Wern, Fir of Febla: 33 Xiven

It would be incredibly reasonable for anybody to be shocked after seeing their jail cell, home for the past four years, start to crumble after being pummeled by a cannon ball. Kayin would have certainly understood if he was the one to break someone out of jail while simultaneously performing an impossible feat reserved for children’s stories, that a person would need a moment to think.

Dhekk, with one hand on Kayin’s arm and one hand holding a longsword conjured from a cell bar, seemed kind of annoyed that Kayin stood, blinking, unmoving, unable to comprehend the literal world-shattering set of moments that led to him standing in the hallway.

“If this shocks you,” Dhekk started in a low tone, “we’ve got a lot of desensitization training to do.” Even if Kayin hadn’t hit his head, he wasn’t sure what Dhekk said would make any sense. He was granted no explanation, and instead Dhekk started to pull him down the hallway, toward the giant, abandoned doors of the prison.

The ground shook, rumbling from more smacks of impact somewhere unseen. Kayin struggled to pull free from Dhekk.

“What is going on?” he finally shouted once they got to the doorway. He reached to the wooden frame, grasping onto it to pull against Dhekk’s heavy stomping. It wasn’t enough, alone, to rip himself out of the giant man’s hold, but he was released anyway.

Dhekk squared himself against the mouth of the upcoming staircase before pivoting to glance back to Kayin.

“Alright, fine. What do you think is happening?”

Well. Kayin desperately hoped that all of this was a long, emotional nightmare where maybe he’d wake up to Aunt Aayin yelling at him for sleeping in, but he knew that wasn’t the case. In his dreams, if he willed for something to be different enough, he usually got a chance to go back and play through it all again for a new outcome. But his racing pulse and throbbing head hammered in the realization that this was an experience that wouldn’t disappear on a whim.

Kayin hesitated for a moment, listening to the distant crashes and the groans and grumbles of massive amounts of stone and wood shifting and falling and colliding. He braced against the wall and regarded the stranger, frowning. This stranger had dirt and debris from before Kayin’s cell got a new door, different colored dirt and clay stained on the shoulders of his shirt—shoulders, Kayin realized, were reinforced under the cloth. Pauldrons. The man was hiding thin leather armor underneath regular clothes.

“We’re at war,” Kayin realized aloud. “Wakino?”

Dhekk nodded.

“Not bad for being concussed. We need to get you out of here before everything collapses.” At his wave, Kayin shoved away from the wall and kept close to him. Another quake, larger this time, made stumbling up the stairs far more difficult.

“Why are we at war?” Kayin shouted over the sound of raining pebbles.

“Um….” Dhekk sucked his teeth. “Tell you later.”

“Where is everyone?” Where were the guards that were posted at these doors every hour of every day? The servants?

“They were encouraged to go somewhere else so that I could get through,” was the answer. “No more questions.” Though him saying that only promoted more to come to mind. This hallway—Kayin was certain there was no option to go right before, but now that is exactly where Dhekk turned.

Four years ago, this was a dead end. Now, a path of rubble led up to a sizable opening in the ruined stones; Rinesa’s rays highlighted trails of falling dust. Dhekk navigated the stones deftly, hopping over smaller ones, climbing over larger ones with hardly any support from his one free hand. The other still held the longsword with surprising sturdiness. Kayin tried not to stare as he scrambled, scraping his palms on the rock.

Kayin coughed into his elbow, struggling not to suck in any of the air tainted with debris as they crawled onto the grass of the castle perimeter.

“Tidesa should be meeting us around here somewhere,” Dhekk said as they emerged.

Kayin’s fingers found the jutted stone edge of the makeshift opening, though as every second passed, smoke and smog stained the air. For a moment, Kayin was just a little boy again, screaming and running from the peka that tore his shoulder and scarred his face. The air was just as thick from the growing ash. He didn’t know fires grew so fast, were so loud.

With an arm covering his mouth, Kayin peered around the wall to see where the loudest sounds came from. Over the loud rumbles of the castle’s walls collapsing were sharp clangs of metal-on-metal, the unprepared guards and soldiers of Yatora struggling to fight back the waves of swords and pikes rushing from the forest.

“We have to help!” Kayin cried, gesturing to the silhouettes against the distant flames.

“Do you even know how to fight?” came Dhekk’s answer. Kayin hadn’t even noticed him break away from the castle to check around the other side of the wall.

“I—I learned a little!” This wasn’t convincing, apparently, because Dhekk rolled his eyes.

“We need to find Tidesa and get you about half a day’s journey through those trees.” The man gestured with the sword, pointing it in the exact direction of Wakino, where all the dangerous people currently trying to slaughter his loved ones just came from.

Kayin scowled, then stood as tall as he possibly could and reached forward. “Give me the sword, I’m going to help.”

In a moment that might have been as confusing as every other one that led up to this, Dhekk shrugged and handed over the longsword.

“’Kay, fine. Let’s go. Don’t die.” And just as he tossed the hilt toward Kayin, Dhekk took off in a run toward the screaming and clashing.

Between the shock of someone actually agreeing to something he wanted and the concussion, it took Kayin a few full moments to catch on, to kick against the rubble upon which he stood.

Breathing in any sort of controlled or calm way was impossible; the thick air slid down his throat like hay, clogged his senses and burnt his eyes. With blurry vision, he struggled to make out what, other than blood spurting from fresh wounds and screams of pain, was going on.

