“This… this can’t be happening.” Janine breathed, holding a hand to her forehead after she had read a copy of the pamphlets that fell from the sky, which explained what Stefan and Anwen saw outside.
“The Black Shield will promise they won’t lay a hand on you or this property,” Leon comforted his elder sister, rubbing her shoulder even though he too was feeling some anxiety. “You can count on us, sis’.”
“But this order… are we supposed to follow it? Liam’s foot… there’s no way he can leave right now.”
“You’re damn right I’m not leaving,” Liam exclaimed from his bed. “This is my home. I’d rather die than let those savages touch my property.”
“Liam!” Janine cried. This was a sentiment she knew all too well. Felix had echoed it back when Leon and the rest of the Black Shield left on their march to the southern capital, and his fate had long since been sealed. Liam would not leave his abode either. A few years earlier, his parents had to retire from agriculture due to illness and age and moved to a village somewhere between the farm and Marius. The farm was all his now, and he would run it like he always had since then. Janine scurried to his bedside and held his hand tight. “If you’re going to stay… I’m going to stay with you too.”
“Y-You’re saying that as if everything’s been set into stone!” Leon cried. “Do you underestimate the Black Shield that much? You can be saved. Everyone in this area, even miles and miles away, can be saved.”
“We have two days to do something,” Anwen recalled. “So much can be done. We just have to tell the people who can make things happen,”
She turned around to see Stefan, silent but observing the interactions with steely determination.
“Ivan’s not going to like this, but I need you to wake him up. Tell him everything that’s happened in the last five minutes. And please show him a copy of the pamphlet or he’ll just complain about you nagging.”
That had been when the wind had blown past her head as she sat in Esperance’s saddle, bringing one of the pamphlets into view as it landed in her periphery.
“Consider it done.” Stefan nodded before descending the narrow stairs to the small house’s hall.
The growing but suppressed concern he had for the Gruber’s—whom he had considered as something akin to a foster family—and everyone else in the region, coupled with knowing Ivan’s irked disposition prompted him to wake him up by kicking the side of the cot, causing it to fold one of its collapsible legs.
“Mummy, save me!” Ivan shot up abruptly, the rag falling off to reveal a stubble-laden face. Stefan thought of how appealing the man would’ve been to the opposite sex had it not been for his insufferable attitude.
“You’re the one who’s going to save your mummy, you baughle! Or someone else's if you don't have one.” Stefan insulted the man.
“S-Stefan? You better have a damn good reason for pulling me out of my slumber, you twat.” he groaned, rubbing his eyes.
Stefan explained the situation to Ivan. To the boy’s surprise he understood it quickly, one of a couple reasons he was now the original Black Shield’s fourth most-trusted soldier, excluding the additions from the remnants of the Free Army and their Anti-Imperial Martian reinforcements. That didn’t quite mean he appreciated it, though.
“I guess they aren’t letting us negotiate terms, methinks.” Ivan sighed, holding the pamphlet Stefan had handed to him.
“What are we going to do, now?” Anwen had asked.
“Obviously I’m going to have to call Jay to update him and get orders. Where’s your communicator, Anwen?”
“I remember leaving it near the foot of your cot.” she recalled.
“So you’re telling me I completely missed it when I—damn it all. Wait here, I’ll come back when he’s done giving me the details.”
“He’s a pretty stand-up guy when he needs to be.” Stefan noted as soon as the young man four years his senior was out of earshot.
“He’s an extremely stand-up guy when he needs to be,” Anwen said. "Otherwise… I don’t think the Anbieter would’ve counted him as one of the possible traitors back then.”
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The girl’s words reignited a flame inside Stefan’s body. Back then he was useless, paralysed, but if he wasn’t he sworn he would’ve found the traitors himself and killed them. He stared blankly at the space between him and Anwen.
“Are you okay?” Leon asked, having finished wrapping alcohol-soaked dressings around Liam’s foot.
“I’m—I’m fine,” Stefan breathed. “Don’t worry.”
Meinrad and Klaudia, why did you have to do that? What did our time together mean? Was any of it real?
A few moments later, Ivan toddled back up the stairs. The irritation that tended to be on his face was gone, and he looked like he knew what would happen next, without any confusion.
“We have our orders,” Ivan said. “We need to immediately return to Jay’s location. Our leadership is spread out right now throughout the north with Aulis taking a role at the front and Jay staying back delegating tasks and information. From there, he’ll give us more specific instructions.”
“Hey, um, what about me?” Stefan suddenly raised his hand.
