud of her pocket system. She¡¯d made them herself, spending much of her time at the base of the big tree sewing pockets onto her trousers and tunic, just like Sofie-sis had taught her¡ªSofie-sis knew so many cool things¡ªso that she¡¯d have somewhere to store all the great things she¡¯d be sure she¡¯d find up here. She¡¯d never once questioned that Gabby-friend would take her up with the others. She was Gabby-friend, after all, and a friend would never forbid their friends from climbing up a giant tree to smell and collect the best ingredients in the world. That just wouldn¡¯t be right! Okay, there¡¯d been that one moment during the ceremony where she¡¯d started to have doubts, but friendship had won in the end, as she¡¯d known it would!
There was just one problem with her pocket system: she could only fit so many pockets onto her clothes. With so many amazing bugs, mushrooms, molds, and assorted other things she¡¯d come across in their climb already today, she¡¯d already hit maximum pocket capacity and the day was only half-over! There was a simple solution to this problem, but strangely, nobody would let her add pockets to their outfits.
Well, at least she had a little space again. Re-engaging with the rough bark, she climbed back into the crack and rejoined her friends just in time for them to come to a sudden halt.
¡°Uh... we might have a problem here,¡± Gabby-friend called from above.
The rest of them joined her a moment later. The crack they were traveling through turned nearly fully horizontal, letting them all stand and catch their breath. That was not the issue, however. Gabby-friend pointed down the crevice to something that caught even Pari by surprise: a massive, thick, green vine more than three times Ruddy¡¯s massive height plugged the way forward.
Pari paused, her brain trying to come to terms with this unexpected roadblock. It would impede their progress, sure, but that wasn¡¯t the real problem. The real problem is that she hadn¡¯t smelled it coming. Even now, only twenty paces away from its end, she couldn¡¯t detect a single whiff of a scent. The realization caused her hair to stand on end and her tail to puff up in outrage. Something so large, yet scentless! Impossible! And wrong! Super very wrong! Living things had scents! That was how it was supposed to work!
Together, the four of them approached this blaspheming plant, Pari watching it warily for any more shenaniganery.
¡°Well, this might be a bit of a problem,¡± Cappy sighed.
¡°What do you mean?¡± Gabby-friend asked as she hugged the inside of the passage, her voice tight.
¡°She told me about this, but it wasn¡¯t anywhere near here the last time. I was trying to steer us around it, but it must have grown out.¡±
¡°So we¡¯ll just have to climb outside again,¡± Ruddy chimed in. ¡°We were going to have to do that eventually anyway.¡±
¡°No, you don¡¯t understand,¡± Cappy said, stepping forward and running a hand along the plant. ¡°Feel this.¡±
The others stepped forward and did as suggested, so Pari cautiously did the same. What she found shocked her.
¡°Nya? Pari cannot grab!¡± she protested, her hands sliding off the plant¡¯s smooth, slippery exterior. Grab and claw as she might, she could not get even a single bit of purchase on the glossy, almost waxy material.
The others expressed similar realizations.
¡°If it¡¯s this far past my estimates down here, it¡¯s going to be far more widespread as we go up,¡± Cappy explained. ¡°Even if we climb up the side, we¡¯ll end up hitting any number of its arms blocking the way. And with how slippery it is, we won¡¯t be able to climb over it.¡±
Ruddy let out a naughty word, the sort that made Sofie-sis very angry when Pari said it before.
Gabby-friend clawed at the vine as well, but even her fingers slid off. She pulled her arm back and then swung it forward, driving her fingertips into the plant¡¯s skin with an audible squelch.
¡°Okay, it¡¯s not that tough,¡± she said with some satisfaction. ¡°I can climb it like this. Rudra, too, I would think.¡±
¡°I wouldn¡¯t be so sure,¡± Cappy immediately corrected her. ¡°It¡¯s one thing to be able to do that standing like this, but hanging from the side of the Mother Tree is a different story¡ªno way to plant yourself and no leverage. And, I should add, the ones above will be at least twenty times thicker than this. We won¡¯t have anybody anchored for when, and I mean when, you fall again.¡±
¡°I haven¡¯t fallen that many times...¡±
¡°Five times now, counting yesterday,¡± Ruddy stated. ¡°He¡¯s right.¡±
¡°How about this, then?¡± Gabby-friend untied the ropes holding her great giant, blacker-than-night blade to her pack and stabbed it deep into the vine. ¡°I can use this.¡±
¡°Maybe if you had more than one,¡± Cappy said with a shake of his head.
¡°Let¡¯s be honest, you¡¯d end up dropping it at some point,¡± Ruddy added. ¡°Not worth the risk.¡±
¡°Then, what do we do?¡± Gabby-friend moaned, ripping the blade free. Her actions left a large gash in the plant¡¯s flesh, from which a pink-purple sludge began to seep.
Pari¡¯s nose lit up as the sludge¡¯s aroma greeted her at last. Ha, the vine couldn¡¯t defy the rules forever! Now, this was a proper scent¡ªacrid and pungent, with a refreshing tang that tickled her nostrils. Her eyes went wide as she detected a wide range of unexplored compounds within the sap¡ªand the potency! Oh, the potency!
¡°Let¡¯s take a break and think,¡± Cappy suggested. ¡°We should eat, anyway.¡±
The others begrudgingly agreed to settle down, but Pari had no such intentions. Positively giddy, she snatched her bag before Ruddy could even finish taking it off his shoulders and dashed over to the leak, eager to collect as much of it as she could. It boggled Pari¡¯s mind just how much stronger all the materials grew as they ascended. Her nose told her that this sap was, without question, the most potent ingredient she¡¯d ever gotten her hands on. It would increase the strength of many of her usual candles by at least five times, and that didn¡¯t account for whatever new, undiscovered properties she might find given time. They hadn¡¯t even reached the giant tree¡¯s leaves yet! Just what sort of wonder materials would she find up there?!
Careful to avoid touching the thick liquid, as her nostrils told her that it was corrosive enough to leave a rash, she filled eight containers to full. Presents from Sofie-sis, the containers were small and simple metal cubes that her sister had forced Metal Man to make, which Pari had diligently lined with Grandfather¡¯s wax to inhibit any unwanted reactions. Pari treasured this gift, partly because it was another sign of her sister¡¯s love and partly because she always enjoyed it when Sofie-sis and Arly-sis made Metal Man do things he didn¡¯t want to do. Pari found the man¡¯s disgruntlement satisfying, though her distaste for the man had softened somewhat over the seasons.
These containers were great, as they let her store much more of any substance without having to waste too much of her precious wax. They also were very tough, so she didn¡¯t really have to worry about anything breaking in an accident, which had sadly happened before. This bag holding her supplies was her fourth bag for a reason.
¡°Pari, come eat,¡± Gabby-friend called.
Pari almost ignored her, but a rumble from her tummy reminded her that she was hungry. Quickly sealing the containers, she packed them back up and returned to the group, her brain resuming its paused processing of nearby conversation.
¡°¡ªcalled the Violet Infant. Honey told me about it, but I don¡¯t think either of us expected it to have spread this far. Perhaps we¡¯re lucky and it¡¯s slowing them down as much as it is us.¡±
¡°What sort of name is ¡®Violet Infant¡¯ for a vine?¡± Ruddy complained, clearly frustrated with something.
¡°It clings to the side of Ruresni like an infant clinging to the side of its mother, and its flowers are... well, you¡¯ll see,¡± Cappy explained.
Pari took a packet of food from Gabby-friend¡¯s outstretched hand. Unwrapping the leaves to reveal a squashed rectangle of squishy, spongy ground grey-brown... something. Some sort of tuber, perhaps? This was different than the other food they¡¯d had so far. She studied it, taking a few tentative whiffs. It was not what one would call ¡°appetizing¡±.
Gabby-friend noticed her reticence and patted her on the head, and Pari pressed her head against the hand and let out a short purr. Gabby-friend was still learning the importance and art of headpats, so Pari had to do what she could to encourage her.
¡°It looks gross and lumpy, but it¡¯s not bad,¡± Gabby-friend reassured her. ¡°Tastes kind of like tofu.¡±
¡°Pari not worried about taste,¡± she replied, her mind whirring through her mental catalog of ways to chemically alter the compounds within the food. ¡°Pari know ways to make lump taste better, but Pari not sure which way best. Best way make lump taste delicious, but Pari¡¯s skin turn yellowy. Other way also good, but many farts and burps for long time.¡±
Gabby-friend gave her a concerned glance, the sort that all sorts of people seemed to give her for some reason. ¡°Pari, sometimes it¡¯s best to just put salt on it.¡±
¡°Ahhh!¡± Pari nodded, remembering that Gabby-friend¡¯s food always tasted better than Sofie-sis¡¯s food¡ªand much better than Pari¡¯s own attempts. Gabby-friend was so wise! Pari rummaged through her supplies. She had some rock salt in here somewhere...
¡°Here, you can use mine,¡± Cappy said, tossing her a small cinched-shut bag.
Pari peeked inside and found tiny, ground-up salt crystals. How convenient!
Pari gave Cappy a wide, happy smile and a ¡°Thank you!¡± Though she didn¡¯t know Cappy better than Gabby-friend, she¡¯d known Cappy first. He¡¯d always been nice to her, and she loved the look of his curly orange-brown hair and bushy tail. What¡¯s more, he properly understood the joys of explosions, being the first person not to ask her to make fewer bangcandles but more. That had to count for something!
Cappy grinned back at her and Gabby-friend. ¡°Of course! Anything for my little pal.¡±
Pari gasped, her heart suddenly leaping with excitement. Pal?! That meant friend! ¡°Cappy be Pari¡¯s friend?¡± she eagerly requested.
¡°Cappy?!¡± The man laughed. ¡°That¡¯s quite a request coming from a cub like you to a Hono like me, and calling me Cappy to boot... Bowbreaker-hono would throw a fit!¡±
¡°Pari...¡± Gabby-friend said in that tone that she and Sofie always used when they disapproved of something she was doing, though Pari had no idea what for.
Pari glanced her way to find her sporting a disapproving scowl, as predicted, her gaze flitting between Pari and Cappy. Pari chose to ignore her for now; friendship was on the table right now, and that was too important for distractions.
Cappy chuckled some more. ¡°But, would it be alright for you to be friends with the husband of your enemy, little cub?¡±
Pari squinted at him, confused. ¡°No?¡± What did that have to do with friendship?
The Stragman let out a handful of hearty guffaws, though Pari still didn¡¯t know just what was so funny about all of this. ¡°Well then, who am I, to say no to such a heartfelt request?¡±
¡°Yaaaayyyy!¡± Pari cheered. ¡°Cappy-friend is friend! Pari have more friends!¡±
¡°Pari, you shouldn¡¯t associate any more than you have to with this two-faced man,¡± Gabby-friend warned.
¡°So harsh! I was helping a girl in need. Didn¡¯t you know that you should always pack plenty of salt for long journeys?¡±
Pari sprinkled some salt onto her food putty and took a bite, wondering what tofu was.
¡°What I know is that we¡¯re basically stuck and going to lose this competition,¡± Gabby-friend sent back. ¡°I knew you were all talk.¡±
Was this tofu pasted root, like this? Pari sniffed it again, taking note of the proteins and the surprisingly high fat content in her now-salty lump.
Wait...
¡°I already explained what happened. The vine¡ª¡±
¡°¡ª¡®the vine grew.¡¯ Yeah, that¡¯s what plants do, you ass!¡±
Pari sniffed again. This might be a problem. She tugged on Gabby-friend¡¯s shirt.
¡°I don¡¯t need your ¡®explanations¡¯!¡± Gabby-friend continued. Her voice was one step below a holler as she gesticulated passionately while ignoring Pari¡¯s tugs. ¡°What I need is for you to not mess up in the first place! There¡¯s far too much riding on your whole stupid, crazy ritual for mistakes! And, frankly, I don¡¯t think you appreciate just how important it is that we win this stupid crap!¡±
¡°Gabby-friend!¡± Pari tugged more, but her friend was just too worked up to notice.
Gabby-friend pointed emphatically at Ruddy. ¡°I will be taking him out of this blasted forest, one way or another! He is too important for me to give up if we lose this dumb race! You understand?! I don¡¯t care if I have to kill ten Stragmans or ten thousand, he will be leaving this forsaken place with me whether you like it or not! So, if you don¡¯t want that to happen, then you¡¯d better stop making excuses and figure out a solution to this issue while we still have a bloody chance!¡±
¡°I am not leaving until you¡¯ve met my terms, and you are not going to slaughter people if you want my cooperation!¡± Rudra snapped.
¡°Shut it, Mister Box! We both know that if push comes to shove, you can¡¯t stop me from taking you out of this place.¡±
¡°Famous last words. You still haven¡¯t even told me what¡¯s so damned important that you¡¯re bothering with this at all!¡±
¡°There¡¯s no way I¡¯d tell you with him right¡ª¡± Pari jumped up and grabbed Gabby-friend¡¯s hair, hanging from it with her full weight. ¡°¡ªOW! WHAT, PARI?!¡±
¡°Bugs,¡± Pari informed her.
¡°Huh?¡±
¡°Bugs coming.¡±
¡°What bugs? I don¡¯t see any¡ª¡±
An insect as tall as a man crawled up over the ledge before Gabby-friend could finish her sentence about how she didn¡¯t see it. Wide as it was tall and three times as long and encased in mottled brown-purple chitin, the bug aggressively chittered and hissed at the group. Compared to many of the creatures Pari had seen in the forest, she found the formidableness of its appearance rather lacking, but that didn¡¯t mean it was harmless. Each of its six long legs ended in clawed, two-toed feet, while a long, thick, and sharp armored proboscis jutted downward from its mouth.
The insect began to charge, only to find a blade bisecting its head before it could take a second step forward. It collapsed, lifeless, its various bodily fluids running out over the nearby bark and sparking Pari¡¯s interest.
Pari didn¡¯t make her move yet, however, choosing instead to stay put and rummage through her sack for the appropriate candle.
¡°That wasn¡¯t so bad,¡± Gabby-friend said.
A nearby chirp came in response, followed by a great many more. One bug crawled up behind the body of the last one, while a second appeared further down. A third appeared from the ledge of the ceiling, then a fourth. More and more insects crawled into view, tens of hissing, angry, proboscis-armed creatures arriving each moment.
Gabby-friend took a step back. ¡°W-wha?¡±
Pari didn¡¯t know why Gabby-friend was so surprised. She¡¯d said bugs, not bug, after all. Their myriad scents had been growing stronger for a few long moments before she¡¯d been able to get them to listen to her.
With a chorus of hisses, the scene exploded into a frenzy of chaos and violence. Insects swarmed towards them from left and right, above and below, rushing in with seemingly little regard for their own survival. Gabby-friend moved to the right, her giant black blade a blur of slicing and dicing. Yet, it seemed as if two bugs would appear for each one she chopped apart.
In the center, Cappy-friend squatted down with his palms on the ground. Thick brown spears of bark emerged from the ground, skewering two nearby bugs. More spears grew out in a line, forming a small fence of sorts about fifteen paces long cutting off the marauding insects from her and Cappy-friend. The man wobbled slightly for a moment before pulling out two long fang-shaped knives¡ªmade from actual fangs, if her nose led her correctly¡ªand began stabbing through the barrier, aiming for eyes and other vulnerable spots.
Ruddy, on the other hand, was not faring so well on the left side. When she looked over, he was on his back, hands wrapped around a bug¡¯s proboscis as it tried to jam it into his chest. With a grunt, he tore the sharp, armored tube off the creature¡¯s mouth and stabbed the point into its head before shoving the writhing insect off him. Climbing to his feet, he kicked the bug¡¯s twitching corpse off the ledge, knocking two others off with it. Still, that left many more to come, and Ruddy¡¯s improvised weapon lacked in comparison to those of the others.
Finally, after several moments of blind searching, Pari¡¯s questing fingers wrapped around something long, thin, and waxy, and she pulled it out with great anticipation. It was the first time she¡¯d be able to see her new candlecandle in action outside her testing ground, after all. Inspired by something Sofie called a ¡°Roman candle¡±, the candlecandle was a revolutionary concept in candlemaking design. All this time, half of the difficulty with bangcandles and boomcandles was getting the candle to the desired location and then not being in that same location a few breaths later. Despite years of practice, Pari still could not throw very far¡ªstupid tiny arms! Now, however, she had a better solution. Why throw the candle when you make another candle to throw the candle for you? It was such an ingenious yet obvious solution that she had no idea how she had never thought of it on her own.
With a snap of her fingers, Pari lit the wick and pointed the lit end towards the massing insects on her left side. The wick burned serenely for two breaths as the flame worked its way through the very thin shell of blue-headed bumper beetle wax covering the string. This was to give the candle lighter time to take aim before the candle activated. Once the flame touched the wick proper, the flame raced down the line like a three-toed spotted lizard streaking for a hiding hole at the first sign of a shadow from above. This was thanks to the burn-fast juice she¡¯d soaked the wick in before assembling this work of art. Made of a special mixture of ground pearmara seeds, underwood sap, water, and just a drop of her saliva, the burn-fast juice sucked the fire down into the candle proper in a flash.
Once inside the candle, the flame passed by and lit a second wick¡ªthis one not treated with burn-fast juice¡ªwhich connected to the first of the inner candles. The flame then scorched its way along a tight spiral that wrapped around the sides of the inner candle. This was to help free the inner candle from any sticking, and more importantly, to catalyze the reaction between the two powders encasing the inner candle. One powder was made from ground jecki petals, a common flowering weed found around most of Eterium, which were then dried under low heat until brittle. The other came from a moss found largely on the trunks of yellow-barked kermith trees in Otharia, dried, ground, and then soaked in a solution of water and eephim root, then dried again. Apart, neither of them did much, but when combined and exposed to heat, they created what Pari had named ¡°stick slime¡±, a thick ooze that did little in a container but turned quite sticky almost immediately upon exposure to air. The newly formed stick slime would coat the outside of the inner candle and then adhere it to the target after it was launched.
Following its spiral, the flame descended further, terminating at a very thin disk of Pari¡¯s trusty bangcandle formula, which served as the thrower in this candle-throwing candle. It had taken a bit of work to find just the right amount of throwing. She¡¯d initially tried with a super-thin layer of boomcandle, but no matter how small of an amount she used, the boom would shatter the outer candle¡¯s casing. Too much bangcandle would do the same or crack it, but after some trial and error, Pari had found the level she needed.
The ignition sliver lit and the candle kicked in her hands, smacking the butt end into her sternum and knocking her back a step, but she managed to keep it pointed where she wanted. A muffled bang rang out as a small cylinder shot from the lit end. It zipped across the compressed battlefield towards the thirty or more hissing, shrieking insects slowly cornering Ruddy by the leaking vine, and smacked into the side of one with a little ¡°plap¡± that she wouldn¡¯t have been able to hear over the noise had she not been listening for it. A half a breath later and...
BOOM!
The small projectile¡ªa much smaller and weaker boomcandle, but still a boomcandle¡ªlit up with a delightful flash and crash, instantly reducing the creature to pulp. The shockwave ripped outward and pulverized the flanks or heads of three more unlucky attackers, killing them as well and sending their dying bodies crashing through the crowd.
¡°Hee...¡±
Pari shifted her aim elsewhere in the crowd and the candle launched its second payload with another bang, followed by another messy and spectacular boom.
¡°Heehee...¡±
Bang! BOOM!
¡°Heeheeheehee¡ª¡±
Bang! BOOM!
¡°¡ªheeheeheeheehee¡ª¡±
Bang! BOOM!
Bang! BOOM!
Bang! BOOM!
¡°¡ªheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee¡ª¡±
The mass of insects swarming Ruddy was now a pale shadow of its former self. At least eight in ten of the bugs had been converted to little more than broken shells and gunky stains covering the floor, wall, and ceiling of their little crack. Even without a real weapon, Pari figured that he would be able to take care of the rest of them for the moment. She swiveled right somewhat, taking aim at some insectoid raiders closer by who were trying to get around Cappy-friend¡¯s barricade while his back was turned. With a wide, toothy grin on her joyful face, she pointed her candle toward the nearest one.
Bang! BOOM!
A spray of blood and bile struck her, coating her left side from head to toe with liquefied bug viscera. Her grin widened and she giggled ever harder, her spirit singing with delight. Candles were the best! Explosions were the best! Climbing this tree with friends was the best! Life was just the best!
Bang! BOOM!
Bang! BOOM!
Bang! BOOM!
After ten shots, the candlecandle finally fell silent, depleted. She tossed it towards the back¡ªno sense in wasting the remaining wax¡ªand rummaged through her sack, looking for the second of the three she¡¯d made before the climb. It was only after she found it and pulled it out did she realize that her surroundings had fallen silent. Looking about, she realized that the fight had come to a sudden but conclusive end.
To the right, countless slashed and sliced bodies littered the area. Gabby-friend stood among them, red mist wafting from her body as she looked back Pari¡¯s way, her body covered head to toe in various bodily fluids. Cappy-friend in the center, meanwhile, looked almost untouched. Far fewer dead insects could be found here, but each looked to have been killed far more precisely, with only a few stab wounds on each, most around the head. He was also looking in her direction. Finally, off to the left, a bleeding but intact Ruddy was busy punting the last still-breathing bug off the tree. She was no body expert like Grandfather, but none of his wounds looked worse than deep scratches. He also was looking her way for some reason.
¡°Again! Again!¡± Pari exclaimed, hopping up and down with excitement.
¡°I¡¯ve had enough fun for a while, sweetie,¡± Gabby-friend replied, plopping down against the wall a few steps away. She groaned as she tried to wipe her face with her hand but found her hand just as dirty as the rest of her.
¡°What... in the world... was that?!¡± Ruddy gasped out between pants.
Both of them stared the question at Cappy-friend, who shrugged and shook his head almost aggressively back. ¡°How am I supposed to know?¡±
¡°No?¡± Gabby-friend pressed.
¡°She never mentioned anything about swarms of predatory bugs attacking around this area, no. I have no idea what happened here.¡±
¡°Nya?¡± Pari had not expected them to all be so clueless. She¡¯d thought it obvious, not just from the scents she was picking up but from the insects¡¯ forms themselves. ¡°Bugs come because bugs smell vine juice,¡± she told them, pointing towards Gabby-friend¡¯s still-leaking gash.
Gabby-friend¡¯s expression tightened into one of chagrin, while a flash of recognition passed over Cappy-friend¡¯s eyes.
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¡°Of course!¡± He smacked his forehead with the heel of a palm, a smile creeping onto his face. ¡°I should have realized it earlier! I do know what these are!¡±
¡°Yeah?¡± Rudra snorted. ¡°What are they, then?¡±
¡°She mentioned offhandedly once that there were insects like this around here. They were peaceful and never went near her, however, so I didn¡¯t put it together until now. She said they would use their ¡®straws¡¯¡ªthat¡¯s what she called them, straws¡ªto pierce the Violet Infant and suck their meals from it. They must feed off the vine¡¯s blood! The smell of it coming from here must have driven them into a frenzy and they viewed us as competition for their prize!¡±
¡°That¡¯s great and all, but why are you so happy about it?¡± Ruddy grumbled. ¡°It would have been nice to know beforehand, but it doesn¡¯t help us much at all after the fact.¡±
¡°Oh, but it does, you see?¡± Cappy-friend hesitated for a moment. ¡°No, you wouldn¡¯t see. I forgot to mention the important part. The reason she brought these things up at all, even though they were so inconsequential to her climbs, was to complain that they could walk on the vines while she couldn¡¯t! If we knew how they did that, we¡¯d be able to climb past the Violet Infant without a problem! And look!¡± He gestured emphatically about the surrounding area. ¡°We have as many of their feet as we need to figure out how they do what they do.¡±
Gabby-friend coughed. ¡°We¡¯d still need to figure it out, though. That might take forever.¡±
¡°You wanted a solution; here¡¯s your solution. I suggest we get on it quickly while we still have a chance at success.¡±
¡°But, how?¡±
These bugs could stick to the slippery vine? Interesting... but how? Pari withdrew one of her Grandfather-bone knives and¡ªafter wiping her slick, bug-juice-covered hands¡ªsawed off the foot from a nearby dismembered leg. The clawed appendage was quite large; if she stuck the bottom of it against her front, it was large enough that it could nearly wrap around her whole torso. Still, for something of that size, it was surprisingly light. Then again, it was from an insect, even ones so enlarged at these. Insect parts were simply like that, once the good, fun juices had dribbled out, at least. Turning the leg side downward, she confirmed that this piece was, indeed, almost empty. All that remained were some muscles stuck to the inside of the joint chitin and a few thin tube structures running from the leg into the foot before then splitting into smaller tubes for each claw.
So... how and where did this foot do its vine-grabbing cool stuff? She tottered over to the vine and placed the sole of the foot against the hard, waxy, almost frictionless outer casing. It slid off without gaining purchase, like everything else.
¡°What¡¯s she doing now?¡± Ruddy asked softly.
¡°Figuring this out for us, I think,¡± Gabby-friend replied.
¡°We should do... something.¡±
¡°Like what?¡± Cappy-friend scoffed. ¡°As much as it pains me to admit it, she might be our best hope.¡±
¡°We¡¯re adults. We shouldn¡¯t just sit here and rely on a child.¡±
¡°You sure did a lot of relying on her just a few moments ago,¡± Cappy-friend pointed out.
Pari could practically hear Ruddy¡¯s scowl. ¡°Shut it.¡± A moment later, he grunted. ¡°Agh, my ears won¡¯t stop ringing.¡±
Pari inspected the foot again, holding it real close to her nose for some extra-good sniffage. Was that...? Yes, she could smell something faint coming from certain spots on the bottom, but not the whole foot. Whatever it was, it was so weak that she couldn¡¯t even detect it when holding it a full arm¡¯s length away. Bringing the bottom up to her eyes, she squinted hard at them, hoping to find some sort of clue. It took her a few moments to notice the tiny, nearly imperceptible holes dotting the chitin, only one around the center of each joint section.
Taking her knife, she started trying to wedge the blade into a joint. It took a little work, but after a while, she was able to pop off a single section on both ends. After cutting through the muscle and tubage, she held the insect equivalent of a phalanx in her hands. Sure enough, hidden inside the claw piece was a small, shriveled gland. Reaching in with her child-sized fingers, she pulled it out. It didn¡¯t look like anything special¡ªjust a little lump, like most any gland. When she gave it a squeeze, however, it puffed out a minuscule puff of orange mist, which she promptly inhaled. Finally, she¡¯d gotten a proper whiff of the odor she¡¯d been chasing. She quickly analyzed it down to the finest detail, taking in its bittermintysavorycitrusystalesweet in all its glory.
She squeezed it again, but smelled little; it seemed it only had one puff¡¯s worth left in it. That was fine. She never forgot a smell, especially not one like this. Harvesting the contents of these glands would take too long, and even then, she didn¡¯t know if there would be enough for them all to climb. It sounded like the vines went pretty far.
That left producing a copycat substance as the best option¡ªa fairly simple matter, really. Reproducing this exact chemical would take time and effort, but the odds that she needed to recreate the entire scent were very low. She¡¯d learned long ago that most chemicals only required some portion of their scent to accomplish a single function. For example, she¡¯d found a blue sourripesaltypeppery vine sap not ten days ago that, when mixed with several fairly common ingredients, would make the candle spray out a slick, noxious-smelling slime that refused to burn, the odor of which made Gabby-friend and the others less happy. So, Pari had recreated the pieces of the scent profile, testing each to see if that was the part that would give her the heat but not the smoke. After several experiments, she found that succeeded with a powder that matched the ripesalty features of the original exactly while lacking the sourpeppery that led to the smoke. The result: a new and improved version of a candle variety she had dubbed the slipperycandle, now with a slipping agent that wouldn¡¯t light the area on fire like the older grease-based ones too often did. It had been so difficult to design the old versions in a way that wouldn¡¯t just result in flaming grease getting thrown everywhere¡ªthat was a job for oilcandles, not slipperycandles! With this new formula, she wouldn¡¯t accidentally set the area on fire if she used one!
The question was, which parts of the bittermintysavorycitrusystalesweet were needed to let them adhere to this stupid vine and which could she do without? To really figure that one out, she needed to study not only the gland¡¯s chemical but the vine¡¯s coating, as well to see how the puzzle pieces fit together. There was just one problem...
¡°Gabby-friend...¡± she whined.
¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± Gabby-friend asked, slowly walking closer.
Pari couldn¡¯t help but notice how, now that the action was gone, her friend stepped hesitantly, keeping one hand on the inside wall of bark at all times. The woman tried to hide it from her face, but anybody could see the tightness in her movements, while Pari could also smell the terror she was radiating from ten thousand paces. Gabby-friend¡¯s fear of highness brought Pari sadness. She didn¡¯t like seeing her friend so constantly on the verge of breaking down through sheer panic and fear.
It was a serious problem, and Sofie-sis had told her once that friends help friends with their problems. But, what to do? Pari had tried to help with her specially formulated scent-releasing candles, and while those had helped some, they were a temporary half-measure at best. Like a candle flame lighting the darkness, they could only accomplish so much, and their benefit didn¡¯t last once they were gone. Pari needed to find something bigger, something stronger and more permanent. She only had to think of it first.
The thing about Gabby-friend¡¯s problem was that it didn¡¯t even make sense! No fall could actually hurt Gabby-friend¡ªnothing could permanently hurt Gabby-friend, as far as Pari understood it. She¡¯d personally watched the woman get her head caved in and stand up again moments later. Word was that Gabby-friend had even survived being turned to ashes by Grandfather himself! Pari had not been there to witness such a blasphemous event, but Sofie-sis and Arly-sis wouldn¡¯t lie to her, right?
Any way Pari looked at it, Gabby-friend had absolutely no reason to be like this. This was not like Pari¡¯s perfectly understandable and well-founded fear of the evil, all-consuming roaring suction beast. Pari¡¯s fear was grounded in reality, while Gabby-friend¡¯s was not. If Gabby-friend could only understand this, then everything would be fixed, surely! But how to make her understand it?
Gaaaahhhh! Thinking people things was so hard sometimes! Pari shook her head. This wasn¡¯t the time for such thoughts, anyway. She had vines to cut¡ªor more accurately, get her friend to cut.
At Pari¡¯s request, Gabby-friend took Pari¡¯s bone knife and sawed off a piece of the vine from its wounded area. As she did, Pari returned to her sack and set up her usual equipment¡ªthe molds, beakers, distillers, and all the rest. Upon receipt of the vine sample, she settled down to work this all out.
Her sample was rather large, being long and wide enough to cover her lap with a bit extra sticking out over the sides. Largely rectangular with a rounded top, the shape reminded Pari of the square-ish breads the bakers of Begale would bake in square pans. How was that city doing these days? Her short time there had been lots of fun, especially all the running on rooftops.
The first thing that Pari noticed was that the outer coating was a lot thinner than it had first appeared, being maybe as thick as the width of two of her fingers. To her surprise, when she prodded the translucent white shell on top, it suddenly slid off the rest of the sample. Picking it up¡ªa harder task than it sounded, given how slippery it was¡ªshe plopped it back onto the rest of the plant flesh and slid it back and forth. Against her initial assumptions, it seemed that the vine had no way to stick to its own protective coating. It must be held in place by its shape and nothing else, Pari surmised. Well, there went her backup plan in case the whole insect route turned out to be a lost cause. At least it meant she probably didn¡¯t need to pay much attention to the rest of the plant.
Shoving the non-coating part of the plant off her lap, she balanced the side of the coating on her legs and gave it the once-over. Mostly clear with a milky-white tint, the shell was surprisingly light. Once again, she tried scratching it with her nails, but the smooth, almost waxy substance refused to catch in any way. She sniffed it but found not even a trace of a scent, nor one on her fingernails. This continued to be utterly mystifying to her. Everything had a smell! Even metal objects had a faint odor if you sniffed them up close! For this to be utterly odorless meant that even the air slipped right off of it!
Well, if she couldn¡¯t get a smell the normal way, then there was only one solution: when in doubt, burn things. Pari pulled out a small mesh ¡®cup¡¯ and set it aside. Picking up her knife again, she tried to cut into the edge. This, too, proved to be a challenge. Her blade kept slipping off and nearly cutting her. Eventually, she had to ask Gabby-friend for help again. The Earthling¡¯s great blade proved to be up to the task once again, carving off a thin sliver that Pari immediately dropped into the mesh container. Placing a boringcandle¡ªa candle variety so named because it refused to do anything fun, interesting, or exciting; it just burned like candles other people made, except for a very long time¡ªbeneath the sample shaving, she lit the wick and waited.
Everything in the world had a smell, and that included Pari¡¯s candles and the flame they made. This did not pose an issue, as Pari knew the signature aroma of her candles perhaps better than she knew anything. Removing that odor from her sense was as easy as meat pie. She was practically just as familiar with fire as she was with her candles, not just in how it smelled but how it altered other smells. Fire could take a smell and twist it, or add to it, or sometimes break it into pieces, but she was far too experienced to fall for its tricks. With only a few sniffs, she could reconstruct the original, not-on-fire smell of almost anything by now.
For a while, long enough to make Pari start to worry, the coating sliver did nothing even with the flame reaching up and licking its bottom. Just as panicked thoughts began to enter her mind, she noticed the substance starting to droop, the lower extremities beginning to spread out over the thin metal mesh. It was melting! Yet, even now, she could detect not a single odor wafting to her nostrils except the fire itself. The coating spread and spread until it covered the whole of the container. To her relief, perhaps because the holes were so thin, it did not leak through the bottom. Soon, the sliver had melted entirely, becoming nothing more than a small white-ish circle at the bottom of her container. Still... no smell.
Just as Pari was about to give up, she noticed a sudden ripple in the melted circle. With an audible whoosh, the entire piece lit up in blue-white flame. Pari eagerly inhaled, her eyes going wide with shock at the bevy of aromas. It all made sense now. This was an incredibly complex lattice of aroma, with hundreds of interconnecting pieces that would combine to form a wall of sorts if arrayed correctly¡ªa wall that would reject practically all other smells, for they would find no holes in which to stick. But, no wall was perfect. If she was envisioning this complex arrangement correctly, there remained a few specific gaps where very specifically shaped smells could fit inside. Not surprisingly, one of those smells was the smell from the insect¡¯s gland¡ªthe mintystale parts, specifically.
She began to mentally run down the list of ingredients she had on hand, letting her intuition, guided by years of experience, lead her along the way. Motitha bark was close to the specific minty she needed, but not quite. Remma fluid? No, close, but too sour. Yrri dew, however, once combined with ebbit stomach acid and then burned, would be just the minty she needed. As for the stale, that was easy! She could get that with green uppon powder, no problem. The only issue was that the two ingredients, with their minty and stale smells, hated each other and would refuse to merge into the combination mintystale final product that she was looking for. What she needed was a mommy ingredient, an extra piece to hold the squabbling minty and stale together in a warm hug so they would get along and stop fighting. However, the mommy ingredient had to hold them the right way, facing each other, or the end result wouldn¡¯t have the right shape.
Pari had tried before to describe all the details of smells to others, but each time, she found that she lacked the words to truly get what she meant across. When it came to smells, each one was different, even though there were a thousand different saltysweet aromas out there, for example. What made each saltysweet smell different? It was hard for her to explain, but her mind liked to conceive of each of them as having a different ¡®shape¡¯ when she envisioned them. Much like how two sides of a Many could look exactly the same but hold their bodies in different positions, so too could the salty and the sweet. Arly-sis had given her a long, quiet look after Pari had shared this wisdom with her. Pari understood; such profound knowledge took some time to fully comprehend.
Luckily, she had just the thing today that she needed to mimic the spell shape she was going for. Crystallized rusted nettle gum, when mixed with a bit of her spit and exposed to flame, would grab both the minty and the stale and hold them in just the right way to shape the smell the same as the insect gland. It would also help adhere the resulting chemical to one¡¯s skin¡ªvery important! All she had to do was mix them up, add a misting agent and spray propellant, and... her test candle was ready to go!
Pari wasted no time setting her creation alight. Once the flame dug into the wax, her creation began to spray out a fine mist, of which Pari took a tentative sniff. She grinned. Just what she¡¯d wanted, as usual! Sticking her hands into the small cloud, Pari let the mist coat her hands thoroughly. She opened and closed them, feeling the very slight stickiness largely provided by the rusted nettle gum, before sprinting back to the vine. She slapped her palms against it and giggled as she found her hands somehow clinging to the plant¡¯s smooth exterior despite seemingly having nothing to grab onto. She pulled herself up off her feet, letting her whole body pull against her hands, but felt no slippage. Unsticking a hand ended up being a little harder to manage, but once she got the trick of removing it by rolling her hand through a quick rotation of her wrist, she was scampering up the green menace with ease.
¡°Well, what do you know...¡± Ruddy muttered to himself.
¡°Great job, Pari!¡± Gabby-friend applauded.
Cappy-friend laughed. ¡°Every time I think I can¡¯t be more surprised than before... Just who are you, little one?¡±
¡°Pari is Pari!¡±
¡°You don¡¯t say,¡± Caprakan chuckled. ¡°That¡¯s what I get for not phrasing my question better, I suppose.¡±
¡°Pari make more candles super fast!¡± Pari declared as she hopped off the vine.
Sitting down, she delved into her task, a small, unimportant part of her mind taking in the conversation nearby.
¡°I don¡¯t like how much you¡¯re prying into her past,¡± Gabby-friend told Cappy-friend, her voice dark with foreboding.
¡°Curiosity is forbidden, now?¡±
¡°Not all people get to open all doors. Why are you so interested in her, anyway?¡±
¡°Why shouldn¡¯t I be? You just saw what she did as well as I. Didn¡¯t even take her a quarter of an hour.¡±
¡°No, that¡¯s not going to fly. You¡¯ve been doing this since the start. Why? And it had better be a very good reason.¡±
There came a pause, followed by a melodramatic sigh. ¡°What can I say? Mysteries intrigue me. I first met her a long time ago, you know. Far earlier than you, I¡¯d wager.¡±
This seemed to put Gabby-friend off-balance.
¡°Surprised? She first introduced herself a few years ago by blowing one of our prime housing platforms to splinters. I even used a few of her creations in my assault on the damned Drayhadans. Still, I thought her an alchemist prodigy and left it at that. There are many talented people in this world, after all. Then, I quickly found myself with far more pressing concerns.¡±
He paused for a moment, perhaps reflecting on his past.
¡°When you first came to us to bargain for a person¡¯s revival, I never imagined it would be for her. When I found out, I couldn¡¯t understand it. So, I started to look into who she was, beyond the child that I knew.¡±
¡°Seriously? Aren¡¯t you one of the rulers here? Didn¡¯t you have more important things to do?¡± Gabby-friend asked heatedly.
Another sigh. ¡°Alas, I did not. From the day of my imprisonment by the Esmae until relatively recently, I had very little to do at all. For a time, I could not even move my body, leaving me with nowhere to go but within my mind. Through much of that and even past its end, I lost myself in bitterness, hatred, and self-pity. Any distraction became a ray of light in the gloom, no matter how fleeting. So, yes, I delved into this oddity, if only to momentarily save myself from myself. And, as I found scattered mention of this child in old intelligence reports and as the more focused reports I requested came in later, I discovered a little beastkin-girl-shaped enigma.
¡°No past to speak of, as if she simply appeared one day with the coming of the dawn. Capable of strange alchemy unlike anything anybody has ever heard of. So well-known among the Eterian military¡ªor what remains of it, at least¡ªthat they have their own nickname for her. You, of all people, are well aware of just how notable one must be to earn a nickname.¡±
Gabby-friend grumbled unhappily, which didn¡¯t make much sense. Who wouldn¡¯t want a nickname? Pari loved nicknames so much, she gave them out to as many people as she could!
¡°Hey, if you two have time to chat, at least get packed and fix the rope, will you?¡± Ruddy butted in.
There came the sound of the pair rummaging about, heeding Ruddy¡¯s words, while Cappy-friend continued without missing a beat.
¡°So, I look at this girl, and I ask, where did she come from? Where did she learn such a craft? Why did she first appear alongside my partner¡¯s childhood idol of all people, fleeing from bounty hunters? And, perhaps most notable... look at her; you see the way her tail waggles and twitches, the way her ears shout every emotion to even the most passive observer? Even disconnected from their homeland, her parents would never have neglected to teach their child the fundamental body control we all learn as soon as we can walk. But no, her lack of manners and control are so stark that I would call her nearly feral, as if she was raised by a pack of animals in the woods. There is a story there, behind it all¡ªthere must be. Aren¡¯t you curious? Surely you¡¯ve noticed all this about her and more. Have you never asked yourself these same questions?¡±
¡°A bit,¡± Gabby-friend begrudgingly admitted after a moment. ¡°Still, she¡¯s not some rare beetle stuck in a box for you to study. You¡¯ll get your answers if and when she chooses to give them and not a second earlier, or I will make sure you will regret it.¡±
He chuckled once more. ¡°Don¡¯t get me wrong; while it is hard to resist my curiosity when the object of that curiosity is right beside me, I have no desire to face the Monster¡¯s wrath while there are so many important tasks still left undone. This is just a personal fascination I indulged in to help buttress my flagging sanity. Even if nothing more comes of it, good things have already come to pass from my investigations.
¡°I found one answer, you see. Little Pari¡¯s family did come from Stragma, it turns out. The Clansnarls were a small family some thirty-five years ago who were persecuted by corrupt magistrates bought off by their business rivals. When their entreaties to the magistrates¡¯ superior fell on deaf ears, the magistrates struck back by colluding to slowly grind the family into dust, cutting off any avenues for them to thrive. Left with no better option, they left the forest in search of better opportunities elsewhere. The magistrates, however, were all still employed¡ªpromoted several times over, even. Dragging them through the mud was... bittersweet. At least I can say that there is a bit less corruption rotting our nation now than a season ago.¡±
¡°So, that¡¯s why she grew up out there.¡±
¡°As much as I would love to deny it, the vast majority of beastkin living outside the forest come from families chased out for one reason or another against their will over the centuries. Some were rightly exiled, but I would hazard a guess that the great majority of them were not, their stories lost to time. This one, at least, was redeemed, if only slightly.¡±
¡°All done!¡± Pari announced, holding out twelve small, freshly crafted candles.
¡°Good, let¡¯s get moving,¡± an impatient Ruddy said. ¡°We¡¯re burning time we can¡¯t afford.¡±
After taking a few moments to show the others how to work their candles, the group continued upward. Able to cross the vines with ease, they made great progress, with Gabby-friend only falling once. As they went, the vines grew thicker and thicker, slowly taking over more and more of the bark¡¯s area and often not just running through cracks but winding right over them. In these cases, Pari¡¯s new candles really showed their worth. Along with the increased vines came stems and leaves growing from the vines. The smallest one being over forty paces wide, the leaves offered great resting places once they applied her candle spray to their feet as well, though Gabby-friend hated walking along the stems to get to them. At one point, Ruddy had needed to hoist her over his shoulder and carry her there.
Partly because of that and partly just because he was the person whose feet she was always looking at as they climbed, Pari found her thoughts turning to Ruddy as the day wore on. The man confused her. He always seemed gruff and disgruntled and... frowny. Pari didn¡¯t usually like frownies; they were always telling her not to do things. However, Gabby-friend had said that Ruddy was the reason she could see Grandfather and everybody else again, so she couldn¡¯t dislike him even if she wanted to. It would still be nice if he wasn¡¯t so grumpy even though, according to Gabby-friend at least, this whole climb was all his idea. If he hated his own idea, why had he suggested it in the first place?
