“So, how bad is this going to hurt?” Sera asked with an awkward smile on her face. She was currently leaning up against a tree, her legs splayed out in front of her. The broken leg had its cast already removed. I could definitely see the places where it wasn’t fully healed and needed to be reshaped.
It had been two days since I had awoken and we only had around three or four more days left on the road before we hit the border. My healing of Sera had been put on hold for a short period since it was apparently unsafe to do large healings in quick succession.
Elm appeared from behind me and extended out to her a small rolled up rag. “You’re going to want to put this in your mouth.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t bite your tongue off.”
She cringed as the image passed through her head. “Oh. Yay.” She then promptly put the rag between her teeth.
Elm was out during the time that I healed him, so I guess he didn’t feel it. But Sera’s completely conscious… This is probably going to hurt.
“Sorry about this.” I said, scratching at the back of my neck. It wasn’t like I could remove the pain from it, even if I wanted to. I was about to completely realign her bones in a short period of time, and the body didn’t really love the sensation of sudden changes.
Instead of delaying any further, I extended my hands outward and started to transform and emit pure mana. Feeling outwards, I started to connect myself to her internal flow. Almost immediately, I could feel how the mana in her leg was slightly askew. Even without the medical knowledge, the broken bones made it look somewhat jagged. Placing my focus on it, I asked for some assistance and began to concentrate on keeping the flow as consistent as possible. There were some sickening cracking sounds that could be heard as the bones started to fuse back together. Sera let out a scream of pain that was slightly muffled by the rag she held in her mouth as the process went along. After a few seconds, the healing stopped and I finished channeling.
My body fell backwards afterwards and I landed on the dirt with my face towards the sky.
“Kid, don’t tell me you passed out again.” Elm remarked.
“Don’t worry yourself. I’m fine, old man. Just let me lie here for a second.” I exhaled, taking deep breaths of the cold Boralis air. Looking up from the dirt, I could see Sera feeling her leg up and down.
“It’s actually healed.”
I gave her the best smile my tired body could manage, which was very weak. I had finally reached the goal I’d been searching for since the beginning- Healing Sera. That was a rather simple goal compared to destroying the slave camps in an entire nation. I could still take pride in it nonetheless.
I could hear Elm let out a deep sigh as he watched the two of us. “If you want to stop lazing around, I suggest you start working on walking again and you get the fuck up and start working on focusing your light so you can actually use it as a weapon. You’re still going to be dead weight in combat.”
Yeah, I know that now more than ever.
Without my igniter or a burner, I couldn’t fight back. If I ever got disarmed in close combat, I’d be screwed. I’d just gotten lucky so far by not ending up in those types of situations.
“You got it sir.” I breathlessly said.
“Yes sir.” Sera parroted.
We both laughed.
It was going to be a long day.
***
I had my gaze fixed on Wanderer that night, sitting against a tree and sharpening his blade. He looked more pensive than usual. Maybe it was the fact that my mind was no longer drawn to Sera and her struggle that I was finally able to think a bit more about the others in the caravan. Wanderer had always been a bit of an odd spot for me. I wanted to know him better, but there was a gap that I struggled to cross whenever talking with him. He loved his culture and Irebor, yet was condemned as a deserter.
Checking back on the fire I could see Sera happily talking with Mell and Ruby about their lives. Ruby had been sharing a lot of stories recently about her journeys and especially Bir, something which I’d like to believe I had spurred on.
Guess there’s no better time than now.
I grunted as I picked myself up from the dirt and began to walk over to the swordsman. As I got closer, his attention moved away from his sword.
“North. What would you require of me?” He responded in a rather monotonous tone. I simply sat down next to him and rested my back against the same tree.
“Nothing. Just wanted to talk.”
He resumed sharpening the blade, his focus turned away from me. “I see. If I had to guess, you want to ask why I deserted.”
I noticed for a second that he bit into his lip, likely to hold back an emotion he didn’t want to express. I was hitting on a harsh spot in his life, the action that had ruined his standing with all of Irebor. It made sense he might not be the most enthusiastic to explain it.
“If it’s not too much of a problem, I wouldn’t mind knowing.”
His hands stopped, and he placed the blade back into its sheath. Taking a deep breath, he steeled himself.
Stolen story; please report.
“If I had to simplify it, I would say I did it out of love. I was a soldier in a rebel group fighting against the empire in Irebor, same as Elina was. However, I had a woman waiting back home for me. Most of our group was led by old soldiers of our former military, so we followed the same rules as our forefathers did. I was part of a frontline unit intended to deal with Arlin troops who were invading a territory we had reclaimed. We left to meet them on the field. It was a massacre, and my field commander died.” Wanderer turned away from the tree to look directly into my face. There was no sadness in his face, just a look of regret and longing. “I retreated, even though my commander was dead. If your commander dies on the field, you are supposed to go with him in the glory of combat. To leave a dead commander behind is the same as to abandon a living one. I knew my actions would be punished, but I just had to see her one last time.”
“Did you see her?”
“Yes. I did. But she couldn’t look at me. I hope she is alive, even if she will never love me again.”
“So how did you end up at the refinery?” I inquired. It was the only part of the story I was missing.
