IrateRapScallion
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Chapter 102
🕑 Added 2020-11-25 02:54:58 +0000 UTCArlette’s eyes opened wearily to blackness. With two claps, the crystals embedded in the ceiling began to glow, lighting the room with their soft radiance. Though the crystals were on their lowest setting, the light still made her eyes squeeze back shut. She rolled over and buried her aching head in her pillow, wishing that she didn’t have to get up, but the chimes coming from across the room told her that it was already well past her normal wake-up time. She couldn’t put off facing the world today any longer.
Slowly, grumpily, she pried herself off the bed and hobbled to the adjacent bathroom. Her body protested the injustice, but she’d overcome such complaints many a time before, and this time would be no different. That is, until the coughing returned. Her arms trembling as she clung to the sides of the sink, her body hunched forward as she hacked and gagged. Soon enough, small flecks of blackened red speckled the basin. Arlette took comfort in how much smaller and drier the splotches were this time. Her healing had come a long way over the night.
That step forward the night before had been a mistake. She’d known it was a mistake even in the moment. Her entire being had screamed at her not to do it. She’d done it anyway; her fury, fueled by the knowledge of why her entire being was screaming at her in the first place, refused to allow any other course of action.
She couldn’t put what happened next into the proper words. She’d felt her body begin to break down at a level she couldn’t understand. She knew what it felt like to take damage to an organ, and it was nothing like that. It was deeper, like every little tiny piece that made up her muscles and bones and skin and everything else had started to decompose all at once. And that was just her body.
She’d felt the same feeling in her mind, and even in her soulforce. It was like her very self was being splintered into millions of tiny pieces and utterly destroyed. Just that one step had been more than enough to convince her that she could not overcome whatever it was that Sofie had done to her. Down that path lay death. No, more than death: annihilation.
Remembering that moment of existential agony brought another wave of utter revulsion washing through her and she sat down upon the toilet with her head in her hands. She felt so violated, so... so used. Again.
As soon as she’d regained her wits and dealt with the massive pain in the ass that was the still-unconscious Blake with the help of Leo and Gabby, Arlette had retreated to her quarters and cried her eyes out. Why was it that every person she dared to put faith in ended up betraying her? Was it a curse? Punishment of some sort from a higher being? Or just fate? No, Arlette reminded herself, it wasn’t everybody. Her second parents had never betrayed her from the moment they’d brought her into their family to the day of their death. She could never allow herself to forget that. But their kindness just made everybody else’s betrayals feel worse in comparison.
Most of the night she’d spent on her knees clutching the sides of the toilet as she hacked up large amounts of blood and mentally went through every single conversation with Sofie that she could remember, looking for anything else that blasted girl might have done to her. Not counting the ones from last night, she’d found only two instances, which worried her. That was far too few. How many was she forgetting? The thought made her gut twist in anxiety.
The two commands that she could recall, however, just left her confused and unsure. They weren’t like the first command, the one that had locked Arlette into helping Sofie in the first place. They were more... benign, perhaps, and as such, they muddled her otherwise-pure anger, which almost made her angrier but didn’t.
The first was a simple one: don’t hurt Pari. The order was utterly pointless, of course; nothing in the world could have made her hurt that sweet child, so on the one hand, the resentment from the imposition was almost a formality. Except... she and the others had, in fact, been close to killing the beastkin on that first night when they’d met. Really close. Sofie had saved her from that terrible mistake. Did the end justify the means? She didn’t know.
The other thing she’d remembered was something much more recent and much more befuddling. When the two of them had sat together on the Flying Toaster, making their way home after their first disastrous attempt at entering the Krekard Mountains to meet Grandfather, Sofie had said to her, “Don’t you die on me too, alright?” Arlette didn’t know how to process this. What would happen if she did die? By dying, would she break the command, and thereby receive the backlash of... death? Or had Sofie simply doomed her spirit to obliteration upon her death?
There were too many questions, questions that she couldn’t resolve right now or, perhaps, ever. Arlette was, after all, forbidden from trying to find the one person who might have the answers.
She could feel the mental block if she tried. She could walk towards the door right now without issue, but the moment she shifted her thoughts to trying to locate the missing Earthling, her body would refuse to move forward. She could still move away from the door with these thoughts, so it seemed to be some combination of intent and action, though Arlette was not sure if this applied to all of Sofie’s commands or just this one. The way the command seemed to know her thoughts better than she did scared her. She couldn’t even try to pretend or tell herself that she wasn’t actually trying to find Sofie. Something inside her always knew.
The lack of control, this weakness, galled her. The fact that she had promised to help that Earthling witch find a way home just made it worse. But she had promised, so it wasn’t like she could get out of it now. Arlette honored her commitments, even ones made under corrupted circumstances like this one. Holding on to her honor mattered to her.
But why did it matter? There was not even a single thought within her of dropping her promise to that conniving girl, even after everything she had done. Did she really care? Or was this just another one of Sofie’s hidden manipulations, something she’d carefully orchestrated in a way that Arlette couldn’t recall?
