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Arc#5 Prologue: The Scars of War
🕑 Added 2024-10-17 07:19:40 +0000 UTCFilth trudged across the rubble left behind by what used to be a mountain.
Emphasis on "used to be". Because now, it was just a pile of shattered stone.
"Ugh..." he groaned, catching a whiff of the nauseating air in the surroundings. There was a gray smog as far as the eye could see and the only reason he hadn't suffocated to death was the magically enchanted cloth bandana he wore over his lower face. As for his eyes, the Brothers of Arkhan had given him a set of "goggles" or whatever they were called, so he wasn't too bothered.
For everything else, such as his ears and hair? He'd seen fit to cover as much as he could with cloth too, eliminating as much of his exposed skin as possible.
It had been a week since that day. The day Arkhan was upturned in just a few hours. And by command of his superiors, Filth had infiltrated the extremely patriotic organization called the "Sons of Arkhan". Surprisingly, it hadn't been that hard because they weren't exactly drowning in members.
Additionally, its members were quite aggressive and unscrupulous in their recruitment efforts. Each recruit was obligated to invite at least two people to the organization before they were officialized. Filth himself had made do with whoever he could get to agree, not particularly caring who they were or what they did in the past.
In any case, he'd succeeded in being officialized. But as the lowest rung in the organization, he was naturally relegated to the shittiest tasks—such as scouting out what used to be Arkhana, which was the nation's capital and the center of its administration.
'Great depths... All of this happened in just a couple of hours, huh...?'
The smog made things difficult, but an errant wind from the southern sea cleared things out for a few moments. That allowed Filth to truly marvel at the destruction wrought by the hands of a few unfathomable beings.
The buildings and landmarks like the Capitol Building among others, all full of rich history. A carefully laid out network of rails and roads, serving to connect settlements to each other. Humble people just looking to find a bit of happiness in their meager lives.
Gone. Just, gone.
All that remained was the ghost of their screams in the howling wind. Shadows of their suffering beyond the impenetrable smog. Or perhaps even that was a hallucination because as far as Filth knew, nobody had ever seen it coming.
It had been sudden. Instant, even.
Too fast to scream or be afraid. And too quick to suffer.
An ordinary day, shattered by an overwhelming instance of violence that no mortal could ever resist.
What used to be the jewel of the south, filled with sprawling buildings and bustling streets was now a mere crater. In fact, it was so close to the shores that Filth was convinced it would be swallowed by the sea if the tide got just a little higher—and it would, in just a few days if his experience sailing in this area was anything to go by.
Forgotten, as if it had never existed.
The ground had turned as gray as the ashen smog that plagued it, almost as if the land was utterly devoid of life and the ability to support it. It would take a long time to confirm because all the trees down to every blade of grass had been disintegrated. And if that wasn't enough, the air was tainted with a foul stench that would make even the most hardened sewer rats like Filth gag—which some smartasses called sulfur or brimstone.
'The kingdom knew about it too.'
Dame Gwendolyn, the beautiful lady knight who handled things while the prince was both away and present, had told Filth to stay away from the central areas of the republic for a while, abandoning all jobs. He had initially been confused at first, thinking that he was being forced into a small break. They did that sometimes, when he was deemed as working too hard. Aizen seemed really serious about that kind of thing.
But then this had happened.
And by now, Filth knew the kingdom had something to do with it. He didn't need to be a genius to figure it out. News had suddenly reached him over in the small town east of the republic that the Sage King was dead.
Even the Spirit Tower was no more, though it was just the organization that was disbanded. All things considered, Vel Ayala was quite intact if one ignored how the Spirit Tower was missing. Even the four floating islands were gone too, but the Lower City, filled with centuries of history, remained unmolested. But even that fact might not remain for long.
The War God and Argonia's strongest were apparently going around killing as many battlemages as they could—which, in turn, caused even more destruction. The fights lasted only for the rest of the day on that day, but the destruction caused everywhere would be remembered for decades if not centuries. While it could not compare to the sheer scale that Filth had seen throughout his survey of the lands, it was still nothing to scoff at.
Filth was pretty certain that the map had to be redrawn.
Aizen's feared knights joined in on the hunt for battlemages too, but they were apparently a lot more peaceful about it. Allegedly, they had recruited any battlemages they could find. Some of the people he'd met these past few days said so, and even the Sons of Arkhan snidely acknowledged that the Aizenians were currently preferable to the multiple imperial armies marching on their door from the north. When Dame Gwendolyn gave him the instructions to infiltrate the Sons of Arkhan, she had also mentioned that they planned to rally everyone in Lageton, which made sense, because it was the closest city to Aizen.
