It had taken only a night for most of the tents in the camp to be put back up to a standing position. Since the regular buildings were destroyed, the only structures that were salvageable were those that we could build ourselves. By the afternoon, we were ready to plan.
In what used to be the cafeteria for the guard, our group stood around a table, staring down at a map of Freiweld and two sheets of paper we’d been able to carefully negotiate from Ruby. Outside of the central crew, I’d invited both Deborah and Cedric to join us, along with some others.
Gwendolyn was from Boralis, who had fought against Arlin during their war. She was as tall as Silva, but her hair was a splotchy mix of brown and yellow. I’d heard her say a few words, but any of the words that came out of her were short and almost raspy. She looked nearly as gaunt as the average penal laborer.
Jay was a Hornel prisoner of war. He’d only just arrived at the camp and was still very angry at Arlin. The lashings across his face and back and total lack of hair were the result of that anger, as he’d been extremely pushy against the camp guard. Deborah had joked about how she’d expected he would have died sooner. Directly in front of his face.
Luckily for everyone involved, he laughed at the remark.
I cleared my throat and placed both my palms on the table.
“Thank you all-”
“Hey little rebel, what’s this piece of shit doing here?” Deborah interrupted, pointing at the terrified Matthias.
I sighed, both at the ‘little rebel’ and at her calling out Matthias.
“He’s here because he’s got information that we lack. We are planning to go to Freiweld, which he has visited before arriving here.”
I raised up a hand and patted him on the shoulder, feeling every muscle tense up at once.
“He’s also terrible at lying.” I added.
He’d lied about his family before we’d done the meeting. His stutter got worse mid-lie, which I called him out on, and he corrected himself. He’d been given the very simple warning that if any of the information he shared was false, it was going to be the collective’s choice on what to do with him.
“That I am.” He said as though it was something to be proud of.
“See?”
There was a collective groan of acceptance before I cleared my throat again to restart from the beginning.
“We’re here to figure out our plan once we get to Freiweld and how we’re going to protect ourselves on the way there. I think that most of the people at this camp will help us, which means we have more numbers than we came with. That still doesn’t mean we can take on the number of forces at the capital.” I explained, gesturing over to Alex to let him continue.
“Right. Ruby, our cartographer, says the journey will take four weeks. We don’t have strigs or carts, which means whatever we take with us is coming on our backs. The road that leads directly towards Freiweld as a small village at the halfway point, which acts as a sort of rest stop for travel. If Arlin is going to fight us, it will probably be at these two locations. So we need to figure out a way to prepare for the trip so we’re ready for an attack or somehow give ourselves more time.”
The table took a brief pause to think over the information. It was certainly a large problem to tackle.
“Does the soundline still work?” Ruby pondered aloud.
“The captain’s office collapsed, but the machines aren’t easy to break. As long as it wasn’t trampled too heavily, it shouldn’t be unusable. Of course, you would need someone who knows how to use it.” Matthias quickly answered as to prove his existence’s worth.
“Can you use it?” I narrowed my gaze.
“No.” He visibly deflated, realizing that his value had once again dropped.
And he doesn’t appear to be lying about that one…
“I can.” Cedric smugly announced, crossing his arms.
“Hmm… is there a type of message we could send to Arlin that would stall them?” Ruby proposed, leading to an entirely different thinking session.
Arlin thinks that our contingent of the rebellion is dead.
“They need to believe that everything at the camp is as normal as possible, but also have a reason for why they won’t be getting any messages for a long period. Maybe we can tell them that the soundline will be down for repairs?” I was spitballing the idea without really thinking ahead.
“But we’d be sending that over the soundline. Maybe…”
Sera’s gaze was followed as all eyes turned onto Matthias.
“Maybe we can use you as an excuse. Say that your magore expertise is being used to improve the soundline against potential attacks.”
“But that’s not what I do. I’m a researcher who is studying natural magore. I’ve only read two papers on soundlines and have never even touched one.” Matthias rambled to no effect.
“Would the military know that? How many people know the exact purpose of your mission being sent to the camp?” Sera placed her hands on the table and leaned forward in his direction.
“Uhh… the research team in Freiweld? Magore research projects are generally held with great secrecy until their findings are deemed publishable for the public. The only thing the military was made aware of was… oh.”
“You think of something?” Sera pressed.
“They were informed of my interest in the camps and protecting the future of Arlin. That was all.” Matthias meekly admitted.
“That solves one problem. Good job Matthias. You make a wonderful traitor.” I sarcastically applauded him. I could see the light within him starting to die more with each passing moment, “Cedric, once we can get the soundline up and running again, I’ll loan you Matthias so you can work out a message.”
