72. Flowers

When Isaac stepped off the train, there were more people in Solonell City than he’d expected. Quite a few were training among the twisting roads and mixture of buildings, and he carefully kept off to the side to avoid them. His eyes lingered on the participants as he walked, the earlier doubt not at all faded.

He soon reached the same abandoned hut near where he’d helped Olzu practice flying. For the rest of the second part of the tournament, he’d found it a perfectly acceptable place to sleep in. He couldn’t go back to Chrowall City given the time differences, which he’d admittedly only remembered when he’d been about to head back and sleep on instinct after the second day. Thankfully Isaac had caught himself in time and ended up wandering over to the hut instead.

It really wasn’t a terrible place, but then again, he knew his standards were very low. There was a roof, a place to lie down, and it was quiet. Or at least, that had been true.

Isaac frowned and paused just as he was about to enter the open doorway. The pseudo square was particularly packed with people who’d scoped it out as a good place to train, and the sound of ringing metal and yells easily traveled across the space, amplified as the noises bounced around the surrounding buildings.

If the hut had had a door, it wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but sound traveled straight through the half collapsed building. Isaac sighed. He probably wouldn’t get much sleep like this.

“Traveler.”

Isaac jumped and spun around, the tension immediately leaving his shoulders when he saw a familiar man wearing an eye patch and full armor.

“Igor. You scared me.”

The man didn’t respond. His one visible eye was focused on the shabby collapsed hut, and he had on one of his usual frowns. He slowly raised a hand and pointed at it, his gauntlets clanking as he did so.

“Have you been resting here?”

Isaac blinked. “Uh, yeah. Just for the tournament, since I can’t really go back to Chrowall without time getting weird.”

Igor nodded solemnly. “I see,” he said like this was the most grave thing he’d ever heard. He lowered his hand and turned to face Isaac. “I have space at my house.”

“I appreciate it, but you really don’t have to—“

“There is space,” Igor said again like Isaac hadn’t spoken. He kept staring unblinkingly at him, and he really did look a bit intimidating like that, with his height, the scars, the eye patch, and the armor.

Isaac frowned, getting the feeling that the man wouldn’t take no for an answer. The sound of an explosion resounded from behind them, followed by curses and yells, and Isaac sighed.

“Fine, but just for tonight.”

—

Igor lived in a small cabin that was actually smaller than the hut probably would be if it wasn’t half destroyed. Since Igor’s home was fully intact, however, it had a leg up.

The inside of the cabin was cozy—homely, even. The wooden walls looked sturdy and well cared for, and the space was softly lit with warm firelight. The ceiling was a bit low, nearly hitting Igor’s head when he stood straight, but Isaac didn’t mind it much. Various portraits hung around the walls, not a speck of dust visible on any of them, and a few plants and little trinkets had been placed around the furniture to decorate the space. Isaac hadn’t thought Igor was the type of person to go out of his way to decorate things, but he supposed he didn’t know the man particularly well to begin with.

Isaac stepped further inside, following behind Igor. The man’s armor didn’t sound as loud in the space, he noted. As they walked, Isaac found his eyes drawn to a vase of old flowers sitting on the windowsill beside what looked like a portrait. From the distance, he could barely make out three blurry figures partially obscured by the drooping petals.

Igor paused and stepped over to the flowers. Raising a hand, his palm glowed a faint green. For a second nothing happened. Then, the petals began to shake slightly. Slowly, the flowers straightened themselves as though drawn up by an invisible string until they were once again in full bloom.

[SKILL PLANT GROWTH LVL 7]

Isaac glanced back up from his tablet to see Igor adjusting the petals slightly with his hands. Come to think of it, he’d never actually seen the man use any of the weird vaguely magical vaguely superpowered abilities that the “humans” of Solonell City were known for. The weirdness of the armor had always marked him as Underside enough in his mind.

Igor’s expression didn’t change, and he simply nodded once he was satisfied and continued walking. Isaac found his eyes lingering on the flowers as they walked past, and he gripped the tablet tighter and hurried to follow after Igor.

The room he was led to was perfectly neat, not a speck of dust in sight despite the fact that it didn’t look like someone had lived there in years. After Igor left with another one of those stoic nods of his, Isaac had taken the time to inspect the place more thoroughly. There were a few dolls and stuffed animals sitting on the shelves, and the bed itself was quite small, leading him to assume that it had once belonged to a child. He thought back to the blurry portrait, eyes narrowing in contemplation.

He shook his head and pushed the thoughts aside. For now, he should focus on getting some sleep before the inevitable chaos of the last event started. Just thinking about it made him wince; he swore if he focused hard enough, he could hear the distant explosions and clashing metal of practicing participants, a mere prelude of what was to come.

