Chapter 90: Confrontation (Second Part)

Our salvation will come from our unity and our downfall from our conflicts.

I carried this belief throughout our journey with Walmir and Ilan. I never imagined before that I would have to team up with slavers under any circumstances, it wasn't something I could proudly explain either, but it was a necessity nonetheless.

An absolute necessity for our common survival in this land that had declared us as their mutual mortal ennemies.

For this reason, each of us made sacrifices, compromises and many untold efforts.

All of us except Paul, who remained incredibly hostile toward Walmir and Ilan.

I couldn't remember how many times I had to soften the impact of his harsh words or play the mediator for them. I did it for the sake of our group's continued existence and, by extension, our own survival. That's why I didn't confront Paul immediately after the last attack where half of our carriage was lost.

I was hopeful that what I had to say to him would wait until we got to the first Advanced town.

However, in this moment, I had realized that it was once again nothing but an impossible expectation to have.

So, with measured steps and resignation in my heart, I approached the carriage.

He had his back to me and was devoting his entire attention to his search, so he didn’t notice me. Knowing that there was no way to avoid this, I finally pulled out an object that I had kept preciously in my pocket ever since the last attack.

“Is this what you are looking for?” I suddenly asked with a thunderous voice, not hiding the accusation behind it.

Paul, as if electrocuted, immediately turned around.

With his eyes round and his mouth falling open, it took him a few seconds to finally stutter a few words with a voice higher than usual.

“Si… Sillath? What are you doing here?”

I didn’t need to answer his question because he quickly noticed the object I was holding out to him. His face was proof enough that no answer from him was necessary to understand that he had immediately recognized it.

The indestructible transparent vial, once a container for the miraculous regenerative potion of the Elves, but now filled with a turbid blue liquid of unknown origin.

“What are you talking about?” he asked after a few seconds with a voice a little too strong and his eyes a little too focused on the vial to feign indifference.

I wasn’t fooled and, now that I had decided to confront him, I didn’t intend to waste time by listening to his lies.

“Really?” I asked with mock surprise. “Then, you won’t mind if I get rid of it…” I continued while unplugging the vial and starting to tilt it to the side, seemingly ready to spill what little remained of its contents on the ground.

“No! Stop!” boomed Paul panicked.

Both aware that he had betrayed the importance of this potion with this reaction, I stopped in the middle of my motion without closing the vial yet.

My raised eyebrows and hard face were apparently a clear enough message for him as his explanation immediately followed. An explanation told with the same confidence as when he told us how he had managed to calm Alianelle’s first crisis several months ago.

“It’s a decoction I made myself to heal Alianelle. She needs it if we want her to heal someday,” he announced with a firm voice.

The confidence was certainly the same, but the explanation was completely different.

At the beginning of our journey with Ilan and Walmir, he had told us that his presence alone had been enough to stop her crisis and, without a better explanation or any real reason to doubt his words, no one had questioned this version. Now, he was explaining with the same straight face that he had used a self-made decoction.

This time again, his words appeared as the only rational explanation.

He had certainly been seen looking for unknown medicinal plants on more than one occasion and had made us lose a lot of time while doing so.

It was a resonable explanation, one I was willing to believe especially when considering that he was simply a father seeking a way to heal his daughter.

However, if this time he was telling the truth, then why had he lied in the first place?

Why hide the existence of this decoction if it was simply a way to heal Alianelle?

Unfortunately, there was only a single answer possible to these questions, and now that I was forced to confront him, I intented to extract this answer from him.

“Yes, at first I really thought that it was something used to heal Alianelle,” I started with a somber face while remembering all these times I had been forced to look for him when he was searching for medicinal plants. “I really believed it when I found this vial inside the carriage while I was desperately looking for a way to calm Alianelle’s crisis while you were unconscious. I was saddened and confused that you would choose to keep this a secret from me, but I was still relieved to have finally found a way to put an end to her crisis myself.”

What happened in the carriage with Alianelle had already proved that Paul had lied to me. It was this decoction that had put an end to her first crisis. Why he chose to lie about such a thing initially escaped me, as I was more concerned that he included me among those he lied to.

It was indeed hard to keep my composure while reminding myself that he had chosen to feed me the same lies as the others instead of trusting me despite all I had done for him and Alianelle.

How easy it would have been to simply turn my back on Alianelle when she was taken away. I had confronted Jazor and a Ryunno clan member for her. It would have been even easier to refuse to return to the Advanced town to save him when the sky itself wanted to condemn us to oblivion. I took so many risks and nearly died for this choice, just so he could be reunited with his daughter.

I had lived under this man’s care and wanted to return this favor as best as I could. However, we both knew that my debt had already been repaid a long time ago.

How many times had I risked my life to keep him and Alianelle safe ever since?

How much blood had I spilled for them?

It was already impossible to tell anymore. All I could say as I looked at this man who had once opened the door of his house to welcome me when no one else would have, was that his continuous lies hurt me even more than I would have thought.

I buried these feelings and continued with the same even, emotionless voice.

I didn’t want excuses from him.

I just wanted the truth.