The flashes of light Kayin previous attributed to fires weren’t purely made of flame--though one, in particular, was a flame someone managed to throw with their bare hand without sustaining a single burn. The flame struck a vaguely person-shaped thing in the distance, which immediately enveloped and crumpled. Changing the shape of metal, summoning intense heat; these were things Kayin read about in the fantasy novels that kept him company, things that he was explicitly told by Aunt Aayin would not and could not be true. Stories that Dania’s mother yelled at him for repeating. Stories that were very clearly intentionally cut out of the history books given to him in this very young settlement.

Stories that now tore apart familiar faces and made people that used to know him cry and scream.

With his sword out in front, Kayin charged toward one person whose helmeted face shifted from looking like a Wakino soldier, to that of a person wearing a Yatora uniform. It was too late to pull back his attack, even if he could comprehend the change in appearance; but the enemy parried Kayin’s swing effortlessly, throwing his weight to the side and nearly knocking him off balance. Kayin leaned into his fall, catching himself with his hand on the ground. How could he trust what he saw, if it could shift so easily?

Despite recovering quickly, he wasn’t quick enough; Dhekk stepped right in, taking advantage of the Wakino soldier’s position, and dug a dagger right between the space of the breastplate’s faulds and tasset. The soldier doubled over to try and protect the new gash in his hip, but Dhekk caught the man’s wrist with his off-hand and pulled the sword right out of his grasp.

Kayin straightened up and went to take another swing, but Dhekk had already kicked the enemy in his wound, knocking him back, and brought his hard-won blade across his neck. The armor shifted from bearing the simple designs of Yatora to the complicated fleur de lys of Wakino as the man crumpled in a heap to the ground.

“Nope,” Dhekk shouted without looking back to Kayin. “Get back.” And once he was finished with his follow-through, he held his arm back and began to push Kayin backward, out of the line of fighting soldiers.

“What?”

“You don’t know how to fight.” As Kayin stumbled, Dhekk blocked a swing from another Wakino soldier and delivered a large slash across her chest; she disengaged from Dhekk when he backed up with Kayin. “You’re a liability, fall back!”

Kayin backtracked all the way to the castle wall, his back slapping against the crumbling stone before he could fully register how fast Dhekk pushed him.

“What? I—I said I know a little!” Kayin shouted.

“Not well enough to survive that without nearly taking me down with you,” said Dhekk. The man kept his arm up like a shield to keep Kayin in place. “Besides, Tidesa’s back there and she’s already going to yell at me. Go.” The man now wore speckles of other people’s blood, and he was more concerned about Tidesa yelling at him? Kayin’s feet worked faster than his mind, already stumbling where Dhekk pointed without even fully looking. But he was right: Tidesa crouched behind a large tree and a half-burned bush, gesturing for them to go toward her.

The white-haired woman was covered head-to-toe in so much ash, it was difficult to even tell her hair was its usual stark white. She had no weapon, no shield, no armor, but was otherwise unharmed. Kayin sprinted toward her, and hesitated once he got close enough to see that she had her own form of protection.

Still tying one side of his leather curiass stood a bloodied Tae. Tae, the mini-soldier that giggled with Kayin at meal times and even stopped calling him “Prince Kayin” near the end of their friendship (before Kayin went to jail). Here he stood, a full foot taller, fully grown. He braced himself against the tree with a sword stabbed into the dirt beside his feet, and hardly looked up to see Kayin and Dhekk rush toward them.

“What were you thinking, Dhekk?” came Tidesa’s immediate shout. The man shrugged. “Without even checking with me, you just decide to rush toward the front lines?”

“Sidelines at best,” was Dhekk’s excuse. He pulled Kayin’s arm to shove him partially into the bush. He kept on his feet, but knelt beside Tae, who finally noticed him. Aside from a little bit of nerves clear in the man’s deep blue eyes, Kayin’s appearance didn’t seem to surprise him. Was he the only one left in the dark about this?

“Dhekk, there’s no time—” Although Tae wasn’t done strapping into his last-minute armor, Tidesa pulled him and Dhekk into a crouch beside Kayin. “I—he’s here.”

“Who—?”

“Dhekk!” He’d never heard Tidesa sound desperate before. But now as he stared at her, it was clear that her watery eyes weren’t just from smoke. And although Kayin had just met Dhekk mere minutes ago, he knew it would be an odd sight to see the man go pale like he did just now. Suddenly, it was just Tidesa and Dhekk, staring at each other like they’d just received the worst news in the world, something worse than the news of war. Something that surprised a woman who could see the future.

“I—” Dhekk gaped, but recovered a little faster than Tidesa. “I’ll take care of it.” Just as fast as he crouched, he stood, and stole the longsword from Kayin’s grasp. He didn’t provide any resistance.

“Dhekk….” She wasn’t crying, but it certainly looked like she was going to.

“We knew this could happen. We knew he could join them.”

Kayin finally piped up, before Dhekk could step away: “Knew what would happen?”

Dhekk’s expression slowly shifted from some sort of surprised sadness to pity. It was so strange to watch him harden that way, to be able to physically see the man step out of himself, out of the distress he clearly just experienced, to put on a different kind of armor Kayin hadn’t thought of before.

“You can’t change the timeline if you don’t have a head, Kayin,” was his cryptic reply. The ash must have finally gotten to Dhekk’s eyes, with how they burned red, how he so visibly swallowed a lump in his throat.

“Be careful,” said Tidesa, defeated. “We can’t rely on him being distracted.”

Dhekk offered a pathetic smile. “He’s not looking for me.” And with that, Dhekk took off back into the mass of soldiers.