Few and precious were the moments Ald felt happy as of late. A few hours a day, between going to bed and waking up. Dreams were merciful, they were carefree. While he slept Felsia wasn’t damned, he wasn’t Unkindness’ latest toy, he wouldn’t cross the Worldvein and wouldn’t die in the claws of the horrors that inhabited that place of exile. While he slept, he wasn’t anything at all, and you could scour the whole world and not find anything more pleasing to him that these little spans of unconsciousness.
Sun hadn’t risen yet, and he was faced with the reality of this being the last time he would wake in his bed, at least for a long time. Yet to wake he had to. As dawn arrived he would part. So he quickly stood, sneaked out of his room and into Kali’s. He watched her sleep on her mat upon the smooth forgewood floor, with the covers all twisted and out of place, with one of her white legs exposed, with her mouth wide open as she snore happily. Four years ago, he had picked Kali by the city walls. Four years ago, he had decided it was time to give back to Felsia a little bit of what it had so generously granted him and become a caretaker. Now pernicious thoughts like weeds sprouted in the neglected garden of his mind. Maybe it would have been better to never catch her, to leave someone else bear the burden, suffer the disgrace she was already living. It was possible to find solace even in the fall of civilization if everyone else you cared for was unlikely to outlive you.
His heart hell had hollowed. Aware and ashamed Ald avoided and abstained. Avoided looking at Kali directly, and abstained from waking her up for a goodbye. With careful step he exited her room and thought of the lie he had told her before going to sleep. “I am going on a fishing trip, Kali, I will come back when I catch the biggest and meanest fish on all of the Worldvein!”. Of course, Kali had run the typical questions through him, and he had lied through them all. How long will you be gone? Just enough to catch the fish. Maybe a week or two. Is it safe? Well, if I fall into the river in the morning I could catch a cold. Will you miss me? A little bit. Be happy, though: I’ll let you name the fish when we mount it on a wall. And so on and so on. It was despicable, and Kali would soon hate him for it. But he needed that prospect of hatred. He needed another reason to return. The guilt and the idea that he needed to live to apologize to Kali would keep him going through this hopelessness.
Elvisat would come soon to care for Kali for a few hours, then, as stated in the letter Gleur had sent him, in the evening, a couple of trusted soldiers would come and take Kali’s to Gleur’s house. She would begin her training the following week, after she had—hopefully—settled on this new reality.
It was necessary, Ald thought as he closed the main door of his farmhouse, with a bag of provisions over his shoulder and his two favorite swords and daggers strapped to each side of his waist. Well, at least the two favorite swords he was willing to use: the best work of blacksmithing he had ever done lay besides the forge that had birth it. He had worked tirelessly the previous week, wishing for longer nights and calmer nights, wishing for a more resilient body, if just to finish that piece. It was a simple short sword, with some intensive care put onto the grip and pommel. But the blade was the main thing: he had engraved it. “Take kindness a step further than I always demanded, Kali.” It said in Felsian runes. Elvisat would give this to Kali on the next new year, if Ald had not yet come back. Elvisat had a copy of the workshop’s key, and until then, it would remain closed, enshrining the sword that would belong one day to Kali, be it given to her by Ald, or most likely, by Elvisat in his stead.
He walked through the benighted orchard like he would have walked through a graveyard. Fruit trees in lieu of gravestones, some of them older than him. If he couldn’t bring the rains back, there would be orchards no more, just forests and grooves. Not more farms but plains. Eventually, even the mighty walls of Felsia would fall, eroded by wind and water. Every little thing Felsians had ever done would disappear.
Every little thing, but Wildfire. But Unkindness. But the Masterworks. And if Felsians, in their desperation, began breeding, there were bound to be many more of them roaming around. The only legacy Felsians would leave the world if they fell would be the privilege of becoming hell for the rest of time
So Ald walked out the orchard, as if racing against the dawning sun, as if he could reach the docks before the morning light touched them. Time felt like a swarm of needles coursing through his flesh. The parks illuminated by the first rays of the sun, the rounded houses of his neighbours, they were all macabre now. Mockeries of what they had been last week. Branches didn’t stretch towards the sun, but pointed to all that would be lost if he failed. Roofs didn’t try to reach and praise heaven, but appeared flattened by its weight.
He walked the plank even when crossing the cobblestone streets: soon he would have to face what no sane Felsian would. How many generations of sons and daughters of his people had been exiled to the other side of this, father of all rivers? The other shore had to teem with abominations. To stroll into a pack of wolves while covered in sheep giblets would have been a more sensible course of action.
