I bolted upwards in a cold sweat, almost falling out of the hammock. I didn’t remember any detail about my dream other than the fact that it ended with me screaming. There was a lingering taste of blood in my mouth. I looked to see my left hand emitting a soft light on its own without me prompting it to. Whatever had happened in my dream was scary enough to make my body start acting defensive all on its own.
I couldn’t dwell on it for too long, as another sensation came to my awareness- I didn’t hurt. Compared to the pain that I had felt yesterday, I felt completely refreshed. I took a moment to check my body to find myself almost entirely untouched, as if I hadn’t battled a giant brick of magore the previous day. At this point, I was starting to doubt whether the event had happened at all.
What the fuck is happening with my body?
Before I could ponder more on the question, Elm bolted through the entrance to the tent. “Kid, you ok? I could hear you from halfway across the refinery.”
Oh, that wasn’t just in my head?
“I’m fine.”
Elm still looked deeply worried. I could see that his hands were slightly fidgeting. “You sure? You said you were pretty fucked up after yesterday.”
I got out of the hammock and stretched my limbs, rotating my shoulders and feeling all of the joints which had ached the previous day. “I don’t feel hurt at all. I promise, I’m completely fine.”
“Sure…” Elm was doubtful of my statement, even as he watched me casually walk outside. I didn’t feel bad whatsoever. That was worrying to me in a different way.
My eyes adjusted to the light, and I noticed that the refinery had been almost entirely dismantled. The tents and buildings had been torn down and scrapped for parts, and the actual refinery was now a pile of rubble. The exhaustion of the previous day had kept me in a deep sleep to the point where the destruction around me wasn’t even enough to wake me up.
“It doesn’t even really look like there was anything here in the first place…”
“That’s kind of the point. Gotta make sure they can’t use this location in the future, can we? You want to destroy Arlin’s control, then you need to destroy the refineries.” Elm walked up beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. Noticing that I didn’t react seemed to throw him off guard, as he probably expected me to still be in pain. It was a rude way to test how physically well it was, but I couldn’t exactly blame him for doubting me. “We also are taking the tent fabric apart so we can make smaller tents. Best we have some cover from the rain.”
“Thank you, Elm.”
“I ain’t the one who punched a chariot into oblivion. Don’t sell yourself short.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. At the very least, Elm had confirmed that it had actually happened. Seeing the fruits of my labor was enough to make me happy. We had now destroyed two separate Arlinian outposts that were necessary to them maintaining power and freed so many people. Even if it stopped here, we’d hit a massive blow to them that they would struggle to recover from quickly.
“Hey, you gonna take off your cuff? I know you don’t need to, but it’s not really doing anything for you.” Elm pointed down to my ankle with the cuff still remaining. I’d thought about removing it but it slipped my mind during the chaos of leaving the camps.
“Yeah, that might not be the worst idea. It’s kind of a comfort for me at this point, but I guess it could mess up our cover.” I lifted up my leg to feel the cuff. It’d been there for 5 years, and I’d barely thought about its presence up until I discovered I wasn’t affected by it.
Elm gave me another pat on the shoulder. “We’ll be moving soon. You got to sleep in since you looked pretty fucking hurt yesterday, but if you say that you’re fine, I think we can get on the road again. Ruby’s got us all set up for the route.”
I nodded, turning up towards the sky. For the first time in 5 years, I’d be visiting a town as a free person.
***
I sat in the cart as we slowly passed through the roads of Corith. Elina was at the complete front of the caravan while Wanderer was staying at the complete back, to make sure they didn’t murder each other. Elina still looked very unhappy with me and wouldn’t change her mind. Elm was actually taking care of the strig while Sera was resting alongside me.
It turned out that people had assumed that I was still fairly injured after the chariot fight, so they had suggested that I rest in the cart before we reached the next stop. I would argue with them, but telling people that my body miraculously healed overnight might cause even more problems. Sera, for some reason unknown to me, was beaming with what I presumed to be pride.
“Sera? What’s with the look?” I asked, hoping for her to finally spill whatever was so important.
“Nothing. I just learned my attunement.”
There it is. Of course she would look smug over that.
“Alex helped me out since old Elm here doesn’t want to take on another apprentice. It turns out he’s a pretty good teacher if you get him to focus and not get too conversational.” She leaned over a bit to see Elm grumbling in response.
“I’m already having one fucking headache dealing with a single idiot Corithian. I don’t need another headache. And it seems like both of you are fast learners.” Elm gave the strig a pat on the neck as he rode along. The animal, which Sera had named Cassy, appeared to have an easy time bonding with others.