Was there even a point in hoping for no more accidents at this point? He released a long sigh that sounded especially loud in the empty room. He didn’t like making it a habit of wishing for impossible things. It usually made things more painful in the long run, he’d found. Maybe he’d settle on hoping no one got hurt badly enough to have to leave the tournament like Olzu did instead.

Isaac shut his eyes and forced himself to rest, lest he spend the whole night worrying. Thankfully it was easier than expected, and almost the moment his eyelids closed, exhaustion took over and he soon sunk into a deep, dreamless sleep.

—

Waking up in a place with no sun or visible changes in the sky was an odd affair. It was just as dark as it had been the night before, with the curtains closed, and the only thing that woke Isaac up was the smell of food wafting through the cracks in the door.

It took a few minutes for Isaac to drag himself out of the surprisingly soft bed, but when he did finally step into the living room, he saw Igor already seated at the table sipping from a steaming mug with two plates of food sitting in front of him. Isaac paused and did a double take, double checking that it was actually Igor even though it wouldn’t make sense for it to be anyone else.

In all his years, Isaac had never once seen the man without armor. Logically he knew Igor didn’t sleep in it, but it still took a moment for him to register him as the same person. Even without the armor, Igor’s height and build still made him look rather intimidating, especially in the confines of the small cabin, but he looked a lot more normal and ironically more threatening this way. Igor nodded at him, and Isaac realized he’d been standing there like an idiot for the past minute and quickly sat down.

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“Thanks,” he said as he picked up the fork. The mug seemed to contain tea, and the plate of food held what looked like a salad, except the components of the salad were various strange fruits and leaves, none of which looked familiar to him.

Isaac carefully stabbed into one of the fruits—this one was dark violet and vaguely rectangular in shape—and took a bite. The texture reminded him of a grape, but the flavor was closer to a blackberry. Once he got past the weird shape, it honestly didn’t taste too bad. He stabbed into another one of the fruits, this one yellow and circular, and it had a sharper, more sour flavor that was also completely acceptable.

Isaac vaguely wondered what would happen if he tried to make a cake with these. Obviously he couldn’t sell them without disguising the fruits as something else first, but still, the possibility was there.

Isaac looked up, about to ask what the fruits were (and where he could get some), but he paused when he saw Igor turned away towards the vase of flowers, his palm glowing again. Overnight, it looked like the petals had started drooping once again, though this time it didn’t take as long for Igor to rectify them as it had the night before. Soon they were returned to full bloom, a roof of full blossoms hanging over the portrait. Isaac frowned. Did he do this every morning and night?

He squinted. On closer inspection, though the flowers now stood at full bloom, the petals looked slightly thin, fragile, like they might tear at a touch. If they’d been bloomed with magic over and over again, no matter how careful someone was, eventually the flowers would wear down and become more and more difficult to manipulate.

“…Couldn’t you get new flowers?” he found himself asking. “There’s a ton in the Golden Lands. I could bring some if you want.”

Igor didn’t respond, and at first Isaac thought the man hadn’t heard him, but after a few moments the man shook his head.

“No, it’s alright,” he said. The glow faded and he slowly pointed at one of the flowers, a light blue one whose pointy petals formed a spiraling shape. “That was my wife’s favorite,” he said. His hand drifted to the flower next to it, a lush pink blossom composed of large, fanning petals tightly packed together. “That was my daughter’s.” He lowered his arm. “Those are the last of those flowers.”

Isaac furrowed his brow. “The last?”

Igor nodded in that solemn way of his. “The others were destroyed in the Collapse.” He took a sip of his tea and set the mug back down.

“I see…” Isaac’s voice trailed off as he stared at the flowers in question. Was their favorites. His gaze drifted down to the wooden grains of the table. “Sorry for bringing it up,” he said. He didn’t say ‘sorry for your loss.’ Those words had never helped him, and he didn’t think they’d help Igor.

The man shook his head. “I don’t mind. I like to talk about them.”

Isaac looked up, brows furrowed in surprise. But sure enough, there was an almost hopeful glint in the man’s eyes, standing out starkly against his otherwise stoic face. Isaac frowned. “…Then, do you mind if I ask how they died?”

Maybe that was too blunt. What was he thinking, he should’ve asked what they were like, he berated himself. Before he had a chance to backtrack, however, Igor hummed in thought.

“My wife passed away from sickness a few years after my daughter was born.” His eyes drifted off to the side, staring at some distant point. “She would’ve liked this tournament, I think. She liked lively things.”

Igor spoke slowly, a bit stilted, and Isaac got the sense that he wasn’t used to talking about these things, about expressing them. Still, there was undeniable warmth in his eyes as he spoke, and his gruff voice softened to something more gentle. Isaac vaguely wondered if his parents had ever looked at each other like that, if their relationship had been fractured from the start or if it had only broken after he’d come into the picture.

Isaac noted that Igor hadn’t spoken in a while. When he looked up, the man was staring down into his teacup, a frown visible beneath his beard.

