Chapter 11: Heart of Glass

Arden woke up. He looked at the ceiling before him. His eyes squeeze bitterly remembering his failures on the day that passed. He arrived at the Inn during the night unsteady. Susan who was cleaning up the back door of the Inn during that night saw Arden and helped him. She then took him to his bed and healed his wounds. She gasped at the large scar line that marks from his left shoulder to the right of his waist. Even the greatest spell of hers won’t be able to cure such scar.

“I failed.”

Arden muttered with his expression bitter. The light in his eyes vanished. His eyes were like of dead fish. He put his left arm on his forehead and then stared at the ceiling with such vacant wide open eyes. The wind meeting with the window’s panel was the only thing that could be heard. His breathing was so thin. As if he couldn’t breathe properly.

Wearing only his pants, Arden didn’t even move at the sight of the sun rising above. Normally he would be up running to the academy while helping people around making him late for class. Today he wasn’t feeling well. No amount of motivation sparks him to get up.

Knock, knock. The door sounded out. Arden sluggishly looked at the door before sitting up, saying it’s open. The door opened, Susan with her brunette hair reaching up to her shoulder entered. She was wearing the apron that had the logo for the Inn of Cher.

“Have a good night my dear brother?”

“Susan.”

“Why the long face, oh let me guess, could it be that horribly scarred that marks your sculpted body?”

Susan spoke with a sneer. She entered, grab the stool near the bed and put the basket containing bread on the bedside table. She took one and offered it to Arden. He looked at the loaf of bread, took it and chewed on it. Opening, closing his mouth he ate the food while Susan icily looked at him with her arms crossed.

“Are you maddened?”

“Oh no, not at all, it is just that seeing my foster brother coming home with a huge wound on his torso, unsteadily walking, half-dead and looked like he has been drained all of his blood made me feel happy. Yes, I was so happy that I almost jumped in joy seeing such state.”

“I see you’re mad.”

“Oh you wound me, Arden, how can I be mad when MY foster brother appears before me as if he was next to death’s door. Ah, surely I wouldn’t be mad, surely not you wound me.”

A fake laugh, a sneering mouth, and a vein popping at the side of her head, Susan was mocking Arden while speaking such words.

“Please forgive me...”

“Why would you ask for my forgiveness my dear foster brother? How can I your foster Sister need such forgiveness when you didn’t do anything wrong? How can I, be so shameful to give my O so wise and strong foster brother forgiveness?”

“Can you let me explain?”

“O, why would I need something like that when you are so o great, and selfless and SELF DESTRUCTIVE?”

“Please hear me out, Sis.”

“Ah, suddenly my ears are open, but with time being so constraint, I need to go and help in the kitchens!”

“Okay...”

Arden explained what happened yesterday. From the troubled noble girl to the scene in the slums, killing the noble girl and the six instructors, and finally getting himself almost killed by a noble girl. Hearing the details, Susan’s stoic expression turned soft; instead of saying something sarcastic she patted Arden’s head.

“You poor thing...”

“…I am okay sis...”

“Your face tells me you aren’t.”

“Not really, I am always like this.”

“Maybe to other people, but not to me, your eyes look deader than yesterday.”

“Haha, that’s kinda rude...”

“Have you cried it all out?”

“I am a man, how can you tell a man to cry?”

“All humans cry...if you don’t cry, then you aren’t human?”

“I...hick...I failed sis...”

“It’s okay.”

Arden sobbed. Susan hugged Arden’s poor head, embracing her broken foster brother. Arden cried, letting the pain of being unable to help on Susan’s chest. Susan patted Arden’s head, letting her brother cry in her arms. He has always been strong, sturdy, he could be hard as tempered steel yet his heart was glass.

Susan knew that Arden despite his sturdy body, and selfless helping attitude that he was weaker than most. He could take on punches from nobles; carry loads of luggage for people for free. But his heart was fragile, so fragile that it could break anytime.

Susan understood Arden more than anyone. She was quite indeed angered that he returned heavily injured, but even so, seeing the brother of hers so emotionally ruined as he tells what happened made her heart softened. Arden needed not scolding’s but comfort, and as his sister, his ally, and family, that’s what he needed the most currently.

“Have you calmed down?”

“Thank you, sis...”

“Gee...you sure are fragile...how can you a hero if you are like this?”

“I will temper my heart to stone Sis...besides I am not asking to become a Hero. I just want to help.”

“Indeed, you could become a normal person...and achieve our dream of being healers.”

“Yeah, but even so I still need to help people Sis...that’s the only reason why I am alive. I can’t live without helping other people, I need to help...”

“Maybe you will change your mind someday...or get a girl to make yourself calmer...”

“That’s impossible.”

“Not really...who knows? There might be innocent gals staring at you helplessly...”

“I can’t do that...”

Arden wiped the tears on his face. His face reverted back into his usual blank one. Susan sighed inside seeing this. Arden would reveal his true face, but after a second he would hide it. It was like clockwork, and Susan could only look at him worriedly.

He was molded tragically out of the fires. And the one who molded him was the worst person one could find to raise a child.

...

Susan went down the kitchen; she tried to help but her mother, Melva Cher rejected her help and told her to clean the bar along with her father. Susan went to the bar. There was none in the bar other than her father Ehren, who was cleaning the wooden mugs and shining the bottles of alcohol.