“Yeah, I’d prefer not to lump another student on him. He’s already got his hands full dealing with me, and I don’t want him dying from exhaustion. So, what’d you learn?”
Sera perked up and leaned forward, extending out her right palm.
“I learned how to transform it. I can’t control it yet, but I can emit it.” she smugly explained. The fact that we were both technically on the same step seemed to give her confidence.
“Watch.”
Sera closed her eyes and focused. As she did, I could feel the flow of energy shift around her. I heard the sound of soft crackling as the mana was transformed in her palm. It was a sound that I was familiar with and never wanted to hear again.
Sera had a lightning attunement.
***
“North?”
I snapped back to reality as Sera called my name. Seeing the energy crackle and bounce around in her palm brought back memories of my fight with Galen. I glanced over at Elm to find him entirely silent, most likely experiencing the same vivid memory that I was.
“Yeah. That’s great Sera.” I forced myself to look at her. My entire body was screaming to back away, remembering the horrid sensation of being electrocuted. “I’ll try and practice with you so we can both get our control down.”
“Sure…”
“Kid, you should be practicing since you have the time. Ain’t like you got anything else to do while you’re sitting around. We have a few days before we end up at Bir.” Elm interjected, breaking the awkward atmosphere.
Thanks old man.
“Do we know much about Bir? The only things I heard about it were from Ruby, and she said that she hadn’t been there in a while.” Now that I knew I was visiting a town for the first time in 5 years, I became somewhat anxious about it. If they were going to support us, that meant I’d be interacting for the first time with people who weren’t slaves and weren’t currently dead.
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Off in the near distance, I could hear Ruby call out to me.
“They’re good people!” Ruby spoke as she slowed down her pace to match our cart. “When I met them, they really hated the empire. Any time they tried to send a missionary, the guy would be sent back to wherever he came from without the clothes on his back. At least, that’s what they told me when we visited.”
“When you visited?” I had assumed that Ruby may have lived there for a short period, but the way she discussed it felt off.
“Oh I never told you? My people were nomadic. My entire tribe was like one big band of roaming mercenaries. We had our animals, but we went from town to town and just did stuff for them. I was their cartographer, hence why I’m the best at it.” She puffed out her chest in a showing of pride. “We were a really small band. Around 20 before… you know. But the villages always knew us when we came to visit. A lot of the time, villages would save up some paper just because they knew I’d be visiting.”
So the paper obsession is an old thing? That’s good to know.
“So you think they’ll treat us well just because of how much they hate the empire? You do realize that there’s a lot more than 20 of us.” inquired Sera.
“Oh, they’re nice people. Even if they don’t handle us for long, I’m sure they’ll allow us to stay in their area for a bit as we continue down the road. Just knowing that we’re beating up the empire should make them like us.”
Ruby’s confidence was something that I needed to balance myself out at that moment. Hearing her say that there were people out there who would support us told me that we were going on the right path.
“I’ll leave you to make introductions. Just don’t start haggling for paper the second we get there. We should have enough for now, right?”
“Can’t promise you on the paper, but I’ll definitely do the introductions for you. You should focus on healing up. Oh and North?”
I sat up to look at her. The smile on her face had vanished.
“Don’t ever try using my body as a cushion again.”
Yup. Let’s not piss off the cartographer.
***
I sat on the edge of our camp, continuing to try and practice focusing my light. The dark night made the light easier to see. It was not going well, and all the progress I was making was minor. During our small cart ride, Sera had already figured out how to link it between her hands. She hadn’t messed around with the power of her lightning, but her control over it far exceeded my own attunement.
Once she’s healed, she’s going to be another powerhouse. Meanwhile I’m over here, struggling to make a straight line.
It was true that I had the capabilities to support others and had the ability to act as a primer, but I needed the help of others to fight. The only weapon I was good with was my igniter, but I didn’t want to be entirely reliant on magore tech when fighting a nation which was rapidly advancing in it.
“Hey. You’re still working on it.” Sera came up behind me and slowly lowered herself down, careful not to mess with her still injured leg. “You should sleep.”
I clenched my fist, stopping the light. “I just want to figure it out. My mind feels like it's stuck on something. I mean, you were able to start doing it before I could.”
“You keep acting like our abilities are the same.”
“They come from the same thing.”
Sera sighed, patting me on the back. “You still stuck up on how you talk with it? I know you learned differently, but I don’t see what your issue with the call and response idea is.”
It’s less like I learned it and more like I misinterpreted what Elm said.
