Chapter 2207 (Patreon)

ToC: https://www.patreon.com/posts/23899958

Another one. Maybe I'll just do one chapter a day all week.

“Oh breakfast butler,” Devick called in a sing-song voice. Her playful tone carried even over the chatter of the other soldiers and the rustle of cloth and armor. “Ohhhh breakfast butler~”

Lowanna rolled her eyes and trotted up along the edges of the column. The group made good time, marching in a winding trail South. They were one of a dozen small convoys that had split off from the Malloon theater, heading down to reinforce Homewell now that the situation around Cerulean City had become murky. Behind them they left a long path of trampled mud and in front of them lay turbid clouds.

As she moved past a few armored and tusked Elephantine warriors, Lowanna couldn’t believe how jovial the whole crew seemed. But she supposed that while the trickling news indicated that Aether forces were losing the war, these individuals had seen only successes. The broader picture couldn’t overcome the reality of their small victories.

She looked up at the horizon and shivered. Based on what she could glean from the sky, a much more dismal outlook awaited them in Homewell. Her thoughts turned to the figure she knew orchestrated the whole offensive. Enmya always moved methodically. The dispersed forces, the hope of the entrenched defenses present in Homewell, the crumbling rest of the Aetherlands…

Well, Aether forces apparently are mustering up a surprising turnaround in the Northeast, but all the refugees and forces still able are flooding down here, into Turtleline lands. A place known and established as a sanctuary. Which puts all these lives in a convenient spot to hammer and eradicate…

Lowanna interlaced her fingers and squeezed until blood couldn’t flow into her digits. Her vision swam as frustrated tears leaked out. She felt so, so far from what she had wanted. I was supposed to be the culmination, the story which would be told, reverberating out into the main universe when the Nexus stabilized. Even if this strange deviation allowed me to delay the fate I saw, will anything change? How could I have allowed this… Did vanity leave me blind? I might hold all the power in my hands-

She went cold, all at once, forgetting about Devick entirely. …could it have been there was another layer to the plots of outside forces? Because had we succeeded, ripples of the Arbiter with bound hands would leak out into the homeland, weakening the Nether…

“Breakfast Butler! That’s it, for insubordination and lollygagging, you are being demoted to breakfast drudge!” Devick arrived in a flutter of her lovely crimson hair, eyes crinkled and gleaming. But a lot of that cheer vanished as she took a closer look at Lowanna. “...Are you alright? Not that you ever are particularly cheery, but your face has a particular element of drowned rodent. My appetite is ruined.”

Lowanna tried her best to smile, to respond to the clumsy attempt at comfort disguised as jostling humor. Yet her lips simply trembled. Fears became horrid realizations and her entire life seemed a manipulatable and petty thing, toyed with by unknown forces. When she raised her white-knuckled hands to her face, she found tears coursing down her cheeks.

“Lowanna, you-” Devick took a step toward her.

But another voice cut across. “Leader! Nether Warriors on the horizon. The highest a Tier 3! We don’t have much time.”

“Well shit,” Devick hissed. She squinted at the horizon, then seemed to remember the situation and looked over at Lowanna. She looked so young, even wrapped in armor and biting her lip so hard that it bled. Lowanna felt how thin a veneer the girl had erected to be seen as an adult. Eventually, Devick looked away. “You need to get in the supply caravan. We can speak more about this when we near Homewell.”

Numb and still crying, Lowanna nodded. She dutifully clambered into the rough wood of the wagon with the wounded or exhausted, while around the rest of the column shouts and the clang of cold metal signaled their preparations. She used her trembling hands to grab the handles of the door and pulled it closed. A beastkin with a stump where his arm used to be sobbed quietly next to her. I have so much power. Yet lifting a finger would mean the death of millions.

In the end… I’m just a voice. Without an ear to listen, I am nothing.

The voices of the Aether soldiers called with new urgency when the Nether Warriors approached, audible through the flimsy wooden shell of the wagon. A Tier 3 Nether Warrior wasn’t a powerhouse, only a fraction of the force a Nether King could wield. But this was the small column led by Devick. She would need to personally stall out the leader of the opposition, helplessly overmatched. Lowanna closed her eyes and scanned the fickle waves of significance curling in the sky.

In the end, the interactions were too small for her to sense any details. The war was so large that this one confrontation, these two score of lives, meant almost nothing. And if another Nether patrol caught wind of the fighting and headed over to intercept-

Lowanna stared blankly ahead at the dark wood in front of her. After spending a few weeks with Devick, she couldn’t bear the thought of the woman ceasing to be. Despite her flaws, despite her remorseless killing of Nether Warriors, there was a spark of sincerity in her that laid Lowanna bare. When the crimson-haired woman smiled, she overflowed with joy. When she scowled, the Arbiter could practically see the other woman mentally crumpling all her problems into a ball. And when she laughed-

A low whimper of fear from a nearby Vulpine with her tails severed brought Lowanna back to the present. She blinked several times. Soon the battle began and all her thoughts were drowned out by the chorus of violence. Lowanna wrapped her arms around her knees, moving only occasionally to bring the more seriously injured water from the shallow barrel near where she crouched.

It was somehow worse not to see the confrontation. To freeze like a small animal when the wagon trembled, afraid in the next instant a Nether Warrior would rip their way into the interior and slaughter all the broken souls waiting here.

They would save me. Lowanna started clenching her hands again. Bring me to Enmya. In the short term, the war would end… but I’ve seen how that ends. The Cult of the Savior would use the lives of the Nether people against me. To choose the soul of the universe or my people. The best way to avoid those vicious methods is to remain vanished…

A vicious roar hummed against the exterior of the caravan. The added fear that at any moment, the shrieks of pain and bitter roars would spread and collapse this small bubble of safety in which she currently sat ate at all of the passengers.