“Loan?” Matthias whimpered at the realization he was being talked about more and more like a piece of property.
“That leaves us with the other issue of Freiweld. Little rebel is right in that I don’t know how much of it has changed. If the castle has remained the same, I can easily get us anywhere we want in there. I doubt Arlin knows even half of the secrets the king shoved in there.” Deborah said with pride
“You know the inside of the castle?” Sera inquired.
“Yeah. I was part of the Royal Guard.”
“What?” shouted the entire table.
“By the Flow, don’t shout. I was caught in the battle. Arlinian bastards overwhelmed us. Must have known the entire Royal Guard was attuned, because they were adamant on keeping us alive.” Deborah explained with great ire, “Say, Arlinian, what’s Freiweld like when you were last there?”
Matthias spent a long time pondering his words until I tightened my grip on his shoulder.
“Oh. I found it unique. A quarter of the city was dedicated solely to the magore production efforts, and appeared to have been entirely renovated for efficiency. It would be remiss to compare it to this camp in any sense in terms of scale or function. The rest is now a mix of outdated Corithian infrastructure and Arlinian improvements to that infrastructure. The center of the city around the castle reminded me greatly of my residence in Vyris. Everything else is still in the process of being rebuilt into something more fitting for a territory’s capital city, although how much they have accomplished within five years is truly astounding.” Matthias blabbed, entirely unaware of the anger radiating off of the three Corithians at the table next to him.
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I took a deep breath to calm myself down and not punch him in the jaw before Sera spoke up for me.
“And who do you think is used to build all of these ‘Arlinian improvements’, Matthias?” Sera angrily asked.
Self awareness returned to Matthias alongside his fear of death as his Arlinian pride was once again shattered.
“I sincerely apologize for any statements I just made.” Matthias stammered.
“Did Arlin make any so-called ‘improvements’ to the castle?” Deborah glared down at him.
“I don’t believe so? I saw nothing of the sort when I was near it.”
Deborah nodded her head up and down, the direct hatred fading back into general frustration.
“The Flow’s generosity shines upon me. I know the place inside out. Can your map girl able to help me draw something up, little rebel?”
“Ruby, could you go with her after the meeting?”
Her cartographer’s pride lit up like a lantern as she quickly snatched one of the two sheets of paper we’d left on the table.
“Great. Now we just need to figure out how to take down a standing army with less than a hundred attuned.”
Silence returned as another thinking section occurred. There was a lot more information I could work with now, but the idea of taking on the army still felt incomplete. Attuned were strong, but only some of the attuned here were trained soldiers. Most were never given the chance to train or didn’t even know what their specific attunement was.
This is a numbers problem… So let's get more numbers!
“Matthias, if you had to guess, how much of Freiweld is Arlinian?”
Matthias seemed a bit more reluctant to speak, as I had to tap him on the shoulder.
“Right! Well… I think it was majority Corithian? Corith isn’t exactly a common location for Arlinians to go to if they want to live in one of the territories. The forest and large number of mines and refineries also means that Freiweld is uncomfortable for those unused to the presence of raw magore. There were businesses in the city, but I don’t remember seeing any of them expressly run by any Arlinian.”
“Could you do a percentage, just based on a guess?” Sera asked, continuing my line of thought.
“I’d say… eighty percent Corithian? But the majority of that twenty percent is either working at the camps or in administration. I remember the researchers I met saying they had been desperate to talk to Arlinians that weren’t government affiliated.”
I grinned as the first sparks of a new idea began to light up in my brain.
“Maybe we don’t need to defeat the entire force ourselves. Maybe we just need to get rid of the guy in control of the territory and say that we’re the ones in control of Corith.”
“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, that’s called a coup.” Sera said patiently.
“Yeah, that thing.” My face visibly brightened. I hadn’t known the word until Sera had said it. “We do a coup and become the new leaders of Corith. That would make it easy to liberate the rest of the towns in Corith.”
The table went silent as I scanned their faces. None of them seemed enthusiastic about the proposal and more worried than anything else.
“Little rebel, are you trying to become king?” Deborah pressed with a level of authority I’d never seen from her before.
Another glance at the crowd told me that the rest of them were thinking the same thing.
“Doing a coup requires someone else to claim the seat of power. It has to be someone who can argue they have a legitimate claim to the throne, or else people aren’t going to follow you. Since you’re the head of this entire rebellion, the logical choice for a leader is you.”
I felt a sense of internal panic. Leading a rebellion was one thing, but leading an entire nation was a whole other problem. I was an uneducated son of a candlemaker who had stumbled into this position and slowly came to accept it. The name ‘King North’ didn’t feel right in my head.
“I can’t be the right person for that role. I’m not royalty and I’m not well educated.” I argued.
