~ Episode Twenty-One ~

The Book of Lodoss:

Lessons From A Lost War

“I, uh, hope you don’t mind tofu,” Shinji said, embarrassed. He tapped down a heaping plateful of homemade spaghetti in front Eri, where she sat at his kitchen table. “Um, I don’t eat a lot of meat much.”

She took in great the steaming wafts of garlic pesto and melting shredded cheddar. “Mmm … Shinji, this smells so-o-o-o good!”

“Thanks,” he murmured, blushing, and went back to the stove to spoon out a helping for himself. “My mother used to tell me the quickest way to a girl’s heart was through a love for food.” He suddenly froze, mortified by the words that had just tumbled off of his tongue. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that – I just – what she meant was – I mean, obviously, you’re not—”

Eri giggled. “It’s fine, I know what you meant. Good food is the best.”

“Heh.” He offered her a shy smile, nodded. “Dig in.”

She smiled back at him, then made the sign of the cross over her food and did just that. When the first forkful touched her lips, Eri nearly melted into a heart-shaped puddle in her seat. Shinji’s cooking was to die for.

He appeared at the table with his own plate of spaghetti and pulled up a chair next to her. “This is my mother’s recipe.”

“Did she teach you how to cook?” Eri straightened in her seat and reached for the basket of garlic bread between them. Shinji got to it first and ushered it towards her.

“Yeah,” he said. “But, mostly self-taught. I use her old cookbook a lot.”

“Oooh. So, do you make all your own school lunches, then?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, wow! They all look so yummy! I never would have guessed. But knowing how to cook must really help when your folks work such crazy hours, huh?”

An almost distant gleam appeared in Shinji’s eyes when she said that. He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Are they working late tonight? There’s enough time to go over what you wanted to talk about, right? Before they get back?”

“…I guarantee it.”

Eri paused in mid-chew, eying the sudden haze of sadness that had come over him. She swallowed in one big gulp. “Is everything okay?”

The question reeled Shinji back to the present. He offered a weak smile, nodded again. “Sorry. I guess my mind wandered off just then.”

“It happens.” Eri twirled her fork around in a goop of noodles. A sudden thought made her giggle. “Hey! Remember in the woods before we fought Eldrom? When Evan thought the magnetized branches looked like spaghetti?”

Shinji snorted. “He’s … got an interesting imagination. I’ll give him that.”

Eri studied him with a smile. “You guys are really good together.”

“Thanks. You and Thompson, too.”

“I mean it,” she said. “I’m glad you have each other.”

Shinji met her gaze. A subtle smirk snuck through his defenses, warmth in his cheeks. “Please, eat as much as you’d like.”

~

Once they finished their meal, Shinji vanished somewhere within the folds of the old farmhouse on hurried instructions for Eri to make herself at home.

She took her time to explore the main floor with hands folded against her back, like she were on an art tour through the interiors of the Izuma-Reinholdt estate. She took in the cushy semblance of warm and wealthy country life Shinji and his parents occupied in the dead center of Libra Road’s more suburban evolution.

Yet, the air here was so cold.

Prickly and cold.

Eri stopped to study an old grandfather clock out in the foyer. In the glass, she spotted Shinji’s reflection past the sliding doors into his father’s den, behind her. She threw him a tight-lipped smile over her shoulder, but Shinji didn’t see it, instead too focused on a search for something he’d casually mentioned during their meal.

Something called the Book of Lodoss.

She crossed into the parlor, on the opposite side of the grandfather clock, and settled into the leather sectional that backed against the bay window into the street. A giant portrait that went previously unnoticed caught her attention from over the fireplace mantle.

A family of three, painted in oils.

The father, of Japanese heritage, wore a brown suit jacket and trousers. The mother, German with radiant blonde curls, wore a striking red dress that looked like it might have sparkled in reality. Between them both, with a parental hand on each shoulder, stood a little boy wearing a toothy smile Eri hadn’t seen in years.

Shinji. A mix of both Japanese and German genes. He, within the work of art, was a work of art. Eri tugged free the scrunchie from her hair as she found herself transfixed by the grinning version of her friend she used to know. The painting of Shinji at such a tender age ignited her to try and remember the look of that toothy smile in real life, what his laughter sounded like.