Maybe he was just in a bad mood? He probably missed Teppy a lot. Pari could tell they spent a lot of time together, given how much of her she could smell on the him. Pari understood it. Pari missed Sofie-sis and Arly-sis and Sammy-friend, too. But still, would it hurt him to lighten up a little bit?
Perhaps he was just standoffish because he was shy? Maybe he just didn¡¯t realize how neat he looked? Between the eyepatch and the peppery beard, he didn¡¯t just look neat, he looked cool! Maybe it was just her, though. Others sometimes acted weird when she complimented their style. Hey, she couldn¡¯t help that people like Sofie-sis couldn¡¯t understand what true style was! All she could do was¡ª
What.
Was.
THAT?!
Pari¡¯s eyes went wide and she swayed, nearly losing her footing as her brain did backflips. The wind had shifted and a new smell¡ªno, a fragrance¡ªhad found its way to her nostrils for the first time. It smelled so incredible that she didn¡¯t know what to do. Her body nearly acted on its own as she sniffed again, deeper this time, taking in all facets of the fragrance¡¯s sweet, floral aroma. No, wait, aromas! This was not one scent but two she realized, working in tandem with each other to create an intoxicating sensation that threatened to sweep her off her feet. Her heart thundered in her chest, her breath came hot and quick. She needed more than anything to sniff the source of this scent up close. But, where was it coming from?
Pari¡¯s gaze urgently swept over the ¡®trunkscape¡¯ above her, her eyes latching on to the one and only place it could be coming from. Up ahead, more than a thousand paces above them, hung a gigantic, bowl-shaped, violet flower. Facing directly downward, it shimmered in the sunlight, beckoning to her. She needed to get to that flower¡ªneeded it¡ªmore than she¡¯d needed anything in her entire life, but what was she to do about that? She was tied to the others, with her pack around Ruddy¡¯s shoulders. She wouldn¡¯t be able to outclimb them if she squirmed loose and went alone, especially not Ruddy and his long limbs. Plus, climbing with her bag would be really hard. It was tough enough for her to run around on the ground with it, and that alone had taken her a lot of practice to get down with her small body. Doing that but upwards would be dicey, to say the least. All she could do, it seemed, was wait.
What followed was the most torturous period of Pari¡¯s life as they crept ever closer to those petals of promise. She had no idea how long it took¡ªan hour? Three?¡ªbut it felt like an eternity, a terrible eternity wherein she could smell those intoxicating aromas with each and every breath. With every inhale, the fragrances grew stronger, and with it, her need grew to match, until it took everything she had to keep from abandoning everything and rushing forward on her own. She couldn¡¯t do that; she needed her equipment to get lots of samples!
Finally, at long last, the group made it to the base of the flower¡¯s stem... and bypassed it entirely, going around it. Oh no! Pari¡¯s mind raced, trying desperately to come up with some sort of stratagem but coming up empty. There was only one route she could see that would work, one she was utterly loath to do. Still, she didn¡¯t see any other option.
Pari would have to be bad. She would have to lie.
¡°Gabby-friend, stop!¡± she cried out. ¡°Pari tired! Pari need rest!¡±
Her cry jolted her friend from her muttering trance. Perhaps disoriented, Gabby-friend looked down toward the source of the voice and saw the open world below her. Pari could see in her eyes as her horror increased tenfold and her body tightened even more. A loud crunch announced to the world that Gabby-friend had just pulverized her handholds to dust.
Pari felt a momentary twinge of guilt as the Earthling fell once again, screaming at the top of her lungs as she went like always. Pari told herself that this was necessary to get onto the stem, even if she didn¡¯t like it.
A few moments later, the group set foot on the fifty-pace-wide base of the flower¡¯s stem. Ruddy and Cappy-friend looked around, while Gabby-friend faced the vine-covered trunk and pressed her trembling body and forehead against it, purposely avoiding looking anywhere but right in front of her. Her chest heaved in and out with each shuddering breath, and once again Pari experienced a moment of guilt and regret. That, too, passed, for Gabby-friend was not the only person breathing heavily.
Pari¡¯s breaths came quick and fast, bringing in more of this seemingly all-pervasive, heavenly scent combination than she knew how to handle. Her heart raced, her body shivered, and her mind focused only on the glorious fragrance and getting closer to it. Her nose picked up plenty of other smells, but her mind did not register them. They did not matter. Only the flower mattered. It called out to her with each and every inhalation, tantalizing her, but she could not go just yet. She needed to escape her bindings and get her equipment first, but that was proving to be harder than hoped.
¡°We don¡¯t have time to rest,¡± Ruddy insisted. ¡°We just rested a little while back, anyway.¡±
Crud, resting wasn¡¯t going to do the job, it seemed. Pari needed to lie more, lie better.
¡°Pari have to pee real bad!¡± she yelled, hopping up and down while pointing hard towards the top of the flower. ¡°Super bad, lots and lots!¡±
Ruddy groaned. ¡°I¡¯ll handle it.¡±
Perfect.
Pari squirmed out of her rope restraint as Ruddy did the same in a much less frenetic fashion. She grabbed his hand and tugged¡ªif you could call a child pulling ineffectually on the arm of a giant ¡®tugging¡¯¡ªhim down the stem towards the flower proper.
¡°Can¡¯t you go right here?¡± he asked as they moved down the floral rod so wide it could be a bridge.
¡°No! Pari pee alone, away from people!¡±
¡°Fine, let¡¯s hurry up.¡±
They kept walking until they made it all the way to the end of the stem, whereupon the stem curved sharply down and morphed into the flower itself. Ignoring the few upturned sepals, the petals slotted together to form an upside-down bowl. Pari could spot nowhere flat outside the stem itself, as the petals began to curve downward even from the very center. The initially gradual slope quickly became more wall than floor as you moved further out. The petals¡ªthe external ones she could see at least¡ªdid not extend straight down, but rather out at an angle, with each petal overlapping its neighbor on one side and being overlapped on the other. This was key.
¡°Pari need bag!¡± she told her companion.
¡°For what? You collect your pee or something?¡± Ruddy asked with an equal mix of confusion, disbelief, and skepticism.
¡°For cleaning!¡± she replied, thankful that she¡¯d come up with a satisfactory answer fast enough that it wouldn¡¯t seem like she¡¯d had to think about it.
The man tisked but unslung her supplies anyway, placing them on the green ground in front of her. She seized her belongings with both hands, pulling them up against her feet. It took everything she had not to bolt right then and there, but there was still one more step she needed to make sure.
The two of them looked at each other in silence for a moment, accompanied by nothing more than the sound of the wind.
¡°Well? Are you going to pee, or not?¡±
¡°Pari cannot go if people watching.¡±
¡°...fine, just make it fast.¡±
Ruddy turned his back and started walking away. Pari counted to ten before making her move.
One...
Two...
Three...
Fourfivesixseveneightnineten!
Her sack clinked and clanked as she heaved it up over her shoulder. Ruddy glanced back at the sound, but he was now a good five Ruddy-sized steps away, which was too far to stop her as she turned and leapt off the stem. She fell through one of the many large gaps between the sepals and landed atop a petal, her feet slipping out from underneath her and planting her on her butt. She let out a tiny ¡®oof!¡¯ as the landing hit her harder than expected, and before she could climb to her feet, she found herself starting to slide down the petal. Well, that worked, too.
A far-off cry of ¡°Pari, no!¡± found her ears, but she paid it no mind. She focused instead on the upcoming petal overlap where her current slide got covered by its neighbor. There, she could see a small gap of space between the two. This gap was her entry point, as it held the dual features of getting her inside a flower that would otherwise be near impossible to access and being so thin that it would cause any adult to struggle to follow.
Pari reached out with her free hand, bracing for impact as she rushed towards the edge of the overlapping petal. That single petal being large enough that you could fit maybe five whole Grandfathers on it, even its edge was larger than she. At the last second, she had an idea. Instead of trying to hit the side and grab on, she leaned back and slid into the gap, letting her body wedge itself in there. Her momentum ceased almost instantaneously, and she had to fight to keep hold of her precious supplies, but in the end, it all worked out. After flattening out her sack as best she could, she pulled it in with her, turned onto her hands and knees, and began to crawl.
Thanks to the elasticity of the petals making up the bread in her Pari-burger, she didn¡¯t have to work too hard to make progress. The plant flesh squished just enough for her to push ahead, heading slightly up and around towards the inside edge of her floor petal. The scents here hit her like a sledgehammer, threatening to overwhelm her ability to think, but she didn¡¯t need to think, she just needed to crawl and drag her sack alongside as she went.
Finally, after some seemingly long amount of time that Pari was currently unable to mentally measure, her head emerged inside the flower... and what a glorious sight it was. It almost reminded her of a city but upside down. Yes, that was it. It was almost like an inverted Wroetin. The massive towering pistil in the center was like Metal Man¡¯s fortress, with the huge, winding stamens being like the chaotic buildings built around the city¡ªwell, the stamens were far bigger, but the comparison still kind of worked. Meanwhile, a city wall of violet wrapped this little world, shading everything lavender, and everywhere she looked, Pari saw the glint of her prize.
Nectar. Magnificent, wonderful nectar. A thin coating of the stuff lined the roof, but the vast majority of it dripped ever-so-slowly in great big gobs down the many stamens. It was luck that placed one of these stamens not three paces to the side of her exit point. Tying her sack around her shoulder so she had both hands free, she crawled forward and jumped, hitting the side almost spread-eagle with a loud splat. Clear, sticky, gelatinous slime enveloped her, and her very being sang with joy. Pari rubbed her face in it, luxuriating in the delectably sweet taste that filled her mouth and the resplendent aroma that filled her very world.
Ohhhh, this scent! This delicious, iridescent, melodious scent! It was wonder! It was life! It was... only half of what had called her here.
She sniffed again, the urgent need returning as she sought completeness. Down. That¡¯s where the other half was. Down below her, and not too far.
It took some effort to slide down the stamen thanks to the nectar¡¯s stickiness and viscosity making her whole body cling to the stamen¡¯s side, but after a few tries, she was able to work out a way to undulate like a worm and work her way down the shaft. Like all flowers, there, at the bottom of the stamen¡ªor the top, depending on how you looked at it¡ªPari found an anther, one of the flower¡¯s many pollen factories.
Once she landed firmly on the anther, Pari took the largest sniff of her life and immediately fell on her face in an uncontrollable fit of giggles. This was what she¡¯d come all this way for, this transcendent combination of melodious nectar and harmonic pollen that left her unable to do anything more than roll around, coating herself in both substances. The pleasure brought by the glittering, effervescent duet of fragrance engulfed her so completely that she lost herself within it for a time.
Cognitive function returned in a limited capacity sometime later, though Pari used that cognition to choose to simply let herself be. How long had she been here? When had she started purring, or giggling? She had not the answers to these questions, nor did she feel the urge to find them. This here was everything she wanted, everything she needed. This was her world. This was her life, an ebullient existence encased in nectar and pollen like a sugar-dusted pastry¡ªexcept no pastry could ever hold a candle to this feast for the senses.
A pleasing purple encompassed her vision. Scrumptious sweetness with a hint of tart and umami hugged her taste. Her sense of smell was overflowing with this wondrous, sparkling, soothing symphony, this bubble bath for her spirit. Even her senses of touch and hearing were getting in on the action, as her body vibrated pleasingly to the sound of a low rumble growing ever louder.
It wasn¡¯t until that rumble drowned out her giggles that Pari realized that it wasn¡¯t coming from inside her head. No, it was coming from below her... but there was nothing below her but open air. Slowly, she wrung enough body control from her scattered senses to scoot a pace over to the side and look down. What she saw below made her gasp in both shock and delight.
Hovering beneath her was a creature she was more than familiar with. Flower appreciators like herself, she¡¯d always felt a bond with them. They were so friendly and useful! She could follow them to find rare or unusual flowers, and their hives often provided her honey for her candles. It was just that they normally were the size of one of her knuckles, not eighty paces long. Still, that didn¡¯t matter to Pari.
¡°Buzzfriend!¡± she laughed. ¡°Hello, buzzfriend!¡±
The buzzfriend paid her no mind as it hovered closer, its great wings beating so fast they blurred. Instead, it grabbed hold of a nearby anther, flipped itself tummy side up, and began to harvest nectar with its eight huge legs, scraping it off the various stamen and shoveling it into its gaping mouth.
¡°W-woah! Heeheehee!¡± Pari laughed as the anther she lay upon shook and swung violently from the buzzfriend¡¯s actions. Before she could even process the danger, she found herself, sack tied around her shoulder, tumbling off the side. Instead of a long, deadly plummet, however, she plopped against the buzzfriend¡¯s belly, her thick coating of nectar adhering her and her supply sack fast to the great bristly fur lining the beast¡¯s abdomen.
Exhausted, disoriented, and still overflowing with bliss, Pari did not have it in her to struggle free. Any desire to do so vanished a moment later, anyway, when she realized what this fortuitous development meant: she was about to go flying again!
¡°Yaaayyyy!¡± she cheered.
Soon, the buzzfriend, ever so diligent in its work, finished collecting the nectar and released its grip. It, and its passenger, fell away from the blossom before the drone of its wings returned and they flipped right-side up. Pari felt the wind pick up as the buzzfriend flew up past and over the flower.
¡°Wheeeeeeee! Heeheeheeheeheeheehee! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!¡±
Down below, she noticed her three companions all standing atop the flower stem, gazing up at the buzzfriend and her, their mouths agape with awe. She waved to their shrinking forms as her ride quickly gained altitude. Strangely, they did not wave back.
Chapter 136 Part 2
It had been such a long time since Pari had truly flown¡ªMetal Man¡¯s ship didn¡¯t count; lacking the thrill of the open sky and the rush of the wind whipping through your hair, that was more like ¡®floating quickly¡¯ than flying¡ªand she made sure to enjoy every moment of it. Her buzzfriend ride took her on a meandering tour of the trunkside, flying from one huge, violet flower to the next in furtherance of its nectar-collecting mission.
Once it had gotten its fill, it was time to return to the hive. They began to ascend, climbing altitude faster and faster while the tree¡¯s great canopy of massive leaves grew closer and closer. Just how high up was the buzzfriend¡¯s home? She was so much higher than where she¡¯d left the others. Gabby-friend and Ruddy were always talking about how behind they all were. What about using buzzfriends to give them all rides up?
Pari¡¯s body still tingled with the rush of the flower¡¯s scents, though her debilitating giddiness had faded significantly since leaving the blossom. Though she was still covered from head to toe with both pollen and nectar, the smells were no longer as all-pervasive as they had been back there. The wind helped as well, clearing the aromas somewhat and with them, her mind¡ªenough for her to remember that she needed to do something, and fast.
There remained one more reason that she liked buzzfriends: they talked with scents. Pari always felt a bond with creatures that she could talk to using her nose and candles. It was like a secret conversation that only she could hear, and one she could contribute to. By marking herself with what she now thought of as the ¡°friend smell¡±, the buzzfriends never attacked her when she borrowed some honey from their hives. Each hive¡¯s friend smell was a tad bit different from all the others, which meant she usually had to sniff around a buzzfriend or two¡ªor even catch one if needed¡ªbefore she could work out just what the scent was.
That would not be necessary this time, as she could smell the giant buzzfriend¡¯s identifying odor beneath those of the flower¡¯s. All she had to do now was copy it. This was easier said than done, given that she was currently adhered to the belly of a giant flying insect thousands of paces high in the sky, stuck in a tangle of hairs with her sack tied around her neck and shoulder. Still, time was running low. She needed to work and work quickly.
Luckily, this called for one of the simpler candle designs in her repertoire, the spray candle. From marking herself with special buzzfriend smells, to knocking out meanies, to covering hands and feet with special vine-grabbing juice, the spray candle showed its utility time and time again. She¡¯d made so many over the years that she could probably make one in her sleep, so making one with only her left hand, largely blind as she rummaged through her sack by feel and intuition alone, wasn¡¯t so hard.
First, she ran her fingers along the candle molds, looking for one of the several that she¡¯d already lined with wax. Finding one, she pulled it out and held it in her teeth. Then, she began to search for the various needed ingredients, navigating by touch and pulling out things that felt right for identification sniffs when needed. The first thing she didn¡¯t even need to sniff; after years of using it, she¡¯d know the tacky, slightly sticky feeling of her propellant putty anywhere, even in her current semi-lucid state. Her fingers worked through muscle memory alone, lining the bottom and sides with the putty while leaving a space in the middle with her thumb for the rest of the ingredients. The rest took a little bit more effort, but largely involved staples of her kit¡ªthinkler bark, powdered striped wiggle bug shell, and qillow seed, mostly. Each bit she pulled out, sniffed, and added to the mix. All that was left was a little Pari Special, then a quick stir with a finger, followed by inserting the wick and folding the wax around to seal the top. The end result wasn¡¯t the prettiest work, but it would work just fine.
It was fortunate that she finished when she did, as just a few moments later, Pari heard the drone of her buzzfriend¡¯s wings grow from a solo to a band to a chorus. The bright light of the outside air quickly faded to a muted brown, and the air became thick with the many scents of the buzzfriend hive. For a time, it seemed that her buzzfriend ride would be content to land on a wall, but soon, it climbed up over a lip and went horizontal a few moments later.
Pari began to squirm her way free, making sure to light the candle wick with a snap of her fingers as she did. A moment later, she popped out and fell the short drop to the hive chamber floor, giggling uncontrollably while landing awkwardly on her rear with her sack falling on top of her. Her candle chose that moment to spit out a torrent of yellow smoke, and Pari, between her awkward position, frantic laughter, and the dizziness from the fall, just barely managed to point it in her direction. The spray candle quickly gave out, and she let it fall from her grasp¡ªor, perhaps she was simply too inebriated to hold onto it. Intoxicating happiness flowed through her as she watched the chaos of the buzzfriends all around her. They flew, crawled, buzzed, and even danced all over the walls, ceiling, and floor of the huge chamber wherein she lay, performing an invisibly coordinated ballet consisting of hundreds, all somehow moving about without ever getting in each other¡¯s way.
This was so much fun! Life was so much fun!
The lighting within the hive was not exactly bright. Some light filtered through the hive¡¯s thin but strong walls, leaving the interior in a state of perpetual semi-gloom. Even still, she couldn¡¯t help but notice the shadow that fell over her. She looked up to find a buzzfriend looming over her. Its markings were different than most of the buzzfriends she¡¯d seen so far, including the one which had taken her this far.
The buzzfriend waved its antennae around her, so Pari waved back. ¡°Hello, buzzfriend!¡±
The buzzfriend responded by bending its head down and seizing Pari in its mandibles.
¡°Nya!?¡± she gasped in surprise, but while the buzzfriend held her firmly, it did not hurt her. Instead, it shuffled forward through the buzzing mass around it.
¡°Where are we going, buzzfriend?¡± she giggled, but it ignored her. They passed through one chamber, then another, then another still¡ªnone of which Pari would see well stuck between her buzzfriend¡¯s jaws¡ªuntil, at last, they entered somewhere new. Pari still couldn¡¯t see much more than a sliver of the ceiling, but her nose told her that this area smelled somehow different from the other chambers. She couldn¡¯t quite put her finger on it, but then again, she couldn¡¯t put her fingers anywhere but against her sides right now.
Then, suddenly, she could. The buzzfriend¡¯s mandible opened up and she found herself plopped down onto her back. Looking around, she found herself within a small, open space stuck into the side of the chamber, with the back wall behind her flat and shaped like a hexagon. Looking out, she realized that the whole chamber was filled with these hexagonal structures, each of them occupied by a wriggling white larva. It had put her with all the other children! So nice!
Pari spent some amount of time¡ªhow long, she couldn¡¯t really say, not that she really cared, anyway¡ªgiggling and watching the kid buzzfriends wiggle and wriggle in their little homes. Though they were all twice her size or bigger, she thought they looked cute and silly squirming around like that. Still, as time passed, a half-remembered thought grew and grew in the back of her mind. Eventually, it grew large enough to push its way through the fog, whereupon Pari remembered and gasped.
She¡¯d forgotten what she was supposed to be doing! She dug through her sack and pulled out some of her larger empty ingredient containers. Then, she began to fastidiously wipe and scrape every last bit of nectar and pollen off of her. Much of the sticky gunk had rubbed off, but enough of it remained adhered to her body, with a wealth of powdery pollen mixed in, for her to fill four whole containers. It also helped that so much had ended up in her many, many pockets.
Now that almost all of the glorious mixture had been sealed away in airtight containers, Pari¡¯s head began to clear a bit. The scents still lingered on her body and would continue to do so until she took a proper bath, but she could handle it. The occasional whiff that left her momentarily woozy was a far cry from the sensory overload that she¡¯d been adrift within for the last who-knew-how-many hours. She felt much more like her normal self, with all the good and bad that such a statement entailed.
Part of her already missed the all-pervasive happy vibes of the pollen-nectar combination, but she tried her best to pretend she couldn¡¯t hear that part. She could return to that emotional realm later. Right now, she was in the middle of a giant buzzfriend hive! There was so much she wanted to do here. She wanted to explore, and see all the buzzfriends, and find some buzzfriend candle ingredients, and test out some more candle-making recipes using what she found, and¡ª
Candles! She could make candles from the pollen nectar! The thought plowed into her mind like a rampaging jaglioth, batting away any competing ideas. None of the previously mentioned goals warranted consideration anymore; she was too busy thinking about just what the pollen-nectar combination might become with a dollop of what Sofie-sis sometimes referred to as ¡°Pari magic¡±. Should she mist it? Smoke it? Her instincts said misting might provide an enhanced joy, which would be great, but burning and smoking it would do something far more transformative. What, exactly? She couldn¡¯t say, and that excited her.
She had to hold her breath while dealing with the powerful stuff, lest she slip back into the happy too soon. Even then, it still wafted into her nostrils and nearly made her slip. She just managed to seal the top of the small candle before collapsing into a giggle fit that lasted a good few moments.
Satisfied, Pari studied her creation for a moment. Along with the pollen nectar and her ¡°secret sauce¡±, the candle contained a dash of powdered midland-river snail shell. The fine shell powder was almost entirely non-reactant to other ingredients, so it wouldn¡¯t interfere with the intended purpose of most candles, but it did have the useful trait of sucking out some of the good breath gas¡ªSofie-sis called it ¡°oxygen¡±, but that name was stupid and clearly made up¡ªwhen exposed to heat. This helped promote the incomplete burning that Pari desired for a proper smoke candle. Perhaps, later on, she¡¯d try one without the shell just to see, but her nose told her that nothing special would come of it.
Unable to resist her curiosity, Pari set her newest creation on the floor in front of her and lit it. The flame ate away at the wick and wax with great speed, ducking inside the cylinder in the time it took her to take a deep breath. Then... nothing seemed to happen. She waited a moment for the expected smoke, then two. Just when she was ready to label this candle the greatest disappointment since that day Kozak¡¯s had run out of meat pies, the entire container burst apart, releasing a wave of dark purple smoke that enveloped her before she could react.
Pari hacked and coughed as the smoke filled her lungs with tart yet floral fumes. She tried to stand up, but dizziness kept her in one place. The cloud faded quickly, however, and when she had finally rubbed the tears from her eyes, she was surprised to find herself somewhere else.
She stood in a simple wooden room. A large, steaming pot hung over a hearth to her left, the bubbling of its contents singing a steady duet with the crackle of the small fire beneath it. To her right stood a wall set with a large window made of clear glass, through which entered bright afternoon sunlight. A small meadow could be seen through the window, with the rainbow hues of a thick Kutrad forest beginning a few hundred paces further out.
Pari heard a door turning on its hinges behind her and spun around. A portal to the outside world stood wide open, rays of light pouring in and bathing the room in their warm glow. Standing in the middle of those beams, her golden hair and fur radiant, stood a woman.
Pari gasped and leapt forward. ¡°Mother!¡± she cried.
¡°Pari-daughter!¡± Mother replied, squatting down to wrap her up in a warm embrace. She smiled her gorgeous smile as Pari purred up a storm into her chest. ¡°Aw, did you miss me?¡±
¡°Yes!¡±
She chuckled. ¡°I was only gone for a few hours, but I¡¯m always delighted to see you, no matter how long it has been.¡±
Mother stood up, one hand grabbing a bag on the floor beside her filled with vegetables¡ªa bag Pari had not noticed¡ªand the other gently holding Pari¡¯s hand. Together, they walked to the hearth and the bubbling cauldron.
¡°Pari-daughter, be a dear and go tell your father to bring in more wood, would you?¡±
Pari gasped. ¡°Father too?!?¡±
¡°Of course, dear. He¡¯s outside chopping wood. If you could¡ª¡±
Pari didn¡¯t hear what else was said, as she was too busy sprinting through the door and around the house, following the smell of sweat and broken wood. Sure enough, there stood a man with skin dark like night¡ªjust like hers¡ªand hair even darker¡ªjust like hers. He wiped his sweaty brow as he glared at the pile of unbroken logs to his left, a much smaller pile of chopped wood to his right and an axe in his hand. His eyes lit up when he saw her and he grinned wide and bright.
¡°Pari-daughter!¡± he laughed. Dropping the axe, he quickly bent down, grabbed her by her sides, and scooped her up. Pari giggled as he swung her in a circle around him. ¡°What brings you back here, my little dumpling?¡±
As soon as he set her down, Pari dashed forward and hugged Father tight, sniffing away. He smelled just as she remembered.
¡°Mother says Father needs to bring wood inside,¡± she told him after a moment.
¡°Well, I¡¯d better get right on that. You should never keep a beautiful woman waiting.¡± He took a few steps, then paused. ¡°Your brother went for a walk. Would you go find him and tell him dinner will be ready soon?¡±
Father nodded towards a path nearby that led into the woods¡ªhad that path always been there? She couldn¡¯t remember, but she was too busy running down it to mind.
The path wound through the forest for a long while. Pari pretty quickly lost track of just how far she¡¯d gone or where exactly she might be, but she didn¡¯t really care. She passed all sorts of interesting-looking bugs, mushrooms, and other ingredients, but she pushed down the urge to stop and investigate. She could do that on the way back. Right now, she was going to see Brother!
Up the path, light bloomed in the semi-gloom, pulling her forward. She hurtled out of the forest and nearly tripped as the land suddenly sloped downward while she was still half-blind with her eyes adjusting to the change in brightness. Sliding to a halt, she took a moment to look around and reorient herself, truly taking in her surroundings for the first time since leaving Father. What she found left her breathless.
Picturesque fluffy white clouds floated across a beautiful azure sky. Flocks of long-winged migratory birds added speckles of other shades to the blue and white as they soared by, hundreds or thousands of paces above her. A little closer to the ground, two eagles glided circles through the sky, watching the dozens of colorful songbirds flit between the few small trees that grew beyond the forest¡¯s treeline.
The sun came out from behind a cloud, its grand incandescence warming her face but forcing her gaze down towards the horizon. The view there was no less gorgeous. Extending off into the distance, rows and rows of towering mountains stabbed upward like gigantic rocky teeth trying to chew the sky. Grand forests covered the lower halves of each of them in a kaleidoscope of colors, with the rest left bald, almost like a crowd of old men dressed up for a festival. The clouds played there too, winding around the snow-white peaks like puffy white caterpillars.
Bridging the gap between Pari and the distant mountains was a series of picturesque rolling hills covered in long grass and the occasional grove or cluster of bushes. Herds of what looked to be some sort of elk roamed the hills, grazing on the abundant food. Everything appeared so idyllic it was almost hard to believe it was real.
Yet, not even all of that combined could compare to the hill she found herself standing atop. Never before had she seen such a massive wildflower meadow, nor one so dense! Everywhere she looked, a brilliant sea of vivid hues waving in the breeze filled her vision. Some of the plants she recognized, but most she had never seen before, and there were hundreds¡ªno, thousands¡ªof different varieties here for her to explore! How incredible!
Flowers weren¡¯t all this place had to offer, as the hillside teemed with other life as well. Little lizards scurried up stems and across leaves. Hundreds of buzzfriends, diligent as ever, zipped from blossom to blossom. Dozens of flutterfriends, each different in size and wing pattern, joined in on the fun. And there, on a small patch of grass in the middle of it all, seemingly without a care in the world, lay a boy in his mid-teens with olive skin and short flaxen hair.
Too absorbed in watching the sky, Brother never noticed Pari until she pounced on top of him and wrapped him into a giggle-filled tackle-hug, eliciting a panicked ¡°Whaaa-! Pari-sister!¡± from him.
Pari nuzzled her face into Brother¡¯s shoulder and purred like no tomorrow, breathing in his familiar scent. Pari loved all her family with all of her heart, of course, but Brother was up there with Sofie-sis as one of the most special. She held vague memories of him being mean long ago, but those were overshadowed by the memories of the time after Father and Mother had disappeared. Brother had dedicated so much of his life to feeding her and protecting her. It was so nice to see how much he¡¯d grown and filled out over the years, especially after that terrible span in the mines when he¡¯d given her half his food every day so she didn¡¯t starve. He looked... the way Brother was supposed to look after all their years apart¡ªbigger, older, healthier, happier.
¡°What are you doing here, Pari-sister?¡± he finally asked, his voice lower and stronger than she remembered.
¡°Father says dinner is soon, so we need to go back,¡± she told him, still maintaining her viselike hold around his chest.
¡°Hmm, okay, I¡¯ll head back in a little while. It¡¯s too nice out here to leave just yet.¡±
¡°But Father said¡ª¡±
¡°You know Father always thinks dinner is ready before Mother is actually ready. He does it every time and Mother scolds him every time. You¡¯d think he¡¯d learn by now, but I think he secretly likes it.¡±
¡°Why would Father like it?¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll tell you when you¡¯re older.¡±
Pari frowned. Sofie-sis always said the same thing. Why did older siblings always have to keep secrets like this?
¡°Come on,¡± he continues, leveraging her off him, ¡°let¡¯s relax here for a little longer. Together.¡±
¡°Okay!¡± Pari settled down in the grass beside him, thinking how nice it was that there was a spot of just grass for her to lay in; she would have hated to crush some of these glorious specimens. Settling in, she looked out upon the world around them. The slope of the hillside was perfect, just the right angle to let them see the sky, mountains, and hills without having to sit up or move their heads too much.
Neither of them spoke for a little while as the meadow¡¯s ambiance settled over them like a soft, warm blanket. Pari hummed a playful tune she sometimes heard Arly-sis sing when drinking. A flutterfriend landed on her head before flying off again a few moments later.
¡°Sometimes, I like to see if I can find clouds that look like things I know,¡± Brother eventually said. He pointed at one. ¡°What does that remind you of?¡±
Pari studied the subtly shifting, vaguely cylindrical white blob and gave the only answer she could. ¡°Candle.¡±
Brother snorted. ¡°Still crazy for candles, are you? Some things never change.¡±
¡°Pari makes candles all the time and they¡¯re super cool and neat! Grandfather showed Pari how to make lots of extra fun candles!¡±
¡°Grandfather? There¡¯s a Grandfather?¡±
¡°Mmhmm!¡±
¡°Since when? They told me that our grandparents died before the journey to Zrukhora.¡±
Pari still didn¡¯t feel right telling most people about Grandfather even after he became known to others, but Brother was a different story. He was Family, so he could be trusted.
¡°Bazzalth-grandfather is super big and strong dragon! Grandfather raised Pari in Grandfather¡¯s lair and showed Pari lots and lots of great, fun stuff!¡± she bragged.
¡°Oh, is that where you¡¯ve been all this time?¡±
¡°No, then Pari went on big adventure all over world! Pari saw super dry place and lots of fields and super big green forest with super duper big giant tree in middle and big cities and big metal castle! Pari made lots of friends and even sisters and had lots of fun!¡±
¡°Wow, sounds like you¡¯ve been busy. But, what¡¯s this about sisters?¡±
¡°Sofie-sis is super nice and smart and sad a lot and saved Pari and is Pari¡¯s sister now! Also, Arly-sis is also Pari¡¯s sister and makes super neat illusions and is grumpy a lot! Pari can¡¯t wait to tell Brother and Mother and Father about Bazzalth-grandfather and Sofie-sis and Arly-sis and Sammy-friend and Gabby-friend and... Cappy-friend... and...¡±
Experiencing a sudden and harrowing realization, Pari¡¯s ramblings slowed, then ground to a halt.
¡°...and?¡± her brother prompted.
Pari didn¡¯t answer. This realization troubled her greatly, but she struggled to put it into words. Unease filled her.
¡°Pari-sister, if you keep gripping your tail like that, you¡¯ll hurt it,¡± Brother said.
Pari looked down to find that she¡¯d brought her tail to her chest at some point and was currently wringing it with both hands. When had this started? She tried to let go, but her nerves got the better of her and she squeezed harder.
Brother rolled onto his side to face her. ¡°Pari-sister, what¡¯s wrong?¡±
Still, Pari said nothing.
After a few moments, he returned to his original position. The silence returned, but this time, it no longer felt warm and comforting. Brother seemed unwilling or uninterested in pushing her for answers, so together they listened to the sounds of the breeze and the buzzfriend and the chirps of the songbirds as Pari continued to fret, guilt building up pressure inside her like a bubbling tea kettle.
A good while later, she couldn¡¯t take it anymore. ¡°Pari...¡± she began, but a wave of shame brought forth by the words she was about to speak aloud stopped her cold.
Brother placed a hand on her arm and gave it a quick, reassuring rub. ¡°It¡¯s alright, don¡¯t worry. You can tell me anything. That¡¯s what brothers are for right?¡±
Still, Pari hesitated. He looked at her for some time, but Pari just held her tail in front of her and squeezed, refusing to meet his eyes.
¡°Pari...¡± she tried again, finding the words just as hard as before.
¡°Pari cannot... remember Brother¡¯s name,¡± she confessed, her voice barely a whisper on the breeze. ¡°Pari knows Bazzalth-grandfather¡¯s name. Pari knows Sofie-sis¡¯s name. Pari knows Arly-sis¡¯s name and Sammy-friend¡¯s name and Gabby-friend¡¯s name and Cappy-friend¡¯s name and lots more!¡±
The words were rushing out now, her voice rising, her body trembling, her lip quivering as she fought to hold herself together despite the pain that came from just acknowledging these words.
¡°But Pari... Pari does not know Brother¡¯s name or Mother¡¯s name or Father¡¯s name! Brother, Mother, and Father are Pari¡¯s Family, so why?! Why Pari not remember own Family¡¯s names?! How Pari forget such important thing?! Why¡ª¡±
A soft hand placed atop her head brought her words and thoughts to a screeching halt. Fingers scratched behind her ears and a delicate palm patted her gently. She reflexively pushed into the caress, memories returning unbidden of how he¡¯d pat her just like this during the Bad Times when she¡¯d felt sad and scared and alone. It was a simple action, but it conveyed its message in a way that words could never quite manage. Things were fine. Everything would turn out alright.
Pari sniffed and rubbed the growing wetness from her eyes, her emotions calming slowly but steadily.
¡°Names aren¡¯t as important as you think, Pari-sister,¡± he eventually told her. ¡°They¡¯re just words. Labels. They change nothing about what lies underneath, and that¡¯s what really matters, wouldn¡¯t you say? It does not matter what you call me, because I am me, and I am your brother, and that will never change. Do you understand?¡±
¡°...Yeah,¡± she sniffed. ¡°But... Pari still wants to know...¡±
¡°Well, I¡¯m sure if you think about it long and hard, you¡¯ll remember soon enough,¡± he told her with a wry smile. ¡°But for now, I¡¯m getting hungry. What about you?¡±
¡°Ah! Dinner!¡± Pari yelped, shooting to her feet.
Brother pushed himself up after her and together they ran back into the forest towards where Mother and Father waited. The path darkened as they went deeper and deeper. What started as a light mist in the air grew thicker and thicker as they went until Pari could barely see the forest floor. She felt a headache start to grow, and the world grew darker.
Pari stumbled.
¡°Pari-sister!¡± Brother called out. She could barely make him out, a vague silhouette in the fog.
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¡°Brother?¡± she called back, but her voice came out soft and weak. Her body felt tired and was growing progressively more so with each passing moment.
¡°Pari-sister! Erdi!¡± His voice sounded further away now, even though she hadn¡¯t moved.
¡°Huh?¡± Her head was swimming, and she couldn¡¯t concentrate properly.
Her ears just barely picked up his words now, but their message came in loud and clear. ¡°Erdi is my name!¡±
Pari blinked, and the world around her was nothing but brown hexagons and the drone of buzzfriend wings.
Pari slowly pushed herself up from where she¡¯d been splayed across the floor, soaking in a puddle of her own drool, and rubbed her eyes. Without even a moment of debate, she immediately went to her sack and began to make another candle. She needed to go back to Erdi-brother and... and Nimoni-mother and Trayon-father.
Yes... yes.
She could remember their names now, though she always used to call her parents ¡°Mama¡± and ¡°Papa¡± instead of their true names. But what mattered is that she remembered those names now, and with them, many other things. She remembered far more of her past than she had before. Starting the day of her first remembering, when she¡¯d first met Sofie-sis and Arly-sis and the others, Pari had been able to remember many things, but those memories had all been the big things, painted in thick brush strokes. Now, it was like some painter had gone through her memories and added a bunch of details, as well as painting many more scenes. She could remember the happy meals together, the times they¡¯d played in the park, the way her father would laugh after telling a terrible joke, or how her mother would braid Pari¡¯s hair in the morning.
This gift of Erdi-brother¡¯s was truly wonderful. That was why she had to go back, to say thank you. That, and to see them all some more.
The scents of the pollen nectar didn¡¯t bother her much this time. Perhaps she was simply getting used to it? The reason didn¡¯t matter. What mattered was that she was able to fashion a second candle into existence in record time. Eager to return, she sat down, placed the candle on the floor in front of her, and lit it.
A few moments later, smoke once again poured from the candle. Pari took a deep breath and began to cough heavily, just like before. Smoke filled her vision for several moments before it cleared enough to reveal... brown buzzfriend walls.
What? Why? How? Had she made the candle wrong? She didn¡¯t think so; the smoke had smelled the same. So then, what had gone wrong?
Returning to her equipment, she began making the candle a third time, this time taking painstaking care to slowly craft it with an eye toward precision. She took a moment as she went to deeply sniff the pollen nectar this time. What she found confused her. Her nose told her that the sticky goop remained unchanged, as head-shakingly potent as it had ever been. And yet, the giddy rush and lightheadedness was nowhere to be found. If she trusted her nostrils when they said the flower¡¯s product was the same as always¡ªand she trusted her nostrils more than she trusted anything else¡ªthen that had to mean that the thing that had changed was her. But what did that mean?
Finishing her third candle, she tried once more to return to her family, but like last time, the smoke did nothing but make her cough. She remained within the buzzfriends¡¯ home.
No.
No!
Why?!
This wasn¡¯t fair! She still had so many things to say! So many questions to ask! It just wasn¡¯t fair! She hadn¡¯t even gotten the chance to say goodbye!
Her emotions, already running high, approached a tipping point. Her eyes began to water, her breath quickened, and her throat grew tight. But, before the oncoming wave could crash upon her shore, something suddenly blocked most of the light, causing her to jump in fright.
Another huge buzzfriend poked its head into her little room, looking at her through the haze. Pari and it shared a moment of confusion before it vomited up a mound of pale yellow, translucent liquid. Having done whatever it was it had come here to do, it released itself from the wall, wings nearly blurring as it spun in place, then headed over to tend to a grub on the other side of the chamber. The smoke in the area thinned tremendously as the buzzfriend did this, and Pari noticed much of it getting sucked into the buzzfriend¡¯s spiracles¡ªthe holes in a buzzfriend¡¯s sides that they breathed from.
Pari approached the buzzfriend¡¯s generous gift, having a good idea of what it was just from the look. She dipped a finger in and gave it a lick. Sure enough, it was honey¡ªthe best, most delicious honey she¡¯d ever tasted by a gigantic margin. Acting quickly before the buzzfriend realized its mistake, she shoved as much of it as she could into some empty containers, then ate some more. The delectable flavor helped calm the storm of loss and disappointment inside, and she felt herself holding together¡ªat least for now.
Unfortunately, her nose suggested that the honey, though surely made from the pollen nectar, held different properties. She would not get a good smoke from this at all. Instead, the incredibly complex scents suggested it would make the base of either an incredible lubricant or glue, she wasn¡¯t sure which. She would have to be sure to try it out, but right now, she had more important things on her¡ª
Something flashed by her, blocking the light again for just a fraction of a heartbeat, and a loud thump met her ears a moment later. Pari peeked over the edge and was greeted by the sight of a buzzfriend on its back on the floor, legs twitching but otherwise motionless. Pari wasn¡¯t sure, but she thought it was the same buzzfriend who¡¯d just gifted her the honey.
...was this because of her?
Her emotions remained in a state of semi-turmoil, but with the mind-altering effects of the pollen nectar no longer messing with her, Pari had regained perspective. She didn¡¯t know how long she¡¯d been in the hive. She didn¡¯t know what had happened to her friends and Ruddy. She didn¡¯t know what had just happened to the buzzfriend. She didn¡¯t really have a plan or even a general idea of what she should be doing to deal with the situation she¡¯d gotten herself in. For maybe the first time ever, Pari felt glad that neither Sofie-sis nor Arly-sis was here, as both of them would surely have scolded her. This was why Grandfather and Sofie-sis always said that lying was bad!
After a moment of painful consideration, Pari began to pack away her equipment. She wanted to see Erdi-brother and Nimoni-mother and Trayon-father again more than anything, but the way there didn¡¯t work anymore. She could spend time figuring out why later. They were doing alright in their forest home. They would be okay without her.
She couldn¡¯t say the same for her friends and Ruddy. Who knew how much trouble they¡¯d gotten into without her there to help them? Gabby-friend was having a hard enough time even with her help!
At least, she could spend her time exploring. Maybe, she could find a way to get the buzzfriends to give them a ride to the top of the tree! She¡¯d settle for a way out other than the hole in the bottom of the nest.
Climbing down ended up being easier than expected. All she had to do was hang over the edge and swing herself into the section below. The larva in each section didn¡¯t even react to her arrival outside of the occasional twitch. She was pretty sure that they¡¯d been more active when she first arrived, but she wasn¡¯t going to question it now.
Once she made it to the floor of the chamber, Pari carefully approached the still-prone, still-twitching buzzfriend. Her worry abated somewhat when she heard it breathing steadily, but she still felt a little guilt over possibly causing it to fall from the air like that. She hoped the impact hadn¡¯t broken anything, and was relieved when she couldn¡¯t spot any notable damage. Perhaps the slight flex of the hive¡¯s material had cushioned the blow?
Now that she was close enough, Pari realized something else. She surely must have been out of it, because the scent marking on this adult was different than what she¡¯d marked herself with. The scent for larvae was different than that for adults, and while that difference was subtle, there was no way she should have missed it.
Quickly, she concocted a new scent candle and marked herself properly this time before any more buzzfriends could come and stick her back in her hole. Then, bidding the buzzfriend and the larvae goodbye, she left.
