“There was a long line,” breathed Zech, who was pale, shivering and exhausted. “But it paid off in the end!”
He slapped four silver half-lucets atop the table for his wide-eyed friends to behold, though one of these was quickly snatched up by his father in passing.
“Hey! I worked hard for that.”
“And you’ll work hard for the next one you give me.” Humming a happy tune, Mr. Lawson returned behind the bar area and began to polish some metal flagons.
“You guys actually made four silver half-lucets in one day?” said Woods, crunching on some fried pork rinds that Mrs. Lawson had brought over for the group to share. “Heavens, I might just sign up myself.”
“Four each,” said Jaden, chest puffed out with pride. “We’ve decided to go on at least three hunts a month. Heh, if things keep going this way then we’ll be able to buy our own homes by the end of the year.”
“You’ll be leaving the orphanage?” said Woods, deflating a bit at the news.
“It’s that, or get kicked out. I’d rather leave with some dignity.”
“You traitor! I thought we were going to be beggars together.”
“Way to aim high, Woods.”
The hefty boy quieted down and continued to munch on the pork rinds, more withdrawn than usual as he stared at their oily, textured surfaces.
“I’ll be fifteen next month,” said Helen, brown eyes bright with thought. “If I sign up as a frontiersman, can I join your team?”
“How else are we going to catch any more deer?” said Jaden without any shame. “We’ll be counting on you.” Giving her a proud look, he added, “And I talked with Mother May. She said we can stay a while longer if we help out with food, clothes and blankets, things like that. Thirty-something kids is a lot to deal with for one lady, after all.”
Helen blushed from happiness, her shoulders sagging from unspoken relief. She had been worrying about what occupation to take up in the future, for as was the case with the others that lived at the orphanage she only had a finite amount of time before she would be forced to leave in order to make room for younger children with nowhere to go.
“Can you guys come with me when I register? I wouldn’t know how to go about it.”
Jaden nodded, flicking a coin at Zech with his thumb and proclaiming, “Even though we didn’t ask you guys to come, it wasn’t so annoying to have you all around. Even though Anne almost ruined everything.”
“What he’s trying to say,” interjected Zech, “is that dinner’s on us tonight. Don’t forget, Jaden, that Anne was the one who spotted the buck in the first place.” With that, he ran into the kitchens to tell his mother to prepare some food.
The other boy shrugged and then took a seat beside Corrie, nudging him with his hip to make a bit of room.
“I want potatoes, please,” called Emely, “with butter and milk!”
Having recovered from his momentary dejection, Woods perked up at the thought of the coming meal and yelled, “I want a bit of everything!”
“Phht, you think Mrs. Lawson didn’t know that already?”
“Bugger off, Jaden. You already said you’d buy us dinner, so you can’t take it back.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
As all of the others began to put in requests, Alistar stood up from his seat and excused himself from the table.
“You’re leaving?” said Anice, who gave him a disbelieving look. “But we never get to eat with everyone like this.”
“I’m not feeling too well,” he said, trying to be as convincing as possible. “You guys enjoy it without me. There’ll be other times.”
Reluctant as the others were to see him leave, they respected his decision and quietly watched him go. Rather than return home, he hurried to the collegia’s library and immediately began to look into the founder of Civus, the woman that the man in the cave had been so distraught over.
Several hours later, he sat at a corner desk within the common area of the library, staring down at some notes he had compiled after rifling through several weathered books. His head rested in his hands, a state of shock seeping into him as he looked over all he’d written with an unblinking expression.
It can’t be.
Dalia Silver had been a famous companion of Aglan of Lahn, and the matriarch of one of the thousands of clans that had taken part in the Inverted Wars on the side of humanity. Like many other of her more powerful contemporaries, she had founded her own kingdom in the aftermath of the conflict, marrying another famous person of her time, a renowned arch magus named Tephon Coldwater that had been known for his unrivalled proficiency in water magics. It was difficult to distinguish whether much of the information on her was a result of truthful documentation or a product of myth and legend, though if what he’d read was to be believed then she had possessed such skill in the arts of healing that, at the time of her prime, there was no wound short of death itself that the woman hadn’t been able to heal. Thinking on it, Alistar had these two to thank for his affinities with both respective arts.
Among Aglain’s other companions was the founder of the Kingdom of Loyarre, a man named Kalven Sunfire whose name had been recorded in almost every major battle of the time, someone that had been considered by many historians as the closest friend of Aglain himself. As soon as he read this man’s name, Alistar felt a shiver run down his spine as he recalled that this was the individual that had been mentioned back in the cave, the so-called ‘best friend’ of the unknown madman.
Coincidences like this can’t exist, can they?
Based on the context of the disturbing exchange that he’d had with that unfortunate soul, all arrows of logic pointed in one direction in regards to his identity. This, of course, was beyond impossible, though no matter how Alistar looked at it he could only have been Aglain himself. Naked, emaciated and insane; the person he’d met had painted a stark contrast to the valiant warrior that was known throughout the entire continent as one of mankind’s greatest heroes, and also one of its most unforgivable sinners.
Looking around the large, candlelit hall to see if anyone was watching him, Alistar folded up his notes and returned the books that he’d referenced to their proper places. Afterwards, he left the collegia while trying to control his breathing, the hairs on all of his limbs standing up like soldiers at attention when faced with a superior officer.
Alistar sprinted home with a pounding heart, going directly to his new room where he holed up for the rest of the night.
It can’t be him, he thought as he stared down at his notes a few hours later, having sat at his desk in a daze since the moment he’d returned. That was over five hundred years ago. Nobody can live that long. Despite thinking this, he had witnessed firsthand that the man from the cave, for some reason or other, seemed incapable of dying. After all, he’d sensed the man’s life signal disappear after he’d snapped his own neck, only to have a bizarre conversation with him in the minutes that followed.
He’d called Lucian a devil. He’d also seemed to harbour deep hatred for Saint Limnin, the savior of the human race and the founder of the Lucian Faith. Was…was that really him? How can this be?
Something that the man had said continued to play through his mind as if a repetitive parrot were perched upon his shoulder. You go back to Limnin and you tell him, you tell him that I’m still here. That I’m still waiting…that I still haven’t forgotten…
Alistar felt as if he had stumbled upon a dark and terrible secret, the nature of which he was completely blind to. If, by some set of drastic circumstances, that man had indeed been Aglain of Lahn, Aglain the Betrayer, the hero of humanity, then how could he have possibly wound up in such a sorry state? An anxious shiver raked his body as he recalled one of his earliest lessons with Mr. Herst, of how the man had described the final battle of the Inverted Wars as having taken place within this very region. Contrary to what was recorded in history, Mr. Herst had said that three Drunish armies had fought a last stand within the Tall Mountains in an effort to buy time for their people to flee westward. It was within the very valleys that surrounded Distan that the Flight of the Abdales, the tragic migration of the remaining Drunish peoples to the western reaches of the continent, had begun.