Kya always felt uncomfortable saying she was a veteran.
Was she even a veteran if she was still in? Was she even still in if she was in another world? She wasn’t sure, but either way didn’t like to admit it. She’d gone through basic, AIT, and had been with her first unit for a little under a year. But she’d never been deployed anywhere. She’d never faced combat, feared for her life, never been shot at unless she counted blanks from OPFOR during an FTX. Sure, she’d been screamed at by her drill sergeant. Been woken up at 0230 and had the absolute hell smoked out of her. She’d had twenty-hour days, been sleep deprived, stood at attention or parade rest or at ease or just plain stood for hours at a time. She knew cadences, she knew how to march in time, who to salute, the honorifics for different ranks, and she was intimately familiar with the wear and appearance of the army uniform. But still, never, not once, had she been truly forced to confront a life-or-death situation.
During her AIT, they’d done community service as part of an outreach program. Some units went to food drives, some cleaned roads and picked up trash. Hers had gone to a veteran's club nearby and helped out the older and disabled veterans there. The entire experience had been odd for Kya. On the one hand, she had already felt some detachment from her peers, being a couple years older than most of them, but a lot of them laughed and joked around during their visits. This wasn’t terrible, and a lot of the veterans they were helping seemed to appreciate the jokes and smiles of the young soldiers. But some didn’t. Some had far away looks and seemed almost pained by the laughter they heard.
Joined by a few of her battle buddies, Kya sat down with a group of the older veterans, three in wheelchairs and all with hats reading “Vietnam Veteran”. Kya didn’t try to tell jokes. She didn’t smile or tell an amusing story. Rather, she asked them for their stories. After exchanging looks, one of them whose sunken eyes seemed permanently affixed to something far off in the distance, and whose wrinkled skin hung loosely around his face while being framed by a white beard that glinted like freshly fallen snow, began to speak.
And Kya listened. Without interruption, without being forced to stop or being questioned partway through, the old man told of his experiences in Vietnam. Told of the hell he had gone through, and that he continues to go through. Kya listened, her battles listened, the other veterans listened. Though they were scheduled to leave an hour earlier, there was no one in that building, especially not her drill sergeant, who would have told these men to stop talking, so on they went. One after another around the circle. Sometimes they stopped at the ends of the stories, sometimes when they couldn’t or wouldn’t say any more.
When finally, the last was done detailing just a portion of his experiences, his voice catching in his throat and his ragged breathing coming in muffles and subdued gasps, Kya watched quietly her drill sergeant went over to the man and knelt down. Removing his brown round and speaking to him in a low steady voice while clasping him on the shoulder, most of what he said went unheard by all except the elder and those closest to him. But the one part she did catch was the one part she’ll never forget.
“... and I just wanted to say, from myself and from my soldiers. From our brothers and sisters. From our country and our creed, thank you, gentlemen, for your service and for the path you paved.”
And with quietly dignified tears dipping in and out of the wrinkles on his face, the last veteran who spoke said back in a voice now horse from use “The greatest thanks you could ever give was simply to listen. To remember.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Archie, despite being a self-proclaimed three centuries old, was still just as spry as an elf half his age.
Kya didn’t know if that said more about Archie, or the absolute absurdity of the world in which she now found herself. Sure, his movements weren’t as smooth as a man in the prime of his youth, and there was a bit of a shuffle to his walk, but there wasn’t any hesitation or weakness. He didn’t struggle to climb the steep spiral staircase to the second floor of the alchemy shop, nor did he have any difficulty lighting the small wood burning furnace in the corner.
In short order, he had settled himself into a plush armchair next to the merrily crackling flames as a comfortable warmth suffused the room.
Taking out a small pipe, and lighting it as well, Archie took several small pulls until he was sure the flame was sufficient before finally gesturing to the smaller chair across from him. “Come, sit. If I’m to tell a story, it’ll be done comfortably or not at all.”
Settling herself in the chair, and refusing the offered pipe, Kya sat with rapt attention as Archie began to talk in a lower voice than he had used before. .
“It was at least a century ago, a century and some change if I remember correctly. Just a few miles south of here in the rose forest in fact…”
~ ~ ~
Archie heaved, struggling for breath as he rested for just a moment against a tree. “It’s not supposed to be like this!” he thought frantically, head peeking around the thick trunk at the bodies littering the forest floor, rosy red leaves above matched by the now crimson earth as vitality rapidly fled the soldiers. The setting suns casting the entire forest into an eerie landscape of cold pooling shadows and brilliant shafts of warm light.