The anger came roaring back once more. Arlette stumbled back to her bed and flopped down upon it. This uncertainty was slowly ripping her apart just as effectively as Sofie’s power ever could. What were her true thoughts? What were the fake ones? She couldn’t tell, and it made her want to scream.
In a fit of rage, Arlette grabbed one of her knives from the bed stand near her bed and plunged it deep into her pillow and the mattress beneath with as much force as her weakened body could manage. Then she ripped it back out and plunged it down again and again and again and again until she could no longer move her arm. Wheezing heavily, she plopped down face first, plunging her head into a pile of down and slashed fabric.
She’d been used as an unwitting tool before, yes, but no matter how much others had twisted her words and deeds for their own purposes, she’d found a small but crucial bit of solace in the fact that they could never twist her. Now she didn’t even have that. Now she had nothing.
“Feeling better?” a familiar voice asked.
“No, Peko, I am not,” Arlette huffed as her alter-ego sat down on the bed beside her. She coughed again. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” he chided. “You’re still you, and a touch of tampering isn’t going to change that.”
“How do you know that it’s just a ‘touch’ and not more? Not everything?”
Peko shrugged. “Our soul doesn’t feel very different to me. Not that I could tell there was anything wrong before the command triggered and hurt you. Real insidious, how subtle it is. I’m impressed.”
“I need more than a feeling,” Arlette told him. “Do you know how many things she’s done to me?”
“No, I can only tell that they exist, not how many there are. But I really don’t feel like she’s got you too twisted into knots.”
“Hmph, what does it matter either way? It’s not like I can do anything about it,” Arlette bemoaned.
“Oh, are we back on this again?” he sighed.
“Why not? It’s not like anything really changed!” Arlette shot back. “Yeah, my control is better and I can do more illusions simultaneously, but in the end, I’m still just a person with a sword! If Blake, Gabby, Sofie, the Mother of Nightmares, or probably any of the other Earthlings out there decided to do something to me, what could I do about it? Nothing! The same is true for all of us Scyrians! We’re just helpless victims, and I am so, so sick of feeling like a helpless victim all my life!”
“But what can you do about it?”
“I... I don’t know. I think at this point that maybe there’s just nothing I can do.”
Arlette expected Peko to say something encouraging, or perhaps sarcastic, but instead, he remained silent. After a few moments, Arlette lifted her head from her destroyed cushion to check that he was even still there and found him lost in thought.
“What is it,” she prodded.
“Have you given up on pushing your multitasking any further?” he eventually asked.
“I don’t think I can push myself that much further. The jump from one to two copies was hard enough. I’m not sure I’d be able to handle much more,” she admitted. “I don’t really see the point, anyway. I have enough smoke and mirrors. The problem is that they’re just distractions. I can’t do much else with them.”
“But what if you could? Remember that book you read back in the castle library when you were a child? On the Mechanics of Personal Phenomena?”
“Which book was that?”
“The old one by Recturic Wallentin.”
“That kook? What would you care about the ramblings of an obscure and derided ancient philosopher? Nobody took him seriously even when he was alive.”
“Those passages he wrote about the nature of matter created through Observation—is it real, where does it come from, what gives it existence, that sort of thing—always stuck with me,” Peko explained. “And I was thinking, since that’s about all I ever get to do, and I came up with a wild idea a little while ago. The problem is, it almost definitely wouldn’t amount to anything and would just waste time you could use training, so I didn’t mention it. But if you think you’ve hit your limit, then all that would be lost is time you weren’t going to get much out of anyway.”
“What’s this crazy idea of yours?” she asked skeptically.
“If we can’t improve the quantity or quality of your illusions, then what about changing how they work?”
“Change in what way?”
“What if, maybe, we could make them solid?”
“Solid illusions? They’re illusions! If they were solid, they wouldn’t be illusions!”
“But what if we could?” he asked again.
Memories of battles past flashed through Arlette’s mind, moments where she’d thrown a throwing knife and flanked it with two false knives, where she’d made copies of herself to overwhelm her opponent’s decision making, where she’d once even created a fake god to distract an all-too-real one. What would her battles have been like if all of those knives had been real? If her doppelgangers’ fake strikes could kill? If she could create her own god?
“Sounds far too good to be true, Peko,” she told him.
“And it most surely is,” he admitted with a smirk. “All I’m saying is if you’re not going to train, meaning we’ll have a lot more time on our hands, then why not experiment a little? If nothing comes out of it, we would at least have had some fun passing the time. Just think of this as time to spend with your old, neglected friend Peko, who you stuff into the back of your mind and forget about for years at a time and-”
“Alright, fine!” she said with a roll of her eyes, though she couldn’t hide the slight smirk as well. “So what would ‘fun time with Peko’ entail? How do we start?”
“We rest and recover is how we start,” her imaginary friend snorted. “After that, well, it’s simple. We-” Peko halted mid-sentence, his brow furrowing as his head turned to stare at the wall to Arlette’s left, a scowl of concern growing on his face.
Arlette turned to check if something was on the wall but found the same featureless gray that had been there when she’d come back from the bathroom. “What is-” she began, turning back to Peko, only for the question to drop off as she found her imaginary friend had vanished.
