Chapter 88: Under the rain (Second part)

“Sillath?”

Concentrated as I was on our surroundings with my entire senses — magical or not — dedicated to this apparently fruitless task, I didn’t immediately react when Jazor’s broken voice, clearly influenced by the cold, reached me.

“What?” I replied slightly dazed by my prolonged use of my magic sense.

“Take a rest. You will collapse,” he admonished me with undisguised worry unfamiliar from him.

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” I immediately dismissed him with a small wave of my hand. “I can still continue.”

However, Jazor didn’t seem impressed by my apparent bravado if the expression I could barely discern on his face because of the dense, constant rain falling on him was any indication.

“Fine, but look around. If you want to continue your watch, do so after that.”

I didn’t understand his words until my gaze landed on Himara, shaking so much from the cold that even her brother had trouble holding her properly. I was equally drenched and chilled, but another kind of cold had prevented me from truly caring about it.

A deeper kind of cold, I had trouble ignoring.

Although, I finally realized that now wasn’t the time to let my fear guide me anymore.

So, without another word, I accepted Jazor's advice and retracted my magic sense. The whole area around the moving carriage that was under my constant scrutiny suddenly disappeared as if someone had suddenly decided to put out all the light around me.

It was a very unnerving sensation, but I knew this time I couldn’t let it control me, so I didn’t try to use my magic sense anymore.

Instead, I took my left hand out of the relative warmth of the wet blanket and summoned a languid flame, barely able to brighten anything around, but giving off more heat than anyone could give it credit for.

The small flame, seemingly ready to be extinguished by the constant rain and the violent wind, flickered, but never went out. I closed my eyes and concentrated for a few more seconds.

The flame didn’t get brighter but warmer. Like a waking beast, it continued to grow until the whole place was under its influence.

All of my unfortunately soaked and chilled companions straightened their backs and moved closer to the flame to enjoy this much-needed break from the ambient cold.

Walmir was the only one besides me able to summon fire. As he mostly stayed at the front of the carriage to lead the Vrapy, I had to develop one precise aspect of this element when I realized that simply summoning a flame above my palm wouldn’t be enough to warm up my companions. After some practice, it proved relatively simple for me to tone down the brightness of the flame so that it was barely noticeable, even in the darkness of the night, while enhancing its warmth.

Everyone around obviously appreciated this new kind of flame.

After a few seconds of this respite, Himara’s shaking finally diminished and her teeth stopped chattering. She held out her tiny hands toward my flame, something she didn’t really need to do as I was directly influencing the warmth emitted from this flame to go toward her.

Paul and Seth seemed to appreciate this sudden relief just as much as she did, and I was sure that even Alianelle, still unconscious in her father’s arms, was enjoying it far more than the cold rain that her father's massive frame couldn’t shelter her from.

However, even the warmth it was generously giving off and the temporary gratitude it generated, wasn’t able to disperse the ambient morosity plaguing us ever since our last confrontation.

It took a few days for Paul to begrudgingly accept Walmir’s explanation only for him to learn that Ilan had tried to kill his only daughter.

There was no coming back from that.

In the same way, Ilan had finally had enough of Paul’s attitude.

As long as Jazor and I were strong enough, he could tolerate having to protect two useless members, but everything changed when it became once more clear just how dangerous Alianelle’s presence could be. Ilan was a man of honor. After all this time fighting by his side, I could say that much.

However, this didn’t mean he was ready to risk his life for a girl he knew nothing about and who was, as far as he was concerned, already dead.

Seeing Alianelle’s rosy complexion, even breathing, and increasingly agitated state, I could argue that everything indicated that she had never been so close to waking up. However, even if this was a possibility, the truth was that neither Ilan nor Walmir had any reason to put their lives on the line for her sake any more than what they had already done along our journey.

The worst part about this situation was that I couldn’t blame him for that, for who could say what I would feel and choose to do in his stead.

For long minutes, these depressing thoughts kept swirling in my head with only the patter sound of the rain crashing on the wooden carriage in a dull, boring rhythm as a companion.

Ilan and Walmir had chosen to stay in the front of the carriage to direct the Vrapy, but even without their presence near us on the same open-air wagon, I couldn’t remember a time when the atmosphere felt so heavy and uncomfortable. And the monster possibly following us from afar, ready to attack at the slightest opportunity, along with Paul’s and Ilan’s respective resentment weren’t the only reasons for it.

Each day was bringing us closer to our destination, to the safety of the first Advanced town, the only bastion of Humanity that could have survived the wrath of the wilderness. We all longed for its protection especially since it always appeared so desperately unreachable.

However, this city marking the end of our journey also brought Himara and Seth closer to their grim fate.

We lost almost all our stuff in our last frantic run. All we had left was unceremoniously put into the largest and sturdiest bag we could find among the debris of the carriage. All our belongings rested in this tattered and small bag under Jazor’s temporary guard, but the black cage was still there, intact and ready to fulfill its role as soon as Walmir judged it was time for the children to return to their place.

If I could spare them of this fate, I would gladly do it despite what Paul might think.

However, for me, fighting Ilan and Walmir wasn’t an option.

Even if I teamed up with Jazor, our chances of victory were slim, to say the least.

