‘’The time we spent together…’’

I ride the carriage back on the road, while Evander is resting on the back. 'He said he had to get used to it...' Evander hasn't seen any danger for a long time, so his body can't keep up if he uses too much magic. That’s what I get from it. We ride out away from the village, and head towards Rakenia. I quickly grab the map, to check the road that we’re taking. It looks like I’m heading on the right road. I look back at the wounded Evander. I have no medical skill, so I'm extremely worried right now. 'Stay with me, Evander. I'll get you safe.' I hear snoring in the back as response. 'He fell asleep?!' I feel a bit of relief in my heart. ‘He’s going to be fine…’ I tell myself.

‘Ah…the sun…’ I just realized I haven’t slept the entire time, since we escaped Abyss at the Hero’s Monument. I still don’t feel the need to sleep, nor the feeling to take a break. I’m just thinking about what I need to do to heal Evander. ‘Don’t worry, companion. I will get you help, no matter what…

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I hum an old song while I handle the horses. 'That's an old song you’re humming…' Evander suddenly comes to the front as he scares me for the moment.

'Geh...tell me when you wake up. You startled me.' He sits down, but his face is still full of scars.

'I'll try to get used to it, so I won't hold you back next time.' I start to get worried. What if he won't get used to it? He might die, and I'll be left by myself.

I'll die from loneliness... I need human activity around me, even if it's only from one person. 'Wait, how do you even recognize this song?' It's an old lullaby that Sylvestra used to sing to me when I was little. It's something passed down by my family, and the family of Sylvestra. We live generations of master and servant, so we respect and appreciate Sylvestra's bloodline. 'You probably confused it with something else.' He sits back in the carriage, and looks around.

‘Everything is still in order, it seems…’ He checks on the food and items we’re carrying.

‘I’m surprised Abyss didn’t take any…they could’ve sabotaged us really badly.’

‘That’s because I cloaked the carriage with magic.’ I look surprised at him.

‘You cloaked it? How? When? You were outside the carriage faster than I was. When did you-?!’

Evander’s hits me softly on the head with his staff. It’s more of a gentle touch than a rebuke. ‘Calm down, will you,’ he says as he smiles out of nowhere. ‘I will explain it to you later, after I have rested for a bit. I trust you will get us to our destination safely.’ He goes back to the back and starts lying down. His soft breathing is calming me for some reason, as I keep my focus on the road, that’s sided by beautiful fields of grass and rivers. I guess he just wants me to calm down like himself.

Ten days later, road to Rakenia……

‘Say, Evander. Why did those creatures from Abyss look like humans to begin with? Because they looked like undead at Rotson Village.’ It was one of the more worrying facts that I had, when I was fighting with them at the Hero’s Monument. It even gave me trouble fighting in the start.

‘Well, how could I know? I’m not from Abyss after all.’ I thought he was going to drop the subject with that answer, but some reason, he starts speaking again. ‘Maybe it’s copying its surroundings. The creatures at Rotson might’ve looked undead, but remember that undead resembles humans. In other words, it’s trying to look like humans as well, even though that can be disadvantageous, since human bodies are fragile, slow and weak.’

‘I guess so…but that doesn’t make sense at all, especially because of the part you said that humans were weak.’

‘Remember, Abyss is driven by evil power. Envy is one of those things, and I guess they are envious of human lives.’

‘You think so?’ Geez, when you put it like that, I would definitely want to believe it like that. His way of talking is very persuasive…well at least for me.

‘Of course I can’t back it all up, since Illuminians know next to nothing about Abyss. We never really had a time of studying over them, since Illuminia was either battling them, or was relying on a hero to fight them off. Such are many reasons why our armies aren’t only lacking in skill and numbers, but why they are so undisciplined as well. The Queen is no warmonger, and we all appreciate that, but when we are fighting a war that we don’t know when it will end, we ought to be stricter and the Queen needs to do something about that.’

‘So, you’re fully against the Queen on that regard?’

‘Nope, not completely. Think about it, a country relying only on military power.’