“Peko?”
Nobody answered her call. She now sat alone.
Arlette couldn’t help but be confused by her imaginary friend’s sudden disappearance. He’d never done something like that before. What had he been looking at?
A series of soft bells rang from beside the door, pulling her from her pondering. Somebody was here to see her, but she wasn’t dressed, nor did she feel physically up for visitors.
After pushing herself to her feet, Arlette slowly making her way towards the door. Upon arrival, she pressed a large button beneath a small flat square beside the door. An image taken from outside the door lit up in the square, showing an angled overhead view of Gabby leaning against an absurdly gorgeous woman that Arlette had never seen before.
Arlette took an involuntary step back from the panel, her eyes going wide at the sight of the mysterious beauty. Her gaze immediately zeroed in on the new woman’s alabaster skin and the almost exotic pinch on the inner edge of her eyes. That eye shape and skin combination were rare, except for a region in the northwest of the Obura continent. An Ubran!
What was an Ubran doing here? Just the sight of her dredged up terrible memories both old and new. Arlette took a deep breath—no cough this time, thankfully—and willed herself to calm down. With a quick double-tap of the door button, the door to her room slid open just a crack, enough for her voice to make it through but little else.
“What is it?” she croaked.
“Arlette! How are you feeling?” the Monster asked from beyond the door. “Can we come in to talk for a moment?”
“I’d rather not right now. Can it wait?”
“I... I think it would be best if we didn’t delay this,” the Earthling said. “We’ll make it fast, I promise.”
Arlette sighed. “Give me a moment.”
With another two presses, the door slid shut once more. Slowly and wearily, Arlette went to the bathroom and splashed some water on her face, then went to get dressed. After that laborious process was complete, she grabbed an extra blanket and threw it over the top half of her bed to cover her eviscerated pillow. She’d prefer not to let anybody else see that.
Finally, after several more moments to collect herself, she opened the door. Gabby immediately hopped inside, closing in on Arlette with a face full of worry. The other woman, meanwhile, stayed a step behind, a look of polite amusement on her face.
“Are you alright? You look so pale!” Gabby commented, putting a hand on Arlette’s forehead.
“I’m getting better, thank you. I will be healed in a day or two, I have no doubt,” Arlette insisted, gently but firmly removing the Monster’s hand and taking another step back.
She didn’t like the feeling of having the Earthling so close all of a sudden. The woman’s presence had always caused her to tense up a little thanks to her memories of Crirada, but now, Gabriela represented far more than that. She was a continued reminder of Arlette’s helpless insignificance. This woman could kill both Arlette and the Ubran with nothing but her pinky finger, and it wouldn’t even require effort. Arlette had long been aware that the only thing keeping her alive was the Earthling’s benevolence, but her awareness of that fact had heightened now to the point where she could no longer push it aside. Yes, the Gabby before her at this moment had no intention of harm, but Arlette knew that all it would take was a change of heart.
The knowledge made her stomach churn. Having both an Earthling and an Ubran in her room at once was too much for her right now. She needed to get whatever this was over with and get them out as best she could.
“Do you mind if I...?” Gabby asked, hopping from one foot to the other and back as she headed for Arlette’s desk and chair on the far side of her room.
“Huh? Oh, sure,” Arlette replied.
Without further delay, the Earthling plopped herself down into Arlette’s chair and let out a sigh of relief.
“Both your feet are touching the floor,” Arlette noted with confusion.
“Because I’m not standing,” Gabby explained. She stood up from the chair, her left leg immediately jumping away from the ground. Then she sat back down, her foot once more able to touch the floor. “It’s rather ridiculous, but that’s the way it works.” She shook her head. “But where are my manners? Arlette, this is Chitra, my good friend. I wanted to introduce her to everybody. She helped me greatly back when things were... less good.”
Chitra performed a low, elegant bow mixed with a curtsy, one that Arlette could tell took a high degree of balance and dexterity to pull off correctly. “An honor and a pleasure,” the new woman said, her voice silky smooth and assured.
Arlette’s hackles rose as she remembered where she’d heard of this sort of greeting before. “That was the formal greeting used by members of the Ubran inner palace,” Arlette said, her voice going ice cold. “What is a member of the Emperor’s inner circle doing in my lands?”
“You are correct, I am a Batranala. Or I was, at least,” the Ubran said with a soft smile. “They no longer desire my presence in the lands of the Empire.”
“And so you ended up here,” Arlette deadpanned.
“So it would seem.”
“How convenient. Unfortunately, our border is closed. Your presence is not desired in the lands of Otharia, either.”
“Arlette!” Gabby protested. “If nobody is allowed to enter, why do you get to keep your boyfriend and I don’t get to keep my friend?”
“Tehlmar is not-” Arlette tamped down another objection about Tehlmar before it could fully escape her lips. Their relationship status was more complicated than what everybody liked to pretend. “My preferences had little to do with it. Tehlmar proved his worth. He provided invaluable intelligence in return for being allowed to stay. He’s told us everything, answered every question. He even told us how he got into Otharia in the first place. Is your friend here willing and able to do the same?”
