This is more than most can say, but I did make good friends on Idroa. Truly. While power and violence brought out the ugly in so many, not all of us had stained souls and some shined virtuously instead.

Wilfrid Pember - Historian- The Start of the Apocalypse

____

Silas blew at his tea, breaking the stream of vapour coming off its surface. Iris sat opposite to him, her cup untouched, while Josh sipped at his tea.

“You packed enough tea bags?” Josh asked casually.

“Yeah, of course,” Silas replied, his lips curling despite his glum mood. “Would be a travesty otherwise.”

“Damn straight, man.”

Silas gulped, then coughed lightly. “By the way, how’s the village faring now?” After being healing, he had remained in bed for the rest of the day. Mostly recovered now, although there were still some splotches of red scarring his face and arms, he had simply planned to give his last farewells and leave, when Josh and Iris had surprised him by showing up outside his house.

“Well, we’re doing alright,” Josh answered. “Not the best, obviously, but those Order guys saved us at the end.”

While Silas realised Josh had put it lightly to ease his nerves, he appreciated it nonetheless. When he had checked the citizen’s list earlier, he had seen nearly a quarter of Riverside’s fighters had died. The upper echelon had done better with only two of the top 15 dying - the Ice Mage Gerald and the newcomer Seung - but it didn’t change the fact that Riverside was gravely impaired right now. “Ah, right. How about the Order? Have they gone yet?” Ish had visited him briefly while he recovered, but he had seen little else of them.

“Most of them,” Josh said with a so-so shrug, putting down the cup. “They’ve left behind a hundred troops for defence purposes, and I heard Elise is planning to build permanent accommodation for them in the south.” He paused. “You don’t have to worry about that, man. We’ll be fine while you’re gone.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just that I’m thinking how stupid I am leaving right after all this has happened,” Silas said, his voice strained. “But, at the same time, I feel like I need to go now. If I wait around any longer, maybe it’ll be too late by the time I find Ethan and Chloe. With stuff like this happening on the daily, a single day could make all the difference.”

“It’s cool, man, I understand. Trust me,” Josh said, thumping his chest while clapping Silas’s shoulder, “You’ll find them alive and well. Then you can come back, and you’ll see Riverside is just as you left it - actually, scratch that - even better than when you left it.”

Silas felt his frayed nerves calming slightly at Josh’s reassuring words. “What about Mike? Anything up with him?”

“Oh, he’s keeping it low right now with the Order around. I mean, we’ve probably been worrying too much about him; maybe it’ll never come to blows, maybe it’ll just carry on being an uneasy peace,” Josh answered.

Spotting movement at the corner of his eyes, Silas looked up and saw a note in Iris’s hand. He’ll attack. I’ve heard that he’s not scared of the Order and that he thinks their lingering presence is proof of you taking it lying down.

Josh clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. “Ignore her, Silas - you know how she is, always the worrywart. Sure, Mike’s been going on about how we didn’t need the Order to be there and so on, but let’s be real, they saved our asses there. Even if Mike tries to start something, no one’s going to stand with him.”

Silas nodded, then after a moment sighed and slouched into his seat, his energy deflating out of him. His mouth opened and closed, once, twice, before he found the strength to say the words. “I’m sorry for doing this. I just—”

Interrupting with a click of his tongue, Josh waved his arms dismissively. “Like I said, it’s cool. You go do what you need to do, and we’ll be fine here. Honestly. Like you’ll come back with your brother and sister in tow, and you’ll find your house still in good shape, you’ll see that we’re all alive and well. You know, maybe we’ll even be stronger than you, like Iris might be the local thug by then, terrorising the children and elderly,” he finished, chuckling freely.

“Thanks, man,” Silas said, smiling. “And I hope you don’t become a thug, Iris.” Taking a deep breath, he stood and picked up his rucksack.

Josh followed him out of the house, Iris at his heel. “Make sure to drop by the hall before you go. I’m pretty sure that’s where Rolf, Elise, and Dom are right now.” Patting the Duellist on the back, they watched as he left, his gait slow and unsteady.

Faltering a couple dozen steps in, Silas turned and saw Josh still waving with a grin. Beside him, Iris leaned against the door frame, her body slack as tears tumbled down her face. This was his second time seeing her tears. He froze for a long moment as he wondered if he was doing the right thing after all, and it took all the strength he had to wrench himself from the sight and continue down his path.

****

“You okay?” Josh asked, waiting patiently as Iris sat hunched over in her seat.

She raised her head and shot him a weak glare, her cheeks still streaked with tears. She scribbled on her notepad. Why didn’t you stop him? You could have asked him to wait. You could have told him Mike is planning to kill us all soon.

“Ha,” Josh said, his lips curled into a wry smile. “Same reason you didn’t ask him - it would be wrong for us to stop him when his siblings are so important to him. You know, I’m an only child, and my mum was sickly even before, so I don’t think she’s made it this far. Most people are like me: they’ve either lost hope or they’ve let go off their past.

“Silas, though,” Josh continued, “One of the first things he asked when I met him was if there was anyone in our group who could locate his siblings. That was all the way back when I went to help with getting the hub crystal, remember. Since then, he’s frequently asked the same question, and he’s kept his hope up even when the rest of us decided to let go off the past and focus on the present. I just can’t ask someone like that to stay behind.”

Iris was still for a while before she finally wrote on her notepad again. I hate you. Without waiting for a response, she got up and left. And it was good she did as he could no longer keep his act up.

Gripping the sides of the armchair, Josh leaned back and groaned. His cheery facade cracked and shattered at once, revealing his true face underneath, drained and hopeless. He had wanted Silas to leave without worries on his mind, and Iris to believe everything would be alright, but he now wondered if he had been the ultimate idiot for doing so. Perhaps he should have begged the Duellist to stay, after all, no matter how selfish it would have been.

There was at least no doubt in his mind that Iris had been right in her words: Mike would find some way to twist this situation to his advantage, and it likely wouldn’t even take much effort considering Silas had been the one deterring him all this time. Now that he was gone, there was no one left who could stop the Gladiator from tearing Riverside into bloody pieces. Was it really their fate to come under another tyrant’s rule, or was there anything left, short of pre-emptively murdering Mike, that they could do to stop him?

____

Sabine Gantzmann, the Blood Fist, was originally a professional boxer from Germany. She was noted in the hard tutorial for her shaved head, tall stature, and overwhelming lust for battle. On Idroa, she was a founding member of Riverside, and despite supporting Silas Wycliffe’s, the Duellist’s, opposition at every turn, she herself kept out of his reach.

This low-key approach shifted as she grew in power and finally undertook a drastic change when she upgraded her class from Pugilist to Blood Fist after fighting off a Ratkin army. At this time, Silas had chosen to leave Riverside in the hands of others, and this prompted Michael Eze, the Gladiator, to make a bid for mayorship.

Incidentally, this provided…

Stefan Sommer - the Chronicler - Heroes and Villains of the First Age