Chương 48: Winworth

Sage's claim that the village was just a half-hour away was painfully misleading. We still had to leave the castle estate, which took an extra quarter-hour. We would've taken our horses had we known, but Sage didn't have a horse of her own. Something told me the sappers had expected her to be eliminated, and sent to a battalion much like the 294th, where she would do the duties of Hild. Whoever had been hoping for that outcome would've been sorely disappointed.

Besides, Morph was a valuable ally, and he carried her around at the same speed as a regular human. In fact, it was Brawl who seemed to have the most trouble. He had one walking speed, and that was faster than everyone else. And I wasn't exactly walking slowly.

"Did you not get taught to march at Homecamp?" I asked him.

"Oh, I can march, brother," Brawl said.

"In fact, it is easy enough. But it is somewhat slower." He settled down into a steady marching pace, which turned out to be slower than our brisk walking pace.

"You'll figure it out eventually," I told him. We continued onward, taking a path across the castle estate, which then merged with a larger wagon trail—Sage confirmed that was the trail that we needed to take to get ourselves to a village named Winworth. Although we'd gotten ourselves cleaned up, we wore all our gear still. It was a bad idea to travel the countryside unarmed, even if things were relatively safe near Castle Urcia. And hey, my spear made a good walking stick. As we walked, I asked, "So…

what is vorghul?" Brawl shrugged.

"Us Dupes didn't get much of an arcane education at Homecamp, brother. What we do learn is about the System and how to use our presence."

"So, let's go back a little bit," Sage explained, urging Morph to walk a little faster.

"Presence is your ability to make something happen. It's like the logs on a campfire. But maegen tinges your Arts with an elemental aspect." I nodded.

"And we can't use maegen as Dupes?"

"Not as far as I'm aware of. Your manipulation is more pure. It takes on the fundamental forces of the Path and adjusts them. But when it comes to maegen…that uses the elements. All maegen has an aspect. For us druids, that's usually an earth aspect.

"But, there are two greater alignments that maegen can have, which run above the basic elemental alignments: vorghul and mae. Mae is warmth. It's earthly, it's full of life. Vorghul is the void—from the sky, from high above. It consumes and destroys. It is fundamentally empty."

"Is it…conscious?" I asked. Sage shrugged.

"Some of its servants are intelligent enough. But in the end, vorghul is like a cyclone on the high plains of Palan. You can't fight it." She paused.

"We are not the first to have tried."

"Gate defeated the Dark Lord once before," Anchor said.

"We can do it again."

"The Dark Lord is only a servant of vorghul, and the first Warlord only sealed him. Besides, it has been a thousand years since then. And now, the Warlord is in charge."

"We can't just give up," I said.

"Do you know what created the Labyrinths?" Sage asked. I glanced at the others, saw them shrugging, then shook my head side to side.

"No."

"There were nations of men before Gate. Not as large, and not as safe, but still, they existed. It was the first age, the Age of Laurels. These nations opposed vorghul and its servants. But in time, the void came for them. They collapsed. They built great underground fortress-cities, hoping to weather the darkness, and for a time, they succeeded. But nothing lasts forever. Those empty underground fortresses are all that remains of their empires, now.

The Age of Laurels ended, and the Dark Age of Kharzon began—Kharzon being the name of the Dark Lord."

"Are we still in the…Dark Age?"

"No. It ended when the first Warlord—appointed by the king—sealed Kharzon. Now, we live in the Age of Kings." Anchor shook his head.

"Gate is stronger than that. We have to be." Sage shrugged.

"If you say so."

"Guys," I said.

"We're sappers, now." If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Not confirmed sappers, brother," Brawl reminded me.

"True, but my point is…we're going up in the world. We can start making a difference. Nothing's set in stone. I don't know how I'm going to do it yet, but I'm tired of being powerless. And I know I'm not just going to sit by and let everything fall apart. Even if that means I have to burn it down to the roots and rebuild it from the ground up." That's what they all say, Shave had told me. I pushed his comments to the back of my mind. I remembered exactly how I'd replied to him.

"Someone has to be crazy enough to try," I said.

"Why not us?" I was expecting a general air of disapproval, like I would've gotten from my old squadmates, but the others were silent. After a few seconds, Anchor said, "You're getting better at the motivational speeches. Better, but not good yet." I rolled my eyes.

"I was just telling you how I felt." After a few seconds, I asked, "Alright, then. You don't seem like a very good anchor. How'd you get that name?"