Chitra chuckled. “I have no allegiance to Ubrus anymore. There is no reason for me to keep what secrets I have. I’ll even tell you one right now: the Ubrans found a way to ward off leviathans. That is how I made it to this country undetected.”
Arlette’s blood chilled at the news, though Chitra maintained her steady smile as she continued.
“The method requires a specific alchemical concoction that you mix in the water as you go. It keeps leviathans away up until a certain concentration, whereafter it will actually attract them for reasons nobody yet understands. Therein lies the problem. You need a lot of it to cross even distances as short as the gap between Eterium and Otharia with a single small craft. The amount necessary to allow for a fleet to survive even a small journey is too much. Instead of warding off the leviathans, it would summon them. That is why this substance was only used once during the invasion.”
“When was that? I never heard of this before.” Gabby asked to Arlette’s surprise. She had thought that the Earthling would have been privy to such things given her position in the Ubran forces.
“The Empire decided to send a smaller force to attack Nefin while they amassed their main army in Redwater Castle,” Chitra explained. “They had hoped to take out several high-value targets there before Gustil discovered that the castle had fallen, so they sent them across the sea between Ofrax and Gustil, around the Divide. I believe their mission ended in failure, but I don’t know much more.”
“See?” Gabby said to Arlette. “Now can she stay?”
“That’s a start, but ultimately a drop in the bucket. However, the final decision is not mine to make. Only Lord Ferros can decide,” Arlette told her.
Gabby frowned. “Is he-”
“I will consult with him later,” Arlette interrupted, shooting the Earthling the hottest glare that she could manage that might still go unnoticed by the Ubran. Things were bad enough as it was, and they did not need word spreading about Blake’s condition and making everything worse. “I’m not feeling all that well yet. Is there anything else you needed to discuss with me?”
“What do we do about Sofie?” Gabby asked, her expression grave. “I can’t spend the rest of my life like this.”
“What can we do?” Arlette sighed. “Have you tried to find her? I can’t even move if I think about it. I can’t use the surveillance system with that in mind, either. The moment I do, I can feel it welling up inside, pushing back and warning me that I’ll die if I resist.”
“Same. I can’t even ask anybody to look for her,” Gabby bemoaned. “I just wish I could get somebody to go search for her, but I can’t even say the words.”
Arlette’s gaze flashed between Gabby, slumped forward in her chair, and Chitra standing beside her. The Ubran hadn’t spoken, but Arlette could see that she was paying complete attention to their conversation. Arlette blinked. Was Gabby going for something here? Arlette decided to float a test and see what happened.
Bracing herself for the feeling of her soul running headfirst into a wall, she said, “But anybody who did try to find her would have to be careful. Sofie is incredibly dangerous and likely to be a threat to whoever might stumble upon her. They would probably have to wait for her to fall asleep before approaching, or she would forbid them from moving or something.”
Nothing happened. She let out a breath of relief.
“I agree, but it is also very likely that she is still very upset over all of this,” Gabby added. “If anybody were to find her, I would hope that person would be somebody who is kind and has experience calming people who are going through horrible experiences.”
“Do you think that it would be hard to find her? There’s a good number of thin women of average height in their early twenties with black hair here in this city.”
“I don’t think she’s even in the city,” Gabby disagreed. “She’s probably somewhere out in the farmland by now.”
“Very possible,” Arlette admitted. The two of them shared a small secret smile. “Well, I need to rest some more, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, of course,” Gabby agreed, pushing herself up and onto one foot. Without a word, Chitra placed a well-manicured hand on Gabby’s shoulder to keep her from toppling over. Then, once stabilized, Gabby hopped from one foot to another all the way to the door. “I pray that you recover soon.”
Alone once more, Arlette sat down upon her bed and let herself tip backward onto her back with a smirk on her face. Perhaps Gabriela was more clever than she’d given her credit for. While she had been busy feeling bad about her situation, Gabby had, perhaps by necessity, realized the truth about Sofie’s power.
Sofie could lay down rules, even wide-ranging and flexible rules like the ones Arlette was currently burdened with, but all rules had limits. The trick was to find those limits and work around them. It felt good to know that, if it ever somehow came down to it, Arlette could kill Sofie as long as she didn’t leave her to die afterward.
“Peko?” she called again. As before, her imaginary friend failed to reappear.
With a tired shrug, Arlette pulled herself fully onto her bed and plopped her head down upon her freshly destroyed pillow. She’d get a new one later. For now, she was tired and she’d slept on much worse than this many times before. Within moments she’d drifted into sleep.
* * *
Arlette woke up much sooner than she wanted to. According to the clock, she’d slept just under another hour, far less than she felt she needed. Her body still ached from head to toe, and her cough remained. But for some reason, she couldn’t get herself to go back to sleep.
