[YF] Chapter 249: Declaration

The land looks dead.

Between the grey land, and the greyer sky, life is more a memory than reality out here in the far east of Vanguard. The view through the small window is drab, and not at all encouraging, but I can’t turn away.

Trees stand without foliage, bushes slump, and there isn’t an animal in sight. A powder coating covers everything. Not snow, but ash. It falls from the sky and spreads indiscriminately. Not even the luxurious interior of our train-car avoids all wafts of ash and filth.

As we travelled north, and grew closer to the Titan Alps, the uninterrupted cloud of ash has only grown thicker. Light barely penetrates. It is midday, and yet it is hard to picture the sky as anything but twilight.

“I’m worried,” I say. “The pact nations are in a bad state, aren’t they?”

“Come now, they’re flesh, not áed. The lower temperature won’t affect them nearly as much.” Yalun met up with us before we switched trains at the new New Vetus and pact nations border. Apparently, she’d flown back to the wasteland to update the grand elders that had remained there of the agreements decided upon.

I appreciate her efforts to cheer me up, but her response reminds me just how isolated my people have been for millennia. My elders may be old, but their thoughts and opinions of the outside world are tinged by time and imprecise records.

“Their crops won’t grow in this weather,” I say, turning to her. “How will they feed their people if this continues? The pact nations might not even survive long enough to see Armageddon.”

Yalun clenches her jaw and says nothing. She knew, intellectually, that the other races needed different things to survive, but her immediate response is to assume the problems they face are the same as ours. I wonder if its the preconceptions themselves, or the lack of an easy path to sympathise that makes it so difficult for my elders to adjust. Maybe its simply how long they’ve lived the same way; change, even that of the mind, is difficult.

It probably doesn’t help that the ursu had been so accommodating. And now the other races too.

The train we ride in is far beyond those I’ve seen previously. It’s smaller than what we rode in with the ursu — what isn’t massive in New Vetus — and we all share the same carriage, but it is beyond luxurious. Ornate carvings shape each wall, and while the seats are comfortable, most of the space is dedicated to other facilities. A table for cards, or other such gambling games, and a bar stocked full of high-purity alcohol.

It seems the ursu weren’t the only ones to discover our taste for the stuff. I wonder if the organiser spoke to my team?

But what is by far the most impressive feature, is the inscriptions they’ve inlaid through the carriage itself. They’ve converted this luxurious room into a furnace. The lines connect to the engine — I can feel it — and burn the room to a far hotter temperature than what it likely should reach.

Our ‘guards’ leave us the privacy of our carriage — not that they would be comfortable even with the limited enhancement they have — instead taking post in both the carriage before and after ours.

Two Beith teams. That’s what they introduced themselves as. Beiths. Yet from my observations in the day since we’ve joined them, not a single one comes close to the strength or skill shown by my team back when we first met. I would have hesitated to call these mercs Luis ranked, and it’s clear my elders don’t think much of them.

Is the Mercenary Order filling the hole of the Beiths left by the last war with those not qualified? If so, I hope they don’t expect each to fulfil the same tasks; the pact nations cannot sustain any more unnecessary losses.

Well, it’s better to consider these mercenaries as guides rather than guards. Not only are the áed they protect each immensely powerful — I do include myself — but its their composition that truly announces their purpose. Despite there being three mages amongst them, not a single one uses water or ice markings. If they were here to guard us, they would include those that can defend against our greatest weakness. That they haven’t shows they are more concerned with keeping face and avoiding any political slight.

Honestly, I would have preferred if they hadn’t bothered. Or better yet: sent my team.

There shouldn’t be much longer to wait before I see them, but it would have been nice to have them join us early. Like New Vetus, I don’t expect to linger for much of the talks, so having them around from earlier would have been preferable. There’s still no guarantee any of them will join me in Riparia.

Now that I think about it, I’m gonna have to dive back into that deep hole in the earth. Could I take any of them with me? They’d probably not be all that helpful in the search for the Riparian treasure, but we could use the time to talk. But… the hole is dozens, if not hundreds of kilometres deep. The climb will be long enough alone. If I had to carry someone with me, it will be painfully time and energy consuming.

I glance across the carriage, to where Leal and Ignatia have been gushing over notes ever since we clambered inside. Those two getting along is… not exactly unexpected. Though I do wonder what Leal will think once she sees the woman’s taskmaster attitude when it comes to training.

I’ll not be able to take Leal down with me. As great a mage as she is, there’s not much benefit she can provide over my permeating flames. Not unless there’s some mystical variation of herself that can feel where the metal orb is, but even those are limited by what are reasonable possibilities. Leal can hardly become a mage of a certain hyle if there is no path to learn, after all.

