The bells tolled, ringing out for a different purpose than the last time they had sounded throughout the city. This was a mournful dirge, a reminder of all who had been lost throughout the city. Titan City was in full mourning, finally having enough time to breathe and remember the lives lost to the invasion of the city-tier spike feeder.

Finding a proper place to have the funerals wasn’t the easiest matter for a lot of the city, given how much of it was destroyed, but the guard’s private prayer grounds were still intact, the hallowed ground luckily spared from the invasion of the beast. The first service had been in honor of all of the departed guards, Amalarys speaking words of comfort and wisdom, but I didn’t have the strength to confront the aggregate loss we had.

I had learned Phillipe’s name all too late, that poor messenger blown to bits. I couldn’t hear the other names and internalize them further. I already had too much guilt to carry for Javier’s sake, his services coming up all too soon.

But for now, I just silently sat outside of the prayer grounds, trying to immerse myself in the shroud of grief covering the barracks.

After the crowd passed by, departing the generalized service, it was time to honor the man we had lost. Mia, Vera and Alain spilled out of the prayer grounds, eyes bloodshot, tears dribbling down their faces. I lacked for more ceremonial garb, limited to my working attire. The same couldn’t be said for Mia, having seemingly brought out her mourning garments once again, the black veil preventing me from seeing her face.

Vera and Alain were seemingly in similar straits, dressed in our regular attire, but Vera clung to Mia’s side, clutching a black handkerchief against her face. It was drenched, heavily used and likely borrowed.

“How was the service?” I said after a short time, struggling to produce the words.

“It was… necessary,” Mia replied, her gaze unknowable underneath the black translucent wall.

“A shame you could not have joined us, Perry, but not all are so suited to deal with grief,” Vera interjected, pulling away from Mia to clasp me in a powerful hug.

She sniffled up against my ear, a few tears rolling down the side of my cheek. Evidently she wasn’t yet at the point of having no more tears left to cry.

“I… I needed to compose myself for Javier’s service,” I choked, the looming thought lingering ahead of me.

“Well, it’s about time then,” Alain said, motioning for us to enter the hallowed grounds. I swallowed whatever fears I had. I had been within the monster. I could manage to go into this other realm, couldn’t I?

Within the chapel still lingered a few faces, some I knew, some I had never seen before. Amalarys was talking with Lenny, while three other women were in a heated conversation. There were other stragglers filtered throughout the room— Javier had earned his fair share of admirers amongst those in the know of his capabilities and work.

At the back sat an empty casket; I had been sure to inquire. A body was never found. I walked over, staring at the absent space, wondering if Javier had somehow escaped. Or perhaps more jarringly, if he had gone camouflaged and his body never reverted back on his demise, unable to be found if one didn’t know where to seek his disguised form.

“How are you doing, kiddo?” Lenny said, having departed from Amalarys’s side. He gently slapped my back, but gentle for this slab of muscle was more like hearty. My body flinched on impact.

“I’ve been better,” was all I could volunteer. Even if I knew Lenny, that didn’t mean I was close enough to divulge everything. That… was for soon thereafter.

“Javier was a great man, you know. If it makes you feel better, you can blame me.”

I shook my head, shocked at the declaration. “Why would I blame you?”

“You were under my care. We were parted. Perhaps if I wasn’t looking after the citizens below, I would have been able to remind you to take cover from the attack. If you weren’t caught in the stream, well, no need for the man to have sacrificed himself.”

I stared at him, confused, wondering if this was more of an attempted absolution for himself because it sounded to my ears as though he was blaming me for Javier’s actions.

“I was prepared to die, Lenny. I know you were as well, and certainly Javier was. We’re only responsible for our own lives. I came to grips with my imminent demise and then Javier snatched that way from me. If he didn’t, perhaps the beast would have lingered longer. I guess it’s a roundabout way of saying I don’t blame you, nor do I blame myself. Javier made his decision because he believed in it.”

“I—” Lenny started, before being cut off by Amalarys.

“You’re going to talk to someone else, Lenny. Maybe think over your words before you continue further,” she said, glaring the musclebound man down.

I didn’t realize it was possible for a man of his stature to be afraid, but he shrunk under her gaze, slinking away from our presence.

“Sorry. He spends a lot of time on his physique and not enough time on his choice of words. He truly does mean well, but meaning well doesn’t mean he’s says properly what he means.”

“As far as I understood, he was best suited to underwater interactions. Past that, the jury was out,” I said, trying to smile back at the leader of the guard.

She met my weakened grin with one of her own. “Perhaps I forgot that too. Good reminder, Perry. I must say… I’m sorry.”

