“I swear it was just annoying hunting beside mages so weak.”

Barnabas shook his head in sympathy. “Mine weren’t so bad. It must’ve been tough, though, Forlorn.”

“I can’t say it was all bad though,” Forlorn continued. “At least they were respectful. I guess the world is still the same as it’s always been out there. The weak bow to the strong.”

“Careful, brother,” Fin said. “That’s the thought path that breeds tyrants.”

“Priests are tyrants in their own way.”

Beside Barnabas, Jason shook his head.

Seth and his brothers were seated in their room, congregated on Barnabas’ and Forlorn’s bed that were placed next to each other.

The room was not the same as the one they’d occupied before their pastoral year. It was new, situated in an entirely different part of the seminary. Its walls and floor were the same midnight black as all the buildings of the seminary. However, it had less beds than the previous, just enough for each of them to have one, and it was more spacious.

Forlorn had just finished telling a story of how he had been posted as part of a government’s mage group. It had consisted of ten mages who had all been of iron authority. However, in his story there were levels to Iron. According to him, they were all subpar. Their combat skills were lacking, and they used their magesc skills poorly. He had nothing but mockery for their abilities.

Barnabas’ experience was a tad opposite from Forlorn’s. At least, he made it seem that way. He spoke amiably of the team he had been in, which wasn’t necessarily a team. Apparently, he’d been posted to a village that lacked mages, somewhere in an uncivilized area. He claimed it was somewhere in the coast of the African continent and his deep tan was a supporting evidence of time spent under the focus of the sun.

During his pastoral year he spent time working alongside a brother and sister who were being trained by his handler. He hunted down reia beasts with them and made of them friends everyone in the room knew would not last.

Fin took over from Forlorn’s story. He picked up as Forlorn’s apparent disgust at the weak died down and spoke of a land that venerated priests. In his tale he served in a land ruled by a priest who was gold; a priest who was generous and kind. His description of the man stood in opposition of what they knew of the Reverends. Then again, Jim hadn’t been like the Reverends of the seminary.

Was there something about living in the seminary that devolved them into cruelty?

As Fin told of his experience, Timi played with a conspicuous length of rope beside Seth. His focus on it was so strong he didn’t seem to be listening to Fin’s story.

Seth tapped him on the shoulder, drawing his attention from the rope. When his brother looked at him he found the rope folded in what he assumed was supposed to be a knot.

What are you doing? He signed. The action was familiar. It sent a ripple of nostalgia through him.

Timi raised the horrible knot and signed with a single hand. It was a broken sign, much like writing in shorthand or codes. Seth deciphered its meaning easily.

Rumor has it that if I can learn knots, I can bend worlds.

That was an odd rumor. Still, there was a fun to knots.

Seth hadn’t tied a knot since the extinction of the crew that had taught it to him but felt his hands still remembered how it was done; how it felt.

I know how to make knots, he signed. I could teach you.

Timi’s nod was so vigorous he looked more of an excited beast than an actual person. His pastoral year had done wonders for him. When he’d come to the seminary he was no more than a bundle of fat. Then time had shaved down his fat, and while he had grown into a massive size, he still had signs of fat. Now, he was a mass of muscles even bigger than before his pastoral year. Whatever he’d fed on or done for the past year, it had done far more good to him than the years before. Fin still remained taller than him by a few inches but the very girth of him was enough to terrorize anyone. Fin included.

Timi held out his rope and Seth took it from him.

Surprisingly, his fingers moved through the loops and the twirls easily, like a master at his craft. The entire knot fell to his will in moments. It made him wonder. If he still knew how to unravel knots, perhaps he would still know how to play instruments. He was about to teach his brother a simple knot when Forlorn interrupted him.

“A piece of advise, Seth,” he said with all the condescension Seth remembered him for. “Learn to pay attention when your betters are speaking. You may learn a thing or two from it.”

Seth grit his teeth. His lips thinned into an impassive line. A few words fleeted across his mind and his minds suggested a few more. Still, he held his tongue. There was much in the entire statement to unravel, but only one was true.

Timi, however, had no such inclination.

Slowly, like a rumbling mountain, he rose from the bed he was seated upon. His size made the very action akin to a demon reaching up to pierce the heavens. Despite his strength and bravado, Forlorn flinched at the very size of their brother.

Seth almost laughed. But violence here would not save him. This was his life amongst his brothers now. He would have to learn to live with it.

Raising a hand, he touched Timi’s arm, persuading the boy to peace. When Timi turned to him, he signed with the rope still in his hands.

Leave him be.

A frown marred Timi’s face but his brother listened. When he sat back down, it was with another rumble. His size was becoming too glaring.

“I see you still need someone to fight your battles for you, brother,” Forlorn mocked.

“And you still run your mouth without control,” Barnabas shot back to everyone’s surprise.