Eventually, the screams faded. When the knock on the wagon door came, it was in the correct sequence. Lowanna eased open the door and came face to face with Pyot, Devick’s second. His left arm hung limply from his shoulder, dangling at the end of a half-severed cord of muscle and gristle.

“We will need help moving the bodies. At least twelve casualties on our side.” He said. His eyes drifted down to her hands. “Can you…”

Feeling strangely guilty, Lowanna shook her head and found herself lying. “I cannot free my arms. The manacles bind a shard of a dangerous image in place. If I take them off- But of course, I’ll do all I can.”

Pyot turned away, his eyes in the middle distance. The horrors of the conflict he just saw danced in the forefront of his awareness, over and over again. Significance swirled around his head, hinting at the pivot he would face in the bleak and restless hours of the night. He probably hadn’t even heard her small lie. Already he mechanically shifted back to work, wandering toward the groaning forms of Aether fighters and helping them into the tent.

Lowanna hurried forward and began to assist as best she could.

The sun began to set after they finished the work of handling the bodies. Most of them, Lowanna included, were splattered in grey clods of clay and death. Looking at them once, Devick ordered the group to rest for the night and finish the rest of the journey in the morning.

Lowanna cleaned herself as best as she could, sparingly using their depleted water stores. The black wicker of her manacles gleamed, even in the dim light of the campfires. Exhausted but unable to sit still, Lowanna went and found Devick, alone, next to a small fire. The other woman lay on the ground and stared up into the bleak darkness of a clouded night sky, her beautiful hair spread out in the dirt. But despite the filth, it gleamed underneath the gentle illumination of the flames.

“It’s much closer to dinnertime, breakfast drudge,” Devick said. “I won’t need you until morning.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Lowanna began.

“I don’t believe breakfast drudges even feel a sense of curiosity. Questions should be impossible for one such as you.”

In spite of herself and how her heart ached at the loss of lives on both sides, Lowanna rolled her eyes. “You… were overmatched. Likely by a lot, facing a Tier 3 Warrior. Based on the wounded-” Devick tensed at the words, but Lowanna didn’t stop. “-you could barely hold the opponent down long enough for the other battles to finish. Yet you didn’t flinch. You walked into a situation you should have lost with your head held high. How?”

“Good genetics,” Devick huffed. “Gave me a straight spine.”

Lowanna kicked her. When the first blow only elicited a snort, Lowanna kicked with more force. The elaborate tattoos covering her hands and wrists glowed, bearing the slightest bit of the cost of her power. Just enough so that the Arbiter could sip from the ocean within her without sucking away the lives of some unfortunate. The blow lifted Devick off the ground and flung her several meters into the air. She squawked and tumbled, eventually landing in a crouch.

She glared at Lowanna. Lowanna raised an eyebrow; the Nether Arbiter was not an individual you could dismiss easily. And although Devick hadn’t believed her when she introduced herself as such, that didn’t make the label any less true. In terms of physical power, there were few who could rival her.

She had spent most of her life supporting a weight beyond the imagination of most individuals, after all.

Devick threw her hands up into the air. “What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.” Lowanna shrugged.

Devick tried another bristling glare. Lowanna just folded her arms, unmoved. After a snort, Devick moved back to slump next to the fire. She rubbed her side for a few seconds before releasing a sigh. “I don’t want to say it. Because… because I’m so much more than a cliche, than just being some woman who admires a man.”

Lowanna blinked in sudden understanding. Her lips twitched, but she managed to prevent herself from smiling. “You are an Aether being admiring a Nether King.”

“Much more forbidden, and therefore hot, I know,” Devick muttered. She shook her head and continued in a much more animated voice. “Hahhh… explaining doesn’t really do the impression he left on me justice. I only spent a short amount of time actually with Nether King Hungry Eye, although we existed in each other’s periphery for several months… but I can just see how he would react if you asked him a similar question. If an impossible task loomed before him and you asked him why he was walking straight into the jaws of it.

“He would blink. It would take a while for his mind to work its way from his certainty to your doubts. Because this foe needed to be defeated. Because no one but him could do it, regardless of whether he was ready. In his mind, there was never any choice. Or rather any other option.” Devick spoke more softly. “I could barely see him, outside of Malloon when that strange Nether Ritual was about to fall and annihilate everything in the surrounding area. He stood up and used his own hands to dismantle an event he didn’t think should occur. Both the awareness to recognize and the willpower to try..”

She looked down at her hands. Crimson-edged bolts of static spidered across her hands. “Agency, I believe it’s called. Nether King Hungry Eye worked, tirelessly from what I could glean from his training regimens, until his decisions had weight.”

Lowanna frowned slightly. “But I think you are wrong about him. His answer was power. He took the capability he needed and shaped the world. That’s very different from the bravery you showed today.”

“You haven’t met him, so you don’t understand,” Devick smiled, something raw and filled with admiration. She beamed up at the sky. “I thought so at first too, but I think its the opposite. Nether King Hungry Eye started nudging the world and soon found himself powerful. Have you ever seen a Nether King who can accomplish what he does? To him, it was always about influence. Power came later, just one more lever to pull. But that doesn’t mean its the only one in his arsenal.”

Significance suddenly pooled around Devick, her wistful yearning becoming her pivot.

But strangely, Lowanna started to feel pulled up in it too. Because she started to acknowledge that perhaps she wasn’t as powerless as she had told herself.

It is my least favorite part of my position, The Nether Arbiter closed her eyes. But… I cannot deny that if it is my voice…

There are millions of ears who would listen.