Chapter 2 - The First Night
The day Zaibach fell, there was a great exhalation, as if the world had been stuck between breaths. Markets were immediately re-opened, and people began clamoring for food, ready to plan feasts with imported ingredients in honor of their returning sons. Merchants began plotting trade-routes, ready to meet the upcoming onrush of orders for such delicacies as Cesarian vino and Egzardian dates. Children were allowed to play outside again. Desperate we-may-die-tomorrow elopements declined in number and young people once again submitted to the business of building familial alliance through carefully planned marriages. People could again rebuild their lives without fear that someone would burn them down tomorrow.
One could almost ignore the tense edge to everyone's eyes as they looked toward the place where the white light had come from, the final night of the war.
When the Alliance met that day, it was agreed that Basram's decision to use the energist bomb was instrumental in bringing the war to a swift conclusion. With their limited numbers, they could not have defeated the four armies of Ziabach without it. It was, however, a brutal method that cost many lives, including those of the allies who happened to be in the way at the time. With this complication, all the countries involved in Gaea's Great War were unsure of how to approach the situation.
And so, they chose to hush it up. Each country agreed to order their Generals not to pass on information to the general public, and made sure all the officials who knew about the plan were accordingly quieted.
The president of Basram made no move to claim victory for his country. He agreed that the Alliance was right to keep the information quiet because of the horrendous results of the explosion. At the meeting, however, he took care to inform the other members of the Alliance that Basram may wish claim credit for the end of the war one day, but was unlikely to as long as it was treated favorably in the political arena. Asturia's Prince Regent Dryden in particular seethed, but it was agreed that no one could possibly ever wish to treat Basram unfairly, and that (at least for the time being) the Alliance would honor Basram's terms. Privately, he planned on congratulating and rewarding the energist technicians who had come up with it.
It was generally known, however, that after the energist bomb had gone off, fighting had broken out among the troops. No one was sure who had made the first move (and absolutely no one was willing to step forward), but it was agreed at the meeting that this strange phenomena could be attributed to the huge blast of green light that had emanated from Zaibach's capital. What was unclear was exactly how much the blast or the green light could be held accountable for the fall of Zaibach, or what happened there when the Fanelian king disappeared within the city limits. For it was then that the fighting finally stopped.
And until King Van of Fanelia returned to Pallas, it would be unclear exactly how much credit Basram really deserved. Princess Eries made arrangements to be quite sure of that information when the time came, and did not push the issue further.
Despite the dark dealings among their ruling class, the citizens of Gaea were beside themselves with celebration. A swift and decisive end to the war to end all wars meant a fresh onslaught of trading agreements and aid to and from other countries. Fanelia and Freid, the two countries most devastated by the war, were on the top of the lists for larger, richer countries looking to present themselves as dedicated to the reconstruction of Gaea, and if they got a few treaties signed along the way, well, all the better. Fanelia in particular was the small politician's favorite target for funds. Everyone was eager to praise the young King who had been such an inspiring war hero and the mysterious girl who was known to have aided him, though no one was yet sure exactly how much.
But as the Asturian fleet darkened the horizon late that night no one could spot Escaflowne in it's midst. When Knight Caeli Allen Schezar, who was known to have been traveling with King Van, could not answer the eager questions of the Asturian High Council, they were most displeased. And because their Prince Regent was refusing to join any further meetings and the Princess Eries had conveniently gone bed for the night, they were at full liberty to question him for as long as they liked.
Hitomi opened her eyes to starlight. She could still hear the mountain spring whispering through the tree roots and down the mountainside, and the leaves above her head were sliding together in the rhythm of the wind. Van, still sleeping beside her, was wrapped in the blanket he retrieved from among the supplies provided to him by the Cesarian army. He hogged the covers, Hitomi noticed, shivering. The mountain night was far colder than the day.
"Van," she said, nudging him. "Wake up. It's night."
Van grumbled indistinctly.
"Tch! I thought you had more discipline than that!" she teased. Van moaned, pushed against the ground to hoist himself into a sitting position, and yawned. Hitomi pointed to the sky. Filtered as it was through the leaves of the tree they were sitting under, the stars still shone close, bright, and innumerable.
"Look at the stars."
"Yeah, it's late," Van said, yawning.
"That's not what I meant! They're pretty, aren't they?"
Van smiled. "I guess. But it's still late. If we leave now, we should be able to make it to Pallas by midday."
"I guess," Hitomi mimicked, then grinned. She was still giddy, and it was difficult not to show it. She hummed to herself while helping Van pack the blanket and the water flask, despite a growing emptiness in her stomach. She loved the deliberate way he pulled on his gloves and attached his sword around his waist. She loved the cliff they'd rested on all evening. And as Van pulled her onto Escaflowne, Hitomi thought to herself that she even loved the silence between them and how they avoided each other's eyes.