Forlorn turned to him, mouth agape, dazed at the verbal attack.

“You know, Forlorn,” Jason said from beside Barnabas. “Maybe you’ve gone a bit too far.”

“I’ve done nothing new,” Forlorn shot back. “And it’s not my fault our brother’s weak.”

“Maybe. But what does it tell you if Barnabas is the one telling you to shut up?”

Seth kept his silence and turned his attention to teaching Timi the easiest knot he could remember.

After all, what voice did an Iron have amongst Silvers.

…………………………………..

Seth sat out in the cold knight, staring at a star filled sky. The moon was a gentle crescent whose light paled in the combined glory of its companions who littered the world in a union of countless twinkles. They were children with a hyperactivity that overshadowed their tired mother.

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Something about it was calming to look at. It almost drowned away his disappointment in himself. Almost.

In a single year his brothers had returned as Silvers where he still remained Iron. He didn’t think he was weak, though. He’d fought enough reia beasts and knew his skills well enough to know this. He was an Iron who could hold his own against Silver rank beasts to an extent. However, he and his brothers had received the same training. They had stood on the same plane once. But now they were an authority above him. He had no backing to mouth off against Forlorn anymore.

Behind him his brohers slumbered peacefully in their room. A few things had changed about them, but none strong enough to make them different. Jason still seemed a leader that would not be accepted. Timi was still a quiet threat commanded only by his words. Fin remained the soldier who’d broken rank, though he seemed more like a leader now. Forlorn was still an ass, even if a more powerful one.

If there was any real difference, it was in Barnabas. Whatever he’d done during his pastoral year had left him less prone to words. Even the stories he told seemed incomplete. Listening to him was like listening to a man reluctant to answer at an interrogation. He monopolized his words, paused incomplete sentences with a frown. Sometimes he discarded entire sentences before even beginning them.

But most glaring of all the changes was his veneration of Forlorn. Now he opposed his brother’s behaviors where he had once made excuses for them. Sometimes Seth sensed how it hurt him to do so, saw it from the reach of his senses when the boy thought no one was watching. It was in the tick to his jaw, the biting of his lips. It was in the discomfort that filled his face like a man doing something he wished he didn’t have to.

It was a change Barnabas didn’t seem to like.

Speak of the devil, one of his minds thought, and his senses picked Barnabas as he walked into his reach. In a fight, fifteen feet was as vast as an ocean, but in a normal world, in a mundane setting, it wasn’t very much.

Barnabas was beside him in mere moments.

“May I?” his brother asked.

Seth looked at the ground beside him covered in grass and soil and shrugged. Slowly, Barnabas lowered himself to it and rested his back against the same wall that supported Seth.

He stared at the sky too and said something Seth did not understand.

“Intle.”

The word was spoken softly. It carried with it a touch of reverence, like one lover to another. It was gentle and assuring. It was what the sky would say to a rainbow if it could speak.

Seth found he did not like its effect on him and chose not to ask its meaning.

“It means pretty,” Barnabas said, after a while. “It’s xhosa.”

“Xhosa?” Seth asked. Eyes closed to the world around him, he basked in the gentle night’s breeze.

“A language from Africa.”

Seth nodded once. The boy had spent a year in a different land with different cultures and different people. It would be weird if he had come back with nothing new.

“It means pretty,” Barnabas added.

In his senses Seth watched his brother stare at the sky a moment longer. His magenta eyes were somehow deeper and still stood dull in his eyes, but there was something about them now. A quiet acceptance of things. Barnabas almost seemed to have found peace in some chaos.

“What was your pastoral year like?” Barnabas asked after another while.

“Boring,” Seth answered.

Barnabas turned to him with a small smile. “Lying comes easily to you, doesn’t it?”

His voice was teasing, without a touch of judgement or mockery. If anything, his brother sounded amused. Comfortable.

Barnabas turned his attention back to the sky, still smiling peacefully. “At least it’s not as dark and deprecating as Forlorn’s. I apologize for his behavior.”

Seth made a sound that was neither acceptance nor rejection. His brother’s apology meant nothing to him.

“Don’t worry,” Barnabas chuckled. “I’m not about to tell you he’s really a good person. It took me a while to see it, though.” He sighed. “An entire year, actually. He really is horrible, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Seth answered and found himself smiling. “But he’s still our brother. He’s just the one I don’t like.”

“Something tells me you don’t like me, too.”

Seth shrugged. “You’re neither here nor there, really. All of you are.”

“Except Timilehin.”

Seth nodded. “Except Timilehin.”

They sat in silence again, staring at a sky that cared nothing for them. A sky that merely existed because it had no authority in the matter. It was its turn to be in control and so it was.

“Do you think I can change him?” Barnabas broke the silence again. “I think I can, but I’m old enough to know that’s my bias speaking.”