Besides, she’s a little heavier than most others I’d have to carry.

I am mostly sure that the treasure survived Kalma’s attack. Not certain, of course, but considering its ability to shift the dual-tailed feline woman’s decay hyle into my own flames, there’s a good chance it did the same during her largest attack.

If not, then it wasn’t that great of a treasure.

Well… it did help me immensely back then, so I owe a lot to the strange creation. If it did fall to Kalma’s immense power, then I’ll have to find another way to get into Riparia. Remus had connections with Solon, but its hard to say whether we can rely on that when we have nothing to offer; Remus did use his favour during the last war, after all.

Even if its better for Leal not to join me in that pit, I’d rather not be alone.

I tilt my head back to Yalun. “Hey, would-”

The train suddenly jolts.

I feel the instant an explosion of fire spreads out from beneath the carriage. It is quick to expand, but even quicker to extinguish. One of my elders snaps their control through the blaze before I can even reach for it.

The train jerks to the side, careening off the tracks. In the few moments before we tilt and crash on our side, I feel each of my elders move into action. Śuri, followed closely by Iri and Ildri have burnt through the side of the train and speed through the air toward a pair of thermal presences a hundred metres off the track.

As we slam into the earth and slide, my form collapses for a moment before snapping back together. I notice Kiko’s fire wrap around Leal and cushion her from the impact. With a nod of appreciation that he pointedly ignores, I rise from the wreckage.

The train lays on its side. A trail of destruction leading all the way back to the rail back up the hill. The mercs from both cars ahead and behind us are already clambering out, and the pair that had sat guard on top of the train, I can feel chasing the instigators. Though, they quickly fall behind my elders. I’m not even going to question how they didn’t notice the attack coming; not when neither my elders or I could.

I glance after Śuri, tempted to follow him and punish those behind the explosion and derailing, but the prone form of the train conductor and their engineer is more important. Even if this wasn’t our fault, the last thing we want is a pair of pact nation citizens dying on our hands when first arriving.

With the fire of the engine still going, I reform my body there rather than moving through air. It saves maybe a second, but it gets me within their small cabin without having to burn through their door.

The conductor, a dohrni, cradles a limp black tentacle as she tries to rise from the train’s wall-turned-floor. A deep black welt slowly bubbles over her torso beneath the dazed pair of eyes, but otherwise she looks fine. At least nothing immediately life threatening. Her partner, on the other hand, does not look so good.

The khirig lays unresponsive on the ground. Scattered around them, are a dozen fractured and broken antlers. The roots of some torn free of skin, leaving them to gush blood. I’ve heard how painful having the roots be damaged can be, but I have no way of knowing whether its the pain that leaves them unconscious or some other reason.

As I glance over their body, I realise I don’t know what I can do to help them. I spoke of my elders not understanding the other races, but am I any different? Even after spending years with them, do I truly understand the differences between us as much as I should?

“Should I cauterise?” I ask the dohrni, knowing that’s what I should do with an albanic, but not sure if that might cripple the antler’s regrowth or something. She simply blinks at me, uncomprehending.

I suddenly realise she may not have been as unhurt as I’d originally thought.

Immediately, I melt away the bottom of the train and yell at the pair of mercenaries moving to secure the area of threats that don’t exist. “You! Get in here.”

They stand dumbfounded for a moment at the sudden disappearance of so much metal and machinery, but as soon as they see the two besides me, they rush to comply. Their first steps are wary of heat, and as soon as they realise I’ve already sapped it all, they join me.

“Do I cauterise?” I ask the one that drops to kneel besides the khirig. The other quick to grab the dohrni, and force her to sit down.

“Yes. Avoid the bone-stems if you can, but its fine if you can’t.” They say after a moment of inspection.

I immediately dive into doing the same thing I did for Ash so long ago. Pinching veins and arteries closed is easier than breathing now, as well as avoiding the antler roots that grow out from bone. That micro-burst training my elders have been having me do to improve my focus is finally proving its worth.

With that done, I back away, leaving the pair to the mercenaries who obviously have a better understanding of what to do with injuries like theirs. I step out, and move for Śuri. He is no longer with the perpetrators, but stands at the top of the hill with a few more of my elders where the train derailed.

As I arrive, I find where the explosion originated; a small series of craters destroying a fairly extensive section of rail.

“Surprisingly, this wasn’t a targeted attack,” he says. “Well, at least not targeted at us.”

They used explosives. Fire. It’s obvious we’re not the targets, but I doubt that’s the point of why he said it. And as I stand and wait, he continues.

“Henosis has declared war.”

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