In the middle of the night, Abrial opened her eyes blearily. She felt cold. In her sleep, she had moved around and kicked the blanket off her legs, and also turned around…
And now was facing Finley.
In her sleepy state, she admired Finley’s graceful features without inhibition. Finley was sleeping, after all; she wouldn’t know if Abrial stared at her for hours, right? Abrial smiled crookedly, studying the line of Finley’s nose, the smooth skin of her long, elegant neck, her moonlit curves draped with the thin blanket. The way that her chest rose and fell slowly in her sleep, and the way that her hair shone like gold in the light of the moon. It looked so soft, and so smooth, like a river of honey.
Abrial reached out and lifted a strand of it carefully with two fingers, twirling it. It was soft — soft as grass. She had the sudden urge to reach out and stick her whole hand into the golden-honey hair that lay spread over that cylindrical pillow, but Finley’s breath hitched. With her heart pounding in her ears, Abrial dropped the strand of soft honey hair and whirled around to face the other direction.
Behind her, two glittering hazel eyes blinked open, wide awake. After Abrial’s breath slowed as she fell back into sleep, a pale hand reached out to gently lift one of her inky-black, shining strands of hair, twirling it and entwining itself in the strands until it was wrapped in them like a honey skein candy is wrapped in threads of sugar. Only when the first strains of pink light leaked through the thin gap between tent flaps did the hand detangle itself and carefully let go.
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The night before the raid, Abrial and Finley gathered at the raid training hill with the rest of the regiment, which was made up of a few dozen strong and lithe magicians, both men and women, who were all quite intimidating to hang around even for Abrial, who could swing a sword faster than any of them.
On the hill where they had discussed the prison break-in plans and practiced blade fighting and horse riding formations morning and afternoon every day for the past two weeks, several long tables had been set up. Simple bowls of white noodles with chives in steaming savory soup had been set out for every regiment member. Lanterns emitting mellow yellow light drifted through the air above, lighting up the bowls and tables pleasantly.
Puzzledly, Abrial slid onto a cushion at the end of a table, and Finley followed to take the cushion next to her.
“The raid is tomorrow, isn’t it?” Abrial asked, perplexed.
“Yes, it is. We will be leaving at first light on horseback.”
“But…if the raid’s tomorrow, why are we having a feast tonight?”
“Because Niklas is a damn alcoholic. What else could this be for? He always makes us drink before a raid as an excuse to drink himself silly, that pig,” grumbled a dark voice. It was the woman sitting next to Abrial, who had extremely well-toned and intimidating muscles, long dark hair, and strange tattoos covering her arms.
Abrial had seen this woman a few times at raid training, but had never spoken to her, as she always remained silent and serious, training until her tattoos shone slick with sweat and occasionally barking at people who got in her way. An intimidating woman, indeed.
“Hullo!” Abrial greeted enthusiastically. This was definitely a lady she wanted to be friends with. “I’m Abrial, and this is Finley. We just joined the regiment two weeks ago. What’s your name?”
The woman scowled, crossing her arms and looking away. “None of your business.”
“...O-Oh,” Abrial blinked. Well, that was a response she’d never gotten to that question before. She was reminded oddly of Ya Syaoran, with his long, shining black ponytail, his tall, lithe build, and his disdain and grumpiness towards anyone who spoke to him besides Wu Dafu. She decided not to bother this woman anymore. If she really was like Ya Syaoran, it wouldn’t be any use to keep talking anyways!
Like the sun materializing from behind dull clouds, Sir Niklas appeared at the head of the tables, his arms raised and a jolly look gleaming in his lightning-blue eyes.
“Raiders one, raiders all!” he boomed. What an introduction; it seemed he was always coming up with some funny new way to address people. “Tomorrow at first light, we, the raiding regiment of the famed Wei camp of the north, will set out to raid the Hwayeom Prison in the East and free our fellow magicians who have been detained and tortured there for many years, as well as to collect and bury any of our fellow magicians’ bodies which have been cast aside by those maggots, the imperial prison guards. You have all been training so diligently and passionately for this event, and so, I now ask you all to enjoy this pre-celebratory feast. Please drink, be merry, and eat your fill! But not too much, you don’t want indigestion during a raid. Trust me, it’s hellish. I have asked our dear Leader Bi Gho to enchant our wine so that no one will become overly drunk — just drunk is quite enough, am I right, ahaha? — and no one will experience the alcohol’s effects tomorrow. Mind you, it was a difficult journey involving begging, pleading, and even weeping tears of sorrow to convince her to do this, so please drink as much as you please and appreciate the alcohol like a true raider should! The banquet will end in a few hours so that all of us have enough time to sleep before sunrise, hehe. For now, let your spirits soar high! Let the feast begin!”