As for the government, surviving settlements still had their local government units but Filth was currently staring at where the capitol building used to be. And he was quite sure the president and all of the other important politicians weren't hosting tea parties under all that ash and rubble. Obviously, they had all perished in the initial conflict.
Even without the loss of the highest political entities, the republic's government was in turmoil. Local governors could do nothing of substance but keep their own cities from devolving into utter anarchy.
Surprisingly, the Sons of Arkhan was doing a whole lot better. While the government was floundering about, accomplishing nothing, they were already sending out new members to survey the damages.
‘Am I… On the right side?’
Well, this side paid more and his survival rate would go up. But what’s right isn’t always what’s easy.
The kingdom had seemed like the side that cared for the little guys like Filth. They treated him like he was actually a person and valued his skills. Even the relatively important figures didn’t talk down to him or treat him like dirt.
Yet they had still consented to… to this. In fact, they might not have just consented. They may have participated too.
"Hey, are you tired? Why are you stopping? Or can you see the capital already?"
Filth looked behind him to make sure he wasn't just hallucinating a conversation partner. Again. That seemed to happen a lot when one was alone so much.
Behind him was a young woman named Leila, though one would have terrible difficulty knowing she was a woman because she was covered with layers upon layers of clothing to protect against the ash and dust. Naturally, she also had a mask like Filth's, goggles, and wrapped every part of her head she could with cloth.
She was one of the people Filth recruited into the Sons of Arkhan, and was the survivor of a fight between battlemages and enemy Ascendants whose affiliation she didn’t know. Obviously, she hadn’t been participating in it. But was close enough to be affected.
In a sense, she was also both lucky and unlucky. Because she’d been tasked with gathering herbs that day, she had been spared the fate of being melted off the face of the planet by some kind of light beam. On the other hand, she was the last of her village. The other villagers, her acquaintances, her friends, her family, and even the man she was supposed to marry were mixed in with the soil that had turned into glass because of the heat.
She had been aimlessly spending the past few days in the town closest to her village when Filth found her. Or rather, she had overheard him recruiting someone else and volunteered in their place.
According to her, she wanted to do something. Anything. Perhaps aiming to distract herself from what happened to her.
‘Poor thing.’
"I'm okay." Filth gestured at the crater. “Just wondering what could have happened to warrant all this destruction. I think it's time to go back to report that the capital's just a massive crater now."
Leila silently followed his gesture and shuddered. He couldn’t see her expression at the moment, but he got the impression that she was grimacing hard. “Those fucking bastards…”
Unable to do anything but nod, Filth led the way back in the direction they had come from.
Train tracks leading to the capital were no more and so were the roads, so coming there would have been a long and dangerous affair. Fortunately, monsters weren’t spared the misfortune of being collateral damage, so they didn’t have to worry about being predated on by some feral beast. But transportation was still a problem, especially with the thick ashen smog.
Luckily, the Sons of Arkhan saved the day again. Really, Filth was starting to think they weren’t so bad after all.
“Oi~! You’re back!”
Filth squinted from behind his goggles, giving it a good wipe with his thumb to clear up the dust blocking his vision. He recognized the voice and walked toward it, but the smog had gotten thick again so he couldn’t see very far. And the goggles he'd just wiped were fucking dusty again. Eventually, he managed to vaguely make out the shadowy silhouette of a man waving his arms above his head.
“How’d he see us from so far away…?” Leila muttered from a bit behind him.
Wondering the same thing, Filth couldn’t help but nod in agreement.
After a bit of walking and almost tripping over a broken piece of rubble partially hidden in the gray sand, Filth reunited with the other person he’d recruited—Lospar, who was dressed similarly to the two of them.
He wasn’t the person Filth was trying to recruit when Leila interrupted him. That had been a bust when the guy asked about the salary—which was zero, because the Sons of Arkhan didn’t pay out a salary. Who could have guessed that rebel organizations didn't earn a lot? Everybody with a brain, probably.
Filth had saved Lospar from giant sewer rats a few months ago. Ironically, he’d been tracking the Sons of Arkhan when he met the guy, who was running away from debt collectors. Months later, when the two reunited, Lospar had happily agreed to sign up as long as he was fed. It was a good thing that was all he asked for, because the Sons at least provided supplies.
