4 months later
The sun that shone above north Yeupis was weak even in the peak of afternoon, dampened by thick blankets of cloud that covered the entirety of the sky. The middle of winter was completely unsuitable for the growth of crops, not just from the lack of light but the sheer cold it brought as well. The people of north Yeupis had to bide their time partaking in other activities.
A boy of 15 wiped his brow of sweat as he sat on his knees carefully on the roof of a barn. The roof was covered in thatch, reinforced with wooden beams underneath that prevented the boy from plummeting into the area below. He wiped his hands before descending to one edge of the hipped roof.
“Done yet, Stefan?” a young woman called out from the ground below.
“I’ll need one more bundle of thatch.” the boy cried back.
“Got it,” she confirmed. “I’ll bring it up.”
As soon as she placed a hand on a rung of the ladder leaning against the building, a look of displeasure appeared on Stefan’s face, but not because he was upset with her.
“No need to come up, Janine,” he said. “Throw it up.”
“Are you sure you want me to do that?” she questioned; an eyebrow raised.
“Don’t worry. I got it.” Stefan smiled.
The boy’s certainly a thrill-seeker, she noted. Just like Anwen, not so much like Leon.
“Here goes nothing.” she said, swinging the bundle in her arms, before throwing it as high as she could. Being the wife of a farmer, she was decently strong, but the bundle wasn’t moving fast enough to clear the edge of the roof before falling.
Her eyes relaxed with disappointment for a moment, before widening in horror as Stefan jumped away from the edge to try to catch it. She foolishly tried to position herself to try to catch him despite their very evident size difference. She realized that, and she shut her eyes to avoid seeing him hit the ground. A fall from such a height wouldn’t have been fatal, but it would certainly hurt very badly and for a long time. At the moment he was supposed to crash into the ground, she didn’t hear the sound of his flesh and bone colliding with the earth. She slowly opened her eyes, and she furrowed her brow.
“Stefan…? What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just getting the thatch bundle.” he said with said object in his hands. It looked like he was floating upside down, but upon closer inspection, he was hanging off the edge of the roof using his toes.
It must be the work of the evil magic, Janine supposed, on track with her grandfather Felix’s belief that Reserve was an unnatural abomination.
“Very funny,” she rolled her eyes. “Hurry up and get the thatching done. You’re going to get cold.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Stefan said, a smile creeping up on his lips.
After finishing up his work, he descended to the ground in a more normal fashion. He and Janine walked five minutes down the surrounding rows of ploughed fields back to the house the latter shared with her husband, down a path beaten into the ground by many horse hooves in the centuries that the land belonged to the Gruber family.
The sound of a trotting animal soon filled their ears as the path crossed a perpendicular one that ran across one of several fields on the property. Janine and Stefan stopped and waited for the beast and its rider to appear before them.
“Could you tell Esperance missed me this much?” Anwen giggled as she pulled the horse to a stop before the two others.
“If he could speak, I’m sure he’d say that you’re the one he loves the most on this farm,” Janine smiled. “Care to join us back at the house?”
“No, I want to ride a little longer.” she spoke rather adamantly. For a moment, Janine believed she was looking at the little girl who’d spoken in her presence for the first time a decade earlier, on hers and Gareth’s first visit back to the Bernard house a year after they both met the family.
Janine looked on as the sabino horse continued trotting down his path with his rider. 10 minutes passed when she and Stefan entered the door of a humble house, a one-and-a-half storey, mostly stone building that was far from any other building. A single bedroom just large enough to fit a queen-sized bed and a small wardrobe made up a loft, while the first floor consisted of a storage room directly below the bedroom, a hall for day-to-day activities including cooking with a central hearth, and a third room used to house several chickens and goats to consume immediately. The floor itself was made of pounded earth. Such dwellings were the norm in north Yeupis far from even the smallest settlements like Derban, and in fact that was how the majority of the population lived. Indeed, settlements were few and far between with lone properties being the only signs of civilisation for even several leagues in some areas.
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Being the granddaughter of a renowned doctor and the child of two semi-wealthy traders, it took a while for Janine to get used to such a modest setting. However the love she had for Liam Gruber was greater than that and with his help she eventually settled in.
“I see that drone is still snoozing.” she scoffed at the sight of Ivan Hout snoring with a rag over his face, lying on a cot in the hall.
