A boy with green eyes clawed at him, demanding answers. “Why did you not save me?” he asked, before his face turned into the vision that haunted Florian for weeks now. The boy attacked him, but Florian couldn’t find the heart to strike back, and he took the scratches in stride, not making a single sound as the boy drew blood.
And then Wesley showed up from the darkness that surrounded them, walking into view with his face still and unmoving. Wesley demanded nothing, but instead summoned a gigantic fireball and sent it screaming at Florian. He tried to dodge, but the boy held him there with a firm grip. Struggling mightily, Florian tore himself out of the kid’s grasp just in time for the fire to singe his hair. But still, he could not fight.
A woman whose name he did not know followed Wesley, her gun raised at him. Her face, permanently locked in betrayal, watched as the bullets tore through his arm. Florian screamed at the pain, and he felt the impact of the bullets everywhere, as if the nerves in his arm were attached directly to every part of his body. Another fireball screamed at him, and this he didn’t manage to dodge.
The flames broke upon his good leg, the hair and skin burning as the fire found fuel. Like the bullets, the pain was everywhere, and it was unceasing. The green-eyed boy took advantage of Florian’s pain to renew his attacks, swinging an axe into his midsection. Whatever sound escaped Florian’s throat was that of a wounded animal. And still, Florian did not strike back.
His eyes caught on the person sitting behind the green-eyed boy. Despite the pain, Florian recognized the man as George. In his face, Florian found neither anger, resentment, or betrayal. Instead, it was the wore that George wore more often than not. There was a twinkle in the old man’s eye, though there was no light to twinkle in them. A wide grin was plastered onto the man’s face, and he raised a single hand to wave Florian over.
Dragging the boy as he marched, Florian worked his way over. Each bullet that struck him intensified the pain, and the fire had spread to his stomach, now. Dropping to his knees at George’s feet, Florian hung his head in shame and regret.
But there were no accusations. George planted a single hand atop Florian’s head, ruffling his hair. “I’m proud of you. Live well, my boy.”
Florian’s head raised instantly, shocked by the words. But the hand that had reassured him had long disappeared, and George vanished. Instead, he was surrounded by the all-too-familiar nightmares. A blue fire sprung into existence in his left hand, and with a thought, Florian sent the magic at the green-eyed boy.
Cerulean flames the color of mana swallowed the boy. As Florian watched the teen disappear, he whispered, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save you.”
The orange flames had spread up to his chest. Florian summoned another blue flame, sending this one at Wesley. It burst through the orange flames Wesley had been preparing, setting his former student alight. But Wesley, like the boy before him, simply began to disappear much in the same way he had appeared. “I’m sorry that I failed you.”
As the crack of gunfire drew to a halt, Florian summoned a final orb. It sailed through the air, and without a word, Florian was left alone in a sea of darkness. “I’m sorry that I chose not to help you.”
And then, the darkness receded, and Florian’s eyes fluttered open. The pain had stopped completely. He rose from his place on an unfamiliar bed in a start, examining his body and finding nothing wrong with it. This time, Florian knew, he had come damn close to death. Never before had he felt such pain in a dream before, and something resonated within him when he guessed that he had survived something he might not have. Had he been completely surrounded by the fire… Florian decided not to think about it. Instead, he turned his attention to the space around him.
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The rays of the sun that peeked through the nearby window assured him that he had escaped from his own personal hellscape. It steadied his breathing, and Florian was able to center himself. At least, until he got gifted a miniature heart attack.
“Good morning, wizard,” a woman said from the sofa in the corner of the room. It was the driver from the day before, her brown hair tied up in a loose bun and her clothes dark with ichor.
“Good morning, driver.”
“I’m a trader, not a driver,” she noted. “And my name is Jacquelyn, for the record.”
“Nice to meet you Jacquelyn,” Florian said, certain that she had been the one to move him to wherever they were now. And going by the looks of it, they were still in Dover, and that meant that she had more than likely stayed up the whole night to watch for Hellwolves. “My name is Florian.”
“Oh, I am well aware of that.” Then she harrumphed and promptly fell asleep on the sofa. Florian wiped the sleep from his eyes, shocked at the sheer absurdity of their exchange. He chuckled softly, hoping to not wake Jacquelyn from her well-deserved rest. Standing up, Florian looked through the room’s sole window.
It looked out over the ruins of Dover. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, but they were now joined at least by six more Hellwolf carcasses and those two giant creatures. The sun rose lazily over the stone walls, and Florian could hear the distant howls of Hellwolves as they disappeared to where only they knew.
Turning his attention back to the room they found themselves in, Florian saw a bookshelf filled with texts from before Worldbreak, along with a small desk and the most luxurious bed he had seen since he’d last slept a blissful night in his college dorms. It was a lord’s personal chambers, or something between a bedroom and a study. Bored and nursing the headache of a lifetime, Florian opened the drawers of the nightstands he found to either side of the bed.
In the top drawer of the nightstand closest to him, Florian found a small, leather-bound journal. Intrigued, Florian opened it, his eyes going wide. He’d guessed that these were Taylor’s quarters, once, but this confirmed it. He had found the old commander’s personal diary.
Flipping to the first entry, Florian found himself rereading that first page a handful of times. There was no way he’d do that, Florian thought. And yet, according to the journal, Taylor had departed the fortress on an expedition to find the ruins of the fighter jet, hoping to receive a final directive from the old command. The same destination that he had once been sent.
The entry was dated two months ago. Curious, Florian flipped forward, hitting a blank page. One page turned into two, and two into four. This first entry was not only the first, it was also the last. And if Florian had not been paying attention, he might have missed the tiny postscript on the final page of the entry.
“If you find this journal, it means that I have failed in my mission. I ask that you follow the last order given by the former governments of the world and retrieve the data from their latest test. We must carry out the duty that has been given to us, regardless of the cost. That is what it means to be a soldier,” it wrote. It was condensed down into a few lines of text, and while it served an entirely different function than the rest of the journal, Florian knew that the postscript was written by Taylor.
Closing the book, Florian sat in the bed. Taylor had seemed a tyrant, and maybe the man was, but it seemed that the man was at the very least not a hypocrite. Though he might never forgive the man for attempting to kill him via one of those same expeditions, Taylor was at the very least true to his own, warped principles. After all, it seemed that Tonbridge and Leeds had been doing their own thing for far longer than a few months. Dover, by comparison, still flew the classic blue flag with a globe wrapped in laurels. That flag might have had a few holes burnt into it, but it flew proudly even to the current moment.
It took all of twenty minutes for Florian to tire of Jacquelyn’s snoring, and so he left the room, wandering through the keep as he saw it for the first time. He made his way down the stairs and to the main door leading out. Finding George where he’d left him, Florian went to go find a shovel. Unfortunately, the building where they might have been stormed was one of those that had been flattened. So he used his hands instead, the dirt going underneath his finger nails as he dug. Slow work, Florian eventually had a hole big enough.
Wishing George all the best in the next life, Florian placed George’s body into the newly-dug grave. Marked by a simple blacksmith’s hammer planted in the same ground, Florian returned to the keep, finding Jacquelyn wide awake and glaring at him.
“Good,” he said. “We’ve got places to be and things to do.”
“How do you mean?”
Holding the locket in his hand, Florian replied, “I need to find some people.”