“Corithian Royalty weren’t exactly the sharpest picks either. Take it from their guard.” Deborah immediately responded back, “But you’re not wrong about the royalty part.”
“We can lie.” Sera casually proposed.
“Lie about me being royalty? The entire royal family was slaughtered with their heads paraded around the capital on pikes.”
“The royal family had secrets, and one of those was that the Queen had grown very bored of the King. You’re a bit different, but the Queen’s face wasn’t too different from yours. The only thing everybody else knows right now is that you’re from Corith.” Deborah listed off as the idea seemed to click with everyone except for me.
“And Arlin put a heavy focus on collecting attuned. It wouldn’t be out of character for Arlin to shove the bastard child of royalty into the mines.” Sera added.
I was panicking as more and more of them seemed entirely convinced of the idea. Everyone except for me, who was about to have the crown shoved onto me and my past actively erased.
“North, do you want to do this coup or not?” Sera pressured further.
“I…” I struggled with saying the painful truth, “Yes, I do want to. But-”
“Then you’re king. Simple as that.”
I got a bunch of pats on the back congratulating me on becoming king as a sense of dread welled up inside of me. Something about this felt wrong in my gut, but I had always trusted Sera’s logic.
To imagine I’d be forced to wear a crown one day.
“Alright. Fine. Does anyone want to help Sera rewrite my entire life’s history?” I shirked off the duty to have someone else do it.
“I’ll do it.” Gwendolyn finally spoke up with her dry voice, “I like making stories.”
“Great,” I replied with the enthusiasm of a corpse, “If we’re done with that, I’d like to decide what the rest of us are going to do today. Jay, Mell, I want you to help get Cedric and Matthias set up with the soundline. Alex and Silva, I want you to start figuring out who is going to be carrying what on the road.”
I placed my hand on the table and grabbed the other sheet of paper, handing it to them.
“I want a list by dinner. We need to get moving fast, and I don’t want to spend any more days planning without already being on the road. And I…”
I had to think for a moment, trying to already place myself in the position of what a king might do.
“I will be meeting with the freed slaves. A king must be believed in, right?” I declared, and got the correct response of smiles, “We’ll reconvene at dinner to figure out our next steps.”
I watched as the room rapidly emptied as the group dispersed to go to their separate areas. Dividing up labor was something I’d gotten used to at this point, and to see people listen to me so readily felt like progress.
“Maybe when I’m king, somebody will finally tell me what embezzlement is.” I joked to myself.
----------------------------------------
By the time dinner was getting served, I was sitting on the lakeside holding my head in my hands.
How does the Fourth Emperor do this?
The amount of new names and faces jumbled around in my head was causing me a migraine. I had gotten the general feel of the people here and had seemingly gained some of their trust, but I could feel more and more of my information about them slipping with each second.
“You okay?” Sera came up from behind and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Probably not. Did you and Gwendolyn figure out my new backstory?”
“We did. She wanted to talk with you about it later, but I think we did a pretty good job. Did you enjoy meeting everyone?”
“I guess. Most of these people were eager to help us fight Arlin, although it seemed everyone else was aware they didn’t have much of a choice other than to follow us.”
“That’s good.”
We waited in silence, as neither of us could find the words to say. Seeing how frustrated I was just sitting at the lake must have finally allowed her to see how much their decision was weighing on me.
I didn’t want to talk. Not yet. I just wanted to take a moment to myself to admire how beautiful the lake was and how much of a change it was from the forest.
We were constantly going from one dangerous scenario to another, constantly fighting for our lives that I’d rarely given myself the opportunity to just breathe.
I won’t get these moments as king.
“I’ll get you food and gather the rest. Mell came and said that they were able to get the soundline up and running.”
“That’s great.” I responded lifelessly.
Sera made her way back to the camp and allowed me once again to just wade in my thoughts.
Power.
That was the center of it all. I’d been managing and working with physical, often tangible power in the form of people and attunements. That was simple and easy to manage. Political power was different, and judging from how Nicole turned out, corruptive.
I extended out my youthful hands and made my request, watching them slowly fade into thin air from the elbow up. Seeing Cedric do what he had with his attunement helped me realize just how terrifying my power really was.
If this ability had been put in the hands of someone like Nicole, I could barely fathom what someone would do with it. I lacked the imagination to think of such evils, but they gnawed at me the more I stared at my invisible limbs.
I could hide from almost anyone. I could have even hid from Arlin if I had chosen to. Yet here I was, running towards them with no idea how I was going to handle the aftermath of my actions.
I let my hands fade back into reality and turned back to where everyone was gathered. It would be rude to keep them waiting. I relied on them, and I was only going to need to rely on them far more in the coming days.