This time Seth looked at his brother through one open eye. There was something about his brother’s smile now. Something sad. Then he closed them.

Was he trying to make a decision?

“You’re the only good left of Forlorn, brother,” he said. “Whether you can change him shouldn’t be the question.”

“But he can’t continue like this.”

“Says who?”

“Says the truth.” Barnabas looked at him. “Says everyone more powerful than him out in the world. One day he’ll oppose someone who he can’t beat in a fight and I won’t ever see him again.”

“One day he’ll be an ordained priest of the seminary. His life after that will be spent opposing everyone not tied to the seminary. That is not a fate you can save him from, brother.”

“But I can try.”

“Maybe.”

They lulled into another silence and Seth was the one to break it.

“Why are you here, brother?”

Barnabas smiled awkwardly. “Would you believe me if I said it was to apologize for all the excuses I made for Forlorn when we were growing up?”

“No. You’ve changed brother, but you haven’t changed that much.”

Barnabas sighed. “I met someone from my past during my pastoral year.”

“And you think I’m the right person to be telling this.”

“I do.”

“And what of Forlonr? I know he’s still important to you.”

“For all my love for our brother, I will be the first to admit he is a manipulative person. Some secrets should not be shared with him.”

“And what makes this one such a secret?”

‘Because she was important to me when I was littler,” Barnabas answered with a forlorn look. “More so than Forlorn will ever be.”

“Even now?” Seth asked, eyes still closed.

‘Even now.”

In his senses, Barnabas cleaned a tear from a sad face. He found himself wondering how the boy looked in this moment under the pale light of countless stars.

Do we like our brother? A mind asked. Are we now realizing we like like our brother?

Maybe that’s why Forlorn’s never liked us, another thought. Maybe it’s because he always knew when we didn’t. Should we do something about it?

Like what?

Maybe we should confess.

Seth sighed. “We do not like our brother.”

“I know,” Barnabas nodded. “None of you do. But you can try.”

His minds laughed. What’s so wrong in liking our brother in that way.

“Are you serious?” Seth asked. “That’s like asking what’s so wrong in liking a girl.”

“Seth,” Barnabas said gently. “Are you talking to yourself again?”

Seth silenced his brother with a raised finger as a mind asked: What exactly does that mean?

“There’s nothing wrong with any of them,” he answered. “They are merely preferences. Like liking beans but not rice. Liking one does not making liking the other bad, it just means the other isn’t liked.”

Barnabas’ chuckle beside him made Seth look at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Barnabas answered, yet his chuckles did not seize. “It’s just… you haven’t changed. That’s all.”

“Did you expect I would?”

“Not really. But it’s still refreshing to find that you haven’t. If only he could—”

“This girl from your past,” Seth interrupted him. “What happened when you met her?”

“She wasn’t pleased with who I had become.”

“Why? Did you tell her about Forlorn?”

Barnabas shook his head.

“So she didn’t care for who you loved. Then what exactly didn’t she like?”

“Everything?” Barnabas shrugged. “I used to be more confident around her. Precise. Decisive.”

Seth kept his eyes closed, hid his surprise. Barnabas only displayed any of those qualities when he had a sword in his hand. In the absence of a sword he was none of them.

“So you’re trying to be better now, is that it?” he asked.

“Maybe. But I can’t be that and still love Forlorn for who he is.”

“And her?”

“What about her?”

“Are you sure you’re not just changing because of her? It wouldn’t be very surprising.”

Look who’s gone guru on us, one of his minds laughed. As if we’re not still hung up on Natalie.

We think he can only brag because we didn’t run into her, another thought. Come to think of it, he never even asked of her for an entire year.

Come to think of it, he didn’t ask of his family either.

“You’re frowning,” Barnabas said. “You don’t approve of me keeping in touch with my past?”

Seth shook his head. “Not that. It’s just very loud in my head right now. You can elope with her after your ordination for all I care.”

A moment of awkward silence followed. It forced Seth to open his eyes and take in his brother. There was a look on Barnabas face that interpreted the silence in more ways than any words could. It made Seth remember Jim’s words.

No priest gets to go home and stay home.

“That’s what makes it a secret you can’t tell Forlorn,” he said. “Isn’t it.”

“I love him…” Barnabas voice broke, yet his smile remained. “I love him so much, despite it all…”

“But not as much as you loved her,” Seth finished for him. “Not as much as you still love her.”

Soon, his brother’s sadness broke through and tarnished his smile.

Seth did not open his eyes.

He kept them closed and basked in the midnight breeze. Silence was an eerie companion.

Beside him, quiet broken sobs pricked the silence. He watched a brother he had never really cared much for weep within his senses. And he allowed him.

He let his brother mourn a decision that would not live long.