Chapter 99

Faithless Faith

“When in doubt, cast the die; if Fate lands left, Fate is to die.”

Proverbs

Noah sat on top of a half-torn wall, rubble strewn about, rings of smoke rising in the distance toward the sky. It’s been almost two weeks since they had settled here, and the fort was slowly starting to enliven once again. Ever so often, one could see a group of people galloping through the hastily repaired streets, and even a trace of singing in some taverns. Yet, ever the same, the shadow of death still loomed heavy over the fort.

Ships kept docking day in and out, with streams of people descending; some officially, some due to morbid curiosity. Bards, historians, scholars, or just the curious ones, quickly filled the empty gaps left behind by the countless dead. However, Noah knew that this would be short-lived. There was little to the story outside what everyone already knew, and every trace of the Kindled had disappeared, saved for the destruction they left in their wake.

All of this… was hauntingly reminding. He’d seen scenes like this, even lived through one or two. The sole exception was that there was no sun in the sky. Instead, gray, ashened clouds smudged the world and cast it into a depressing, sullen and cinereal state. He could still remember the blaring of the sirens, the mind-reeling city alarms, the red and blue cascading through the darkness… tragedy, he learned, was like a shadow – it followed him everywhere.

“… she’s packed.” Asandra came up and sat next to him, her face still dirtied as neither had taken a bath ever since that day. She appeared tired, her face aged beyond her years.

“… did you turn thirty yet?” he asked, glancing at her.

“Hm,” she nodded. “About a month ago, I believe.”

“How does it feel?”

“… like any other year.” She shrugged. “What? Were you looking for someone to confide in your elderly thoughts?”

“… I just realized I haven’t given you a present.”

“… I imagine saving my life can’t exactly be matched, no?”

“…”

“When will you make up with the Princess?” she asked with a queer smile. “The way she looks at you… even anger can’t hide it.”

“… I envy you two.” He said, chuckling bitterly.

“Envy?”

“The naivety,” he glanced at her. “When I was a young boy, I used to hustle and steal a lot to get by. There was this one stall next to where I lived that I used to frequent, picking fruits mostly. I thought myself stealthy for never getting caught, but, one day, the old man who owned the stall sat me down and asked me for how long was I planning on stealing from him.”

“… he knew?”

“Hm,” Noah nodded. “All the while. He just… let me. I didn’t steal much, so, as he said, he didn’t mind. But… he wondered whether I’d continue to steal all my life.”

“Did you?”

“In a way,” he chuckled. “He took me under his wing, and started teaching me… showed me more care than anyone else.”

“… what happened?”

“Nothing,” Noah said with a sigh, looking around at the rubble. “A few months later, our… village… looked a whole lot like this.”

“… more and more,” she said, following his eyesight. “I found your life story fascinating, Noah. Just what in the Light’s name did you live through?”

“… mostly just human nature,” he replied. “The same story we’re living through now.”

“… in comparison,” Asandra said. “Corrupt Dacents… seem like the least of our troubles.”

“No,” he shook his head. “It’s all connected. Corruption… is never isolated. Evil always solicits evil. If a guard is corrupt, it’s because one of his superiors is, and so on you go, until your reach the top. A coward may dread stealing from a guard, but if that coward is backed by a Noble… why would he fear anything?”

“…”

“All this,” he waved his arm about. “Is a result of a system that’s so corrupt… even I cannot see its depths. However, there is a root cause – the starting point. Somewhere that all these threads converge back to. I need you to find it.”

“… me?” she looked at him askew, confused.

“Hm,” he nodded, looking into her eyes. “Scoff at it or not, people see you as little more than a brute with a blade. In many ways, you are more invisible than anyone here. I will help you, naturally, but it will be up to you to find the depths of this hell.”

“… why do you trust me so much?” Asandra asked, keeping their gazes locked. “That’s something that’s been bothering me for a while. We’ve known each other for… what? Half a year? Yet, I probably know more about you than the Princess that saved you. Why?”

“… you remind me of someone.” He chuckled, looking away. “And, for however much I distrusted that woman, and for however many times she tried to kill me… she always had my back.”

“… you… know some odd people.”

“Ha ha, that’s one way to put it, I suppose. I found, however, that odd people… are the ones worth keeping around. Look at those that arrived here after the fact – none of them are odd. They are graceful, honorable, endowed.”

“… my ass.”

“There you go,” he chuckled. “You, on the other hand, are odd.”

“How come?” she asked with piqued interest.

“… I looked it up,” he said. “You are the sole female guard in the entire Kingdom that ever saw any action. You don’t belong, much like I don’t belong in this place. Tell me… what does it take to stand amidst all of this… and not cave in?”

