By the sound of a powerful wing flapping above me, Barbosse’s eyes suddenly snapped open to the dark and starry sky, slightly hidden away by immense tree leaves. Upon opening and realizing where he was and what that noise could be, his hands went instinctively to reach for his sword. Upon reaching the sword, Barbosse grasped it as if my life depended on it.
"I doubt such a sword would do anything to a dragon." Someone commented across the bonfire next to which Barbosse rested.
He could still hear the wings flapping, becoming quieter as it got further away.
From where the wing flapping noise came from, with the man's comment and the familiar sounding of the commotion, Barbosse knew from what creature it came from.
There were undoubtedly countless winged creatures in this place, but only one particular came to his mind: dragons.
"I suppose you’re right, Lord Aubrecht."
"As I said, Armand is fine."
Sitting across the bonfire, with almost all his full equipment on, except for his helmet, was Armand Aubrecht, one of the Seven Holy Paladins of the Church.
From the journey they made together, Barbosse got to know that Lord Aubrecht was not a very talkative person. Most of the words coming out of his mouth were mostly short comments of four or seven words maximum, and that only in extreme necessity. So the moment Barbosse didn’t further the discussion, the conversion died short, leaving a place of long silence.
Today, tonight, just like the day before, in fact, just like the past 120 days, they were still within the greatest forest known to humanity, the Iharana Great Forest.
What were they doing there?
Well, it could be summarized in one sentence, "They were sent by the Church, to investigate the source of the dragon's sudden and simultaneous exodus."
They were to find an explanation for the tragedy of almost two years ago.
For these seven massive and powerful dragons to wreak havoc and destruction across their path, all so suddenly and simultaneously breaking through and crossing through the human continent that had been untrodden by monsters for millennia, there was no doubt that there was a reason, or at the very least, a catalyst for that to happen.
Although the reason behind their behaviour was a mystery, the place where the answers to that question could be found was crystal clear: here, where all the seven calamities headed to, the Iharana Great Forest.
One might still be asking oneself, what are Barbosse and the others doing here after all this time?
Well, the answer was simple. With the source that triggered the great calamity being unknown, nobody was completely certain whether the event would repeat itself or not. Henceforth, in order to determine what triggered the event and to determine the chance that a tragedy would take place once again, the Church sent Barbosse along with several seasonal fighters to investigate the event.
Once again, a loud wing-flapping, along with a loud shriek, another dragon passed above Barbosse.
The noise from above was quickly followed by a noise from the forest, and Barbosse, who had managed to remain calm despite the second wing flapping, instantly straightened up.
But as the noise got closer and closer, and due to the lack of reaction from Lord Armand, he eased himself as he realized that what was approaching was not a monster but rather one of the three other people that accompanied Barbosse and Lord Armand on this quest.
A tall, full-bearded man emerged from the penumbra and the woods, wearing the same black set of armor as Lord Armand and holding a massive spiked shield in one hand, a giant hammer on his back and his helmet in the other. Two other men, far younger than him but of comparable stature, appeared behind him.
"How was it?" Lord Armand asked.
"Five hours south of here, the trail stopped, as if replaced by massive, unusually recently unearthed giant trees," said the man who approached and sat casually next to the bonfire. "From there, no more trail! ... It was as if they suddenly disappeared. "
The two men went to sit next to the bonfire and took off their helmets, exhausted expressions on their faces.
"Any idea, what could be beyond that place?"
"With the night and the vulturing dragons in the area, we chose to stop our investigation to make our way back here, but ahead, I could tell that it led to something in one lower-altitude area... A steep area, maybe, but I can’t tell for sure. "
"I see."
The man with whom Lord Aubrecht casually conversed was Archbishop Amon Ainsley, one of his fellow Fourteen.
Seven months ago, eight men were sent on this expedition. A Holy Paladin, an Archbishop, five Lord Paladins, a title which is considered the rank just below one of the fourteen, and one Vicar.