Now marked with the correct scent, Pari explored unbothered. Returning to the entrance hole, Pari realized that the world outside looked darker than when she¡¯d arrived. She must have been in here for at least half a day. That explained why the light filtering through the hive seemed a tad more blue than it had when she¡¯d first arrived. It also explained why most of the buzzfriends were so still right now. Even buzzfriends needed sleep!
Luckily for Pari, exploring didn¡¯t turn out to be that hard. Yes, there were many chambers, and the way into them mostly involved climbing straight up, but the buzzfriends¡ªthe ones still awake, at least¡ªshowed the truth in their name by letting her hitch a ride on them as they moved around.
For the most part, Pari couldn¡¯t make sense of the differences between one area and the next. A few chambers were clearly for buzzfriend children to grow, but the others seemed to just be honey storage. Maybe there were secret buzzfriend differences that she just couldn¡¯t understand?
After several hours of fruitless searching, Pari was growing tired and frustrated. She had yet to find another exit, and now she was pretty sure she was lost as well. Just as she was about to give up and settle down to sleep, she heard what sounded like the drone of a buzzfriend¡¯s wings off in the distance, only louder. The drone grew as other buzzfriends joined in, the sound quickly spreading as the sleeping buzzfriends around her suddenly woke up and joined in. It felt like the whole world was vibrating, and it took every ounce of concentration Pari had to grab hold of a nearby buzzfriend¡¯s leg before it and the others scurried upward.
A veritable tide of buzzfriends flowed upward, her ride included, leaving Pari unable to do anything but hold on for dear life and wonder what was going on. They wound through chamber after chamber, until they arrived at one more that looked pretty much the same as all the others. There were a few differences here, though. One was the extra large buzzfriend perched on the far wall, with an abdomen significantly bigger, longer, and less round than the others. The other difference was the mass of buzzfriends swarming over something on the chamber¡¯s floor. Pari gasped when her eyes caught a momentary glint of black crystal slicing into a buzzfriend before her view was blocked again by the swarm.
Oh, no! Her friends¡ªplus Ruddy¡ªand the buzzfriends were fighting! Friends weren¡¯t supposed to fight!
Pari let go of her ride and fell to the floor. Avoiding the rush of buzzfriends as best she could, she scampered to a nearby corner, hoping that would help keep the buzzfriends from trampling her and her equipment. Crafting faster than she¡¯d ever crafted in her lift, Pari made another adult buzzfriend scent-marking candle, tweaking the usual design slightly for maximum dispersal in minimum time. The moment it was complete, she pulled it from its mold, left her equipment where it was, and rushed into the fray.
For once, Pari¡¯s diminished stature paid off, as she was able to run under the frenzied buzzfriends largely unimpeded. As soon as she was close enough, she lit the candle with a snap and rolled it as hard as she could beneath the chaotic, writhing mass. A moment later, the candle exploded, engulfing the area within thick yellow cloud.
Pari pressed forward, into the smoke. She couldn¡¯t see, but she could still hear, and her ears told her several things. First, she heard coughing¡ªnot just from one set of lungs, but three. Second, the drone coming from the buzzfriends ahead of her seemed to have died down. Slowly, as she worked her way towards the center, she heard the drone start to recede, the end to the alarm moving outward from one buzzfriend to the next.
Then, she was through the tangle of buzzfriends and into the center. Through the thinning haze, she could make out her friends¡ªand Ruddy¡ªlooking around and trying not to cough. Gabby-friend, in particular, was making a vicious and desperate face. Red mist leaked from gashes all over her body, but the pile of buzzfriend body parts suggested that she¡¯d given far more than she¡¯d received. Still, the way she held herself like she was standing through sheer force of will alone, told a story of their experiences since Pari had left.
Buzzfriends still surrounded the trio, even climbing up over each other to form a loose buzzfriend cage around them, but they had largely stopped moving. The ones closest, in particular, only waved their antennae around, feeling the scents in the air. Gabby-friend turned to a specific buzzfriend, taking a stance, seemingly having decided to take action.
¡°No! No hurt buzzfriends!¡± Pari cried out before things could get any worse.
Gabby¡¯s head snapped around so fast that Pari was surprised she didn¡¯t break her neck. Seeing Pari alive and unharmed, she rushed forward and grabbed Pari around the waist with one arm, lifting Pari off the ground and holding her against Gabby-friend¡¯s hip.
¡°Alright, we¡¯re getting out of here,¡± Gabby-friend said, her voice sounding as haggard as she looked. She leveraged her sword up onto her shoulder, ready to strike. ¡°Where¡¯s your stuff?!¡±
¡°No!¡± Pari squirmed and struggled, kicking and beating on her friend¡¯s leg with her tiny fists. ¡°No fighting! Buzzfriends not hurt Gabby-friend anymore!¡±
¡°Pari, what in the world are you talking about?¡± Gabby-friend sighed.
¡°Look!¡±
Sure enough, the buzzfriends, closest to them started to turn and leave, followed by the rest of them.
¡°...what.¡±
¡°Pari make friends and Ruddy smell like buzzfriends! Buzzfriends accept friends and Ruddy just like how buzzfriends accepted Pari!¡±
Gabby-friend stared at her, then at the buzzfriends busy returning to their normal routines, then back at her, an incredulous look growing on her face.
¡°...you¡¯re serious,¡± she finally said. With a sigh, she let Pari down and rubbed her face. ¡°They truly won¡¯t attack us now?¡±
¡°Nuh-uh! Buzzfriends not attack. Buzzfriends help Pari! Even gave Pari honey!¡±
¡°How long do we have?¡±
Pari tilted her head questioningly.
¡°How long until whatever you did wears off and they attack us again?¡±
Pari shrugged. ¡°Pari not sure. Long time. Pari can always make candle again, anyway.¡±
¡°...good enough, I guess.¡±
She turned to the others, who were still looking around, confused.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s find a place to set up camp.¡±
Ruddy looked at her like she was crazy. ¡°What? In here?¡±
¡°You heard Pari, didn¡¯t you? They won¡¯t attack us, so this is as good a place as any. Better, even. It¡¯s indoors, flat, and we won¡¯t have to worry about being attacked by anything else all the way in here. Besides, do you even have the energy to push any further?¡±
¡°Energy to push further? Are you joking?¡± Cappy-friend half laughed, half groaned. ¡°I ran out of energy hours ago.¡±
Ruddy didn¡¯t protest much more outside some low grumbling, and Pari led the three of them over to the corner where she¡¯d left her stuff. Deciding this was as good a place as any, they removed their packs and set up camp. Their meal consisted of more of the bland, squishy rectangles, but this time, Pari shared some honey with the others and made it taste super delicious instead.
That didn¡¯t stop the scolding, however.
¡°Pari, promise me that you will never do anything like that ever again,¡± Gabby-friend said after finishing her rectangle. Sitting back against one of the walls that made up the corner, her sword lying by her side, she gave Pari the most stern look that she could, which was not very stern.
¡°She¡¯s right,¡± Ruddy said from where he lay nearby. His hands were covered in bandages, as was his left leg where he¡¯d been slashed by a buzzfriend foot. It looked painful, but both he and Cappy-friend said their pain largely went away since eating the honey, which was neat. ¡°Do you have any idea how far we had to climb today just to get here?¡±
Pari shook her head.
¡°It was...¡± He paused, thinking. ¡°Bloodflower?¡±
¡°More than double what we usually manage in a full day, thanks in part to one crazed woman dragging us along and a handful of near-death experiences,¡± Cappy-friend helpfully chimed in.
¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Ruddy continued with a nod. ¡°By all rights, we shouldn¡¯t be alive right now.¡±
Pari¡¯s ears turned down and she grabbed her tail as she sank into the floor. They were right, of course. She¡¯d let them all down.
¡°That¡¯s not what I meant, you guys,¡± Gabby-friend told them, her face more stern towards them than towards her, for some reason. ¡°We made it here in one piece, and that¡¯s all that matters.¡± She turned back to Pari and her face softened again. ¡°What I¡¯m trying to say is that something terrible could have happened to you. You could have gotten seriously hurt, or worse.¡±
Pari didn¡¯t know how to feel anymore. She¡¯d been bad, but why wasn¡¯t Gabby-friend mad about it? That wasn¡¯t how it was supposed to work at all!
¡°Pari sorry,¡± she managed to say. This was good, right? It felt bad to be scolded¡ªshe would know. So, then... why did she feel so guilty? She sniffed, and her eyes began to feel wet.
Gabby-friend quickly pulled her into a side-embrace.
¡°Please don¡¯t cry, sweetie! We all just care about you, alright? We want you to be safe, which is why you can¡¯t go sliding down flowers and riding giant bees eight kilometers up in the air, you understand?¡±
Pari sniffed again and blinked away the tears. Gabby-friend begged her not to cry, so she would not cry. ¡°Okay, Pari understands.¡±
¡°Good.¡±
The sound of a buzzfriend descending a nearby wall made the others jump. Had they not heard it coming?
¡°It¡¯s too dark in here,¡± Ruddy complained. ¡°Can¡¯t we light the place up a bit? I¡¯d like to see the killer bees coming before they¡¯re on top of us.¡±
Ruddy couldn¡¯t see the buzzfriends in this light?
¡°He¡¯s got a point,¡± Gabby-friend conceded. ¡°Pari, do you have any... you know... normal candles?¡±
Normal candles? What was she trying to say about her candles? They were perfectly normal! Still, Pari always felt nice when somebody asked her for candles. It combined two of her favorite things, making candles and making people happy, into one activity!
In this case, Pari figured what Gabby-friend was asking for with her very poorly worded request was a few boringcandles. However, she¡¯d used up all her boringcandles that morning analyzing the slippery vine. She could make more with ease, of course, but she had a better idea. They wanted the area to be better lit? She¡¯d show them that there were far better options and just boringcandles.
¡°Pari make bright candles for Gabby-friend!¡± she declared.
A lightcandle was exactly what it sounded like: a candle that made light through the creation of a very bright flame. It was one of the simpler and earliest candles she¡¯d ever come up with, though it rarely got any use these days. In a jiffy, she had three new candles ready to go. Putting them around the camp, she lights each with a snap of flame. The chamber lit up like they were outside at midday.
¡°Ah, wow! That¡¯s¡ªthat¡¯s really bright!¡± Gabby-friend winces, squinting and holding a hand in front of her eyes.
Cappy-friend laughed a tired laugh. ¡°Well, at least nothing will sneak up on us tonight.¡±
¡°But, won¡¯t it be hard to sleep like this?¡± Gabby asked.
Ruddy snorted. ¡°After what we went through today, I could fall asleep inside the sun itself.¡±
¡°Then, why don¡¯t you just sleep and save us the commentary?¡± she shot back.
He sent an askew glance her way. ¡°Perhaps you haven¡¯t noticed, but we¡¯re surrounded by giant, killer bees. I think I¡¯ll wait a bit.¡±
¡°Whatever.¡± She rolled her eyes. ¡°So, what were you up to, Pari?¡±
Pari grinned. ¡°Pari flew around with buzzfriend, then came to hive, then made candles with buzzfriend children, then spent time with Family, then explored, then found friends and Ruddy!¡±
Gabby-friend went still.
¡°What do you mean you ¡®spent time with your family¡¯?¡±
¡°Pari visited family in wood and talked to them and had many hugs!¡±
¡°How?¡± Her voice was low but held an urgency that Pari had never heard before.
¡°With candle. Gabby-friend want¡ª¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°Okay!¡±
Pari pulled out her stuff and got to work, humming a happy tune. This would be a great test of a theory she had.
Ruddy cleared his throat. ¡°Are you sure this is a¡ª¡±
¡°Shut up,¡± Gabby-friend told him.
He did.
Not long after, Pari set her fourth Familycandle, as she¡¯d decided to name it, on the floor between them. The three others looked at it, watching the flame burrow into the wax and disappear.
¡°So...¡± Ruddy began, ¡°is it going to squirt at Gabriela, or¡ª¡±
The candle erupted and smoke enveloped the four of them.
Pari coughed like always, this time with three other voices joining in. Yet, soon the others¡¯ voices cut off, leaving only her. The smoke spread, growing thinner around her, and soon she found herself sitting near the prone forms of her friends and Ruddy.
She hummed again, glad she could do this for them after their bad day. They would enjoy the forest, and she was sure her Family would treat them well. It also suggested her theory was on the right track; it seemed that a Familycandle might only work on somebody once¡ªfor now. There was no way that Pari was going to let that be the end of things.
Just to make sure, Pari confirmed that they were all breathing. Once she was sure of that, she settled down to rest and wait. Her friends and Ruddy would mouth unintelligible things every so often, and sometimes a limb or two would let loose a heavy twitch, but that was about all they did.
Elsewhere in the chamber, buzzfriends stumbled and swayed, but did not fall over like the last one had. Being further away, they must have inhaled just a bit of the smoke, making them move as if drunk rather than fully passing out. Pari giggled as she watched the oh-so-serious and responsible buzzfriends stagger about like they''d spent the whole night partying.
So distracted was Pari by their insectoid antics that she didn''t even see Ruddy''s leg spasm and jerk until it was too late. She didn''t even notice his heel kick the nearest lightcandle, sending it rolling towards the center of the chamber, until she saw a bumbling buzzfriend step right on it. Squashed like a juicy berry, the lightcandle¡¯s fuel reservoir splashed all over the hive floor, covering a wide area. Before Pari could even register what had happened, the now-barely lit wick, in one last gasp of defiance, fell against the wet floor.
FWOOSH! Fire, blinding and hot, made Pari wince and turn away.
Uh oh.
The buzzfriend let out a startled hiss as twenty paces of dry, paper-like hive suddenly went up in flames around it. It stumbled back, retreating from the heat, and began to beat its wings toward the flames. A moment later, other buzzfriends joined in, creating a small windstorm to pummel the flames.
Oh, no!
¡°Stop, buzzfriends!¡± Pari cried. She understood now. They were trying to blow out the flames like Pari on her birthday! It was probably how buzzfriends usually dealt with fires when living in such a burnable house¡ªcreate a great wind to stop it before it grew too large to put out. But these buzzfriends didn¡¯t realize that this was no ordinary fire. Lightcandle fuel craved air. No amount of wind, no matter how strong, could put it out. Instead, the buzzfriends were only spreading the destruction.
Twenty paces of flames became thirty, then forty, then fifty before Pari could even think. More buzzfriends arrived, these fully sober, but they just joined in with the others.
¡°No! Stop!¡± Pari yelled, running and jumping and waving around to get their attention, but either they couldn¡¯t hear her over the din of fire, wind, and buzzing wings, or they just didn¡¯t feel like listening. She wracked her brain, trying to come up with a way to communicate her message through scent, but her understanding of buzzfriend communication was not yet so advanced.
Half the chamber was ablaze before the buzzfriends seemed to realize their strategy wasn¡¯t working. Their backup plan seemed to be nothing short of mass panic. They rushed around, seemingly without purpose, running into each other, climbing over each other, and generally making a mess of things.
Pari wasn¡¯t faring much better. She could feel the heat of the growing conflagration against her skin and see it getting closer to their camp with each passing moment. No matter what she tried, the others just would not come back from the forest! Pari tried yelling in their ears, shaking them, pinching them, kicking them, and even biting them, but nothing seemed to work.
What was she supposed to do?! It wasn¡¯t like she could carry them or something, and leaving them here wasn¡¯t an option either. Maybe she could stop the fire herself?
Thinking fast, Pari ran to her candle equipment and got to work. First, a mold, the largest size she had on hand. Then, a shell of Grandfather¡¯s earwax, a bit on the thick side to make sure it held up to the pressure the candle would create. Next, the best expansion agent she had: ribbit pod juice. When burned, it produced bubbles that were more than fifty times larger in volume than the liquid source. That would provide more than enough pressure to spray out the mixture.
But in what form should the mixture emerge? A liquid might work, a sort of mist, maybe, but the fire would probably blow most of it away. It needed to be something more solid, but also thin enough that she could cover a large area with it. Yes, of course! A foam would be perfect! Into the mixture went two pinches of dried double-crested lizard blood. Combined with the ribbit pod juice, it would create a solid foam that would quickly harden after only a few moments of exposure to air. That meant it would stick around and not evaporate in the heat.
Still, none of that mattered if the foam just caught on fire. All of this was in service of the true star of the show: the fire-stopper. Pari didn¡¯t have much in the way of fire-stoppers. Burning things was the fun part of candles, so why keep things that got in the way of that? But still, she did have something. Yrith sucker vine sap was a strange liquid that she¡¯d found during her first adventure in Stragma. On its own, the sap was fairly boring, but when combined with certain sour things, it became something interesting and annoying: a cold, sparkly dust that not only refused to burn but seemed to eat heat. Luckily for her, she still had some stored in... why was the container so light?
Ripping the lid off, Pari stared in shock at the nearly empty container. Of the various container sizes, this was already one of the smallest¡ªafter all, why waste anything bigger on ingredients she never used?¡ªand now only maybe a fifth of it was occupied by the thick, sticky sap. When had she used so much of this? No, that wasn¡¯t important right now. What mattered now was that she couldn¡¯t make enough fire-stopper with this to cover even a third of the floor. Maybe it didn¡¯t even matter at this point. The fire had already spread up multiple walls and was working its way across the ceiling.
Still, she could keep the encroaching flames away from the camp. That would at least give her some more time to figure out how to wake up her friends and Ruddy. A few moments later, her candle was ready, and a moment after that, orange foam began to spray out of the candle¡¯s top. Pari sprayed a circle around their camp, including the walls, creating a buffer of about twenty paces around them where the fire could not touch. Still, that did not mean they were safe¡ªfar from it.
Having been raised by a dragon, Pari knew full well what a lot of fire could do, and the inferno raging around them definitely qualified as ¡°a lot¡±. Sweat poured down her body, and she was having trouble breathing¡ªnot even from the smoke, of which there wasn¡¯t much, but just from breathing in air so hot. The roar of the flames assaulted her ears, and her nose was filled with the smells of combustion.
Pari went back to beating her friends and Ruddy, begging them to wake up. Yet, no matter what she tried, nothing seemed to work! It made her want to cry from the sheer frustration alone! Why wouldn¡¯t they wake up? Especially Gabby-friend? She could wake up from anything, even death!
Wait... was that... was that it? But, to do that to a friend was just... bad! She¡¯d have to be bad again, and look where it had gotten her so far! And yet, maybe this was the one time when being bad... was good?
Pari didn¡¯t have time right now to ponder the profound questions her situation presented. Her current tactics weren¡¯t working, so she decided to trust her gut.
A bangcandle would do the job, but it would also hit Cappy-friend and Ruddy; all three of the people off visiting her Family were far too heavy for Pari to move on her own. That meant she¡¯d have to do things the hard way.
Fetching one of her Grandfather-bone knives, Pari knelt beside Gabby-friend¡¯s head. Placing the tip of her knife against her friend¡¯s throat, she took a deep breath¡ªwhich only made her start to cough, impressing upon her all the more that she couldn¡¯t hesitate anymore. She leaned in, and with as much force as her tiny body could manage, Pari stabbed the blade through. Gabby-friend¡¯s whole body seized for a fraction of a moment, then went fully still, no longer even drawing breath.
Pari squeezed her tail as she watched the woman¡¯s body remain still. Blood slowly leaked from around the handle, dripping down to the ground, but there was no sign of movement or that telltale crimson mist. How long was she supposed to wait? Shouldn¡¯t there have been some sort of response by now?
¡°Gabby-friend, wake up!¡± she pleaded.
A rush of red burst into being, rushing like a torrent into Gabby-friend¡¯s body. Her eyes flew open and she shot up into a sitting position, letting out a gasp for air so loud that Pari could hear it even over the roar of the fire. The handle¡ªand only the handle¡ªof Pari¡¯s knife clattered to the floor.
¡°Pari, what...¡± Her question skidded to a halt as she noticed that the world around her was quite different than it had been when she¡¯d left it. ¡°...WHAT?!¡±
Looking around, she took in the inferno around them and the unmoving forms nearby, and she grew grim and serious.
¡°Pari, get your things.¡±
Pari didn¡¯t need to be told twice. She threw her recently used equipment back into her sack, then paused. Her stock of pre-made candles was beginning to melt in the heat. If they had to run through the flames to get out, there was a chance one or more of them would catch fire as they went, and that would be bad for everybody. So, as much as it pained her to do so, she dumped out every complete candle she had and left them in the middle of the fire-free camp area. Then, she finished tying up her now half-full sack.
Meanwhile, her friend grabbed her half-deconstructed pack, tied her giant blade to the back of it with several loops of rope like she had every day they climbed, and put it on. Pulling Pari into a tight hug against her front, Gabby-friend tied the two of them together, making sure to tie Pari¡¯s legs around her waist. Then, she stuck Pari¡¯s sack of things against Pari¡¯s back and tied it to them both with more rope, making a Pari sandwich.
¡°Hold on tight and don¡¯t let go,¡± she told Pari. Grabbing the other two with one hand each, she roughly threw each of them over her shoulders, one arm holding each. Finally, she bent her legs.
Pari had never before experienced Gabby-friend when the woman was actually trying, and to say it was something she would never forget was putting it lightly. The initial leap felt almost like being struck, so intensely was the acceleration. Inertia slammed her downward and into her friend¡¯s chest, knocking the wind out of her for a moment. And then, they were soaring upward and out towards the center of the chamber, flying without wings. They shot through the doorway in the center of the ceiling, the entranceway to the higher chamber wreathed in flames.
This place had become a firestorm as well, and there was nowhere to land that was not covered in flames. Scorching air rushed up from the hive below, swirling around like a mini-tornado as the flames spun higher and higher. Gabby-friend landed into a sprint, the flames licking at Pari¡¯s rear.
She leapt again, and they sailed through an opening high on a wall into a third large room, which was also entirely ablaze. Just how far had this catastrophe spread? Was the entire hive burning?
With an ominous rumble, followed quickly by a loud series of cracks, a large section of nearby honeycomb wall broke apart and fell right towards them. Still, Gabby-friend was strong. Pulling the others down in front of her and squeezing Pari on both sides, she turned her back and let the debris fall over her, blocking it with her body. Spinning, she kicked the blazing honeycomb away, heaved the others back up onto her shoulders, and leapt back into action.
Leaning to the side, Pari was able to peek her head around Gabby¡¯s torso. It gave her a perfect view to watch as they sped through burning room after burning room, then a perfect view as they leapt upwards one final time, emerging into the open night lit by the bright blue glow of the Mother Tree from above and the brighter orange blaze of a hive fully engulfed in flames. It gave her a perfect view of the hole they escaped through, a triangular hole sliced open by a long, sharp blade, and it let her watch as the bindings holding that blade tight to her pack loosened as the four of them flew through the air, the ropes having been burning since the flaming wall landed on them.
The buzzfriend¡¯s hive hung from the side of a massive branch thick enough to hold several city blocks, and it was upon the slope of that branch that the four of them landed. Gabby-friend bent down to set the others down, and that was the final straw. With a snap, the final rope holding her sword to the rest of her broke, and the weapon fell away. Gabby-friend spun around just in time to watch it land hilt-first against the bark, bounce and spin, and drop towards the bonfire below. Piercing the top of the hive almost tip first, it embedded itself into what remained of the papery nest.
Then, as if they had been holding out just for this moment, her discarded candles went off. A cacophony of thunderous, overlapping kabooms rocked the hive, sending tremors even through the branch they stood on. The hive shook like a leaf on a tree during a windy day, let out a series of earsplitting cracks, and broke apart.
Pari and Gabby-friend stared in silence for several moments, dumbfounded, as the gigantic, roughly ovoid mass of fire and death which had been the buzzfriend¡¯s home plummeted towards the earth all those thousands of paces below, taking the mighty blade with it. Her friend¡¯s prized sword, the thing she kept with her at all times, even when it made things hard, was suddenly just... gone.
Pari Clansnarl began to cry.
Chapter 137
Chapter 137
Back before Gabriela Carreno had appeared in this world, back in a time that felt oh-so-far-gone nowadays, she had believed in many things¡ªGod, the inherent goodness of people, the inherent goodness of herself, and more. Life had stripped away much of that belief, to the point where she wasn¡¯t entirely sure if she still believed in any of those things anymore. But, there was one truth that still remained untouchable in her heart.
Children were everything.
Back when Gabriela was younger, before her romance and marriage, she would have to fight not to roll her eyes when coworkers would say things like ¡°Having kids changes you¡± and ¡°When you have children, you¡¯ll understand¡±. It had all seemed so very hackneyed and hyperbolic to her teenaged self. Then, she¡¯d had children, and it had changed her, and she¡¯d understood.
A child was light. A child was wonder. A child was joy. A child was love. A child was everything.
A child was bawling their eyes out right in front of her.
Gabby had many issues on her plate that very moment. Her irreplaceable blade was now gone. She had two unconscious people still hanging limply upon her shoulders. Their mission to reach the summit of Ruresni, harvest some sort of special petals, and then get back down before the Chos could looked to be hanging by a thread. There was a real possibility that, at some point in the future, she was going to explode¡ªthe return of the agonizing burning sensation during their escape attempt only lent Blake¡¯s assessment more credibility in Gabriela¡¯s mind. And yet, every one of those issues took a backseat to the fact that a child was in tears and it might be her fault.
Gabriela had never seen Pari truly cry before; she¡¯d barely ever seen the child even be sad for more than a few moments. The sight of her weeping face pierced Gabby like a stake through the heart. Seized by concern, she dumped the others onto the bark¡ªthey¡¯d be fine¡ªand quickly knelt before the wailing girl.
¡°Pari, sweetie, what¡¯s wrong?¡±
¡°Gabby-friend lost sword and buzzfriends¡¯ home burned away because Pari was bad!¡± she blubbered.
¡°It¡¯s okay, it¡¯s alright,¡± Gabby quickly assured her. ¡°You¡¯re not bad at all!¡±
¡°But Pari lied! Pari not have to pee! Pari only cared about Pari, not friends, and now Gabby-friend¡¯s special thing fell and buzzfriends have no home!¡±
Somewhat paralyzed by indecision, Gabriela found that she did not know what more she could say to the distraught girl. Her children had not been old enough for her to have experience with this sort of thing. So, instead, she just pulled Pari into a solid embrace, letting the beastkin sob ¡°Pari sorry! Pari sorry!¡± into her shoulder over and over. Gabriela stroked the child¡¯s hair and told her that everything was alright, but those words felt empty.
Eventually, Gabriela picked Pari up and ventured further away from the branch¡¯s side. Removing her pack, she laid down and let the catgirl sniffle herself to sleep against her shoulder. She felt her eyelids drooping, hours and hours of exertion and stress finally catching up to her. She¡¯d go fetch the others in a minute, she told herself, just after she finished this extra-long blink.
¡°Mama, where¡¯d you go?¡±
¡°I¡¯m scared!¡±
¡°Don¡¯t leave us!¡±
Light greeted her when she opened her eyes. A curse formed in her throat, but stopped at her lips when she realized that Pari was still sleeping beside her, face nuzzled deep into Gabby¡¯s left armpit. Ever-so-slowly, she extricated herself, making sure to not to wake the child, and stood up.
It had been that dream, again, sort of.
So many nights, she¡¯d dreamt of what she¡¯d lost, a dream that had been much like tonight¡¯s. The dream had become more intermittent recently, starting when she¡¯d begun her illicit relationship with Chitra, and occurring less and less frequently as time moved on.
To say that Gabriela felt conflicted about this was putting it lightly. On the one hand, fewer nightmares was generally a good thing. On the other, it signified that her flame was sputtering, so to speak. As time passed, all things faded until they were lost, and this was the one thing she was terrified of losing. How long before she wouldn¡¯t be able to clearly remember her children¡¯s faces? Their voices?
This slumber¡¯s nightmare, however, had been different. The words hadn¡¯t sounded like they were coming from an infant¡¯s mouth; the voices speaking had been older, more grown-up, as if they were in their mid-teens¡ªjust like they¡¯d been in the vision.
Gabriela shook her head to clear her thoughts. This wasn¡¯t the time to think about that. She looked around.
When she¡¯d gone to sleep the night before, there had been nothing but bare bark around her. Sometime before her waking, a campsite of sorts had popped up. The contents of her pack, or what remained of it at least, had been carefully sorted and laid out nearby, alongside a small pile of broken bark, but the others were nowhere to be seen. Realizing rather belatedly that she¡¯d basically left them unconscious in a crevice, she felt a tad bit guilty, but clearly, they were fine.
Or, one of them was, at least.
¡°Finally up?¡±
Gabby turned to find General Bloodflower and Rudra approaching, a semi-pulped meter-long beetle propped up on Rudra¡¯s shoulders. Gabriela let out a quiet breath of relief.
¡°We got breakfast,¡± Bloodflower continued. ¡°Now, we just have to figure out how to cook it.¡±
¡°Stupid bark won¡¯t burn,¡± Rudra rumbled, cocking his head towards the broken bark pieces. ¡°Took all my strength to get even that much and it won¡¯t even light.¡±
¡°As I said, it would burn if we could get it hot enough, but then we¡¯d just use that heat source as the fire, anyway.¡±
The Stragman sighed and ran a hand through his thick red-orange hair.
¡°Now, I believe you owe us some explanations, yes? Or did I just imagine the massive wasp hive and all the supplies that seem to have mysteriously vanished?¡±
Gabriela glanced towards Pari, who had thankfully yet to wake. ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± she told them. ¡°Let¡¯s go elsewhere and I¡¯ll tell you everything.¡±
¡°What a series of unfortunate events,¡± Caprakan bemoaned once her story was over. ¡°I was hoping you¡¯d stashed your sword somewhere for safekeeping. To think that it¡¯s lost...¡±
¡°The hits just keep coming,¡± Rudra grumbled. ¡°We¡¯re down to almost nothing. Maybe a meal and a half of food if split between the four of us, and we¡¯re low on water as well¡ªnot to mention only one bedroll and all the rest.¡±
¡°Wonderful,¡± Gabby sighed. ¡°At least Pari¡¯s things made it through.¡±
The Stragman nodded. ¡°True, I speculate that her candles might be our best hope for success anyway. If we could catch my wife with whatever Pari used on us last night, our victory would be nearly assured. What was that?¡±
¡°Something wonderful and terrible,¡± Gabriela answered, a frown creeping onto her face. She had been trying her best to not think about the vision Pari¡¯s weird candle had given her. Her family, whole again, living out normal, happy lives. The sight of her children nearing adulthood, beautiful and healthy, had been almost more than her heart could take.
It had been a momentary slice of bliss, and then it had all vanished like... like smoke. Gabriela didn¡¯t blame Pari for what she¡¯d done, ending that wonderful vision prematurely; she recognized that it had been the right decision. Still, that didn¡¯t make her happy about it.
¡°Whatever it is, that girl could become the richest person in the world with it if she played her cards right. I know a lot of people who would do just about anything to experience that again after getting their first taste. After what I saw, I almost certainly would. What about you? What did you all see in the smoke?¡±
Gabby¡¯s mouth drew tight.
¡°You first,¡± Rudra said.
¡°Ha, well, that is only fair, I suppose,¡± Bloodflower conceded. ¡°I saw my love, smiling and laughing. It was a wonderful thing.¡±
Gabriela doubted it was as simple as that, but the man seemed unwilling to say more. Three of them looked at each other, each waiting for one of the others to speak.
¡°I saw Tepin, but she was strong and healthy,¡± Rudra finally said.
¡°I saw my family,¡± Gabriela reluctantly told them to finish the set. ¡°I saw my children grown.¡±
¡°You have a family?¡± the Stragman asked, seemingly shocked. ¡°I would not have guessed that the woman known as ¡®The Monster¡¯ would have children.¡±
¡°There¡¯s a lot you don¡¯t know about me.¡±
¡°And those names you kept repeating, those are your children?¡±
Gabriela scowled. ¡°I don¡¯t want to talk about it.¡±
¡°Of course, of course! I meant no offense. On a different topic, then, I suggest we wake our sleeping member. I wouldn¡¯t bet my health on eating our prize raw any more than I would hazard my life trying to guess which of Pari¡¯s creations will provide us a cooking flame instead of spraying us all with acid.¡±
Pari was acting weird. More specifically, she was acting sad and depressed, which was well within the bounds of normal for others but not for the cat-eared giggle factory. She moped about all through their short breakfast, then seemed a shadow of her former self during their long trek back to the main trunk.
The bark on the branch upon which they strode was much the same as the bark everywhere else on the tree, with massive patches of rough and uneven but navigable surface split by the occasional large crack. However, where before the cracks had served as arteries through which they could climb up on the trunk, here they turned into wide, often deep trenches that the party had to leap over.
To be more accurate, Gabby had to carry each of them, one at a time, and leap over the gap. This was just the sort of activity that Pari would usually love. Today, however, Gabriela didn¡¯t hear even a single giggle as they jumped through the air.
With their speed greatly increased by the horizontal nature of their travel, the group made it back to the trunk relatively quickly. They opted to take a short break before they began to head upward and Gabriela¡¯s day became immeasurably worse. Taking the opportunity, she sought out the dour child and sat down beside her. The beastkin glanced at her and then lowered her head and averted her eyes.
¡°You okay, Pari?¡± she said after a moment of silence.
¡°...Yes,¡± came the eventual and unconvincing reply.
¡°You¡¯re still upset about last night, aren¡¯t you?¡±
¡°...No.¡±
¡°Pari, look at me.¡±
Pari looked away.
¡°Pari, come now, we need to talk.¡±
Still, Pari ignored her, wholly committed to her moping.
Gabriela sighed and reached over. Ignoring the surprised yelp, she grabbed Pari by the sides, picked the squirming child up, and deposited the beastkin on her lap so they were face to face.
¡°Listen... I know you think I¡¯m mad at you, but I¡¯m really not, okay? None of us are.¡± That last part was a lie, but one she knew Rudra wouldn¡¯t call her out on, at least not right now. ¡°We¡¯re just glad you¡¯re safe.¡±
¡°Friends and Ruddy should be mad,¡± Pari mumbled. ¡°Pari was bad and did bad and broke buzzfriend home and lost sword and¡ª and¡ª¡±
¡°Shhh... shhh...¡± Gabby pushed ahead before the sniffling girl could fully board the tears train. ¡°I want you to listen to me very closely, alright? This is important. Yes, you made a lot of mistakes yesterday, but that¡¯s okay. You¡¯re a child, Pari. Childhood is all about making mistakes; I made a ton of mistakes when I was growing up.¡±
Memories of her younger years bubbled to the surface, from all the fights she¡¯d gotten into, to the times she¡¯d neglected to study before a test, to the time she¡¯d killed the orphanage¡¯s pet fish by overfeeding it.
¡°What matters is that you learn from them and grow, understand?¡±
¡°But Sofie-sis said that it¡¯s important to think of others, but Pari was only thinking of what Pari wanted and bad things happened because of Pari.¡±
¡°People are allowed to be selfish sometimes too, you know¡ªespecially young people like you. Sofie¡¯s advice is a good goal, but nobody can be selfless forever. The fact that you care is very good already. A lot of people wouldn¡¯t even feel bad about it.¡±
¡°But sword gone! Buzzfriends¡¯ home gone!¡±
¡°Well, about that... Would you like to know a secret?¡±
¡°Eh?¡±
Gabriela leaned down next to Pari¡¯s ears, her voice falling to a conspiratorial whisper.
¡°I hate that sword. It¡¯s clumsy, awkward, and a giant pain to carry around, and it always reminds me of things I would rather not remember. I¡¯m glad it¡¯s not here.¡±
That last part was only a half-truth¡ªshe had a bad feeling it might have come in handy really soon¡ªbut still, even she mostly believed it.
¡°...Really?¡±
¡°And your wasp friends flew away before the fire got too bad,¡± Gabby continued, purposely avoiding any mention of larvae. ¡°They¡¯re building a new, better home right now, I¡¯m sure. Maybe you¡¯ll be able to visit them again in the future.¡±
¡°Really?¡± The girl pulled back and looked up at her, the light in her eyes renewed.
¡°Absolutely! Now, go grab a snack before we set out again. We have to move fast today.¡±
Pari hit Gabriela with a smile so bright with joy that it left her momentarily blinded. ¡°Okay!¡±
Quick as a whip, the beastkin hopped off Gabby¡¯s lap and sprinted towards the others, only to screech to a halt a few steps later. Turning back, she rushed over and wrapped Gabby¡¯s side into a hug, nuzzling her shoulder. ¡°Pari feels better now. Thank you!¡±
¡°Friends help friends with their problems. It¡¯s only right.¡±
Pari gasped as if struck by a sudden revelation. ¡°Yeah!¡±
And then, she was off like a rocket once again. Despite their current dire situation, Gabriela couldn¡¯t help but join Pari in her good humor.
That smile was everything.
The others, however, did not share in the good vibes. Somewhere in the middle of her chat with Pari, the men had gotten into another argument.
¡°-have to take risks. With everything else that¡¯s gone wrong, playing it safe will just make us safely lose,¡± Rudra rumbled.
¡°I know it¡¯s hard for a log head like you to grasp,¡± General Bloodflower snorted, ¡°but sometimes, taking the longer route is faster. Is it quicker to run up a hill or climb a ladder?¡±
¡°I can go up ladders faster than you think.¡±
¡°What¡¯s the issue now?¡± Gabriela cut in.
¡°This lummox is unable to see the wisdom in my planned route, despite how clearly better it is.¡±
¡°It¡¯s three times as long, at least!¡±
¡°What is the route?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°It¡¯s simple: we climb to the next branch up and follow that. Do you see how it largely slopes upward?¡±
He pointed at the nearest massive branch, thicker than twenty city blocks, which emerged from the colossal trunk above and counterclockwise from them. True to his statement, the branch twisted and turned, but generally seemed to rise higher into the sky the further from the tree it went.
¡°Much further along the branch, there is a leaf which comes within just paces away from a leaf on another branch. We have you throw us up onto the second leaf, and then you jump up to follow. The second branch is that one up there.¡±
This time, she had a bit more trouble making out what he was indicating. The second branch was so much higher up that she couldn¡¯t tell much from looking at it at this distance.
¡°That branch is much the opposite, sloping downward, and leads directly to our goal,¡± he explained. He brought his fingers together to make a triangle, indicating the general shape of his route. ¡°It¡¯s longer, yes, but the speed we will be able to travel will make up the difference and then some.¡±
¡°That does sound like a decent idea...¡± Gabby considered.
¡°Hey, tell her why you know this,¡± Rudra butted in angrily. ¡°Don¡¯t leave out why you¡¯re so confident, now.¡±
Gabby gave the Stragman a curious look.
¡°Well... this path is the usual path taken by those who climb the Mother Tree,¡± Caprakan admitted.
¡°Meaning that it¡¯s the way the Chos went, which means a likely ambush, if not worse,¡± Rudra added.
¡°But it also means you know what to expect, right?¡± Gabby asked.
The Stragman nodded. ¡°Better than any other route, by far.¡±
¡°And what other way do you think is better, Rudra?¡±
¡°Take the shortest, most direct path. Straight up. Much less distance, no competition.¡±
Gabby stared at him in disbelief for several moments.
¡°You¡¯re serious,¡± she finally concluded. ¡°We have the option to walk on basically solid ground almost all of the rest of the way, and you¡¯d rather free climb?!¡±
¡°I think it will be faster. And no fights to worry about.¡±
¡°Faster, my butt! We¡¯re taking the branches.¡±
¡°But¡ª¡±
¡°Let me worry about that muscle-bound woman. We¡¯re taking the branches.¡±
Of all the things that Gabriela expected to find thousands of feet up a tree, a forest above another forest was not on the list¡ªespecially not one like this. Countless stalks stood in front of her, each a meter thick and more than six meters tall. Dozens of bud-like leaves, each about the length of her forearm, sprouted from each stalk in an alternating pattern reminiscent of kernels on a stalk of wheat.
The pattern made each stalk look almost like a length of braided hair from a distance, but taken as a whole, they combined to look like a giant¡¯s carpet covering this area of the great tree¡ªan uncharacteristically colored one, at that. The leaves and stem started as green near the base, the color matching the green so predominant in Stragma, only to progressively transition to fuchsia as they got higher. The color scheme only further added to the feeling of an alien landscape.
¡°What in the world?¡± Rudra muttered.
A gust of wind hit them and rolled onward, sending the stalks waving in the early afternoon light.
¡°What is this?¡± Gabby joined in.
¡°Moss,¡± Bloodflower told them with a grin.
¡°W-what?¡± Rudra sputtered.
¡°Giant moss,¡± the Stragman clarified.
¡°You¡¯re joking,¡± Gabby replied. ¡°A forest of giant moss, atop a giant tree, higher up than the tallest mountains.¡±
He grinned with amusement. ¡°Of course.¡±
The man¡¯s answers strained credulity, but she didn¡¯t have a better explanation. It wasn¡¯t like she knew what moss looked like up close, anyway.
¡°According to my understanding, this is the last area before we approach our goal. A quick break would be prudent before we push into this mossy jungle ahead.¡±
Rudra nodded and took their only remaining pack off of his back, sitting down with a sigh of relief. The others joined him, passing around a waterskin and some of their remaining food. After scarfing down her snack, Pari whipped out her candlemaking supplies and retreated to her own little world of freak catgirl chemistry. The others, meanwhile, soaked in the otherworldly ambiance of their surroundings.
Ruresni¡¯s strange and highly localized ecosystems were a sight to behold, the moss forest being just the latest example. The wealth of insects and lizards alone was staggering, from the weird aphid-like attackers, to the bees, to the myriad others they¡¯d passed on their way up.
Luckily, the aggressive aphids were more an exception than a rule; most of the life here either didn¡¯t consider the tiny humanoids big or strong enough to be worth caring about. She had to reluctantly admit that Caprakan¡¯s guidance had helped them from stepping on too many toes, as well.
It all felt a little wasted on her, to be honest. Somebody like Sofie would doubtless appreciate the sights here better than she could. Then again, maybe Sofie wouldn¡¯t be too fond of all the bugs, massive or otherwise. Chitra, on the other hand... She¡¯d surely get a kick out of this place, and she¡¯d somehow make it all the way up here without a single speck getting on whatever alluring dress she¡¯d have on, too. The thought of her scantily clad friend sashaying up the side of Ruresni, climbing... How high up even were they now?
¡°Very,¡± Rudra rumbled when she voiced the question aloud. ¡°We¡¯re well above the clouds. Perhaps even twenty kilometers.¡±
¡°Isn¡¯t that higher than Mount Everest?¡± she wondered, taking a deep breath and feeling the thick, heavy air rush in and out of her lungs. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t the air be so thin that we couldn¡¯t breathe up here? And shouldn¡¯t we be freezing to death? It¡¯s as hot and humid as the forest floor.¡±
¡°You can thank Ruresni for that,¡± the general told her. ¡°Even the air itself is altered by her mighty presence.¡±
Gabriela wasn¡¯t sure exactly how much ¡®altering¡¯, and to what capacity, was actually going on here, but she wasn¡¯t about to argue about a glowing tree taller than the tallest mountain on Earth. It was as good an explanation as any, she supposed.
Another gust swept through, carrying with it a whiff of smoke. Though only present for a moment, it reminded her to check on the fourth member of the party, who had been suspiciously quiet for the last few minutes.