Perhaps she needed some air, she decided. Climbing out of bed, she went to get dressed before realizing she’d fallen asleep already dressed. With that hassle already taken care of, she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
The innards of Blake’s fortress were silent and still. Between Pari’s death, Blake’s current health, and Sofie’s absence, an eerie pall had fallen over the place. Arlette found herself surprised at how much she missed the noise and the hubbub over the peace and quiet of the current moment.
Heading down the hallway that led towards the sunlight, Arlette paused outside an open door. Sofie’s door. It was so like her, to leave her room unsecured like this. Sofie seemed so willing to see past the vulgarity of human existence, even now, that it made Arlette’s head spin. But then again, with what she could do, perhaps she didn’t need to worry in the same way others did.
Giving in to foolish curiosity for a moment, she stepped inside the open room and looked around. Arlette always found a person’s room to be an extension of their true selves. You could learn a lot just with a single look into another person’s room. Arlette, for example, kept her room neat, organized, and clean, reflecting her orderly, disciplined mind. Sofie’s room, on the other hand, looked like a trash heap. The entire place was a mess, a chaotic jumble of assorted items strew across the floor, the bed, and every other flat surface available.
Except for the desk. Sofie’s desk stood in the corner like a small, solitary island in a sea of disorder. Upon it laid two large tomes, each open to reveal pages covered in scribbles that she could not hope to understand. Arlette understood that, even with the Emperor’s book to help with her translations, Sofie’s progress had petered out in the last few months. Her decision to start teaching tens of thousands of children had, not surprisingly, eaten up all of her free time.
There was nothing to see here. Arlette didn’t even know why she’d bothered to step inside. With a shake of her head to clear her mind, she left the room and headed outside.
The sun felt good on her skin, the midday breeze whisking away the stickiness clinging to her skin. She sat outside for a good while, perhaps half of an hour, before the brightness of the sun, amplified by the reflective surfaces all around, started to bother her. That was one of the problems with a fortress made entirely out of metal. Sometimes it didn’t take much before all the shining gave her a headache. Or perhaps she just needed to eat something.
A meal later, Arlette could definitively say that it hadn’t been just hunger. With likely more than half of her healing still to come, her body still ached to its core, and she’d been pushing it with all this walking. She needed to head back to her bed and sleep some more.
The detour to the fortress cafeteria had altered her route back to her chambers, the new path leading by her current employer’s domicile. As she neared it, she decided to give Lord Ferros a quick check and see if his condition had improved.
To say that Blake had been in dire condition the night before was the understatement of the century. Arlette felt like death warmed over from just a single hit of Sofie’s power; Blake had taken twice as much, and each attack might have been harsher than hers as well, judging from how much he’d screamed. Combine that with the state of his body already—something that Sofie had hinted at but Arlette had never fully understood until she’d seen it firsthand—and it was a miracle that he was still alive at all.
Arlette had no idea how long it would take for the ruler of Otharia to wake up, assuming he ever would. She could still remember how long it had taken for Sofie to heal from a single arrow wound, one that, were she Scyrian, would have been little more than a scar within a few days at most. For all their overwhelming power, Earthlings didn’t seem to be able to heal like a Scyrian could, one notable exception notwithstanding. In general, it was a tiny light in the darkness as far as Arlette was concerned, but in this specific case, it was a nightmare. They needed Blake alive and awake as soon as possible. Too much of the structure of the nation relied directly upon him, thanks to his inability to trust others with his secrets. Not that she had a leg to stand on when it came to paranoia.
Arlette arrived at the entrance to Blake’s large living quarters, which was located behind three incredibly thick security doors. Or at least, what had once been three incredibly thick security doors. When she, Leo, and Gabriela had tried to move the comatose Blake back to his rooms, they’d found themselves stuck outside said doors with no way of getting them to open, as the only person who could control them laid unconscious right between them.
Eventually, Gabby had solved this problem by forcefully bashing, tearing, and bending the doors open, an impressive accomplishment made even more impressive by the fact that she did it on one foot. Of course, because Blake was Blake, Gabby’s actions set off a series of alarms, defenses, and more. Gabriela, being the Monster that she was, had ripped through the defenses like a cyclone through the Erim Steppe, a feat which Arlette would have found terrifying if she hadn’t seen the Monster in peak form back during the siege.
On second thought, she still found it terrifying. That was the problem with Earthlings. Even in a weakened state, they towered over Scyrians. If Gabriela ever returned to her full ability...
Arlette shook her head. There was no point in pondering that now.
Blissful silence filled the rooms, a far cry from the shrieking sirens the night before. Even after Gabriela’s reign of destruction, the wailing had continued until Arlette and Leo had figured out how to turn it off. After taking a massive injury, the last thing she’d needed was to waste time trying to disable blaring alarms, but such was her life these days.
Carefully stepping around the debris strewn across the floor, Arlette worked her way into Blake’s “inner sanctum”. There, she found Blake lying on the bed where they’d left him, as expected. What she didn’t expect to find was Samanta standing beside him, seemingly lost in thought.
“Hey, kiddo,” Arlette said from the doorway.
The child almost jumped in the air from the sound of Arlette’s voice. “Ah...” she bleated, trying to find words. “M-Miss Arlette...”