“Father...”

“Susan, are you not going to the Academy?”

“Well, you saw the sheets right?”

“Ah, poor lad has got a scar that big, it may rival mine and his father...”

Ehren shook his head, wiping the mug on his hand.

“Father, do you think that Arden will change his mind?”

He stopped for a while, looking at Susan.

“No, I do not think so. He is worse than ‘Sin’and he's that young.”

“Why is that?”

Ehren put down the mug and leaned on the bar. Susan sat on the stool, cleaning the bar’s surface.

“You would think that his foster father was like that since he was child?”

“I don’t know.”

“Believe it or not, the Magus killer was a happy go lucky lad, someone that I and your mom used to play with.”

“You were childhood friends?”

“How else would we let some infamous killer put his adopted son here if it wasn’t for him being our friend? In fact, we owe him lot of debts, and he only wanted one debt to be paid.”

“I see...”

“But you see, the old magus killer was quite happy, he was out of this world, and his eyes were filled with joy. He knew a lot of things, but mostly kept them a secret; he even made a noble with black hair, fawn for him. He, before was so kind, optimistic, that thinking how he ended up makes me question.”

Susan listened silently.

“For years he became one of the finest lads in that village far away from here, your mom and I live there, but that village was far gone. Burned to hell by raiders, who were soldiers trying to take out the noble family that manages the village. If it wasn’t for him making use of those odd weapons of him, then we wouldn’t be alive. His valor was great, to the point that he was allowed to become a magus along with the noble girl that fawned over him.”

“I and your mom had to separate with the village destroyed, she would head far north where she would learn to handle steel, while I and my father went to work in the south east for gold, guarding mines. It took years; he didn’t forget about us and sent letters. He was doing fine, and he was top in the class with that female noble.”

Ehren’s tone was nostalgic. But as he continued, his expression became sour.

“But one day, the horde of the north came trying to escape winter’s wind. With that trouble, he was deployed to that battlefield along with that female noble. I and your mother went there too, and during most of the battle, they stood together wearing black and white. He was wearing his black-mantle, whilst the noble girl he was with,was wearing a white-mantle. They wear opposite colors, and every time their mantles flap over the battlefield we would sigh relief. We thought of them as Heroes, and damned well they were. But then the demi-human lords attacked, many people died, and to save them he made a choice.”

“A choice?”

“Yes, in order to save the army of the southern continent of old. He rushed to the north and tried killing the leaders of the demis. But instead...he pitied them.”

“Pitied them?”

“Yes, he was convinced first that the enemy he was killing were horrible barbarians, but the moment he went there blind and saw hundreds of innocent, he changed his mind. He returns conflicted, enough for the white mantled partner of his to question him. That was the start of their arguments, and I and your mother could not do anything but watch. He didn’t fight, and only through killing the leaders, that he somehow regained the human side trust. But what shocked us the most was that he quit fighting in the battlefields. He left his partner and went talking to many leaders, begging for the war to be stopped. But no king, Queen, Duke would listen to him, not even Magus would listen to him. He despaired first; he went and found us, drinking. His partner, that female-white-mantled knight lady of his tried convincing him to fight back, but he didn’t. He tried and tried, only to find out that the war on the middle was merely a guise by certain lines of Magus.”

“Guise?”

“Yes, he found out that they were making use of the demis. Slaves, and prized possession making them used as tools and experimental objects; it angered him enough that he went and earned his title. After that, he went haywire, and one night he killed much more and even went to the battlefields to kill the Magus’s that were involved. He didn’t spare anyone that was guilty, and the more he found himself down the rabbit hole, the more he became a fanatic. He had many names other than his title; The Magus Killer, the Black Death, the noble slayer, the Demi's friend, and the black-mantled butcher and so on. He was so good at it, that they sent the female knight in order to stop him. They fought, but in the end, it ended with no one winning. The female knight bearing the white mantle turned her back against him, and he likewise turned his back, saving anyone with no care for his own.”

“That’s...”

Susan couldn’t speak any words other than that.

“It is a sad tale, and to think that he would turn out to be so broken. In fact, I was surprised that he brought Arden that day, and hearing him abandoning everything he holds on to, made me somehow think that he found salvation through Arden in heaven’s knows what reason that is. Yet, even with that, he probably would have never thought that the kid he brought would take after him, making him be someone that has the ideals and principles, a person that wants nothing but to help. Too bad that Arden wasn’t dense, too bad that he looked up to him if he didn’t then maybe he would be much unbroken than he is. Those vacant eyes of his and that self-destructiveness of his would never leave him. It would have been fine if the lad has a steeled heart. But the lad has a heart fragile as glass, unlike his foster father...”

Ehren looked up to the ceiling.

“What should we do father?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea what to tell that lad, at best all we could do is help him, give him a hand. Pray that somehow, he would abandon what he looked up to and idolized...but knowing that lad, I doubt it.”

Ehren said truthfully. Susan looked down the surface of the bar she was cleaning. She thought of Arden, thinking of ways to help him, yet all she can think of was nothing. She can only offer him comfort, after all curing him was harder than breaking diamonds with a fist.