“It just doesn’t make sense to me. I tried it, but it feels off. And I know that I can do it my own way. It’s just that my focus isn’t strong enough for my request.” I had tried it the other way, but nothing had worked. The mana didn’t even respond to me when I tried to do a direct order. I had originally assumed that it had been some form of mental blockage, but after the past 2 days my opinion was starting to shift.
“Why do you talk about it like that?” Sera scooted a little closer, leaning over to get a look at my face.
“Like what?”
“You’ve been treating it like it’s a person. I always thought of it more like a river, a moving force. That’s how Alex explained it to me anyhow.”
I mean, it’s been speaking back. I don’t know if a river can talk.
“It just never felt that way to me. Whenever I try to interact with it, it listens to me. But it never really felt like it was just following orders. It just felt like it listened to me because it… wanted to?”
Sera sighed, turning up towards the night sky. She was the first one to really think about my weird relationship with the flow of mana and question if something was beyond it. Now that she was learning mana and really got to understand how weird it was, it made sense she would be more doubtful.
“Hey North?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever think of Elric?”
Oh…
The question caught me off guard. I knew we had both been thinking about him, but we’d sort of avoided discussing it.
“I do. A lot. I think about what he would say to my actions or how he would help us. I know he would call a lot of my ideas dumb, but he probably would have helped out a lot. He probably would have helped me solve the soldier problem without needing to rely on Nicole.” I looked over at her. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Do you miss Twig?”
“Yeah… she was a good woman. She cared for all of the penal laborers. She would have done a lot in helping us figure out our path. I don’t think she had much longer though.”
We were both hurting. Elric was someone I could rely on to tell me when I was doing something wrong, and Twig was someone who helped Sera in her time of need. That wasn’t even counting the other losses we’d already experienced in the caravan. It was so much loss in such a short period of time. Being the last two survivors of Marlisle, it wasn’t something we were unfamiliar with.
“I wish I could have known her more.”
We sat silent for a moment. The trees shifted in the cold wind. Winter would come soon, and that would only complicate our efforts. I knew that things were only going to get harder from here on out, yet I was still struggling to talk out the most basic things with a friend.
“I think the best thing we can do to honor him is to keep moving forward.”
I heard Sera let out a weak laugh. “Both you and I know that’s a lie. You just don’t want to think about it, so you focus on everything else. You’re selfish.”
Yeah, I know.
“But it’s the only lie I know how to tell myself. And I think Elric wouldn’t want me to just stop. He’d want me to keep going forward, even if I’m being a complete idiot.” I glanced at Sera. “What would Twig have wanted?”
Twig cared for all the penal laborers and Sera. I didn’t know what the woman wanted other than for those people to survive, but that couldn’t be all. Something about her felt deeper than that.
“She told me before the revolt. She simply told me that she wanted me to remember her, since I was going to live longer than the other penal laborers. She didn’t talk about her past, but I don’t think she had anyone left outside of the camps. Her only desire was to not be forgotten.” Sera took a moment to wipe her eyes. “Maybe that’s the same for Elric. For everyone that we lose.”
Loss of memory. That was how the Arlinians destroyed us.
“Hey Sera?”
“Yeah?”
“When we go to Marlisle, we should give the people there a real funeral. The type they deserve.”
We sat silently as we watched the distant stars in the night sky. Thinking about Marlisle was hard. It was so distant and yet so prevalent in our minds. As the last two children of Marlisle, we were the only two people who could mourn for them. It was a weight which I refused to bear alone, and which led to the revolt. At the same time, I couldn’t remember the faces of the people in Marlisle. They had faded with the passage of time.
“I’ll hold you to that.” Sera finally stood up, grabbing her crutch. “Now sleep. We have a lot to do in the morning.”
***
“Ok, we should be close.” Ruby looked up from the map that she held so tenderly within her hands. After spending a few days on the road, we had finally made our arrival at Bir. Ruby looked ecstatic to finally see some people from her past, and it was rubbing off on me. As we were about to crest the final hill, I couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s a tad quiet though, right?” I hadn’t been to a town in a while, but I’d expect there to at least be some noise on the periphery. “We also don’t know if they’re occupied. We should probably be more careful.”
In response, Ruby gave me a heavy slap on the back which almost caused me to lose balance. “That’s what the uniforms are for, aren’t they? We’ll have the jump, even if there are soldiers.”
Oh yeah. That’s why I did that.
I stared down at my legs, noticing that I still had the cuff. I quickly readjusted my pant leg to better cover it.
“Ok, here it comes.” Ruby spends a bit more, running forward to get the first view of the town. When she got to the top of the hill, she abruptly stopped. Noticing her shock, I bolted upward to stand by her and immediately understood her reaction.
“It’s gone.”
The town of Bir was dead.