The Holy Paladin Armand Aubrecht, Archbishop Amon Ainsley, Lord Paladin Richmond, Lord Paladin, Lord Paladin Rochemtal, Lord Paladin Powel, Lord Harthold, and finally him, Vicar Theodore Barbosse.
In terms of fighting competence, Barbosse put aside, each of these seven people sent by the church for this mission was the elite among the elite. And yet, during these past 4 months, a lot has happened. Their squad lost three of the five Lord Paladins sent by the Church, two of whom were killed by a sudden attack of a swarm of dragons, as they were particularly teeming in this region, and the last one was killed by a bear-like giant monster when he was on his own doing his human needs, a truly gruesome and tragic death.
This is the first time in several centuries that no expedition has been led to this corner of the map. The Iharana Great Forest is said to be the least known region in the world.
The decision of them being sent here had dawned more than one year ago, so Barboss was given a certain timeframe to do his fair share of research about this place. Putting aside the event of the Night Ecarlate, it had been more than 600 years since no one had ever fooled the Iharana Great Forest’s ground.
From what he had read, there was not much known about this forest, except that it was divided into three sections, each of which had been long since they went past, so what he had read was rendered completely useless.
They were on unknown ground, and it was far more dangerous than he could ever imagine. Barbosse knew, and was often reminded, that he was here not for his combat capability, which was close to naught, but for his magic: teleportation magic.
A few months ago, Barbosse was not the only one wielding such magic across the human continent, there was another one.
She could’ve possibly been the one chosen for this journey, for her power was similar to Barbosse's but somehow more sophisticated when it came to being used. Saddly for him and for her, that person was brutally murdered half a year ago by the ones referring to themselves as the Aristocracy.
Her name was Ada Liede. She, just like Barbosse, was a vicar.
She was mostly known for her teleportation magic and didn't have any secondary duties besides that. If there were a reason for her to be murdered by the Aristocracy, it would be because of her magic.
If it weren’t for that person's death, the church would never have chosen to send someone like him here. Barbosse knew very well that he was more of a liability than anything else for the rest of the squad. In fact, the two Lord Paladins who died in the dragon’s attack died while trying to protect him. They couldn’t even recover their bodies and give them a proper funeral.
Once again, the noise of wings flapping drew my full attention toward the sky. This time, different from the two previous cases, he could clearly see the creature it belonged to, a giant dragon. It casually passed above the forest, seemingly without noticing their group.
"Do you all think, we’re finally near it?" One of the two Lord Paladins asked with a clearly exhausted voice.
They were equally aware that none of them knew the answer to that question, but each of them could tell where he was coming from. No matter how varied it is, though there are regions with open skies and others without, there is always this strange claustrophobic feeling exuding from this place.
If they could, Barbosse would’ve liked to rush away to a clearer place, but with the dragon teeming in the region, that was not an option. As such, they were left to endure by themselves the madness this place was pushing them into.
If he were to be honest, Barbosse would admit that he was on the edge, that he had reached his limits. He wasn't built for this kind of adventure; the journey was exhausting even for the two Lord Paladins, let alone someone like Barbosse. At first, they were taking this pretty well, but once they started taking casualties and overly dangerous monsters started to pop out as randomly as mosquitoes in warm weather, their morale took a heavy blow, plundering to where they are now.
Lord Armand and Lord Ainsley, Barbosse was certain, felt the same way. This must be as exhausting for them as it is for us, but since they, unlike the others, have been through a crusade and have power and experience on their side, he could only assume they have a more robust resistance to this kind of environment than the others do.
"Missing home?" Lord Ainsley asked, without answering his question.
"Yes, I do." the man answered in a low voice.
"Me too." the other man added.
"Me too," Barbosse too, followed.
When given the opportunity to express his exhaustion, his body answered before he could.
It has been months since he last saw my family, his two sons; and now that he has been away for so long,
Due to his work, being away from his two sons for months was not something he was unfamiliar with. This was not a premiere. Maybe it was the thought environment he was in, or the fact, that his mind was no longer drowned by his work as it used to be, but now, over the months in these woods, he realized how much he missed them and how much of a horrible and unpresent father he was.