‘Well, it would have still been fine anyway since Dame Gwendolyn sent me off with three months worth of rations.’
But those were for emergencies. And he’d attract unwanted attention if he had that much food on him. Actually, just a spatial artifact as spacious as the one he was hiding was suspicious enough for most—hence, why he was hiding its existence.
As for the debt collectors Lospar owed money to, they probably wouldn’t be enthusiastic about hunting people down during this time of chaos. Filth would really have to hand it to them if they continued to do so. Such impressive work ethic just inspired admiration, in a way.
“Why are you over here…?” Filth looked around. “And where are the steeds?”
“Over there,” Lospar said, pointing somewhere. “I found a cave. Well, something kind of like a cave. Thought we could take a break there before making the trip back. My fucking ass is sore and my balls need some dusting.”
“Ew." Leila grimaced, but soon nodded before turning to Filth for confirmation. "He has a bit of a point though. My feet are killing me.”
Not having a reason to refuse, Filth shrugged. “May as well.”
“Great! Follow me,” Lospar said as he led the way. "It's just up ahead."
It took two minutes of trudging through the upturned earth and pushing through the smog for Filth to see a giant chunk of stone shaped in a way that part of it acted as a kind of roof over a depression on the ground.
Within were two vehicles redesigned from magitech carriages. Except these were meant to be mounted like horses instead of boarded, which was the reason they were called “steeds”. They were a lot faster than horses or carriages, ridiculously maneuverable, and they also wouldn’t complain about journeying through the foul smog.
That didn’t come without consequence, however. They were smaller than carriages and could only be ridden by two people at most—three if they really squeezed in. The riders were also without a roof to shelter them against the elements.
All of that aside, they were perfect vehicles for their current duties. Filth didn’t know why, but the steeds also had some kind of black material wrapped around the metal wheels that made the journey through uneven terrain much easier. It had a durable softness that was somewhat stubborn too. He wished he knew enough words to describe the feeling.
After reaching the cave, the three sheltered under the rock and sat on the gray earth. They could have taken out rations to chew on, but the smog reached the cave as well, if only a little. Catching a whiff of it would immediately banish their appetite so they’d have to leave it for later.
“What do you think is gonna happen now?” Lospar asked casually, though it betrayed the uncertainty of someone who was a bit lost as to what kind of life they would lead from this point on. “I mean, the brotherhood feeds us but… Is that it? We just eat crappy rations for the rest of our lives, or what?”
Leila nudged her head toward the direction of the former capital. “We're better off than those guys, at least.”
“Oh, right. What’s the situation over there, by the way? You guys came back awfully quick.”
“There was nothing to check. Arkhana’s a crater now. We could see it from afar thanks to the sea breeze blowing the ash back north.”
“Damn… I mean, people were speculating, but I was kind of holding out some hope, ya know? Was hoping that maybe the president could pull somethin' outta his ass. Or someone else in the capitol could.”
“I don’t know anymore.” Leila clenched her fists atop her lap. “I just don’t want to sit around and do nothing. I’ve done enough of that these past few days.”
Lospar grunted. “Well, the railway networks are entirely fucked, so cities big and small, and even towns, are gonna have to depend on their own stockpiles for food. That’s gonna run out real fast for industrial regions that depend on other regions for food supply.”
“I don’t really get that kind of thing.”
“Eh, it’s not that complicated.” The man chuckled. “Just think of your village. Not everyone worked to grow food, yeah? Some did stuff like fixing up tools or patrolling to fend off small monsters. Am I right?”
Leila nodded. "Yeah. You got it."
“They’re all important people in the village, no? What did those guys do for food over there?”
“The chief and the others gave them some in exchange…” Leila trailed off quietly. “Okay, I think I get what you’re saying.”
Lospar laughed. “Yep, it’s that. The industrial regions, like south of Vel Ayala and those to the east, are focused on the production side of things. Regions to the north and west are more on agriculture and stuff. It’s a circle, see? The farming regions send food to the industrial regions and the latter send over tools and all sorts of stuff. Bullets and combat golems, for one thing.”
“And that depended on the railway systems?”
“Yep. Used to be, we kind of had a bit of everything everywhere. But with the trains, regions chose to specialize. More efficient, ya know?"
Leila groaned. "That's not good."