I don’t need to think too hard about it. I can just look at Edelweiss. It was a country of war back in the days, and I can still see some things here and there resembling those times. ‘Everything will collapse in the times of peace…’

‘Exactly. If war fades from the country, you’ll have to end up firing a lot of people of you start cutting through the budget of the military. You’ll have to keep up an army for absolutely no reason.’

‘But can’t you like…keep it balanced? You’ll need an army anyway since you are always exposed to dangers outside of Illuminia.’

Evander starts rubbing his beard again and feels his fading scars. His face has really healed up, and next to a few scars, you wouldn’t even realize he was in a state where he’d looked like dying. ‘You said you fell down from the sky, right?’

I look bewildered at him. ‘Uhm…yes, but what does that have to do with anything?’

‘How high were you? Did you see the entire country?’ he asks as he starts grabbing the map again.

‘I think so…I did see a lot of mountains,’ I tell him, trying to remember the scenes when I was falling. To be honest, I don’t remember that much since I was preoccupied screaming my lungs out while dropping from a deadly height. Evander opens the map in front of me while I reminiscence on my previous experience.

‘Look.’ He points at the mountains that edge the lands on the map. ‘These mountains are enormous. We’ve tried to climb over them, but they peak to high for us, and for some reason, the magic starts to diminish the higher we go.’ He proceeds to points at a location called Silversand Mines. ‘We’ve been digging for years around these areas, but we’ve never reached the end.’ His finger moves from the western location of Silversand Mines, all the way to the east, to the city of Deepmonth. ‘We’ve also been digging around these mountains, but to no avail.’

‘What are you trying to tell me, Evander?’

‘I mean, we haven’t gotten past the mountains, nor have we had any activity from the northern and southern sea. What I am implying at, is that I don’t know if there are any other countries besides Illuminia, and every day I start to doubt it even more. We don’t need an army unless we’re fighting Abyss. So, keeping one for the sake of protection against other foes wouldn’t make sense.’

Evander starts rubbing his beard, while I rub my chin simultaneously. ‘What about a reserve army? Volunteers that live their lives normally, but also train from time to time as soldiers?’

‘I’m sure that the Queen thought about that, but I don’t know if people are willing to actually to fight…people are afraid of Abyss, and the soldiers we have don’t want to do anything but fight… I personally don’t know how to solve the problem.’ We both rub our chins again. ‘By the way, can you stop copying me?’

‘It’s fun!’ He hits me gently with his staff again.

‘Idiot…’ he says smiling to himself. I guess he does like the silliness. ‘So that’s the Sword of Thousand Arcs… At least the ‘’rusty old butter knife look’’ has faded away.

‘It’s amazing right. It looks so pretty all of the sudden, and it’s definitely far lighter than those worthless orichalcum swords and spears……now that I think about it...’ Evander looks at me questioning. I just realized about it. ‘The army uses orichalcum as a base for their weapons as well, right?’ Evander nods at me, and my train of thought continues. ‘I know its hard to make weapon that are not orichalcum based, but you should’ve seen how I blasted these creatures away!’

Evander looks more closely at my sword. ‘You blasted something with the sword?’ he asks questionably.

‘Yeah, it was like a big light flew out of it and started burning my enemies around me. It was amazing, like swoosh, and kaboom, and-!’

‘I get it, I get it. Calm down, will you?’ Even if he asks me, he’s still smiling. I haven’t seen him smile that much for a while. I wonder what he’s thinking about to be this happy. He grabs the sword, and holds it up in the sky, inspecting it in the rays of sunlight. ‘I see…that’s interesting…’

‘What is?’ I ask him as he return to sword back to me.

‘Your sword acts with the same principles as my staff. It’s a magical item, only its enhanced in a sword. It’s not uncommon to see that, but the engravings and magic properties suggests it isn’t created like the typical magic item.’ I just listen to him, as I look at the shine of the sword. ‘Well, just like me, you’ve got to practice with it. IF you do, you’ll be able to use the sword and the magic around you better than you can now…’ I quickly stand up.

‘Teach me how to use magic, Evander. I know that you’ll make an excellent teacher!’

