Somewhere on a lone hilltop engulfed in fog stood an old tree, its gnarled trunk and leafless branches suggesting it had seen better days. There a young woman sat, back resting against the tree, head bowed. For an eternity, nothing stirred. The wind was calm, and quiet enveloped the hazy realm. Suddenly, without a word, a young man in his late teens emerged from the fog and took a seat beside the woman. Neither spoke for what seemed like ages, each simply soaking in the silence.
"You're blaming yourself again, aren't you?" the man asked finally. The woman did not respond, and the world lapsed back into stillness.
"It wasn't your fault. You know that," the young man said eventually. "Just like Sebastian. Just like your father. None of it was your fault."
"I know," the woman finally replied, her voice soft and melancholy.
"And yet you drag me out every time just to have me say it to you. It would be nice if you came to visit just to say hi sometime, you know, instead of only whenever everything falls apart."
"I'm sorry, Peko."
"Don't say that, Arlette," the young man said as he wrapped the woman into a gentle embrace. "Thinking only of myself when my best friend is suffering right in front of me... I'm the one who should be apologizing. Call on me whenever you need me, and I'll tell you to stop blaming yourself as many times as it takes."
"If I hadn't brought them there, they'd still be alive right now. They trusted me to keep them safe."
"Oh, and you also summoned that monster down from the heavens? Should we all be blaming you for all the thousands of dead in that city?"
"Sometimes I wonder... Maybe I'm cursed. Maybe if I hadn't been there, the city-"
"Curses aren't real, Arlette. I know it hurts to lose those you care about, but you must remember to keep moving forward. Spend too much time looking back and you'll lose your way."
"They're gone, Peko! Just like that!" she wailed as tears fell onto the man's shoulder. "Why? Why are they gone and I'm still here? What did I do?"
"Shhhh..." Peko said as he stroked the crying woman's head with a brotherly affection. "Just let it all out. I'll stay here as long as you need."
Arlette cried into her friend's shoulder for what felt like hours until her sobs finally dried and she returned to silence.
"You should probably wake up soon. We both know how much work is left to be done, and you can't let Jaquet do it. He'd just mess it all up."
Arlette let out a dry laugh, a small hint of humor showing in her reddened eyes.
"And I'm serious, come see me sometime other than right after disaster strikes. I feel like you forget I exist sometimes."
"Sorry, I will," Arlette promised. "Thanks, Peko. You're the best."
"I'll be here any time you need me," he said as he ruffled the woman's hair with a loving smile. "That's what imaginary friends are for."
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Arlette Faredin opened her eyes to a wooden ceiling and a window showing the predawn sky. She was in an inn, which could only mean one thing. They were already at Poniren, the closest town to Zrukhora big enough to be called a town instead of a hamlet or village. The Ivory Tears had stayed a night in the cheapest inn Poniren had to offer just several days ago on their way north. It had taken the group three days to reach Zrukhora from Poniren. It seemed that Arlette had been out for far longer than she'd hoped.
Everything hurt, which was to be expected given how far she had pushed herself past her limits a few days ago. With a grunt, Arlette tried to sit up, only to find that her left arm was being held down by something. That something turned out to be the slave she had saved back in Zrukhora. The young woman was asleep, her arms wrapped around Arlette's limb so tightly that it had gone numb. What was she still doing here? Arlette reached over with her right hand and poked.
The slave squirmed and grumbled as an annoyed Arlette continued to poke the woman out of slumber, until suddenly her eyelids shot open, her eyes filled with terror. She looked around with panic until she spotted Arlette's aggravated frown, her face lighting up with joy as she recognized the mercenary.
"You're awake!" the slave chirped with relief. "I was afraid you weren't going to wake up. You wouldn't move when I shook you and I was so scared that something had happened to you and I didn't know what to do and-"
"My arm," Arlette grunted.
"Eh?"
"I can't feel my arm. Let go. Of my arm."
"Oh! I'm sorry..." The slave released Arlette's arm and sat up. Groaning as her entire body bemoaned her slight exertion, Arlette worked herself into a sitting position as well and looked over at the slave while rubbing feeling back into her appendage, studying her in the firelight.