He’d been a user for some seventy years at this point and wasn’t new to any of this by any remote definition of the word. He’d seen border disputes, minor skirmishes, and even the three years' war when Loterre had all but annexed the Nioa islands.
Archie had never really been a part of the military, never been through training and never taken the time to establish a real foundation for his class, but he made health potions of a respectable quality at the 1 and even 2-Star level, and any army worth their salt would welcome the presence of an alchemist. So with the army he went, traveling where they did and experiencing much of what they experienced as well.
Most of the time, they were just smaller scale operations. Most of the time, most of the people weren’t actually involved in the conflicts that went on. Sure the infantrymen deployed to the fields, earth, war, and death users alike would storm out from their camp to execute whatever raid or mission they’d been tasked with. But the knowledge users? Peace and life users? The crafters, logisticians, and merchants? They were left behind to their own tasks, far removed from the dangers of front-line fighters.
Most of the time.
This time was different, oh gods, it was different.
Archie had heard the shouts in the street, read the posters that had been put up in the taverns all around the cities and camps. This wasn’t some minor conflict, but a war for survival. A noble war of justice and glory. But peeking out again, Archie was horrified by what he saw. No justice. No glory. Just… pain.
Taking faltering steps out from his tree, arms tired from lugging around the dense six-foot metal rod all non-earth users were required to carry, Archie hurried over to the soldier he could see with signs of life. The active battlefield had moved away from the area slightly, and he could hear the sounds of war only a hundred meters away, causing his already unsteady and panicked steps to fumble and stagger all the more as he sprinted, falling to the ground in skidding stop at the soldier's side.
He’d clearly been at the receiving end of both a spatial and temporal attack; a perfectly circular hole about the diameter of three of Archie’s fingers had simply been removed from existence out of the man's upper abdomen. More than that, his entire right arm looked almost mummified, as the sleeve of his uniform had crumbled to dust and his arm had aged independently from the rest of his body.
These types of wounds had long since lost their visceral effect on archie, being an alchemist and healer around the army for several decades and built up his tolerance for what often revolted others, but as he quickly looked up and around at the forest of blood and bodies, he felt the bile attempt to rise up in his throat.
Hands shaking as he fought to suppress those feelings, he muttered out loud the old mantra his master had taught him in the distant past “Focus on the problem in front of you, not those ahead of you.” Taking out several small vials and a small saw-like tool, he placed them down neatly on a towel he’d placed on the forest floor. It was matted and dirty, but cleaner than the dirt and gore so it was better than nothing.
He started to work quickly, flinching every few seconds at the sound of explosions and screams that were all too close by, and he kept the metal rod close at hand just in case.
He started by pouring a clear teal liquid on his own hands from the first bottle, he then immediately spread half the health potion directly onto the gap of bone and flesh, then putting the other half down the man's throat. Though he was unconscious, the soldier still swallowed the red liquid with an eagerness that told Archie his body at least recognized what it was. Watching for a count of five, moving on the moment he saw the bone start to sedately grow back, with flesh following a second after. It wouldn’t even be close to a perfect heal, not after a single potion no matter how good, but sealing the organs and skin would give a better chance at preserving his life.
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Then, Archie turned to the arm. Luckily, the aged marks weren’t all the way up to the shoulder, stopping about midway up the bicep. Frozen with indecision for a couple of seconds, he ultimately decided that the arm, while horrific, wasn’t life threatening at least in the short term, and could wait until… until…
The soldier heaved a coughing breath, blood and bile coating his lips, before falling completely still. The wound must have hit the lower left lung, damaging it more than he’d first thought. Now he…
Forcing his mind away, forcing his body to move and his face to stop scrunching, Archie couldn’t help uttering curse after curse against the world, and against the gods who fought over it. Quickly rolling up his towel and supplies in one hand, and grabbing the dense metal rod in the other, Archie stumbled away towards the next soldier he felt clinging to life.