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Lord Ainsley sighed and said, "With the trail having stopped, I think we could be near what we are looking for, or I could be wrong. But I honestly think we are onto something. "
The trail he was talking about from earlier, was the trace of the dragons’ passage. With their size and the wave destruction they caused by simply walking, swimming, and flying, they were so disastrous that even two years later, one could easily see what path they took. What Barbosse and the others did so far was to follow it, until they ended up here.
But Barbosse, just like all of them, knew that Lord Ainsley was trying to cheer them up, but with him, himself, being unsure of what could await them, his attempt fell flat. Which is why he added, "To be honest, I don’t know. With the trail suddenly stopping, we can only hope we are finally close to it." He let out a loud and exhausted sigh. "I really don’t know what’s going on lately. More disasters have happened in these last few decades, than in the past few millennia." First, the Night Ecarlate," the moment these last words left Lord Ainsley’s mouth, a strange threatening palpable aura emerged from Lord Aubrecht. Lord Ainsley took notice of it but continued nonetheless " … then the Great Calamities, then the rise of the "Aristocracy"."
All of these were things that had never ever happened in the history of the human continent.
Even with the last one put aside, The Sudden Rise of the Aristocracy was the uprising of a fanatical anti-Church group led apparently by someone from one of the most prominent names on the Continent.
Though, after having made their famous rassemblement speech, there were no particularly big moves from them yet, but there were cases of small attacks across the continent. The chaos they caused was not spreading like a wildfire but was instead breaking out here, and there.
With the chaos brought by the Dragons, they really chose the perfect time to start this uprising. Though Barbosse was not well-versed on the subject, he had heard that there were quite a few noble families that had lost many members during the disasters and had secretly joined the aristocracy.
Barbosse had no idea how this situation would eventually devolve, but he hoped it wouldn't lead to something more destructive than the calamity itself, especially given the nobility's current crisis with the Children of Light.
That kind of conflict was not appropriate at this time.
"There was also the death of the Hazo, the tree of life," a voice added, "My sister is married to a noble in Beaufort, so she was present to witness its withering." One of the Lord Paladins commented.
Hazo, the undying tree of Beaufort.
Though the tree wasn’t particularly considered sacred, or used as a symbol by the church or nobility, one can say that almost everyone knowledgeable enough about Beaumont would've at least heard about the tree that does not shed its green.
And yet five years ago, it did: Maybe it could be related to what brought the dragon to this corner of the world, one could? Nobody knows for sure, but rumours are starting to spread that these two events could be linked.
"That too. What else am I forgetting? "
"There was something else," Having said this, Lord Aubrecht’s eyes slowly darted toward me.
"The sudden halt of the spawning child of light." More than one voice muttered.
With a sigh, Lord Ainsley said, "Ah that, at this point, I’m thinking that the world is gearing toward nobility and, by extension, humanity’s extinction. Children of light were the only thing that was somehow balancing our declining population, but with them not being born anymore, we’re literally doomed to go extinct. "
From the beginning to the end, Lord Ainsley was right. With the abrupt halt of the emergence of the child of light fifteen years ago, nobles were doomed to go extinct with the decreasing population due to the low natality nobles are sadly known for.
That's it; fifteen years ago from today, not a single child of light was born. The Church did everything it could to keep this hidden, but after the Grand Assembly of one year ago, the truth blew up to the public. That being said, even then, the truth was requested by the church to be kept hidden from the world to prevent chaos from spreading, but one can only imagine how futile it was, as it didn't take long for it to be leaked and become common knowledge.
Looking at Barbosse, Lord Ainsley asked, "I heard from Whiteley that you were among one of the many that were tasked with finding an answer to this matter. What do you think could've caused this abrupt stop? "
"What caused this abrupt stop, huh?" Barbosse thought to himself.
