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So, in advance… SORRY FOR THE ANGST.


Needles in My Eyes

Chapter 7 – To Infinity and Begnion


We made landfall in Begnion at about noon the day after the battle with the 'pirates'. Needless to say, nobody but the sailors stayed behind to unload everything. We took what was ours and never looked back. Nasir came too, of course. While he was captaining the ship and all, the men and the ship belonged to the empire. As far as I could remember, Gallia was paying him to refocus his efforts into helping Elincia. I hadn't been present when that deal was done, and I couldn't remember the exact details from the game. All I knew was that, when all of the dust settled, I was going to have to trust him.

Anyway, once we'd met up with the apostle's entourage, it was discovered that Her Colorfulness was eager to continue on to the capital. Within an hour of setting foot on solid land for the first time in three months, it was time to move again. We left the port town in a veritable convoy of wagons, the middlemost of which was this elaborate red and gold feature of a carriage that could only play host to the empress herself. The rest of us got the basic wooden and canvas affairs, and the canvas was only if you were lucky. A few of us were just sitting on the front seats of open supply carts.

Of course, I was one of the unlucky ones. I wound up sitting on the very back of the convoy, nestled at the rear of an open cart full of bags of this and boxes of that. Brom was driving, Zihark was riding shotgun, and I was watching our rear flank.

…Not much of a watch, really. The only thing I could see through the trail of our collective pipe fog was the ground, and the only things down there were the mounds of literal shit a convoy of horse-drawn vehicles tends to produce. It smelled awful. That was why we smoked, though. Because the herb we'd bought in the port smelled better… or, at least, it numbed our senses to the point of the shit just not smelling as bad. It all just added up to be a big disappointment for me. I'd been kind of excited to see some nature. Instead I got to smell horse manure. At least I didn't have to walk. Silver linings… with a touch of gray smoke.

Anyway, it only took us until nightfall to reach our first stop on our romp. It was a decently sized village with an absolutely massive mansion at its heart. No doubt it was some noble's stomping grounds, but nothing I'd ever heard of before. The apostle, her people, and the princess, all disappeared into the mansion while the rest of us were divvied out into wherever lodging was available. Unfortunately, Soren was the one doing the divvying, so I wound up in a room with Gatrie. The mage must have done the listing by join time and gender.

"Ooooh…" the man would carry on, looking out the window of our hut too get a peek at the hut next door. It was the girls' hut, naturally, and his claim was that he was worried about Astrid. Talk about loads of manure…

"She'll be fine," I tried to assuage the knight's worries as I lounged in the curiously small bed that came with the place. It was late and I'd made sure eat as much dinner as I could. Breakfast wasn't going to stay down the next day if the smell didn't improve. "Every woman in that place is a trained killer. I'm sure her safety isn't something we need to be concerned about."

"But that's what I'm worried about," he continued to fuss. "Lady Astrid isn't some hardened soldier dog. She's delicate, like a violet in the summer field."

Of all the people for me to be roomed with, why'd I have to get the one with a sense of adoration and poetry?

"Yes, and violets grow best when you're not looking at them," I made up some crapshoot words of wisdom before rolling over and trying my hardest to get some sleep. I tossed for quite a while, unable to find the peace I'd had on the ship. There wasn't a steady tide of waves and a weary atmosphere to help me along anymore. Now I just had Gatrie, whom was agonizingly unhelpful.

The next day was a repeat. I sat at the convoy's rear and did relatively nothing. I didn't even smoke, not having the heart or the will to go through all the steps… that and I didn't have a light. To compound my troubles, the journey wasn't going to get any better. As one of the Begnion soldiers had told me a dinner that first night, the journey to Sienne, Begnion's bright and shiny capital city, was bound to take us at least a week. The road we were on was old and, thus, curved every which way in order to go through towns and avoid various old woods and rolling hillsides. I wondered for a moment why there wasn't some sort of grand highway made to avoid this kind of thing, but then I remembered that we were in Begnion. Their shtick was that they were mired down in tradition and political corruption. They'd always taken the old road, and every two-bit noble who made money off of it would fight tooth and nail to keep people traveling on it.

What managed to make things worse was every noon when, in the heat of the day, the convoy would have to stop. Why? Because it was lunch time and the Her Holiness couldn't miss a meal. We'd stop, sit there for anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, and then maybe a loaf of bread would make its way back to us. There weren't many of our fellow mercenaries hanging in the back with us—the majority of the procession was made up of Begnions—so we had to be 'remembered' if we actually wanted to get some lunch. One day Zihark actually decided to go out and pick some fruit out of the woods. I dare say that was the best meal I got all trip, if not since I'd arrived in Tellius. Apples, man. Apples for the rest of the day.

