assistirfilmes Chapter 239: What We Can
Chapter 239: What We Can
Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Arthur Leywin
Blackbend City was bustling with life as I stepped from the teleportation gate platform, the summer air pulling at my cloak. I put a hand over my head, making sure my signature auburn locks were hidden, alongside my mana signature.
“This place is different than what I expected,” Sylvie said, her little fox form stuffed in my coat. Her ears peeked out a little as her slitted gold eyes peered over the milling crowds. “That man could have been nicer, too.”
Sylv, of course, was referring to the gruff guard who had demanded to see my lower back upon leaving the teleportation gate. I’d complied, but the massive brute of a man could have done without the death glare or the killing intent.
Things are tense now, Sylv, I responded with a mental sigh, my eyes tracking over the city. Everywhere I looked, people bustled about with their chores as they sought to add to the war effort. Nobody can afford a slip.
Blackbend City was one of the core, integral parts of Dicathen’s supply chains. Located at the headwaters of one of the Sehz River’s mighty tributaries, it served as the go-between to the Wall–and by extension, the Beast Glades beyond–and the rest of Sapin.
Furthermore, control of the river that coursed along Sapin’s southern border was sourced in the iron-walled city. Needless to say, it was a critical military and strategic outpost, and it showed in every action of the townsfolk around me.
Burly men hauled metal plates and scaffolding to the edges of the ringed walls, then were waved on by soldiers. Armed mages and contingents of the Triunion marched through the cobbled streets, reassuring the women as they worked to chisel arrowheads along the main thoroughfare.
They’re carrying resources for the construction of the underground train to the Wall, I thought, weaving through the crowds.
My eyes lingered on a group of three adventurers as they hauled the corpse of a mana beast to a designated station for processing. Nothing would go to waste in that body, I knew. The tendons would be used to string bows and tie fletchings. The meat would feed a few families easily, and the fur would make resistant armor. The bones could be whittled and sculpted into arrowheads, or ground up for use in mana-conductive artificing.
The haunted expressions of the adventurer party and the blood staining their clothes told me that they were far from content with their victory. No, an aura of misery clung to them like a gravity spell that weighed down only their hearts.
Immediately, I knew why such dread ensorcelled the three. I could read it in how the conjurer nearly stumbled into a tall, lanky augmenter. She’d been expecting someone else to be there to stop her, but they hadn’t. Another close-combat fighter belatedly turned, opening his mouth to scold the conjurer, but his maroon brows fell as he looked at them with defeat, unable to muster the strength. I could see the lines of loss carved into his brows like a meticulous sculpture, the emotion unwilling to escape. The final augmenter just looked away, ashamed.
They’d lost someone in their party.
I paused for a moment in the middle of the street, flashbacks of Jona as he mourned over Cedry sparking in my head. I watched as the three remaining mages tried to pretend that the gaping hole in their hearts didn’t exist for a short time.
“It won’t work, Arthur,” Sylv thought to me, her emotions muted. “The reason you’re here… It won’t help. You know that.”
I ignored the dragon stuffed into my tunic, instead inhaling the scent of industry all around. It was different from the bloodied corpses of the massacres I’d been to barely a few hours ago. Oil, freshly cut wood, metal, sweat, and grime from workers’ bodies… It all meshed together in a tangle of wartime society.
There was tension in the air as every citizen performed their duties, like the haunting lull at the eye of a storm. Every adventurer I passed kept their shoulders tensed, like they were still in the depths of the Beast Glades. The soldiers that marched through the streets slammed the butts of their spears against the ground in a rhythm of war. A subtle haste propelled a group of washerwomen onward like wind nipping at their heels.
They couldn’t know yet about the terror attacks ripping their country apart, but some part of this city knew that the lightning had already begun to strike.
They were just waiting for the thunder.
I kept my hood raised as I wove toward my predetermined destination near the outskirts of the city. Adventurers and lone mercenaries became more and more common as I roamed eastward.
I hopped up onto a nearby crate as I reached a specific section of the city, craning my neck as I
Sylvie’s angry thoughts smothered anything my father could’ve said. “The indignity!” she thought to me, glaring upward. “I am an asura, not some pet to be smothered in a coat!”
I laughed aloud at that, my tension easing as my shoulders shook. Suddenly, it didn’t seem such a daunting task, what I was about to do. “That you are, Sylv. That you are.”
I carefully took her from my coat, before orienting on an amused Jasmine. The wind augmenter was significantly less enthused once I dropped the ball of fur into her arms.
“Arthur, what is the meaning of this?” she said snippily, which was nearly more words than she’d ever said during our training. “Do you want me to look after–”
“Just for a time, Jasmine,” I said, hoping the seriousness of my words carried in my voice. “I’ll be back soon.”
