Story:Kings of Strife/Part 53

Part Fifty-Three
Their truck rolled through the night on the abandoned road leading to the end of the nation. Even in the almost-midnight air, the environment around them rose gently and fell with even more grace, and the snow blanketing every inch of the land was the only light from all over. The moon was absent. The more westward they went, the more the lands wore their damage with pride: dry craters, collapsed towers and houses, fallen and stripped trees crooked like shattered spines. The most telling scar was the silence. For the entirety of their drive – and for the entirety of the journey Vik and his friends had been taking to the west – Shorica was silent, even in the empty ruins of wayward towns and isolated villages.

A drop of moisture landed on Vik’s nose. He let it melt into the air again. He had been clenching one eye closed for the entire ride, and the other looked out to watch the country as they passed it by.

“It’s snowing,” Karilyn whispered, her body moving slightly as she reached a hand up to hold a slowly falling snowflake. A childish joy she had never exhibited before shone through her hushed voice. The rest of the caravan was either silent or asleep. “Look, Scarface. It’s snowing. Does it snow in Nneoh?”

He chuckled deeply, despite himself. “Yes. In the mountains by the south. I climbed one of them, so I’m no stranger to this.”

“Really? You climbed a mountain? Was it fun?”

Vik frowned, remembering the gambit that was his journey on Mount Gulg and the ruin that its aftermath had brought to his life and his career. “Not really. My life was kind of in danger the whole time.”

“…Oh. Well. I’m sorry about that.” She lowered her hand.

He laughed again, smiling despite everything. “It’s okay. It’s in the past now. And it was fun. Not everyone can say they’ve done a lot of things I have.”

“That’s true. I don’t know anyone else who can make fire come out of their eyes like you can.”

“That’s not one of the things I’m thankful for, unfortunately.”

“Haha! I’m just teasing you, Scarface, you know that.” She looked up at him from her spot on his shoulder, her eyes smiling like he had never seen before. Vik felt his heart start to beat harder, and he suddenly became conscious of how close the two were. At some point during the long truck ride, Karilyn had went from sitting next to him to slouching in her seat and letting her head lean on his shoulder. He gulped and looked away to the country again.

“I miss the snow,” she said after a few minutes, when her head had fallen onto his shoulder again. He could feel her breathing slowly, at peace, as if they were not riding toward a city that could be their tombs. “It would always snow at home, in south Inusia, where my family used to live. I remember spending every winter holiday reading with my dad while the snow piled up outside of our little glass door. Once a week, dad would go sledding with my brothers and I before dinner, and we’d come back in to mom cooking dinner for us. Sometimes it’d be my favorite: eggplants and rice with yellow beans. On those nights, dad would always let Korus have a beer, and we’d laugh louder than ever.” She shifted again, bringing her furry mantle closer around her shivering shoulders. “That was a long time ago. Before the Civil War in Nneoh. Before my parents separated.”

“I’m sorry,” Vik responded, quiet and unsure of what else he could say. “That sounds like a wonderful memory, though. Your father sounds like a great man.”

“He was. Mother left him for a rich older man that wasn’t a soldier. She said she couldn’t live with… what happened.”

“What happened? What do you mean?”

“…My older brother died in the Civil War. He and my dad both fought… and only my dad came back. Mom blamed him for it. He would never tell me that, but I knew, even then.”

“…Oh.” Vik inhaled sharply and blinked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, it’s okay, Scarface.” She looked up to him again from beneath her eyelashes. “What’s your dad like?”

Vik looked down to his feet and tried not to close his eyes. He knew he would see a face that would wound him if he let himself hide in darkness. “Strong. A military man, too. Very strict. He… made me join the army when I was of age. He and I weren’t very close.” Even now, after he had left the man to die – especially after that – Vik felt the cold, piercing sapphire gaze of his father on his back.

“I’m sorry.” She wrapped a hand around his arm and squeezed his bicep. “It’s alright. Dads suck, anyways. Mine… When I began to work for Inusia, he cursed me out and disowned me. Said he raised me better than to follow in his footsteps. I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place, or just to find something I was good at… but he wouldn’t listen. He just sold our old home and found a place in Inusia City. Some nice apartment, I bet. He never gave me the address. He just… left. I haven’t heard from him in a few years now.” She slouched further and gripped Vik’s arm with both of her own, sighing as she snuggled closer. “I hope he’s alright in all this mess. I miss him.”

Vik had nothing to say in response, so he glanced down at Karilyn before feeling his blood run cold. A memory pierced him – a shameful memory, of one of the weakest, most horrid moments of his life. A moment he had tried extremely hard to forget. Something brought it on, he realized, trying not to move or disturb the woman next to him. Inusia City. Why did that make his heart beat so quickly? Inusia City – he had been there, once, when fleeing the Mirage Tower after meeting Silverius again, at what felt like years and years ago. Vik remembered the robbery they did, to survive. Their fleeing from the city. Silverius effortlessly picking a lock. Vik killing a man on accident. Before that, Vik holding onto a portrait of a family with identical, beautiful red hair. Hair like the fire of his Crystal… hair like the woman’s on his arm.

‘No. No, it cannot be. There just… There is just no way. No. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.’

The exact memory of the portrait went further in his consciousness the more he blinked and struggled to calm his breathing, even more persistently than the image of his father’s disappointed gaze. The woman – he could see her now, clearly, just as clearly as he could see the woman on his arm now. Vik knew it to be true, though he wanted nothing more than to deny it with all his heart. Karilyn Red was in a portrait in the house that Vik and Silverius had broken into in Inusia City, the same house in which Vik had killed a man.

