The still darkness of the night was penetrated by the lamp post Kaspar and Seth stood under. Verdigris tower was on fire now, as the bomb had just dropped. The brothers stood at a platform for the trains on the northern side of the city, waiting silently, with nothing but the sounds of bugs and the wind to accompany them. The trains still ran–they were driverless–so nobody apparently had gotten to shutting them off due to the emergency that was the bomb and Royal forces parked in the southern plains. But it seemed that shutting off the trains wouldn’t be needed for the time being, as nobody was seemingly in a rush to leave. Kaspar and Seth were the only ones on the platform.

Behind them, Verdigris Tower burned. The flames wisped and curled out of the floors it was contained to, and the brightness with which it burned hid the stars. But aside from the motion that was Verdigris Tower burning, Verdigris seemed still. From where Kaspar stood, he could not see any movement, nor could he hear anything else. In the few times he had taken the train out of Verdigris to Velorath, he had at least been able to hear the faint sound of hustle, business, and chatter that the wind caught and carried to the outside of the middle city. This time, the wind blew with its hands empty.

The faces of the brothers were lit up suddenly as a train entered the station. It drove past them disappearing into another tunnel, where it soon appeared again, facing the other direction, ready to take them north to Velorath. It stopped, its doors opened, and Seth and Kaspar silently stepped inside the train that was as empty as the platform itself.

The inside of the train was warmly lit and nicely decorated. It was open and spacious, unlike the cramped interiors of old passenger train cars, and faint music played on the inside. The music wasn’t anything of note.

They departed shortly after Kaspar and Seth took seats across from each other, facing one another. They both silently stared out the window, where the ambient light from the inside of the car reflected heavily off the inside of the window, obscuring the outside. There wasn’t much to see out there, anyway, and Kaspar knew that, but it was what you did when riding in a train. You looked longingly out the large windows, watching the quickly fleeting landscape pass by. This time, you couldn’t see the landscape, so he just looked longingly out of the window.

The silence of the train was interrupted by the sound of irregular breathing, followed by a wet sniff. Kaspar looked over at his brother, who, although he was trying his best to hide it from his brother, was visibly starting to cry.

Kaspar only looked at his brother. He did not know what to do; he had never seen his brother cry in response to anything. Thinking about it, he never really saw his brother be emotional like this, at least in front of him. Watching tears trickle down from his brother’s face, watching his diaphragm struggle to make a regular breath, almost made Kaspar want to cry, too. His eyes stung, saying they were ready to start streaming along with Seth, but nothing came. He just stared at his brother, who was no longer staring out the window, trying to hide it, but instead had his face buried in his hands, wiping the tears and rubbing his eyes.

Kaspar moved across to the seat directly next to Seth, and slowly put his arm around his brother’s shoulders, and pulled him closer. As he did this, something in Seth, whatever was keeping back whatever flow of emotions that hadn’t been let loose yet, broke, and Seth broke out into sobs, leaning into his brother’s side. Kaspar wanted to cry even more, but still tears would not come to his own face.

“I’m sorry,” Seth eventually said through a sniff after his sobs had called down.

“It’s okay, it’s alright,” Kaspar said. He didn’t know what else to say to his brother that would make anything better. “Do you need to talk about it?”

“I don’t know,” Seth said, sitting up, “I guess it was an adrenaline dump.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Things have calmed down, now’s the time to let it all out, I get it.” Kaspar did not get it. He also could feel the adrenaline slowly draining out of his body, causing his muscles to relax and become tired, his focus slipping, his eyes drooping. The absence of the adrenaline made him tired, exhausted, ready to take the deepest sleep he had taken since he was a baby. It had not made him emotional. The stress of the situation just faded from his shoulders after he remembered that he had shoulders that were tense. “But hey, we’re just going to Velorath, we’ve been there a bunch before, things will be fine.”

“I know, I know. That was just…a lot.” Seth stared at the floor as he said this, examining the patterns, not wanting to look out the window any longer.

“They probably sent out an emergency warning to most of the cities surrounding Verdigris,” Kaspar said, mostly to himself but figured that he would say it out loud to Seth too, “So Gerlach is probably awake. We can go crash with him for a night or two while we figure out what to do.” Uncle Gerlach was a family friend of theirs who served with their father in the military, and went on a campaign through Yellow with him. After returning home from that campaign, Gerlach left the military to settle down in Velorath, his hometown, as their father continued with the military. Their father, after the Yellow campaign, was stationed in Verdigris for a year and a half, then went off to fight elsewhere.

“We can also see if they’re safe,” Seth suggested.

“That too. I didn’t hear anything about an attack from the north, so as far as I know Velorath is untouched.”

“As far as you know.”

“As far as I know. Let’s hope, though.”

And they hoped. They hoped silently, as the train went on, quietly gliding across the tracks that split through the otherwise uninterrupted green fields that were now invisible, hiding behind a curtain of black night. Kaspar sat still next to his brother, trying to think of things to say, but he couldn’t. Seth sat still next to his brother, slouched over and staring at the floor, tired of the blackness hiding behind the reflection of the train car against the window, trying to keep his mind off of what he had seen, off of what it meant. The place he called home, the place he felt most safe, was now potentially one of the most dangerous places in the world. Royal, the combined force of Yellow and Purple, two of the most powerful military forces, was attacking them jointly. But why had it only been one bomb? Why not many? Why not send a barrage down upon the city? It almost felt like that was a warning shot. But what were they warning against?

Green’s military was split in two, Seth realized. Some of them were here, defending the homeland and the capital, and some were elsewhere, across the sea, fighting and raiding another country, another color. But this was normal, and they had been attacking Red, not Purple or Yellow. What did they have to do with Green leaning into an attack that wasn’t detrimental or beneficial to either nation?

Seth’s wondering came to a pause, as the train started to slow, and they pulled into the Velorath station. Kaspar stood, and Seth stood behind them, and they exited the train. It was noticeably colder on the platform here than it was in Verdigris. It hadn’t felt like they had ridden that far away. Maybe it was just because it was deeper into the night, and the heat had more time to die away. Or maybe it was that Verdigris was warmer due to it being a large city with lots of people and factories warming the air around them. Whatever the case, Kaspar cozied into his thin jacket a little more.

They walked through the station, which was just as empty as the station in Verdigris, and stepped out into Velorath proper, which was, as they had hoped, completely untouched. It was peacefully quiet, unlike the tense, fearful quiet that filled the streets of Verdigris while Kaspar and Seth were fleeing. Radios chattered, broadcast screens displayed silent footage of the burning Verdigris Tower, and the birds and bugs sung as normal. Most houses had lights on, and Kaspar would catch a glance of the occasional shadow moving to make tea or get food. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of the person themselves, backlit by the living room or kitchen light.

They walked streets that were familiar to them, winding through much looser, much less artificial and more organic street structures that took many visits to this place to learn, and found a small first floor apartment tucked away from the main street that acted as the main artery of Velorath. Kaspar stepped up to the door and knocked. They waited for a while, but as they expected, a man in his late fifties opened the door, and Kaspar and Seth felt a comforting warmth when they caught sight of Uncle Gerlach, their late father’s best friend.