In the aftermath of the fire a death count was conducted. We lost a bit over two hundred of the thousand troops that entered the town, either to the initial explosions, or complications born from them. The civilian death toll, on the other hand, was unknown. There was so much rubble, and it was still dangerous to even attempt to clear it out in search of survivors, or bodies. The silver lining was that we did save some of them by putting out the fires, and they were grateful, despite having lost their homes. At least enough of the town was standing that they might still be able to find shelter until rebuilding could begin.
I walked down the street, helping wherever I could to ease the pain. During my aimless wandering, a Droln soldier ran up to me, seemingly with something urgent to bring to my attention. “Lord James, we need your assistance clearing a house.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“There’s still a civilian inside, and when we tried to enter, he yelled at us, threatening to use a crystal. We’re hoping that perhaps you might have a better chance at convincing him to give up.”
A crystal? This town isn’t known for crystal mining, and if he was using it as a threat, that means it might have been given to him by the Thrainian army. It was a good lead for figuring out why this happened, and I may be able to prevent another tragedy from taking place.
“Alright, take me to them.”
I followed behind the soldier as he led me through the destruction and towards a part of the town that was mostly untouched. Our destination was clearly marked by the presence of a dozen soldiers, huddled outside of a building. These apartment-like buildings all looked very similar to one another. Three stories tall, simplistic design, using primarily wood with the occasional iron reinforcement. The only differences I could see were small ones, such as little decorations placed around the windows, or a different shade of paint on the outside.
The soldiers stood at attention when I showed up. Whether that was due to my ‘noble’ status or my champion of the Eternal Mother status I could not tell and did not care. “At ease everyone,” I said with some exasperation. “Just point me to our scared resident and I’ll try to calm him down.”
One of the soldiers stepped up to give me the requested information. “He is currently holed up in his room on the second floor. We’re not sure what the crystal does, but it is most likely dangerous.”
“Figured as much, which is why I’m going to give you an order to wait down the street. If things go wrong, you probably don’t want to be anywhere near the building.”
They looked a little unsure, but obeyed my command and cleared the area. I was now by myself as I looked up at the building. It felt a bit imposing not knowing exactly what I was about to walk into, but I took a deep breath and opened the front door.
The entry hall sported a series of four doors, two on either side, and a set of stairs that went up to the next floor. I took the stairs, finding a similar layout on the floor above with a single door that was slightly open. Taking an educated guess that this is where our skittish civilian was hiding, I pushed the door open, and it swung inwards soundlessly.
Everything was very compact in the entry room. It looked like the kitchen and the dining area were squished together into a single area. I felt a little nostalgic when I saw it, remembering my old apartment back in my world. Shaking my head, I cleared the errant thought away while focusing on finding our civilian. The fastest way to do that would probably be to call out.
“Hello,” I called out into the room.
“I said leave!” came the nearly immediate reply from the only other room in this place. “I swear to all the gods, I will use this thing!”
Here we go. I walked towards the second door and pulled it open. This was apparently the bedroom, just about as claustrophobic as the last room. The man I was looking for was huddled down on the far end of the bed in the corner. He was an average looking man appearing to be in his mid-twenties with a messy head of brown hair. He looked tense, and he clutched in both his hands a glowing crystal.
My hands came up to try and diffuse the situation. “Easy now, I’m here as a friend.”
When he saw me, it did look like he relaxed a little bit, apparently thinking I was a Thrainian like him. “Where did the invaders go?”
Should I admit that I’m with them? After considering that for a second, I decided to just let his assumptions stand. “The group that was checking this building left. I came in because they were saying something about a person hiding inside.” I slowly moved closer to him, trying to get a better look at the crystal he had.
“There... there was so much noise. I saw smoke and fire. Did they burn down the town?”
“I don’t think the coalition army was responsible. They were caught in the explosions as well, and they are currently trying to help the survivors of the town.”
“They are?” He sounded like that was an impossibility and even squinted at me skeptically. “Then what started the fires?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.” I gestured to the crystal in his grasp. “May I see that? I can read the runes, so we can find out exactly what it does. I promise I will not move from your side while I do.”
He looked between me and the crystal, brow furrowed in deep contemplation. After a silent, tense, moment, he swallowed his apprehensions and slowly handed it over to me. I gently took it from him and turned it over in my hand a few times, reading the various carvings to see what its intended purpose was. The more I saw, the more my face twisted in anger.
“What does it do?” the man asked, breaking the quiet.
I sighed before looking him in the eye. “You were wise not to use this. If you did, it would have killed you and everyone else in this building while spreading more fires.” This damn thing is basically a brick of magical C4 and napalm wrapped into a single package. Normally exploding a crystal so violently was considered a waste, but I imagined they didn’t want there to be evidence of their wrong doings.
The man’s hands shook a little bit after I told him he was essentially holding a bomb. He didn’t know because he couldn’t read. This world desperately needs education. Not just to prevent people from being taken advantage of like this, but teaching people their history can even stop wars from happening by retelling the events of battles past and their nightmarish aftereffects.