Repeating the steps, he was about to begin treating the leg that had been crushed almost flat by an earth user, when the soldier's eyes fluttered open weakly, showing the gleaming purple amethyst eyes within. Archie didn’t care that she was a time user, and technically on the opposing side. He didn’t care for the propaganda the Loterran's were putting out. This wasn’t a fight for glory, it was a fight for survival.
The soldier's eyes closed a moment later, as she lost the strength to stay conscious. He knew she was slipping and needed to act fast, cursing softly, he pulled out one of his few remaining 2-Star potions and poured it down her throat. Overcharging someone with a potion wasn’t the safest thing to do, the risks getting exponentially worse the more powerful they went, but a 2-Star potion for a 1-Star wouldn’t be too dangerous, especially if it let her live through the moment. Archie watched as, with comic speed, her crushed thigh seemed to inflate like a balloon as it was rapidly healed, and she took a deep, rattling, ragged breath. A moment later, the drawbacks started, but he could manage those, mitigate those, he just had to dilute the energies that were now ravaging through the body. Taking out a dark green vial no bigger than his thumb, Archie once again poured it into the woman's mouth one drop at a time. This would hopefully avoid most of the negative effects that would result from an overcharged potion. From there, he simply bound the rest of her leg tightly in some boiled strips of cloth he’d prepared earlier in the day and moved on. She wouldn’t bleed out, and though the leg was far from usable, she probably wouldn’t lose it.
From there, Archie repeated the process, getting lost in the work. He saved two more, but lost a third, stomach clenching and ice in his veins as he had to stop doing chest compressions and close the dim sapphire eyes of the man.
Exhausted, almost to the point of delirium, Archie was stumbling his way forwards to another body with several bloody gashes penetrating the skin when he realized where he was. Subconsciously or simply as a result of following the bodies, he had inadvertently come much closer to the ongoing fighting than he’d ever meant to.
Falling back as a boulder larger than he was landed mere feet from where he looked on in stunned horror, Archie felt the ground shake and tremble not only from the impact of the stone, but from the sheer power being thrown around in front of him. If a 1-Star was the physical limits of the body, 2-Star and onwards far exceeded that, going into the realms of myth. What Archie saw as he looked out on the ruined remains of forest and terrain.
A new clearing had been made as the battle raged on, not by any true intention, but as an aftereffect of the almighty overhead. Auras raged around him, bolstering allies, suppressing enemies, amplifying abilities and adding to the chaos. Several squads of soldiers flew overhead, the 3-stars who had gained the strength of spirit to levitate cast abilities with impunity. There were water users channeling rivers to bend around them into massive tendrils to manipulate at their command. Fire users had set huge swaths of the forest alight, trapping and condensing the enemy to a confined space. Death users flickered in and out of the shadows never staying in one place long enough to be attacked, and yet wreaking havoc all the same. Not to be outdone, groups of spatial users were gathered in groups, repelling any projectiles sent back at their senders, pulling enemies out of the sky and one at the head of the group, would occasionally let loose a dark beam that seemed to erase anything it touched, causing the air to rush back into the space after with a cacophonous roar. Archie couldn’t make out any time users, but he could feel and see their effects as objects shot towards the diminishing group of defenders in complete slow motion. He saw tree’s that rapidly grew up from the ground to block, and he saw sections of ground puff away into dust as if decayed from the inside out.
Archie was only drawn away from his stunned observations of the chaotic battlefield when a young boy fell out of the sky and landed with a sickening crunch several yards ahead of him. Instantly, the young boy screamed out, and a moment later, his severed hand and shin landed nearby.
More dragging the iron rod than carrying it, Archie, shocked into action, crawled towards the boy. Though the suns had both set at this point, the faint ambers of dusk still hung on the horizon, and all three moons were already out, giving more than enough light to see the blood pouring out of the two wounds, and the panic-stricken face of the boy as it rapidly grew paler and paler.
Taking his last 2-Star potion, he wasted no time in putting bits of it directly on both the arm and leg, before shoving the rest of it, glass and all, into the screaming kids' mouth and slamming his jaw closed on it. His pink eyes bulged out as he flailed his arms and legs wildly trying to free himself from what he thought was an enemy come to finish the job.
“Stop! Ferona help us, you’ll kill yourself if you keep moving! Please, I’m a healer, I’m trying to help!”
A moment later, his movements growing weaker, they stopped altogether.
