Chapter Thirty-Six
The Silence of Honour
The doors were slowly pushed open some hours later and the pale sun spilled into the dark bunker once more, throwing light down on their sullen faces.
Jack stepped out first. He bore a heavy knife in hand as he moved carefully into the hall but his face fell as his eyes touched Ilo’s body.
The others began flowing up into the hallway behind him as Jack bent to a knee and placed a hand on Ilo’s chest, thrice pierced and saturated crimson.
Michael tried not to stare but his eyes landed on Ilo’s cold body and couldn’t be wrought away. His throat closed as he saw the dark emptiness of the warrior’s eyes staring vacantly across the floor. His arms sprawled out. His hand had fallen from his sword, resting openly on the polished floor in the pool of his blood.
Jack looked up to Michael and Sidney coming out from the bunker.
Sidney’s face was wrought in a wave of anguish but Jack reached out and took her hand. Sidney closed her eyes, tears dotted her cheeks but she held the scream inside herself and her body trembled with it.
Jack held her tight and Michael realised the veins in Sidney’s neck were flickering and sputtering out. Where Jack’s hand gripped her, both of their powers surged against each other, like fighting tides, neither giving way to the other.
Jack looked at her and drop of blood rolled from the corner of his good eye as he shook against the pain of his Arcancy. “Sid. I need you help to move him. Please. Michael you too.”
Michael could barely compel his feet to move. All he could focus on was where the blood had stained Jack’s armour where he’d knelt. He watched as it dripped to the ground.
Michael and Sidney took up Ilo’s legs and Sarah joined Jack, her composure stiff and silent. Together they slowly carried Ilo’s body down the hall. Behind them, the great crowd of Legacies followed in silence.
He was heavier than Michael thought he’d be. His legs were cold and stiff. His mouth was slightly open, his lips blue.
They stepped carefully passed the destroyed doors of keep and slowly hoisted the young man’s body out into the sunlight. His skin was pale in the light and red of his torso was almost cherry.
Michael readjusted his grip, beginning to feel himself sweat, and someone tapped him on the shoulder. Michael turned to see Flinn’s face trickling with tears and his jaw tight. The pain behind his eyes was so soft, it rolled through his body like the thunder, and ripping at his seams.
“May I take him?” Flinn stammered out, unable to withdraw his eyes from Ilo’s waxen face.
They stopped the march slowly as Flinn took Michael’s place, sobbing from the moment he took hold of his dear friend, unable to even hold his head up for the weight of his tears.
Sidney’s eye hardened as she listened to his sobs, staring straight ahead.
Jack’s eyes were cold and faraway, the motions of it all, far too familiar.
The procession passed by the medical bay and headed toward the only place Michael had yet to stay very long. It was a small corner of Fort Guardian positioned quietly in the shadow of the wall and was little more than a wide plot of well-trimmed grass, lined with rows and rows of small gravestones. Each was slightly different. Some were rounded, some were squared, some were new and others were old. Many were accompanied by polished swords and bouquets of flowers. The gravestones themselves were no more than a title, a name, and a date, all listed one after another.
At the front of the ever-spreading graveyard, there was an empty row, lacking any kind of stone or upturned soil. Upon it grew daisies, tickled by the breeze.
No one spoke for the length of the burial. The entire fortress gathered to watch Jack, Sidney, Flinn and some others Michael recognised from his cabin as they dug Ilo’s grave.
The body of the fallen warrior was covered in a sunflower-yellow shawl to keep off the sun as they worked. At one point Sidney offered to “make the digging quick” but Flinn shook his head and stabbed the shovel in deep again, sweating dripping from his chin.
Michael was unsure what she meant but found himself unable to care.
The other three hundred Legacies stood in silence with folded hands.
Only after the grave had been finished, Flinn climbed out, sweat covered and filthy with dirt. He knelt down beside his friend and his eyes were tired as he undid Ilo’s sword belt. As the buckle came loose he began to weep again.
Sidney left at one moment and returned with a rock big enough to be used as a headstone. The hand which she used to carry it was alive with Arcancy-filled veins and she walked it to the head of the grave and placed it softly, like a pillow at the head of a bed.
Michael couldn’t believe his eyes. With three people he couldn’t have carried it.
Then, like the stone was made from softened clay, Sidney sheered away its rough edges with her Arcancy-fired hands, making it into a beautifully rounded slab. Then with her open palm, she gently brushed her hand across the face of the stone and in its wake, were left the fallen solder’s own three lines.