The sound of booming laughter and conversation gradually filled the atmosphere atop that hill, and Abrial dug into her bowl of noodles. She sighed in pleasure as she often did, reminiscing on how delicious the food was since she’d come to the Wei camp.
A sudden image of a steaming pot of chili oil broth with cloud-soft white dumplings and green scallions floating through the savory red broth flashed through her mind’s eye. Even if the Wei camp food was good, Shin Minyeo’s soup had been the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted, hadn’t it?
The noodles in her mouth suddenly tasted bitter.
I don’t need to be thinking about things like that right now! I’m going on a raid tomorrow! I get to fight guards with my daggers and free magicians tomorrow! I can’t be sad or in a mood for that!
Swiftly, her hand shot out to grab the neck of a bottle of wine and bring it to her lips. But before it could touch her mouth, the bottle froze.
Finley had snatched her wrist, her long, slender fingers curled tightly around Abrial’s skin and holding the bottle back from her lips.
“No drinking,” she said sternly. “Your tolerance is low, and you just healed recently. It would harm your health to drink.”
Normally, Abrial would have scrunched up her nose sourly and pushed the bottle forward to drink anyways. She just wanted to get rid of that bitter feeling in her heart with some searing sourness! But this time, her skin prickled hotly where Finley held it tightly, and the feeling shivered down to Abrial’s stomach. Jerkily, she put the bottle down and withdrew her hand, hiding it in her lap.
“Okay, okay, fine. I won’t drink wine, I’ll just drink water!”
She swept up a water vessel instead, poured her wooden cup full, and chugged it down in two gulps. Then she repeated that twice, until the feeling of water sloshing in her stomach drowned out the bitterness in her mouth.
“You’re a funny one,” grumbled a low voice. It was that woman again, the scary one with the muscles and tattoos who was like Ya Syaoran, only older, stronger, and scarier.
“Me? Thanks!” Abrial responded cheerfully. She was never good at either telling or caring whether someone was insulting or complimenting her, so as long as something sounded remotely like a compliment, she’d respond happily. Abrial pointed at the woman’s strange tattoos that snaked up her left arm. They depicted many things, all swirling together: peculiar birds, stars, flowers, dragons, all sorts of things. “I like those. Why d’you have them?”
Apparently, the woman had relaxed a bit after drinking a full vessel of liquor, so she was willing to answer now. She rested her arm on the table in a casual manner that actually came off as highly intimidating, since she also displayed all of her extremely toned muscles along with her dark tattoos in the process.
“Got these while traveling. A different tattoo for every place I’ve visited.”
“Whoa! That’s so cool! You have so many tattoos, I bet you’ve visited a hundred places!”
“More than that. I used to be a roaming blade fighter. Ah, those were the days…” The woman’s intimidatingly dark eyes gleamed with a sudden wistfulness. “I used to travel all over Gongkua, town to town, catching thieves and fighting beasts that terrorized people. I even made it to Geum for a while, and Roatia, too, though there wasn’t much to see there…”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Geum? Roatia?” Abrial leaned forward excitedly. “No way! You’ve been everywhere! I want to do that!”
“Not everywhere.” The woman shook her head, smiling grimly. “Since I’ve settled down now and had a son, the most traveling I do is with the regiment around Gongkua. But I can tell you, from the days I spent roaming…This world is a much more vast place than most people imagine.”
“What d’you mean? Is Geum really big or something? Does Roatia stretch really far?”
The woman shook her head. She leaned forward, cheeks slightly flushed from all that liquor, but still looking serious and…mostly sober.
“Have you heard of the ocean?”
“I think so…maybe a couple times? Isn’t it just a big, salty lake outside Gongkua?”
“Hmph. Everyone here gets taught the same thing. Those Gongkuan historians really like to play it down as a lake so that Gongkua seems more almighty and magnificent. Pah! Stupid historians. They’re making people miss out. The ocean is a vast body of salty water surrounding Gongkua, Geum, and Roatia. Much more vast than some lake! It stretches as far as the eye can see, and no one knows where it ends. For all we know, it might go on forever.”