Dad’s smile had progressively fallen as I spoke to the wind augmenter, that gloom shrouding him like a blanket once again as his eyes became more serious. I stared back at him, matching azure with azure. He slowly crossed his arms, no doubt sensing on some level why I was here.
“Arthur,” Sylvie tried, peeking from where Jasmine was nervously holding the foxified dragon, “Just…”
I know, I replied after a moment, feeling resignation deep in my bones as I absorbed the rising resolve of my father as he stared me down. I know.
—
Reynolds and I strolled a ways ahead of the caravan, both of us mute as we put one foot in front of the other. I kept my hands shoved in my pockets, working my jaw as I tried to formulate the right words to say that would convey exactly what I needed.
The news of the massacres would likely spread like wildfire across the entire continent in the next few days, but right now I had a rare chance to speak to my family. To really convince them that what I wanted was right.
And Reynolds? He wasn’t a fool. He knew immediately that a Lance dropping in out of nowhere on a departing caravan could only be because I wanted to talk to him.
“Your mother’s going to be worried if we stray too far,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “We shouldn’t outpace them too much.”
“Yeah,” I said lamely, keeping my gaze forward. “Yeah, you’re right about that.”
The quiet tinkle of birdsong rose from nearby copses of trees like an orchestra of nature. This close to Darv the landscape was mildly hilly, but mostly flat and plains-like. Not far away, a tributary of the Sehz River burbled like my thoughts.
Reynolds let me think as I gathered myself. Just like the time that felt like an age ago when I’d revealed the truth of my past life to him and Alice, he didn’t interrupt or cut me off. Some part of him understood that I couldn’t be rushed.
It was strange. I’d been a monster on the battlefield in my previous life. I’d seen the deaths of countless enemies from battle to battle. My name inspired fear in the hearts of all the enemies of Etharia as my armies methodically and efficiently broke my enemies.
Every time my forces lost a battle, we resurged, learning from our mistakes and winning the next time. I had made an art of learning from my mistakes in both swordsmanship and military tactics. There was a wrong way, and there was a right way. Often, it was as simple as that.
But conversations like these always snuck up on me. I failed at them again and again no matter how many times I had them. It felt sometimes that I was destined to repeat the same cycles instead of learning from them.
I took a deep breath, then braced. I just needed to say it. “You and Mom need to withdraw from the war,” I said sharply. “Things have changed, Dad. I can’t do this if I know you’re out in the field.”
Reynolds didn’t respond for a while. Just like me, he kept his gaze forward, but I could see the clench in his jaw as he struggled to maintain calm. He kicked a rock in his path, and it went soaring fast enough to kill any unfortunate bird that might intercept it.
“How many times do we need to have this fight, Arthur?” he finally replied, his voice laced with irritation. “How many times do we need to tell you that we have a right to fight for our country, too?”
“That’s not what this is about,” I said back, restraining my own anger. “I just got back from a mission that has shifted the Council’s entire perspective of this war. I needed to talk to you before it became widespread news.”
“Why? Have the Alacryans suddenly retreated back to their continent?”
“No,” I replied, smelling phantom blood and feeling the wraith-like traces of Grey across my mind. “We don’t know how yet, but the Beast Horde didn’t hit the Wall. They’ve been indiscriminately attacking towns and killing thousands.”
Reynolds froze in his tracks, nearly tripping as my words reached him. He turned to look at me, his eyes wide as I continued.
“That’s why you can’t stay in the war,” I argued, turning to look at my father as the momentum of my words carried me on. “It’s not just about soldiers fighting soldiers now, like you thought it was. Now it’s indiscriminate death and destruction. The rules of this war have changed. I know you want to make a difference, but you can’t. Not like this.”
My father’s azure eyes traced over me as I stared at him resolutely. He had to understand. I’d been in far more wars than he had. More wars than anybody on this continent. I was best suited to comprehend exactly what was happening and how little a single soldier meant.
To my benefit, he appeared to have calmed slightly as my words finished. His shoulders had loosened, and the angry creases in his face had vanished.
He gets it, I thought with a small note of triumph. I clenched and unclenched my fists, waiting for his response. He’ll–
“How does this change anything?” he finally asked, his words crashing through my carefully composed mental state like a battering ram through a castle gate. “Arthur, this only cements what we need to do more.”
More? More?!
The anger I’d tried to keep in check boiled over. “More?!” I snapped, my mana pulsing outward, “More?! Dad, don’t you get it? If you fight in this war, then everyone you know—everyone—is going to die. Just like Adam! You’ll die pointlessly and emptily! You’ll leave everything behind!”