The girl looked to be in her late teens and nearly as tall as Arlette. Two wide, bright eyes with gray irises, placed on her small face around a somewhat elongated nose, returned her gaze with no small amount of adoration. Long, black hair flowed down well past her shoulders. Arlette had expected the pleasure slave to have a more traditionally beautiful face, given her lot in life, but she was decidedly average in Arlette's judgment. The reason for her selection as a pleasure slave, however, was no mystery to the mercenary. Arlette had never seen skin so perfect before in her life. Nary a pock mark or blemish could be seen on the woman's face or body. How had she achieved such radiant skin? Arlette had met noble women who would literally kill for such a complexion.
Her body was thin, almost to an extreme, though without looking starved. A quiet series of clinks caused Arlette to realize that she still wore the restraints that she’d had on when they’d run into each other on the street. Arlette found it strange that they were still there. Still, none of that really mattered. There were much more important questions to be asked, such as...
"Why are you still here?"
"What do you mean? You saved me?"
"You begged me to rescue you from Zrukhora. I did. That was at least three days ago. Why are you still here?"
"B-but I need your help!" the girl stammered as she began to tremble. "I'm so lost and everybody is so horrible and I don't know what to do and I'm so scared and I just want to go home but I don't know how! Please, you're the only person who's been nice to me ever since I came here! If you won't help me then-"
Arlette sighed as the slave began to weep openly and ramble on and on about something. She told herself to stay strong. She'd already done enough for this person, and if she were realistic about her situation, she couldn't really afford to do anything more. She had little money, since most of it had been invested in the journey to Zrukhora, and with her comrades gone there was little prospect of making much more any time soon. No amount of tears would change that. She would just have to break it to the crying young woman gently, that was all.
"Hey, hey," she comforted the girl, who was still blabbering on. Something about pain and two moons and being captured; Arlette hadn't really been listening. "Calm down. Let's start over. Hello, I am Arlette Demirt. What's your name?"
"Sofie Ramaut..."
Strange, Arlette could not place the origin of her name. Now that she thought thought about it, that's wasn't the only odd thing about her.
"Your speak is strange. Where are you from?"
"My speak?" Sofie asked, apparently confused by the simple statement.
"Yes, your speak. How you talk with your mouth. I've never heard something like it before. Where are you from? Ramaut sounds somewhat like a clan from the Droajan Federation. Did you come from all the way on the other side of the Divide?"
Suddenly Sofie's face fell, though Arlette could not fathom why. Did her question bring back painful memories?
"You won't believe me," she mumbled.
"Sure I'll believe you," Arlette assured her.
There was a moment of quiet as Sofie seemed to struggle with something in her mind before she raised her head, a look of determination in her eyes.
"I'm... not from this world. I'm from a different world, from a country called Belgium. In my world, magic doesn't exist. People don't just understand each other no matter what comes out of their mouth. There's no slaves, and we only have one moon. That's where I'm from."
"I see," was all Arlette could say as the import of Sofie’s statements bored into her. Oh no. She had rescued a crazy person.
“You don’t believe me.”
“You certainly have some... profound notions.”
“Nobody believes me.”
Arlette heard the booming voice of Jaquet from somewhere outside the window. “I have to go.”
“No!” Sofie cried, grasping for Arlette’s arm with trembling hands. “You’re just going to leave me! I don’t want to be all alone again!”
Arlette leaned back and avoided the girl’s lunge, her attempt easily dodged thanks to the shackles that she still wore restricting her.
“Calm down. All our supplies are here. We’re not going to just disappear without coming back for them, okay?”
“Y-you won’t leave me here?”
“We won’t leave you here.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
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“So how do we go about leavin’ ‘er ‘ere?” Jaquet asked when she joined him outside in the cold morning air.
“I don’t know, I’m trying to come up with something,” groaned Arlette as she massaged her temple in frustration. She pulled her flask out from her tunic and took a swig. “Have you talked to her?”
“Nay. She barely said a peep all the way ‘ere. Just grabbed on ta ya when ya collapsed and didn’ let ya go fer tha entire journey. Didn’ eat, barely slept.”
“She’s deranged.”
Jaquet’s face stiffened. “Severed?”
“No, if that didn’t trigger her, nothing will. Still, she’s completely delusional. She even made up her own country. Says she’s from ‘Belgium’.”
“’Belgium’? What kind o’ name fer a country is that?”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“I know, right? If you’re going to make something up, at least make it sound believable.”
“So it’s settled then. We leave ‘er ‘ere and ‘ead fer Xoginia in tha mornin’.”
Arlette paused. “I don’t know.”