“Me too, Javier was a good man—” I started.

“No,” she said, stealing my momentum, “I’m sorry for pulling you back into the guard so forcefully. There were many better ways to draw you and your other deserters back into our fold, but I chose the easiest one. Easiness doesn’t make things quite right though. I understand you may have wanted to cut ties after our conduct around Lord Nonan’s demise, but Titan City needs you, perhaps more evidently now than ever given your actions in halting the spike feeder. Honestly, if you didn’t manage to do what you did, I don’t know how long it would have taken for us to come upon a similar solution. That could have cost us countless more lives… I say countless as though one life wasn’t already too much to pay.”

She sighed, wiping away a stray tear. “Don’t let me fall into the old trap of wondering how much one life is worth. It’s a game that everyone loses at. All of my digressions aside, I want to apologize once again. The city is in your debt, and I had to essentially blackmail you into helping it. If you had deserted during the attack, would I have been upset? Absolutely. Would I have understood? All too well. So finally, perhaps in the spirit of Javier, I’m sorry. And thank you.”

I silently nodded, unsure of how to address her words. “I… I would never desert the city,” I said, struggling to say anything at all.

That seemed sufficient for her. She traced the curves of my face with her outstretched hand before drifting away to the others in the room, leaving me staring at the empty casket once again, still hoping that Javier would jump out and surprise us with his presence. And yet, I didn’t look with my electroreception, unwilling to take away that hope and turn it into nothingness.

“Thank you,” I whispered to the casket, turning back towards the rest of the attendees. I saw the three women surrounding Mia, Vera and Alain, peals of laughter emanating from the group. Unwilling to be left out of the joy, I slid by my team, placing my body firmly next to Vera’s.

My entrance didn’t go unnoticed. “Oh, welcome, Perry. I’m Veronica. That’s Ethel, and this is Betty. Call us Javier’s contemporaries,” the dark haired woman said. She had a timeless beauty, but also a cold sharpness to her face.

“We were talking about some of Javier’s older days training,” Betty said, blonde-haired and looking as though she was ready to run for days.

“He hated running,” Ethel said. I shook my head, confused by the statement.

“Look, most people don’t like running, but Javier did understand the importance of running,” Betty said, chiming back in.

“Yeah but he really hated it back then. He would cry just doing laps around the training grounds,” Veronica replied.

“Of course he would cry. You cried too. We were running laps after a full day of rigorous training. Now we’re standing here looking ready to run at any prompting. It works. You hate it, but it works,” said Ethel.

“So he was going easy on us?” Mia interjected, pulling her way back into the conversation.

“Maybe on you. I had to run from the outskirts of my village all the way to Titan City after running away and minimally sleeping the night before. I think that’s comparable or worse to what they just described.” I had raised my eyebrows at Mia’s comment, unsure of what she had been experiencing while the rest of us exercised.

“Well, we no longer have to do such exercises,” Vera mumbled, the air flooding out of the room. She had pierced all of the momentum of the conversation, sapping it of energy.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Oh hush,” Ethel said, clapping Vera on the back. Her hand left a hefty impact, an audible thud coming from the connection. Our ibex friend shook, startled out of feeling bad for herself.

“We’re not going to stop running, Vera,” Alain said, finally speaking up in our presence. “Just because we want do doesn’t meant it’s good for us.”

“Don’t you have any better stories about Javier?” Anything to get us off the topic of running. Even if it was funny that Javier once hated it, that didn’t mean I liked running… even my thoughts were consumed in this loop of fixation on fast movement.

“Well, there was the time that he fell flat in a face of manure. That was pretty funny,” Veronica said, chuckling. Her eyes stared off into the distance as though seeing the memory once again.

“Excuse me, he did what?” Mia proclaimed.

“Well, it wasn’t like he wanted to fall flat into manure. I imagine most people don’t. It was when we were starting out as part of the city guard. One of our missions took us out to a nearby village on the outskirts,” Betty said.

“It took nearly three days to get there,” Ethel interjected.

“Fine, you tell the story then. It’s been what, ten years? I can’t remember how long it took to get there, I only remember the look on his face as he fell, the spike feeder’s tail slamming into his body. It wasn’t enough that he got pushed back from the attack, but he stumbled over some farming tools, obviously causing him to trip and fall into the pile of filth.”

“I thought you wanted me to tell the story. That’s basically the whole thing.”

“It’s not how we got there. It’s not why we went there.”

“It’s the punchline, Betty. That’s the fun part to tell. Unless you like to hear yourself talk, and I know you do.”