Arlette fought to hide a frown. Her and Samanta’s relationship was... odd at best. Samanta, or Sam as Blake always called her, kept everybody at an arm’s length to some degree. Pari and Sofie had been able to get closer to her than anybody else, while her relationship with Blake was... complex for reasons that Arlette had no desire to pry into. But for some reason, perhaps because her and Sam’s only connection came through her employment, neither of them had made any real effort to form a connection, even though they saw each other relatively frequently. Maybe it was just that Arlette didn’t particularly love being around children, or something to do with her status as an outsider.
“What are you doing in here?” Arlette wondered.
“I-I... um... nothing,” Samanta stammered. “Just... thinking.”
“Is that so?” Arlette replied, stepping into the room and walking up beside the child.
Together, they stared down at the battered form of Lord Ferros. Arlette felt thankful that he had a blanket covering his body now. The moment Gabriela had ripped off his armor was the first time that Arlette had seen the flesh that lied beneath. It had been hard to look at, to say the least. It amazed her that he had been able to function as well as he did, but then, stubbornness was one of his defining traits.
His face looked recently washed. Somebody was taking care of him. Leo? Normally she would have guessed Sofie would be the one to take care of an injured person in this situation, but, well... Regardless, Arlette breathed a little easier knowing that her employer was being looked after. In her sorry state the night before, she’d never even thought about it.
Cleanliness aside, Blake’s health sure didn’t seem so hot. His face looked as white as his sheets, his breaths shallow and labored. She took solace in the fact that at least he wasn’t bleeding anymore.
“He doesn’t look so great, does he?” she said to the child by her side. “It’s like a stiff breeze is all it would take to push him over the edge. Or, if you wanted to be more sure, a knife would be more than enough.”
Samanta flinched. “H-how did-”
“Please, kid. I’m a mercenary. Checking for hidden weapons is practically instinct at this point.” She reached out her hand, palm upturned expectantly. “Now hand it over. And don’t give me that look. I’m doing you a favor.”
“All you adults say stuff like that,” the kid grumbled bitterly as she drew a kitchen knife, likely pilfered from the same cafeteria in which Arlette had just eaten, from her sleeve and placed it reluctantly in Arlette’s waiting hand.
“Come here,” Arlette said, grabbing Sam by the arm and pulling her to a pair of chairs placed across the room. She sat down in one and gestured for Sam to take a seat as well. Reluctantly, hanging her head in that way only a petulant child preparing to be scolded could, Sam lowered herself into the second chair. Arlette waited for a bit, but the kid kept her sullen gaze squarely on the floor.
Eventually, Arlette let out a sigh. “I’m going to be frank here. When I was young, the most my mother had to punish me for were things like sneaking too many honey buns from the bakery. Attempted murder is a few steps beyond childish hijinks, kiddo. I’m almost at a loss over what to do about it.”
Samanta’s face scrunched up in emotion, though Arlette wasn’t sure if it was sorrow, anger, bitterness, or something else. “Just get it over with,” she told Arlette, still not looking up from her shoes.
“Sam, look at me,” Arlette prodded.
“Don’t call me that,” the kid grumbled.
“Why not?”
“I hate it.”
“What’s wrong with ‘Sam’? It’s a perfectly fine nickname. Doesn’t Blake call you that all the time?”
Silence.
“Do you hate the name? Or do you hate it because he’s the one calling you that?”
More silence, the kind that held plenty of answers. Arlette felt a bad vibe run through her, like she’d stumbled upon something that she perhaps didn’t actually want to know. But now that the door was right in front of her, she found that she couldn’t turn away. She needed to open it and see what was inside.
Samanta’s presence in the fortress had always been a bit of a mystery, but one that Arlette had felt little need to solve. She knew that Blake had taken the kid in well before Arlette or Sofie had arrived in Otharia. She knew that Blake spent time with her most days that he was home, teaching her a variety of things. It reminded her of her second parents. Like them, he’d taken in a child and was raising her in his own way.
Arlette had asked Sofie once if she knew why Blake had decided to raise Samanta. Sofie had refused to give her the details, saying only that it was complicated. That Sofie “Walking Rumor Mill” Ramaut didn’t want to spill the beans meant that the story had to be intensely personal, so Arlette backed off. As somebody who understood the importance of privacy, she didn’t want to pry into something like that. She had other things, like her job, focus on, things that were actually important. She didn’t need to know, and she’d seen nothing that would give her cause to change that decision.
From what Arlette could tell, Blake treated the girl very well. He kept her well fed, gave her a nice place to live, taught her things she would otherwise never get to learn, and more. Arlette had never once seen a single sign that he beat her or mistreated her, other than that sort of self-absorbed neglect that he inflicted on everybody when he was busy with something he cared about. That was all she really needed to know.
As for the girl herself, Arlette had always thought that Samanta was the sort of moody, anti-authority child that some kids became at her age. The sort that fought with their parents over every little thing, the sort that wanted their independence over everything, no matter the cost. The sort that Arlette had been for a while with her second parents. But not once had she thought that Samanta held something against Blake that ran deep enough for her to go this far.