Lord Ainsley was once again on the spot; he was indeed one of the first to delve into the Child of Light problem. He couldn't tell if it was the hazard, but the spawning children of light had always captivated him, as he believed they could be the key to the noble problem of low natality rate.Over the years in the academy, Barbosse eventually met up with people sharing the same interests and, soon realised, dreams as his.
Those people were Philip Edouard, Luna, and Moona.
With their efforts, they eventually managed to attract the attention of Lord Whiteley, the Archbishop in Charge of the Authority of Kiady, the Eternal. He, Barbosse, a nobody, had the funds he needed to start his research along with his friends. He, along with his soon-to-be wife Moona, became Vicars of the Church.
Despite having had their first children, his friends and he dedicated themselves to their cause. This went on for a while. Two years or so after Barbosse and his friend had their children, they took notice of a strange anomaly. They, who spent two years of their life they should’ve dedicated to their children, noticed that, out of the blue, no children of light were ever born.
At first, they assumed this was just a gap in their data, but soon realized that the halt was something real and did not result from some misunderstanding or misinformation.
Barbosse and his friends, being the first ones to notice the anomaly, were the first ones put in charge of figuring out what was going on by Lord Whiteley.
The information regarding that matter was sealed even among the fourteen. The only ones aware of the anomaly were Lord Whiteley, the Holy Paladin Ezekiel, and Archbishop Ezekiel, who were known to be the closest among the thirteen to the Pontifex.
His friends Phillip and Luna dedicated fifteen years of their lives to these researches, in spite of time that should’ve been dedicated to our respective children, and yet they still haven’t found a single answer that could’ve explained the phenomenon.
"I’m sorry. It is true that I was among the first ones to have delved into that problem, but even now I still haven’t found any answers yet." Barbosse honestly confessed.
"Aaah, we’re doomed." Lord Ainsley sighed. "But tell me, as someone who spent your time trying to figure out what was behind this, what do you think about all these events? Don’t you think they are somehow interconnected? Because I do?"
"Are these events interconnected?" … I have often thought about this as of late, or at least before I came here, but with all these events being random, what I would call, "reactions", it is hard next to impossible to figure out what could be the correlation between all of these events. Without anything tying them together, they all, and will, forever come across as random. "
If there was a link between the sudden halt in the birth of the child of light, the night Ecarlates, the death of the Hazo, and the seven calamities, then maybe Barbosse, or at least someone he knew, could be able to figure out the source of all of this. For now, it all felt like a reaction to something unknown to them.
Without knowing where or why these events all emerged from in the first place, they can't figure out where they might converge or diverge, that is, if they were somehow linked.
That being said, there was one whose cause was well-defined.
Barbosse was very curious about what happened at the time for a variety of reasons, and yet due to pressure from Archbishop Medvedik and some of his fellow archbishops, he was not allowed to investigate or involve himself any further in the matter, despite his clear and direct involvement.
Why was that? He knew that it was linked to the man sitting across the bonfire.
Right now was the best opportunity he had to find out what happened that night.
He was hesitant at first, but he eventually gave in and asked, "Lord Armand, I know, I shouldn’t tackle the subject given how personal it is, but… I must ask what exactly happened that night, referred to as the "night Ecar-."
The moment Barbosse mentioned those words, a threatening reaction escaped Lord Aubrecht, but was immediately calmed down by Lord Ansley, "Calm down."
Lord Aubrecht didn’t move at all, but it was as if. Even the two Lord Paladins were taken aback by what suddenly happened.
Lord Ainsley, who has successfully calmed the room, "We are all grown adult here, let’s not-"
Before he could finish, he was interrupted by Lord Armand addressing me, "You were there, weren’t you?"
What was he referring to? Barbosse knew very well.
It was something that happened 8 years ago, a matter that he wished he had never been involved in. With it, Barbosse didn’t even know how to face those who he could consider to be his only friends.