“Ethel, Betty, cut it out. I’ll tell the story. Ethel was right. It took around three days to get to the village. There were reports of a spike feeder causing havoc, and that little village out in the middle of nowhere didn’t have an adequate guard to deal with it. We later learned that most of the issues they were running into weren’t a spike feeder but pranks from the kids in the village, but coincidentally a roaming monster was in the area for us to fight. It wasn’t like it was particularly strong, but the four of us were fresh back then. Barely trained. Our first mission out of the city. I’m sure you remember yours,” Veronica said.

That wasn’t the best time. Being out in the swamp, Mia getting nearly killed. Well, that was my first mission. It wasn’t the other’s. Perhaps they had an easier time, although by the way their eyes met, it looked like whatever came before wasn’t that simple.

“You could say that,” Alain offered. “So your leader just let you take a stab at the spike feeder?”

“Multiple, really. Which is what it made it even funnier when Javier declared that he was enough to kill it alone. He ran up, no sense of strategy in his attack, just charging headfirst at the monster. You would have thought he understood to use proper tactics according to his skill set, but this was a fresh Javier, untested and not yet tempered by constant fights. So as we had mentioned, he got knocked back and tripped, landing in the manure. If I thought those monsters had a sense of humor, I would have sworn it was laughing at the event, but that quickly ended when our leader eviscerated the beast. He was seemingly afraid of the rest of us embarrassing ourselves and what that meant for him as a team leader. I don’t think I would have fucked up like that, but you know, there’s no way to change the past.”

“Oh hush, Veronica. On the next mission you ran into a spray of quills that the rest of us dodged away from,” Ethel said.

“How was I supposed to know it was aiming over there? Its body language suggested otherwise,” Veronica protested, hands folded over her chest.

“The rest of us read it properly,” Betty said, rolling her eyes. “But let’s not feud over this. I think the kids are getting bored.”

“No, no, we could listen to you squabble for days.” Vera’s grin was deep, any ill omens dispelled from her lively approach.

“As entertaining as that would be for you, I think we’re moving on to the service now, and we wouldn’t want to delay that. Let’s take our seats and prepare to say what must be said,” Betty commanded.

I looked about and noticed she was right. Everyone else was taking a seat throughout the prayer hall, which meant we were about to speak ourselves. I quietly thanked Javier’s contemporaries for sharing and made my way to the front, the others following shortly thereafter.

“Thank you all for coming,” Amalarys said. “It would warm Javier’s heart to know that so many people cared for him. For those of you not fully aware of the circumstances of Javier’s death, he made the greatest sacrifice one can as part of the city guard, giving up his own life to preserve the life of one of his team members.”

My cheeks flushed red, a mixture of shame and embarrassment threatening to overwhelm me. Everyone knew I was the cause. I was the one he had sacrificed himself for. It was by his own will, but that didn’t make me feel any better to hear it restated.

“It’s a noble pursuit, one in line with our core values. In fact, that very person he saved helped end our crisis, boldly making their way to the brain of the beast and destroying it. If not for Javier’s sacrifice, the rest of you might not be here as well. So do not think poorly of him, if you were so brazen as to do so. Javier was a devoted and kind member of the city guard, and even his last actions carried a grace and a sense of grandeur. He couldn’t just die. He had to die dramatically and by his own will. That’s the man we’ll always remember, for his many contributions to the city. Hold that memory tight to your chests. Remember the hero that had protected Titan City and its people over and over again. Remember the man with the obstinate quirk of saying the same thing three times in a row but slightly different.”

The audience quietly cheered, my own admiration dying beneath my breath.

“I think that’s enough from me. Anyone who knows me knows very well my thoughts on Javier, so we’ll allow for some other speakers. If you wish to speak, please come on up.” Amalarys stepped off to the side, motioning for the deepening gap at the back of the room.

Unable to be deterred by the threat of public speaking, Mia rose to her feet, taking the front stage. “I haven’t… hadn’t known Javier as long as many of you have. I never will. Not now. The opportunity to know him more is gone. The last sight I saw of that man is him sacrificing himself to save my good friend, Perry. I couldn’t do anything but helplessly watch, knowing that I could only escape myself. He had changed the destined death of one of my friends with his own, a selfless act truly evocative of what it means to be part of the city guard, like Amalarys said. That’s the kind of person I want to live up to.”