“Simple. When I was forced to leave, I ran into the empire. They captured me, and I ended up getting moved around a few times until I ended up at the refinery. Prisoners of war like me aren’t trusted to work at the camps, so they put us at the refinery instead.” He plainly answered.
Huh. Guess I never really thought about the other slaves the empire uses. I guess my only exposure to other slaves have been those with attunements and penal laborers from True Arlin.
I gave him a small pat on the shoulder in a vain attempt to console him. It must have looked a tad odd from an outside perspective, but it was the least I could do.
“I am sorry for souring your relationship with Elina, by the way. I could tell that you valued her as a friend.” He replied, looking in her direction. She was having a discussion with a few of the new caravan members and teaching them some maintenance methods with their burners. “She’s a strong warrior. I imagine the people back home would be proud of her accomplishments.”
I tilted my head to get a better view of his eyes. They looked forlorn, as if they were looking at a window to the past.
“You really love Irebor, don’t you?”
For the first time in a while, I saw a smile come to Wanderer’s face. “I do, and I always will. Even if it will never love me back.”
At that moment, Wanderer finally clicked for me. He was a man bound to repent in any way possible out of admiration for his homeland. He even knew that it was pointless and that no one from his homeland would ever come to appreciate his efforts. Even still, he continued to fight onwards, blade in hand. Even if he couldn’t truly live the Ireborian dream, he would strive to allow for others to do it while he cannot.
“Thank you.” I replied without thinking. It just felt like the right thing to say at the time.
“The honor is all mine. You have helped to give my life a purpose it has lacked for far too long.”
I just pray I’ve given his life enough meaning by now.
***
The air around the caravan on the final day was off-putting. There was a different sense of dread as we grew closer to the ones we had felt at our other raids. One thing had been haunting us the entire trip here, and was a fact that Elm pointed out a few days in.
There’s no other people on the road.
We hadn’t seen a single other person traveling on this road, even though they might have wanted to check on the camps or refineries. The road we were on was also an important route to get to other forts and locations, yet nobody was to be found.
Which meant that they were waiting for us at the end. We had no idea what they were planning for us exactly, only that our main job was to overwhelm the border and get through it so we could continue our way to the camps.
I was walking at the front of the caravan ahead of the carts alongside Elm. Behind us, Ruby sat behind us in complete silence with her eyes closed. She was completely focused on reading the surroundings with her attunement. Without saying any words, Elm placed a hand on my chest and stopped my movement. Soon, the entire caravan came to a stop. I traced his vision to see that he was staring at a branch in a tree. More specifically, it was a scrap of cloth hanging from the tree. There was an odd symbol on it that looked like two crescent moons tilted on their side and overlapping each other.
“That can’t be right…” Elm said. His gaze then began to shift forward as he noticed more of the same scraps of cloth hanging off of other trees on the road. If there was a message, whoever was sending it wanted to be very clear about it.
“Elm? What’s the symbol mean?”
“It means they want to talk, but that ain’t something Arlin does. They don’t do this type of shit with rebel groups.” Elm muttered under his breath. “Something about this ain’t right.”
Yeah, I’m on the same page as you.
“Ruby, have you spotted anything other than the caravan?” I took a sharp turn only to find Ruby shaking her head.
“Unless they’re staying perfectly still, I don’t think we have anyone around us.”
Shit.
Elm’s eyes were still glued to the cloth and the symbol on it. I knew that specific things could trigger memories for him, and the symbol appeared to be one of them.
“So is this a trap?” I asked the old soldier.
“Probably… but this is a lot for a simple trap. I doubt they’d do something like this if they wanted to ambush us or catch us off guard. Arlin soldiers are willing to do some dirty shit, but that symbol? That’s not something you use if you want to lure someone into a trap. Still, it’s up to you, kid.”
I’d prefer to kill as few people as possible if we’re liberating camps.
“Let’s check it out. I think we can use it to our advantage either way.”
Elm simply shrugged and we continued to walk. I debated whether I should run up ahead while invisible to see what was there, but something told me that it was best to stay back. There were a lot of things in my mind giving me different directions and options, and even one of them telling me to turn tail and run away. Even then, I kept putting one foot in front of another as we made the final stretch towards the border.
***
Clearing the final hill, the sight of the border came into vision. It was an empty area where the trees had been removed, creating a gap between the forest of Corith and the forest of Boralis. There were two buildings made of wood that stood next to each other on each side of the main road, both of them about as large as the old armory at the camp.
Around each of these builds stood a large number of men, all prepared with burners in hand. My own igniter was in my hands and was already wound, and the caravan had already prepared themselves for battle. Small pieces of cover had been created using stacked logs, and other men stood behind those pieces. When I locked eyes with one of the soldiers, I could see them visibly flinch.
That wasn’t what stood out. The main thing that stood out was what was standing in the middle of the road. It was two soldiers, side by side. Neither of them held their weapons in their hands, although one of them had what appeared to be a notebook. I couldn’t make out too many details from a distance, but I could see that one had a hair color the exact same as Nicole. The other had short black hair and was a good bit taller.
The silence was finally broken when the other man, the one not holding the notebook, spoke up and yelled across the clearing.
“HELLO THERE! CAN WE TALK?”