“Yer not seriously thinkin’ o’ takin’ ‘er with us, are ya? You said it yerself, she’s touched in tha head!”
“I know, I know. It’s just... if we leave her here she’s going to die. That, or end up a pleasure slave again, in which case she would be better off dead. She’s completely clueless. There’s no way she’d survive on her own. I might as well just kill her myself instead of leave her to suffer first, if we’re going to just leave her here.”
“Letty, I know ya feel bad, but we’re a mercenary company, not a charity. We can’ be gallivantin’ around doin’ good deeds just because we feel like it, especially not now. There’s nothin’ in it fer us.”
“That’s not always true. What about Olenset? The people there love us for what we did. We even got discounts at the shops.”
“An’ tha Lord there ‘ates us fer the same reason. Did ya ever think that maybe that’s why Maddock ‘ad it out fer ya? Nobles love ta talk ta each other. Pretty much all they do, as far as I can tell.”
“What if we just took her along with us to Xoginia? Then we find somebody to take her in and wipe our hands of all of this.”
“An’ who would take ‘er? What kind o’ skills could a pleasure slave ‘ave?”
“I bet she can do numbers.”
“What makes ya say that?”
Arlette risked a glance back towards the inn’s upstairs window and Sofie, who was trying to hide that she was watching them and doing an absolutely terrible job at it.
“Look at her and use your head for once, muscle-brain. What kind of life do you think she’s had?”
“Are ya talking about ‘er skin?”
“Yeah, that’s not the skin of somebody who spends time outdoors. No calluses on her hands, either.”
“So some kinda noble. An’ that means learnin’.”
“Exactly.”
“Then ‘ow did she end up like this?”
“Maybe she was born with problems, so her family sheltered her until she was discarded for some reason, like they tried to marry her off but nobody wanted her. Or she was part of a small noble family that we haven’t heard of that was destroyed and left her as a slave, and she cracked and came up with the nonsense that she’s spewing now to explain it all away. Who knows. You could try asking her, though I doubt you’ll get anything useful.”
Jaquet sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “This is a mistake, Letty. It’s gonna come back ta haunt us. I can feel it.”
“I’m sorry, which of the two of us is the boss?”
“Letty, I’m just sayin’-”
“And which of us could have been the boss, but said ‘no’ because he ‘didn’t want to have to deal with hard choices’?”
“Okay!” he relented. “Okay. Ya win. Of all the things ta pull rank on, I never thought you’d do it over a girl ya just met, but whatever. I can see that ya made up yer mind o’ this.”
“Relax, it will be fine. We’re just taking her to Xoginia, then she’ll be gone and you’ll never have to deal with her ever again. Now tell Basilli to pick the locks on her cuffs while I get ready.”
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Arlette, Jaquet, and Basilli stood around a large rock surrounded by a ring of smaller stones out in the woods outside of Poniren. They’d had to travel farther out than she’d expected, as hundreds of refugees had set up camp around the town proper, but they’d eventually found a worthy location. Somewhere behind them, Sofie leaned against a tree, most likely still absent-mindedly rubbing her now-shackleless wrists and ankles while wearing a spare set of Arlette’s clothes. She’d started crying again when Basilli had finished removing the restraints, though Arlette didn’t blame her for such tears of joy. Overall, the girl continued to act withdrawn, saying little to anybody except Arlette. Clearly some sort of attachment had formed in the addled ex-slave’s mind. Arlette worried about how she would take the news that they were going to dump her in Xoginia, as Arlette hadn’t yet found the right time to inform her. She’d been busy with much more important things, like what laid on the ground in front of her.
The stone arrangement was the best the group could manage for a grave, given their situation and the complete lack of bodies. Jaquet had chipped the mark of the Ivory Tears, a water droplet inside a diamond, into the side of the center rock. The arrangement of marking stone surrounded by a ring of smaller stones was a widely recognized form of grave marker, and she believed that even as shabby an example as this would be easily recognized and respected, if for no other reason than to avoid angering the spirits.
Jaquet cleared his throat, his countenance solemn. As the eldest person there, he took the role Voice of the Dead and thus was the one who began the ceremony.
“In this world o’ struggle, tha only truth is tha’ all things must end. We, who ‘ave met our ends, ask tha livin’ tha’ they do not forget all that we were, so tha’ we may continue ta touch the lives o’ tha world. Tha’ ya remember us fer our failures as much as our triumphs, our sorrows as much as our joys. Will ya grant us this?”