Arlette leaned forward. “Do you hate Blake, Samanta? Enough to want to kill him?”
Samanta clenched her jaw tight. Though her body trembled, she remained silent. Arlette grew more concerned.
“Did he do something to you? Please, if he did something to you, I need to know about it.” If there was some sort of hidden abuse going on here, then Arlette needed to reconsider her employment. Depending on how bad it was, she might just drive the knife into his chest herself.
Tears began to fall onto the smooth metal beneath the child’s feet. “Shut up! Just leave me alone!” she half-sobbed, half-snarled. “You people always lecture me like you understand, but you don’t!”
“I don’t know what you’re going through,” Arlette admitted. “But I do know what it’s like to grow up hating somebody so much that you wish with everything in your heart that you could kill them with your own two hands. I know that feeling maybe better than anybody else in the world.”
The girl’s sniffling slowed as she glared Arlette’s way. “You’re lying.”
“If only,” Arlette sighed. “Tell you what, I’ll tell you my story, and in return, you tell me yours. Sound like a fair trade?”
Samanta still looked skeptical, but she didn’t shoot Arlette down.
“Alright, I’ll start,” Arlette began softly. “Once, there was a kingdom known as Ofrax, a small country far away on the continent of Obura...”
Arlette laid out her childhood, from her “recruitment” to her training to her betrayal to her escape. She kept it short, but even the abridged version seemed to leave Samanta enraptured. About halfway through, the child started to weep once more, though Arlette didn’t yet know why.
The reasons became pretty clear soon enough. Almost before Arlette had finished, Sam began to gush, her own story flooding out between sobs and sniffles. It was clear to Arlette that this was something that she’d been dying to tell somebody for a long time. She’d probably told some version of this story to Sofie, but from the emotion Arlette could feel rolling off of her, this was probably the first time she was telling the whole story.
And what a story it was. The two of them shared even more similarities in their pasts than she could have imagined. They each had lost their home, they each had been used by somebody more powerful, they each had suffered under a cloud of guilt—or, in Sam’s case, still suffered. Things were more complicated in this tale, however. The good and the bad were clear in Arlette’s tale; the same could not be said here. But one thing appeared very clear to Arlette, something she couldn’t let alone.
“Samanta. I need you to listen to me. All of this isn’t your fault. You must not blame yourself for something you had no control over. Blake made you help him, and if you weren’t there, he would have just found somebody else.”
“But if I hadn’t stabbed him, then-”
“Then who can say what would have happened? Think about who he is. With how hard it is for him to take no for an answer, everything probably ends up like this anyway.”
“You don’t know that,” Samanta muttered.
“I don’t,” Arlette admitted. “But either way, you need to trust me on this. You have to find a way to forgive yourself, or it will eat away at you for a lifetime. That’s what almost happened to me. If my second parents had not rescued me from my guilt, I would not be sitting here with you. I would likely be dead, perhaps even by my own hand.”
Arlette could see Samanta’s reluctance to put any faith in her words, but she pressed on anyway.
“You are a child. Children make mistakes all the time. That is just the nature of things. If even the man you crippled can understand that, so can you.”
Sam’s eyes went wide and she glanced for a moment over at the quiet third person in the room.
“Do you really think, if Blake blamed you for everything that happened to him, that he would be taking care of you like this? No, he might be angry at you. Furious, even. But he doesn’t blame you.”
Arlette could see the wheels spinning inside the kid’s head. She looked a little overwhelmed from it all, but Arlette knew it was for the best.
“But what about my home?” Sam finally asked. “What about everything he did, all the people he killed? What about Othar’s teachings? It is my duty to strike down the Elseling! This is what Othar warned about!”
“Don’t compound one mistake with another. With the Church destroyed, killing Blake would lead to a power vacuum that could destroy the entire nation.”
“But... but...”
“Let me ask you this, then,” Arlette said to the conflicted child. “If it is your sacred duty, why did you hesitate? What made you stop long enough for me to walk in?”
Sam’s head drooped. “I... I was standing there and I... Pari... might not come back.... and... never get another chance... I don’t know if I wanted to... kill him anymore... and I got so scared and...”
“Good! Good! Be glad!”
“Why would it be good to feel like this?” Sam whispered.
“Because it means your wounds are healing, and that means you might not end up like me. Trust me, that’s a good thing.” Arlette shifted forward. “Let me tell you something. Remember those two men who ruined my life and took my home and all that? The two that I grew up wishing I could kill with my bare hands? Well, they’re dead now. I watched Sebastian die and I killed the Emperor with my own hands like I’d always dreamed. And you know what? All that anger, all that hate, all that pain... it’s still there. That’s the terrible truth about all this. I thought it would make me feel better. But it didn’t help much at all.
“Don’t be like me, Sam. Don’t make the same mistakes that I did. If you can find it in yourself to let it go, do it and never look back. You’ll thank me later.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Sam complained. “It’s all so confusing.”
“And that’s perfectly fine. You’re just a kid. You don’t have to make up your mind any time soon. Let time help sort everything out, and one day you’ll know.”