"You said it. It’s gonna bite everyone in the ass now that the railways are all messed up. Monsters are an issue, though most of 'em probably kicked the bucket now. Heard a buncha of sleeping volcanoes erupted too, and that's where some of the ash comes from. It's getting stupidly hot in Vel Ayala's vicinity too and it's spreading outward for some reason... Ah, and I heard Argonia declared war, so there’s that. Curse the depths, Arkhan's all kinds of fucked right now.”
Filth idly listened, contemplating the probability that he could get Aizen to accept these people too. But it wasn’t as if he got to decide that. He wasn’t exactly a citizen either. Just someone who worked for a guy who lived there.
‘Argonia declared war…’
If that was true, wasn’t the republic well and truly finished? With the Sage King dead, they didn’t have anyone to keep the War God in check. And looking at the destruction wrought on the lands, it was made glaringly clear just how fearsome a Transcendent was.
There was no defying that level of violence.
Filth had never truly understood just how strong those lofty beings were. Prince Reivan alone was already such an insurmountable figure in both battle and status. And apparently, any random Ascendant could kill the prince with less effort than it took to chew a mouthful of bread.
What, then, did that say about Transcendents? They could kill Ascendants with great ease, after all. That's what everybody says, as far as he heard. The scale of power was so grand that Filth couldn’t really imagine it. All he knew was that a lot of people in the world could end his pitiful life without lifting a finger—and Transcendents just happened to be one of them.
Now, however, he finally realized. Just how tiny everyone else was.
It was horrifying, thinking about how hundreds of thousands—maybe even millions—of people were slain unintentionally by a handful of people fighting each other. Like how two drunkards in a tavern, upending tables in their brawl and dropping plates on the floor.
All that death and destruction?
It was just collateral damage. The Transcendents hadn't meant to do so much harm. But they did. Unintentionally. Like bumping elbows while trying to cross a crowded street.
Filth found his fists clenching despite himself.
He discovered his special gift and even received the attention of a country’s prince because of it. His head may have inflated a little after that. But now, he was reminded of just how insignificant he truly was.
Like a leaf, all he could do when the wind blew was get swept away. No resistance. No choice. Just, the consequences of actions he didn’t take.
“You good there, Fil?” Leila called out his alias. “You suddenly went quiet.”
Filth looked up and smiled, before remembering he was masked. Instead, he shook his head and waved a hand. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Maybe I'm a little tired… about all this.”
Lospar sighed loudly. “Who wouldn’t be? I almost wish I could go back to the time I was still being hounded by debt collectors.”
Leila and Filth chuckled at that. True enough. At that time, Lospar’s greatest problem was which alleys to pass through or which shacks to hide in. Now? Nobody knew if anywhere was safe. A bunch of Ascendants could suddenly show up and fight nearby. Then what? What could a bunch of puny mortals whose greatest offensive option was a gun do?
Biting his lip in hesitation, Filth eventually decided to divulge some of the information he knew. Even though he really shouldn’t. Surely, it would be fine. “I heard Aizen’s gathering people in Lageton. Reinforcing it and handing out food.”
“Yeah?” Lospar asked, surprised. “I don’t think I’ve heard anything about that. And I’ve been hanging around in all the right places for information gathering before you picked me up, Fil. Is this info from a reliable source?”
Filth nodded. He heard it from a knight, so it was a lot more dependable than anything they’d ever hear in some seedy tavern. “The east and southeast are still mostly intact.”
“Huh. Guess they want a piece of the pie too,” Lospar muttered to himself. “Well, who wouldn’t, I suppose. It’s free land. Nobody would pass up free land and free labor.”
Leila hung her head. “So the two nations are gonna split the republic up? Is that it? Or can we fight back?”
Filth shook his head. “Doubt it. The Sage King’s dead, so nobody can stop them.”
“Yeah.” Lospar agreed with a sigh. “It’s sad to say, but the republic isn’t a player in this game of cards anymore. Aizen and Argonia? Their only enemies are each other now. What’s left of Arkhan can only hope they’re treated well by whoever lays claim to their particular part of the continent.”
“Then is there even a point? To this, I mean,” Leila said with bitterness. “I joined the brotherhood to do something. But in the end, it’s powerless against these nations too. Just like we were before we joined.”
Both Filth and Lospar remained silent, because she wasn’t necessarily wrong.
Still, it seemed Lospar was more optimistic. “Well, it’s better than doing nothing. Who knows, our chance might come. Maybe the Sword Star and the War God kill each other. Or one of the battlemages that escaped that day becomes a Transcendent.”
“There’s always a chance if you keep on living…” Filth muttered, earning looks from his cavemates. “I heard it somewhere.”