Abrial’s jaw went slack. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
“No one knows where it ends? Forever? You can’t be serious! They have to know! How could mapmakers make maps otherwise?”
“Pfft! They can just pretend like it doesn’t exist and make maps without it. I’ve seen the ocean. It’s wide as the earth and sparkles like diamonds. And the kingdoms further north and south than Roatia and Gongkua…I’ve never met a Gongkuan who knows anything about them. Tell me, have you heard of the Moto kingdom? Or the Tallahielo empire?”
Abrial racked her mind, but those names didn’t ring any bells at all. “...No?”
“Pah! See? There are so many kingdoms and empires out there that the people of Gongkua don’t know about and don’t give a shit about! Mostly because they don’t know, heh. Ever since that damn bastard Emperor took the throne four hundred years ago, Gongkua, Geum, and Roatia have been closed off to the outer world. We don’t trade, and we don’t communicate. Anyone outside our kingdoms doesn’t dare to come in, because most of them are magicians and any magician who enters this place’ll be hunted down like cattle once they’re found out. Though he’s stupid and a bigot, the Emperor’s powerful, after all. No one here leaves, since we have this Great Immortal Emperor who ensures Gongkua’s prosperity, so why would we need to explore other, less prosperous places? Pfft! The Emperor has truly made Gongkua an empire of stupidity. First, the vast majority believe this “all magicians are evil” shit, and then no one cares to explore and leave the empire anymore. What a bunch of idiot wimps!”
The scary tattooed woman was clearly very drunk by now, her cup sloshing as she waved her arms around and spat passionately. As she spoke, Abrial’s eyes began to sparkle. The world seemed to expand around her and fly beneath her feet as her consciousness zoomed out, picturing vast, salty bodies of water no one could see the end of even if they sailed for months, conjuring other kingdoms and cities lit in the distance outside of the mountains surrounding Gongkua…
She had thought the world was vast when she left her house on a gust of roaring wind and saw the hills for the first time.
But really…
The world is so much bigger than I imagined!
Her eyes sparkled even brighter, a hungriness materializing in them.
If the world was really so vast she couldn’t picture it in her mind, she wanted to explore all the way to its end and back.
Something nudged her gently in the ribs. Abrial came to; she had been zoning out until Finley softly elbowed her. The tattooed scary woman was still ranting and swinging her now-empty cup.
“Hey, what’s your name?” Abrial asked for the second time. Now that she was drunk, maybe she’d answer.
The lady grinned crookedly. “It’s Ya Nam-gil, ha! You knew to wait till I was drunk to ask! Good for you. But you know my son, don’t you? He talks about you.”
Abrial grinned back at the woman, then stopped abruptly. Her expression turned puzzled.
“Your son? Who’s your son?”
“Ya Syaoran,” Finley offered, her tone somewhat stiff. “This is Ya Nam-gil, Ya Syaoran’s mother.”
Abrial slapped her forehead, nearly giving herself a red handprint there. Of course this was Ya Syaoran’s mother! How could their attitudes, appearances, and manners of speaking (when not drunk, that is) be so similar only for them to be not related?!
But something…weird struck her suddenly.
“Wait…Ya Syaoran talks about me? That can’t be right! He hates me!”
Ya Namgil snorted. She leaned back on her hands, which inadvertently made her muscles flex intimidatingly and impressively. “That boy always acts like he hates people. Probably got it from me, heh…Definitely not from his father, his father’s meek as a mouse. But it is true that he never says anything good about you…” Ya Nam-gil put a hand to her chin, suddenly thoughtful. “He’s said Han Abrial Chae-young is nosy, a reckless show-off, doesn’t know how to stop talking, thinks she’s all that, is full of bullshit, talks everyone’s ear off, and only knows how the swing daggers around, among other things. You know, maybe he actually does hate you. He doesn’t talk to me about people unless he feels particularly strongly about them.”
Abrial’s stomach did a nauseous lurch. “Particularly strongly”? Couldn’t that be positive or negative? So, did he hate her to the bone? Or worse…was there a possibility that…like Wu Dafu, Ya Syaoran was nursing…feelings for her?
Seeing her expression, Ya Nam-gil smiled crookedly again, leaning on the table with her chin on her fist in a lazy manner.