“What did they tell you when they gave you this?” I asked him.
“T-they said that it would protect me and hurt the invaders. It... it was a lie?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Which sort of begged a question. “Why didn’t you use it?”
“I... I don’t know. Maybe it was the look in his eyes when he handed it to me. It felt like he was pitying me, almost, or regretted even handing it over.”
So, somebody had a conscience, yet they still gave it to him, to all of them. I guess loyalty won out over what was right. It’s always the soldier who say they were just ‘following orders.’
I had the crystal now, and this man looked to be pacified. Probably too busy reevaluating his loyalties to make any more trouble. “Alright, I’m going to take this and have it properly disposed of. You can stay here or leave if you want. Either way, I don’t believe you are in danger anymore. Just don’t make trouble, and trouble won’t find you.”
The man looked almost shell shocked as he stared at me. He might have eventually said something, but I didn’t have all day to wait around for him to ask, what I assumed would be, more questions. It was better to leave now while he was calm and just let him process everything on his own.
When I emerged from the building again, the group of soldiers who called for my help approached me. They noticed the crystal in my hands and hesitated to get closer to me for a moment. “Sir, is that...”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I nodded. “Yes, this is what caused all the explosions. The Thrainian army gave them to the civilians, telling them it would protect them from us. When Caldern and his men started searching the houses, they spooked the civilians into using them. The resulting explosions then scared others who activated their own which caused a cascade of destruction.”
“Why would they do that to their own people?”
That was a good question, and one that had many disturbingly possible answers. “Off the top of my head, I can think of a few reasons. The first is the most obvious; they wanted to catch us off guard and do some damage. They assumed we wouldn’t expect them to destroy one of their production centers just to kill a few of us, and they were right. Another reason would be to spin a story, make martyrs of the people who died and say that we were responsible. It would certainly drum up a fervor and probably increase their recruitment numbers for militia to fight us off. Third, and this is one of the more disturbing thoughts that come to mind, they needed to reduce the number of mouths to feed. We’re entering winter, and we just stole a massive amount of food from them. Their situation will only worsen the further we get into the season, and doing something as heinous as this in the shadows may prevent them from facing a food riot which would look even worse to the citizenry.”
The darkness of my speculation seemed to fall upon the faces of the soldiers in front of me. “And they call us monsters,” one of them muttered.
I nodded and held the crystal up. “I’m going to take this and have it disposed of. If you are clearing the other houses, please be careful just in case there are more of them in the possession of civilians. Try not to surprise any of them, and no hostility. I would prefer it if no more buildings exploded today.”
“Yes sir!” They replied in unison before spreading out to continue with their task.
That wasn’t really an order, but works for me. I shrugged and then walked back to our camp where I met up with the mages again. After explaining the situation and the dangers of the crystal I was handing them, they were tasked with disabling it whilst I reported to Durdan about this.
Durdan was understandably livid when he heard about what caused all this. He went on a small tirade saying that even at his lowest he had never once considered sacrificing his own people just to hurt the enemy. The knowledge fired him up, and he seemed more determined than ever to make it to Fulvrist and put an end to this war before more tragedies like this one could happen.
Unfortunately, it was already very late, and the light had disappeared nearly an hour ago. The snow was probably the only reason I was able to see without a torch or lantern right now as the moonlight reflected off the white ground. We’d have to spend the night in and around the ruins of the town. Quite the grim environment.
The sea of tents was already beginning to rise once more as the soldiers prepared to weather the frigid night. I went back to my carriage and saw my friends erecting their tents. None of them seemed to be in a mood for conversation or banter. We just got sucker punched, and everyone was feeling the pain after having to drag charred bodies of comrades and friends out of the wreckage. They acknowledged me with a nod at the very least, and that was the extent of our interaction for the night as I grabbed the fabric and poles that would be my shelter for the night.
After about thirty minutes of set up, I had a functioning tent and two cots set side by side inside. I sighed as I was finally able to get off my feet for the first time in what felt like forever. Quiet pervaded the tent for a few minutes, only disturbed by the occasional buffeting of the wind against the side of the tent. It was an oddly calm night considering the chaos that had consumed the last few hours.
My alone time was interrupted when the flap of the tent was pushed aside, and a very beleaguered Kala stumbled in, wrapped tightly in her fur cloak. Her eyes were half-lidded as she came to a stop beside me. “Catch me,” was all she said before falling face first toward me.
My body lurched forward to grab her and give her a softer landing. She had done a complete ragdoll on me as I struggled to move her limp body onto the cot. After positioning her beside my own bed, I spoke up with both exasperation and amusement in my voice.
“You’re placing an awful lot of faith in my reaction speed. You know I'm tired too, right?”
“You still caught me,” she mumbled out, making me huff at her.
“I guess you’re right about that.” I lay down next to her, rolling on my side to face her.
She let out a sigh. “This has been an exhausting day.”