Sam went back to staring at the floor in silence. Arlette didn’t push her. She knew the girl needed time to ponder. But there were better places for that than here.
“Come, let’s go back to your room,” she said after a while.
Sam didn’t fight her as Arlette took the girl’s hand and stood up. The world spun slightly from the exertion and Arlette remembered that she was injured. She’d only planned on checking in on Blake for a moment, not for whatever this was.
Slowly, they made their way out of Blake’s chambers and over to the entrance to Samanta’s rooms. The moment the door opened, Alpha, Sam’s tiny skitter pet, bounded out into the hallway, jumping up and down and letting out little squeals of protest at being locked away.
“I’ll leave her to you,” Arlette told the little robot.
The machine beeped back at her, and for some reason, Arlette felt like it was acknowledging her statement.
Finally, Arlette turned back towards her room. She’d already spent far too much time away from her bed, much more than she’d planned, and weakness descended upon her overtaxed body with a vengeance. She’d pushed herself too far. Her steps quickly grew unsteady and the world began to sway. It wasn’t long before she found herself leaning against the right wall, unable to continue further. She bent over as a large cough forced its way out of her mouth, followed by another even heavier one. She fell to her knees as the coughing fit grew worse and worse and the specks of blood spewing from her mouth grew into full-on drops of wet, sticky redness.
Just wonderful. Arlette tried to climb back onto her feet but found that willpower could only do so much. Her vision spun and grew fuzzy as she fell to the cold, hard floor. Perhaps she was going to have to sleep here instead...
“Arlette!” a voice said from somewhere. “There you are!”
Arlette heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Small hands carefully turned her onto her back. Even with her fuzzy eyesight, she’d recognize that distinctive elf-shaped blur anywhere.
“How did you get in here?” she mumbled.
“The lady with the huge sword let me in,” Tehlmar told her. “She said something happened to you?!”
“Yeah...”
“What happened?”
Arlette coughed again.
“It’s... complicated...” she managed to say.
“Well, let’s get you to your room,” he said. “Can you walk?”
“No,” she croaked.
“Well, guess there’s no helping it then...” Tehlmar sighed.
Sliding one arm beneath her shoulders and the other beneath her legs, he grunted and slowly lifted her off the floor.
“Oof, you’re heavy,” he groaned.
“I’m not... you’re just tiny...” she grumbled back.
“So who did this to you?” Tehlmar panted as he staggered down the hallway.
“Sofie,” she told him. She didn’t want to tell him, because she knew what his reaction was going to be, but if she didn’t, he’d just find out from somebody else. At least now, she could stop him from making a big mistake and getting himself killed.
“Now isn’t the time to be joking, Letty,” Tehlmar scolded her, a half-amused smirk on his face.
Arlette watched as, when she didn’t respond, his features progressively became more dour and serious.
“She... she really...?”
Arlette nodded.
“That little witch! I knew she was no good!” he snarled. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her.”
“No!” she wheezed, the exertion making her lightheaded. This was what she was afraid of. Why did he have to be so stupidly predictable? So... so willing to die for her? “She’ll... kill you... She can control... your mind... make you do things... or not do things...”
She swayed slightly as Tehlmar came to a stop in front of her rooms. She reached out and pressed a hand against the panel, unlocking the door.
“I told you we should have left her to die somewhere from the start, but you wouldn’t do it,” Tehlmar huffed as the door slid aside. A moment later, he lowered her into her soft bed with a breath of relief.
“I couldn’t do it...” she informed him. “She made it so I couldn’t...”
Tehlmar ruffled her hair affectionately.
“I don’t know if I fully understand or believe what you’re saying, but maybe you shouldn’t worry about it. There was no way you were going to listen to me regardless. I knew it then and I know it now. You never could abandon somebody in need if they were in front of you. Especially not somebody as helpless as she was. I made the arguments anyway, but I knew it would end up the same as if I was talking to a stone wall.”
“That’s not true...”
“It absolutely is. You’ve always been too nice for your own good. Normal mercenary captains don’t rescue children taken by slavers, Letty. But when those villagers came to you back then, you didn’t even think twice. It’s just who you are. If it makes you feel any better, that was a big reason a lot of the others stuck around in our middling little mercenary band. They liked having somebody like you calling the shots. It made them feel like more than just a bunch of losers killing for coin.”
“Hmph,” Arlette sniffed. She wanted to be irate over his absurdly baseless claims, but she just didn’t have the energy for it at the moment. She could feel herself slipping away towards unconsciousness. Reaching out and grabbing his hand as hard as she could—which, currently, was not very—she looked up at him pleadingly. “Stay with me?”
“Of course, my love,” he replied, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. “Not even a god could get me to move from this spot.”
Arlette smiled. Her last thought before she entered the lands of dreams was how nice it felt to finally have a somebody she could truly rely on.
Comments
Erdos
Thanks
IrateRapScallion
Oh no! Lol
RedPine
You'll have to look for constructive criticism elsewhere, I'm a fanboy incapable of faulting the story at this point.