"I… Yes, I was the one who, with my magic, teleported the Archbishop and the Holy Paladins Medvediks to Beaumont, and ultimately to the Rosetta plain. "
"So you should know from them what exactly happened there, for you reached the place before I did, and what you didn’t see, you should have heard from the Medvediks or Whiteley." He said coldly.
At this point, Barbosse knew very well that furthering this discussion wouldn’t bring anything good, yet he still added, "The Lords Medvediks refused to say a single word on the matters, and Lord Whitely only knew of what he witnessed, so what I knew was what he saw, and the light summary of what happened before his arrival. And there is no written documentation of what happened that day, which is why today I asked-"
"-Oî Vicar Barbosse, I think you should stop with this." Lord Ainsley interrupted, "Before it gets out of hand. You see, I wouldn’t like this journey to be in vain."
It was only with his words that I noticed the fire between us, was behaving in a very strange fashion.
"This applies to you too, Armand, I know you have never been good with words, but he was just asking a question. No need to get this fired up."
He didn’t answer, instead merely saying "humph." He seemed to have calmed down since the bonfire had finished acting strangely.
"I think we should-"
To Barbosse's biggest surprise, just as Lord Ainsley was about to propose a subject change, Lord Arment said, "That night, after having confronted the Medvedik cousin’s for what they did during the banquet, I headed for the Rosetta’s plain, but as you know very well, you reached that place before I could," He took a moment to continue, as to remember clearly what happened. "The moment I reached the place, the situation was already out of hand. From afar, I had already heard the sound of a powerful explosion. Upon reaching the place, I was welcomed by a thick wall of fog covering the entire region, within which I knew a battle was ongoing."
A mere fog would be nothing but nothing for someone like me, but whatever that fog was made of, it didn't allow me to see through it or dissipate it.And yet, I charged head first into it. It didn’t take me long to guess who, thanks to his magic, was the one fighting Gregor Medvedik, and lying around in the area was his cousin, Dominik, along with several other members of the Church. I was not sure against what or what he was fighting or what led to Gregor, full-fledged Holy Paladin, in the state I found him in, but I knew that the right thing to do was to get him out of that place. The moment, I tried to reach out for Dominik, I was attacked by it. Back then, seeing was practically impossible while being engulfed by that foggy matter. I didn’t know what he looked like, but I knew I was attacked by a humane but also ill-defined silhouette, one of an adult man. Being taken as a target by it, I was left with no choice but to defend myself. Along with Medvedik, I fought. It was in the middle of that battle that the other Fourteen arrived, and it was also then that things took a way worse turn, from here I believe you know everything that is to be known about that night."
Barbosse nodded.
"It was along the fight as we were, let’s be honest with it, losing most of us aware of something. With the outline of the silhouette getting clearer and clearer, we recognized that it was molded to resemble something of a tall man, and clinging on the back of that silhouette was a child. I believe you can imagine who and what that child was, and you can also most likely imagine who that silhouette belonged to. "
Barobosse once again nodded.
That night, after having teleported Lord Medvedick and his cousin to where they were summoned, Barbosse left them with a child no older than his eldest son and a man, who was most likely his butler.
From there, Barbosse connected the dots by himself.
"That night, with the assistance of my fellow fourteen, I helped fend off my own blood. That’s all that is to know about that night. It was his final action that caused what you people call the "Night Ecarlate." A literal child, blowing himself up in an attempt to fight us up. You can understand now why the church didn't want to make the news public." He said in a voice more bitter than ever.
When Barbosse heard these words, he couldn’t help but remain silent, ashamed of himself.
No matter how hard he tried to hide this from himself, He knew that he was as responsible as anyone involved in this, for the death of that child.
Not knowing what else to say, Barosse said the only thing he could think of right now, "I’m sorry for what-."
Once again, for the fourth time, a dragon passed above, causing him to stop mid-sentence.
"I…"
"I don’t know about you two, but that is enough with this subject," Lord Ainsley announced before Barbosse could resume what he was previously saying, and put an end to this topic of discussion.