The girl seemed to spend every free moment on candles these last few days, but Gabriela understood. The bonanza of materials Pari was getting her hands on every day was the equivalent of an ordinary child being let loose inside the world¡¯s greatest toy store.
Gabriela wasn¡¯t quite sure why, but the beastkin had taken to setting up her apparatus further from the others recently. Perhaps it was simply for their safety, or maybe she just didn¡¯t want to be distracted. Approaching the child, who sat hunched over her equipment with a look of intense concentration, she found the latter more likely.
Pari glanced up and noticed her approach before quickly looking back down and biting her lip. A single, solitary, barely audible snicker made it to Gabriela¡¯s ears. Her instincts, finely honed by months of experience with the girl, immediately began blaring alarms of warning and caution. The little devil was up to something.
¡°Pari? What are you up to?¡± she asked, her voice laced with the sort of no-nonsense suspicion that only a parent can manage.
¡°N-nothing,¡± came the entirely unconvincing reply, further betrayed by the soft ¡®hee¡¯ that leaked from her tightly drawn lips.
¡°Pari, I know you love a good prank,¡± she began, looking around for some sort of sign as to the nature of the ruffian¡¯s mischief and finding nothing, ¡°but this isn¡¯t the time or place for¡ª¡±
Gabby had thought she was ready for anything the tiny miscreant could throw at her; that wary confidence lasted a mere six steps. On the seventh, she found herself completely unprepared when the front half of her right foot¡ªfully bare, her footwear having fallen to pieces before the end of the second day of climbing¡ªrefused to rise from the bark upon which she stepped.
Suddenly off-balance, she tried to reposition her left foot to compensate, only to find it stuck fast as well. Arms windmilling, Gabby twisted uncontrollably and fell forward and to the right as gravity took hold. She felt her right ankle bend further than it was meant to and her left knee twist in ways it shouldn¡¯t, pain lancing through both legs as she landed on her bare right knee¡ªthe bottom of her pant legs having not made it past the fourth day.
Still, momentum wasn¡¯t done with her just yet. It sent her upper body toppling forward, and she instinctively stuck her bare right forearm out to catch her fall before the whole right side of her torso hit the bark.
Pari giggled.
¡°Pari!¡±
Folded into an anatomically incorrect human pretzel, Gabby pushed through the pain¡ªshe¡¯d had much worse¡ªand went to push herself up, only to find that her knee and arm were also stuck. The sight of her ineffectual attempts to free herself sent Pari¡¯s giggling into overdrive.
¡°Pari! This isn¡¯t funny!¡±
Gabriela¡¯s outburst only brought forth even more mirth, and she thought she heard soft laughter coming from the others behind her, too. Traitors! Adults had to stand together in solidarity against the tyranny of chemistry genius children!
¡°Pari use buzzfriend honey to make super duper sticky candle!¡± the girl explained, bright-eyed.
¡°That¡¯s wonderful, sweetie,¡± Gabriela ground out through gritted teeth as she frantically tugged against the bark to no avail, ¡°but you have a way to unglue me, right?¡±
Pari cocked her head to the side. ¡°No? Pari not have ingredients here for unsticking.¡±
¡°PARI! How am I supposed to get up, then?¡±
¡°Nya? Pari see Gabby-friend break bark many times?¡±
Gabriela let out a groan and took a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she repeated the mantra to herself.
Children were everything.
Children were everything.
Children were everything.
Even when they superglued you to the ground.
¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re so miffed about,¡± Bloodflower chuckled.
¡°Shut it.¡±
¡°No, really, you make that look work.¡±
¡°Shut. It.¡±
Gabby swept a moss stalk to the side with her right arm, only for it to catch on the half-meter-long, jagged chunk of bark still glued to her forearm.
It turned out that Ruresni¡¯s bark was strong enough that even she had trouble breaking it when her strength wasn¡¯t boosted by the adrenaline of abject terror or battle. The awkward position she¡¯d found herself stuck in hadn¡¯t helped her get good leverage, either. Still, in the end, she¡¯d managed to free herself... Mostly. She¡¯d managed to rip apart almost all of the bark using every drop of her normal strength and both of her hands. The one bit remaining was the piece on her arm that she just couldn¡¯t get enough leverage to rip off.
There were other options, of course. Given enough time to bash it against something hard enough¡ªsome more bark would do just fine¡ªshe could probably break the rest of it off, but she didn¡¯t have that time. Then, there was always self-maiming; if the bark and the glue were too strong, perhaps the flesh on the other end could be removed and reformed.
With Rudra holding the other end of the bark, it wouldn¡¯t even be hard to accomplish. Still, Gabriela didn¡¯t ever want to become used to hurting herself just for the sake of convenience. She wasn¡¯t that desperate¡ªnot yet, anyway, though the future wasn¡¯t looking too bright.
It was just one thing after another from the moment she¡¯d left Wroetin. What would happen next, she wondered? Maybe a horde of dragons was going to appear and gobble them up. Maybe a giant lumberjack would show up and chop the tree down. Maybe she¡¯d make it to the summit, only to find the flower petals she was supposed to harvest and bring back all eaten by giant caterpillars. Maybe¡ª
Maybe she¡¯d end up separated from the others. She couldn¡¯t hear the steps of her companions anymore. Spinning around, Gabriela found herself alone amongst the stalks. Her blood ran cold.
¡°Hey!¡± she yelled. ¡°Where are you?¡±
She strained her ears but heard nothing but the wind.
¡°Pari! Rudra! Bloodflower! Anybody!¡±
No answer.
But wait! From somewhere seemingly close in this jungle of moss, back towards where she¡¯d come, was that the rustle of people slowly pushing through? She rushed back, simultaneously worried and annoyed.
A handful of seconds of retreat later, she heard more rustling, now just a few meters away. Was this just another one of Pari¡¯s pranks or Bloodflower¡¯s jests?
¡°Come on, everybody, this isn¡¯t funny!¡± Gabby called, pushing her way through the overgrown living carpet. ¡°We have to stay together, or¡ª¡±
She didn¡¯t notice the club until it had already smashed into her torso with the weight of a cargo ship, the heavy blunt weapon rendering her flesh to paste and nearly breaking her in two. Instead, the force launched her into the air like a hanging slider shooting off a power hitter¡¯s bat. As she flew faster than a bullet, the bark on her right arm caught a nearby stalk, the collision cutting her speed slightly while sending her spinning like a drunken top.
Even as she whirled through the air, her reforming torso feeling like it was ready to puke, she managed to notice just how close to the edge she¡¯d wandered without realizing it¡ªjust a few hundred meters.
When she crashed down at last, plowing through three stalks on the border of the forest before coming to a merciful halt not more than twenty meters from the start of a steep slope to open air. She let out a relieved breath. The bark she¡¯d been cursing all this time had ended up saving her. Had it not slowed her down a fraction... No, better not to think about it.
Springing to her feet, Gabriela rushed back into the moss, traversing it in great leaps and bounds now that she didn¡¯t need to make sure the others were keeping up with her. It didn¡¯t take long to find her attacker; the club¡¯s swing and Gabriela¡¯s successive exit had cleared out a small patch of moss stalks that were easy to spot from the air.
¡°Tch.¡± The Chos spat to the side. ¡°Figures. Maybe it¡¯s better this way, anyway.¡± She hefted her overgrown stick onto one shoulder and strode forward. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you did to make Caprakan join you, but I¡¯m going to make you pay for it a thousand times over.¡±
Palebane lashed out in a flash, her club coming from the right. Gabriela crouched down as fast as she could, barely making it beneath the arc of Palebane¡¯s warclub as it swept overhead, the air shuddering as it passed by just millimeters from her skull.
Gabby went to charge forward, but before she could even manage a step, the club¡¯s enormous momentum suddenly vanished as if the Stragman was clutching a drinking straw in her meaty hand rather than a hunk of wood weighing hundreds, if not thousands, of kilograms. Before Gabby could react, the overgrown tree branch reversed course, crunching through her arm and shoulder and sending her ragdolling off of and through the mossy jungle.
Gabriela spat out a piece of moss¡ªwhich tasted strangely like broccoli¡ªand used the few seconds she had before the Chos caught up to her to reconstitute her shattered and crushed body. While she did that, her mind tried its best to come up with the best way out of this mess.
This situation was a problem she had not faced before. Almost the entirety of her training and fighting strategy had revolved around using her sword to destroy most threats and her healing to absorb¡ªor ¡°tank¡±, as Blake liked to put it¡ªwhat she couldn¡¯t cut in time.
It had been a highly successful strategy, but her circumstances conspired to render it worthless now. Her sword was gone, lost to her for the foreseeable future, and while she could certainly survive the crushing blows of the Chos¡¯s gnarled cudgel, its incredible hitting power meant she would get flung into the next timezone every time she failed to dodge.
If she could get close enough to get even a hand on her opponent, the fight would be over, but how was she supposed to do that? The way the Chos swung her club defied physics¡ªliterally, if what she¡¯d been told was correct¡ªand made every strike hard to predict. Not for the first time, she wished that her powers made her not just stronger, but tougher as well.
In some respects, they did. Lifting a city block required incredible toughness to keep from being crushed, the absurd weight snapping her tendons, splintering her bones, etc. Yet, even while in the middle of lifting that city block and handling the titanic forces in play, any blade, club, or bullet could wreak havoc on her all the same. She''d never figured out why that was, but she had never been the inquisitive sort.
Perhaps if she could build up enough speed, she could strike so fast that Palebane wouldn¡¯t be able to react in time, but this cursed overgrown carpet of moss they were stuck in meant she had no room¡ªnot to mention that the bark still stuck to her arm would catch on the stalks as she went, throwing her off balance.
She glanced at the bark again, the beginning of an idea forming in her mind. Though blocking that monster of a club could feel like stopping a freight train¡ªand with the way the Stragman¡¯s powers worked, she basically was¡ªshe¡¯d managed to block it many times in the last fight with her sword. Could the bark work the same way? Its placement on the outside of her forearm was fairly close to that of a one-handed shield.
There was only one way to find out.
Gabriela darted toward the towering woman, who¡¯d been approaching her with a cold fury. Palebane¡¯s arm snapped out, her movements precise and economical. The club arced diagonally down and towards her right side, and Gabby threw her bark-glued arm in the way, setting her feet to take the pressure of the blow.
CRACK!
Wood and bark collided to mixed results. On the plus side, though the blow felt like it was going to tear her forearm off, both the bark and her arm held. On the other side, this time it was her feet that failed to hold¡ªor, more accurately, the soft ground of this moss-filled place could not withstand the force. She skidded backward several meters, her feet leaving twin trenches in the springy floor, until her left shoulder suddenly clipped a stalk. The next thing she knew, she was rolling to a halt.
Gabby sprang back back up, wary of a follow-up attack, but Palebane was just slowly walking in her direction, the beastkin woman simply stared bloody murder her way. Somehow, Gabby found the quiet Chos even more intimidating than the usual brash Chos.
The approaching Stragman leader cut a terrifying figure. A good half a meter taller, she had advantages in weight and reach, but Gabby knew that her real advantage came from her weapon. Without that club, the musclebound warrior would be harmless to her. But how could Gabby separate the weapon and the weapon master?
Sadly, she couldn¡¯t think of any way other than ¡®just grab it¡¯, which was as easy to say as it was hard to do. Perhaps if she could just knock the woman over, even for a split second... even just getting her off-balance might be enough...
Plans were not really her forte; she found her success through chaos and forcing the issue with brute strength. The last time they¡¯d fought, it had been on a flat arena with few stone pillars¡ªa clean, orderly, structured place. Now, they were battling in one of the most chaotic environments she¡¯d ever fought in. They strode upon uneven, lumpy, and slightly mushy ground that squished with every step, while an unruly mess of moss stalks grew all around them, twisting and turning every which way. If she didn¡¯t have a concrete plan, her surroundings at least would help her stir the pot a little.
Gabriela shot forward in a flash, snaking around the stalks. The Chos came to a stop, weapon ready. As soon as Gabby got within range, the club swung around to intercept. Gabriela was already going low, taking advantage of the soft, slightly slippery ground to slide headfirst beneath the blow and aim for the Chos¡¯s legs.
With a grace that nobody that size should rightly possess, Palebane pirouetted aside, avoiding Gabriela¡¯s reach by a couple of centimeters at most. Undeterred, Gabby planted her hands in the ground, using her momentum to flip forward and back onto her feet. She kept moving forward, barely avoiding the sweeping follow-up attack, and kicked off of a nearby stalk to change direction.
Like a pinball shot from a cannon, she caromed crazily about, bouncing off of stalks and the forest floor as randomly as she could. Moving so fast that most anybody would see her as little more than a blur, she kept it up for a few moments before finally redirecting herself inward.
As expected, the Stragman warrior was already turning, club arcing to intervene, so when she did, Gabriela threw both handfuls of mushy, slimy moss jungle floor, which she¡¯d grabbed when she¡¯d flipped upright after her slide, right at the Chos¡¯s face.
Palebane swayed to the side, managing to avoid one of the two clumps, but the other caught her right across the face, splattering it with slime and mossy goodness. Quick as a whip, Gabby leapt to the side, careened off one nearby stalk, then four meters up another, and then finally launched herself straight for the Stragman¡¯s exposed back.
Gabby wasn¡¯t in a position to land a particularly vicious blow, but that was alright. At the speed she was moving, all she had to do was collide with her assailant¡¯s broad, exposed back, knocking them both to the ground and turning this fight into a grappling match that Gabby was sure to win.
It was too late now. With the speed Gabby was traveling and her positional advantage, not even the Chos could swing her club fast enough to cover the full hundred and eighty degrees needed to intercept her. Which was probably why the Chos didn¡¯t swing her club around to bash her like it was an oversized baseball bat.
Instead, she did something Gabriela did not see coming. She swung her arm back, like a bowler winding up to throw, and buried the knob at the bottom of her club into Gabby¡¯s solar plexus with the power of a speeding double-decker bus.
Eyes wide, Gabriela coughed as the strike flung her straight up into the air.
¡°Did you think I was like you, riding on nothing but a special weapon and raw power?¡± the Chos asked, wiping the muck from her eyes. She stepped aside and drew her warclub up behind her head as Gabriela, now a good ten meters high, began to experience gravity once more.
¡°I¡¯m nothing like you, worm!¡± she hollered as Gabriela fell within her reach. ¡°I know how to fight!¡±
The club slammed down, chasing the falling Gabby like a giant flyswatter to swat her from the air. At the last moment, Gabriela managed to twist just enough to get her bark-covered arm between the rest of her before it slammed into her, hammering her straight down into the ground so hard that she found herself half-buried in the spongy moss floor. The only reason she ended up merely ¡®half¡¯ buried was because the moss wasn¡¯t deep enough. She could feel the rough bark beneath that layer scraping against her skin.
Stuck on her side, her body largely broken, Gabriela barely had time to think before the club came down on her a second time, smashing directly into the center of Gabby¡¯s bark shield with a deafening WHAM!
¡°You dare to come into my home!?¡± she cried, pulling back for another blow.
WHAM!
¡°You dare to try to steal my people!?¡±
WHAM!
¡°You dare to mess with my husband!?¡±
WHAM!
Gabriela tried to move, but doing so meant trying to push off of one arm while every second it was like she was being stomped on by Mount Everest.
¡°Did.¡±
WHAM!
¡°You.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Really.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Think.¡±
WHAM!
¡°You.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Could.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Hold.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Back.¡±
WHAM!
¡°My.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Fury.¡±
WHAM!
¡°With.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Some.¡±
WHAM!
¡°Fucking.¡±
WHAM!
¡°BARK?!¡±
WHAM!
WHAM!
WHAM!
The blows rained down with such ferocity that Gabriela began to hear their booming echoes between the strikes, the syncopated aftershocks to the original earthquakes.
WHAM!
BOOM!
WHAM!
BOOM!
WHAM!
BOOM!
Though the Chos¡¯s rain of terror showed no sign of ending, Gabriela didn¡¯t give up. She kept trying to rise, to wiggle free, to find some way out of this, but every time she tried, it was like a million elephants were landing right on her. All she could do was keep her arm raised, the bark still shielding most of her body. If she let that arm fall, she¡¯d end up being turned halfway to paste and whacked all the way to Drayhadal before she could reform.
What other options did she have? If only she hadn¡¯t made that promise to Bloodflower, things would be simpler.
WHAM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
WHAM!
CRACK!
BOOM!
At last, Gabby¡¯s improvised shield gave up the ghost. Bits of bark sprayed everywhere as the chunk exploded into a hundred tiny pieces, leaving Gabby¡¯s arm covered only by a small patchwork of little chips that would not protect her from what she was up against.
¡°HRAAAH!¡± the Chos roared, rearing back and swinging her weapon down with brutal finality, putting everything she had into this one last, triumphant strike.
But, Gabriela almost didn¡¯t hear it, nor did she really notice her newly unburdened limb. Instead, she was busy processing something that had quickly become much more clear.
Those secondary crashes that she¡¯d thought were echoes of the Chos¡¯s attacks were something else, the steady rhythm of something she¡¯d heard not too long ago. Those were the sounds of explosions from one of Pari¡¯s Roman Candles.
The others were still out there, fighting. Pari was fighting¡ªfighting against people who might very well might be trying to murder her! She was fighting for her life, and what was Gabriela doing instead of running off to save her? Lying on the ground like a worthless lump! She¡¯d fought Blake¡¯s robot armies! She¡¯d fight a bloody dragon! Couldn¡¯t she do better than this?!
The image of the girl¡¯s body lying on the tavern floor, rainbow blood running from her, flashed through her mind.
No.
No!
Gabby could not let anything happen to Pari. She would not let anything happen to Pari. Never again!
The club came crashing down like a meteor packing enough power to send Gabriela the way of the dinosaurs. She put her hand up.
WHAM!
The force of the impact sent out a shockwave strong enough to blast the surrounding ground cover to bits, filling the air with minute flecks of green and purple. And yet, when the air cleared, there Gabriela lay, propped up on her left elbow, her right hand palming the end of the great club, wisps of crimson leaking from quickly vanishing cracks running down her hand and arm.
¡°What?!¡± the Chos gasped, staring in wide-eyed shock.
¡°Tantrum¡¯s over,¡± Gabriela growled. She pushed herself up with her left arm enough to get one knee under her, then rose to her feet, her right hand still grasping the club tight.
Thanks to the Chos lightening the club after impact, keeping the weapon up was now a trivial task. The larger woman tugged furiously, trying to pull it free, but Gabriela¡¯s grip would not be overcome.
¡°How?!¡± the Stragman leader snapped. ¡°You never showed such resilience before!¡±
¡°Well, this time, I have a reason to care.¡±
With a quick two-handed yank, she ripped the oversized tree branch from her opponent¡¯s grasp and sent a swift kick into the Chos¡¯s gut, doubling her over.
Palebane fell to one knee, gasping, wheezing, and clutching her stomach with one hand. And yet, when she managed to get a hold of herself enough to raise her head, she looked at Gabby not with pain but with outrage, like she¡¯d just been slapped across the face.
¡°You held back on me?!¡± she hissed, as if the very idea was the gravest of sins.
Gabby stared down at the Stragman ruler and realized just how pathetic she really was. Without her weapon, Akhustal Palebane was as threatening to Gabriela as a well-stuffed pillow. She was little more than an oversized lump of anger and grievance whining and bleating impotently about disrespect and honor and other crap, and Gabby was just so utterly done with her and all of it.
¡°I gave you what you deserved, nothing more,¡± she told her.
Without another word, Gabriela pivoted around, reared back, and hurled the Chos¡¯s weapon as far away as she could manage. She didn¡¯t quite have an idea of which direction she faced, but with luck, the club would be joining her sword on the forest floor soon enough. She turned back again to Palebane, her hands balling into fists.
¡°Without your little stick, you¡¯re nothing. This is over.¡±
Gabriela took a step forward... and nearly fell on her face for the second time that day when her back foot refused to move. When she regained her balance enough to spare a glance down, she found a tendril of wood emerging from the ground through the mossy bed and quickly winding up her leg. Checking her front foot, she found a second, shorter tendril already up to her ankle, while the first was not just past her knee.
Gabby strained against the snares to no avail. Though the vine-like tendrils were as thick as her pinky finger at most, they were made of Ruresni, and while she could destroy the mighty tree¡¯s bark with enough force, the actual wood was a different story.
¡°Hello, my dearest,¡± said a familiar voice from off to the side.
Leaning confidently against a nearby stalk was Caprakan Bloodflower wearing a face of grim concentration, one arm held up, palm out towards Gabriela.
¡°Wha¡ª! Bloodflower! You snake!¡± Gabriela snarled, straining impotent against her living shackles as they wound around her shoulders and began to circle her neck.
The general ignored her, which only made her angrier. What a fool she''d been to listen to him at all! She¡¯d known he was suspicious. She¡¯d known something wasn¡¯t quite right about everything involving him. And yet, she had let him into the party. She¡¯d taken his ample guidance as they ascended. Just how much of their delays had he engineered through bad directions alone?
Having fully looped around her neck, the wooden vines¡¯ growth came to a halt, and Bloodflower¡¯s arm fell and he let out a weary sigh. ¡°Glad I made it in time. Took longer than I¡¯d planned to get away from that musclebound oaf and insane little girl, but it looks like it all worked out.¡±
¡°You¡¯ve always been one to arrive fashionably late, my little berry,¡± Palebane cooed.
Caprakan smirked. ¡°You know it. Already got your petals and on your way back down?¡±
¡°Of course. Hid them away somewhere safe, just in case.¡±
¡°Smart and wise. That¡¯s why I love you so.¡±
They stepped toward each other and, before Gabby could mentally prepare herself, swept each other into a loving embrace, their lips meeting right in front of her eyes in a passionate kiss.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Great. Pari¡ªand Rudra, she supposed¡ªwere out there somewhere, potentially hurt or worse after being backstabbed by this fiery-haired creep, and she couldn¡¯t do a thing about it. Now, to top it all off, she got to watch two of her least favorite people make out right in front of her.
With disturbing seriousness, she began to contemplate what would happen if she were to thrust her head forward hard enough that the unbending wood circling her neck would decapitate her. Would she reform still in the cage? Or would her body rejoin the head, free and ready to dispense payback? But then, just as she was about to start putting that question to the test, she noticed something that made her pause.
¡°Did you miss me?¡± Caprakan said once their lips parted. He reached up with his hands to cup her cheeks.
¡°All I could think about this whole time was you, Caprakan,¡± Akhustal confessed. ¡°I just kept imagining all the ways that woman might have twisted your tail. But, that doesn¡¯t matter now. You¡¯re safe with me, my little wruelit.¡±
¡°And I thank you, my dearest, but there¡¯s just one problem.¡± He lithely slipped out of her grasp, stepping away. ¡°Nobody forced me to do anything. This is my choice, of my own free will.¡±
¡°Caprakan?! What¡ª¡± the Chos began, alarmed and confused. Her voice was cut off by the sudden tightening of a wooden tendril that had slowly snaked around her throat unnoticed while they kissed. More vines, which had been stealthily creeping up around her legs, swiftly tightened as well, locking her in place just like Gabriela. Quickly they grew to wrap her entire body, imprisoning her in a Chos-shaped cage of indestructible wood.
Akhustal Palebane struggled much like Gabriela had, and found herself just as powerless. On her face, Gabriela saw an expression of profound betrayal, the sort of deep hurt that no amount of words alone could ever fully heal. The cord around her neck loosened slightly, enough for her to breathe and speak, and she began to rage.
¡°Caprakan, you little sack of milloc shit! How could you do this to me?! After everything we¡¯ve been through, after everything I sacrificed¡ª¡±
Gabriela tuned her out the moment her husband turned to Gabby and the cords locking her down went loose. She twisted her way out of her bindings and gave the man a steely glare. ¡°Where are the others? If something happened to Pari, I swear, I¡¯ll¡ª¡±
¡°She¡¯s fine! They¡¯re both fine,¡± he rushed out. ¡°We should get going. This way.¡±
Gabby grunted her assent, and she followed as they strode across the small battlefield of mowed moss stalks her fight had created. Just before they pushed into the green and blue jungle, Bloodflower paused and turned back to his partner. Red-faced and almost frothing at the mouth in her anger, Palebane continued yelling obscenities and all manner of vitriol as Caprakan blew her a kiss before turning back around and pushing past the stalks.
¡°You¡¯re going to have to lead the way,¡± he said. ¡°I used up most of my strength between handling her and her team members.¡±
Indeed, Gabriela could hear the exhaustion in his voice.
¡°I actually thought you¡¯d turned on us for a while there,¡± she admitted.
¡°Had to sell it, you know? And I thought you were going to kill her.¡±
¡°I had half a mind to,¡± she confessed. ¡°I know part of the deal was to not kill her, but that word means nothing compared to Pari¡¯s safety. Remember that.¡±
¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind. For the deal means nothing if we lose, anyhow. That stunt I just pulled buys us an extra half a day, at most. The wood will recede after a few hours.¡±
¡°Wait, but her club doesn¡¯t come undone, or that cell.¡±
Caprakan sighed dramatically. ¡°Why is it so hard for all of you to get it through your skulls? I swear I have to explain it to one of you every other day now.¡±
¡°Because I¡¯ve had your handiwork crush my skull to bits on several occasions, probably.¡±
¡°...Fair enough. Wood from the Mother Tree is incredibly resistant to change. If you grow and shape it quickly, like I did just now, it will start to return to its original form after a few hours. By tomorrow, you¡¯d never know it had been altered in the first place. Things like the items you mentioned have to be molded over the course of months, usually by a whole team of people. You have to grow it very slowly, and then hold it in its final shape for many days. Only after a long time will the wood eventually begin to regard its new shape as its ¡®original¡¯ shape, so it won¡¯t try to revert to its previous shape anymore.¡±
¡°Okay, I guess that makes sense for stuff that¡¯s still part of Ruresni itself. Can¡¯t you just use your powers to separate a chunk of wood from the tree and then shape it however you want?¡±
¡°If it were so easy, everybody would have something made from her wood, but no. The wood still resists, even when removed from the tree.¡±
¡°How?¡±
¡°Simple. It¡¯s still alive. Wood from the Mother Tree lives on even when taken away from her great body. We have the oldest known trinket ever made from her wood back at our home. It¡¯s said to be over seven hundred years old, and the wood still lives. I¡¯ve grown it myself, just to see.¡±
¡°Why doesn¡¯t it die?¡±
¡°Nobody knows. It is just one more mystery surrounding Ruresni. But we can talk more about that after we¡¯ve found the others.¡±
¡°Right. Let¡¯s pick up the pace.¡±
She began pushing forward harder, making less effort to move stalks out of the way and just breaking them down if it was easier.
They continued for another few minutes in relative silence before Gabriela spoke up again.
¡°You know she¡¯s going to murder you, right?¡± she asked.
¡°Only if I¡¯m lucky,¡± he replied.
¡°¡ªand then wiggly man went all flippity-floppity and dodged all of Pari¡¯s booms and then Cappy-friend catch beard man¡¯s ankle and¡ª¡±
¡°So, what really happened?¡± Gabby asked Bloodflower.
Having met up with the others maybe half an hour ago, the group continued to push through the moss jungle. Gabriela had taken to leaping straight up every so often to make sure they didn¡¯t go off-course, and from what she could see, they still had hours more to go.
¡°She has the right of it, basically,¡± Caprakan told her. ¡°My honey¡¯s teammates got the jump on us, initially. I did my best, but every Hono is well aware of my capabilities and my weaknesses. Our moody friend did just about what you¡¯d expect. Our petite companion, however, posed a problem they might have thought themselves ready for, but as you know, few are truly ready for what the little whirlwind has in store for them. My countrymen are not fiends and were reluctant to tie up such a bright and seemingly harmless child. Once she had her candle out and lit, it was already too late. Rudra and I took care of the rest.¡±
¡°Sounds like we got lucky.¡±
¡°In a sense. We might not have needed luck if a certain lump of muscle had done much of anything outside of holding one down and helping tie the rope.¡±
¡°Stuff it,¡± Rudra grumbled. The man had been sullen since she¡¯d rejoined them, and seemed to be in no mood to talk.
His mood, of course, meant little in the face of Pari¡¯s excitable mood.
¡°Hey, hey, why Ruddy not fight?¡±
¡®Ruddy¡¯ didn¡¯t answer her with anything more than an annoyed look, so Gabriela chimed in.
¡°It goes against his beliefs.¡±
¡°But Ruddy fight bugs just fine?¡±
¡°He doesn¡¯t fight people.¡±
Pari scoffed. ¡°That stupid.¡±
Rudra came to a halt and let out a sigh. Gabriela tensed, readying herself to stop the man from doing anything drastic, but he just clenched his hands into fists, took a deep breath through his nose, and then unballed his fists.
¡°Don¡¯t talk about things you don¡¯t understand, kid,¡± he growled.
¡°Grandfather said person who won¡¯t fight is called coward.¡±
Turning around, Rudra stared the child down with his single eye. ¡°And what does your vaunted grandfather know of cowardice, girl?¡±
Meeting his heated gaze, Pari puffed up, either from pride for her scaled guardian and his greatness or from outrage that Rudra would dare question the person she revered so deeply. ¡°Grandfather knows lots and lots! Grandfather super strong and smart!¡±
The large man laughed, though Gabriela could hear no humor in it. He squatted low, but even so, he still had to look down to maintain eye contact.
¡°Tell me, child, what does your strong and smart grandfather believe in? What ideal does he hold deep inside?¡± He tapped his chest twice with one of his gigantic hands.
¡°What Ruddy mean? Pari not understand. Grandfather is grandfather!¡±
¡°Every person is really a big messy clump of feelings and connections and urges all wiggling around. But likes and hatreds come and go; relationships morph from one thing to another over time. If you want to know what a person truly is, you have to ask... what are you willing to die for? No, not just ¡®die for¡¯, because death is easy; death is escape. What truth are you willing to suffer for? The answer to that question is the diamond found deep in the center of that misshapen clump. It is the foundation that everything else builds off of.
¡°The truth in my core is that harming others is wrong and that all of us should strive to build a world that reduces suffering instead of one that thrives on it. I hold onto this truth because I know it is right. I believe it because I know it is just. If I were to fight, I would be adding suffering into the world, and that would betray the truth that I claim to hold in my heart.
¡°The thing is, most people don¡¯t actually have convictions¡ªthey just think they do. Any person can have convictions when things are easy. It¡¯s when those convictions get in the way that the real truth comes out. If you are not willing to be true to a belief until the end, no matter how much it hurts or how bad it gets¡ªif you are willing to throw that conviction aside the moment it becomes a burden¡ªthen you never actually believed it at all, did you?
¡°As a wonderful person I knew once said to me, ¡®True beliefs are the things you stand by even when you have every reason not to.¡¯ Those are all that define you. Everything else is but a thin coat of paint.
¡°My pacifism has brought me nothing but pain since I came to this world. I know well the suffering that waits down the path I chose, and yet, every single day, I wake up and choose to stride down it again, and again, and again. It¡¯s easy to talk about courage and cowards when you¡¯re strong, girl. What do the strong have to fear in a world where they get to make the rules? Courage has nothing to do with being willing to fight and kill other people. No, real courage is staying true to yourself even though it makes you weak, no matter how hard the world tries to make you throw yourself away.
¡°I have the courage to hold my truth in my heart and never let it go, no matter the hurt that will come my way. What about you, girl? Can you say the same? Can your dear old grandfather?¡±
¡°...Pari not know...¡±
¡°What about the rest of you?¡± he asked, standing up and turning to the others, glowering disdainfully. ¡°Don¡¯t think I haven¡¯t seen the way you look at me when you think I won¡¯t see it. You might disagree with my choice, but at least I made one. What are your truths, hm? Or, are you so cowardly that you can¡¯t even choose a conviction, let alone live by it?¡±
Gabby opened her mouth, ready to unleash a quick retort, and... found that words were surprisingly hard to come by.
Pari tugged on Rudra¡¯s sleeve. ¡°People fight lots every day. Why Ruddy not super mad?¡±
Rudra sighed, the sort of tired sigh of a parent worn to exhaustion by chronically misbehaving children. ¡°I am, Pari. I¡¯m furious all the time. I¡¯ve just grown used to it by now.¡± He turned back around and pushed a moss stalk aside. ¡°Let¡¯s move.¡±
Gabriela followed mutely, that question still simmering in her mind. It wasn¡¯t until much later that she realized that Caprakan had never answered Rudra¡¯s question, either.
It was with great relief that Gabby pushed aside the final stalk and stepped out into more barren terrain at last. She stopped a few paces out of the moss jungle and let herself take a long, deep breath.
¡°And here we arrive at the final stretch,¡± Bloodflower said from behind her. ¡°Funnily enough, it should be the easiest part of this whole ordeal¡ª¡±
Gabby hummed in agreement as she gazed out at the terrain ahead. As the Stragman had said, this did, in fact, seem like the easiest portion of their climb. From here on, the branch they strode upon was little more than a straight path with a moderate incline going right to the top of the tree.
Outside of a few giant shelf mushrooms that basically formed natural walls, there wasn¡¯t much to get in their way. Even the bark seemed smoother than normal, with some noticeable grooves running this way and that along the branch.
¡°¡ªas long as we avoid Alu¡¯khan, I suppose,¡± he finished, mischief in his voice.
¡°Sorry, what was that last part?¡±
He smirked. ¡°A great winged serpent who patrols the top of the trunk.¡±
Stragmans had their own Quetzalcoatl?
¡°How great are we talking here?¡±
¡°I jest, I jest,¡± he chuckled. ¡°Alu¡¯khan is merely a beast of legend, a lesser god among some of the less popular sects. If a serpent like that truly lived up here, my honey or others would have run across it by now.¡±
¡°Knowing my luck, it¡¯s been hidden away, sleeping for the last ten thousand years,¡± she grumbled.
¡°All the more reason to get in and out as quickly as possible,¡± Rudra stated, coming up to join them. ¡°Let¡¯s push on.¡±
They pushed on.
For a while, nothing went wrong, which only served to increase Gabriela¡¯s paranoia. This was too easy. Then, true to form, something finally went wrong, though not in the way Gabby expected. They hadn¡¯t even made it more than two-thirds of the way to the trunk when Gabriela heard Rudra shout her name.
¡°Something¡¯s wrong with the kid,¡± he called from down the slope.
Gabby practically leapt down the hill and skidded to a stop near them. Her blood ran cold when she saw Pari spasming in his arms, her eyes vacant and foam leaking from her mouth. The girl¡¯s chest rose and fell in violent, uneven spurts as her tail lashed wildly every which way.
¡°What happened?!¡±
¡°Not sure. She was breathing strangely for a bit, but I thought she was just huffing from the effort of climbing this incline with her little legs. Then, she just fell over all of a sudden.¡±
Gabriela pulled the twitching child into her arms as the child¡¯s body shook. ¡°Pari, what¡¯s wrong, sweetie?! Come back! Talk to me! Pari! Please!¡±
The beastkin¡¯s body stiffened all at once, her eyes rolling back into her head. Her lips moved and it seemed like she was whispering something, but Gabby couldn¡¯t hear it. Gabby leaned in as much as she could, getting her ear right near the girl¡¯s mouth in time to barely make out two words before the tiny form in her arms went limp.
¡°...so...stinky...¡±
¡°Get me her bag, quick!¡± Gabby demanded.
Rudra brought the sack to her in a flash, and she immediately put Pari down and dug in with both hands. A moment later, she pulled out a handful of the sticky, pliable wax that Pari preferred to use in her experiments.
¡°Sorry, sweetie,¡± she said as much for her own benefit as Pari¡¯s. Without hesitation, she pulled two smaller pieces out of the wax mound and unceremoniously smushed them as deep into Pari¡¯s nostrils as she could. Then, to make sure, she did it again.
¡°What was that for?¡± Rudra asked.
¡°Something is overwhelming her senses. Hopefully, this will stop that.¡±
¡°You serious?¡±
¡°Her sense of smell is absurd. Haven¡¯t you seen her sniffing things all the time?¡±
¡°Well, yeah, but I just thought that was because she was weird.¡±
Gabby shot him a warning glare.
¡°The smells on this stupid tree are so powerful they¡¯re messing with her. Like before, with the flowers. They just smelled like nice flowers to me, but the scent alone made her high. I don¡¯t even smell anything right now, but whatever it is, it¡¯s too much for her to handle.¡±
¡°And you think that stuffing wax up her nose will stop that?¡±
¡°It¡¯s the best idea I could come up with, alright? Like putting cotton or bits of cloth in your ears.¡±
Pari let out a tiny groan and stirred. Her eyelids fluttered and she tried to inhale, only for the wax to catch her by surprise. Her eyes and mouth shot open, she took a heaving, gasping breath. Gabby pulled the catgirl into a comforting embrace.
Pari wrapped her arms around Gabby¡¯s neck, clinging to her like a drowning sailor clutching a board floating atop a stormy ocean, coughing and wheezing while her body trembled. All the while, Gabby held her close, stroking her soft hair and whispering calming platitudes. It took a little while, but eventually, Pari calmed down.
¡°Are you alright now, Pari?¡± Gabby asked.
Pari nodded, though she looked puzzled. ¡°Pari¡¯s nose can¡¯t breathe?¡±
Gabby reached out and stopped the girl from sticking a finger up her nostril. Quickly, she explained what had happened and what she¡¯d done to try to fix it.
¡°Is the stinky smell still bothering you?¡±
Pari nodded again. ¡°Smell still super stinky, but Gabby-friend help lots! Pari not feel sick anymore.¡±
Gabriela had to suppress a chuckle over how Pari¡¯s voice changed when she was plugged up. ¡°What was it like? Was it like the flowers?¡±
Pari shook her head. ¡°This smell strong. Very, very, super stronger than flower smell. Wax makes smell weaker, though. Now, close to flower pollen strong.¡±
Gabby frowned. ¡°Is it getting stronger the further we climb?¡±
¡°Uh-huh. Smell come from up.¡± Pari pointed directly up the slope. ¡°Pari okay for now.¡±
¡°Alright, tell me if it gets unbearable again, okay?¡±
¡°Okay!¡±
For a little while, Gabby carried the little girl, letting her recover some more before she eventually got too squirmy and wanted to walk on her own. As they got near the top, Pari ended up having to stop and make some sort of mixture between a thin candle and an incense stick, which she immediately lit and began to huff. It struck Gabby as a rather drastic measure, but the girl knew better, and it seemed to work.
Gabriela had spent many a moment during this whole escapade imagining what their destination would look like, but no amount of imagination had prepared her for what they found when they reached the top.
The peak of Ruresni¡¯s trunk was shaped like a shallow bowl, with the ground sloping gently down from the edge before leveling out to form a seemingly endless rolling meadows filled with beautiful flowers glowing blue in the night. Gabriela had envisioned something like tulips in her mind, but instead, the blossoms resembled sunflowers as tall as a man, each with a large papery bulb like those of the Chinese lantern flower sticking out where the center seeds would be.
The flowers glowed from top to bottom, with the petals noticeably brighter than the body, but the central lantern glowed most of all. The massive field of these shining flowers, swaying gently in the breeze, surrounded by the glow of the tree from all around them... it all had a very peaceful and mystical ambiance, like she was looking at some sort of heavenly realm where mortals were not supposed to tread.
Gabby was entranced.
¡°It is said that, once we die and our souls return to the Mother Tree, we are reborn as acunai flowers upon this field,¡± General Bloodflower said softly, almost reverently.
¡°I... yeah,¡± she managed to mutter.
¡°A shame we can¡¯t stay long. Let us collect our prize.¡±
The four of them headed down into the meadow.
¡°Does it matter which ones we harvest?¡± Rudra asked, pulling a flower down to inspect the sunburst of petals.
¡°No, any one is as good as the rest,¡± Caprakan told them.
¡°Let¡¯s get to it, then.¡±
Rudra unslung their one remaining pack and pulled out the special bag they¡¯d been given at the start of the challenge. Made of a thin, rubbery membrane, the sack was smooth to the point where it seemed to have a sheen and seemed to be made from some sort of oversized animal¡¯s stomach or bladder or something rather than being sewn or woven. As he inspected the half-meter long and wide bag, he suddenly scowled.
¡°What¡¯s this?¡±
He turned the sack around for them to see. At first, Gabby didn¡¯t see anything, but closer inspection revealed several tiny burn holes dotting the rubbery material.
¡°Oh, that¡¯s not good,¡± Caprakan sighed.
¡°Why, is it going to rip open if we fill it?¡± Gabby wondered.
¡°No, it should be alright in that regard. The skin is stretchy and tough, and the petals are large enough that they won¡¯t fall out even if the holes stretch wider. The problem is that we needed a bag like this to keep the smell locked away as we travel back down. Animals will get attracted to the scent.¡±
¡°Can we fix it somehow? Sew it shut?¡±
¡°Sew it with what needle and what material?¡± He shook his head. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t keep the smell in regardless. The reason this is made from kravak lung is because air can¡¯t escape through it. Unless we could seal it shut somehow...¡±
As one, then three of them looked over towards Pari. The jittery, nose-plugged, incense-huffing child was busy stuffing all manner of flower parts into metal containers.
¡°Pari could seal with candle,¡± the girl told them after they explained the problem, ¡°but Pari not make candle while Pari not smell good. Pari need wax out first.¡±
¡°I guess we need to just deal with it until we get down to the moss and have her fix it then,¡± Gabby proposed.
¡°It¡¯s not like we¡¯ve been free from animal attacks so far,¡± Rudra pointed out.
Caprakan nodded. ¡°Even so, I think our best move would be to have Gabriela wear the bag at all times. That way, if any creatures attack, they¡¯ll focus on her and not the rest of us.¡±
¡°Fine, that works,¡± Gabby agreed.
¡°Wear it on your front so you can protect it,¡± Rudra suggested. He smirked just for a moment. ¡°Like a fanny pack.¡±
¡°Don¡¯t make me punch you.¡±
Together, the three of them harvested enough flower petals that Gabby looked pregnant with octuplets by the end. Then, reluctant as she was to turn back, they had to go. Gabby took one last moment to gaze upon the placid, quiet beauty before she walked over the lip and stepped out onto the wide branch headed down.
¡°We need to take a rest,¡± Gabriela insisted.
¡°We can¡¯t afford to stop so soon,¡± Caprakan argued. ¡°They¡¯re surely almost all the way down the lower branch, if not back to the trunk already. That means they¡¯ll be on the ground in another two days. Our best hope is to push onward as fast as we can manage.¡±
¡°I know, but I need to help Pari get the wax out of her nose now that we¡¯re far enough down the branch. She can¡¯t stay like this forever.¡±
¡°Quickly, then. I don¡¯t want to stay still with the petals, either.¡±
Gabby jogged over to Pari, who was lagging behind. The girl seemed worn down. Perhaps it was a side effect of her alchemical solutions to the last few days¡¯ problems? Or maybe it was her short legs making her have to work harder to keep up? Or maybe it was the wax in her nose making it harder for her to breathe? Or maybe¡ª
¡°Pari thirsty.¡±
Gabby zipped over to Rudra and grabbed the group¡¯s last remaining waterskin before zipping right back in a flash to Pari¡¯s side.
¡°Make sure to drink before you get thirsty, Pari. It¡¯s important to stay hydrated.¡±
Pari nodded between gulps.