“We will,” replied Arlette and Basilli in tandem.
“Esteemed spirits,” intoned Basilli, serving the role of Speaker for the Living, “we mourn your passing with grieving hearts. We pray that you accept these grave stones as a monument to your existence, and that they serve you well in the future. We ask only that you guide us through a future that we cannot see, and protect us from evils that we cannot know. Will you grant us this?”
“We will,” replied Jaquet.
“In death, as in life, we remain as one in the darkness,” they all said together, “until the sun returns once more.”
Arlette and the others stood there for a little while longer, each lost in their own thoughts and memories, until one by one they turned back towards the town and a very intrigued Sofie.
“That was interesting,” she commented to Arlette. “Fastest funeral I’ve ever seen.”
“Don't tell me you've never attended a Rite of Passing before. It’s the most common form of death ceremony on the continent.”
“That’s not how we did funerals on my world.”
Skies above, she was committed to her wild fantasies. Arlette decided to drop the topic rather than delve deeper.
“So... now what?” Sofie asked.
“Now we hold the other funeral.”
“You need to have more than one funeral?”
“That was the funeral for their spirits, the one that everybody performs. This is the one that only we mercenaries do.”
“Is it also for their spirits?”
“No, this one is for us.”
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“An’... and then ‘e said... ‘If tha’s a vekkel, where’s my wife?’”
The three mercenaries burst into another round of alcohol-assisted hilarity at the punchline to Jaquet’s story. Sofie sat beside them at the cheapest bar in Poniren, watching them as they poured mug after mug of liquor down their gullets for the third straight hour. She’d barely made a peep, choosing instead to simply stay out of the way. Arlette thanked her for that.
“Another round!” Jaquet shouted to the bartender. “Who’s next?”
“Tayt,” Basilli responded. “Oh man, Tayt. That man drove me crazy. He would do the stupidest things, and then somehow get rewarded for it. Every damned time. Remember what he said when he first met Lilybeth? Walked right up to her when we were in that bar in Agosa. Nobody had any idea who this guy was, and he just walks right up to her and says... uh...”
“‘I heard you beastwomen enjoy hunting. What do you say to hunting a snake upstairs in my bed?’ That’s the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard!” Arlette laughed. “And without a word she just turns to him and WHAM! One hit and he drops, and then she undresses him and hangs him by his underclothes from a pole outside the bar!”
More cackles echoed off the tavern walls.
“Right!” Basilli said. “And then what happens? Before even a year is done, he’s part of the band and the two of them get fucking married. How?!?”
“Ya sound jealous, my friend,” chuckled Jaquet.
“How about you, Arlette?” Basilli teased, his face red from the hours of hard drinking. “You ever think about marrying somebody? What about Jaquet here? You spend so much time working together you might as well make it official.”
“Maybe if he was just old and fat, instead of old, fat, and ugly,” Arlette replied, bringing about perhaps the loudest guffaws yet.
Arlette sat there with the others for hours, reminiscing about those who could no longer join them and cracking up so hard that tears rolled down her face. But even in that drunken haze, she couldn’t quite convince herself that they were tears of laughter.
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“As much as I would hate to interrupt your little party,” came a voice from behind them, “I’m afraid that I require your names.”
Arlette turned to find several identical-looking men, each holding a sheet of parchment and a quill. She found it odd that they all seemed to move simultaneously, but pushed that thought off to the side so she could pay attention to what the they three men were saying.
“We are tabulating a list of survivors, especially those who were working for the magistrate. Could I have your names, please?”
“I’m Arlette Demirt,” she managed to slur out after a few seconds of work, “leader of the Ivory Tears. We were working for the city when it happened.”
“I see,” came the reply as the three quills began to scratch away at the parchment. “And the others?”
“Basilli Inciar, Jaquet Delon,” she stated, pointing at each as best as she could.
“And what about the young woman? Is she a member as well?”
“Nahhhh, that’s Sofie Ramaut. She’s nobody. We just met her and we’re gonna leave her in Xoginia once we get there. Don’t bother with her.”
“Very well. Thank you for your time.”
Soon the group teetered back upstairs and Arlette fell over onto her bed and started to fade into slumber. As she did, a small part of her brain, deep in the back, seemed to be saying that she’d made some sort of mistake, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. It was probably nothing.