Paladin
Ilo Feller
112 - 130th Cycle of the Fourth Age
Sidney glanced up to Flinn without speaking and the young man nodded, helping her to her feet.
Flinn mouthed his thanks so as to not break the silence and then looked down to his friend’s body once more.
Sidney touched him softly on the back and stepped back into the crowd of Legacies, leaving Flinn alone with Ilo. He knelt down and touched his forehead to Ilo’s and trembled as he clutched his hand one final time.
Jack stepped forward and touched the younger man’s shoulder fondly, though the gesture had another meaning too, and Flinn understood it. A wooden platform strung with rope was brought forward, wide enough to hold a body, but narrow enough to fit into the grave.
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Flinn and Jack placed Ilo on the wooden board, and by the ropes they lowered him into the grave.
Slowly, a handful of Legacies began helping fill in the grave and by the time they’d finished, the sky was colouring the shades of early dusk.
Flinn patted down the top layer of soil and rose to his feet. He looked only at the headstone, reading his friend’s name over and over again.
Michael watched as he began to speak, so softly that no one in the crowd could discern his words. It wasn’t until much later that the archer learned it was a Legacy custom to dedicate the world to silence until the dead were buried, if at all possible. It was their way of insisting that there was too much to say. That one shouldn’t judge themselves for forgetting after a day of loss, nor that the fallen should be defined by the memories of those living. Nor worst of all, that an entire life should be concluded by one day’s worth of speeches.
Some called it an excuse. Some took it gladly. Some took turns speaking anyway, practicing their own rites for their own reasons. Some merely wandered up to the tombstone and stood awhile. Some read or recited passages from different texts. Many withheld from approaching the grave at all.
Once everyone said their goodbyes, Flinn returned to the grave holding the fallen Paladin’s sword, still sheathed in its old, worn scabbard. He slowly drew out the iron long sword and leant the bare blade on one side of the tombstone and the empty sheath on the other. They nearly made a point, but not quite. He began mumbling under his breath and a pale red light swelled in whites of knuckles.
Someone snickered in crowd. In any other crowd it would’ve been buried beneath a wall of breathing, idleness, shuffling and chatter. But in that moment, a breaking bell would’ve been subtler.
Flinn’s hand froze and the magic died. He closed his eyes and counted to five before continuing. The light sparked back to life.
Michael looked through the crowd with anger plain on his face.
Oliver caught his gaze and tightly shook his head. He mouthed, Don’t, as though it pained him to do so.
Michael blinked in confusion. He looked to the other members of the crowd and they all wore the same look of strained anger and white-knuckled resentment. Yet no one turned.
Flinn looked vacantly to the soil and said, as though to no one, “Rose?”
From the great gathering of Legacies, out stepped a young woman. She was perhaps a cycle or so older than Michael and she walked with an upright authority. Her face was Riniglacian pale and her eyes were a cold, bright blue, like light-touched ice. Her face was sad on its own and serious without trying to be. Her hair was on the lighter side of dirty blonde, tumbling down her back in long, thick waves. Her back was muscled and strong, her legs were thick and she moved fearlessly in worn, muddy work boots. Over her shoulder was slung a bow-staff, intricately carved with Riniglacian runes.
Michael watched as she stepped up to the gravesite. He thought she looked like a war-goddess as the sun danced in her hair. Rose, he remembered.
The young woman unslung her bow-staff, made from a knotted length of pale wood, and gently placed it on the freshly turned soil. In the same instant, her arms and eyes came alight with Arcancy, her veins flushing bright green.
The energy travelled down the length of the bow-staff like droplets of rainwater and flowed gently into the ground, and the moment they collided with the dark soil, blades of grass sprouted in their place and within a few moments, the upturned soil was flush with greenery and blooming flowers of every kind and colour.
Michael noticed that where her shoes touched the ground, the grass and other plants seemed to lean toward her until she finally ended her bout of Arcancy, letting out a strained breath.
Flinn thanked her softly as she stepped back into the crowd. He stayed there for some time, simply reading Ilo’s name again. Then without warning he numbly turned and nodded silently.
Michael watched the crowd begin to disperse.
He looked to the others in gentle confusion. “Is that it?”
Oliver nodded. His face was dried from its many tears. It made him look older. “Simplicity is important to us. These days aren’t nearly rare enough…”
“Please,” chuckled a young man at the back of the moving crowd.
Flinn hadn’t moved since nodding. He didn’t look up when he replied, “Enough, Magnus.”