¡°Now, it should be about time to get that wax out, right?¡±
¡°Pari trying, but wax sticky.¡±
¡°Maybe I can help dig it out?¡±
The child seemed less than enthused by that idea. ¡°Pari try harder first. Pari tell Gabby-friend when¡ª¡±
Something heavy barreled into Gabby¡¯s side, bowling her over. Before she could even process what was going on, she felt something press down on her torso and the petal bag, holding her on her back against the ground.
The inside of a mouth more than a meter wide seemed to open up out of thin air, hundreds of wide triangular teeth designed for gripping and ripping glinting in the glow of the night. Gabby twisted and tried to fend off the incoming teeth with her left hand, only for them to bite down hard on that arm and tear it right off.
The pain swept the confusion from her mind, letting habits formed by months and months of battle finally kick in. She lashed out with her right arm, full of fury and smoke, and felt her hand stab into flesh she couldn¡¯t see, and her hand grabbed what felt like some sort of pliable tube. The mouth opened to let out a pained screech, and the pressure on her chest lightened somewhat.
Gabby pulled. Purple blood sprayed from a floating hole in the air as her arm emerged clutching a piece of a pipe-sized artery. The unseeable creature reared back, letting her roll away and jump to her feet. Thinking quickly, she swung the petal bag around to her back like a backpack and sprinted forward.
Thanks to the blood spraying out with each heartbeat, she could make out the vague outline of a four-clawed foot, three in the front and one sticking out backward, large enough to wrap around her torso. Attached to that foot was a scaled leg as thick as she was, leading up to... thin air. The blood didn¡¯t make up much past the leg outside of a few drops, but it was enough to point her in the right direction, and that was all she needed.
¡°Let¡¯s see how you like it,¡± she muttered as she flashed forward and wrapped her arms around the creature¡¯s leg. Not surprisingly, it did not like having its leg ripped off very much at all.
More violet blood sprayed forth from the beast¡¯s suddenly empty socket, coating her and the now-tan limb which she held. It shrieked again, this time with extra agonized warbling.
Leaping up and grabbing its lower jaw, Gabby clung on as it thrashed, eventually pulling herself up and forcing its jaw open with both feet and one hand. Jamming her free hand up through the roof of its mouth, through the bottom of its skull, and into its brain, she quickly swung her limb this way and that, churning brain matter into slurry.
The lizard dropped like rock, dead as a doornail. And that¡¯s what it was, she could now clearly see: a lizard. It most closely resembled a horned lizard from back on Earth, the sort she¡¯d heard could shoot blood from their eyes or something, except it seemed to have some sort of crazy chameleon camouflage ability tacked on.
¡°What in the world...?¡± she heard Rudra mutter somewhere behind her.
¡°What a terrifying hunter! Glad we don¡¯t see those on the forest floor.¡± Caprakan chuckled. ¡°Or maybe we don¡¯t see them!¡±
¡°Gabby-friend! Hey! Gabby-friend!¡±
Gabby felt tiny hands tugging on her side and tensed. She¡¯d learned her lesson from the giant aphid attack and immediately ignored the others to focus on her kitty-girl beast radar. ¡°What is it, Pari?¡±
¡°Gabby-friend look super cool fighting sneak beast! Gabby-friend like rawr! Pow!¡±
Gabby let out a held breath. ¡°Thanks, sweetie.¡±
The child no longer sounded stuffed up, and two little trails of wax beneath her nostrils told her what she¡¯d missed. It also told her that Pari could probably smell properly again.
¡°Pari want sneak beast eyes! Gabby-friend kill other sneak beasts for Pari too? Pari want many eyes!¡±
Gabriela froze. ¡°...there¡¯s more?!¡±
¡°Lots and lots!¡± the girl proclaimed with a wide-eye smile. She eagerly pointed to Gabriela¡¯s left, back up the hill towards the trunk. Then, to Gabby¡¯s dismay, she continued to hold her arm out, pointer finger engaged, and turned herself in a full circle.
Gabriela straightened up and searched their surroundings, her gaze frantically sweeping across the terrain but finding nothing. A blip flickered on the edge of her vision and Gabby spun to face it, but only found more nothing.
No, not nothing. There was something there, perched atop a vertical shelf fungus about thirty meters away. Gabriela couldn¡¯t quite make it out, but she could just barely see an effect akin to the way air shimmers over a hot road, only far more subtle. Though she couldn¡¯t see the creature¡¯s body, the shimmer created an indistinct outline that she could barely perceive if she focused.
¡°Pari, get behind me,¡± she warned.
¡°Pari help!¡±
¡°No, Pari, just¡ª¡±
A candle flew over her shoulder, clattering to the rough bark ground ten meters away. A moment later, it burst with a loud ¡®pop!¡¯, sending out a wave of smoke that covered the whole area in front of her in a haze. Another ¡®pop!¡¯ came from behind her, and she coughed as the two fronts of smoke converged over them.
Looking through the clouds reminded Gabriela of particularly smoggy days back in Mexico City. Her vision was cut to a few hundred meters, but she could make out long, four-legged shapes now that she couldn¡¯t before.
One, two, three, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty...
¡°There¡¯s dozens of them...¡± Caprakan said, his voice quiet but strained.
Gabby looked behind her and found, to her dismay, that he was looking in the opposite direction that she¡¯d been looking. They were surrounded.
A stone formed in her gut. The odds that she could protect everybody if all these huge lizards attacked at once were not high.
¡°Okay, here¡¯s the plan,¡± she said with calm she did not feel. ¡°They¡¯re attracted to the petals, right? I¡¯ll lure them back uphill while you get out of here, then I¡¯ll rejoin you after I¡¯m done.¡±
¡°We¡¯re already in their sights,¡± Rudra replied. ¡°Even if you run, there¡¯s nothing stopping them from making us easy prey.¡±
¡°He¡¯s right,¡± General Bloodflower agreed.
¡°Then what¡¯s the plan?¡± she hissed. ¡°Give me something better! They¡¯re going to attack any moment now!¡±
She could see the foggy outlines of huge lizards slowly getting over their shock, the fight impulse starting to win over the quicker-out-the-gate flight impulse. However, before Caprakan could give her an answer, and before the chameleon horned lizards could swarm them, something else she didn¡¯t predict threw it all out the window.
Normally the glow of the tree seemed to be coming from just about everywhere equally as each leaf added its own light from a different direction. It lent the environment a very alien, uncanny vibe as shadows seemed nearly nonexistent at times and the light never seemed to change no matter how much time passed or which direction you looked.
Now, however, the glow seemed to shift, growing just enough to be noticeable off to Gabriela¡¯s left. Preoccupied with the imminent danger presented by at least a hundred nearly invisible predators, she didn¡¯t notice it at first, but it would have been impossible to miss what happened next.
Gabby didn¡¯t know what to compare the experience to other than standing near a meteor striking earth. Something heavy, bright, and massive¡ªeven relative to all the other overgrown plants and animals on this giant tree¡ªcrashed down not more than twenty meters in front of her, throwing truckloads of pulverized bark into the air and sending a shockwave through the branch so strong that it sent Gabby flying.
When she managed to stop her tumble and regain her bearings, she gaped at what she saw before her. The impact had blown away all the smoke, giving her a clear view of the biggest fucking snake she¡¯d ever seen or imagined. She¡¯d joked in her head about Stragmans ripping off Quetzalcoatl, but here, right in front of her, was a great beast that had seemingly escaped straight out of myth.
A wall of undulating serpentine muscle fifty meters high filled her view, white scales longer than she was tall, speckled with the occasional bright blue scale, speeding past from left to right at freeway speeds. Its gargantuan mass plowed through the nearly unbreakable bark like it was nothing, which she belatedly realized were probably the wide channels she¡¯d noticed when first arriving at the final stretch. Its body curled up from around the side of the branch, seeming to never end.
The monstrous snake turned away from Gabriela and the others, its head rearing high, poised to strike at some poor sneaky lizards on the other side of its body from them. Now that she could see the head without the smoke in the way, she could make out the wings poking out from its neck¡ªit seemed it truly was a winged serpent. Much smaller than the broad, strong wings found on many depictions of Quetzalcoatl, these appeared almost vestigial, though they did have a gorgeousness to the way the feathers started pure white, only to transition to bright blue near the tips.
The whole snake had a mystical beauty that reminded her of the acunai flower field atop the tree. Unlike the other animals that made Ruresni their home, the snake itself glowed. Its entire body had a soft but visible azure aura, while its blue scales and its massive eyes shone with a more powerful glow like stars in the sky. Gabby found it mesmerizing.
She wasn¡¯t the only one.
¡°Alu¡¯khan... It¡¯s real after all...¡± Caprakan gasped with wonder.
Then, it opened wide, revealing a maw so large that it could swallow a dragon whole with ease, and Gabby came to her senses.
¡°Gogogogogogogogogo!¡± she hollered, turning downhill and booking it.
The others needed no encouragement and likewise made tracks. That was when Gabriela realized an important issue: everybody ran at different speeds. Rudra was a large, heavily muscled man and ran like one. He wasn¡¯t slow, exactly, thanks to his impressive height, and he had his impressive super strength to help haul him around, but it felt like most of that strength went towards torque rather than top speed. Caprakan, meanwhile, had little holding him down thanks to his slender build, but he wasn¡¯t the tallest of people and leg length mattered when it came to this sort of thing. Speaking of tiny legs, however, the notable straggler was the tiny child laden with the big, heavy sack of candle supplies. Pari struggled to manage even half the speed of the others.
This wasn¡¯t going to work.
Gabby skidded to a halt and turned back, sprinting at full speed over to the beastkin girl. She lifted her up against her chest, saying, ¡°Hold on just like last time, alright?¡± Pari, breathing heavy to the point of panting, grunted her understanding and assent.
To make sure she stayed put, Gabby pulled tight the straps on the acunai petal bag on her back, letting them stretch from around her shoulders to the point that she could tie them together, making a sort of makeshift seat belt to hold the child in more snugly. Lastly, she grabbed hold of Pari¡¯s sack with one hand, heaving it over her shoulder.
Taking a split second to glance at the carnage behind them, Gabriela broke into a sweat. In just moments, Alu¡¯khan had turned the area of the lizard ambush into a wasteland of broken fungi and gigantic furrows in nearly indestructible bark.
Debris littered the area in chunks both larger than her body and smaller than her head. Were the bark a concrete grey instead of brown, the place would look more like an urban warzone after a bombing run than a living tree.
The perpetrator of all this destruction¡ªor the perpetrator¡¯s head, at least¡ªrose up several hundred meters into the air, several formerly invisible lizards sliding down its gullet, and turned their way.
A fearful chill ran down her spine, the sort of alarm that she imagined prey felt when they saw a predator ready to strike. She could win against Alu¡¯khan in a battle of attrition, surely¡ªprobably¡ªmaybe¡ªbut there was no way the others would survive if they were anywhere nearby.
Looking right at her, Alu¡¯khan opened its mouth and let out a hiss that seemed to shake reality itself.
Gabby turned and ran. Moving with superhuman speed, she caught up with the others not more than ten seconds later and risked a glance back. The great serpent had cut their lead nearly in half.
This wasn¡¯t going to work. She had no choice but to take drastic measures of the sort that she¡¯d been avoiding this whole journey.
She transferred Pari¡¯s bag to her mouth, biting down in a big wad of the fabric to keep it from slipping out, then she sped over to Rudra. With one smooth motion that was a lot harder than she made it look thanks to the man¡¯s bulk, she grabbed him around his stomach and hoisted him over shoulder much in the same way she¡¯d done in the burning hive.
¡°Wha¡ª?!¡± Rudra protested, squirming against her grip.
Gabriela didn¡¯t take the time to argue with him. She was already zipping towards Caprakan.
The Stragman struggled against his sudden hoisting just like his heavier counterpart, but she held tight. Things like working things out took time they did not have; the great serpent and its brobdingnagian maw was already almost right on top of them.
Gabby accelerated as only she could, her ears picking up the grunts of her two shoulder-borne companions and the whump of the hungry beast¡¯s jaws closing just where they¡¯d been a moment ago. Bark blurred beneath her feet as she picked up speed with gravity¡¯s ample assistance.
Luckily, this decline was the smoothest and straightest leg of their journey, though she still had to make some sudden swerves and a few hops to get around some unfortunately placed shelf mushrooms, drawing some more displeased grunts from her male passengers. At least they¡¯d figured out what was going on and stopped struggling quickly enough.
There was just one tiny problem...
The rumble of the great Alu¡¯khan¡¯s pursuit was not quieting nearly as much as she thought it would.
The green and blue stalks of the moss jungle waved at her from up ahead. Gabriela peeked behind her only to find the giant winged serpent alarmingly close behind them. The gap had widened a bit, yes, but at the speed the creature was motoring, it would catch up to them in at most twenty seconds if she were to stop now.
She wanted to scream. Why did this have to happen?! Was it following the scent of the flower petals? There were a billion flower petals up the branch!
The moss forest was upon them now, and stopping was not an option. Neither was just ramming through with Pari acting as a humanoid plow. That left one option.
¡°Hold on!¡± she called as she bent low before launching them all into the air to the sound of pained grunts from Rudra and Caprakan.
Gabby tried her best to make her leap as low and long as possible, hoping to soar over as much of the growth in one leap as she could while also not hurting her passengers upon landing, but there was only so much she could do. She barreled into the top third of a stalk, sticking her feet out to cushion the blow. The stalk bent and deformed, absorbing some more of the momentum. It didn¡¯t matter.
Gabriela cringed from the sound of Rudra¡¯s gasp, the sound of a man who¡¯s just been kicked in the gut by a horse. General Bloodflower fared even worse, the contents of his stomach splattering all across her back and side. But Pari¡¯s moan of pain and nails digging into the back of her shoulders distressed her most of all.
¡°SorrySorrySorrySorry!¡± she shouted as her superpowered legs threw them through the air a second time, and then a third, and then a fourth. Each time the pained moans got a little louder, the nails digging in just a bit more, and her heart sank even further.
She never should have taken Pari up here. Even though her mission would have failed without Pari, even though Pari had proved indispensable on the way up, she should have done it anyway. She should have tried to find another way. But it was too late now. All she could do was apologize with all her heart as Pari let out an ¡®Ah!¡¯ with each jump and each landing.
As they soared above the mossy mess, Gabby checked behind her again and let out a groan. Alu¡¯khan had chosen the ¡®crush and flatten everything in your path¡¯ option and was plowing through the oversized moss like it wasn¡¯t even there. They¡¯d gained a lead of perhaps a minute now, but that was hardly anything.
What was their endgame, here? How long was this going to go on? What if Alu¡¯khan kept chasing them all the way down the tree?
Her teammates couldn¡¯t take this punishment for too much longer. Heck, she didn¡¯t know that she could hold onto them for much longer, either. Pari¡¯s sack, especially, was starting to slip a little from the wetness in her mouth. But the snake continued to chase them, and so she kept going.
With one final leap, they landed on the far side of the moss jungle, back where Pari had glued her to the ground what felt like a week ago but had only been merely hours earlier. Alu¡¯khan showed no signs of losing interest, so she kept going, the wind whipping through her hair and roaring in her ears.
Somewhere up ahead grew the leaf that had been their access point to this branch, but getting there wouldn¡¯t be easy. The terrain ahead lacked the primeval mossy overgrowth or benevolent open flatness of the last two areas, instead conforming more to the general norm of other parts of Ruresni. The terrain became far more rough and uneven from a Gabby-sized perspective, making running on it without tripping difficult.
On the Ruresni-sized perspective, the branch as a whole twisted and turned like an absolutely hammered man trying to walk home from a bar, with sudden extreme downward slopes added in for good measure. A smattering of flora and fauna served as extra obstacles, as shown by how she had to quickly juke to the side to barely avoid a strand of spiderweb as thick as her thigh.
The sudden change of direction didn¡¯t go over well with the others. Gabby heard a ¡®HUAGH!¡¯ come from Rudra, and her ankle felt a splash of wetness. Her spirit quailed at the thought of the damage she was inflicting, but what more could she do in this situation?
To be on the safe side, Gabby decided to cut her speed just a little so that she could react sooner to surprise impediments. It would be faster in the long run, she told herself.
Her decision paid off almost immediately as not more than a hundred meters later, the ground beneath her feet abruptly fell away, the branch nosediving into a steep slope. Gabby bit back a curse as they free fell nearly ten meters before landing harder than she¡¯d wanted. With a yelp, Pari¡¯s grip faltered and she slid further down Gabby¡¯s torso, her hands clawing at Gabby¡¯s back.
¡°Pari! Hold on!¡± Gabby hollered through clenched teeth, panicking hard. She tried to bring them to a stop with just her feet, but the slope was too steep and her feet just slid, the bark tearing off the skin and leaving twin bloody trails behind her. ¡°Just hold on as much as you can!¡±
They finally skidded to a halt as the gradient leveled out a bit more, and Pari wiggled and scratched her way back up, wrapping her small arms tightly around Gabby¡¯s neck. Gabby took off without even asking if she was good to go; The faint but still present tremors passing beneath her feet told her that every second still mattered.
Gabriela didn¡¯t know how long she ran. It might have been an hour or more, or it might have been merely fifteen minutes, but to her, it felt like an eternity. At long last, however that eternity was coming to a close. Of in the distance, she could see the wide, green-blue shapes of their exit leaf and its companion from the adjacent branch. If they could get off this branch, maybe that blasted serpent would finally give up the chase... right? Perhaps not, but what else could she do but hope?
Soon enough, they were nearly there. Her eyes locked firmly on the end of the leaf, she sprinted across the stem, then across the leaf¡¯s wide surface. As she approached the leaf¡¯s edge, her gaze moved to its companion from the branch beneath, and, for the first time in several days, she gazed out upon Stragma as a whole. The world seemed to open up all around her, the vastness of the land far, far, far below hitting her all at once like a sledgehammer to her skull.
Gabriela stumbled, somehow just barely keeping herself from tumbling off the edge as her joints locked up as if turned to stone.
Everything about Ruresni was huge, and that obviously included the branches. The thing about them was, they were so wide that they looked and felt enough like solid ground for Gabriela¡¯s senses to pretend they were just that. Even the stem on this leaf was nearly a hundred meters wide. This had obscured a terrible truth from her, one she was not ready to suddenly confront without warning.
Climbing up this tree had been hellish torture, to the point that she¡¯d thought she was going to lose her mind at times. Climbing down was many times worse, because climbing down meant looking down. All the time.
The sight made her vision spin, her heart race, her mind go blank. She was frozen stiff, but what minuscule piece of her consciousness that could still reason told her that Alu¡¯khan would have no such issues.
¡®Move! Curse you, move!¡¯ she yelled silently at her unresponsive body, but the only movement it seemed capable of doing was trembling in overwhelming terror.
All she had to do was one jump. One leap down. It would only take a step, just a single step, but she couldn¡¯t. She couldn¡¯t. She had to, but she couldn¡¯t she couldn¡¯t she couldn¡¯t she couldn¡¯t she couldn¡¯t¡ª
Something grabbed her by the shoulder and wrestled her back, away from the edge and its terrible view. She tripped and fell, landing on her rear. A large hulking shadow loomed over her, reaching down with one hand to untie the acunai petal bag straps¡ªoh, Rudra; it was just Rudra. When had he gotten off her shoulder?
Freed at last, Pari woozily slid off Gabby¡¯s chest, stumbling to her feet and swaying before sitting down.
¡°Pari not feel good...¡± she slurred.
¡°Me neither,¡± Rudra said from somewhere behind her. ¡°I can¡¯t move my left arm.¡±
No third voice joined the conversation.
The mind-scorching view was gone, and slowly her brain was coming back online¡ªtoo slowly. Her breath still coming in fits and gulps, her whole body still trembling from terror and shock and adrenaline and so many other things, Gabby fought with the irrational part of herself for control. Finally, she managed to turn her head and see Caprakan¡¯s motionless form stuck under her arm. He must have fallen off when she¡¯d tripped. For a split second, she thought him dead, but then she felt her arm atop his torso rise and fall just slightly. That was good, at least.
Wasn¡¯t there something she was forgetting? Something important?
Rudra unceremoniously ripped the sack from her mouth. ¡°Pari, get out a smoke candle, quick!¡± he said, his voice urgent.
¡°Smoke... candle?¡±
¡°The one from the hive!¡±
¡°Hive?¡±
¡°The one with Jaya, the... the one with your family inside or something?¡±
¡°Happy candle!¡±
¡°Hurry! It¡¯s getting closer!¡±
Oh right, Alu¡¯khan.
¡°Happy candle, happy candle, happy candle...¡± Pari dug through her bag with both hands, a sleepy look in her unfocused eyes. After a few long moments, she pulled out a candle and gave it a long sniff. ¡°Heeeeee.... happy candle!¡±
¡°Light it, quick!¡±
Pari leaned over the candle, reaching out with a hand and, after a pause, snapping her fingers. Nothing happened. ¡°Eh?¡±
Another snap, more nothing.
¡°Mmnnnnnnn...¡± she moaned.
¡°Come on, Pari! Push through! It¡¯s almost here! Hurry, hurry, hurry!¡±
Gabriela shakily push herself to her hands and knees, purposely closing her eyes just in case she were to accidentally get a peek over the ledge again.
Another snap. Another. Another.
¡°Ah!¡± Pari finally gasped. ¡°Ah? Give candle!¡±
Gabriela felt a large hand grab her and roughly pull her to her feet, then shove a small, smooth object into her grasp. She opened her eyes to find a small lit candle in her hands. Off in the distance, a hulking serpent was working along the leaf stem, it¡¯s head nearly onto the leap proper.
¡°Quick, before it starts working, get this into its mouth,¡± Rudra demanded.
¡°B-but...¡± Her body still felt weak and not fully under her control, her legs shaking just from the act of standing. ¡°I...¡±
Rudra sighed, stepping in front of her and reached out, his large, strong hand with its long, thick fingers wrapping tight around her throat.
¡°Sorry about the roughness, but I only have one working arm right now,¡± he rumbled.
He pivoted, taking a step toward the snake, and hurled her overhand towards their pursuer like some sort of living javelin.
Gabby hurtled though the air like an arrow, the candle held close to her chest in a vise-like grip. Alu¡¯khan saw her coming and opened its mouth, letting out a hissing roar of challenge or maybe anger at having to chase them this far, giving her a nice big target. Except for one thing: the snake seemed to be dipping.
Alu¡¯khan¡¯s great mass leaning more and more on the leaf as it slithered off the branch was slowly bending the leaf down bit by bit. And so it was that, when she reached the giant winged serpent a moment later, she sailed completely over its gaping maw... and tumbled instead right into its left nostril.
Close enough. Besides, wasn¡¯t it proper that with Pari¡¯s candle she use Pari¡¯s proven method?
Gabriela grabbed the soft, slimy inner flesh of Alu¡¯khan¡¯s nose as the creature whipped it head back and forth, trying to dislodge her. Though the flesh was slick, she held on, her other arm winding up and waiting. A moment later, when the candle finally began to belch its mind-altering smoke, she threw it with everything she had, sending it flying deeper into the beast.
The serpent sneezed, creating a massive gust of wind that finally dislodged her, pushing her back out into the open. As she scrabbled against smooth scales, she found herself face to face with the massive predator. It stared at her with its giant glowing eyes, and she stared right back.
Something inside her snapped. Memories of this entire ordeal flashed through her mind¡ªthe terrifying free climbing, the disgusting giant aphids trying to drink their juices, Pari running off with giant wasps, having to fight through an entire hive and then run through an inferno, losing all their stuff and her sword, the Chos¡¯s cowardly ambush, and more¡ªand her body felt ablaze with fury. This bloody beast was the final straw.
¡°KNOCK IT OFF, ALREADY! GO BACK TO BEING A MYTH!¡±
With every ounce of anger and frustration that she¡¯d built up over the course of this accursed journey into the sky, she kicked it in the snout.
Alu¡¯khan¡¯s head snapped back, it neck slamming into its own body coiling around the leaf stem. It shuddered and let out a agonized wail, but she could tell that for all the pain she¡¯d inflicted, it wasn¡¯t much hurt. By the time Gabby landed on the leaf, it was already rising again, its gaze locked onto her with clear hatred in its eyes.
Gabby braced herself and readied a maximum strength punch. Yes, she didn¡¯t have her weapon, but she¡¯d managed something like this before. All she had to do was hit the snake¡¯s head hard enough that its jaw snapped open, rip out a gigantic fang, and go to town on it. The others were far enough away now... probably... unless their battle caused the leaf to shake and throw the others off...
But just as her doubts were setting in, the snake sneezed again. And again. Its head wobbled, and its gaze lost its hard, predatory edge. To her surprise, its long, giant forked tongue squirted out from its lips and... licked her entire body, almost as a dog would.
Confused and covered is snake drool, Gabby watched as the great winged serpent Alu¡¯khan turned away, the bulk of its body still on the branch pulling the rest of it back. With a long, satisfied hiss, it began to wrap itself around the branch, circling around it over and over as if searching for something.
Well, Gabriela didn¡¯t much care what it was searching for. All that mattered was that it wasn¡¯t searching for them.
By the time she returned to the others, Caprakan had regained consciousness, though he didn¡¯t look like he wanted to get off the ground any time soon. Pari, even in her clearly addled state, did what Pari does and tried to collect as much Alu¡¯khan saliva as she could.
¡°Ah, our savior returns,¡± he weakly jibed.
¡°Are you alright?¡± Gabby asked.
¡°Oh, I¡¯ll recover in due time. Don¡¯t worry about me. We should worry about you. I hear you froze on the edge here? That doesn¡¯t bode well for the rest of the trip.¡±
¡°Yeah, well, I...¡±
¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Rudra told them. ¡°I know how to fix this.¡±
¡°And how would we do that, my burly friend?¡±
¡°It¡¯s simple. We blindfold her and I¡¯ll carry her tied to the pack.¡±
Gabby swallowed. ¡°You¡¯re joking.¡±
He was not joking.
A few moments later, once everybody was on their feet and set to depart, Gabby turned back toward the branch they¡¯d come down, and sighed. The last image she saw before Caprakan wrapped the cloth over her eyes was that of an absurdly gigantic white and blue snake, eyes glazed, wrapped around the entire branch and gnawing happily on the end of its tail like a puppy with a chew toy.
Almost two days later, the group found themselves back at the trunk, ready to climb down to the lowest layer of branches. From there, they would be halfway down, with the rest of the descent being nothing but trunk.
The trip had taken nearly two days because of the groups many injuries sustained by riding the Gabby Express, wiping out some of the time savings they¡¯d gained fleeing from Alu¡¯khan. The biggest reason she hadn¡¯t simply carried the others everywhere was because she¡¯d been afraid of exactly this sort of outcome.
Rudra had a sprained and dislocated shoulder, multiple broken ribs, and probably some other things he wasn¡¯t telling her. Say what you might about him, the man sure could act tough. After popping his shoulder back into place, he¡¯d climbed like nothing was wrong, not making a single noise of pain.
Besides being knocked unconscious and whatever damage might have come with that, Caprakan had a severely dislocated hip, back pain, and had even lost several teeth. Unlike Rudra, the Stragman had been quite vocal when they¡¯d popped his hip back in place.
In some ways, Pari had suffered the least damage, but at the same time, she was the one Gabby fretted about and blamed herself for the most. A concussion. She¡¯d given the sweet child a concussion. The very thought made Gabby feel ill.
Scyrians were obnoxiously hardy folk, however, and the pair had healed far quicker than most anybody else would. The last half day, they¡¯d been moving about as if nothing had ever happened in the first place, which was a little relieving.
One thing she¡¯d learned during the trip: being toted like a piece of luggage was incredibly demeaning. Gabby couldn¡¯t move. She couldn¡¯t see. All she could do was hang there and think as Rudra and the others descended, hour after hour. It still beat doing it herself.
¡°So, umm... thanks for this,¡± she said softly into the dark.
¡°You thanked me before. No need to keep doing it,¡± Rudra rumbled from a few feet away.
¡°Ha, yeah, you¡¯re right...¡±
There came a pregnant pause.
¡°I¡¯ve been thinking about what you said a few days back¡ªabout true beliefs,¡± she finally managed to say.
Gabby felt how his whole body stopped for a split second mid-climb before continuing on as if nothing had happened.
¡°Yeah? Finally have something to say?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know, I just... It really made me think about that sort of thing for the first time in a while. I used to think I knew what I believed in. I was raised Catholic since I first arrived at the orphanage. I did all the things a good Catholic child was supposed to do, and I engraved the Lord¡¯s teachings upon my heart. I remember my neighbor commenting once on how ¡®remarkably devout¡¯ I was for somebody my age. Then I ended up here, and all that belief didn¡¯t even last a week. I knew what I was doing when I tossed it all aside, and I did it anyway. And then I¡¯ve spent almost all my time since then avoiding thinking about it. I can¡¯t help but look at myself now and realize that I¡¯m empty. Perhaps I¡¯m the one who should be called a ¡®Shell¡¯.¡±
Rudra snorted. ¡°Is there nothing you have left to believe in, then?¡±
¡°I don¡¯t know anymore.¡±
¡°Nothing at all?¡±
¡°I¡ª¡± She hesitated, not sure if she should say it. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t.¡±
¡°Just say it,¡± he told her.
¡°There¡¯s one thing I still hold on to. If I had to put it into words, it would be... ¡®children are everything.¡¯¡±
Rudra went quiet for a long moment.
¡°Quite the statement from perhaps the world¡¯s single most prolific orphan creator,¡± he finally said.
¡°That¡¯s why I didn¡¯t want to say it...¡± Gabriela replied, her voice hollow. ¡°Do you know what they call me in other places? My nickname, or title?¡±
¡°Not really.¡±
¡°They call me the Monster. Even the Ubrans called me that while I fought for them.¡±
¡°Even your side called you that?¡±
¡°Yes.¡±
¡°And you let them?¡±
¡°Yeah... I could have pushed back. The commanders could have snuffed it out pretty easily if I had asked them to. But I didn¡¯t, because I knew that I am a monster. I condemned this whole world to years of chaos and war for nothing but the possibility of returning to my kids. I chose to damn countless innocent children to lonely lives filled with misery, all just for the chance to see their faces again. I chose that, and there isn¡¯t a better word than ¡®monster¡¯ for somebody who would make that decision. But what really gets to me is that, if given that same choice again... I would like to say that I would choose differently now, given everything that I have learned, but... I can¡¯t say that. Not without feeling like I¡¯d be lying. Even now, I¡¯m still the Monster.¡±
¡°So, really, it¡¯s not ¡®children are everything¡¯, but rather ¡®my children are everything¡¯.¡±
¡°I... I guess so, yes. But what good does a sentiment like that do in a world without my children? What¡¯s the point of holding that in my heart when I know that I will almost surely never see them again?¡±
¡°Then change it in your heart.¡±
¡°Sorry?¡±
¡°Do you know what I was before I became a pacifist? I was a thug. A hoodlum. I did some low-level crime, fought as a part of a small gang against other local gangs¡ªthat sort of thing. I lived a very violent life, and I hurt some people very badly. I don¡¯t think I killed anybody, but with some of the injuries I handed out, I will never be able to say for sure. Would you like to know a secret?¡±
¡°Um, sure.¡±
¡°When I first became a pacifist, I didn¡¯t believe in pacifism.¡±
¡°I don¡¯t understand?¡±
¡°I fell in love with a girl who was a pacifist, so I followed what she taught me so I could be around her and so she would like me. I didn¡¯t actually care about those things, I only pretended to. Then, one day, I woke up and realized that it wasn''t an act anymore. Those principles I had lived for selfish, shallow reasons had taken root within my spirit without me even knowing, and for some time I had believed in them for their own sake. I saw the good that I had done, and the harm that I had prevented. I saw how much better the world would be if only more people walked the path my lover and I walked. I was a changed man, and the one who had changed me was myself, just by living my truth.
¡°That¡¯s the real secret I want you to know. Sometimes, if you live a truth, even if it is a hollow, false truth, it can become something more. It can grow into something strong and real, the sort of thing that you would face the weight of the world to uphold. It happened to me, and my leap from lowlife to what I am today was a large one. All you have to do is make it from loving your children to loving all the other children too.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve been trying, but even so, I don¡¯t know if I have the right to say or believe that sort of thing after everything I¡¯ve done already.¡±
¡°I agree, you¡¯ve done many terrible things¡ªunforgivable things, in my mind¡ªbut this isn¡¯t about the past. This is about the future. You cannot change the suffering that you already brought into this world, but you can change the good that you can create from this point on. Others will call you a hypocrite or hate you, but if your truth is solid, their words will be little more than noise.¡±
¡°You really think so?¡±
¡°I know so, because I have lived it. Now tell me, Gabriela Carreno the Monster, what do you believe, deep in your soul? What is your truth?¡±
¡°¡®Children are everything.¡¯¡±
¡°Your children?¡±
¡°All children. They need to be guided. They need to be protected. They need to be loved and cherished.¡±
¡°Then take that truth and let it crystallize inside you. Let it be the bedrock that everything else builds on top of. Live by it, and one day you will realize it has transformed you for the better.
¡°But, this is not something that can work if you half-ass it. You have to commit fully and with everything you have. Tell me, what have you done already?¡±
¡°Well, I spend time at an orphanage, helping the people there. And, I have helped some children in trouble, though the trouble was in large part because of what I¡¯ve done, so...¡±
¡°Then, about the future. What can you best do now to help as many children in this world as possible.¡±
¡°...I can leave.¡±
¡°Gabriela, don¡¯t play games with me.¡±
¡°No, I¡¯m serious. It¡¯s... I¡¯ll explain later. I promised you that already. Other than that, I don¡¯t really know.¡±
¡°Well, you have plenty of time. Think about it. Ask others. You don¡¯t have to chart you own path alone. And when you finally know, tell me.¡±
¡°...I¡¯ll try. Thank you.¡±
¡°Of course.¡±
They settled into a few minutes of silence.
¡°Any chance I¡¯ll be able to take this blindfold off soon?¡± she finally asked. ¡°It¡¯s all sweaty and sticky.¡±
¡°...not for another two hours at least, I¡¯d say.¡±
Gabriela sighed.
By the end of the second day, the group had made an encouraging amount of progress. They¡¯d made it to the lowest layer of branches¡ªwhich still left the vast majority of the trunk left to go, unfortunately¡ªbefore two swarms of beetles clashing over territory had forced them to veer off of their branch and onto one of the few broad leaves to be found this far down. Making camp, they settled down to cook, eat, rest, and plan. Now that Pari had repaired the damaged petal bag, they didn¡¯t have to worry anymore about the scent attracting more wildlife to ambush them as they took a break.
¡°Our best hope is that my honey got delayed on the way down,¡± General Caprakan explained as they sat around a small candle-born fire, cooking the last of their rations. ¡°While I doubt they¡¯ve had to deal with as much as we have, they should still run into their fair share of obstacles and setbacks. If the Mother Tree were an easy thing to traverse, it wouldn¡¯t make a very good trial, would it?¡±
They¡¯d set up near the center of the leaf, which stretched out in all directions for hundreds of meters. Gabby could almost be convinced they sat on solid, slightly soft earth if not for the barely perceptible movement beneath her feet that came when the wind blew hard enough. Even that was so subtle that she couldn¡¯t say for certain she wasn¡¯t just imagining it. Still, it was enough to settle her nerves somewhat.
¡°This is her third time, though,¡± she pointed out.
¡°True, but that doesn¡¯t mean she has experienced all this place has to offer. We can only hope.¡±
¡°How much further do we have to go before we¡¯re back on solid ground?¡± Rudra wondered.
Bloodflower stroked his chin for a moment. ¡°About twelve or so leagues, I should think. If we go as fast as we can manage, take some risks, and get lucky, we might be able to do it in two full days, perhaps. Our chances are slim, but they still exist.¡±
¡°What about your blimp?¡± Rudra wondered. ¡°Couldn¡¯t we just ride that down the rest of the way?¡±
The Stragman shook his head. ¡°That would likely count as outside assistance, which would make us forfeit. Can¡¯t risk it.¡±
¡°Doesn¡¯t matter, anyway,¡± Gabby added. ¡°I can¡¯t find the remote control.¡±
Rudra stiffened at the words. ¡°What do you mean you can¡¯t find it?¡±
¡°Exactly what I said. I checked the pack and it¡¯s missing.¡±
¡°When¡¯s the last time you saw it?¡± Bloodflower inquired.
¡°Before the snake, while we were packing the petals. Was too busy after that to check again until now. It must have fallen out during the chase.¡±
¡°But... then how do we get on board?¡±
Gabby shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I¡¯ll try to find a way, but if we can¡¯t, we¡¯ll just have to go on foot.¡±
Rudra groaned and laid down, the thought alone enough to tire him out.
Gabby sighed. They were all worn out. Days of pushing herself had combined with the overwhelming stress to fill her with a sort of exhausted restlessness, the sort one might get on hour thirty of an all-nighter but stronger. ¡°I¡¯m going to go look around again,¡± she said, climbing to her feet.
The night was quiet, with little to hear except the soft padding of her feet upon the leaf and the occasional rush of wind in her ears. In most places in this world, she¡¯d have been able to hear at least the songs of insects, birds, or Scyria¡¯s absurdly diverse and abundant lizards. Things were a bit different here, she supposed, when one bird would be a dozen meters long and likely have a huge territory or something.
Now halfway between the leaf¡¯s center and one of the sides, Gabby glanced back at the others. They are an eclectic bunch, to be sure, but she¡¯s come to respect them through their shared ordeal.
Rudra is reclining like he tends to do when they stop, his large body stretched out and his head tilted towards the single flame. Gabby still finds his attitude and self-imposed limitations to be aggravating, but she can understand the reasons behind it a little more, she supposes. Maybe it was just finally seeing the anger he kept inside that made her connect with him more than before.
She could not deny that he had been the workhorse of the team. When Caprakan was too exhausted, he was there to take up the load. When she fell, he was the most reliable of anchors to stop her. When she couldn¡¯t manage to climb down, he... well, there was no need to revisit that morning¡¯s shame right now.
What mattered was that he was the constant rock keeping the team together, even if he could be rather surly and grumpy most of the time. It still took a little work to overlook the fact that the only reason there needed to be a team in the first place was his blasted stubbornness, but her initial ill will toward the man had largely faded. She respected how upfront he was about his presence with them. The man had a goal and made no effort to disguise it.
Gabby could not say the same about General Caprakan Bloodflower. Even now, she couldn¡¯t quite trust his explanations about his presence with them, nor did she like how interested he seemed in Pari. And then, there was his single requirement as compensation for his participation, the one that Gabriela had agreed to only out of necessity. She couldn¡¯t fully trust somebody who would willingly do something like that to their most precious person...
Still, his knowledge had showed its worth multiple times. What¡¯s more, he¡¯d saved her when the Chos had attacked. If he¡¯d come to betray them, it would have happened then. She also appreciated how he would sometimes erect fences when they¡¯d rest in cracks in the bark. It helped her nerves.
Right now he was hunched down beside Pari, having a quiet discussion with the child who was nodding vigorously. Gabby frowned. She didn¡¯t like the idea of him influencing her in any way. She wanted Pari to stay Pari for as long as the world would allow.
Even now, with the prospect of failure¡ªand a whole heap of regrettable violence to follow¡ªlurking up ahead, the child was all smiles. Gabby wasn¡¯t sure if the catgirl didn¡¯t know why they were climbing this tree, didn¡¯t understand, or just simply didn¡¯t care. Knowing Pari as she did, Gabby supposed it was a mixture of all three.
Despite her promise to not put the girl in danger, she found herself glad to have her along every time she saw that wide, delighted smile. Pari was having the time of her life here, and that was good; at least somebody was having a fun time during this disaster.
And, as much of a pain as the beastkin¡¯s recent antics had been, Gabriela couldn¡¯t avoid the fact that they would have been in heaps of trouble without her there. Gabby had always known that Pari¡¯s strange alchemical abilities were worth acknowledging, but she¡¯d had no idea how varied, useful, and downright powerful they were. Again, her thoughts flashed back to the vision. Could Pari make another candle like that for her? Would it even be right to ask?
Gabriela often struggled to spell out in her mind just what Pari was to her, or what she was to Pari for that matter. The part of her that hated herself would say that Pari was little more than a child-shaped plug she was desperately shoving into the hole that her summoning had ripped out. The fact that Pari was cute, joyous, and lovable did little to quiet that particular voice, largely because she feared it was at least partly correct.
Another part of her envied the child for being able to do what she couldn¡¯t. Not the candles or the being raised by a dragon or any of that¡ªthe way she¡¯d remedied the loss of her original family by simply creating a new one. Gabriela wished she had the bravery to do something like that. The closest she¡¯d ever gotten to finding that bravery had been that time in the zeppelin months ago, back when Pari had tried to induct her into the child¡¯s weird idea of sisterhood.
She¡¯d almost gone along with it¡ªalmost¡ªbut in the end, she hadn¡¯t been able to. She¡¯d felt like joining Pari¡¯s family would mean throwing away her own, for as little sense as that made. She¡¯d worried that to let the door open even a crack would lead to her losing her drive, which had already been faltering. She¡¯d feared it would be the first step towards her being comfortable, and she did not deserve comfort.
It was a small thing, really¡ªjust a single word. After Gabby had turned down ¡°sister¡±, leading Pari to switch over to ¡°friend¡± instead, the difference in classification had not altered the way the girl treated her in any noticeable way. She basically acted like Gabby was family anyway, just with a different word tacked onto the end of her nickname.
Still, Gabriela knew that if she were to tell Pari that she¡¯d changed her mind, the little catgirl would add her to the family ledger faster than she could whip up a candle. And yet, even now, Gabriela still found herself unable to speak the words.
Gabby was a parent without children while Pari was a child without parents; their needs were well suited for each other. Despite this knowledge, she just couldn¡¯t do it. Maybe that voice in her head was right. Maybe she did view Pari as a way to soothe her pain rather than as a person. That was no way to treat a child. Children were everything.
Gabriela shook those ideas from her head and turned away again. Her thoughts were a mess. She kept walking.
Gabriela approached the side as close as she felt comfortable¡ªabout thirty meters from the edge, right where the leaf began to slope downward¡ªand looked down. Even from that distance, she could see enough of the forest floor off in the distance, lit by the mighty tree¡¯s glow, to somewhat digest just how absurdly high they were.
With the weird way information flowed between people in this world, things like measurements worked in a somewhat confounding but functional way: the recipient would get an impression of the measurement, and their mind would convert that to a fairly accurate approximation.
In this case, Gabby¡¯s mind had converted General Bloodflower¡¯s estimate of their elevation to ¡°about twenty-five kilometers¡±. That alone was enough to make her head spin, but this view was another matter entirely. Even if she wanted to, she wasn¡¯t sure she could get her legs to take another step forward.
It was funny, in a way, how this gave her what she was looking for. She¡¯d wanted to clear her head of all those depressing thoughts, and nothing cleared her head more effectively than sheer terror.
¡°Gabby-friend!¡±
A voice cut through, bringing her back to the present. She turned around to find Pari rushing over, a large wooden cup held in front of her with both hands.