“You used that secretly prepared blue decoction to end Alianelle's first crisis. You didn't speak about this because it would have proven that you knew more about her sudden coma and crisis than what you said. However, for me, it didn’t change the fact that this was exactly what I needed to calm her crisis and offer us a chance to escape. I was sure of it until I opened the lid. It immediately hit me: I knew this smell. I couldn’t remember where, but I definitely knew it, which didn’t make any sense as this was the first time I held this decoction in my hands.” I explained while finally putting the cap back on the vial to dissipate that not-so-pleasant smell.

"Honestly, the situation was so desperate back then that I was ready to ignore this and give it to Alianelle all the same, until I noticed something else impossible to ignore this time.”

“What?” nervously asked Paul.

“Alianelle was able to heal herself,” I simply answered. “This was something she had never done before, not even when her stomach had been torn apart. She never showed any regenerative ability or any kind of magical aptitude for that matter.”

Paul didn’t interrupt me and simply maintained an ominous silence while repeatedly glancing behind me toward the cave entrance that we couldn’t see because of the trees. We couldn’t be seen and were certainly too far away for anyone inside to hear us.

His desire not to be overheard by anyone wasn’t surprising, but also perhaps prevented him from hiding his reaction this time. The lack of surprise on his face when I talked about regeneration was all the proof I needed to continue.

“She never showed this kind of ability when conscious. This regenerative power and her crisis, when she releases an absurd amount of mana, only began after she fell unconscious because of an elven potion that never had this kind of effect on me. So, I made a safe hypothesis: these two new events caused in one way or another by this elven potion are linked together.”

“...”

What if all this mana, that was putting all of us in so much danger, was the reason for this new regenerative ability? I followed my instinct and gave her my own mana instead of simply giving her this potion. In case you were wondering, this is how I calmed her last crisis.”

“...”

Once more, I waited for Paul to interrupt me. To tell me that I was wrong, that everything I told him was far from the truth. However, he stayed completely silent.

Was it shame or anger that was hiding behind his clenched fists? I couldn’t tell, but neither could force me to stop.

“If this torrent of uncontrolled mana is simply there to heal her then this raises two questions.”

“...”

“First, why now? She stayed several months without showing the slightest sign of life and without releasing any mana, so what started the crisis this time?”

Once more Paul refused to answer and waited for me to enunciate the second question, but I stayed silent about it for now.

“The answer to the first question is in my hand, right Paul?” I finally declared while once more holding out the vial forward for him to see.

“These past couple weeks, you spent so much time looking for the plant used to make this decoction that it became impossible to ignore given the time you made us lose. However, despite my warnings and Ilan’s increasingly short temper about this kind of attitude, you continued. That and the few leaves left I found with this potion makes it easy to guess that whatever you used, is rare and that you had to ration it.”

The half vial with only enough decoction left for a gulp or two was more than enough to support my words. The rest of the plant I had found along with the vial would have been enough to make another vial of this size but certainly no more than this.

“Alianelle’s crisis happened because she didn’t have enough of this potion to drink these past days. That’s why you were desperate to find more, that’s why you took the risk to come with us to this devastated camp.”

I gritted my teeth in frustration as I watched him simply listening without saying anything to contradict me.

“If this potion was only used to stop her crisis then you would have plenty left. No, this potion is not something you used a couple of times to calm Alianelle’s crisis a few months ago. It’s something you make her drink regularly. When I realized that, it finally hit me.”

I crossed Paul's gaze who had finally raised his head.

Making a potion secretly to heal his daughter and prevent her crisis wasn’t something any of us could blame him for even if it raised many questions about her true nature.

However, what I understood when I remembered where I had smelled this potion before, was much harder for me to accept quietly.

“I smelled this decoction inside the farm. It’s the infusion you made Alianelle drink daily. You’ve been giving it to her for years.”

With each word, I could feel my anger and frustration building up. Fortunately, this time Paul finally chose to open his mouth.

“It’s because she has a rare condition and needs this potion. I cultivated it outside my farm, but it is far more difficult to find in the wild. My daughter's well-being doesn’t concern you anymore Sillath, you made that clear when you sided with Walmir after returning from this camp. So let us be.”

“I know what you think about me. It saddens me that you would doubt my will to protect the both of you after everything I already did. I can also understand that you would want to hide any special ability or condition Alianelle might have given our current allies. However, this is not the most important, right?” I declared coldly.

“And what is?” he asked defiantly.

“The second question.” I simply answered. “What did she need to heal with all that mana?” I finally asked with an accusatory tone that put an immediate end to his defiance.

Paul’s eyes went round as he realized what this question meant.

He knew that I had understood a secret he probably desperately wanted to stay buried forever.

“You want to answer me, Paul?” I added almost pleadingly.

However, Paul remained completely silent, eyes downcast as if afraid to meet my gaze, so I simply continued to spill out a truth I would have preferred to keep to myself, at least until we reached the safety of the first Advanced town.

“This question haunted me for days because no matter how much I thought about it, I always ended up with this absurd answer. I must have made a mistake somewhere, but the pieces of the puzzle fit together too perfectly for everything to be wrong.

I was clenching the small vial so tightly that my knuckles had already turned white. However, the indestructible vial containing the terrible answer for the second question refused to break.

Paul didn’t ask me what the answer was this time.

There was no defiance or anger on his face anymore.

Only shame.

“Why did you poison your own daughter, Paul?” I finally asked in total silence, as if the wilderness itself was waiting for the answer to such a terrible question.