“He won’t bother anyone. If it helps, I can keep an eye on him.”
“That won’t be needed,” Janine smiled. “Liam and Leon must be waiting for us upstairs.”
The two carefully ascended the narrow, winding stairs to the singular room that made up the upper floor.
“Welcome back, you two,” Leon smiled as he sat on a stool near the foot of the bed. “You enjoy patching up the barn, Stefan?”
“It was nothing.” Stefan shrugged.
As Leon pressed an alcohol-drenched piece of cloth on the sole of a man’s foot, he groaned in misery.
“Could you please be a little gentler, damn it?” Liam grumbled, baring his teeth in annoyance.
“It wouldn’t be so painful if you called us sooner. I can’t believe you waited three days to get help for this wound.” the boy chastised his brother-in-law, eight years his senior and four years older than his own sister.
“If Stefan hadn’t called Leon last night, you probably would’ve needed to get an amputation. You and your stubbornness.” Janine crossed her arms, her lips set in a deep frown.
“I… I thought it would be something I could walk off. My bad.” Liam admitted.
“At least you’re being honest,” Janine simpered. “Finally. And you’re forgetting something else.”
She pointed at Stefan who stood behind her quietly.
“Thanks, Stefan.”
“For?” Janine demanded clarification.
“Calling Leon here after I stepped on a rusty old nail outside and finished up my work.” he groaned.
The reason for Stefan staying at the Gruber home was intriguing to say the least. A month and a half after the Anbieter declared war, the Black Shield and Free Army had spread themselves across the border of Yeupis. Jay and Aulis both believed that keeping him under their watch would keep him protected, as was the Anbieter’s final wish, but the intensity of the fighting with the incoming ground forces of the Titanian Military proved to be a lot and cost many lives, nearly including Stefan. After some discussion, it was decided that Stefan would temporarily stay at Leon’s sister’s house—both to distract him from the weight of his friend’s betrayal and his brother’s allegiance, and for his safety. Keeping him in an environment that resembled a family would prove to be beneficial as he had regained much of his old spark and drive back. He was more prepared than ever to return to the war front, having kept his Reserve in use by honing his body with it, without the use of weaponry or armor.
“Leon, how long will this take?” Liam sighed deeply.
“I’m not as good as Grandpa. Just a little longer, please.” the boy replied.
“Of… of course,” Liam glumly said. “Sorry.”
The ground invasion had ravaged through a mostly empty Marius as soon as the border was breached about two months earlier. The Black Shield held it off for a long time with the help of Anti-Imperial soldiers and technology they brought in, but they could only do so much before they were needed elsewhere, and after a long and hard fight they had to give up Marius. Felix Bernard was not among the last few evacuees who stayed until the end.
The room was silent for a few moments, although it felt like an eternity. They all knew what the old man’s fate was, but no one dared to say it aloud. Marius was probably being turned into a provisional logistics centre at that moment.
Then the sound of rapping knuckles was heard, coming from downstairs.
“Stefan,” Janine turned around. “It’s Anwen. Can you open the door for her?”
“Yep” Stefan nodded.
The girl had a look of apprehension etched onto her face, which Stefan immediately noticed as soon as he opened the door.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Without speaking another word, Anwen grabbed a handful of his jacket and pulled it toward her, bringing him outside. She then pointed up to the sky.
“That’s not normal.” she said.
“Huh? What are you…”
His voice trailed off as he understood what she was referring to. Something seemed to be falling out of the sky. It wasn’t snow. It was too big and solid to be snow. Hundreds of these objects littered the ground, and Stefan swore he could see the glint of some kind of stealth craft darting away from the area.
Anwen left his side and picked one of the objects up. It, like all the others, was rectangular in shape and was about as long as the length between her wrist and elbow, and three times as wide. On it was writing, perfectly presented on invisible straight lines. It wasn’t written by a hand. None of them were.
“To all residents of this zone,” she read what she and Stefan understood to be some sort of pamphlet. “You have 48 hours from the moment these pamphlets all reach the ground to do one of two things: give up your land peacefully to the units that approach it and transfer operations to the Empire in exchange for immunity and the privilege to remain on your land, or evacuate north to an area these pamphlets have not reached. Failure to abide with these terms will be responded to with force.”
Stefan’s pupils expanded with astonishment. He grabbed Anwen’s arm.
“We need to leave.” he said.