‘I killed her father, and my own.’

He could not move or take her off his arm. She was sleeping now, as was everyone else in the back carriage of the broken down truck. Cidolas drove in the front, silent as ever. Karilyn stirred slightly, and Vik remembered the last time someone had slept on him. It was the last time he slept with Jütenas Kinandorf. He wondered if they were still alive, with Vainia or in the city. He cried silently until the silhouette of Shorekeep loomed, darker than even the sky.

The caravan began to buzz with activity as the majestic city grew before them like a giant. The silver-cloaks rose and yawned and started to reload and prepare their weapons. Karilyn continued to doze, and Vik wiped his tears gently enough to keep the woman on his arm in her peaceful slumber.

“You said you had a plan,” someone said, drawing Vik’s attention to the activity of the caravan again. “Something to do with the airships. What is it?” It was the brown-haired boy with two pistols in his lap that spoke, his small hazel eyes boring into Vik’s. The city was closer now, but they had long since deviated from the road that led to the walls of the city and a likely roadblock or checkpoint. Cidolas was driving to the sea and the cliffs that the great city stood on.

Vik cleared his throat and looked over the young boy in front of him. How could someone so young really be a soldier riding to a city full of enemies, and still show such indominable determination in his eyes? “Right. I… I can take out the airships, I think. I just need to know where they are, and to get to them without being caught. How many were there?”

“Only three, from what I saw. They’re not flying around now, so they’re likely in Lady Vainia’s shipyard.” The boy looked Vik over. “I’m Shinten Asuka. I’m from Mortis, just like Lady Vainia.” He pushed his hand out to shake Vik’s.

The Nneonian complied. “Vikcent Hyusei. Nice to meet you.” He hoped against hope that he would be able to see the boy again, even if that was an unrealistic hope.

“So how are you going to do it? You don’t even have any weapons on you. Are you an explosions expert or something?” Shinten Asuka nodded to the dark-skinned woman in the caravan, who was helping organize supplies with Moritaka right behind Cidolas in the driver’s seat. “We have one of those, too. Maybe she should go with you.”

“No. You all need all the help and manpower you can get, I think.” Vik felt the pulsing of his Crystal wrapped in the pockets of his pants. Though he only had the lavender scarf around his neck to protect him from the elements, he momentarily felt exceedingly hot. “I have… a power. One I can’t necessarily explain.” He frowned at the somber knowledge of what he had done at Icarun, and against Silverius. To do what was necessary, he would definitely have to draw upon that uncontrollable power again, and those black flames felt likely to char his soul this time.

“A power? Like Lady Vainia?”

Vik looked up. “Something like that. I’m not very experienced with it, though. What have you seen of Vainia’s power?”

Shinten shrugged and looked off to the black sea motionless to their side. “I’ve only heard stories of it, mostly from fellow Mortisian refugees. How she made massive weapons and hundreds of knives to defend herself. How she saved the lives of hundreds by making constructs and boats out of her powers. How she makes the impossible happen. If it wasn’t for her and her powers, the entire palace and everyone in Grainis would have been killed, without a doubt.”

“Huh? Killed? Why?”

“…How haven’t you heard? Where have you been in the past three months?” Shinten frowned and fingered his pistols. He looked more like a child the more uncomfortable he grew. “The Feast of Men. After Lady Vainia returned to her home nation after the failure of Icarun, she was betrothed to a noble and a feast was held in honor of their betrothal some time after she returned. But she was betrayed by the Inusians backing her parents, the King and Queen, and Inusian airships bombed the entire palace. Everyone was killed but Vainia and the people she personally saved.” Shinten sighed. “It was that heroic act of hers that influenced me to join her forces in the first place. Mortis had always been the Empire’s bitch, everyone knows that… but that was too much. They took it too far.”

Vik was stunned silent from awe and sympathy. He couldn’t imagine having to deal with something like that… yet, at the thought of a father and a mother, he remembered his own crimes and his own faults. His eyes lowered and he felt a pang in his heart. ‘Where would I get off condemning a betrayal, when I betrayed my own blood?’

Karilyn shifted and sighed in her sleep. ‘And, speaking of betrayal…’ Shinten was about to turn around and continue preparing, but Vik raised his hand and grabbed the boy’s attention again when the truck entered a cliffside tunnel shrouded in darkness. “Hold on. You all were in the city already, right? All the way in the palace?”

“Hm? Yeah. We were driven out by the Inusians already. We lost our last Leader there.”

“…What about the Barons? The Council? Were they there, or did they go east with Vainia?”

Shinten’s eyebrows knitted together in thought. “I don’t know. We saw a bunch of refugees crammed in the throne room, but I didn’t see any Barons or anything. I don’t remember where they went. We were being shot at, dude.” He shrugged and turned away.

Vik wasn’t sure if he was to feel relieved or not, but he was sure that there was a chance the Baron of Foreign Affairs still lived. Vik wondered if they would ever meet again. ‘If you’re alive, and here… I only ask that you stay safe. I want to return this to you… and to thank you.’ He gripped onto the scarf with his right hand, absentmindedly jostling Karilyn and startling her out of her rest. She looked up at him with tired, familiar eyes.

<- Previous Page | Main Page | Next Page->