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He smelled the wet dirt of the Worldvein’s banks. He heard the roosters of his neighbors saluting the sun as he left them behind. He breathed in and felt the long shadows the dawn was casting would drown him eventually: the sooner, the better. And in the distance, from his vantage point, he saw the Worldvein’s shore, and the extension of the river past one of the colossal gates on the Northern Wall. There were lands at the other side of the Worldvein, but it resulted hard to believe for anyone who had never seen them. Sailors liked tales almost as much as Ald the truth, after all. Yet he trusted that Unkindness would not mislead him. Not with something so simple, not with something so hard to misinterpret.
He tramped downhill like a trash bag instead of a man. One more step of his march towards duty or death.
His bag felt too light to pin him in this place of safety, yet too heavy to carry around comfortably. The swords on his waist seemed made of lead, but mercy would have been if they were made out of frozen mercury.
Another step, and another bit of the hope that some external force would stop him sublimated.
The wind said nothing, yet for him, it whispered mockery for the coward. His steps resounded over the planks of the docks, a heartbeat of a dying giant, as he looked for the pier where they waited for him. Gleur had told him, in his letter, that the ship was called The Menagerie, because every soldier abroad considered his shipmates a bunch of savage animals. Ald hoped that to be just friendly banter between the sailors.
He spotted the tall soldiers in their distinguished steel and leather armors, and stopped in front of them, saying nothing. The one who oversaw the whole operation as her shipments loaded heavy boxes of supplies into the boat, turned after a minute of feeling Ald’s stare in the back of her head. She was a head taller than Ald, or at least seemed to be due to his slouching form.
“Excuse me, good sir, are you looking for a particular boat?” she asked in a formal tone.
“I believe I am looking for yours, miss.”
She eyed Ald form Head to toe. “No, we are waiting for a prisoner, which it is clear you aren’t.”
“Gleur told me I could board The Menagerie to reach the other side of the Worldvein.” Ald said, not bothering to hide his lack of enthusiasm.
“And Gleur told us we were taking a prisoner to the other side of the big ol’ puddle. So, please, sir, kindly leave us to do our job. In any moment some guards should be coming with this Ald guy…”
“Let me show you something…” Ald stepped back, slowly extracted one of his daggers from the scabbard and, holding it carefully by the blade, extended it to the woman. “Take it, and read the inscription.”
She approached carefully, her right hadn ready to unsheath her sword, a,d then, her eyes opened wide when she saw the runes inscribed in the blade. “Property of Ald Elvisatcaught.” She read aloud. Then she carefully stashed the dagger on her belt. And eyed Ald from head to claw once again.
“What kind of sick joke is this? Are our forces so occupied with the misshapen that they cannot spared three miserable soldiers to escort a prisoner? You are even armed to the teeth. And you bring that bag with Mother-knows-what. Explain this tomfoolery, now.”
“I don’t know what Gleur told you, but I am no prisoner. I want to go there out of my… own I guess… volition.”
“Gleur told us we had to take a man to the lands of exile. He never made explicit that you were prisoner, but it’s only natural for it to be like that. However…” She returned the dagger to Ald with a deft movement of hands. “You are not dressed like a prisoner, you are armed, no guards are by your side and, most important, you are not trying to escape. It makes no sense for you to be a prisoner. Are you one of Mirn’s lab rats?”
Ald shook his head and gave her a broken smile. “I have business on the other side.”
She chuckled and then her scarred face returned to her natural, serious self. Ald wondered, whenever he glanced away from the boards and at her, what kind of monster could leave a face scarred as if it had been finely raked.
“You wouldn’t last three hours on the other side. But Gleur’s orders are Gleur’s orders. You may not be a prisoner, yet know this: everyone abroad is a seasoned soldier, most of them excelling in close quarters combat. Any attempt of mutiny will be met with extreme hostility on our part. We also have orders that I considered weird until you showed up like this and with such resolution… Tell me, Ald Elvisatcaught, what do you think about when I speak of wildfire?”
Ald doubted for a second, but then decided that nobody in the dark about the Masterworks would make such a question.
“She comes for our bonfire like a flame-eating moth,” Ald quoted Gleur.
The woman shook her head, smirked and extended a hand.
“Well, that explains our orders to kill any bird that approaches you. Orders we will disobey, because we know, and Gleur too, that trying to stop her is an exercise in futility. Welcome abroad, Ald.”
“You are forgetting an important detail…” Ald said, finally reciprocating the gesture.
She blinked twice, and then let out a little laugh, which contorted her scars, revealing the true ugliness of her face. Ald couldn’t stand staring at it for long.
“Ah, my name. I am Fuldra Talamcaught. Address me by my name or as ‘captain’, I don’t mind either. Go meet the boys and girls, help them load the supplies onto The Menagerie.”