Estarian Confederacy, [REDACTED] Naval Port.
A Katolis naval officer came and saluted, "Sir, the ships and their cargo have now been transferred to the Confederacy,"
"Good, we will handle the rest" Admiral Konstantine saluted to him then offered a handshake. "Rest assured, we have taken every precaution and created a perfect cover story for your stay, we can begin unloading and crewing these ships immediately"
They looked as men and women were entering and leaving the ships like an ant trail.
Katolis Castle. Library.
"In hindsight, it turned out that dive-bombing was the most effective method."
"So there was a chance that we would've won that day?" that was what she thought after listening to his tale.
Vaeril snorted, "Not a chance, we are lucky to be alive but anything else is pure delusion,"
"What do you mean?"
"They couldn't risk undermining their planned invasions of Duren, Rustreau, Eshijan, and Vosnuavania by sending too large a force to attack insignificant insects like us."
"But..." she found this difficult to process "this makes no sense, they went through the trouble of invading Xadia just to invade someone else"
He sighed, "I'm sure Callum told about how effective dark magic is when using material harvested from Xadia." He could easily imagine what was going on in her head. "Do you remember the incident with Queen Sarai's death and the prince being kidnapped ?"
She nodded to his question remembering what Callum had said during their journey.
"They pulled back their forces from Xadia to prevent the risk of Katolis becoming militarily involved. I thought about exploiting this to gather information but ended up getting captured." He let out a self-deprecating chuckle after thinking back on it, "Oddly enough they didn't coin us immediately and wanted us brought to the capital, the sights were truly breathtaking."
"and that's how you met Callum?" she was starting to get a picture of what happened.
"Yes, we entered what we thought was an arch mage's mansion hoping to find a spell to cross the veil but we found Callum instead, we took him and escaped though two of my men got caught,"
-
[FLASH BACK RIPPLES VFX]
Vaeril and the others were hiding in the woods just outside the estate.
"That was close, why is this kid so important to them?" Janai looked at the boy tied up nearby.
"So you are elves?" the boy he titled his head, he recalled the depictions he saw in the books but the ones before him looked very human if he ignored the skin color and horns
She nodded to his question, she assumed he must be 10 or 11 years old.
"He is important enough that they are threatening to kill our friends if we don't give him back." Vaeril was looking with his spyglasses at the two startouched elves who were being tied to polls with wood piled at their feet. "Whats your name?"
"Callum"
"So kid whats your story?"
"political hostage slash bargaining chip," the boy said dryly as if he didn't care at this point.
"Why?"
"My step-dad is the king of Katolis."
"that does explain a few things... cut him loose," Vaeril knew there was no point in keeping him tied up if he wasn't friendly to this nation.
"So you think your dad would be willing to help us get back to Xadia if we brought you back?" Janai asked as she untied him.
"only if he knows a mage to cross the veil," he maintained his nonchalant attitude.
They understood that as far as this boy was concerned, all that happened was that his captors had changed.
"At the very least we can ask for asylum, it's likely only this nation knows how to cross over," Vaeril began pacing, "If only they could break the rope on their own then it would be easier."
"Is the rope made of hemp?" Callum asked with mild interest.
"Does it matter what it was made from?" Janai looked puzzled at the boy's question
"It is... do you know of a way to cut them both at once?" Vaeril assumed the boy knew of a place where they could easily find weapons
"I just need salt or baking soda, water, two glass cups, a paper towel, two pencils, long copper wire and lightning magic." he counted off his fingers as he listed what he needed.
Vaeril's eyes narrowed "How would that... never mind, will this spell help us?" He decided to trust the boy considering all the absurd things he'd seen so far.
"spell?" Callum was now confused,
"You need those things to make a dark magic potion or spell right?" Janai interjected
"No, I'm not a mage and this is not magic, its science" Callum seemed somewhat upbeat.
"We can discuss that latter," Vaeril turned to the other elves "Tanyth you will provide lightning, Meira head to town and get these things."