Van, she noticed, didn't hum to himself or smile stupidly every time he caught Hitomi's eye, like she did whenever she caught his. Instead, he became extremely considerate in the way they interacted. He took the supplies from her when they were walking to Escaflowne, and offered to fly behind her in order to keep her warm, which she gladly accepted with the condition that he wear the blanket around his shoulders. They flew like that for some time; him quiet and accommodating, and she acting out her happiness without knowing she was doing it.
When she had run through the gamut of pop tunes she knew, Hitomi began to hum a tune that she thought she'd heard before, but the origin of which she couldn't quite recall. When she finished, Van shifted position behind her back, and said, "You have a good memory for music. That's one of the songs from Fanelia. My mother used to sing it to me when I was very young."
"What was it called?"
"I never knew the name. Folken did. He used to whistle it."
In her mind's eye, Hitomi saw Folken sitting over the desk in his makeshift laboratory in Asturia. He looked over his shoulder at her as she came barreling into the room, and she asked him to create a pillar of light that would take her to Zaibach...
"Folken was a good man," she said.
"Really? How could you tell?" said Van, an edge to his voice.
"He had a sincere smile, like you," she said, honestly. A little of the tension eased from Van's body as he steered them over the descending foothills, but there was still a certain incongruity in the customarily relaxed stance he used while flying Escaflowne. He was thinking about something, she could tell, so she chose to keep her silence and wait until he was ready to speak again.
She was admiring the long swathe of the Milky Way when Van asked, "How did my brother die?"
Hitomi was startled at Van's question. She'd been expecting it, but in her mind Van wasn't likely to ask it for quite a while yet. For a moment, she was quiet, trying to organize her thoughts before telling Van the whole story.
"His sword broke when he killed Dornkirk," she finally said. "And the tip hit him in the heart, and then he fell."
"So he did kill Dornkirk," Van said. Hitomi thought she could hear something akin to pride in the way he said that. She didn't like it.
"He shouldn't have!"
"Hitomi?"
"It's because he killed Dornkirk that the Atlantis Machine started," she said. "He was expecting it. I think he knew what I would do if-" She trailed off, then continued in a stronger voice, "That big machine he lived in opened up and he just offered himself to Folken. He even egged him on. I told Folken he would die if he came with me but he said it was his fate, and I said I'd do anything to prevent that kind of fate, and then we were there..."
"Came with you?" Van asked incredulously. "You wanted to go to Zaibach alone?"
"I- I wanted to talk to Dornkirk. I could have talked to him and told him to stop the fighting."
"Hitomi, there's nothing you could have said to make that monster stop. He was evil."
"No!" Van's head to jerked back a little from the volume of her exclamation. "He wasn't evil. He just didn't understand what was wrong anymore. If I could have just talked to him, after all that we've seen, I think he would have understood."
"No, he wouldn't have," Van retorted. "You saw what he was willing to do to accomplish his goals. He would have had you killed if you got in is way."
"Maybe," admitted Hitomi. "But killing him didn't solve anything either."
"So you think my brother died for no reason?" Van snapped, bristling.
"That's not what I said!" she answered, frustrated. "He just didn't have to do it. Killing never fixes anything. It just makes things worse."
Hitomi felt tears begin to build behind her eyes. She started breathing steadily in an effort to control her emotions, but she still wept a little while Van stood behind her, his heart beating fast. She wiped her face on her sleeves and said, "Folken was doing what he thought he had to do, so you wouldn't. He really cared about you, Van."
Through her back, Hitomi could feel Van's heart slowing, and his breathing returning to normal. She had known him long enough to expect him to snap at her or argue with her if he was angry and sulk if he was hurt. Since he didn't do either, she kept silent, giving him a moment to digest what she'd told her. She knew he trusted her insight, no matter how uncomfortable it made him sometimes.
"Let me show you something," he said, abruptly. He pulled Escaflowne into a long arc which brought them over a system of waterfalls spilling over flat-topped steppes and into a deep canyon. Hitomi couldn't see any animal activity from their height, and the obscuring darkness, but she could hear creatures calling to each other from that height, and the steady roar of falling water. If she strained her ears, she thought she could hear music.
"That river means we're in Asturia," he said. "They call it 'Jichia's Steps,' but in Cesario they call it the 'Vino Falls.' I read that the water turns purple sometimes when the sun hits it just right."
"I wish the sun was shining now," Hitomi said. "I bet it's beautiful."