Most nights we were forced to camp, except, in this case, 'camping' is synonymous with 'building a small city in which most of the buildings are made from canvas and sticks'. The instant we'd stop for the evening, an army of servants and soldiers would get to work throwing up tents and setting up fires. Cooking would get underway, water would be fetched, ale would be distributed to those that wanted it, and I'd try my best to not get stuck helping out. One thing I had to thank the bow for here was that it definitely separated me from the servants. I eventually learned that, so long as had the bow on my back and my quiver at the ready, nobody would ever ask me to do anything I didn't have to. It wasn't all bad, though. We mercenaries got our own slice of camp, but we only got three tents. I wound up in the second men's tent, shared between Brom, Zihark, Sothe, Kieran, and myself. I think Volke and Mordecai were supposed to be there, too, but they never showed. I saw Lethe stalking out into the woods one evening, so I can only assume she and Mordecai were staying away from camp.

As for Volke… well… I'm sure he managed somehow. I wouldn't be shocked if he spent the majority of his time carousing the convoy's monetary supplies. He wouldn't be the only one to have the idea. I'd toyed with the thought in my head at one point, and we actually had to stop Sothe from going in for a heist one night.

"No," I whispered at him, holding back anger as we sat around the fire that late afternoon. I was downright furious on the inside, though I can't remember if it's because he was planning on thieving or because he thought I'd be game to help him.

"Oh, c'mon," he scowled at my disagreement. "It's not like they actually need it."

"But what if we get caught, hm?" I asked, sliding a discrete nod towards a Begnion soldier that was passing by. "We get caught and Ike claims us, how does that reflect on the princess? And that's assuming that he even would claim us. Do you wanna get left behind? How about thrown in prison? What do you think they do to people who try to steal the apostle's money?"

"I won't get caught," he says, not assuring me in the slightest.

"I've seen it. They string them up by their thumbs in the square in front of Mainal Cathedral," Marcia chimed in, dropping the name of Begnion's capitol building as she did. "The crowd throws their gubbins at them until they pass out or worse, and then they get hauled down into the dungeons. Nobody ever escapes from down there."

These words put a somber and slightly perturbed mood over our campfire. Everyone just kind of stared at Marcia for a while until Brom finally got done with what I guess was a particularly good huff.

"I don't think that was absolutely necessary," the farmer commented with a slight shudder under his tone. It was here that I remembered that Brom was afraid of torture, which was pretty much what Marcia had just implied. Thankfully, the man had a bit more backbone in this reality than he seemed to in Path of Radiance. He reminded me more if his character in Radiant Dawn, especially in regards to the opening act of part two. The bit where he and Nephenee bravely rushed out to knock some sense into the wannabe revolutionaries in their village was pretty epic, if I do say so myself.

"O-Okay, fine," Sothe finally backed down, going back to staring into the fire as most of us would do for hours on end. Good times and laughter weren't really on the menu, if you catch my drift.

To be honest, in spite of our intentions with coming to Begnion, it was hard to get the impression that any of us actually wanted to be there. With the exceptions of Ike, Soren, and a few certain others, most of the mercenaries walked around with depressed faces. I could understand how they felt, though. They were far away from their homes, some farther than others, and many of them were suffering from the timeless plague of homesickness.

Me? Gee… Where do begin? I found myself struggling with the whole 'being in a damn video game' thing. On top of that, I was missing my life, my friends, my precious technology, and everything else from what my life had once been. I thought I'd dealt with those demons back on the ship, but now things were different again. There wasn't a whole lot to do while we were with the convoy. There wasn't a whole ship for me to walk around and find something to do in. All I could do was sit and wait for us to arrive at Sienne. This led me back to pretty much where I'd been that first day. I was brooding, and there are few things I hate doing more than brooding.

The worst thoughts of all were when I thought of my grandparents. What was their reaction my supposed disappearance from home? Those two… They loved me so much. I was pretty much all they had, and now I was gone for no good reason. Some nights, as I lay in a weak sleeping bag and prayed that I might get to sleep, I'd think of the bedtime stories granddad and I would make up. We'd go around, have crazy adventures, do fun things…

I had to leave the tent late one night and go out into the woods to cry.

I went far out enough to where I could just barely see one of the fires, sat my butt down behind a tree, and started to unravel. It was here that I realized how much of a mess I was on the inside. I pulled my mask off, feeling the flush heat my face as tears spilled down my cheeks. Crying for me was hard. I'd done of lot of it in my younger days, and by this point in my life it took some serious effort to do anything besides balk, wail, and heave. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd truly shed real tears. There had been some of the worst days of my life, funerals for people I'd deeply cared about, horrific bouts with pain, but there I was nonetheless. I was curled up in a ball, crying to myself like the lost child I really was.

The world sat still, dark and hazy as I let my feelings spill out in my tears. Between my broken sobs and blubbering coughs, I could see things that took me back. I could see my grandparents faces that first day—the day they'd been officially named my legal guardians. I could see Jake the day I'd met him, remembering the first time I went with him to his house to play video games. I could see Beth, my best friend for practically all of my life.