“Good,” Archie breathed out heavily. “Now I’ve just…” But he didn’t finish the sentence. The boy, and he was just a boy, so, so young. Probably barely seventeen or eighteen years old, hadn’t stopped from comprehension, but from falling unconscious.
Hand shooting out to check for a pulse, Archie felt the faintest fluttering of life and felt a fire determination ignite in his heart. This boy was so young, still had so much life left to live. He wouldn’t let it end here, not in this rotten landscape of blood and guts.
Moving like a machine, he pulled out the tiny green vial to try and downplay the backlash from the powerful potion, while prepping another healing and mana potions. Though his aura shortened the amount of time the boy would have to wait before taking another potion, he’d still have to wait around ninety more seconds before he’d be able to administer another. Having set them both out and ready to use at a moments notice, He began to tightly bind the leg first. The 2-Star potion hadn’t been enough to start regrowing bone, and though the bleeding had lessened considerably, the boy would surely die of blood loss before long if Archie couldn’t stem the flow as quickly as possible.
Tying off the leg, he was about to move onto the arm when he felt an earth-shaking impact only ten meters ahead of him. Head jerking up as he stared ahead, though his hands kept working to begin wrapping the arm, he saw a bloodied and ragged Loterran uniform first, then the gleaming golden eyes as the man walked forward a few steps out of the dust cloud that had risen around him with his landing.
In a soft voice that nevertheless pierced through the cacophonous battlefield, the man said “That soldier is an enemy of our Kingdom and our god. I will give you one chance to move away before I end his life.”
Archies's heart raced as he felt the soldier's aura, with all the oppressive power the 3-Star could muster, settle on Archie.
Leaning over the boy with tremors racking his body, he said “No, you can’t! I’m trying to-” But once more, he didn’t finish the sentence.
The moment Archie said no, the soldier took an almighty jump towards the sky, and came crashing back down, driving his foot into the earth. A chasm opened up where a moment before there had been solid stone and soil, plummeting Archie and the boy into the dark depths below. Seconds before the earth closed back around him, Archie scrambled for the metal rod and clinging to it for dear life, felt the stones close back together with a grinding, reverberating snap.
He would have been crushed, should have died right there. Archie had no idea if the boy still lived, as he couldn’t see him in the dark void that now surrounded him, the only illumination coming from the dull golden runes on his metal staff, keeping the stones from slamming together and crushing him entirely.
~ ~ ~
Archie cut off his story there, with several deep, shaking breaths. He shook his head as if to clear off the memories, and then rose from his plush armchair to add another couple of logs to the small fireplace. Returning and sitting with a huff, he saw that Kya had been watching him with unblinking eyes, her expression one of empathy and sadness.
She didn’t say anything for a long time, nor did he. Instead, they sat together in silence, the crackling fire the only thing accompanying them on the roads their thoughts took.
Finally, Kya said in a gentle voice “Thank you, Archera, thank you for telling me that story, and for letting me see just a piece of your past.”
Bronze and green eyes shimmering with a deep sadness, and yet crinkling with just a hint of amusement, he said “Just call me Archie'' then sighed and brought a wizened hand to rub at his eyes and forehead. “The funny thing is, that soldier probably saved my life” he finally said with a dry, humorless laugh. “Though I eventually dropped down even lower into the earth and found a system of caves through which I escaped, I could still feel it, and later saw its aftereffects when I eventually resurfaced. I found out sometime later that a spatial user, a 5-Star who appeared late in the battle, had seen that their forces were almost entirely wiped out and used some ability that killed almost everyone in the area. There were a couple 4-Stars I think, as well as others that, like me, had been buried or protected in one fashion or another. But other than that, every single other living thing had been killed. Not just people, either, but plants, monsters, animals, everything. If you go out in the forest, you can still find it, not a thing has grown there since, though the rich mana in the area has attracted no shortage of monsters and beasts to the area, so be prepared if you do go looking. I sometimes go there, about once every ten years or so just to-” His voice broke, catching in his throat, before he finally got out “To remember.”
Kya reached out a tentative hand from where she sat, and placed it on top of Archie’s trembling one. “Next time you go, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to accompany you there. To pay my respects, for those that came before.”
Nodding his head multiple times, and swallowing past a lump in his throat, Archie finally just said “You’d be more than welcome, child. More than welcome.”