¡°Pari bring Gabby-friend soup meal!¡±
¡°Aw, thank you, Pari. That¡¯s so sweet of you.¡±
She took the cup from the child and took a sip. Thanks to their circumstances, they were nearly out of food and didn¡¯t have the time to scavenge or hunt for more¡ªnot that she trusted anything on this blasted tree to be edible, anyway. That meant stretching out what little they had through the time-honored medium of soup.
For what it was, the hot liquid tasted pretty good, if a tad tangier than the other times they¡¯d made it. Perhaps her taste buds were simply so starved for flavor that their standards had fallen to the point that dirt would taste good right now, but she wasn¡¯t going to test that theory.
¡°Gabby-friend, why Gabby-friend get so scared of being high?¡±
Gabriela smirked slightly at the wording. Being high was actually the best way for her to not be so scared.
¡°Didn¡¯t we talk about this a while back?¡±
¡°Uh-huh, but Pari not understand then, and Pari still not understand. Why Gabby-friend afraid of thing that cannot hurt Gabby-friend?¡±
Gabby let out something halfway between a chuckle and a sigh. ¡°I ask myself that more than I¡¯d like to admit,¡± she confided before gulping down some more soup. Her head felt a bit woozy; perhaps all the stress was finally really getting to her? She must have been more fatigued than she¡¯d thought.
Pari moved closer, arms out for an embrace, only to run face-first into the large bag of acunai petals which Gabby had moved back to her front¡ªshe felt it was easier to protect it that way. Gabby pulled the bag around to wear it like a backpack again, just for a moment. Pari darted in immediately and wrapped her into an adorable little hug, pressing her head against Gabby¡¯s chest. Gabby reflexively reached out with her free hand and patted the girl¡¯s soft hair, eliciting a soft purr.
¡°When Pari was scared of baths, Grandfather made Pari take bath until Pari stopped being scared,¡± she said from down by Gabby¡¯s torso.
¡°Oh, if only it was that easy,¡± Gabby sighed.
¡°It¡¯s okay!¡± Gabby heard the sound of a tiny hand making a tiny snap. ¡°Pari help Gabby-friend!¡±
¡°No, it¡¯s alright...¡±
¡°¡®Friends help friends with their problems!¡¯, just like Gabby-friend told Pari!¡±
The beastkin stepped back a few steps, giving Gabby a wonderful view of her wide, adorable smile. Then she stepped back some more. Then, even more. And then, she waved.
¡°Soup meal wear off soon. Bye bye!¡±
Something kicked Gabriela in her lower stomach, throwing her backward and into the air, pressing with great, constant force. She looked down and found a strange candle, wide and short, with its base stuck on her abdomen just below her belly button. A great gout of flame shot out of its top like a rocket, pushing her up and away with greater and greater speed.
What?! How had Pari managed to stick that on her without her noticing?!
Gabby frantically grabbed the rocket candle and pulled, but it did not budge. That super glue from before! Pari had adhered the candle to her skin, meaning there was no way to rip it off without ripping off her skin with it. Instead, Gabby crushed it in her hands, bringing the reaction to a sputtering halt.
It was too late. As she slowly spun in midair, with nothing around to interact with, she caught sight of the leaf¡¯s edge. With utter horror, she realized that she was not going to land back on the leaf... not even close.
There was nothing she could do.
As Gabriela tumbled past the edge, she got one final glimpse of the cheery child still energetically waving as she shrank into the distance, and then there was nothing left between Gabby and solid ground but several dozen kilometers of open air. As she began to plummet, a single thought managed to manifest before her mind devolved into a shrieking pandemonium of panic and terror.
Maybe, just maybe, children were a mistake.
Chapter 138 Part 1
With a loud groan, Blake Myers exited Hyper Mode, leaned back, and rolled his stiff shoulders. Absent-mindedly, he reached over and massaged what remained of his sore left arm with his right hand. Even though he could adjust his custom prosthetic arm at will, it still made his shoulder ache a bit after wearing it for long periods. The support of his exosuit helped alleviate that burden, but it also meant wearing the suit.
These days, he found himself removing as much of the upper half of the armor as he could to let his body breathe more. He couldn¡¯t remove too much before he lost back support and things went sideways, often literally, but it was better than nothing.
It went without saying, of course, that he only did this when alone, and often not even then most of the time; who knew when Arlette or whoever would randomly barge in? However, down here in the crystal vault, where dozens of meters of earth and rock stood between him and the surface, he didn¡¯t have that worry. Down here, he was alone.
Well, almost alone. The one other person down here didn¡¯t exactly have the luxury of locomotion these days. She wouldn¡¯t be bothering him unless he chose to liven up his evening.
Arlette and Sofie wouldn¡¯t be bothering him today either. They¡¯d rushed out this morning, heading south. His loyal employee had told him where they¡¯d be going, but he hadn¡¯t really been paying attention¡ªhe¡¯d been too focused on a certain project to bother with lesser concerns.
Since the day he, Sofie, and Gabriela had discussed his very correct and well-founded explanation for their presence on this world, they¡¯d split the responsibilities between them.
Gabby was the muscle. Her job was to go out and get the things they needed, be it material or people, by force if necessary. Her skillset matched well with the tasks required.
Sofie was the researcher. Her job was to read and translate any new manuscripts they could find in search of new information. Even a sliver of extra knowledge could be the difference between getting home and turning into a crater. Her skillset also jived perfectly with what they needed from her.
Blake¡¯s job was... everything else, or as he thought of it, ¡®the hard stuff¡¯. As the only person with even the slightest bit of understanding concerning ancient technology in general and the dimensional piercers in particular, it was up to him to find a way to transport them back to Earth in one piece. Given his lack of degrees in theoretical physics or dimensional mathematics, Blake didn¡¯t feel like his skillset fit with the job much at all.
Figuring out entire fields of theory with little to study but millennia-old machines and the occasional reference found in their tiny collection of ancient writings was a rather unfair ask, but nothing about his last few years had been fair. It wasn¡¯t like he could trust the others to pull something like this off. Still, there was a big difference between being the best man for the job and being the best man available for the job, and he was very much the latter.
That being said, he couldn¡¯t help but feel a twinge of pride as he gazed at the fruits of his labor. Down here, far beneath the surface, stood the world¡¯s only non-ancient dimension-piercing device. That he knew of, anyway.
Though he lacked theoretical comprehension, Blake didn¡¯t need any of that to just copy the work of others, so that¡¯s what he¡¯d done. What stood before him, beside the back wall of his crystal vault, was a near-complete one-to-one recreation of the technology found in the bunker that had brought him here.
He¡¯d studied the bunker at length already, to the point where he knew its structures practically by heart, but he¡¯d found long ago, as far back as middle school shop class, that he learned far more from building something than from studying the completed item. Building something piece by piece forced him to reconsider each piece¡¯s place, its function, how it fit in with the pieces around it, and more in ways that he otherwise wouldn¡¯t have.
Now that he had done all that he could, Blake felt like he understood what was going on much better than before. It was enough for him to lament that he couldn¡¯t recreate all facets of the devices. Everything in the main chamber had been recreated faithfully, along with the machines in the various side chambers that connected to the central apparatus, but what was missing was the non-physical aspects of the setup, like the programming that ran on what were clearly ancient computer consoles. All of that had been lost during the apocalypse all those years ago when the unforeseen loss of the civilization¡¯s power source had wiped everything for good.
Not for the first time, Blake cursed the ancients¡¯ hard-drive-free, all-RAM approach, though he understood the appeal of lightning-fast storage speeds¡ªit was why he¡¯d been an early adopter of SSDs with his personal computers. If he¡¯d lived in a world with seemingly eternally available, steady energy to power technology, he could see himself making the same mistake they¡¯d made. It was like designing for a world without air; why would anybody think to bother?
Still, their lack of foresight way back then meant that today he had a body for his autopsy but very little brain inside that skull to work with. If he were to rig up some hacked-together controls onto this bad boy and fire it up, would it even do anything? He wasn¡¯t sure. Without programming, the machines had managed to scoop him and the others up, after all. Still, he didn¡¯t dare test it and find out. If the system were to fail, there might be catastrophic results; who knew what a partially pierced dimensional wall would bring about? Or maybe the accumulated energy would just explode in his face.
And yet, were his machine to somehow succeed as it was now, the consequences would be even worse. Even if he had never discovered the terrible truth of their existence here, he would never willingly subject another person to what he¡¯d been through. It was the biggest reason he¡¯d never tried to activate the bunker on his own, even though he thought he had more than enough crystals to power the devices there. With what he knew now, though, the thought of willingly pulling more bombs into this world struck him as utter lunacy.
All this was neither here nor there, anyway, because his goal was not to build a machine to suck energy or people from their world to this one but to do the reverse, which would be far more difficult. If the current machine was like a hose using gravity and water pressure to drain water from an above-ground pool, then his machine had to somehow fight against gravity and pressure to blow that water back up into the pool. How exactly he was going to do this still eluded him.
Or, at least, most of it did. One thing he felt pretty confident in was how he was going to get the power needed to stuff himself and the others back up that hose. His gaze turned to the massive cantacrenyx crystal that loomed over the rest of the chamber, a wry grin pulling on his lips.
¡°Just you wait, you beautiful thing, you,¡± he cooed to the huge stone as if it were a beloved pet. Walking up to the behemoth, he ran a hand along a smooth side. He could almost feel the power within it thrumming against his palm. ¡°Your time to shine is coming soon. Patience.¡±
The largest crystal Blake had ever integrated into a device was the one that powered the Flying Toaster. That stone was the third largest he¡¯d ever seen, and yet the second largest, which sat on the opposite end of the chamber near the door, dwarfed it like a full-grown adult dwarfed a four-year-old. That crystal, however, was like a pebble when compared to his darling right here.
Ever since he¡¯d acquired these three gems, the myriad possibilities they presented had been enough to make his mind swim. Yet, he¡¯d held off on using either of the two largest for anything¡ªit wasn¡¯t that he lacked ideas, but none of them felt like the right applications; they lacked the majesty befitting a stone so gargantuan. Now, he was glad for his hesitation. After all, what function could have more magnificence than saving the world?
Like it had a will of its own, the metal of Blake¡¯s suit flowed up from his torso to once again encase his entire body. Bringing up his suit¡¯s clock, he found it was already the early evening. He¡¯d been in his zone longer than he¡¯d thought.
Quickly zipping through menus, Blake activated a function he¡¯d named PrisonCamSummary_3 and waited as the server did its business. Though he was constantly recording audio and video of the guest in his dungeon cell, that didn¡¯t mean he wanted to watch hours of her fidgeting and breathing. He wanted just a rundown of anything notable, and PrisonCamSummary_3 would do just that.
A few moments later, a video began to play before his eyes. It began with a view of Chitra sitting against the left wall of her cell, the cords binding her to the far wall slack enough for her to roam most of her prison; treason or no, Blake wasn¡¯t going to force anybody to stand spread eagle for days and days without end.
Part of him pointed to this and declared that he was going soft; that the old him who¡¯d conquered this place would have subjected Chitra to all sorts of pressures until she gave him what he wanted. He gave that part of him the finger and shoved it down the stairs.
He hadn¡¯t gone soft, he¡¯d just recalibrated to meet the needs of the moment. He didn¡¯t need to break Chitra to get the info he wanted thanks to Sofie, anyway. She had to tell him what he wanted to know. He just needed to figure out what it was that he still wanted to know¡ªor what he, Arlette, and the rest wanted to know.
Maybe he should have paid more attention to what Arlette had come to tell him earlier, after all.
As he watched, Chitra¡¯s head swung gently from side to side as she softly sang a slow, melancholy tune. He found her singing voice to be as mesmerizing as the rest of her¡ªhaunting and ethereal, nearly transporting him to another realm even through the less-than-studio-quality microphone in the cell. Though the song struck him as bleak, even perhaps mournful, she did not seem to be sad¡ªrather, she seemed wholly at peace. A traditional or ceremonial song of some sort, perhaps a vestige of her childhood that brought her comfort in trying times?
Abruptly, the scene cut to another one with an altogether opposite vibe. Chitra stood near the back wall, the cables to her ankles and wrists pulled out far longer than necessary for her proximity to the wall from which they came. With the hand furthest from the wall grasping the metal ropes, she began to swing them up and around in a circle and... Was she doing jump rope? Okay, perhaps he needed to be harsher on her after all.
Another abrupt cut¡ªBlake really needed to add in a half-second black screen between these or something; this was getting hard to watch¡ªand this time the Ubran was on her back in the middle of the cell, as far out toward the front and the cell bars as her restraints would allow. She had a thoughtful look on her face as if considering some deep philosophical concept. She muttered something under her breath.
Taking manual control, Blake rewound the video and boosted the volume, hoping to hear what she¡¯d said, only to get mumbled gibberish. Oh, of course. She was speaking her native language, and he¡¯d momentarily forgotten that meaning did not survive recording.
Thankfully, Blake had a speech translation module he could plug into the video playback to give him subtitles. The translation software was still in a sort of long-running beta state as he worked to add more local languages and dialects while he smoothed out the various wrinkles, but it worked well enough.
This was in large part thanks to Tehlmar, of all people. The elf¡¯s spy training had included the ability to use the ¡®speak¡¯, as the locals called it, of multiple cultures, including Ubran. It was the most useful the elf had ever been¡ªperhaps the only time he¡¯d been useful, really.
After a few moments of processing, the video resumed with subtitles. Strangely, the program labeled the Batranala¡¯s speak as ¡®Otharian¡¯, not ¡®Ubran¡¯. It seemed that the language recognition was still a little buggy. Perhaps it was because of how unintelligible her mumbles were?
Still, the program managed to suss out and translate some of it. Most of it was just a word or two in a sentence, surrounded by untranslatable garbage¡ªtoo little to glean anything from. One sentence, however, made it through intact, and he couldn¡¯t help but fixate on the words: ¡°Hmmm, perhaps he just doesn¡¯t know?¡±
Who was ¡®he¡¯? Was she talking about him? And what was it that he didn¡¯t know?
The rest of the recap didn¡¯t feature much worth remembering. Within moments, Blake was marching out of his crystal vault and down the hall to the nearby prison. The door slid open upon his approach, and he strode in to find Chitra already standing up against the back wall. With an annoyed grunt, Blake triggered the motors in the wall to pull her restraints tight, holding her to the surface.
¡°How is it that you¡¯re always waiting for me when I show up?¡± he grumbled.
¡°I can feel the vibrations of your steps running through the floor,¡± came the immediate response.
Ah, right. She had to answer his questions, even the ones that were mostly rhetorical.
¡°Oh, it¡¯s not the sound?¡± he followed up, marginally curious.
She shrugged. ¡°That too, but not until a bit later than the first vibrations. You¡¯re a rather beefy boy, after all, and all this solid metal is very good at conducting vibrations.¡±
¡°Cool,¡± he flatly replied, reminding himself that he wasn¡¯t here to idly chat. What¡¯s more, something about her was throwing him off a little, and he wasn¡¯t sure what it was or why. ¡°So anyway, what is it that I perhaps don¡¯t know?¡±
As soon as that devilish grin appeared on her face, Blake knew he¡¯d fucked up somehow.
¡°Nothing. Why, Lord Ferros, you wouldn¡¯t be spying on a helpless maiden such as myself, now, would you?¡±
Dammit. He¡¯d let himself be played, and that damned grin only widened as she watched him realize it.
¡°Yes, nothing,¡± she continued, snickering. ¡°I simply wanted to know if you were observing me with your oh-so-advanced technology. I never expected you to give me the answer so easily. I¡¯d thought I¡¯d have to put in far more work in the coming days, but alas, it seems your gadgets are the only advanced thing about you.¡±
¡°Says the dope who bumbled into every single trap trying to break into my workshop,¡± he shot back. ¡°And here you are, provoking the one man who holds your life in his hands. Much genius. Very wow.¡±
¡°Please,¡± the Ubran scoffed, ¡°spare me the empty threats. You won¡¯t do anything and we both know it. You might put on a good show, but one peek behind the curtain reveals the falsehoods.¡±
¡°The hell are you saying?¡±
¡°I¡¯m saying that I¡¯ve ventured around this piddly, pissant excuse for a nation. I¡¯ve seen your reign and what you call dominance, and I would laugh if it wasn¡¯t so pathetic. The rumors call you a tyrant, but all I find are the actions of a child mimicking an adult, a poor imitation of the ¡®what¡¯ without any understanding of the ¡®how¡¯ or ¡®why¡¯.¡±
¡°Hold up... your critique is that I¡¯m not tyrannical enough? Are you serious?¡±
¡°Do you think I can lie right now?¡±
¡°Bullshit! I conquered this whole place on my own, killed a whole score of people, and now rule the whole nation with a tucrenyx fist!¡±
Wait, why was he defending his savagery? Eh, that was a question for later. He just didn¡¯t want to lose an argument to a prisoner in his own dungeon! This was about the principle of the thing! It was about defending his honor!
Chitra laughed mockingly, a look of absolute derision in her eyes. ¡°The desperate words of a paper tyrant clinging to the scraps of his self-worth. You know nothing of what tyranny really is!¡±
¡°Oh, and you do?¡±
¡°Must I remind you once again that I cannot speak falsehoods?¡±
Suddenly, the mockery on her features vanished, as if she had become a completely different person. She stared at him with solemn eyes, her gaze unrelenting.
¡°I know true tyranny. I¡¯ve witnessed the depths of its cruelty, the way it twists you into something your old self would not recognize. At first, you fight it, but it is like struggling in quicksand. Soon enough, you find yourself suffocating as you are dragged inexorably deeper beneath the surface until you wind up bargaining with yourself and everything you thought you were¡ªyour principles, your hopes and dreams, your very identity¡ªabandoning each and every piece, one at a time, for a momentary gasp of air. True tyranny takes everything from you, and when at last it deigns to allow you a mere handful of meager scraps¡ªthat which it deemed so worthless and unimportant that it never even bothered to take from you in the first place¡ªyou find yourself thankful for its gracious generosity.¡±
Blake rolled his eyes. ¡°Jeez, enough with the sudden theatrics. You¡¯re laying it on thicker than a triple-stuffed Oreo.¡±
¡°I see your childish mind cannot grasp the vast chasm that separates you from what you believe yourself to be. Perhaps I should dumb it down further for you,¡± she scoffed. ¡°To put it in words even you could understand, a false tyrant like yourself wants to dominate the mind; a true tyrant dominates the soul. You care about controlling what people think; true tyranny controls what they are.¡±
¡°Sure, sure, whatever. Look, I understand that you¡¯re trying to get under my skin and junk,¡± Blake groused. To his annoyance, her attempts were somewhat working. ¡°But the whole ¡®child¡¯ bit is just... you do know I¡¯m older than you, right?¡±
The haughty, mocking smile returned, and the heavy atmosphere she¡¯d cast over the cell evaporated so quickly that one might think they had imagined it.
¡°Are you? In some insignificant metrics, perhaps. Yet I can say for a fact that, in all the ways that matter, you cannot even compare. I am the epitome of grace and refinement; you clomp around like a newborn garoph not yet used to standing upright. I have traveled the world, partaking in the grandeur and wonder of the land and the societies that live on it; you barely leave your house. I am an expert in myriad arts; I¡¯d be surprised if you could even handle fingerpaints. I am a world-class consort, a master of the intimate, while you, well...¡±
Her smile grew so wide that Blake thought it might split her head in two, transforming from disdainful and mocking to downright malicious.
¡°...I know a virgin when I see one.¡±
¡°WOAH WOAH WOAH, HEY!¡± Blake immediately protested. ¡°Don¡¯t you fucking say that! I am NOT a virgin!¡±
Chitra responded with a single laugh, harsh and derisive. ¡°Sure, you aren¡¯t.¡±
¡°It¡¯s true! I had plenty of girlfriends back on my world!¡±
¡°Ah yes, the ¡®my girlfriend is real, she¡¯s just in another province so you can¡¯t meet her¡¯ excuse,¡± she jeered. ¡°Never before met anybody desperate enough to take it to such extremes, though.¡±
¡°F-Fuck off!¡±
¡°No need to be so hostile,¡± the beautiful woman chuckled, her voice dropping closer to a whisper. She leaned forward as much as her restraints would allow, her hips swaying subtly but just enough to catch Blake¡¯s notice. ¡°Maybe if you did me a few favors, I could do you one very large favor¡ªthat is if your dick even still works.¡±
Dick.
It was a harsh word, with hard consonants that really stood out to the ear. That was how, at long last, Blake realized what had been bothering him since the start of their interaction.
¡°Wait, you¡¯re speaking English!¡± he gasped.
¡°Ah, you finally noticed? I¡¯ve been doing my best to learn. My honey had to help me with most of it, but you¡¯ve been a wonderful teacher as well.¡±
More accurately, Blake found that the Batranala was speaking a mix of English and Spanish, though mostly English with a few of the most rare words reverting to Espa?ol. As apparent proof of the woman¡¯s claims, even her English sounded as if spoken by somebody with a Mexican accent.
¡°What¡¯s your game?¡± he asked warily, eyes narrowing.
¡°Game?¡±
¡°Learning English? Is this another way you¡¯re trying to mess with me?¡±
¡°Pah, who says that everything has to be about you? I¡¯m fluent in dozens of speaks; learning them is a hobby of mine. It¡¯s easy. After the fourth one, you realize they all fall into a few categories with shared patterns¡ªeven otherworldly speaks, it seems.¡±
¡°Bullshit. Why bother to learn the language of a place you will never visit, spoken by only one person in this entire world?¡±
¡°But that is exactly why I would want to. A speak spoken by only a single person is the rarest, most valuable speak a collector could ever hope to find¡ªa true miracle, and here I have found several.¡±
Blake didn¡¯t quite know how to feel about her treating languages like limited-edition baseball cards.
¡°But still...¡± he argued, still in disbelief. ¡°To get anywhere this fluent, you would have needed to listen to every word I speak, paying attention to the sound of each one and connecting it with the meaning provided, and committing it all to memory...¡±
¡°Do you not? It¡¯s not like it¡¯s that difficult, and it teaches you so much about a culture. For example, have you noticed how much emphasis Stragmans put into speaking verbs, especially those that denote a physical action? A remnant of their past aggressive warrior culture. Conversely, Drayhadans have an absurd number of adjectives to describe the placement of items in a room because they¡¯re a society obsessed with finely-tuned control. Otharians have a startlingly limited vocabulary when it comes to topics of a sexual nature, for reasons that I think would be clear to both of us.¡±
¡°And? What does this tell you about English?¡± he couldn¡¯t help but ask.
¡°A mess of words that don¡¯t have any coherent aural consistency, leading me to conclude that it is little more than a crude hodgepodge of other more coherent speaks. Also, I couldn¡¯t help but note that like Otharian, there is a startling lack of words related to intimate acts, but that is likely because the only available native speaker is lacking in experience with such¡ª¡±
¡°Yeah, okay, that¡¯s enough out of you for now,¡± Blake grumbled, turning away and heading for the door to the sound of more mockery and laughter.
¡°Where are you going, big man?¡± she called after him. ¡°Going to fetch that girlfriend of yours?¡±
The door closed behind him, bringing a blessed silence with it¡ªaside from the metallic clomps of his boots against the floor as he marched toward the elevator, fuming the entire time.
He wasn¡¯t running away. No, this was just a tactical retreat. He¡¯d come back later after he¡¯d had some food and stuff. Yeah. She¡¯d see.
As he rode the lift up toward the surface, he quickly wrote a new variant of his Chitra monitoring routines, this one designed to monitor her musings live and stream the audio and video directly to his suit¡ªwith translation if needed¡ªshould she say anything he deemed worth listening to, and immediately activated it. That harlot didn¡¯t know it yet, but she was going to regret pissing him off.
Revenge was a dish best served cold. Chili con carne, on the other hand, Blake preferred warm. Craving something spicy, he¡¯d been pushing the cooks that manned the fortress¡¯s cafeteria to work on a Scyrian equivalent for the last week or so. Today, at last, they¡¯d managed to cobble together something that he judged to be at least a rough facsimile of proper chili. While there was still a long way to go, and the difference in ingredients meant it would likely never get quite to the ideal chili in his mind, this was the first attempt he found good enough to sate his cravings¡ªfor the moment, at least.
Bowl in hand, he started to head for his chambers to eat when a notification chime rang in his ear. Damn, it was already time for his lessons with Samanta? It had been some time since he¡¯d last gotten so into the flow that he¡¯d lost nearly a full day. Grabbing a second bowl for the tyke, he made tracks.
Blake found Sam waiting for him outside his rooms. Well, to be more specific, he first found Alpha, the mini-skitter who tagged along wherever she went, as he approached the final corner before the hallway where his rooms currently were. The tiny machine scampered around the bend, said hello by running several laps around his feet and letting out a series of electronic chirps, and then galloped right back around the corner and once again out of view.
Giving the tiny robot to Sam as a pet of sorts had been one of his better decisions, he thought, even if he¡¯d never intended for this outcome. The first robot he¡¯d ever built, Alpha had not originally been designed for such a role. It had not been designed for any role, in truth. Nothing more than a miniature proof of concept, experiment, and training exercise, the purpose had been in the act of creating something that could move and navigate environments on its own. Outside of simply walking, Alpha had not been designed to actually do anything at all.
At first, he¡¯d planned to recycle it after testing its locomotive capacity. Only, the sight of it climbing up on a distressed Sam, who was trying desperately to hold herself together as this unknown thing took a seat atop her head, gave him other ideas. Blake would have loved to say that he¡¯d gifted the little creation to the child as an act of benevolence, but his original motivations had not been remotely so pure.
Initially, he¡¯d found dark amusement in the way she would cower from it like an elephant from a mouse. He¡¯d only reworked it into a true pet later on, vastly upgrading its processing abilities and even throwing in some experimental adaptive learning subroutines to see how it fared. Even then, he¡¯d viewed its primary purpose at the time as a way to monitor the rebellious Otharian child, with being a pet being its ¡®cover¡¯ of sorts.
The way it behaved in the present¡ªthe way it had bonded with the girl and seemed to bring her some measure of comfort¡ªwas not something for which Blake could take much credit. The pair had built that themselves over the course of several years, all on their own. He would still take as much credit for it as he could, however. As Alpha¡¯s creator, it was only his right, after all.
Unlike the jubilant robot, Sam was her usual dour self. Picking Alpha up off the floor and cradling it against her chest, she sent him a displeased scowl.
¡°You¡¯re late.¡±
¡°My bad, my bad. Let¡¯s get started, then.¡± He held out his bowls for her to see. ¡°I brought lunch.¡±
Samanta silently inspected their contents, though her dubious expression said plenty. He didn¡¯t blame her. One of the consequences of the Scyrian ingredients was that this dish swapped out the appealing red-brown of Earth chili for a rather sickening brown-green hue, which gave it an appearance regrettably close to vomit. Maybe he could get somebody to figure out food coloring? Eh, too much work for too little reward.
¡°Trust me, it¡¯s pretty good,¡± he assured her. Willing the doors open, he entered his chambers and moseyed into the lesson room, Sam quickly trailing behind him.
The lesson room had changed greatly over the months, morphing to fit whatever subject was being taught at the time. Currently, it contained two chairs, a large chalkboard for him to draw circuit diagrams, a smaller handheld chalkboard for Sam to do the same, and a big block of tucrenyx and a bucket of cantacrenyx crystals, with which he could demonstrate all sorts of mechanical concepts.
Sitting down in one of the seats, handed one bowl to Sam and began to tuck into the other. ¡°Eat up so we can get started,¡± he said between mouthfuls.
She eyed it warily as if it were going to jump out of the bowl and bite her. ¡°...What is it?¡± she finally asked.
¡°It¡¯s an attempt at a dish from my world,¡± he explained, spooning another load past his lips. He closed his eyes and savored the flavor. ¡°Still has a ways to go, but not bad at all. Needs more salt, and too sweet, and the kick isn¡¯t quite right, but still, for something so out of their wheelhouse, not a bad effort.¡±
Sam gingerly spooned up a small amount and, after a long moment of hesitation, put it in her mouth. The effect was almost immediate. First, her eyes went wide, nearly bulging out of her head, followed by a series of coughs interspersed with gagging. Her face grew red as a beet and he even thought he saw the glistening of sweat forming on her forehead.
¡°It¡¯s good, right?¡±
A few more seconds of gagging and spitting later, she looked at him with disbelieving eyes as if he were insane. ¡°Poison!¡± she gasped out between her desperate panting. ¡°What is this? Everything inside me feels like it¡¯s burning!¡±
It took all of his self-control to not crack up then and there. Instead, he stood up and entered the nearby restroom to grab her a cup of water. ¡°What do you mean?¡± he asked as he went. ¡°This isn¡¯t even that spicy. A four out of ten, at best.¡±Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
He handed the cup to the child, who immediately began to gulp it down as fast as she could.
¡°Man, you Otharians really can¡¯t handle a lick of spice, can you? That¡¯s just sad.¡±
¡°S-shut up!¡± she sputtered as the last of the water went down her gullet. She let out a single cough, her face looking to Blake like she was about to hurl. ¡°You people are crazy! Why would you ruin perfectly good food like that? Blech!¡±
With that said, she shoved her bowl as far away as she could, never to be consumed again. ¡°Can we start now?¡±
¡°Of course!¡± he agreed with a smile.
Blake had spent many hours a week for maybe two years now struggling to ¡®teach¡¯ this one Otharian child, and to say it had been a struggle was like saying that The Divide was just a few oversized hills. Though her active resistance had faded after a while, nearly every lesson had been like pulling teeth. Blake was not so oblivious that he couldn¡¯t recognize just how unwilling to engage with him and learn she had been, whether she fought him, retreated into passive aggression, or pretended to cooperate to just get through it and then immediately forgot everything.
Still, he persevered. This was too important. This was him winning the argument, the one that had started all those months ago in a run-down farming village the day after his arrival on this world. The one that was him against the entire country of Otharia. The one that had cost him his legs. That argument. As he¡¯d told Samanta long ago, he was going to open her eyes to all the knowledge and glory that she had nearly ripped from this world until she could not help but weep over the horror of what she¡¯d done, and he had never lost sight of that.
Finally, at long last, he felt like this was an argument he was starting to win. The scales were starting to fall from her eyes, and it surprised him not in the slightest that the subject that had brought such a shift about was Engineering, the coolest subject of all no matter what those jocks back in high school said.
The Samanta in Blake¡¯s little two-person classroom was like a totally different kid than the one that used to sit sullenly and say as little as she could. She engaged with the subject matter. She asked questions. She was eager to start every lesson and often asked to continue past the usual stopping time. She would even ask for homework and actually complete it!
At long last, somebody else in this godforsaken realm¡ªother Earthlings included¡ªsaw value where he did. Finally, somebody understood. Engineering was badass. Machines were badass. Soon, she would discover that programming was badass too.
¡°Alright, let¡¯s see what you did today,¡± he began.
Samanta fished out a folded set of papers from inside her shirt and handed them to Blake. Unfolding them, he inspected each circuit diagram with the discerning eye of a strict professor and smiled at what he saw.
¡°This is excellent. No corrections. I think it¡¯s time we combined this and the mechanical concepts from before into building your first working, powered machine. A mid-term project of sorts.¡±
Sam nodded enthusiastically, her little hands balled into fists that quivered with excitement. ¡°What are we going to build?¡±
¡°Well, we¡¯ll...¡± Blake thought about various contraptions that could be built with the basic-to-intermediate knowledge she¡¯d learned so far but stopped himself as a better idea came to him. ¡°Actually, instead of me telling you what to do, let¡¯s make figuring out what you are going to create be the first part of the assignment. I want you to go out there and find a problem that needs solving, and then I want you to design a machine to solve it.¡±
¡°Huh? But¡ª¡±
¡°Ah, ah,¡± Blake cut in, ¡°what is the point of machines?¡±
Sam sighed. ¡°To solve problems and make life better,¡± she recited in a tired monotone.
¡°So, if you don¡¯t know what problem you¡¯re trying to solve, how can you make a machine to solve it?¡±
¡°...I guess...¡±
¡°Great. We¡¯ll take this in three phases. First, find your goal and determine the scope of the problem as well as the scope of your solution. Second is the design work. Be ready, because I¡¯m going to make sure that you properly optimize everything before it gets my approval. Third¡ª¡±
A thunderous crash drowned out the rest of Blake¡¯s words, joined by a tremor that shook the room with such force that it nearly knocked Blake off his feet. He looked toward the direction of the sound, though of course, he only saw a wall. The sheer force of the sudden event had knocked him mentally off balance, but now his thoughts were starting to catch up to¡ª
A second crash, even more powerful than the first, destroyed Blake¡¯s train of thought and threw him to his knees. The cacophonous outburst rang in his ears, muting the world to all other sounds, but he had heard enough to grasp the situation. The first had told him the fortress was under attack. The second had ruled out explosions as the cause. Behind the initial hit, he¡¯d heard the sound of tucrenyx straining and failing against force beyond what it could handle. It was a familiar sound, one he¡¯d recognized anywhere after several years of working with and fighting using the Scyrian metal¡ªhell, just his battle with Gabriela alone had permanently seared the noise into his memory. No, these were not explosions. These were the sounds of something buckling and punching through the walls and floors of his home.
Blake could tell that these booms were coming from within the central area of the fortress¡ªhe wasn¡¯t quite up on his fortress terminology; the keep, perhaps?¡ªwhere he lived and most of the administrative offices were located, rather than from the large fortress walls. That meant, what, somebody was throwing them over the wall? With a catapult, or maybe even a trebuchet?
But, surely there was no way that anybody could get something like that close enough without being noticed. They¡¯d have to somehow bring the weapon deep into the city, which seemed nearly impossible¡ªand that didn¡¯t even include carting in the ammunition itself. Whatever was hitting them had to be large, conspicuously so.
Still, just to be sure, Blake began to quickly check the streets on that side of the fortress, but saw nothing out of the ordinary¡ª
A third impact rocked the facility, this one farther away than the others and on the opposite side, but still violently loud.
What in the hell? He switched his view to the streets on that end and, just like before, sees little he would deem noteworthy. No large objects that don¡¯t look like they belong. In fact, the only out-of-place sight were the people fleeing from the area around his fortress. On second thought...
Zooming in, Blake looks over the retreating Otharians. Most are watching where they¡¯re going or glancing back toward the fortress, but a significant number of people seem to be looking in one other direction¡ªup, as in, high up. Nearly straight up.
A chill ran down Blake¡¯s spine. Had the dragons finally made their move? But he had dragon detection systems in place now. Surely he would have received warning ahead of time... unless he¡¯d fucked up with the design or implementation of the detectors. Surely he hadn¡¯t, right? Blake had great confidence in his creations¡ªafter all, he was the one who¡¯d designed and built them¡ªbut when dealing with a force like giant lizards capable of turning a city into a crater, it paid to triple-check.
A pit of dread building larger and heavier in his gut by the second, Blake frantically skimmed through the notifications for his nationwide detection system, entering Hyper Mode to blaze through as fast as possible. Finding nothing that seemed relevant, he switched over to the debug logs and began poring over the sea of detailed output from the last hour. For the first fifty-seven minutes, he couldn¡¯t find anything that appeared out of the ordinary. It was only in these last three minutes, just before the start of the attack, that he found something odd.
High above the fortress, directly atop it, the system had detected the appearance of four large objects and a fifth smaller object. Given that none of them remotely resembled a dragon, the system had not considered them a threat. The four large objects, appearing to the system as roughly spherical, had been marked as likely balloons of some sort and would appear in the night¡¯s automatic report as non-threatening. The smaller object had been determined to be a fairly large bird, which meant it had been deemed entirely unremarkable.
Maybe he¡¯d have to reexamine the design of his systems after all.
Luckily, being deemed report-worthy, even if otherwise determined to be non-threatening, meant that the system would save a picture for later viewing. Blake instructed the system to bring up the images of the four ¡®balloons¡¯ for his inspection, finding his impatience growing as the server took a few minutes¡ªfor his sped-up mind, at least¡ªto bring them up. His system was not designed to be used in this sort of way, so he had no choice but to wait.
At last, the pictures flashed into his vision. At first, Blake just felt confused, unable to parse what he was seeing. Everything looked rather low resolution, which he quickly realized was because the objects were so high up that the only way to get a decent image of them was to zoom in on the full image rather heavily.
The small object thought to be a bird was little more than a dark blotch of pixels, nearly impossible to make out. The other four, however, had just enough detail that he could at least try to figure out what they might be. Though their outlines sometimes jutted out a bit one way or another, they all generally shared the same ovoid shape.
They shared the same general color palette as well: grey and tan that seemed to run through them all in relatively straight lines. The colors reminded him somewhat of hikes he¡¯d taken as a college student through some of the more beautiful parks in states like Utah.
Wait...
Suddenly, Blake knew where he¡¯d gone wrong. You see, when it comes to designing and programming systems, it¡¯s impossible to build something capable of handling everything that could ever happen. To make any system feasible, you have to set limitations and work with assumptions about what is possible and what is not.
Writing something to predict the path of a baseball? Then you would assume that gravity exists. Writing a store for a website? You might assume that any purchase would have person with a name and credit card as the buyer.
Faced with the impossibly complex task of analyzing thousands of images every minute to find a dragon, Blake had been forced to rely on several rules and assumptions. Writing something that could identify any object in an image would be nigh impossible given how many things existed in the world.
But, he¡¯d reasoned, the system would only ever be looking up at the sky, so the only things it needed to recognize were things that would be found in the sky: clouds, birds, his flitters, the Flying Toaster, dragons, etc. If he pared down the list of objects to look for to only those things, the task became feasible.
That was how he¡¯d erred. His failure had been, in a sense, not poor logic, but rather a lack of imagination. On his list of ¡®things to identify¡¯, he had failed to put ¡®boulder¡¯, because that was not something that would be found in the sky.
Except, those were definitely boulders¡ªhuge ones, from what he could tell¡ªand they were most definitely floating in the air high above his fortress. Or, at least, they had been. But wait, there looked to be four in that image, but the fortress had been hit by only thr¡ª
He almost felt the sound of impact before he heard it. With a pained gasp, Blake was thrown¡ªboth literally and figuratively¡ªout of Hyper Mode, falling flat on his back hard enough to send a spike of pain running up his spine. The crash of rock slamming through metal echoed in his deafened ears as he stumbled to his feet. That last impact had hit close by¡ªmaybe just a few rooms away from his quarters¡ªwith enough force to send his head spinning. Quickly looking around, he found Sam huddling fearfully in a nearby corner of the room, Alpha clutched tightly against her trembling chest.
¡°Run down to the lower floors! As low as you can go!¡± he hollered, hoping she could hear and understand him, given that he could barely hear himself. With that said, he sprinted out of his quarters and down the hall, signaling every door to open as he went.
Three rooms down, he found the site of the last impact: Sofie¡¯s quarters. The door at first refused to open properly, so he had to melt it away. What greeted him on the other side was less of a three-room apartment than a large pit with half a bathroom still attached. The evening light leaked through a massive gaping hole in the ceiling, illuminating the bent, buckled, and torn metal above. It looked like the remains of a sheet of tin foil after having a pebble shoved through it. No, he thought, more accurately, it looked like the metal of a car door with a bullet hole in it, viewed from the inside. His fortress had been shot four times.
The massive rock, perhaps thirty-five to forty feet in diameter, made quite the bullet. It had punched right through the roof, the three floors above, Sofie¡¯s room, and come to a stop in the floor below¡ªwhich meant, if it was as tall as it was wide, it had broken through another few floors below that, nearly making it to the ground floor.
Tucrenyx was an incredibly durable metal with high tensile strength, and his floors were each about two feet thick on every storey, with the roof being about three feet thick. Blake¡¯s intuition told him that, even falling from a high height, there was no way that a boulder even that large would penetrate so deep. These rocks hadn¡¯t been simply dropped; they¡¯d been thrown¡ªhurled, even¡ªand with great speed.
The sight blew away the hazy, confused urgency that had filled his mind, replacing it with indignant fury. This was his home, his creation. Somebody was attacking his home, and he would not take that lying down.
But who was responsible? Looking up through the puncture, Blake failed to find anything but the open sky, its blue beginning its evening transition towards yellow and orange. He¡¯d have to get outside, or maybe quickly repurpose some of the flitters that surveilled the area to look up rather than down. Actually, the latter seemed smarter right now. No need to go outside and make himself a target. Just because they¡¯d detected four boulders didn¡¯t mean that there weren¡¯t more.
A moment later, four flitters zipped down through the gaping hole above and came to rest by Blake¡¯s feet. The task of modifying the main cameras to stick out of the top of their bodies instead of the bottom took only a few seconds. He just had to flow the cameras up, flip them around, and rewire the logic that had previously filled those spaces to run through the now vacated areas. He didn¡¯t even need Hyper Mode for this one.
As he worked, the ringing in his ears finally subsided enough for him to hear the outside world again. At first, he wasn¡¯t sure what the sounds gracing his ears were, but as the ringing grew ever softer, he realized what it was: screams. Terrified screams, sobs, and wails coming from seemingly all around.
Right, shit. There were more people in this place than just him and Sam. The working day had ended a little while ago, so hopefully most people had left, but apparently enough people were still around. How many had died already? What about the injured? What about the rest of the people still here? What about those who¡¯d left for the city, for that matter?
The city... Well, he had set up the emergency siren signal system for just this sort of thing, hadn¡¯t he?
One quick moment of focus later, and Blake could once again barely hear anything as the siren installed atop the fortress¡¯s observation tower began to howl, its message clear to all: get as far away from the center of the city as possible, now.
A moment later, his four converted drones buzzed up and out of his perforated castle, eyes pointed way up and searching for something, anything, that seemed to defy the laws of gravity. Worryingly, the seconds ticked by as the siren wailed its urgent cry, yet none of his converted drones seemed able to find anything up above the city. Taking manual control of one of the flitters, Blake began a frantic visual search, only to join his robotic minions in failure. There seemed to be nothing in the sky but air and the occasional cloud.
Now what? If his attackers weren¡¯t in the sky, then where had they gone?
The answer came in the form of the fortress¡¯s alarm. Without warning, its cry changed, its tone warping and rising in a way that brought the image of somebody being choked to death to his mind. Then, a heartbeat later, with a decisive crunch, the noise cut out altogether, leaving nothing but an uneasy silence.
With a curse, Blake rotated the drone he was currently controlling to look lower; he¡¯d had his cameras focused high in the sky, looking right past where the attackers might be! The view panned down, and he blinked and rubbed his eyes.
Something hovered just above the top of his fortress¡¯s observation tower. It took him a moment to realize that that something was a person¡ªor, at least, part of a person. He could make out a head, as well as what looked like a torso wrapped in filthy, tattered rags, but that was about it.
His mind struggled to understand. Who this person was, what they were doing here, and how they were doing all of this. Along with that came a related and perhaps even more important question: was this another person from Earth? He suspected that was the case, which greatly complicated things. Apartment-sized boulders aside, the feat of levitation they were casually displaying at this very moment was alone more than anything he¡¯d ever seen a Scyrian pull off.
He thanked the stars that Sofie wasn¡¯t around; she¡¯d probably run out and try to talk, and then end up dead¡ªor, in that Sofie-like way, somehow survive anyway to his utter befuddlement. Blake wasn¡¯t fully discarding all thoughts of communication, but he had no plans to try face-to-face contact until he had the upper hand¡ªthe upperiest of hands, honestly. But when they at last turned their gaze directly toward the drone under his control, something about their gaze didn¡¯t give him much hope for success.