"Robbie!" she'd call my name as we'd see each other for the first time in what felt like ages. We'd hug, and every bit of discomfort that a family affair might bring me would be gone. It was such a good feeling—such a good time. We were young and happy… There wasn't a care in the world between us.

"Why do you cry, beorc?"

The voice scared me in a way I can't really describe. I guess that the closest I can get is by admitting that I've always had an aversion for being seen in a moment of weakness—not unlike how I was right then. I never cried in public, not if I could help it. So, when that question came out of nowhere, and I realized that I had been found out, I panicked. My body jolted, causing me to reel and make a motion like I was going to get up and run away. Unfortunately, being distraught seems to have this adverse effect on me where I can't really do much of anything while under its emotional spell. Instead of getting up and making tracks for a different part of the woods, I fell face-first into the dirt.

"What's the matter? Are you mad?"

The voice spoke again, and this time I managed to recognize it. It was Lethe, the cat warrior from Gallia. I must have disturbed her rest with my bawling. As I lay there, I thought about what she meant by 'mad'. She didn't mean it like 'angry'. She meant it like 'crazy'. And there it was. Was I crazy? I didn't know, to be honest. Everything around me had stopped making sense, and, all of the sudden, I found myself being presented with heavy sentiments swirling around in my head like they were being stirred into the steaming cup of coffee that was my ongoing emotional breakdown.

I didn't answer her. All I could do was idle in that spot, sprawled on the ground gasping for what air could sustain me.

"Are you ill? There's a doctor in the camp, I think."

I stayed silent as my brain slowly switched formats. The thoughts of home, the brooding, the crying, the wishing, the overall melancholy was being forced out. As this carried on, I used the vast majority of my remaining energy to reach out and grasp onto the tree I'd been sitting against before Lethe arrived. I dug my fingers into the bark, not caring whether I ripped my gloves or not. Using both hands, I pulled myself up enough for my feet to get planted firmly on the ground. Once that was done, I brought myself up to full height, dried my eyes, gave a hard snort, spat the excess behind the tree where Lethe couldn't see, and then finally turned to face the cat woman.

It was dark, of course, probably on near midnight by this point, so all I could really see of her was the glow of her eyes in the moonlight. There were some vague points of her silhouette against other slightly lit areas behind where she stood, but it wasn't much to go by.

"No thanks," I said in a voice that was more callous than intended. "I'm fine. Sorry for disturbing you."

I walked off towards camp without anything else being exchanged, feeling cold and empty inside. I'd never felt so hollow before. All of those thoughts that had been eating at me were gone. I couldn't say what had happened to them. It was like they'd just gone off into the forest and I'd left them there. But I didn't want to talk to Lethe—I didn't want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to go back into the tent and sleep for the rest of the night.

So I did.

The journey continued the next day without any fuss. Nobody asked where I'd gone, though I did pick up a very hard stare from Lethe during breakfast. I paid her no mind, just taking it as she now thought me to be an extremely strange person. This was fine with me, so long as she didn't question me about it. It was none of her business, I believed, so, even if she did ask, I could just refuse to tell her. If there was anybody in the group that I had no care to make nice with, it was that cold-hearted, racist, cat-tailed bitch.

…In case you didn't pick it up, I wasn't a big fan of Lethe. I didn't like her personality in the games, and that bias had indeed carried over into the reality. She was a good fighter, however, and, in retrospect, I guess I really should have been nicer to her. She did save my life during the battle against the ravens, after all, but her interrupting me during what had been intended as a very private and personal moment ruined any hopes a potential friendship might have had.

The journey from there was just a slog down the path. We did eventually reach a straight portion of road, exiting the trees and entering a wide prairie. Unfortunately, the heaven decided to take this opportunity to piss some rain out on us. Not even good, hard rain. It was just constant drizzle, with an occasional couple of minutes' worth of anything referable to a downpour.

For the record, I'm a fan of rain so long as I'm not stuck out in it. I like the sound of it, the light pitter-patter of it against the sidewalk mixed in with the background sounds of thunder simmering through the clouds. Then again, what is rain but consistent treble and thunder but the hard-beating bass? Sometimes I'd have rain noise play under some soft music while I wrote silly things on my computer. It was great for relaxing, unwinding when schoolwork was eating me alive.

As I sat in the back of that wagon, huddled drearily under a cloak someone had given me during our time on the ship, I slowly started to hum one of those songs I'd listen to. I'll admit, I had intended to actually sing the dirge, but I was so drained that all I could get out were lame groans in tone.

It was one of the worst days of my life.

Ironically, it was also one my best days in Tellius so far.


Sorry for the really short chapter here, but I didn't want the landing and Sienne to be the same chapter.

Thanks for reading! Review if you feel.