“You? Oh, yeah. Jay said it was your call if you wanted to return or not.” Ivan nodded.
“I’ll go with you, then.”
“Stefan, you need to—
“No,” the boy cut off Anwen before he could listen to her sharp objection. “I am going to go. The Anbieter might’ve had a reason for me not to train so hard, but Jay is giving me the chance to show that my training has paid off.”
Anwen fiddled with her thumbs as an awkward smile creeped over her lips.
“I wasn’t going to stop you,” she said. “I think you should go. You just need to… prove that you’re not the same as before. But you need to show that your mind is in the same place as your body. That’s what I wanted to say.”
“I will.” Stefan nodded.
With that, everyone in the house agreed that their next course of action was a good one. Leon instructed Janine to change Liam’s dressings regularly until the wound healed and the infection was gone—which would've been much quicker than usual due to Leon’s contracted healing—before everyone gathered their belongings and heading for the fields of the Gruber property. In one of them was a large pile of discarded tree limbs. Stefan moved some aside—each weighing upwards of hundreds of pounds—as easily as one would open a door, unveiling a Craft that had been hidden underneath.
“Looks like it’s already starting to pay off.” Leon smiled, proud that his friend had grown a lot in their few months apart.
Stefan smiled as he and his three comrades boarded the small Craft—just barely enough to fit four seats. With the revving of a silent engine, the outside of the Craft looked like it was peeling away. Not the material breaking apart, but the vehicle itself looked like it was fading out of existence. Stefan’s heart began to pound, he’d never seen this happen before.
“Uh, what’s going on?” he asked.
No one else seemed to be bothered at the sight of exterior of Craft becoming invisible suddenly, while the interior remained apparent.
“Stealth tech we borrowed from the Anti-Imperialists,” Anwen said proudly, hitting a button on the control panel that shut the hatch of the vehicle. “Vigdis and I modified it to fit these old-generation Titanian crafts that we salvage, but it’s not much worse than what they have themselves.”
“Woah,” Stefan breathed, amused. “That’s neat.”
Their destination was two hours of flight away—a journey which would’ve taken weeks by horse and carriage. It was to the southwest of the Gruber property, nearly equidistant but somewhat closer to Marius to its southeast. It was a small portion of the continent, but the dryness and higher than normal altitude meant that it was much different from the rest of the continent. Although not as thinly populated as the Glacial Lands, the cold desert known as the Barrens was only inhabited on its edges, its central area void of any human life. The crew was headed to its northern edge, where Jay and a platoon worth of Black Shield soldiers had stationed themselves.
The site was not relatively far from where the desert transitioned into the flailing grasses of the central plains where the presumed lands sought by the Titanian Empire was situated. Rolling hills of rock dominated the landscape and were the only naturally occurring mountains in all of Yeupis, although they were not nearly as high. Stefan had traveled hundreds of leagues over the course of his life, assisting the elders of Derban in trading missions, but never had he seen such an extent of the continent’s vastness. The land was dry and covered in almost no vegetation, the air blisteringly cold. As it turned out, there was a reason for Jay to have stationed himself there, despite its bleakness.
“So they’re not lingering around the borders anymore,” the first thing Jay said as Ivan and the three other Black Shield members emerged from the Craft. “If we hadn’t stationed ourselves here, it would’ve been…”
“Jay, let me help.” Stefan said as the man had trailed off in an attempt to avoid thinking of the disastrous consequences of not being where he was at that moment. He saw his fellow soldiers training, repairing dozens of lined-up Crafts, and setting up equipment including a technology that Anwen had acquainted him with earlier in the war—missiles, brought in by the Anti-Imperialists. He needed to get in on the action.
“I see that,” Jay nodded. “I’ll have work ready for you. I appreciate you coming, kid.”
“What about the farms?” Leon asked, worried about his remaining family’s safety.
“I’ll redirect some troops to them,” Jay said. “This is a large area of land, and from Aulis’ experience, it won’t be easy even for the Angels to cover that much ground. The fact that we’re here already gives us an advantage. But you three have better use than being simple infantry or cavalry.”
I’ve never heard him use those words before, Anwen remarked. He’s definitely changed the way the Black Shield works.
“You look like you’ve been contemplating something,” Anwen said, quick to observe the concentration written on his face since she and the other stepped foot into his tent, stacks of paper to one side and a communicator to the other. “What’s going on, Jay?”
“Just after you left for Leon’s sister’s place, I received intel from Rask which Aulis confirmed,” Jay said. “There’s a reason we’re in this wasteland, and you kids are needed for it.”