“It’s not what you’re thinking. He’s already got his eyes on someone else, I can tell. I can’t talk for that boy, but if I had to guess, it’s hate he feels for you. Or strong resentment. Nothing good, heh. That boy holds the hardest, deepest grudges.”
Abrial gulped. Having Ya Syaoran’s mother confirm that he really hated her to the bone wasn’t much better than him having feelings for her.
“Well…” she said weakly. “All right. If he hates me, there’s, um…nothing I can do about it, right?”
“That’s the spirit!” A large hand clamped down on Abrial’s shoulder.
Ah, the great Sir Niklas had arrived to this section of tables. And it sounded like he was very, very drunk. As in, about-to-fall-over-and-black-out drunk. Had Bi Gho really enchanted the wine to prevent extreme drunkenness? Just how much had he drank, then? So much for “just drunk is quite enough”!
The handsome-jawed man grinned down at Abrial, his teeth gleaming and his face flushed red. He shoved a bottle of wine beneath her nose and swirled it.
“Abrial, you’re not drunk? Impossible! I remember — hic — how much you drank at the last banquet. Come, drink some! Hic!”
Abrial scowled at Niklas, smelling the sweet smell of plum wine that wafted from the bottle.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a cool and mighty leader or something? You even get this drunk the night before a raid? That’s just plain irresponsible.”
Niklas boomed with a deep laugh, pushing the bottle’s mouth towards her.
“Everyone needs to relax before a mission! And — ” his face suddenly became serious, some soberness returning to it “ — you have no idea how hard it was to convince Leader Bi Gho to enchant this wine to have no lasting effects! Don’t waste my hard work, Warrior Abrial!”
Abrial was about to snatch the wine bottle away from him just to get it out of her face, but before she could, someone else swiped it from beneath her nose.
Finley’s face was expressionless, but her fingers clutched the bottle so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“Sir Niklas,” she said slowly. Her voice wasn’t overly cold, but there was a quality to it that made everyone listening shiver. “Abrial has just recently recovered from the Day of Agony two weeks ago. She will not drink if she is to go on the raid tomorrow.”
As soon as Finley began speaking, a mischievously crooked grin spread across Niklas’s face. He leaned on the table on his elbows, giggling like a little girl.
“Finely Fellner, taking up the role of great protector once again! What an admirable partnership! Though by appearance, I would have thought Abrial would be the protector, as she looks so much fiercer at first glance. But up close, I see that’s not the case — your expression and protective instincts are clearly much fiercer than Abrial’s! Count yourself lucky, Abrial — it’s hard to find a lover as fierce as this one — ”
Before either Niklas could finish his sentence or Abrial could punch him in the crotch, Niklas was dragged away by a very sober and very apologetic Instructor Wei, who appeared out of nowhere.
“Please excuse him,” Instructor Wei apologized, looking utterly embarrassed. “He has had far too much to drink and is speaking whatever odd thoughts come to mind. He does that normally as well, but please excuse him this time — Niklas, come with me. This is entirely inappropriate.”
Niklas pouted, playfully resisting as Instructor Wei dragged him back to the head of the tables.
“Guanggg-eeeerrr, hic, I was just teasing them! But myyy, you’re acting so aggressive tonight! Don’t leave marks on my wrists, hmm? Ah, I’m being dragged away by an angry, handsome man, ahhhh…”
Back at the end of the table, Abrial choked. Finley froze. Ya Nam-gil continued to eat her noodles drunkenly and totally unphased.
At last, Abrial spoke, both eyes wide as glass marbles and one eye twitching uncontrollably..
“What…the fuck did I just hear?”
Finley made an unintelligible sound in response, her face pale as a ghost’s. Ya Nam-gil looked up from her bowl, chewing somewhat grumpily and giving them a sideways look.
“Have you really never heard him speak like that to Wei Guang before? That’s how they converse. Think of it as Master Wei Guang being the dogkeeper, and Niklas being the dog. Really, Niklas will speak in his sappy, flirtatious way to anyone, man or woman, it doesn’t matter to him. It’s all the same. As long as it moves, he’ll try to woo it.”
Abrial swallowed, eyes wide. The image of Niklas whining and pouting after Instructor Wei was burned into her brain. She had the sudden urge to scrub her eyes with an iron sponge.
Unfortunately, there were no iron sponges around. So instead, she picked up her bowl and slurped down all her noodles in one gulp, then went to ladle more from the pot, drowning her poor traumatized mind in salt.