Sadness panged in her heart for him.

Guilt, too.

They’d been best friends all through childhood until her family moved to Borden. Until that point, all they had was each other. They were inseparable.

And Eri had abandoned him.

The guilt around her heart clutched tighter. There was nothing she could have done about the move, Eri knew that. The decision wasn’t hers to make, but she still carried the weight of it, anyway. An impulsive decision made by her father that did nobody any good in the long run anyhow.

Two years of socially-isolated homeschooling. Two years of a straining bond between she and Noah that only became more one-sided and controlling with each day that passed. Two years of intense passive-aggressiveness between a pair of grown caretakers who acted less like adults than either sibling did.

Stolen novel; please report.

The two years at Base Borden were lonely and stressful years for Eri, who found herself trying to navigate the beginnings of puberty alone and confused, with parents who scolded her for asking questions about her body, about their bodies. Parents who sent her to bed without supper, simply for uttering the words, penis and vagina, like they were foul things to say.

The two years at Base Borden were wasteful years for her family that resulted in an honorable discharge for her father – unresolved military-grade PTSD that took the form of sudden explosive outbursts and unfounded accusations from a place of projection and deflection – fearful inadequacy as both a frontline soldier and the Seruma patriarch.

The two years at Base Borden marked two years without Eri’s former best friend when she needed him most. Just to return home with nothing to show for her time away except for a new house, attendance at a new school, a separate seventh grade homeroom from his, and no one to turn to except for the nurturing gaze of a loud and comically-short girl behind her in class who was obsessed with Sailor Moon.

Eri sighed, considering the oil-painted image of a boy she used to know.

A toothy smile she used to know.

“You can do this, Seruma. I know you can.”

Shinji never called Eri by her last name before this semester when they were finally reacquainted under Ms. Youse’s tutelage. Before now, he never called anybody by their last name.

Something had clearly happened to Shinji while she was away.

And Eri hadn’t been there to catch the fall when he needed her most.

It explained why Shinji acted so distant with her now.

Why he stayed away, ignored her, until now.

Why he relied on the extroversion of Evan Williams, his new best friend, to carry him through the loneliness of introversion and the playground’s rules of societal rejection that came with it.

Much in the same way Mackenzie Thompson had done, for her.

Words Shinji spoke to Mackenzie the night they fought Cloria and Zorfus burned in Eri’s ears: “Not bailing when people need you is the most important lesson.”

She sniffled against a sting of tears, wiped her eyes with a knuckle. “Shinji … I’m so sorry…”

“Sorry for what?” he asked.

Eri yelped surprise and found him considering her with a hard-set gaze on the other side of the coffee table. A giant leather book was cradled in his arms.

“Oh! N-nothing! I was just looking at the painting.”

Shinji turned his attention to the family portrait.

“I think I was nine or ten there,” he said. “Can’t remember.”

He plopped down next to Eri and slid the book into her hands. It was heavier than she expected, the front and back covers bound together by a strap of cow hide and encrusted with a golden twist lock in the shape of a lion’s head.

“What is this?” Eri asked. Her fingers trailed over the lock, noticing that it had been released. She set the tome onto her lap and tilted back the front cover.

“This is the Book of Lodoss,” said Shinji.

“The Book of Lodoss?” Eri wrinkled her nose against the thick layers of mustiness and ancient incense that emanated off its pages.

“It’s an appendix, a grimoire, of all things related to the Kenah’dai and the continent of Atrea before its eventual merge with the rest of Europe,” Shinji explained. “The author was Eric Lodoss, the Black King’s royal priest. Father Lodoss is the one who gathered the original Star Warriors in the first place and helped lead them against the Black King, with the Warrior of Fire.”

Eri blinked at him. “Warrior of Fire?”

Shinji gave a grave nod, his penetrative gaze upon her. “That’s right, who you’re related to. The Warrior of Fire was their leader. His name was Jarem.”

“Jarem…” The name had a familiar ring to it, though Eri couldn’t place exactly where from. She chewed on this for a time, then turned her attention back to the grimoire and flipped through pages of scratchily-drawn maps and diagrams, mystical articles, and countless bestiary entries. A crude portrait of Kyupo, the Monster of Velocity, sent a shiver through her in passing.