"For archers, our anchor is a point on our head that we always draw back to," he said.

"A point on our cheek, maybe, or just beside our eye. It helps us with aiming. Well, my squadmates were joking that my anchor should be my eyepatch."

"Wouldn't that be a horrible…uh, anchor?" I asked.

"That's the point," Anchor said.

"It's my blind side. It would be horrible for aiming."

"Ah…" I muttered.

"How did you lose the eye, brother?" Brawl asked.

"Got into a fight," Anchor replied.

"Don't worry. It wasn't my fault. One of the Dupes in my battalion went loopy, became a soulstealer. Well, as soon as he arrived, he broke free and panicked. Killed three of my brothers. I restrained him and killed him in turn, but he took my eye as a memory." I winced. Obviously, I couldn't blame myself for that, but a twinge of understanding seeped through me.

"After that," Anchor continued, "I vowed to train harder. When my commander realized I'd earned an Art, he was impressed and sent me to train as a sapper—or as a candidate. And then when I arrived here, I sacrificed my Art to improve my archery to Journeyman." I nodded.

"Hey, is there any chance you would help me train? With archery, I mean?"

"I could," Anchor replied hesitantly.

"But we will have proper instructors, now. This isn't just going to be a free-for-all like before."

"Sure," I said.

"But I plan on using all the time I have to the best of my ability. Including whatever free time we get assigned to us."

"Brother," Brawl said.

"You cannot just train. That's not living, is it?" I raised my eyebrows.

"Neither is dying in combat. I've gotta do what I can while I can do it."

"Guys," Sage said.

"We are almost there." She pointed ahead, past a rolling hill, to a village surrounded in orange-leafed autumn trees. Its residents were in the process of constructing a wooden palisade around it, and since it was only the middle of the afternoon, they were still hard at work. We passed through an under-construction gateway, then circled through the streets of packed mud. The houses all had stone bottom floors and half-timbered second storeys, and thatched roofs topped them off.

It was odd, with how little fortification this village had, but they must have thought they were far enough away from the fighting that they wouldn't need a wall. We travelled around the village a little. A vendor selling canned goods recognized Sage, and we spent a few minutes chatting with the old woman, before Brawl asked if they needed any help with the palisade, and a few regular Dupes from the local garrison overheard. They gladly accepted our help.

We worked until sundown, cleaning up logs and chopping off branches, or helping dig ditches to erect the palisade upright and bind the logs together with ropes. It didn't feel like we'd made much progress, but the villagers thanked us and invited us to the tavern—which, in my opinion, was far better than getting ourselves drunk mid-day and hoping no one judged us. When we arrived, we weren't the only squad of candidates from Castle Urcia. There were plenty of others who had arrived earlier than us.

A few fiddlers played a tune in the corner, and the taverners must have been expecting us, because they'd brought out a few more kegs of ale and cracked them open. We made good use of it, though I tried to drink in moderation—I didn't need a massive hangover tomorrow morning.

"There's no need to be too cautious, brother!" Brawl told me.

"The higher your Vitality, the harder it is to get drunk. Combine that with your Focus… I think you'll have to rack up a pretty high tab before we actually get you drunk." Truth be told, I wasn't even feeling buzzed, so perhaps Brawl was right. As the night dragged on, I settled down at a table with the others, and we ate a hearty meal. Other squads were dancing or partying, and one group had jumped up on a table.

I wasn't paying too much attention to them, not until Sage kept glancing at them out of the corner of her eye. Their druid was dancing and spinning, using her legs. I turned to Sage and whispered, "Don't worry about them."

"It's fine," she replied, shaking her head.

"Just a little…nervous about what's to come."

"Hey, if you think we're doomed, why did you even bother coming here and trying out for the SAP?" Anchor asked.

"Unless it was your father that made you do it, in which case, ignore me." He didn't have as much Vitality or Focus as the rest of us, and the alcohol was getting to him more than the others, but Sage only shook her head and said, "It wasn't my father. I needed to do something. One of our estate servants spoke of the candidacy, and since Lord Ceonwin was away at the capital, there was no one with authority to stop me." She leaned forward, pretending to pick at her food.

"At least out here, there's a little freedom. I won't be trapped inside all day, tended by servants, just waiting to die."

"Well, you're in the SAP now," I said. Then I turned to the rest of the squad.

"We did great today, and we're going to keep doing great. I promise to make this squad work. Now, let's enjoy ourselves for the rest of the evening—we deserve it."