I marched forward, struggling to keep my aura contained as I stared Reynolds in the eyes. Mine raged like the most tempestuous sea. I’d grown these past few months. I was as tall as he was, nearly taller. But he still couldn’t see from my point of view.
Agrona’s mocking words from barely a month ago burned in the back of my skull. He’d warned me that this war would be more deadly than any I’d experienced in my past life. And I was terrified that he might be right.
That fear had been building for so long. It had peaked when I’d witnessed the massacres, and now it had finally found eruption.
“Do you have any idea what this war will do?” I snapped, barely a foot away from my father. “You don’t! You’ve never been in war. You’ve never fought a true battlefield, so of course you don’t get it. But that’s all there is, Reynolds. And every. Single. Time. Every single time we talk, you don’t understand what it means.”
The fist that smashed into my jaw didn’t make me budge an inch, but it was my mind that reeled. Something in Reynolds’ hand broke as it crashed against my chin. He didn’t seem to feel it as he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, staining it with his blood.
“I knew what war meant the moment Adam died!” he yelled, his temper erupting in turn as his face took on a demonic cast. “You think that I haven’t asked myself what the point was? You think I haven’t talked with shadows on the wall?”
He pushed me away, and this time I stumbled. Reynolds’ face was as red as the blood I’d seen in the catastrophe. The yellow earth mana swirling around his fists seemed wrong in that moment. It should have been red fire.
“You don’t even get how selfish you’re being, Arthur. Just because you got a second chance, you think this world should bend to your whims?” he yelled, throwing out his hands wide.
“No!” I yelled back, finding my footing on the uneven ground. “But if you truly understood war, you wouldn’t be out here, ready to die for nothing!”
Reynolds took a long, deep breath. He inhaled, then let it out in a manner reminiscent of meditation. “We only die for nothing if nobody picks up the torch after we’ve dropped it,” he said, stomping out the embers of his anger. “You’re right. Adam’s death was pointless. It was empty. He didn’t kill a Retainer or beat back the Alacryans or anything. The only people who will remember and mourn him are us. You were a King, yetsomehow you don’t understand it.”
I wanted my dad to still be angry. Somehow, the act of his cooling rage only made me more furious. Anger was easier to fight, to beat against like an enemy. But I didn’t have a target now. “Then what don’t I understand?” I barked back mockingly, raising my arms. “You just admitted I was right. And if I’m right, then–”
“There are things bigger than us,” Reynolds said, his voice quiet as his ashen hair shadowed his eyes. “The deaths of everyone around us are only meaningless if we let their drive die with them. The Alacryans want to take everything we’ve ever known. Our tiny desires for happiness are unimportant in the face of that. Our individual wants are a worthy sacrifice for those we love.”
He raised his head, looking at me in a way that made my mana core clench and goosebumps trail along my skin. “That’s something you don’t understand, Arthur. You think you’re the only one allowed to sacrifice yourself, because then it will be all okay. But what happens when you get yourself killed, and you’re just another meaningless ‘Adam?’ ” Reynolds said, halfway between a lament and a sneer.
I couldn’t maintain it anymore. That burning funeral pyre wavered at my father’s words, the genuine question in his eyes making the acclorite in my blood freeze. “If that happens, then there won’t be a war after. It will be enough to win.”
“Is that what your experience as King Grey tells you?” my father asked instead, his shoulders slumping. “You’ve been through war. What are the chances of that?”
I didn’t answer, feeling shame crawl with tiny legs through every crevice of my thoughts. I turned away from my father, instead inspecting the long path ahead.
“This war is bigger than you or me, son,” Reynolds said, his voice soft. He approached slowly, something weary in his soul. “I want nothing more than for things to be like they were in Xyrus so many years ago, with your mother, your sister, and you all together. But no family will be able to have that life if we don’t fight for this.”
“I don’t know if I can do this if you all die,” I said quietly, feeling like a child crying in the rain. “You’re all I have. You. Mom. Ellie. Tess. Sylv. You’re everything.”
A strong arm wrapped around my shoulder for a time in a comforting way. I was stronger than any mage in this war, but I felt so weak. My father shouldn’t need to lift me back up.
“There are thousands of mothers and fathers and sisters and lovers and bonds out there, not just yours or mine,” Reynolds said with grave exhaustion. “You got a second chance in this world, son. But how many others will? We need to make the world they can live in safely. We can’t trust some illusory deities to give those we love another try.”
“But I… I don’t care about them,” I admitted with a raw voice. “Not like I do you all. I’m… I’m selfish. I want everything to go my way this time.”
Dad was quiet for a few seconds as he processed my words. “I don’t know what it’s like to be a king,” he said after a moment. “But I know what it means to be a soldier. And sometimes, all we can do is what we can, even if it means that it hurts those around us.”