“When Father Lodoss realized the Child of Destiny had been sent through time, he hid this book and other artifacts away – the Monster Dowser and our pendants – with the royal family of Earth, to prepare for Sufocus’ return. That’s how I have all this stuff.”

“Shinji, this is really neat!” Eri flipped past an entry on alchemical botany, and lingered on a portrait of a young boy sitting on a boulder, with the Fire Hammer leaned against a nearby tree. The boy was clad medieval garb with a long cape flowing across his lap. Cradled in his arms was a runty-looking baby, fast asleep.

The caption beneath read, “Jarem with Terra during Harvest Equinox – September, 1286.”

“Terra…?” Eri murmured the name, taken aback. “That’s what…”

“That’s Jarem, there.” Shinji pressed the pad of his index finger against the musty page. “The Star Warriors were kids, like us, when this all happened. Jarem was maybe sixteen, or so.”

“Then he wasn’t a kid,” Eri informed him. “He’d be an adult at sixteen in that era. Most people didn’t live for very long back then.”

“Oh – Yeah, I guess you’re right. Forgot you were the medieval history buff. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” Shinji rubbed the back of his head and quickly added, “The amount of medieval video games you play, I mean. You still play those, right?”

“Um … yeah.”

The truth was that Eri never stopped playing them. From the moment Noah had stuffed a Nintendo controller into her grubby little toddler hands, Eri was addicted to turn-based RPGs – Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, and others of similar ilk. … They filled a void that made her homesick for a place she didn’t know.

The name Terra called her attention back to the open page before them. “Umm … who’s that baby he’s holding? His kid?”

Shinji peered over the image of the girl in Jarem’s arms. “No. That baby, uh, she’s – that’s – his sister.”

“Oh,” said Eri, and moved on to the next page without question. “Weird.”

The following sketch showed a woman with long-pointed ears and flowing dandelion hair, sipping from a flask. She was draped in a cape that spilled around a hard-leather one-piece that left only her arms and legs exposed, with sagging field boots up to her knees. Leaned against her was a wiry-looking Irishman playing a pan’s flute. He looked like a man who should have been on a maiden voyage somewhere off in the Pacific, instead of trotting around with a bunch of knights.

“That’s Lakmir, an Elf of the Highlands,” Shinji noted.

“An Elf? Like, for real? I thought those were only fantasy!” Eri shot off a nervous chuckle when Shinji’s already-trademark flat expression soured deeper at her. “S-sorry. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, either.”

“Lakmir was a Monster of the earth element. She helped Father Lodoss and the Star Warriors during the final battle against the Black King.”

“You mean she didn’t get brainwashed?”

“The willpower of some Kenah’dai was stronger than in others. Just like in humans.” Shinji shrugged. “Some refused outright to bend the knee, and were slaughtered for it. Others bargained with the Black King and joined his forces willingly – like the Monster of Radiance, when her brother fell to Sufocus’s influence.”

What were you doing, huh?

Who’d you go fooling around with, huh?

Eri shivered. Instinctive fingers darted to massage a tightness in her shoulders. She shifted away from Shinji a hair and continued to read from the tome as he spoke.

“The Elves refused to aid Sufocus in sequestering the Child of Destiny from Jarem and the Star Warriors – and suffered the consequences for it.” Shinji didn’t seem to notice Eri’s sudden discomfort as he observed the portrait splayed out before them. “Lakmir was the last of her kind. Oh – that’s Faran Coyne, the first Warrior of Water, beside her.”

“My mind is officially blown.” Eri folded the book shut on the coffee table and leaned back against the couch cushions. A long yawn escaped her. “Oh, man. That spaghetti’s got me ready for a nap. Thank you again, lunch was really yummy.”

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Shinji suggested. He started to rise from his seat. “I realize this level of information is a lot to take in. But it’s important.”

He froze to the spot, staring down at the Book of Lodoss.

Eri gazed dozily at him. “Mm, everything okay?”

Something like regret flexed across Shinji’s features.

“No,” he admitted.

His chin bowed, eyes closed. With a sigh, he sat back down next to her.

“Seruma – I have to tell you something.”