The council called me up for another session. It was technically a closed session, but they had no idea what a training ground needed, so I was invited to advise.
At least, that was what they said I was called for. As soon as I arrived, with Orleris as my personal advocate, it was pretty clear my stunt from the other day was weighing heavily in the air. I could feel the tension. Any heavier and I would have been worried it was miasma.
The first question, and you couldn't pay me to bother to remember all their names, was from a guy that seemed around the same age as Navar. "Are you able to summon those weapons anywhere?"
I think I should have laughed at him. Instead, I watched him silently. He clarified that he was asking if there was a specific geographical or physical requirement for a site to build a training ground, but it felt more like he wanted to know if I could unleash an arrow right there. Quite frankly, it was a nonsensical question in the first place. They still had magic, just not combat magic in the same sense as I did. How could he think there was some kind of limitation?
I summoned a dagger for him and confirmed his fear, then I clarified that all the training ground really needed was to be insulated enough from buildings and civilians that even the most wildly off target spell wouldn't harm anyone outside the grounds. If Eloitte could get her machine fixed up enough to handle real combat magic, we would be fine anywhere with enough space.
I kept the dagger out, letting it spin slowly in the air above my hand. At least, I planned to keep it out so we could get past the dumb questions, but Orleris gave me a disapproving look. Was he my personal advocate or my personal sitter? If he opened his mouth, I'm sure he would have said that there was no reason to be so threatening in my actions.
Yes, ok. If it is you reading this, Orleris, I did put it away because of that look. You got me.
But you know, I hadn't thought too much about the way I phrased it, but the next question that came back actually caught me off guard. And it was Navar. He asked, "Who would be a civilian?"
See, I thought they didn't know the definition of the word. Its miracle enough that we can even understand each other when I think about it but given the situation in this world leading up to present, it just made sense to me that they might not even have a way to differentiate between those who were going to fight and those who weren't. At least, that's my definition. So, I explained.
With a completely neutral face, Navar...
"If the threat of the Demon Lord is as serious as advertised, we don't have the luxury of there being people on the sidelines."
I felt my stomach drop. Its true, miasma and the Demon Lord wouldn't exactly abide by war conventions of my world, leaving women, children and non combatants out of the crosshairs, but-
I guess this is directed at you. I've thought about it a lot all day since the meeting ended. Navar, even if everyone has something they can contribute, that doesn't mean you have to wring them dry for it. If your wife was put in charge of a miasma barrier and became the first target of a demon invasion in Liliales, would you really have nothing to say about that? What about children? What about your daughter? What about people who are too scared to fight? People who are too ill, or sick, or weak to fight? Are you fighting for the literal land? The ground? Why do people fight?
But you know? I can't say that out loud. Just asking that question makes realize I'm a hypocrite. I don't want anyone to ask me. I don't know why I'm fighting either.
I've already said so many times that I don't feel like a hero. But I am a protagonist, right? In this world, as the one who saved people in the past, and the one here to save them again, I am someone with a story to be told. How do all the heroes in my games end up taking on the role? Why are they fighting?
The rest of the meeting passed in a blur. We picked out a clearing space just outside of central, and they planned to put together a budget for Eloitte to improve her machines.
I don't want to think about it. Why am I here? I don't know. I wandered through a portal fifteen years ago. I felt special. Magic was real. I had a purpose. I saved the world.
I feel so powerful, so valuable. Here, I have the power to inspire awe and fear just with the wave of a hand. I bet I could have told them I'm a God and they would have believed me.
That was disgusting to write. I'm literally nothing, just a human.
My phone says it hasn't even been a full day since I came here. It feels like whiplash.
I could just go home. This would all go away. I could pretend none of this is real and I could just take my five days off work to sleep and
The ruby is fused to my chest. I have to think rationally about this. If the time in my world is passing slowly, when I go back, time will pass fast here. Will the seal break the moment I cross over? Will the ruby grow out of control if I go back home?
I need to be patient. This ruby in my chest grounds me here. It's as if whenever I start getting anxious, I feel it more clearly. This is basically our remaining hope right here, and it just needs some time. Even fragments can save cities.
I'm sorry, Orleris, Navar. I should scratch that all out but if you are reading this, I hope you can understand me a bit better now. I'm no one special. I'm not a soldier. I'm just an ordinary, average person who was put into an extraordinary, exalted position.
I don't really want to be alone right now.
I'm going to go talk to Eloitte. She could make a pad to qi charge my phone just by holding it and listening to be explain. Maybe if I show her the ruby, she will be able to think of a way we can deal with it without breaking my ribs.
***
Once the cell phone was charged up, he read through another diary entry. She was so eaten up over trying to come up with a reason to fight, but wasn't it just that she was extremely empathetic? She knew she could do something, because she had before, and she wanted to help?