He slightly laughs but smiles afterwards. ‘Sure…but let’s do that when we take breaks, okay.’ I nod excitedly at him, as the wind calmly breezes around me, waving my hair in the sky.

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The days come and go, as Evander and I talk about our personal life, hobbies and the world on a subtler level. Him learning how to use magic and helping the country. Apparently, he was one of the few fighters that not only advised the Queen as a personal consultant but took the fight to Abyss after the Hero died. We talked about Abyss for a bit, but I avoided the topic for some reason. The feeling of fighting a group of monsters like that still feels unreal. I trained with my sword, while he tried to get more used to him magic. I learned a lot about the magic around me, and how to control it more efficiently. And just like that, more than 20 days past……

22 days later, near Rakenia.

‘New subject!’ I shout out in the wilderness, and Evander almost leaps up because of it. We burned through a lot of our resources, and hunger started to become more of an issue. I know distracting myself from it would help us, but we didn’t have any energy to talk about anything at all.

‘What happened with you? Did you see a dragon or something?’

‘No, but talk to me about something! Quickly!’ Having no idea what’s going on, he starts to look around, and his eye falls on a particular item.

‘That necklace…I haven’t seen it before.’ He points at my necklace that was gifted by Astra. I quickly hide it and try to suppress my blush. ‘Aw, young Brandr has a crush on the princess,’ he starts saying in the most annoying tone, while he covers his hand like a middle-aged woman telling gossips to her neighbor.

‘I-It’s not like that!’ I shout back at him.

‘You shouldn’t deny it. I’m not mad at you. Falling in love is a healthy thing. You should try to follow your heart.’ I don’t respond. I’m still too embarrassed to talk about it. ‘You know…once we get back to Lamia, we’ll stay for a while, so you can bond with the princess, okay?’

I quickly turn to him. ‘Y-You sure…that’s okay?’ He smiles and nods. I feel myself calm down. ‘T-Thank you…’ I want to ask him about his love life, but for some reason, my mind tells me not too.

‘I’m going to take a nap, so I won’t feel too hungry.’ My stomach rumbles the moment he talks about hunger. I guess I’ll have to fast just a little bit longer…

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My body is well done by now, but I try to keep myself from passing out. Evander went to sleep, and I check on him occasionally if he didn’t die in his sleep. Not eating is seriously dangerous, but after very long trip… ‘Ah…’ I see a wall, and a lot of high buildings. I quickly try to wake Evander. ‘Evander! Evander! Civilization! We’ve made it, we’re going to survive.’ I feel his body, but his breathing has stopped. ‘E…vander…?’ No way, he died? ‘Don’t do this to me, Evander…’ Tears swell up in my eyes. *sniff* I start sobbing a lot. And then…

‘RRRAAAA!!!!!’ His eyes go wide-open, and he screams loudly.

‘ARGH!’ I fall of the carriage. The shock makes me cry even more.

‘Hahaha, you really are a crybaby, Brandr!’ Evander stops the carriage and helps me up again. I hit him for his troubles.

‘Y-You *sniff* i-i-idi-ot…’ I can’t talk normally with all sniffing and crying.

Well yeah, I really am a crybaby, but that how I was born. I get scared and sad easily. I got bullied by the elder warriors for being a scared sissy, a weakling, and a crybaby. I tried to keep the tears in, and I promised my father I wouldn’t cry anymore, but I keep breaking that promise over and over again. He never minded though, and always reassured me. ‘When you get older, you won’t cry over these things anymore. He always told me that, and when I asked him why, he told me: ‘Because you’ll get used to it…’

‘I’m sorry for scaring you, Brandr.’ We ride to the city in front of us.

‘It’s all right now. So, that’s Rakenia?’ He nods.

‘Let’s get some food first…’ Our thoughts are likewise. For it is the top priority, and after that, resupplying. We near the gate in front of us, guarded by two spearmen. The doors are wide open though.

‘Haha, good…open gate policy.’ Edelweiss always had their gates shut. We enter the city, and a bright light blinds me, but only for a second, as I see a large city around me now…