Van smiled. "The beastmen think so. Rhum told me once that it's a sacred place to them, like a sanctuary. I'd like to visit it someday. Merle would probably like to see it, too. You should come with us."
"I'd like that," Hitomi said, trying to catch the thin strains of song she heard on the wind. It was, she supposed, his way of saying he was sorry for getting upset so easily. It wasn't a bad way of apologizing.
As the waterfalls and the great river faded into the distance, Van said, "You're probably right."
"About what?" Hitomi said, confused.
"That killing never really solves anything," he clarified.
"Oh. Well, I'm glad the war is over now," Hitomi said, smiling. "You won't have to fight at all anymore."
Van looked at the sky, the constellations blurred from the speed of Escaflowne's flight. "I hope you're right about that, too."
"People are sick of war. I know that they'll want to work for peace."
Van shrugged, which annoyed Hitomi a bit. "I guess you know more about politics than I do," she said frostily.
"As long as there's power in the world, people will look for it," he said. "That's all."
"And as long as people work together for peace, there won't be a need to fight for power," she retorted.
"I'm not disagreeing with you," he said, shrugging again. "I want your future more than anything."
Hitomi blushed at his choice of words, and Van continued, "And I'll do anything in my power to stop what happened to Fanelia and Freid to any other country. But there will always be people who will take what they want by force, no matter how hard we've worked for peace."
Hitomi sighed and watched more of the landscape pass by beneath them. "I know you're right, in a way," she admitted. "But there has to be a way to fight for a peaceful future without war. If anyone can do that, it's you, Van."
"I promise I'll try," he said.
"You know?" Hitomi said, looking over her shoulder at Van. "I believe that you'll do it. So I don't need promises."
At that, Van, who was never really very good with words anyway, placed his forehead against hers for a few moments. Hitomi closed her eyes and took in his scent before he pulled away to make sure Escaflowne wasn't flying off course. They didn't need to talk much for the rest of the journey. They leaned into each other, and flew on.
"General?"
Adolphos looked up from the mess of paperwork on his desk. While his appointment had granted great relief to the dissipated masses of Zaibach, it had also landed Adelphos under a mountain of paperwork.
"What is it, private? I've got a lot of refugee claims to sort through before tomorrow without you interrupting me."
"Sir, there is a question about Strategos Folken's remains. The sorcerers have completed their analysis of the scene, and are saying he's the one who killed Emperor Dornkirk."
Adelphos put down his fountain pen and rubbed his forehead before muttering, "Folken, you damned fool."
"I'm sorry, Sir?"
"Nothing, private. Is there anything else?"
"Yes, sir. Instead of cremation and disposal in the potter's field, the Sorcerers are requesting the use of his body for research."
"I suppose it's because he was a Draconian?" asked Adelphos. The private shrugged. "All right then. It's a decent use as any for traitors such as he."
The soldier clicked the heels of his boots together, bowed, and turned to walk out the door. Then, in a flash of white light, Adelphos was seized by an idea.
"No, wait," he commanded, stopping the private in mid-turn. "No. Tell them they can't have the body. Tell the Sorcerers to put it in one of the empty meat lockers instead, and that I'll decide what to do with it later."
"Sir?"
"Go. Make sure that you take care of it personally. I don't want any sneaking about. And bring me some coffee when you come back with your report."
The private repeated his bow of before and left the room. Once alone, Adelphos stood and walked to the window. Outside, the lights of the city drowned out even the blue-white shine of the Mystic Moon, leaving only bright, cold green tinged with black. It was bright enough to see the city's outskirts from where he was situated, in the central tower of the capital building. Airships were returning home, carrying wounded or dead soldiers to medical camps situated on the edge of civilization. Most of the victims, he knew, would have strangely twisted limbs, relics of the awful white light that had felled most of their army. And beyond that, there was the ruined land.
He remembered well the words of revenge he spoke after his fleet was downed. He remembered all the bodies, burned unnaturally into shadows or faces refracting like they were underwater, and he remembered the melted earth. And he remembered which key member of the Alliance was a close blood relative of the late Strategos Folken.
The Sorcerers were incensed at this defiance of their request. Under Emperor Dornkirk, they had merely to request a certain subject, or a certain privilege, and it was granted to them. All in the name of science, of course. At first, they defied the Private, claiming that he had to have been mistaken in his orders. When the Private simply repeated what he was told to do, they grew mutinous, threatening to destroy the body if they couldn't have it for their experiments. It was not until the Private, enjoying his temporary authority under Adelphos' orders, threatened to have the Sorcerers executed for treason, that they released their prize.
This, they decided, was a bad sign of times to come.