“You don’t have to talk about your daughter if you don’t want to,” Isaac said.

Igor shook his head. “No, it’s simply more complicated to explain.” He swirled his cup around, the liquid splashing close to the rim and just avoiding spilling. “Before the Collapse, Solonell City used to be bigger,” he said.

Isaac’s eyes drifted out the open window, where the hodgepodge of architecture and weirdly shaped streets were visible. It did look an awful lot like someone had taken different areas and crammed them all together into one city, now that he thought about it.

Igor’s frown deepened. “The old government wasn’t very good,” he said, and Isaac got the impression that that was putting it lightly. “There was a rebellion.”

“You were part of it?” Isaac guessed. He leaned forward a bit.

Igor nodded. “Only low rank,” he explained. He shook his head. “Our leader planned a coup, and my daughter got caught in the fighting.”

“Oh.”

What was he supposed to say to that? “Sorry” didn’t feel like enough, but asking more about his daughter didn’t feel appropriate either. Clearing his throat, Isaac did the only thing he could think of, which was to attempt to shift the subject.

“Who else was in the rebellion?” Considering he hadn’t heard of it before this, Isaac assumed most of the people involved had passed away during the aforementioned coup. He frowned at the thought.

He might’ve imagined it, but he could’ve sworn Igor raised an eyebrow, the closest thing he’d ever seen to amusement on the man’s face, in response to his decidedly unsubtle side stepping.

“Most are gone,” Igor confirmed. He took another sip of his tea. “Mortimer was one of the highest ranked.”

Isaac was glad he wasn’t eating something at the moment because he was sure he would’ve choked. “Mortimer?” Sure, logically he knew the half-undead man was above average level, this tournament had confirmed that, but the man seemed so utterly uninterested in anything besides his inventions that he couldn’t imagine him actively participating in a rebellion.

That was definitely amusement beneath Igor’s beard. “He was close to the rebellion leader,” he explained.

“…I’m guessing the leader didn’t survive the coup?”

Igor grunted. “No, the coup was successful.” Isaac’s eyebrows raised in surprise before Igor continued. “He died during the Collapse.”

Isaac once again found himself at a loss for words. He briefly considered asking how exactly he’d died, but he felt like he didn’t want to know the answer to that. The more he learned about the Collapse, the more uneasy he felt about it. It was a constant that smoldered in the background of everything Underside related, and he got the distinct sense that he’d only get burned the closer he wandered towards it.

Isaac grabbed his own mug and drank some of the tea, which had cooled down at this point, but was still pleasantly warm. It had a rich, slightly bitter flavor.

“Thanks for telling me about it,” he muttered once he set the cup back down. His eyes darted briefly over to the flowers, and he cleared his throat. “Especially about, well…” his voice trailed off, but the implication was obvious.

Igor shook his head. “It was no trouble.” He stared at Isaac with that eternally serious eye of his. “I think my daughter would’ve liked you.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow.

“She liked fairytales.” A pause. “And funny people.”

“She loved the Underside, I’m sure.” Isaac shook his head and took another sip of his tea, and he could hear Igor’s low chuckle as he did so. When he faced the man again, his gaze was distant again, filled with a similar warmth to when he’d been talking about his wife mixed together with fondness and pride. It was a look he’d seen once before, briefly, that night when Lloyd had returned home with his acceptance letter and he’d watched him and his parents, hidden in the hallway. At that moment, he’d understood that it was an unconditional, uncontrollable thing, and yet he’d still spent the next years trying to earn it like it was something that could be gifted. It would’ve been funny if the memory wasn’t still so bitter.

There was a lightness to Igor’s gaze in particular that made Isaac pause. The longer Igor spoke about his family, the more the man seemed to brighten from his usual stern, dreary state. He couldn’t make sense of it, and before he could rethink his words, Isaac found himself blurting out, “Isn’t it painful? To talk about them, I mean.”

Igor turned to face him, and to Isaac’s relief he didn’t look upset. Instead, the man hummed thoughtfully.

“It has been many years,” he said. “And though the memories are still difficult, it’s more painful to think that I’m the only one who remembers them.”

A soft breeze drifted through the open window, rustling some of the petals, and Igor stood up to shut it. Isaac followed the man’s movements with his eyes. Even without his armor on, he walked with a similar heaviness, a deliberation in every action. After checking that the flowers were still alright and adjusting the blossoms with a light touch, the man sat back down. Looking at him at that moment, Isaac thought that the cabin no longer looked too small for him.

“…If you ever want to tell some stories about them, I don’t mind listening,” Isaac said. He couldn’t quite understand Igor’s reasoning, maybe he never would, but his words still echoed in his mind, prying at old, tightly wound thoughts and memories. He shifted in his seat.

There was a rustling noise, and when Isaac looked up, he could see the corners of Igor’s beard tilt upwards.

“I would appreciate that,” he said.