The crowd dispersed a little more, and through the moving bodies, Michael spotted a young man, perhaps a couple cycles older than himself. He was chuckling to himself in earnest, leaning against a tall scythe with a dark blade almost in the shape of a crescent moon. He had long, dark hair, falling in his sickly pale face. His body was strong and lithe, more like a cat than a person, and his movements were all slow and deliberate. Michael would’ve laughed at the image of him, but nothing about his posture or garb was performed. Looking at him made Michael feel a rushing sense of uncertainty. Like waking in the dark to a see shape that’s too close a person, and while knowing it simply can’t be, finding no comfort in the fact.
Magnus laughed still. It kicked up in him like waves, and to his credit he seemed to be fighting it, however unapologetically he was doing so.
Flinn rose to his full height, still without turning. Arcancy burned into his strong hands and up the back of his skull. The glare caused the onlookers to wince and Flinn’s outline was angelic, in the god-fearing sense.
One last time, Flinn seethed, “I said... Enough, Andevār.” His beautiful sea-coloured eyes raged with bronze light but still he didn’t look away from Ilo’s tombstone.
The boy they called Magnus finally fought down his laughter and raised his hands dismissively.
Michael blinked as he saw the young man’s eyes through the curtain of his dark hair. He’d expected them to be dark, or animalistic or somewhere in between, but they were something else entirely.
They were dark red, interrupted only by the black of his pupils and the surrounding whites. They glittered and flushed like the hot coals of a fire-pit as he blinked slowly at Flinn. “Alright, Alexander. I’m done laughing. But are you sure you don’t want to hear the joke I thought of?” His voice was chiding and full of cruel amusement.
Michael’s confusion wore away and his anger returned. He stepped out in front of the pale Legacy and said, “I don’t. Kindly fuck off.”
The red of Magnus’ eyes burnished as he frowned deeply in response. He looked genuinely surprised to find someone would interrupt him. Magnus took a short step toward him, inspecting the details of Michael’s face like he was a rock he’d picked up on the beach.
Michael didn’t step away, though he was thrown by the reaction. He looked sharply into the Magnus’ eyes and said, “Walk away, or I’ll make sure you never walk again without this up-jumped cane,” nodding to the long-handled scythe.
The red-eyed boy smiled at his words, as though they stoked a fire in him. It was one without humour or friendliness as he tightened the grip on his scythe.
Suddenly, James’ enormous battleaxe was pushed under the boy’s chin, forcing Magnus away from Michael.
James spat, “You heard him, Magnus. Don’t make us doing anything you’ll regret.”
Magnus looked at Michael then back to James and whispered, “We both know you couldn’t make me do anything, dear. Better monsters have tried.”
James pushed him off his axe-head and glared him down, waiting for his reply with a cocked head.
The hollow-faced boy chuckled once more, as though forgetting where he was, and looked back to Flinn. “Ilo was a soldier, Alexander. And he did what all good soldiers do eventually. Well, ‘good’ might be overselling it.” His smiled lingered for a moment. His teeth were white as marble.
Michael’s face flared with anger but James’ strong hand stopped him for swinging.
Flinn didn’t move. His Arcancy slowly faded away and left him standing amongst the flowers.
Magnus rolled his eyes, turned, and walked away.
Michael shook his head and threw his hand Magnus’ direction, yelling, “Who does that jackass think he is? Why didn’t you let me do something!” Michael turned to face James directly when he noticed not only him, but every one of his friends had weapons in-hand or Arcancy raging in their veins.
Michael breathed out his anger. “Sweet Rii, guys, seven on one is a bit much. Seriously, what is this?”
No one had time to answer because all eyes landed on Flinn. He finally walked away from the gravesite, every step seeming to pain him more than the last. As he passed Michael, he softly said, “Magnus is difficult to understand. To reason with. To fight. So, best to not.” And with that, he left them standing in the graveyard.
Michael’s confusion only grew to make him more upset. He angrily ran his hands through his knotted hair. It was already growing to be late, he realised as the sun reached toward the horizon.
Sarah looked nervously about the group. Her kind face tense with worry as she asked, “Maybe we should eat. Just try to... I don’t know... process things.”
Everyone seemed to nod or agree but Michael.
The funeral had taken most of the day, yet he couldn’t bring himself to even think of food. He knew he was hungry, but despite that he felt nauseous.
Michael shook his head gently and said, “I’m going after Flinn. Most Legacies don’t seem to have many friends. And he just buried one of his.”