That was an understatement. From minefields to unwitting suicide bombers, this day would forever live in infamy in the minds of those who lived it. “You can say that again. I honestly didn’t think that Alathos could stoop any lower than he already has. He had to be the one to give the order, and the only solace that comes from knowing that is in the fact that he must be scared.”
Kala allowed herself a small grin, though the emotion didn’t reach her eyes. “I guess that makes me feel a little better, but I wish that it didn’t have to come with such devastation. Honestly, I never thought I’d find myself feeling bad for Thrainians. At one point in my life, I would have cheered if I knew that they had to destroy one of their own cities because of us.”
I gave her a reassuring smile. “That just shows how far you’ve come, how far everyone has come. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was beaten in a cell by the very people that are now my allies. Heck, my current group of friends stoned me.” It was quite ridiculous when I thought about it, but sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
She chuckled lightly before shifting her body a little closer to mine. “You certainly live an interesting life. Really, you should be proud of the part you played in changing the way we think. If you hadn’t pointed out the way the coalition had been slipping into the same mindset as the Thrianians, we probably never would have realized and became just as bad as them.”
“That’s a pretty deep goal post there. It’s hard to reach that level of depravity.”
“And yet we might have. It may not have been immediate, but it was happening steadily as more people viewed Thrainians not as people, but as monsters.” She broke eye contact with me for a second. “I was one of them. Even now it’s difficult to think of the Thrainians as anything else. But you can’t kill monsters by becoming them, you have to be better, or nothing will ever change.”
I reached over and placed my hand on the side of her face. “There’s only one monster that I’m interested in killing, and once he’s gone, things will get better. Then, hopefully, we can enjoy a well-earned rest.”
“That would be nice,” she said in a groggy voice as she started to slowly nod off.
She’s too damn cute. I shifted my arm around her back and pulled her close. She snuggled into my chest as I sighed contentedly, eager to sleep off the weariness of the day. Tomorrow we were back on the war path, and our next major stop was the one we had all been eager to reach.
Mornings start early in an army. The first sign of light on the horizon was enough for the wakeup call to be sounded throughout the camp, much to Kala’s irritation. She wasn’t alone in that feeling this morning, however. Much of the camp had been up late trying to get the situation in town sorted out, so there were many tired faces wandering around with yawns on their lips.
Despite the exhaustion, I could see an underlying excitement in the way everyone was moving. It seemed that the knowledge had spread at this point. We were closing in on Fulvrist.
I had seen the castle walls once before, and even before I knew about magic, they looked intimidating. Who knows what kind of traps and defenses they would have around the city. If Yol’vastume was considered by most of the coalition to be impregnable, then what would Fulvrist be considered? If push came to shove, we may be stuck living out a protracted siege, but that may go on for months depending on how many supplies they had squirreled away. No way of knowing other than to poke the nest and see what happened.
Camp was broken, and the army prepared to move out. The survivors of the town were disparate in their condition. Many lost everything they had, and to help ease the burden, Durdan left some food for them like he did at the last village.
I watched the soldier unloading the supplies when something occurred to me. “Hey, Kala, did you see any slaves in this town?”
“Slaves?” She cocked her head to the side as she thought. Her brow dropped when she came to the same realization that I did. “No, I haven’t. Isn’t that weird?”
“Very... I’m going to bring it up to Durdan.” I walked with some urgency to find Durdan as he oversaw the distribution of supplies. He noticed me approaching him, and turned his attention towards me as I started the conversation. “Durdan, we didn’t find any Slaves in this town, correct?”
I didn’t fault him for not realizing it, I didn’t either. We were all rather preoccupied with the whole exploding buildings thing. His face immediately became concerned, however. “No, and a town like this should have a significant population of slaves as well.”
He immediately set about trying to find the answer to this and approached a random Thrainian civilian on the street. “You,” he said while projecting an aura of command.
The man practically withered on the spot as he was singled out. “Y-yes? Can I, uhm, help you?”
“What happened to your slaves? Where have they gone? This town should have many of them and yet I don’t see any.” He appeared to be very nervous when the topic of slaves came up. Durdan picked up on that and made efforts to coax the information out of him. “You will not be harmed for admitting that you had them, it is a well-known fact. All I want is the information on where they are now.”
With a nervous gulp, the man started to explain. “The soldiers took them when they came through here. They said they didn’t want the slaves to fall into your hands and add to your numbers. That’s all I know.”
Durdan considered the information for a second before nodding and waving the man off. After the man left, I approached the pensive general with a question. “What are you thinking?”
He took a second before responding to me. “I’m concerned. Most of the slaves taken by the Thrainians would be civilians, not soldiers. Even if they were soldiers, I wouldn’t ask them to be part of the army, I would send them home. They’d most likely be in no condition to fight. It makes no sense for the Thrainian army to take them, which worries me.”
Durdan wasn’t alone in his worry. I had a bad feeling about this too. They had already shown a complete lack of concern about the wellbeing of their own people, so how would they treat the slaves? All I knew was that we needed to reach Fulvrist quickly to stop them before it was too late.