"I'll see what I can find" Meira cast an illusion to appear human before heading off.
A few hours later Meira had returned, "Salt, no baking soda. These things are pretty cheap, you sure they'll be useful."
"Of course it will" Callum was grinning at the prospects of making this,
"Ok can you remove the wood from these pencils leaving only the graphite?" He gave the pencils to Ettrian who complied as wood was easy to manipulate using earth magic while Callum went to work on the rest. He mixed salt and water then poured it into a cup while filling the other with regular water. The paper towel was used as a salt bridge connecting the two cups. He wrapped the wire around the graphite then dipped them into each cup. Though his explanations went over their heads.
"you sure you aren't making a potion?" Ettrian asked
"It is a potion, its just not magic," Callum now gave the copper wires to Tanyth, "Ok now zap it... by the way don't put your head near the cups, the gas will kill you if you're lucky", his grin was now starting to worry the elves.
Soon they saw that both graphite pieces were making bubbles. There was also a faint odor in the air.
"What is this?" Vaeril was now very curious,
"The electricity is separating the salt water into hydrogen, chlorine gas and sodium, so now what we have in the cup of regular water is Sodium Hydroxide," Callum was happily explaining with an evil smirk on his face though none of them understood much of it.
"what does this.. sodyum hydraksyt do?" Vaeril wanted to know how it would help.
"It is very dangerous stuff, it will slowly melt the rope but don't let it touch your skin." Callum maintained his nonchalant attitude.
"Do all human children know how to make dangerous stuff!?" Tanyth hoped not.
"Nah, my grandmother works with this kind of stuff and she teaches me." his eyes were filled with nostalgia.
Janai looked at him with concern "I'm not sure that teaching this to children is a good idea." Everyone else just nodded.
A few hours later, Meira took the cup and turned invisible, and went to pour it on the rope.
[FLASHBACK ENDING RIPPLE VFX]
"So did it work?" Rayla wasn't sure if she should think of an 11-year-old Callum as adorable or just plain terrifying.
"It worked quite well, after escaping we spent some time learning his people's science and human civilization before doing anything else, it proved quite useful."
"You sure he was 11? he doesn't sound like the guy I've been with"
"He's mellowed out now that he has other responsibilities to deal with. I trust your curiosity has been satisfied?"
"It has, thank you for your time," Rayla left to do some thinking while Vaeril returned to his book.
Rayla was lying in bed thinking back on what Vaeril told her, Until now all she knew was what she was told in school. She heard a knock at the door
"It's Callum, dinner's ready ya big glutton, you comin or not?"
She opened to door to see him "Oh, delicious dinner, where forth art thou my delicious dinner."
"Right this way." He gestured down the hallway.
"So whats on the menu tonight?" she started fantasizing about what she could find waiting for her.
"It changes every day. The chefs try to keep everyone guessing." Somehow he felt like he could already see the fantasies she was having about dinner
"Sweet!" he pumped her fists into the air in triumph. "... by the way after dinner can we talk, just the two of us?" she began to fidget
"Sure, I got nothing else to do tonight"
Soon they arrived at the dining hall, Rayla saw a massive buffet lined up on each side filled with all kinds of food. she followed Callum and began filling her plate.
"Just how many stomachs do you have?" Callum was overwhelmed at the sight of her plate,
"three and counting" she happily kept adding to the growing pile of food.
"You could just come back for seconds" He kept taking only stuff he liked and wondered if her stomach would be able to survive dinner.
"Oh I intend to do just that,"
"Not remotely what I meant" He wondered if she was serious and thought "She's definitely serious and I might have to double the food budget at this rate."
They sat at one of the tables closest to the buffet and began to eat,
"ooh whats this?" Rayla took a small lobster looking thing covered in shredded leaves, its meat was pure white with the golden gravy sticking to it.
Callum's jaw fell open, "It's shrimp, a type of crustacean... and you mean you took food without even knowing what it was?"
"I see food, I eat it," she said proudly as she ate at a furious pace.