“It’s a good anecdote, definitely.” Lospar raised his thumb in approval. “Cheer up, Leila.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Damn, you’re hard to please. Little brat.”
“Hah? Who're you calling a brat, old man?”
Filth stood up before the two ended up arguing. Again. They’d only been together for two days, so he would need to give them time to actually get along. “It’s about time to go. The escape point might expire if we leave too soon.”
The other two nodded and stood up too.
Only two steeds were available, and Leila couldn’t figure out how to drive one. Lospar was apparently a magitech carriage driver for some wealthy guy before he got addicted to something and fell into debt. The controls were a lot different but he’d already proven his proficiency.
As such, Filth mounted one steed while Lospar took the other one. As for Leila, she hopped behind Filth and held onto his shoulders.
With the flip of a switch, the steeds roared to life. Filth leaned forward a little to wrap his fingers around each handle. Leila readjusted her hands to Filth’s waist since his shoulders were a bit too far. She must have been nervous about falling off, but despite that, wasn’t holding on very tightly.
That’s why, before taking off, Filth took a moment to securely wrap her arms around his waist. It’d be disastrous if she really fell, after all. The steeds were quite fast because they were so much lighter than magitech carriages, so an unexpected fall would likely cause more than a light bruise—especially to what had been an ordinary village girl.
It was the same set of events as earlier, before they made the trip here. He wished she’d start taking safety more seriously and grabbing onto him properly from the start.
“Lospar, you got everything in order?” Filth looked to the other steed rider. “Didn’t forget anything, right? Once we go through an escape point, we can’t go back through it.”
“I’m good to go.” Lospar nodded, starting up his own steed. “Race you there.”
And with that, he took off.
“Curse the depths…” Filth muttered, earning a giggle from the girl behind him. “Hold on tight.”
Leila responded by literally tightening her arms around his waist, which was good. She definitely wasn’t going to fall off now.
With one final glance in the direction of what had once been the capital, Filth’s steed surged forward as thoughts of a kind but foul-mouthed orphanage director plagued his mind.
When he had the time, he'd pour an entire bottle of wine into the ground to send the guy off.
════════════════════════════════
The Escape Point they were supposed to take was set southwest of where the capital used to be, so the three of them rode through the gray wastelands to reach it.
With how fast their steeds tore through the lands, they reached it rather easily. And probably because it was close to the sea, where the southern wind was blowing from, the smog was absent here.
As such, the other two saw fit to take off their masks and head wrappings. But not their goggles, since their eyes weren't exactly immune to dust.
Lospar was a surprisingly old man despite his youthful voice full of cheerfulness. He even had a glorious mustache and a beard long enough to reach his collar. Streaks of silver adorned his dark brown hair and he had quite a chiseled jawline—which Filth was forced to constantly look at from the side because they were riding parallel to each other.
As for Leila, she was a charming young lady with milky white skin. She was certainly lovely and quite a stunner, but nothing much compared to the refined beauty he saw in Dame Gwendolyn, the white-haired princess with cat ears atop her head, or the aloof lady that his true employer would marry soon.
Seeing those three had truly widened his horizons on the subject of just how pretty a human being could be. They had also ruined him, in a way, because everyone else was uglier in comparison. Hopefully, he’d fix his eyes after not seeing them for a few months.
What stood out about Leila, though, was her peach-blonde hair. It looked luscious, voluminous, beautiful, and extremely well-maintained—which made it clear that a normal village girl shouldn’t have it. But it wasn’t Filth’s business to pry into whatever backstory Leila wanted to peddle.
She could be the long-lost daughter of the Sage King for all he cared.
“Ah! There it is. I can see it.” Lospar yelled as he pointed at something in the distance.
Squinting from behind his goggles, Filth was forced to admit that the elder gentleman’s eyes were something special. Because he couldn’t see anything until they rode for a few more minutes.
‘He was right.’
Filth beheld the seventh Escape Point he’d seen since joining the Sons of Arkhan.
Months before the republic was upturned, Dame Gwendolyn had tasked Filth with tailing people who allegedly belonged to the Sons of Arkhan. Ascendants could do it a lot more easily, but they might be detected by the republic’s Ascendants.
For very obvious reasons, that would be inconvenient. As such, it was better for him—someone who very few people could find—to do it instead.
And Filth did his job diligently. A lot of the time, it ended up being flops. The people he followed were just cranky bastards with nothing better to do than to blame their shitty lives on anyone but themselves.