Without any sign of warning, the feed cut off, leaving him in blackness. A split second later, the sound of his robot¡¯s demise worked its way down through the gaping hole in his fortress and into his ears. This one sounded far higher-pitched, a crinkling crunch that reminded him of the sound of somebody stomping on an empty soda can.
Before he could even register his surprise, the second of his converted drones went offline, another crunch following right after. Then, the third. Crunch! The fourth. CRUNCH! In the span of a few seconds, all four of his modified drones went offline, and none had been closer than a few hundred feet from the attacker.
A foreboding set of possibilities began to take form within his mind, years of comic book and anime consumption serving as fertile ground for a bevy of increasingly unlikely explanations for all he¡¯d seen so far. Then again, it didn¡¯t much matter what it turned out to be; his countermeasure was always the same, regardless: an army of autonomous death machines, of course.
With just a few commands, every active skitter from the fortress to the city limits turned toward their new target, ready for battle. Their scattered deployment would prevent any real semblance of order and coordination between them; the when and where of each of their arrivals would be too random unless he purposely held units back, and that meant delays in a situation where that seemed a bad idea. He¡¯d just have to make do.
Another quake shuddered through the floor beneath him, showing that his adversary wasn¡¯t going to just sit around and wait to be shot. Starting almost imperceptibly but quickly gaining in strength, the low groan of straining metal filled his ears and filled him with sudden dread. Before he even knew what he was doing, his feet were pounding down the hall and up a nearby stairwell, sprinting toward the source of the dreadful noise.
Blake knew that sound. As an engineer, he was very familiar with the different sounds of metal pushed beyond its limits¡ªand there were different sounds. What he heard now was quite different than the screeches of boulders tearing through fortress floors. No, this was a sound he¡¯d come to learn intimately during his years in college as he worked through mistake after mistake on term projects and assignments. This was the groan of metal being stretched beyond what it could bear - the squeal of it being slowly pulled apart. And, judging by just how low it sounded, it was a lot of very thick metal, like that of a bridge about to collapse.
Every step brought him closer, the shaking intensifying, the volume of protesting metal growing louder. Though it was hard to tell without something else to compare against, he got the feeling that the hallways were starting to slope upward the further he went, the thought of which only pushed him to move faster. Just a few moments later, he arrived at the floor¡¯s central elevator and found that his fears were more than justified.
The scene was a mess even though he stood several floors below the top of the fortress. The floor, walls, and ceiling ahead were warped and stretched almost beyond recognition, the formerly straight path twisting up and to the right. The far wall with the elevator doors was just as bad, if not worse. The door frame looked like something out of a funhouse mirror with how distorted it appeared, the top more than two feet to the right of the bottom.
The groaning intensified, and Blake watched in horror as the elevator wall twisted even further with an ear-splitting screech. Metal buckled in places and began to tear in others. With his ability, Blake did his best to repair the damage, liquefying and resolidifying the metal in an attempt to reset the molecular structure and strength even if he couldn¡¯t fix the shape, but what he could do here was limited. This one hallway was just on the periphery of the damage. The real disaster was far greater: a lunatic was trying to rip the entire observation tower and the elevator shaft right out of the fortress, and they were somehow succeeding.
The sound of metal shearing apart somewhere above made Blake cringe. With his breath hissing through gritted teeth, he watched as the single most iconic feature of his fortress, the one part that he made sure to alter as little as possible whenever he felt the need to redesign the rest of the fortress interior, was torn off like a weed in a garden. His whole world shook as the metal shaft rose floor by floor, grinding against the rest of the structure as it went. And then... there was another hole in his home.
With the mindset of a man forcing himself to look at a dead body, Blake approached this latest perforation and looked up. His beloved observation tower, now horizontal, hovered almost lazily in midair beside the mysterious attacker. The still-confusingly shaped thing seemed to be looking around the fortress for something from above, though he couldn¡¯t say what for.
Suddenly, the attacker¡¯s head whipped to their left, and they zipped behind the floating tower just as a hail of bullets punched into the tower¡¯s thick exterior. Blake smiled. His first skitter had arrived on the scene.
Now, how would the enemy respond?
To Blake¡¯s initial confusion, the attacker responded by rotating the tower back upright and ducking inside from the open bottom. Then, the tower wall began to tear above them, the rip circling the cylinder as if it were being cut by a giant, invisible can opener. Once the break finished circumnavigating the tower, the new piece detached from the tower¡¯s bottom end and floated around the being, a ring of metal ten feet tall forming a sort of three-hundred-sixty degree shield of metal many feet thick.
Blake clicked his teeth with dissatisfaction. His skitters had some very powerful guns, but very few could punch through that much metal. Even the ones that could would need to fire at the same spot non-stop for several moments before breaking through.
At least he still could rely on the power of numbers; that ring could be angled, but it still left its top and bottom unprotected. More skitters would be arriving any moment now. As long as the one already there could keep them pinned down¡ª
The tower rose high, almost as if gripped in the hand of an invisible giant, before slamming down on the out of view skitter like a rolled-up magazine in the hand of a housewife splatting an unlucky roach. The blow struck the fortress like a drumstick against a drum head, the blow reverberating through the structure with such force that Blake instinctively put his hands to his ears even though his helmet was in the way.
Blake staggered down the hallway, away from the hole. Though his ears rang, he thought he heard the sound of more gunfire somewhere over the din. This was answered a moment later by a second blow, then a third. Head pounding, he found himself needing to put an arm against the nearest wall to keep from falling over.
How did that saying go? ¡°Discretion is the better part of valor¡±? Suddenly, Blake found himself feeling especially valorous. Yeah, perhaps it was time for him to beat a strategic, temporary retreat¡ªget some distance first before mounting a counterattack. Let his robots handle this for now. It was time to make tracks.
Blake¡¯s new plan lasted all of twenty seconds. He¡¯d barely gotten down the hallway when something seized him, pinning his arms to his sides and flattening him back-first against the hallway¡¯s side. It was like a weight was pressed against his chest¡ªnot enough to crush him, but enough to keep everything from his hips to his neck immobile. Blake twisted and thrashed as hard as he could, to no avail. Struggle as he might, even Blake''s enhanced strength proved impotent against this unseeable force.
So... it turned out to be telekinesis after all--maybe the worst of the various explanations he''d considered. Invisible, long-range, versatile, and hard to counter. Well, shit. Why couldn¡¯t his life ever be easy?
Then he saw them, floating within the former elevator shaft, their gaze locked right on him. A circle of tucrenyx, much reduced to fit inside, hovered around them like a bulletproof cloak. A single vertical rent in the front was the only gap through which they could see each other, but it was enough.
Smoothly and silently, as if they were a ghost, the attacker floated closer, until they hovered right in front of him. At last, Blake got an up-close look at their invader, and his first thought was that he felt like he was going to vomit. His second thought was that what he saw explained just why he hadn¡¯t been able to make sense of them at a distance.
Levitating before him was, without a doubt, the most mutilated person Blake had ever seen. They were missing not one, not two, not three, but all four limbs, severed right at the hips and shoulders so not even a stump could be seen for any of them. That alone was enough to throw off his recognition from afar and make him want to retch, yet somehow, something else made it far, far worse.
Almost the entirety of this person¡¯s body, or what remained of it, was marred by horrid-looking burn scars from what must have been terrible third and even fourth-degree burns in the past. Much of what he could see, especially the entire right side of their face, looked like their skin had melted from the heat, giving them the horrifying appearance of a half-melted human candle. A fogged white eye stared blankly at him from amidst the charred flesh.
Only the upper half of the left side of their face seemed entirely unscathed, running from just beside their nose up past the eye and covering some of their scalp on that side. Judging by that small untouched area, they seemed to be of African ancestry, and by the lack of wrinkles, fairly young at that¡ªunder forty, at least. That was about all he could safely say with nothing more to work with than a small patch of bare skin, a few wisps of curly black hair, and a single intact brown eye.
All-in-all, beneath the disgust, Blake couldn¡¯t help but feel a pang of empathy for somebody who had somehow been dealt an even worse hand than he had. He had trouble believing that this person was even breathing. Then again, they had busted up his home, probably killed some of his workers, and were currently pinning him to a wall, so there was only so much sadness he was capable of at that moment.
Then again, this person had the telekinetic strength to lift and crush tons of metal, and yet they had not killed him. The fact that they hadn¡¯t pasted him the moment they saw him meant there was the possibility of dialogue, right? Shouldn¡¯t he at least try? Sofie would castigate him if he didn¡¯t even try.
¡°Well, this is not exactly how I like to meet new people,¡± he chuckled with false bravado. ¡°You break into and bust up other people¡¯s homes often? How about maybe you introduce yourself?¡±
The person looked at him almost robotically with that single working eye, showing no signs that they¡¯d even heard him. Their gaze felt vacant, as if they stared at him through a different sort of fog, one more metaphorical than the literal sort afflicting the other eye.
¡°Hello?¡± he pressed. ¡°Anybody in there?¡±
Some invisible force latched onto his helmet and began to pull, trying to rip the metal mask away. Before they could do so, and wrench his neck in the process, Blake gave in and let the metal melt away, revealing his face to his assailant. The pressure vanished, and they paused to take a good look at him. After a few moments, they let out a gargling grunt that Blake¡¯s mind interpreted as nothing more than, ¡°Yes. You.¡±
Without another word they turned and headed for the elevator shaft, Blake being pulled along behind them. He mentally shrugged. He¡¯d tried it the peaceful way, but there were limits. There was no way he was going to let this weirdo kidnap him or whatever their goal here might be.
Their tactic of surrounding themselves in a cloak of tucrenyx was an effective one to protect themselves from bullets coming from outside, but unfortunately for them, it also came with a critical flaw. The cantacrenyx crystals remained inside like small hidden bombs, waiting to go off, and Blake had spent the time while they¡¯d held him to the wall rewiring them all to go off on command. The moment he felt the energy within them reach the breaking point, he triggered the switch, dumping a final surge of energy into the circuit and causing the crystals to rupture all at once.
A swarm of shrapnel filled the interior of the assailant¡¯s little safe zone, and they let loose a high-pitched cry¡ªso, a woman, then?¡ªas metal punched into her from all sides. The psychic grip around Blake¡¯s body faltered before falling away entirely.
The moment his feet touched the ground, Blake threw himself backward through the wall behind him, using his control of metal to let him pass through without creating a hole. As he did, he grabbed a bit of extra building material and reconstructed his helmet around his head; while it wouldn¡¯t offer much protection, he needed the surveillance and control capabilities that only its heads-up display could provide.
Momentarily, he debated returning to the fight but decided against it. From what he¡¯d seen, the wounds he¡¯d inflicted, while painful, were not deep enough to be anything more than superficial. He¡¯d succeeded in getting free at the cost of, from the sounds of the shrieks coming from the other side of the wall, royally pissing off the mutilated woman. If he got caught again, there was no guarantee that she wouldn¡¯t pop him like a pimple the moment she had him in her clutches. Best not to let that happen.
Time to book it. He momentarily considered being bait, leading her on a wild goose chase through this fortress while his forces gathered and flanked her, but decided it was too much of a risk to his life without providing much in return. Instead, he decided on a safer plan:
- Get the fuck out of Dodge and away from Miss Smashy¡ªcurrently in progress
- Gather a critical mass of skitters somewhere they could overwhelm her defenses¡ªalso currently in progress
- Get her to enter the trap
- Win
Simple enough. If he managed to lose her, it wasn¡¯t like he wouldn¡¯t know where she was. His fortress was chock full of security cameras. He¡¯d be able to find her easily through their feeds or just by watching to see which cameras went offline most recently.
WHAM!
The wall he¡¯d just passed through buckled in like a car door in a side-on collision, reminding Blake that ¡®if he managed to lose her¡¯ was a very iffy contingency, and he had to get a move on now while he still could if he wanted to make it happen. Taking off for the opposite wall, he risked a glance back just as he passed through the metal, and what saw only spurred him to run faster. The thick wall was being pushed aside much like somebody would push aside a window curtain. It looked to be about as easy too, with the metal crumpling like tin foil. And behind the folding metal floated the woman, now even more messed up than before.
Blood dripped from all over what was left of her form, at least a dozen shards of metal embedded in her front alone, including two in her face, and one especially large one jammed into her ribcage. Somehow, her single working eye made it through untouched, though a dribble of blood ran from a cut above it down into the eye, lending it an especially demonic appearance¡ªnot that such embellishments were necessary. Her eye practically glowed with wrath so scalding that it honestly terrified him.
This was different than the somewhat cold, controlled, terminator-like rage he¡¯d faced when fighting Gabby. This was an unhinged, white-hot, abyssal fury of an almost berserk nature, the sort that didn¡¯t care what happened as long as the objects of their ire suffered. The sort where setting the whole world aflame wasn¡¯t just a price they would gladly pay to get what they wanted, but was a goal in and of itself. The sort that wanted to inflict pain for pain¡¯s sake alone. The sort that could never come into being from just one event, but had to be built up over years and decades, bubbling just under the surface like a geyser, waiting to erupt.
Blake saw anger that put to shame even the burning rage he¡¯d felt when he¡¯d lost his legs, and it chilled him to his core. Immediately calling an audible, he abandoned his initial route¡ªwhich started with him weaving a path through the current storey for as long as possible¡ªand quickly sank himself through the floor instead.
That decision potentially saved his life, as the wall he¡¯d just put between him and her lasted all of two seconds before it, too, was little more than scrap thrown to the side. His head passed through the floor just as the remnants of the wall flew through the space he¡¯d just occupied, and he caught one last glimpse of his wrothful pursuer before he was through.
It was that glimpse that told him that he couldn¡¯t stop, so he let himself fall through a second floor. Pain shot up his spine as he hit the metal awkwardly, but he couldn¡¯t let that stop him now. He could hear the crash of the floor two stories above falling onto the ceiling above his head. That ceiling would be next. He took off in a sprint, weaving through rooms and hallways with barely a plan, relying on his knowledge of the fortress¡¯s layout and instinct to guide him.
And so, he ran, the incessant pounding and breaking of walls and floors right behind him a constant indicator that his plan was not exactly working out; he couldn¡¯t even manage the first step! And, while he wasn¡¯t quite sure, it kind of felt and sounded like Madam Torso was gaining ground on him, slowly but surely.
The act of ¡®liquefying¡¯ a metal was one of the foundational techniques that allowed Blake to work his magic and was the big reason he was still breathing today. It would be an oversimplification to say that liquefying was simply a matter of reducing the metal¡¯s viscosity, but only a bit of one.
In a sense, especially for the situation at hand, he was effectively doing exactly that: turning a hard solid into not just a liquid but as thin of a liquid as he could. The problem was, that didn¡¯t do anything about the tucrenyx¡¯s mass. Whether you had to run through a wall of water or molasses, you still had to push the matter aside to move through it.
Lower viscosity helped ease that burden, but it could only help so much. Every wall and floor fought his passage just enough to slow him down by a fraction of a second. The other options were to use the doors or to just melt holes in the walls and run through them. The former would add extra steps that would only slow him down more, if there even was a door there to use, while the latter would just create a trail for Floaty McCrush to fly through, and she was surely faster than him when there was nothing in the way.
Meanwhile, his pursuer was getting better at punching through walls as she got more practice.
Heart pounding in his chest, blood pumping in his ears, Blake took a left, then a right, and then another left before skidding to a stop. Changing the floor beneath him from solid to liquid, he began to fall through like before. As he did, he took advantage of this short moment where he wasn¡¯t sprinting for his life to set up the second step, diving into Hyper Mode for a split second to coordinate his units and summon every one nearby to the ground floor pillar room¡ªthe same room which had been the site of the conclusion to his intense battle with The Monster. The chamber was just about the only place that would work for his idea; no other one was large enough to hold the large number of robots he would need, and his creations were too big to get up to higher floors, anyhow.
Returning to normal reality as his helmet finished slipping through, Blake looked down just in time to spot the pair of upturned chairs and the knocked-over table occupying his landing area, their protruding legs ready to turn a clean landing into a disaster of twisted limbs. After the initial split second of panic, Blake remembered that this was his turf, where even the chairs and tables were entirely metal. With a thought, they turned soft and melted against the bottoms of his boots like they were made of silly putty.
Blake took a deep breath and tried to quickly center himself. Looking around, he realized that he¡¯d ended up back in the lesson room where he¡¯d been with Samanta before they¡¯d been so rudely interrupted. Thankfully, Sam had listened well and was no longer present. All that remained was a single still-upright table with an uneaten bowl of chili con carne perched near the closest edge.
Well, no time for reminiscing. Blake decided to pass down another floor before continuing on his escape. He made it halfway through before the ceiling caved in on the other side of the room, the force and noise so strong that it sent his helmet rattling. The crumpled floor crashed down like a meteor, slamming into the floor and crashing down upon the far end of the one still-upright table. The table flipped, the side closer to Blake hurtling up as the bent ceiling drove the opposite into the floor, flinging the bowl of imitation Mexican cuisine right toward the newly opened gap. The chili, as if it were the final payload of an overly elaborate trap from a Home Alone movie, splashed all over the descending woman, from her face down to what remained of her hips.
It was the kind of luck normally reserved for main characters with plot armor, the type that people like Sofie seemed to take for granted, not the sort of luck that had followed Blake since his arrival on this damned world. To think that somebody had even worse luck than he... Just how many kittens had this woman kicked in her past life to get this sort of karma?
With a furious growl, Madam Torso began to wipe away the uneaten stew with her telekinetic powers, pausing in her pursuit. That image was the last of her that Blake saw before he was through the floor and running through the empty lobby of the Ministry of Finance¡¯s offices.
Chapter 138 Part 2
How was she able to find him so easily all the time, he wondered. She couldn¡¯t see through walls too, right? No, he sheepishly realized a second later. She didn¡¯t need to see through walls when she could just follow the racket he made with every step.
Having lived for many months now relying on his armor to walk, and having spent well over ninety percent of his time within the bare metal walls of his tucrenyx abode, Blake had long ago gotten used to the heavy bang that five hundred pounds of metal-encased person produced with every step, to the point that he didn¡¯t even really notice the noise anymore. In fact, he had largely considered it more of a feature than a flaw; he felt that it gave him presence, the sound of his footfalls a constant reminder to his employees of who they served.
But now, that same ¡®feature¡¯ was now biting him in the ass. Arlette had once told him that she could hear where he was from more than twenty rooms and a storey away, and that was when he was just walking. Now running, he wouldn¡¯t be surprised if Lady No-Limbs could track him from the next time zone.
Yet, what was he supposed to do about it? It wasn¡¯t like he could just remove the metal soles from his boots. The rest of his leg armor wouldn¡¯t be able to hold up, and his worthless feet wouldn¡¯t be able to handle the pressure.
Well, if he couldn¡¯t decrease the noise, what other options were there? Create more noise to drown it in a sea of sound?
Wait a minute...
It was as if the clouds parted and the answer he¡¯d sought descended to the rapturous harmony of a holy chorus of angels. The best way to defeat bullshit comic book powers was with bullshit comic book logic! How many times would a supervillain be defeated, only for it to be revealed that it was never the real supervillain at all, but rather a robotic copy of them? Countless times¡ªso many that some comic book villains were downright famous for it!
Yes, he thought as he dove into Hyper Mode, time slowing to a crawl. Why make yourself a target if you can make something else a target instead?
Of all the hundreds and thousands of different devices Blake had built with his powers, none were more familiar to him than that of his powered armor suit. He¡¯d formed it over himself so often, in so many different situations, that the circuits and form were practically imprinted on his mind. It had become like driving, where he could leave huge parts of it to the non-conscious parts of his mind while focusing on other things, and it would still turn out fine.
That is to say, making a copy of his suit using metal and crystals from the nearby walls was child¡¯s play to him. Adding a bit of extra metal on the inside to simulate the additional weight of his body was simple as well. Even making it walk and run naturally wasn¡¯t a problem; given the state of his lower body, he¡¯d had to rely on computer-assisted mobility functionality from the start. The only part that took even a little effort was programming Blakebot Alpha to navigate the fortress and avoid their pursuer as best it could.
His creation took off down the hallway, its metal feet banging along like the world¡¯s loudest hammers on the world¡¯s largest anvil. Meanwhile, he quickly melded into the nearest wall, making sure to move himself through the metal using his powers, at the cost of speed, instead of stepping. Then, he turned on his feeds of the many still-functional cameras spread throughout the building and waited, a devious grin spreading across his face.
He didn¡¯t even have to wait five seconds before he heard the sound of the ceiling caving in down the hall near where his decoy was. She¡¯d taken the bait. Now, all he had to do was flow down to the ground floor, making sure to stay inside the walls so he didn¡¯t make any noise, and the trap would be set.
His grin widened, and he had to repress the urge to chuckle out loud. Arlette had really been on to something with the whole doppelganger tactic. He should have taken this page from her playbook long ago.
His Blakebot wouldn¡¯t be able to stay ahead of her forever, but it didn¡¯t need to as long as his trap was ready by the time she¡¯d hunted it down. Still, just to make sure there were no surprises, Blake kept watch over his adversary as he followed gravity¡¯s lead.
As he jumped from feed to feed, his disgruntlement growing as more and more of his abode came to look like a tornado had just passed through, he noticed something odd. Besides the floating woman, her front still stained with the greenish-brown of chili, he kept seeing something else, or several things perhaps, floating in midair. These indistinct shapes were moving quickly and often erratically, so he couldn¡¯t make out what they were, but they caught his eye and his curiosity.
Pushing the live feeds to the side of his view, he took the recording of a recent feed and rewound it until he saw the shapes again. Slowing the playback even further, until he eventually was going frame by frame, Blake finally paused it on a frame that had a relatively clear picture. With that done, he studied the image with great curiosity. What exactly was he looking at?
The first thing to jump out at him was the thing¡¯s odd shape. He had trouble wrapping his mind around it; it appeared warped, like a large sheet of paper that had been cut up and twisted into three dimensions. The second thing he noticed was the color: the same as the chili con carne still on the woman¡¯s front and even in her hair. Coincidence? Surely not, but what did it mean? He wasn¡¯t sure.
He went back to staring at the shape again, trying to puzzle it out. The object could be broken down into four parts. The largest one was the hardest to describe; its shape looked to him to be about halfway between a circle and crescent¡ªor perhaps like a particularly obese ¡®L¡¯¡ªwith the edge of the inner side being far more squiggly and irregular than the more well-defined outer edge. Protruding from that outer edge were two long, thin rectangles and one equally thin but much shorter rectangle closer to the upper end of this ¡®L¡¯.
It was an ugly, lumpy amalgamation of shapes, and messy too. Strangely, the almost smear-like shapes kind of reminded him of his days as a young child when he used to fingerpaint and leave misshapen handprints on his mother¡¯s pristine walls. Ahh, the good old days, back when he¡¯d been much too young then to understand why his mother would become so upset whenever she discovered his ¡®gifts¡¯.
Hold on a second...
Blake looked at the image again, then set it aside next to the live feed, where in just a matter of seconds, the woman was making great progress in chasing down his doppelganger; Blakebot Alpha was slowed by its inability to ignore metal obstacles like he could. Bringing up a second feed, he slowed it down and watched how the floating thing twisted and folded. There, the way it creased, always in the same spots, never more than two folds.
He¡¯d been looking at this all wrong. He wasn¡¯t looking at an object, exactly; he was looking at the remnants of Sam¡¯s meal splashed upon something invisible, revealing only a fraction of its surface. And, judging by what he saw, that object was a hand¡ªa huge-ass invisible hand, floating in mid-air.
Now that he made the connection, he could see it all. The large, roughly oval area was part of a giant palm, while the rectangles were part of the inner sides of three of the fingers. It all made sense. If he¡¯d had a bowl of chili splash in his face, his first instinct would have been to wipe it away with his hands. The woman had likely reacted the same way, except with her psychic hands since she lacked any real ones. Looking through the feed, he spotted the other floating shape he¡¯d seen earlier. Yep, that was definitely the bottom of a palm and a thumb.
So... she didn¡¯t have ¡®true¡¯ telekinesis, but rather huge unseeable grabbers. But, was that a distinction that mattered? Could he even take advantage of this discovery somehow? Hands or no hands, she could still peel his fortress apart like it was papier mache.
Perhaps, he decided. This revelation suggested possible limitations he had not before considered. It was possible that she could only hold or manipulate a few things at a time. If it was one hand per missing limb, then that meant two things at once maximum, or four if her legs had hands like a chimpanzee. Now that he thought about it, she¡¯d announced her arrival by dropping four giant rocks onto his once beautiful fortress. Why stop at four? If she could only carry one heavy object per psychic hand, and she only had four hands, then suddenly this all made more sense.
Then there was the question of just how ¡®physical¡¯ these things were. Yes, they could interact with matter, but did they have to? Could they pass through solid objects? From what he¡¯d seen, no, solid matter could block their path. That meant that things like, say, the pillars in the chamber he was retreating to could serve as temporary shields¡ªunless she could maneuver her graspers around them and seize something she couldn¡¯t see. But, once again, he¡¯d seen no evidence that she could do that.
Perhaps there was more to work with than he¡¯d first thought. If the hands were at least semi-physical, then it stood to reason that they might be able to block bullets. Yet, she had gone out of her way to create a shield earlier to protect herself, suggesting that she couldn¡¯t block everything with just her projections. It also meant that every hand she sent out to crush something was a hand that couldn¡¯t be shielding her.
Quickly, Blake reworked some of his attack plans for the upcoming second confrontation, several ideas bubbling up to the surface. For example, if he brought in some of his drones, he could have them do coordinated ramming attacks with five or more at once from five different angles, and at least one was likely to get through. Given their light weight, he doubted they could do a whole lot of damage, but even just making her hurt would knock her off balance and hopefully ruin her focus.
A few moments later, he wrapped up the alterations to his instructions, just as he felt the metal beneath him run out. He had arrived at his destination. Creating a fireman¡¯s pole so he wouldn¡¯t have to fall the several dozen feet to the floor¡ªas a lobby of sorts, he¡¯d tried to design it to instill a sense of power and awe; thus, the large size, extra-high ceiling, and pillars¡ªhe slid his way to the floor and looked around in satisfaction.
A wide array of his forces had gathered in this massive space. He saw original model skitters, still clanking along and still useful after all this time; newer generation battle skitters, larger, tougher, and stronger; Sam; a handful of experimental skitters that he¡¯d been working on in his workshop, many of them still incomplete but all equipped with at least one working weapon; a small cloud of flitter drones, their combined fan output enough create a strong breeze within¡ªwait a second. Back up.
Samanta cowered beside a nearby pillar, clutching Alpha to her chest with both of her little arms, a look of terror on her trembling face. What the hell was she doing here?! He already knew the answer: he¡¯d told her to run to the lowest floor she could. Given that she didn¡¯t have the clearance to access the basements or sub-basement, this was as low as she could go.
Blake cursed his luck, fate, and every god he could remember. Why?! Why did it have to be that the one time that she¡¯d actually listened to him was the one time it would make things worse?! He couldn¡¯t fight Lady Smash-em-up and protect Sam at the same time! It was dangerous enough for him to be here alone!
¡°Sam, run! Quickly!¡± he hollered. ¡°Get outside!¡±
The girl didn¡¯t need much encouragement. Turning toward the archway that led outside, inconveniently located all the way on the far side of the room, she ran as fast as her little legs could carry her.
It was too late.
Sam had made it only a couple of meters before the room shook from a heavy impact above. Another followed a split second later, the blow punching a hole through the ceiling not far from the exit archway.
Before he even consciously knew what he was doing, Blake took off after Samanta, his heavy boots slamming against the floor. A now-familiar figure dropped into view, her take-no-prisoners glare setting his hairs on edge. He pushed his armor to its limits, even disabling all safety toggles for every last ounce of speed and power he could get despite the possible loss of functionality past the immediate moment. Three steps later, he reached out, grabbed Sam by the shoulders, and dove to the side.
Something unseeable slammed down right where they¡¯d just stood, shaking the ground and just missing them as they rolled behind a nearby pillar and out of sight.
Then, all hell broke loose. An eardrum-shattering cacophony erupted as dozens of weapons fired from all across the chamber. Unable to see what was happening, Blake let his pre-planned orders take effect, turning his focus to the child huddled against his armor, hugging Alpha tightly to her chest with fearful desperation.
This wasn¡¯t going to work out. He could fight the intruder or keep Sam safe, but he couldn¡¯t do both. In the end, the decision ended up being an easy one. He¡¯d put a lot of time and effort into creating this place and building his robots, but he could always rebuild those.
Sam was a different story. He had not rescued her, spared her, protected her, housed her, fed her, tutored her, and so many other things just to have her die here. He had yet to make her understand, to get the tearful apology that she owed him and would one day bestow unto him when she finally fully realized the terrible truth of her past deeds. And until that day came, he would not let her die. Never. He would not allow it. And if that meant fleeing and temporarily leaving this place to the enemy, then so be it.
¡°Pinch your nose and hold your breath!¡± he shouted.
Ordinarily, the unearthly din of weapons fire, invisible hands smashing about, and huge robots stomping around all echoing across a fully metallic chamber would make any aural communication nigh impossible, but Scyria¡¯s strange meaning translation managed to convey his words well enough that the girl complied.
Without taking the time to explain further¡ªtime he likely didn¡¯t have¡ªBlake pulled her and her robot companion as close to him as he could and used his powers on the metal below them all. Samanta flinched as they sank into the floor, but thankfully did not resist beyond that.
It was a good thing, too, as something¡ªan invisible hand, no doubt¡ªstruck the pillar they hid behind, creating several large cracks that ran through it like lightning. One breath later, most of the pillar exploded into rubble, showering the area with shrapnel as large as a man¡¯s head.
But, it was too late. They had sunk so low by that point that they remained hidden behind the low stump that remained, and then they were fully within the floor and sinking lower by the second.
There was not much beneath the ground floor that would work for their situation. The basements, which could be found beneath perhaps half of the fortress by area, had no way out but back up to the ground floor, so they wouldn¡¯t work as an escape route. Same for the sub-basement far, far below where the dungeon and his crystal vault stood.
They would work only as temporary hiding places; any hope he had of using them, the sub-basement especially, as a sort of panic room¡ªBlake made a mental note to build a real panic room in his next fortress¡ªwas undermined by the existence of the elevator shafts. Dozens and dozens of yards of solid tucrenyx and earth between them and her meant nothing when she could just bust through the lifts and float right down unmolested.
But, there was one place below his fortress that had everything he needed: the sewers. Several sewer tunnels ran beneath the structure, including one beneath this very chamber. There were no easy weak points here, only foot after foot of solid, uninterrupted tucrenyx all the way down. After Sofie and Pari tried to enter the fortress through the sewers way back when, Blake had paid much more attention to how the fortress sat atop them. He¡¯d increased the thickness of the metal between the sewer and the floors above, reworked all of the waste lines to empty at the south end of the fortress as far downstream as possible, added sensors to detect any attempted infiltration, and more. Once they were through, he and Sam would have a good twenty feet of metal between them and her.
There was a big difference in thickness between this and the walls above. At twenty feet, she wouldn¡¯t be able to bust through with brute force blows¡ªor it would take her long enough to do it that they¡¯d be long gone, at least. The complete lack of windows, doors, or anything else for her hands to grab onto for leverage would help as well.
Yes, this would work. Blake wasn¡¯t exactly happy about having to abandon his home, but he could stomach a temporary defeat for a permanent victory. More than halfway down now, the sounds of the battle were becoming harder to make out, but he could tell from his feeds that chaos still reigned.
Lady McSmash had broken holes all across the ceiling and was popping down through them just long enough to throw a chili-covered fist at a robot before zipping back up and out of view like an inverted form of Whack-a-Mole. The floor was covered in the rubble of shattered pillars and assorted robot parts. Most of Blake¡¯s flitters, his flying drones, were down for the count, as well as about half of his skitters. Some were entirely destroyed, while many of his larger robots were still half functional but with crushed weaponry or legs limiting their effectiveness. Several had somehow gotten flipped upside down and were having trouble righting themselves in the uneven, debris-littered environment.
Still, his units were putting up a good fight, more than good enough to keep her busy for a good while longer¡ªand, if he was seeing it right, she had not gotten through this so far unscathed. He was pretty sure he saw significantly more blood on her now than even after he¡¯d detonated her shield. Their sacrifice was tolerable for this outcome.
Just a moment later, Blake, Sam, and Alpha hit the roof of the sewer tunnel and all resistance dropped away. They fell the last dozen or so feet, Blake wincing as the impact of landing sent stabs of pain running from his hips up his spine. Meanwhile, Sam let out a little ¡®oof¡¯ as she landed somewhat awkwardly, Alpha slipping out of her arms and tumbling into the nearby stream of water and sewage. It scrabbled out a moment later, letting out a high-pitched, indignant whine at such horrid treatment.
Blake couldn¡¯t help but snort. It felt like the little machine was getting more lifelike every day, and of course, of all things, it was turning into a cat. At least this one wouldn¡¯t shed all over the house, he supposed.
Now that he had a moment of relative safety, Blake dove into Hyper Mode. His thoughts whirred as, in a fraction of a second, he wrote a quick script to display a small map of the sewers in the upper right corner of his vision, along with a red line tracing the most direct path from their position to the closest exit. There was no easy way to get their exact position under all this metal and earth, so he would have to manually update their progress as they went, but that was good enough for his needs today.
Scooping up Sam, he tried to place her on his back but found that the suit made his chest too wide for the girl to go piggyback. Though she was rather big for it, he moved her onto his shoulders instead and took off down the tunnel, following the directions given by his homebrewed GPS. Alpha could follow on its own just fine; its legs might be short and stubby, but it could really move them if it needed to.
With a fairly straight tunnel and no crazy woman trying to kill him, they made swift progress. In what felt like no time at all, they¡¯d already passed where Blake believed the fortress¡¯s outer wall to be. From here, the ground above would quickly transition to primarily earth with some stone, with the only tucrenyx left being the relatively thin six inches or so that made up the tunnel itself.
Theoretically, it would be much easier for Smashy von Crush-crush to dig her way down here, but she would have to find him first. Even the ringing clangs and clongs of his feet pounding on the tucrenyx walkway would be impossible to hear from above ground.
They passed two side tunnels and took a left at the third, the first turn in their fairly simple directions. From there, they sped down this slightly smaller tunnel until it ended in a ¡®T¡¯ intersection, where he went left. The passageway here took a long, slow, but steady bend to the right until it forked into two more tunnels. Right this time, his guidance said. This tunnel was less straight than the rest. First, he slid around a sharp left bend, his feet slipping from the water that seemed to cover every spot of ground here. Then came an equally sharp right turn shortly after.
It was here, rounding this second bend, that he almost ran face-first into a stone wall. As it was, Blake barely managed to skid to a stop before he would have slammed into the unexpected obstruction. He looked around, befuddled. The sewer tunnel came to an abrupt end right here, a wall of stone sealing off the space from side to side and top to bottom.
The stone was largely a dark tan with streaks of light gray mixed in. Its surface was smooth like a stone from the ocean, with little of the usual craggly roughness of the rock found in the area. The only hole in the wall was a thin gap in the bottom center to let the sewer water continue to flow unimpeded, but even that had several ¡®bars¡¯ of stone sealing it off.
What was going on? His map showed this passageway continuing for some length before joining up with the final sewer line that would lead to the exit. It couldn¡¯t be a cave-in, as it was clearly man-made, so what was it doing here? Had somebody¡ªLeo, perhaps, or whoever was in charge of the city¡¯s sanitation?¡ªordered this put in recently? Why hadn¡¯t the map been updated? Or had it been updated on paper but never in his systems? That last possibility was more likely than he wanted to admit. Even years in, getting all his employees to use computer systems over paper as much as possible was a challenge.
Well, whatever the reason, the blockage seemed too thick for him to bust through without major effort and time he didn¡¯t have¡ªbest to just find another route. His system blinked for a moment before the red line changed, now heading back and taking the other side of the fork. Well, at least it didn¡¯t look to be too significant of a detour.
At least, that was what he¡¯d told himself until he followed the second tunnel and found himself standing before a second stone obstruction nearly identical to the first¡ªit even had the same bottom grate to let the liquids through. Shit! Why was he in the dark about these? How many more had been put in here without his knowledge and consent? When he made it through this, Blake was going to have a long talk with those responsible, from Leo on down!
Or, had that been the point? At this point, Blake found it hard to keep his trademark paranoia in check, as unhelpful as it was right now. Was this some sort of sabotage? Part of a plot to bring him down? Was there a rat in his government placed high enough to manage this sort of thing?
He¡¯d have all the time he needed to solve his mystery later. Right now, what mattered was getting out. Ignoring Samanta¡¯s confused and worried questions, Blake reversed course and headed back toward the T intersection.
This third route had him taking the rightward path, which mirrored the slow bend of its twin. That meant he¡¯d be able to keep his momentum up along the outside wall through the whole turn. Or, at least, that¡¯s what he¡¯d thought until he sped through the intersection, did a double-take, and came to a screeching halt.
The other passage, the first turn in his directions, the one they¡¯d taken from the central tunnel into which they¡¯d fallen, was now sealed off with stone¡ªthe same stone as the other two blockages. This one was new, however. Right? He wasn¡¯t going crazy, was he? He hadn¡¯t gotten all mixed up and lost?
No, he was right where he thought he was, and this was definitely new. There was no bottom channel on this one, meaning that the sewer water was now pooling up on this side as the stone blocked its flow. Judging by the small and shallow puddle at his feet and the rate at which it was rising, this obstruction was maybe two minutes old¡ªthree, max.
Blake took off down the rightward path, his legs churning with a redoubled urgency. Somebody else was down here. That somebody was hunting them. And, they¡¯d taken chimirin. A team of expert stone Observers would need a few hours at the minimum to create a mass of stone that big, and yet it had formed in just the few minutes after he¡¯d made it to that intersection? That was the only explanation, no matter how much he didn¡¯t like it.
Memories he very much didn¡¯t want to remember resurfaced at the thought. Visions of his life-or-death battle with that bastard Yarec flashed through his mind, reminding him of just how deadly a stone Observer on this suicide drug could be¡ªand that fight had happened above ground! Here, he was surrounded by stone, encircled on every axis by the enemy! Even with all the experience, knowledge, and resources he¡¯d gained since that early, terrifying confrontation, Blake knew he didn¡¯t stand a chance here.
The thought of Yarec returning from the grave to exact his revenge sent shivers down his spine, but he dismissed it immediately. That fucker was dead. He¡¯d checked.
It didn¡¯t matter anyway. Sure, Yarec had been an accomplished Observer to achieve his status in the old Otharia¡ªa high-tier stone Observer, at least¡ªbut the real star of that show hadn¡¯t been the man but the drug. Swapping him out for another stone Observer wouldn¡¯t make a difference; same chimirin, same result¡ªand that result spelled bad news for him and Sam, no matter how he looked at it.
There was, of course, the ticking time bomb that came with god-like power. If Blake could just manage to run out the clock... but how? He had nowhere to hide, and this new adversary knew where he was¡ªor at least, where he¡¯d been. He couldn¡¯t even hide in the walls, as they were too thin to conceal his whole body. If this second enemy wanted to take this to the next level, they could do so any time they wanted.
It figured... he¡¯d done so much, sacrificed so many, just to escape death by crushing metal, only to end up facing death by crushing from different building material for his troubles.
Well, there was nowhere left to go but forward. And so, Blake went. Except, things were different now, he found as he moved through tunnel after tunnel. No longer content to hide their existence, his mysterious foe was now blocking off options at every junction, forcing him to take one path and one path only. They weren¡¯t being hunted, he realized now; they were being herded, funneled through an underground maze of their enemy¡¯s design.
Every so often, over the pounding of his heart and the clangs of his boots echoing through the tunnels, he thought he could hear metal tearing as rock obstructions formed ahead, the sound of their unseen stalker doing their thing.
Why were they doing this? If their roles and powers were swapped, Blake would have just turned his adversary into pulp via a hundred tons of stone crashing down upon their head. Why wait, especially given the limited time they had? Was this some sort of sick game? Did they need to get their jollies by terrorizing him before they ended things? Or, was the reason they had yet to render him and Sam into paste that they didn¡¯t want to kill him at all?
Maybe that was it. Maybe they were forcing him toward some desired location, some trap they¡¯d set up in advance to capture him without killing him. The presence of those first walls, the ones with the drainage slots in them, suggested that this had all been planned in advance. There was no reason to make them with holes at the bottom except to prevent backups and floods that would draw unwanted attention before the attack took place.
The prospect of being captured didn¡¯t appeal to Blake much more than being crushed to death. But what could he even do about it? What were his options down here?
Hiding would have been highly difficult even without Sam here; her presence made it nigh impossible. He could try to force his way up to the surface, perhaps, but it would be difficult and take a lot of time. Without his usual resources available, he¡¯d have to work with just the metal and crystals around him.
Metal wasn¡¯t an issue, since he could just strip the floor of as much as he needed, but there were almost no cantacrenyx crystals around to power anything he made. Digging up posed its own risks, like bringing everything down on their heads. And, of course, their enemy lurked somewhere within the earth as well.
That left turning back and trying to bust through one of the obstructions. Given some ingenuity, most of the crystals in his suit, and whatever he could pull out of Alpha, he could probably make something strong enough to hammer the obstruction to¡ª
¡°Lord Virgin, are you there? You¡¯re still listening in on me, right?¡±
Blake nearly tripped over himself and fell into the sewage, only able to come to a halt by fusing his boots to the floor. Sam cried out as she nearly flew off his shoulders, her arms desperately wrapping around his helmet and cutting off his vision for a moment. What in the hell was¡ª
¡°It sure sounds like you¡¯re having the time of your life up there. It¡¯s not polite to exclude a lady, you know.¡±
Oh, right. Chitra. He¡¯d totally forgotten about the video and audio feeds that some subroutine in his fortress server was monitoring for activity and how he¡¯d set it up to pipe live audio directly into his helmet if she said anything suspicious. Calling him by name damn well qualified as suspicious. And how had her English gotten so good?
No, never mind that. He had to keep running. Bringing up the live feed of the cell, he stuck it next to the minimap so he could glance at it while he ran. Within the grey box, Chitra leaned casually against a side wall, the cables fastened to her limbs long and limp upon the floor.
Blake didn¡¯t have time for another distraction. Whatever she thought she was doing, now wasn¡¯t the time. He sent out a directive and a moment later watched as the four cables retracted with great speed, yanking the woman off her feet and slamming her back-first against the far wall, her limbs spread eagle as each cable went taut.
Chitra grinned, seemingly not just unbothered by the sudden use of force but delighted by it.
¡°So, you do hear me! Wonderful! I sure hope you are watching as well. I would hate for you to miss the show. It¡¯s been fun, these little games of ours, but I¡¯m afraid it¡¯s time now for me to take my leave. You¡¯ve been a truly excellent host, I must say, but all good things must come to an end eventually. I¡¯m sure you understand.¡±
What in the world was the Ubran talking about? Had she suddenly lost it? Take her leave? The woman could barely move with all that Sofie had done to her, not to mention the manacles and prison cell and all the rest!
Unless... was all of this¡ªthe fortress destruction, the flying torso, this chilling game of underground cat and mouse¡ªjust part of an operation to free the Batranala? But no, that didn¡¯t quite add up.