Tears started to stream down her cheeks, visible through the veil, little wet reminders of why we were gathered. The sense of grief in the room kept swelling with each word Mia said. “There was a period, earlier this year, where I had to deal with a hard fact in my family. An illusion I knew was disrupted, and the harsh reality beneath was more than I could handle. I wanted to rush in and deal with things, but there was proper protocol to follow. I won’t know if it was the wrong decision or not, if doing things differently would have changed the outcome, but in spite of my mistake, Javier welcomed me back, trusting in me just as much as he did prior to my hot-headed actions. He was a good man. I’ll miss him.”

She stepped down, at a loss for words, nothing more that she could say, which was more than enough time for Alain to rise up and take his turn.

“Javier was the very man I looked up to. He was the aspiration I dared to reach, a dream I may never be able to achieve. His memory will slowly fade away, in that I won’t be sure how precise his movements were, how sharp his wit was. But he still will live in, that remembered being within my head, the uncertain benchmark I’ll try to measure myself against. He opened a path to let me get to this point. I’ll have to live up to his memory the best I can, even if I can’t measure against the real person anymore. I’ll do my best to lead as he did. To be the beacon for others to follow, a light guiding in the dark.” Alain started choking on his words, no more coming out, heavy sobs drowning any other thoughts. He hobbled on back to our seats, Mia pressing him against her body, muffling his heaving body with the her freely given side.

That left Vera and I with the option to speak. I held my gaze upon her own, a silent conversation passing between us. It was evident she needed to speak first, her body already angling to flee from the pew and speak her truth.

I motioned for her to go. It would give me the time I needed to compose myself and prepare to say what needed to be said.

“Javier was a strange man. He didn’t live by the doctrine, but yet he acted in a way that reflected its virtues. He found me and let me escape from a life that wasn’t meant for me. A life that wouldn’t have helped as many people. Now I’m here, in Titan City, preaching the doctrine by being another reflection of what it means in my actions each day. He helped me be the best version of myself, and I will continue to use his teachings to ensure I grow and become the capable person he believed me to be.”

Her eyes were shimmering, tears welling up on her face but she didn’t waver. Her will was too strong, too condensed. She couldn’t be shaken. She sat back down and motioned for me to say my words, and I nodded, swallowing my fears. It was time to give back in the last way I could for the man that I had saved me.

I looked at all of the gathered friends and family— how could we not be family? We shed blood together. Wasn’t that what made a family?— noting the looks on everyone’s faces. They were reflecting acceptance, understanding and sorrow. No rage at me. They knew who I was. It was safe to speak.

“Javier saved my life not once, but twice. The first time he saved me, I had run away from my village, not content to live a life wasted away fishing, the people threatened and perpetually at risk for a minimal gain. I had done what I could, but that village was a prison, firmly stuck in its beliefs. Even though I had fought and saved my friend, they wouldn’t believe in my ability to join the guard.”

I swallowed, trying to refrain from having my tears overwhelm me. “Javier believed in me. He thought the best of not just me, but the team. He believed that we were his legacy. We were what he left behind. We can do no less than try to live up to his expectations. If this is what it means to be part of the city guard then we’ll do nothing less than perform to the utmost of our abilities. I’ll work however hard I need to so that I can fill his footsteps. Titan City and the rest of you in the room deserve no less.”

I choked, unable to refrain from crying any longer, the tension of speaking on this precarious matter too overwhelming. I fled from the room, unwilling to be seen so vulnerable. They had already found me unconscious— I needed some measure of security.

I panted heavily, sitting on a stray bench, staring at the ground. Time moved so suddenly. I had lurched from being a nobody into being a semi-competent fighter as part of the guard. What was the next lurch, my own death?

The tears had stemmed, my own breaths ringing in my ears, a sense of center desperately seeking to be found. Numbers slowly incremented under my breath, trying to get my racing heart to steady down into a steady state, until I was interrupted by a firm hand on my shoulder.

“You quite alright, Perry?” Alain asked, having the good temerity to look embarrassed at his reach out. I could only presume it was driven by Mia or Vera, given his reclusive nature.

“I’ll manage. We’ll have to, with Javier gone.”

“Yeah.” He plopped down next to me and we sat in silence, only the wind blowing through the courtyard producing any noise. There was something comforting about our lack of conversation. We had already said what needed to be said. Now it was just a moment to not be alone and nothing more.

Eventually the rest of the crowd trickled out of the funeral, slowly passing by us without a word. I appreciated their respectful passage, a lack of further encroachment on my boundaries, until Vera and Mia pulled up, sitting alongside the two of us.

The team was reunited once more. As well as it could be. I stared at the collected faces, appreciating their constant presence, but a lingering through clawed forward, angling to be answered. It was an overwhelming desire. A need that could no longer be ignored now that we had said what we could.

Who was going to be the next leader of the team?