"Now that I can believe," this process continued with Rayla asking Callum whenever she found a food she didn't recognize.
An hour later in the castle tower overlooking the entire island.
"Alright now what's so important that you want to ask me? a pay raise? moving your room closer to the dining hall? a change to the menu? adding moonberriers to your food? all of the above?" He guessed it had to be one of these.
she hesitated before speaking, "Whats a thermonuclear weapon?"
He didn't expect that and realized there was no way she would ask that on her own, ". . . . Vaeril?"
She nodded, understanding that it wasn't a question. "I figured it would be some kind of state secret so that's why I wanted to ask when it was just the two of us."
"If it was a state secret then there is no way he'd tell you."
"So what is it?"
"Do you really want to know?"
She nodded, "How bad can it be?"
He took a deep breath, "It was many decades ago, back then the scale of our cities and industries required more energy than we could hope produce long term. The king of Katolis during that time knew that if this wasn't solved then it could lead to an all out war between humanity. He hoped to foster peaceful coexistence and invited the other human kingdoms to collaborate on a project."
He turned to look at the stars, though he wasn't looking at anything in particular.
"The Dukedom, Evenere, and Del Bar were the only nations who answered his calls. After years of work, they created a nuclear reactor that used uranium as its fuel. It produced a phenomenal amount of power by tearing apart atoms in a process we call fission."
"It avoided war right?"
"Yes, but they all realized that they had now brought humanity to the precipice of annihilation. An emergency conference of all nations was called upon. They all were to study this new technology and decide what to do."
He paused, almost as if to collect his thoughts.
"They created a single device calling it the Trigger, they placed it on a small 2 kilometer wide island located in the far northwest and raised it on a platform 50 meters high before the entire island was evacuated. . . ." He paused to take a few breaths ". . . At 2:30 in the afternoon it was activated and the atomic age began."
"The atomic age? Wha-What happened?..." Her words were caught on her throat as she saw his expression and feared what he would say next.
"Have you seen the destruction caused by any large human made explosives?" He asked without looking at her,
"Yes, they were big enough to blow up a big house.. why?"
"This explosion had a radius of 600 meters, the island was gone, it could be seen and felt several kilometers away."
Her eyes widened with shock.
"What happens afterward is what we call the 'fallout' where radioactive dust and ash begins to fall over a large area. The area itself will need extensive clean up to be habitable, any living thing that's exposed to it will suffer from health problems or die depending on their exposure."
"So thats what a thermonuclear wea."
"No, that is an atomic weapon. . . A thermonuclear device is far more powerful as it fuses atoms which produces far more energy when compared to fission. A single one can destroy an entire city. All the humans nations were horrified by the results and signed a treaty renouncing their right to use them as first strike weapons against each other."
"thats so horrible" She looked at the capital city in the distance, illuminated like jewels in the night, thinking how all those people simply enjoying their lives would be wiped out in an instant without even being able to fight back and the land would be left poisoned for a long time, knowing that her home was in the exact same peril. She understood why Vaeril felt they Xadia had no hope of victory and that Xadia was merely reaping what it had sown without any regard as to how he might be perceived. She remembered how back in school she and everyone else were told that they would win no matter what, and it would be be a disgrace to the memory of those to have died if they gave up, it was all a lie, we were just deluding ourselves,
"Are you alright?" Callum noticed tears forming in her eyes,
"I'll be..alright" She tried to hold back her tears as her legs gave way. She realized that Xadia now lived or died at the whims of the other side and none of them even realize it. "I just need to.." her voice became strained as she tried wiping away her tears.
"It's alright, you don't need to hold it in." Callum gently embraced her, .
She began to cry profusely into his chest, tears streamed down her face "I thought... I thought if we just fought harder then we'd have won somehow... Now it was worthless to even try... we fought for nothing, my friends, my parents, everyone all died for nothing... If we gave up sooner then they wouldn't have died."
He gently rubbed the back of her head, telling her it would be alright. He regretted that he couldn't tell her about Lain and Tiadrin.