But then he got to the part where she said she was going to talk to Eloitte, and he couldn't help but suddenly rip his eyes away from the page. "Eloitte, you knew? About the ruby?"
She gave a little jump start, pulled out of the thoughts that had kept her silent. "I... she didn't want anyone else to know!"
"And did you get any shards off of it?"
"No, we decided that it wasn't safe to break it, since the seal on the other stone in her possession completely broke when her other crystal broke."
"And after the seal broke? Was it still there?"
Navar kept glancing back and forth, finally demanded an explanation. "What are you two talking about? What about the ruby?"
But Eloitte ignored him when she replied, "yes, there were still pieces there, but they were too small to break off properly, so we planned to wait a while."
Navar continued to try to extract answers from them, clutching his own notebook all the while. It took a while, but he eventually gave up. "I feel like I'm the only one who has no place here, even though I'm the one who is supposed to be recording history for the future generations."
His complaint fell on deaf ears. Both Orleris and Eloitte were far more aligned with Lil's wish for people to not know what had happened than they were with Navar's wish to record the present. And more so for Orleris, he knew Lil didn't think very highly of the way Navar's family had tried to maintain historical records.
It was getting to be night when they arrived at the village where Lilia was living. They found the reason they couldn't track her by supply orders was because they were living with another family that were expert foragers, so they hadn't been teleporting in any supplies or food. They pulled in in the late evening and found her sitting outside her little cabin.
"You found me."
"Did you know I would find you?"
She shook her head but invited the trio inside.
Before Orleris could ask anything, she held up a hand.
"I'm going to start by telling you that I'm not all-seeing. My visions are very limited. I can only see things in a certain place, and even then, they aren't all that distinct. I'll tell you everything, right now, and then you will need to leave because you need to find the path to this future."
She sat at her table and offered seats to her three guests. "Navar, Eloitte, nice to see you two as well. I'm sorry for running away."
Navar shook his head. "If what we've heard is the truth so far, you had a strong incentive to do so, and its hard to fault you for that." He pulled out his notebook like he always did, then motioned for her to speak. "But we need to hear more from you."
She took a deep breath.
The Demon Lord often talks to himself in the Sky Domain.
It sounds like he is talking to Lil.
Orleris is standing in the Sky Domain.
The Demon Lord is there.
Orleris runs forward.
They stand close to one another for a moment.
Orleris is knocked back and falls to his knees.
The Demon Lord approaches
There are brown crystals everywhere
Something changes, and Orleris isn't there anymore
Then the Demon Lord is angry.
He no longer talks to himself.
"That's all?" Navar stopped writing once she finished her lines.
"What do you mean that's all? Clearly all the teleported crystals are decoys, Lil is up in the Sky Domain, and you," she said pointing at Orleris, "are going to go there alone and save her."
They stared between each other, when Orleris asked the first question. "Lilia, did you really need to run away? Didn't you think you should tell me that before?"
"I..!" She started to shout, then turned away. "I told mom. She didn't believe me. She said the Demon Lord wasn't going to return, and I just needed to spend some time in the forest. I didn't think you would believe me either. Mom said I just needed some time away from central and I'd feel better."
Eloitte stood up, circled the table, and knelt down beside her. "Did you know? That the Demon Lord is back now?" Lilia nodded slightly, keeping her gaze locked on the table to avoid eye contact with any of them. "And you stayed here?"
"It was mom who wanted to stay here! I said she had to believe me now, but she just wanted to..." Lilia started crying.
She barely seemed her age, Orleris felt he was much more put together at twenty-one. "Your mother didn't want you to get involved. She didn't want you to get hurt." Lilia nodded to his guess, then looked up and words started pouring out of her.
"Its so safe here. We can just pretend the world doesn't exist, our whole world is right here. I don't even want to look into the future anymore, so I haven't. I've rewatched that scene of you and the Demon Lord over and over, I just want to believe that's the end. I don't want to look anymore.
"If I see a future where we don't beat him, does that make it real? If I tell you a future, does that destroy it? I don't know. I don't know anything about what I see. But I know it's the future. You have to make it our future! You have to get up to the Sky Domain!"
After her outburst, she couldn't stop crying. Eloitte helped over to her bed, which was just in a corner of the single room cabin. She muttered that her parents were going to be away foraging for a few more days with the neighbours, and that they could use her parents bed to rest. Navar ended up taking the bed, while Eloitte rested on the ground with a blanket. Their driver took the night in the carriage, and after Orleris checked that she wasn't too overwhelmed with everything, he settled down on the floor inside the cabin as well. It wasn't really that great to burden their driver with all this information, but none of them were capable of running the magic engine as well as she was.
Sitting against the wall, he picked up the diary and decided to read one more entry before trying to sleep. There was a soft light from the stove that was keeping the cabin warm, so he sat next to it, and found the shortest entry so far on the next page of the diary.