Walmir was strong, full of surprises and resources for a man with a single arm. Many of his magics were strange and for now, escaped my understanding. In a magical fight where anything could happen, to say that I was sure to best him was pure arrogance born of inexperience which I have now shed. Even so, my chances against him were pretty good.

However, Ilan was completely different.

All along our journey, he proved to be an experienced fighter of inestimable value that mercilessly crushed his opponents with pure power born from straightforward magic. I had a hundred scenes playing in my head of him using either water magic with his sword or wind magic with his axe to overwhelm almost every obstacle in our way.

All the memories of his fights were more than enough to make me doubt whether Jazor would truly prevail against him especially after losing his main weapon.

I had long been convinced that victory over them was impossible unless I went all out, which would not be without consequences now that I had no regenerative potion left.

Moreover, even if an opportunity to defeat them presented itself, I wouldn’t even try to seize it.

They were slavers and therefore, according to Paul, deserved every form of punishment, but the truth remains that they fought alongside us and risked their lives more times than I could remember for our sake. Our unity was never our greatest strength, but the four of us still made it work in the end. We accomplished miracles together and survived when none of us would have separately.

I knew that I owed them my life just like they owed me theirs.

This wasn’t something I was willing to easily betray.

No amount of talking with Walmir could convince him to release the children either, even if I offered him my most prized possession. If he wanted to quit his job and rejoin his family, he couldn’t show up empty-handed to his employer in the city. This simple reason, which I had trouble truly understanding, left no place for negotiation.

My only choice left was to participate in the auction myself to buy Seth and Himara’s freedom.

I took a glance at the now-familiar ring on my thumb that saved my life so many times across these lands.

Such a simple item and yet imbued with a magic so out of my understanding that I had no hope of reproducing it.

At the time, when I was still completely delusional about the nature of the wilderness and its dangers, I didn’t realize the true worth of this artifact.

Now, it was impossible to clearly remember how many times it had saved my life.

Although I didn’t want to part with this gift from Hirillë, I knew this gentle soul wouldn’t want me to keep it for myself if it meant it could save children from years of slavery.

However, things weren’t so simple.

We planned to part ways with Jazor at the first Advanced town. While I wanted to enter the Dorell Kingdom through the three fortresses, he wanted to rejoin the Red mountain to reach his homeland.

Tegralle, my birth town, was on the eastern side of the Dorell kingdom while the first Advanced town was in the southwest. Although I would be much safer inside the kingdom than in the wilderness, it would still take me several more weeks of travel to return home on foot.

If I win the auction, then I couldn’t just let these children fare on their own. With no support or place to go, they would quickly be captured once again before being sold to a perhaps even worse place. Therefore, I would have to travel for weeks with two defenseless children across a country known to enslave them. With their particularly noticeable hair, hard as steel when not voluntarily controlled, and glowing in the dark, hiding their true nature would also prove tedious, if not downright impossible.

Jazor couldn’t take them with him either. Dwarves had a long history of enslaving beastmen tribes, something I didn’t know, but which, in retrospect, explained why Jazor so readily accepted our alliance with slavers. According to him, although Dwarves generally didn’t enslave their own, contrary to the Humans, their acceptance toward beastmen tribe members was surprisingly far worse. This habit inherited from the rancor against this race during the last great war couldn’t be overlooked.

That’s why, even if he brought them with him to his hometown, they would have no future there.

While the idea to escort beastmen children across the Dorell kingdom on my own wasn’t appealing, the result if I lost the auction wasn’t that much better. They would still be enslaved and I would have made known that a child was owning a precious elven artifact. No need to be a genius to guess how things could escalate from there.

In the end, this artifact that has saved my life so many times could either save two more lives or make me risk mine without any result.

Whether I wanted to admit it or not, if I wanted to rejoin my family safely, the most sensible choice was to follow Walmir’s advice and turn my back on Himara and Seth’s fate.

‘You’ve done enough.’

These words Walmir spoke not so long ago, kept a far greater place inside my head than I would ever admit.

‘Think about you for once.’

Like a curse continuously spelling a truth difficult to admit.

‘They were never yours to save.’

I wanted to save them, but the thought of ultimately failing when I had made it through the wilderness because of misplaced generosity was hard to bear.

That’s why I didn’t mention the possibility of freeing them.

Because I was afraid to fail and to have given them false hope, but also because I wasn’t sure I was ready to lose everything for them.

I intensified the flame’s warmth in a way to distract me from this choice I knew I will have to make soon.

A few more minutes in this heavy silence with this cruel choice hanging in the back of my head as only companion made me realize that maybe this was the reason for Paul’s constant harsh judgemental gaze on me.

He had wanted to save these children the first day, never hid it, and blamed me for not doing the same ever since.

How blessed the weak and ignorants could be, comforted in the warm embrace of their delusions born from misplaced ideals out of step with the truth of this world and the reality of our situation.

I was envious of him sometimes.

Of his naivety, I lost a long time ago.

I still kept alive a faint hope in the corner of my heart that Paul had his own solution to save these children from slavery.

That would make the end of this journey less bitter because for now, all I could hope for was that we would reach the first Advanced town before our group completely collapsed in our next fight to the death.