Sometimes, though, he struck gold.
Filth would follow them into clandestine rendezvous points within abandoned shacks. Sometimes in fancy hotels. Hell, sometimes he’d follow them into the sewers where he would have run-ins with giant rats or cockroaches.
But every single time, they’d just vanish into thin air for some inexplicable reason. And no, he didn’t just lose sight of them in a crowd or look away the second they dropped down some kind of hidden trap door. He’d shadowed them from literally right beside them and had his eyes peeled but still lost them.
Filth was pretty sure that Dame Gwendolyn just thought his failures were because he was slacking off, so he really worked hard to prove her wrong by actually gaining some results. But no matter how he tried, he still couldn’t figure out how the bastards kept disappearing.
He didn’t have an infinite number of the Sons to follow, so he was in a bit of a dilemma. The ones he would find were surprisingly disciplined too, not saying anything about what they were doing even though they were alone together.
Because of the string of failures, Filth was going crazy with frustration. He had half a mind to just kidnap one of them, but most of the members he spotted were stronger than him or otherwise kept in tight-knit groups, thereby starving him of opportunities to catch one off guard.
And that was when Filth was ordered to join the Sons of Arkhan instead.
Shortly after he got accepted, he was also told to stay in specific cities and not to step foot anywhere else. This was with the warning of avoiding certain regions—some of which had been Vel Ayala and Arkhana.
Now, however, he was back. And he’d even recruited two new members.
Back then, he had joined the information-gathering team thinking he could glean some information from it. But it was quite literally the information-gathering team. Not the information-sharing team. All he could do was give to the organization, never receive.
Frustrating, yes. But Dame Gwendolyn had been fine with it because it allowed them an opportunity to feed the brotherhood false information. Or legitimate information that would lure them into action.
In any case, by joining the brotherhood, Filth came to know of these “Escape Points”.
Basically, they were one-way teleportation spots that could only be seen and used by people who were allowed to see them. Apparently, they could be remotely set up literally anywhere in the nation and would lead to a so-called “Safe Zone.”
Appearance-wise, they looked like a cube-shaped white crystal floating off the ground. Just being close to it and wanting to use it was enough to activate the escape point. Hell, it could even bring whatever vehicle the user was riding on.
They did, however, expire.
Filth wasn’t privy to all the information about them. All he knew was that they teleported people. They could be made to appear anywhere in the nation. And if he was told to use it before a certain time, he should—because it would expire and it wasn’t possible to form an Escape Point there for a while.
It was all very valuable information, according to Dame Gwendolyn. Filth even got praised, which made him quite happy because it came from such a drop-dead gorgeous beauty.
She figured that the Escape Points were made by someone’s gift.
Kind of like how Filth could turn imperceptible while Prince Reivan could just ignore that. Oh, and Dame Gwendolyn could do it too, apparently. Which was frustrating in all sorts of ways. Now there were two of them.
Anyway, Filth was to continue infiltrating the organization and try to advance his authority within it to figure out who possessed the gift. What would be done to said person was entirely out of Filth’s hands though. Maybe they'd get caught so Aizen could convince them to join the kingdom the same way Filth did. Or perhaps they'd be killed.
Filth didn't exactly not care. But he was a bit more concerned with what was going to happen to the republic in these chaotic times.
'We should be in range now.'
The three of them stopped their steeds just close enough to touch the cube. They would have to time their teleportation together and also stop moving because they didn’t want to crash into any walls or fall off a cliff if the so-called safe zone had those.
“On three.” Filth raised three fingers. “One…”
“Wait,” Leila tapped him on the shoulder. “Do we go on three or go…?”
“Three. I just said so. I’m not going to say go.”
It was Lospar who slapped his head as if he’d realized something. Clearly, Leila wasn’t the only one who would have gotten it wrong if he hadn’t clarified it.
Filth sighed, wondering how he’d gone from slave to a prince’s retainer, before finally ending up as a spy-slash-rebel. All in just under a year.
'Well, it's better than being dead in a ditch, I guess.'
Being alive was really hard sometimes though. Dead people definitely didn't have to go through so much trouble to make a living.
Comments
The3rd
Infinite cookies are here 🍪♾️
mechanizedbush
Tftc! This chapter hits a lot harder after Reivan's time as Clover. And all of it was just collateral damage. "Knews had suddenly" -> "News had suddenly" "Wag God" -> "War God"
Tsorov
Thx for the chapter! The escape point might expire if we leave too soon.” -> leave too late?