“… I don’t know,” she said, looking up toward the sky. “All I’ve ever known… was the sword. Growing up, I didn’t care much for a lot of things – but, swordsmanship… drew me in. I didn’t care how the boys looked at me because, at the end of the day, I’d have them all rolling in dirt, wailing in pain. Though the odd stares never stopped, their lips grew silent. I think… we both, now, know why that was the case.”

“… the Fire.”

“The Fire.” She nodded. “Can you tell me anything? In your eyes… I see that you know something.”

“… what little I know is not worth sharing,” he said. “Just try and not explode in the Capital. That would put some wrenches in our plans.”

“… in your plans, you mean?” she looked at him, smiling wryly. “Your wall is tall, Noah. I get it. The rest of us, as you said, are young and naïve. All this while, you directed us like a general directs his army. Left, right, up, down… we listened. And, I imagine, we’ll continue to listen. I just wonder… whether we listen for a year, or ten… will you ever truly trust any one of us?”

“… no.”

“…”

“It’s just who I am Asandra,” he chuckled at her frown. “I haven’t trusted a soul in over twenty years. Besides, you also said the reason why I will never trust you entirely.”

“… I did?” she probed.

“You’ll continue to listen,” he said, heaving off the crumbled wall. “If even you can’t see yourself as my equal, what do you think others feel like?” he glanced at her, his expression staggeringly hollow, surprising her. “The Princess will continue to pout and paint the fronts, but, bit by bit, disillusionment is seeping in. She’s beginning to see the world for what it is, and, soon enough, she’ll be slipping into my shadow, trying to hide. Sash? Row? Syl? Evel? The closest one, even including you, is Sash. Yet, even he defers to me, never questioning me.”

“…”

“I’ve lived through this more times than I can count,” he continued. “And it always ends the same.”

“… how?”

“With me drinking a bottle of ale above everyone’s graves,” he said. “Wondering… where it all went wrong.”

“…”

“Not too long ago,” he glanced at her once again, his smile bitter. “You swore to me that you’ll solve me. Yet… now… you just silently await for what I need you to do.”

“… yet you do need me to do something.” She frowned.

“If you truly were trying to ‘solve’ me, you would have known already what to do. Your dream was to usurp the corruption of Dacents, yet, for months now, I haven’t heard you mention it once.”

“… there are more important things.”

“My things.” He emphasized. “Did you accept my invitation just for that?”

“…”

“I don’t know what it is,” he shook his head. “But everyone… has put me on a pedestal. You, Olivia, Myrell, Sash… even Jovyer. Perhaps, in part, you project one part of me, the ‘Outlander’ part, and instinctively duck. I’m not like the others before me, Asandra. The place that I come from… is void of magic, is void of monsters save for those in human shape. By all accounts, I am a simple man, albeit perhaps better learned than most. Yet, the Princess of the Kingdom trusted my insane plan at the drop of a hat… the King himself deferred to me… and people far more powerful than me are so terrified of a few tricks that they’ve lost their minds.”

“…” Asandra stood in silence, reeling in shock, her mind spinning as she realized… everything he said was true. She, indeed, did seem to forget why she joined him in the first place. And, without even realizing it, she had put him above her, and listened to his words as though they were a gospel.

“So, tell me… how can I trust any one of you?” he asked. “You’ve made an enigma out of me where there is none. You built up a statue tall enough to overturn the world, yet the man you’ve encased in that stone… is so powerless he can’t even keep his slaves alive. I may have plans, Asandra, but plans are dead. They are predicated on people behaving in a way I expect them to… but, in many ways, you can’t predict people. A completely normal man, ordinary in every way, might turn into a murderer if the life of his lover is threatened. A stalwart veteran of many battlefields may become a coward if you threaten to cut him here and there. The hardest thing in the world is to predict the unpredictable. And all of what we’re doing… is predicated upon the unpredictable.”

“… you predict us well enough,” she scoffed, jumping off as well. “And it’s your fault that you always look like you know everything.”

“I—” Noah suddenly turned silent as he saw a figure in the distance sprinting toward him.

He quickly recognize the boy, though the countenance of youth and faint defiance seemed completely absent from his face, replaced with horror and anxiety. Fylcon’s black hair looked browner than before, the dirt dusting backward like smoke, as he ran forward. Sweat covered every inch of his face, his eyes locking onto him, widening as he suddenly sped up further. Noah frowned as he suddenly sensed it – it was faint, so invisible he was certain most others would have missed it… but he felt it. Light. The boy… was using Light.

“Master!!” the boy exclaimed as he came to a grinding halt, bending over and heaving, his hands on his knees.

“… what’s wrong?” Noah asked, frowning.

“The… the King…”

“The King? What about him? Did he do something to you?”

“No,” the boy shook his head, taking a deep breath and looking up, meeting Noah’s gaze. “The King… has been murdered.”

END OF BOOK I, ILLUMINATED WHEELS