Chitra¡¯s location was known to a select few¡ªthe existence of the deep underground prison and its adjacent crystal vault was a closely guarded secret, after all¡ªso unless somebody in the small handful of people involved was a rat, people on the outside wouldn¡¯t even know where in the fortress to look for her. And if they somehow did, all they would have needed to do was use their chimirin-boosted stone Observer to make a passage right down to her cell and take her out before Blake even knew what was going on.
¡°Before I head out, I wanted to thank you for making this all possible. If you¡¯d sent anybody else to go round up your wayward waif, I would never have gotten days of exposure to her geasa. Without that, I would never have been able to craft the methods to subvert or even destroy her commands. I have enjoyed playing pretend these last few days¡ªespecially the times when you ¡®made¡¯ me cough up ¡®blood¡¯. To think a parlor trick was all it took to cloud your judgment. You trust in yourselves far too much, but I digress.¡±
Wait, what?
¡°One.¡±
¡°Two.¡±
¡°Three. Oh! That one felt especially violent.¡±
¡°And... Four.¡±
¡°Done. Four geasa snapped like rotted twine. You cannot see this, of course, but you¡¯ll see the proof of it in a moment. Does envy fill you, oh Lord Virgin? After everything she¡¯s put you through, don¡¯t you wish you could be free of that nugget of fear in the back of your mind? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I¡¯m afraid crawlers just don¡¯t have soulforce strong enough to manage it. My condolences.¡±
Oh. Oh, no. Oh, nonononononono. She couldn¡¯t be. She just couldn¡¯t! It wasn¡¯t possible!
But even as he thought that, he could zoom in and see the royal purple scales forming on her skin, the teeth in her mile-wide grin sharpening like tiny daggers, the pupils of her eyes transforming from round to a predatory slit. The woman¡¯s entire body seemed to bulk up, not only her muscles swelling bigger and bigger like time-lapse footage of watermelons and her frame widening and growing inch after inch. Stepping forward as if she were not restrained at all, Chitra brought her arms forward and seized the shackles on her wrists, one and then the other, breaking them apart like they were made of cheap plastic. The ones on her ankles followed a moment later.
¡°One last thing, before my mouth becomes unable to pronounce this silly speak of yours,¡± the creature said, her voice now a low baritone and getting deeper by the second. ¡°I bet you have wondered just how we people carve out homes from within the very mountains themselves. As one final token of appreciation for just how easy you made all of this, I, Maylanth, will now provide you with a demonstration!¡±
She laughed, the sound deep and almost diabolical even when coming through the tinny speakers within his helmet. As if a switch had been flipped, her changes accelerated drastically, her body shifting from the humanoid he had always known to a familiar quadrupedal form. Her skin was now entirely covered in scales, their color almost regal as they flickered in the low light of the prison. Wings sprouted along her back, twitching and trembling as they expanded and thickened. Though she had turned around to face the back wall of the cell, he could see her face lengthening into a long snout. A massive tail, thick with cords of muscle and topped by a series of nasty-looking spikes running from the body all to the way to the tip, sprouted from her rear, lashing back and forth with seeming anticipation.
By now, the dragon¡ªand that was what she was, no matter how much Blake wanted to deny it¡ªwas taking up nearly every square foot of her cell. With a swift kick of her feet, the bars that made up the enclosure¡¯s entrance snapped off, freeing her to expand beyond the confines of the chamber she¡¯d called home for the last few days.
Then, she swelled even more, not because she was still growing¡ªand she was very much still growing¡ªbut because, he realized after a second, she was taking a very deep breath. The reason for that became clear a moment later as she exhaled, a thick plume of noxious flame pouring forth into the back wall. The flame looked strange and wrong to Blake; not only was the color¡ªa sickening mix of orange, vomit-green, and light brown¡ªall wrong, but the flames did not seem to entirely flow as fire was supposed to.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Immediately, the wall of solid tucrenyx began to melt, swiftly receding deeper and deeper out of his video feed¡¯s view. Blake blinked. No flame, not even one as hot as what he¡¯d seen dragons manage, could do away with that much metal that fast, and in that way. It only began to make sense a moment later, when Chitra¡ªno, he supposed it was ¡®Maylanth¡¯ now¡ª turned her breath on the walls to her sides, opening the area up for more rapid growth.
With a closer view at a better angle, he realized that he wasn¡¯t really looking at flame breath at all. Sure, flame was a component of it¡ªthe orange color he could see, and maybe a contributor to the brown as well¡ªand influenced the flow, but it was secondary to the main element: some sort of gaseous acid that spewed out of her mouth like the toxic smog of a thousand factories running at maximum output.
This cloud ate away at the metal at an astounding rate, turning what was a thick, strong, and proud wall into a long, smooth, and widening tunnel. It eroded the rock behind the tucrenyx even faster, and before he knew it, the now-immense but still-growing dragon was stepping out of the cell through an exit of her own making and receding from view.
Behind all the shock and panic, a part of Blake¡¯s mind noted how odd it was that Maylanth was tunneling out sideways rather than upward. After all, wasn¡¯t the point of this for her to escape? Then, at last, he connected the direction of the tunnel to the layout of that area and let out an involuntary gasp.
She was going for his crystal vault! His precious crystals, including the pair of massive incredibly powerful stones, sat there, waiting to be plundered! His experimental bunker device, too!
Suddenly he understood what she¡¯d meant when she¡¯d said that he¡¯d made things ¡°easy¡± for her. Getting caught and thrown down into his underground prison had been her goal all along. Was this coordinated attack a part of that plan? She¡¯d been forced to admit collusion with the terrorist forces, but could anything she¡¯d said be taken for the truth now that she¡¯d shown that Sofie¡¯s command had never had a hold on her? He didn¡¯t know.
What Blake did know is that he¡¯d been played harder than a fiddle at a twenty-four-hour hoe down. He was so screwed.
It would be only a matter of moments before Maylanth made it to his vault. What could Blake do about it? Nothing, he realized with great anger. He had been distracted, chased, and isolated¡ªSam¡¯s presence notwithstanding. He had no resources and was stuck in an environment that tilted heavily against him. He didn¡¯t even know the true number of foes he faced right now.
He was impotent again, just like he¡¯d been when he¡¯d first found himself here. So much of what he¡¯d done over the last few years, he¡¯d done in large part to never feel that powerlessness ever again. Yet, after all of that, here he was anyway, cornered and out of options. Except for running. That, he could still do for now. That, and watch a dragon steal all his best stuff, which was something he very much did not feel like watching.
With great disgust, Blake turned off the video feed. He needed to focus on traversing the tunnels right now, not on the pillaging of his vault. He would deal with that later, when this was all over and he had a chance to prepare himself.
A small hand smacked against his helmet.
¡°What are you just standing here for?!¡± Sam complained from atop his shoulders. ¡°Let me down if you¡¯re not going to do anything!¡±
Huh, he¡¯d stopped moving sometime during Maylanth¡¯s little show without realizing it. How long had he been standing here? Where even were they right now? He checked his makeshift GPS, the dot of his position showing him somewhere northeast of the fortress but still nowhere near outside the city.
Without taking the time to respond, Blake got back to running. Still, try as he might, he couldn¡¯t quite take his mind off of what he¡¯d just seen and heard. He felt so utterly idiotic, now that events had so rudely pulled back the curtain on his many ignorant assumptions.
The biggest assumption: only elves could shapeshift. This seemed like an almost farcical conclusion to him now, but it had been so widely accepted as the obvious state of things by everybody around him that he¡¯d never once questioned it. No other form of Scyrian ¡®magic¡¯ that he knew of was exclusive to a single species.
If there was any explanation, then, it would be that shapeshifting took so much time and effort to learn that the other races wouldn¡¯t be able to master it within their shorter lifespans, leaving elves the only ones capable of it by default. Dragons had all the time in the world, though. The only thing stopping them would be themselves...
Which led to another related and underlying assumption now proven wrong: dragons would never try to take humanoid form because they viewed such a thing as entirely beneath them. From everything Blake had gleaned during his stay with Bazz, it wasn¡¯t just that ¡®crawlers¡¯ were viewed as vastly inferior existences, but the humanoid form was inherently demeaning to a dragon because they, by definition, could not fly. If he had been asked that morning if a dragon would ever willingly take human form, he would have laughed out loud¡ªall while, willingly or not, one had been lurking beneath his feet the whole time.
And, because of these two presumptions¡ªwhich everyone else believed as well, in his defense¡ªBlake was about to have his important project smashed and his greatest crystals absconded with. He needed those, especially the biggest, if he wanted to ever build a tunnel back to Earth.
Ugh, just the thought left him bitter and paranoid. What other unquestioned assumptions of his were there, hiding in plain sight and waiting for the perfect time to ruin his day? What simple fact was going to turn out to be completely false right when it mattered most? What¡ª
A mighty roar sent tremors running through the ground, followed soon after by another coming from higher up, likely softened by distance¡ªMaylanth¡¯s triumphant victory cries, he assumed. Damned dragons... couldn¡¯t even let him lose quietly. Had to make a big deal about it.
Suddenly, alarms started blaring in his ears. Giant, bright red letters spelling out ¡°URGENT! DRAGON DETECTED!¡± started blinking in front of his eyes, blocking his vision.
¡°Oh, now you work properly,¡± he grumbled, disabling the system.
¡°What¡¯s that sound? It¡¯s giving me a headache,¡± Sam complained.
¡°That was a dragon roaring, Sam.¡±
She bapped his helmet with her fist. ¡°I know what a dragon sounds like, idiot. I was there too, remember?¡± Oh, right. ¡°I¡¯m talking about the other sound.¡±
Other sound? The alarm in his helmet? He was pretty sure nobody could hear the sounds in his helmet, or she would have said something about it over the years. And surely, she couldn¡¯t mean the banging of his suit against the ground that came with every heavy step, as cacophonous and headache-inducing as it was, especially amplified by the tunnel. He slowed to a halt for just a quick moment to listen better.
Immediately, he knew what his passenger was talking about. Now that he wasn¡¯t lost in his own little world of self-condemnation, the sound came through loud and clear. It was quite low pitched, yet somehow sounded almost like a whine even though it was nearly a rumble. Something about the sound felt familiar yet disquieting, though he couldn¡¯t say why. He could feel it on the tip of his tongue, recognition just out of reach.
What was it about this sound that set him on edge? Was it the low frequency? No, though unexplained low rumbles were never a good sign. Was it the way the pitch seemed to be rising ever so slowly, just fast enough for him to be only mostly sure he wasn¡¯t imagining it? No, not that either. Maybe it was the way the sound seemed to bypass his eardrums to vibrate inside his skull...
Blake gasped in horror, the pieces suddenly falling into place. He¡¯d heard this sort of ¡®sound¡¯ hundreds of times now, just never so low that its nature hadn¡¯t immediately become clear. This was not a sound of the vibrating air variety. This was something altogether different. He wasn¡¯t hearing this with his ears, he was hearing it with his mind and soul. This was the ¡®sound¡¯ cantacrenyx crystals made as they became overloaded with energy, just before they exploded and unleashed a torrent of mostly kinetic energy in all directions.
The problem was that the whine he was used to sensing was usually extremely high-pitched, almost at the edge of a human¡¯s hearing range. That was because the crystals he usually set off were small; with one notable exception back near the start of his time on this world, the largest were the size of a thumb. The larger the crystal being primed to explode, the lower the whine began before rising as it grew more and more saturated until eventually reaching that telltale high note.
Blake quickly brought up the security feeds of his crystal vault. There was only one crystal in existence that would start its whine so low that it almost resembled an earthquake. Sure enough, what he found on the feeds confirmed it. Every crystal, big or small, had been connected by tucrenyx channels into his super giant crystal, with only a single small channel out to complete the circuit¡ªhis classic overload self-destruct configuration.
As massive as his biggest stone was, the combined mass and energy of all the others in the vault still overtook what it could handle. It was only a matter of time before it went off, and when it did it would wipe all of Wroetin and more off the map in one massive blast. He, Sam, and everybody else in a multi-mile radius would be pulverized into smithereens by the kinetic energy. He wasn¡¯t listening to just a rumble. He was listening to the countdown to his annihilation.
Blake¡¯s already sky-high heart rate was now spiking through the roof, his body trembling uncontrollably. Blood pounded in his ears and his vision seemed to pulse with every beat. The walls felt like they were closing in. He couldn¡¯t breathe, with air coming only in fits and gasps.
The countdown tone¡¯s pitch continued to slowly rise.
Small hands grabbed at the bottom of his helmet, trying to pull it off. Desperate for air, he let it melt away and took a series of huge, deep breaths. Sam stood in front of him, hands on his shoulders, shaking him as much as a prepubescent girl could shake a large armored man who weighed ten times as much as she did. How had he ended up sitting on the ground with his back up against the wall?
¡°What are you doing?!¡± the girl hollered. ¡°We need to get out of here.¡±
Blake avoided the child¡¯s gaze, staring off into the gloom with empty eyes. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± he told her, his voice as hollow as his spirit. ¡°It¡¯s too late for us now.¡±
¡°What are you talking about?!¡±
¡°That sound. It¡¯s a bomb, and when it goes off, we¡¯re all going to die. Even if I run as fast as I possibly can, there¡¯s no way to escape before it blows. It¡¯s game over. We got outplayed.¡±
¡°So you¡¯re just going to sit here?¡±
¡°What¡¯s the point? I¡¯d just die more tired,¡± he replied through heaving breaths. His heart still pounded with terror, his mind still cried out at the concept of oblivion, yet he knew it was all for nothing. ¡°This is the end. A pointless death in a fucking sewer. What a fucking life.¡±
SMACK!
Her face contorted in indignant anger, Samanta reared back and slapped him across the face as hard as she could. From the way that the entire side of his face buzzed, she¡¯d likely added some electricity to her palm as well. The blow stunned Blake for a moment, enough that when that faded, he found himself staring at the girl¡¯s furious visage with mind and sight momentarily unmuddled by fear.
¡°What¡¯s wrong with you?!¡± she yelled. ¡°Aren¡¯t you supposed to be Lord Ferros? Aren¡¯t you the man who slew the Church in front of all of our eyes and declared yourself king? Aren¡¯t you the wicked tyrant who rules this land with an iron fist?! What are you doing?! Get up!¡±
¡°None of that matters anymore, Sam.¡±
SMACK!
¡°When I stabbed you, you could have just lay there on the ground and waited for death, but you didn¡¯t! When those assassins almost killed you with the poison knife, you could have run away, but you stayed! When Miss Gabby came and attacked you and sliced everything apart, you could have surrendered, but you refused to give up! You fought with everything you had, no matter how bad it seemed! Now, after all that, you¡¯re going to just sit here without even trying?! Get up!¡±
She kicked his armor, disdain and contempt oozing from every pore. Still, he didn¡¯t move.
¡°Get up, you bastard! Weren¡¯t you going to show me just how wrong I was?! Weren¡¯t you going to make me grasp the weight of what I did to you?! Weren¡¯t you going to make me see the magnitude of my actions and understand so deeply that I would not just apologize for everything but thank you?!¡±
She screamed at him with a rage and intensity that he¡¯d not known her capable of, her face a furious red and getting redder with each shouted word while tears of bitterness formed in her eyes.
¡°Or was all of that just damned lies? Huh?! Was Sofie right when she said you¡¯re nothing more than a bully with delusions of grandeur?¡±
She kicked him again, once, then twice.
¡°Get up, you coward! Get up! Do something! I did not spend all this time learning your secrets for you to just lay down and die before I can kill you!¡±
Seemingly realizing what she was saying only after she had already said it, Samanta immediately reverted to her usual sullen self, only madder. Her words echoed through the tunnels, piercing the quiet that surrounded them.
Blake, for his part, watched the scene with befuddlement. Never before had he seen such passion from her. Slowly, the contents of her diatribe worked their way into his mind, seeping through the fear and despair that had smothered him like a waterlogged blanket.
A chuckle escaped his lips. Then, a giggle. Before he knew it, Blake found himself laughing aloud in the dark, unable to keep a huge grin off his face.
¡°Well said!¡± he declared to the gloom. Pushing himself back to his feet, he reached out and tousled Sam¡¯s hair. Even after all she¡¯d said, she refused to flinch or pull away. The girl had guts, he had to admit. It was one of the things he liked about her.
Few people had been dealt a hand worse than Samanta Zemzaris. She¡¯d had her whole life ripped away from her to a degree that was hard to fathom sometimes. Not only was her family gone, but also her country and her place in the world had gone up in smoke. In the end, she¡¯d fallen into a life bereft of control over her own fate, a powerless existence, all the while living beside literal walking weapons of mass destruction everywhere you looked.
Even most adults would completely fall apart under such a harsh series of blows, but not Sam. She¡¯d gone from a normal girl living a relatively normal Otharian life to the most reviled traitor of all in the eyes of many of her fellow countrymen, and yet she¡¯d never given up. She¡¯d fought, she¡¯d escaped, she¡¯d laid low and worked to build up her knowledge and increase her capability, never in two whole years losing sight of her goal.
God damn, he was so proud of her.
But, Blake had his pride, as well. There was no way that he could let himself get shown up by a child! He was Lord Fucking Ferros! The man who¡¯d single-handedly brought an entire nation to its knees! The man who¡¯d stopped the Ubrans in their tracks! He hadn¡¯t fought tooth and nail, barely surviving multiple brushes with death, just to give up here!
Was he going to give up now and just allow a bomb to destroy him and everything he¡¯d worked for? No! Okay, well, most likely yes, actually. Physics was a bitch like that. But, that didn¡¯t mean he wasn¡¯t going to go down swinging with everything he had!
But what could he even do? The whine in his head was approaching violin territory. He had a few precious minutes left, at most, before a kinetic nuke went off distressingly close to him, and there were scant few fridges to hide within down here in the sewers.
...Unless he made one.
Yes... yes, that might be their best chance at survival¡ªnot a fridge, exactly, but something made to enclose them and absorb as much of the blast energy as possible. Couple that with a larger shield between them and the bomb, and... and they¡¯d still likely die, but maybe, just maybe, they¡¯d live to see the sunrise tomorrow.
The best part of this plan¡ªif you could even call it that¡ªwas that it would need only metal, which was the one thing he had in relative abundance down here. He just had to get it without killing himself.
¡°Sam, run that way for a bit,¡± he instructed her, pointing down the tunnel in the direction that led somewhat away from the bomb¡ªthe passageway traveled at an angle to the center of his fortress and the crystal¡¯s location.
¡°How far?¡±
¡°You¡¯ll know.¡±
Giving him an unsure look, the girl turned and did as told, hightailing it down the passage with Alpha tap-tap-tapping along behind her. Blake, for his part, turned in the opposite direction and ran, quickly widening the gap. Once he felt like he¡¯d given himself enough space to work with, he slowed to a halt and took a deep breath.
Reaching out with his ability, Blake mentally touched the tucrenyx that coated the entire passage from top to bottom. Starting with the metal a good twenty feet further down the path, he liquefied it all at once and drew it toward himself as fast as possible. Backing away, he continued to pull out all the metal lining as he went, waiting for the inevitable. He didn¡¯t have to wait long. With a crash that startled him in its suddenness even though he¡¯d been expecting it, the tunnel¡¯s arched roof gave in starting where he¡¯d first pulled away the metal and racing toward him.
Quickly backpedaling, Blake worked as fast as he could, building up ton after ton of liquid tucrenyx by his side as he went. After more than a minute of staying just ahead of the incoming cave-in, he called it quits. Luckily, once the earth reached the point where the metal remained, the collapse quickly came to a halt, leaving him coughing up dust but alive and with a wealth of resources to work with.
He beckoned to Sam, who was already approaching warily, and got to work. Distressingly little time remained. The crystal¡¯s whine had risen to a worryingly high note.
Design-wise, metal wasn¡¯t exactly feathers and fluff. He didn¡¯t have many options. He did, however, have the concept of the crumple zone. Crumple zones in cars were able to absorb a significant amount of kinetic energy by trading their structural integrity to blunt the oncoming force¡ªaround a whole twenty-five percent or so if he remembered right.
The fact that he hadn¡¯t died near the end of his battle with Gabby was proof enough that sacrificing metal to bleed off the energy of impact had merit. More so, he¡¯d had just a second or two then to work with, and cars had limits to their size. Neither of those restrictions affected him right now.
Blake was going to construct the largest series of crumple zones this world or any other had ever seen.
In some ways, this proved to be quite easy¡ªthey weren¡¯t highly complex designs with hundreds of interconnecting parts, after all. In others, it proved to be quite the challenge, especially when it came to growing the massive array further and further into the earth beyond the tunnel walls. Still, he persisted, working the metal as deep as he could in the time he thought he had.
Moment by moment, a somewhat concave shield formed within the tunnel and the surrounding ground, twenty meters in diameter and nearly as thick. He stopped there, as judging by how the crystal¡¯s cry had reached the top of piccolo range, time was nearly out.
Using the remaining metal, he formed a thick and solid sphere large enough to hold the three of them, lining the outside and inside with more shock absorbers and forming a single seat with its back toward the crystal. He briefly considered creating more seats but realized that there was only room for one seat facing away from the imminent blast. Any seat facing a different direction would do little to help the occupant. They were going to have to share.
The purpose of the sphere was simple: withstand as best it could the crushing force that would occur when the blast hit and pushed them against the earth surrounding them. If it could hold out long enough for the ground above them to also get blasted away, then they might be able to avoid getting flattened between the blast below and the ground above. Getting out from there afterward would be a piece of cake in comparison.
¡°Okay, get in,¡± he instructed, opening an entrance in the side of his creation.
Clutching Alpha to her chest¡ªa mannerism he¡¯d come to realize she did when highly stressed¡ªSamanta eyed it warily. ¡°What is it?¡±
¡°Our best hope of getting out of here alive,¡± he told her. Not that it was a very bright hope, but he wasn¡¯t about to say that aloud.
It said a lot about how much the girl trusted him¡ªor, more likely, the capabilities of his creations¡ªthat she climbed inside without any more questions or arguments. Blake followed, taking his place in the seat and placing Samanta on his lap. More metal flowed up around them, forming tight body harnesses to hold them in place.
Thinking about his construction brought back memories of middle school when this science class had been given the task of designing building protective containers to keep an egg intact when dropped from the school roof. Even though they¡¯d been limited to a short list of common materials, his team had managed to make something that let the egg survive¡ªthough only barely¡ªin part because of the crumpled paper that had surrounded the egg.
Figuring it couldn¡¯t hurt, he filled most of the open space left in the sphere with super thin tucrenyx, as close to aluminum foil as he could manage, making sure to make it moderately crumpled in on itself. He was the egg this time, and while the odds of survival were still so low that he would rather not think about them, he still wanted to do better than ¡®barely¡¯ survive.
The whine of the cantacrenyx in his mind was quickly transforming into a distressed wail, the ¡®sound¡¯ still growing in pitch and intensity to the point that it was starting to give him a headache. He wasn¡¯t alone; judging from the way she was rubbing her temples, Sam seemed to be experiencing something similar.
Wait, what was that? Another noise, deep and grinding, caught his attention - a real noise this time, not one being broadcast directly into his skull. It came from just beyond the sphere, which brought him great worry. Had something collapsed out in the tunnel? Or... he¡¯d forgotten for a moment about their mysterious adversary. Were they undermining his already nearly futile efforts? Hoping that they still had a few more seconds, he opened a small hole to see what was going on and froze at the sight, his mind going blank.
Through the hole, Blake saw light. Daylight. Widening the hole a bit more, he found himself staring at a ramp of stone just outside his sphere, lit dimly by light from above¡ªa ramp that had not been there a moment ago. Moving the hole upward, his eyes gazed upon something bewildering: a tunnel, slightly inclined, leading to the surface.
His mind raced with possibilities. What was going on? For a moment, he thought that this was his hidden stone Observer adversary leaving him with one last taunt before his demise, showing him salvation just out of reach. On second thought, he realized it was quite the opposite. This tunnel was circular, smooth, and just wide enough for his sphere to fit inside.
They¡¯d been given an escape route. Not one they could run up¡ªthe crystal would rupture at any moment¡ªbut a path for the sphere to launch away instead of getting crushed. Their mystery antagonist had made a gun barrel, and they would be the bullet. If the angle was correct¡ªand it seemed like it was¡ªthey wouldn¡¯t have to worry about being crushed like a cardboard box in a trash compactor. Now, they would just have to survive the impossibly powerful force of the blast itself and the deadly acceleration that would come with it.
Yeah, they were still going to die. At least it would be quick.
Hugging Sam tight to his chest, Blake let the metal of his suit melt away, pressing her shivering back to the skin of his chest. It was stupid, he knew, but his body was softer than his suit, and it might increase the odds that she, at least, somehow made it through this. One last buffer to absorb whatever it could.
The wail had become a mind-rending screech at a pitch that no human could hear with their ears, loud enough that he felt like his mind was going to melt. The crystal, his great, wonderful, giant crystal blared out its agony, almost like a cry for help, or perhaps a siren of warning. But no help would be coming now, and any warning was far, far too late.
¡°Sam... I¡¯m sorry.¡±
The crystal cracked. For the tiniest fraction of a micro-second, the screaming in his mind ceased, and his thoughts were graced with blessed silence. And then, his world came apart.
The blow hit so hard and so suddenly that Blake wasn¡¯t even capable of processing it in real time. One moment, he was seated in the sphere, waiting for the blast. The next, he was tumbling wildly and untethered around the inside of a half-crushed ball, the shape like that of a ping pong ball after you stepped on it really hard. He found thinking hard and moving even harder.
Pain suffused his existence. How many bones had been broken? How many organs damaged beyond repair? How many fractures were there in his skull alone? He didn¡¯t know, nor did he have the mental capacity to even ponder those questions. He could not think; he could only feel as he was turned from an egg in a protective capsule into a rock in a rock tumbler.
That didn¡¯t mean he didn¡¯t try. Blake even went so far as to try to enter Hyper Mode, only to find that all that did was make the blinding pain even more blinding. He tried to reach out with his powers and fix the capsule, and perhaps construct some sort of parachute from the outside, but even without the crippling pain, he would have found it nigh impossible with how quickly both he and his environment were spinning independently about multiple axes.
Then, a second impact hit, completely changing the capsule¡¯s spin, followed a moment later by a third and very final crash.
Blake opened his eyes. He didn¡¯t know how long he¡¯d been out. He didn¡¯t know where they¡¯d come to a sudden stop. All he knew was that he wouldn¡¯t be going anywhere for quite some time.
His body was an absolute wreck. He didn¡¯t know the full extent of the damage, but his pain receptors told a very comprehensive, whole-body story, and it was a dark tale. Anything more he could discern came from what he could see of his limbs. Mangled and broken possibly beyond repair, it was quite apparent that moving anything, even his neck, would be a very bad idea. The blood covering much of the area directly around him wasn¡¯t a good sign, either.
And yet... his heart beat, quickly and urgently but with vigor. Breathing didn¡¯t come easy with all the broken ribs, but he could manage it, and it didn¡¯t feel like his lungs had been punctured or anything. The world swam, but he could think¡ªat least while the adrenaline was flowing.
Somehow, despite everything, he remained alive¡ªbroken and in pain, but alive.
He lay on his back on an incline, half-in, half-out of a broken chunk of his safety sphere buried into a hillside. They¡¯d landed somewhere outside of Wroetin and, from what he could tell, come to a stop when they¡¯d crashed into the hill. Bent and twisted bits and pieces of metal of all sizes were strewn about the land in front of him like the scene of a particularly deadly plane crash. Not far to his right, he found the remains of his seat, the harnesses snapped and broken.
Speaking of deadly... he didn¡¯t see Sam anywhere. Had he alone survived? Scyrians were notoriously hardy, but their advantage lay primarily in their stupidly capable healing, not in some ability to tank a sledgehammer to the face and walk away unharmed.
When it came to sheer durability, Earthlings¡ªwell, not counting Sofie, at least¡ªhad them beat by far. Without that superhuman toughness, he would have died long ago. That had been partly why he¡¯d put himself between her and the blast.
A flash of motion on the left edge of his vision caught his attention. Alpha¡ªsomehow seemingly completely undamaged, the little shit¡ªscrabbled into view, clambering over rubble and pushing through the tall grass that covered the ground around the crash site. Emitting a series of plaintive chirps and beeps, it ran several circles around one particular small pile of wreckage before pushing its little body against the metal, half-digging and half-climbing its way inside.
The rubble shifted, several pieces sliding or falling over to reveal the battered, unmoving form of Samanta Zemzaris. No! Not after all he¡¯d done... Wait, was that? Blake let out a breath of relief, wincing as he did so, at the sight of Sam¡¯s chest rising and falling. She¡¯d made it too, and she¡¯d be fine. With her Scyrian nature, she¡¯d be back to normal in a week.
...
Soooo...
Now what?
Having survived the unsurvivable, Blake now found himself stuck with the question that he¡¯d been too busy trying to not die to ponder. He¡¯d made it through the eye of the needle, and only now did he realize he didn¡¯t have a plan for what to do on the other side.
Things weren¡¯t looking that great. He was heavily injured. Sam was out for the moment. Alpha was maybe a foot long and had no real weapons. His home base had just been converted into a crater, all his allies were elsewhere, and he still had to protect a child along with his own life. That had proved hard enough with a functioning body. There wasn¡¯t much he could do now except maybe build some sort of automated cart to help him move? Then, perhaps find more resources, build better transport, and get somewhere safe until they could get back on their feet?
Easier said than done, even if you took out the fact that somewhere between one and three villains were likely still searching for him. Maylanth was out there, somewhere, though he had a feeling that she¡¯d flown away; if she wanted him dead, she could have killed him multiple ways without resorting to all of this.
The mysterious stone Observer was likely alive as well. He doubted they had sacrificed their life to create that tunnel and save him. They could show up at any moment. Then, there was Torso Lady. Blake could only hope the blast had disintegrated her on the atomic level. Unlike the others, who seemed to get some amusement out of messing with him, Grabby von Smashalot seemed the no-nonsense type to a fault. He wouldn¡¯t be able to talk or finesse his way out of things if she¡ª
As if summoned by his thoughts, the limbless woman dropped out of the sky, quickly slowing into a static hover just above the earth not more than five feet away from him. Though now bloodied far beyond her previous state, with the star of the show being a hole going clear through what remained of her left shoulder, the woman seemed completely unaffected by her condition, as if she couldn¡¯t even feel it.
Her expression, once detached and impassive and later angry and emotive, had become that of cold hatred sharpened to a lethal edge. She stared at him like one might stare at a bug, wondering how best to pull off its wings to cause the most pain without killing it.
And yet, the one thing that had not changed since the moment he¡¯d first seen her remained the vacantness behind her eyes. Even after all this, from the dispassionate apathy to the scalding rage to the current icy fury, something in her gaze made him feel like everything he¡¯d seen from her was more of an emulation than something real. It was like, even with all the emotion and violence, she was sleepwalking through this whole ordeal.
Blake didn¡¯t even have time to finish thinking ¡®well, shit¡¯ about her arrival before he felt thick, unseen fingers wrap around his body and constrict tightly. The woman lifted him up into the air, inspecting him as if wondering how much she could squeeze and still successfully complete her mission. So intent was her gaze that she didn¡¯t notice Alpha until the little skitter leapt through the air and latched onto her face like a facehugger from Alien.
The woman¡¯s reaction was immediate, instinctual, and altogether understandable. Dropping Blake without a thought, she flailed about wildly. Her hands¡ªwhich Blake could still partially make out thanks to stains of blood, chili, and dirt¡ªdesperately tried to grab and dislodge the robot without taking her head off with it.
Meanwhile, Blake let out a groan as his body hit dirt and metal, limbs splaying this way and that outside of his direct control. It took a moment for his head to clear enough for him to see the woman finally wrench his first-ever robot off her head and throw it into a nearby rubble pile. Before he could even speak, she raised a massive paw and slammed it down atop the metal over and over, turning perhaps his most beloved creation into unsalvagable junk.
That poor little guy had been with him and Sam longer than pretty much anything else he¡¯d ever made. Outside of his suit, most everything else had been replaceable. He would create, evaluate, reclaim, and replace his skitters without even a whiff of sentimentality. Yet, despite being mostly unchanged since its creation, he¡¯d never once considered scrapping the thing.
Part of it was because of the data he got on Sam from it, and some was due to the important data he got studying it and how it learned and adapted well beyond the capabilities of his other creations. But really, he knew, he¡¯d kept it around because it was maybe the only thing he¡¯d ever made since coming to his world that he saw directly bringing joy to somebody.
Other inventions like his farming equipment had delivered more widespread good and helped people live better, happier lives, but that was always in the abstract, happening to other people in other places. Alpha¡¯s contribution had been something he could experience firsthand.
At first, Sam had loathed and feared the machine, viewing it as an extension of him and his will. But, as time had gone on, she¡¯d started to tolerate it, then accept it, and eventually love it. When she was feeling lonely, she¡¯d play with it. When she was feeling down, they¡¯d snuggle together under the covers of her bed. The bond that had formed between girl and machine had been one of the most beautiful things he¡¯d ever seen, a direct manifestation of everything he dreamed of bringing to the country as a whole.
And now, it was gone. Alpha¡¯s unique computation and evolving subroutines were only part of the picture. He¡¯d been studying the thing ever since he¡¯d noticed how its machine-learning capabilities seemed to outpace far more advanced models by leaps and bounds. He¡¯d even started making nightly backups for study in the future. But, he¡¯d never been able to find the time to sit down and figure out just what made Alpha special. Loading Alpha¡¯s nightly backups into other machines, even exact copies of Alpha¡¯s design, failed to reproduce the same level of behavior and growth.
In the end, Blake had come to conclude that there was some oddity in Alpha¡¯s construction, some small mistake that he¡¯d made back in his early days when he hadn¡¯t quite known what he was doing, that had turned into something beneficial. He¡¯d never had the time to study it in depth, not to mention that he¡¯d feared that digging too deep into its circuitry might accidentally ruin whatever made the bot special. He¡¯d never get the chance again. And those backups? The server they¡¯d been stored on was little more than dust, now.
That was why he felt such tremendous satisfaction when, at just that moment, Samanta reached out from behind his creator¡¯s executioner, placed her hands on the woman¡¯s temples, and, just as he¡¯d taught her, let loose with every ounce of juice she could muster. Never had Blake thought the crack of electricity arcing through the air could be so cathartic.
The woman howled. She bucked and writhed, her giant physic hands flailing about and sending pieces of the wreckage flying every which way as hundreds of volts coursed through her head. Sam collapsed to the ground, unconscious and utterly spent, but the effect of her actions persisted. Still alive after what would have fried the brain of even a Scyrian person¡ªthat Earthling durability showing its stuff once again¡ªthe woman seemed to be having some sort of freak out. Shrieking like a banshee, she bobbed about seemingly randomly, as if she were losing control of her hovering. Two of her massive hands were now wrapped around her head as the woman sobbed and screamed and cried.
She turned back his way, and Blake was shocked to see a clarity in her gaze that hadn¡¯t been there before. For the first time, the woman was present. The haze over her mind had disappeared, and with it, everything that kept her from feeling every bit of well-deserved agony that was coursing through her veins.
Ohhhh, it felt good to watch. He knew he wasn¡¯t supposed to take pleasure in the suffering of others. He knew Sofie would smack him if she knew the gratification this scene brought him. But, he couldn¡¯t help it. This was the person who¡¯d ripped apart his home, dropped fucking boulders of all things on it, killed his underlings... If he wasn¡¯t allowed to feel good about this, when was he? What would it take?
Yet, against his expectations, Blake found his schadenfreude fading as the scene continued. The more he studied her, the more he began to grow concerned. It hadn¡¯t been obvious at first, masked by the anguish, but with each passing second, he became more convinced it was genuine.
Confusion.
The woman didn¡¯t know what was going on. She didn¡¯t know where she was, why she was there, who he and Sam were, what the mess strewn everywhere was about, and likely most of all, why everything hurt. She only knew sudden and unexplained, all-consuming agony.
The inference that came with this observation made his stomach drop. Somebody else out there had used this woman as a weapon. Somebody with some form of mind control. Somebody who harbored ill will toward him. And, he had no idea who that person might be.
At least momentarily freed from whatever mental compulsion that had dictated her actions so far, Madam Mc¡ªno, referring to her that way now felt gross¡ªthe woman finally gained enough control of her faculties to do the only smart thing. She fled, launching herself into the sky and out of his view.
Blake let out the breath he hadn¡¯t realized he¡¯d been holding and allowed himself to relax a bit. They¡¯d made it through once again. Yet, he couldn¡¯t get the taste of bitterness out of his mouth as he took in Sam¡¯s limp form. The cost had been high this time. Maybe too high.
¡°Ahhhhh... Truly, nothing can match the feeling of a perfect plan executed exquisitely.¡±
A man Blake had never seen before walked into view. Tall, especially for a Scyrian, with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a thin scar on the right side of his face running from his chin to his nose, the man had a chiseled handsomeness and magnetic charisma that made Blake think he would be perfect as an actor in soap operas back on Earth.
It was the sort of suave good looks that Blake had always envied, the sort possessed by men who always got all the chicks. However, the man¡¯s beauty quickly lost all importance the moment Blake saw his right side.
The man¡¯s arm and leg were prosthetic, but not just any prosthetics. They were crystal tech. Ugly, rudimentary crystal tech, but without a doubt cantacrenyx-powered machines. The crystals were exposed, sticking out of the metal. Rough, jagged circuits were engraved across the surface, crisscrossing the machines like a giant game of connect-the-dots. Yet, Blake could not deny that, aesthetics aside, they seemed to be perfectly functional machines filling in for his limbs, and judging by his lack of limp and his incredibly natural stride, filling in quite well.
¡°It is a pleasure to finally meet the great Lord Ferros face to face,¡± the man said with a slight and very mocking bow.
¡°Who the fuck are you?¡± Blake asked, though the only sound he could manage was an irritated huff. Thankfully, Scyrian language rules would handle the rest.
¡°My name is Gyan Agharia, though few still alive in this world know me by that designation. If it pleases you, you may call me...¡± He smirked. ¡°Sebastian. I must apologize for delaying our greeting for so long, but it took time to prepare my surprises for our dear princess, you understand.¡±
Sebastian? Why did that name ring a bell? Where had he heard that before? And princess? Who was he even talking about? There were no princesses in¡ª
A late night, a lot of alcohol, and a long conversation half-forgotten.
Oh. Oh, boy.
¡°Ah, I see she told you of me. Wonderful. That makes things so much easier.¡±
The man casually approached, navigating the uneven and unsteady terrain with the ease of a man with all his original limbs.
¡°I must say, Mister Myers, how much I respect your accomplishments so far. A single man, conquering an entire country on his own through nothing more than ruthless and efficient brute force? Truly remarkable, even if that country is this shoddy excuse for one. I only hunt the biggest of game, you see, and so it means something when I say that you were worth hunting.¡±
He crouched down in front of Blake, so close that he could hear the whine of the motors supporting the man¡¯s weight.
¡°But, the hunt is over now. Now that I have your technology, I no longer have need of you. The only reason you still breathe is that he insisted upon it. But, you may take solace in knowing that your technology will be a critical driver of my coming rise.¡±
Blake was a microsecond from liquefying the man¡¯s limbs then and there when the ground opened up behind the gloating bastard, revealing a tunnel lined with stone.
¡°See, I told you he¡¯d still be alive if you listened to me,¡± a female voice said from out of sight. ¡°It¡¯s simple physics.¡±
A grunt, deep and gravelly, with meaning infused within. ¡°Hmph. You gloat too much.¡±
¡°And you refuse to learn from your mistakes. Even after what happened, you¡¯re still playing with your food.¡±
Another grunt, once again with meaning. ¡°Silence, you damnable woman. That is not what this is.¡±
A woman¡¯s head appeared, quickly rising as they ascended what Blake assumed was a slope in the tunnel. She had fair skin and long, curly burgundy hair, but the thing that jumped out to him the most was how thin she was¡ªnot unhealthily so, but bordering on it.
Then, another face came into view, and Blake¡¯s mind went white.
No. It wasn¡¯t possible! He¡¯d watched him die! And yet, no amount of denial could change what Blake saw.
That ruggedly handsome face. Those hazel eyes, burning with intelligence and hatred. That red hair, the color he¡¯d never forget, now cut short to match his trimmed beard.
Yarec.
Except, things were not quite the same anymore. The first and most obvious thing was that the man appeared to be confined to a wheelchair currently being pushed by the thin lady.
The second took longer for Blake to grasp, because what he was looking at made so little sense that he wasn¡¯t sure he was seeing things right. Grey and tan streaks covered parts of his body, interspersed between bits of normal skin. Some areas were more covered by the colors, and others, like his head, were less marked, though still marked. It was like somebody had tried to cover his whole body with a camouflage pattern using body paint, except they¡¯d given up halfway through.
It was only when the pair drew closer that Blake realized he wasn¡¯t looking at paint the color of stone¡ªhe was looking at actual stone. Somehow, Yarec had become half-man, half-statue. The stone growing over him¡ªor, upon closer inspection, through him¡ªwas the reason for the man¡¯s wheelchair. The rock looked especially bad on his limbs, but the worst single case was probably the jagged spearhead-shaped stone that went up his chin and over half of his mouth, seemingly sealing that half shut permanently. Hence, the grunts, he supposed.
¡°Are you done?¡± the former Apostle grunted.
¡°Indeed, I¡¯ve said all that I desire,¡± Sebastian replied, turning and walking away without a care in the world. ¡°He¡¯s all yours.¡±
The woman wheeled the stone Observer close, then stepped back, leaving the two of them alone.
For a few moments, they just stared bitterly at each other, until Blake got tired of it.
¡°Well, look who it is,¡± he grunted with fake bravado. ¡°You¡¯re not looking too hot, there, Yarec.¡±
¡°Says the cripple with a dozen broken bones in his legs alone,¡± Yarec grunted back. ¡°Though I suppose you cannot feel those, can you? To think, after all your talk, you were laid low by a mere child.¡±
¡°Yeah, to think that a kid was able to do what the oh-so-revered and respected elite Apostle couldn¡¯t. Is that all you have? You had years to work on your trash talk and that¡¯s what you came up with?¡±
Yarec paused, and for a moment, Blake thought he¡¯d gotten to him. But then, he chuckled, the sound low and rasping but full of mockery and disdain.
¡°Look at you. Your forces ruined, your friends gone, your body destroyed. All you have left is your sad little words. How pathetic you have become.¡±
¡°Says the pot to the kettle. What do you have, Mister Gargoyle?¡±
¡°What do I have? Why, that¡¯s a simple answer. I have revenge. Sweet, long-awaited revenge.¡±
Something cold and smooth wrapped around Blake¡¯s neck, choking his airway and pulling him up.
¡°Do not think I will allow you the luxury of a painless death, Blake Myers. Your fall has just begun, and it will only get more terrible from here. You will beg for finality¡¯s cold embrace before I am done with you.¡±
Blake saw two stone vines sprout from the ground in front of him. He saw how quickly they grew up to face height, the stone flowing like water. He saw their sharp, pointed tips turning directly toward his eyes. He saw them shoot toward him, their movement so quick that they blurred in his vision. And then, Blake saw nothing at all.