Chapter Thirty-Eight
All was quiet on the northern front.
The Charr invasion was officially over, and in a two day summit, the Charr and Ascalon reached a peace accord. Devona suspected that the leaders of the two sides would like to pursue more than just peace, but that they acknowledged small steps would be the best course of action. With time, she figured the Charr would come to perhaps be a powerful ally to Ascalon…
… that was odd to think even now…
Coran had upheld his promise to the Mron, and even now, the survivors of that race were being escorted through the Shiverpeaks by the Deldrimor, and eventually through Krytan lands, with the end of this long pilgrimage being the Maguuma Jungle, which Arro claimed was meant to be their land parceled by the gods at the beginning of time. It made sense, Devona supposed… the jungles of Maguuma were unclaimed, and inhospitable by and large to any large scale human settlement. The Mron did seem much more suited to that landscape… not that Devona knew much about that sort of thing.
At any rate, Ascalon was safe… no one need die on the fields of battle, and there was no indication that anyone would do so in the near future. It should have been a time of great celebration, and of happiness… but any such rejoicing was subdued. Everything seemed blanketed by an invisible weight.
Devona didn't need her betrothed's genius to figure out what that feeling was. The land she was walking through told that tale with blackened, burned detail. She had always thought the land after the Searing was lifeless until she saw the desolation from Coran's cannons up close.
Both Mhenlo and Eve had occasionally spoken of the Bone Pits of the Underworld; of a cold, dark, empty landscape littered with the remains of countless damned. It seemed like the power Coran had unleashed had taken a small part of that horrific realm and drug it onto Tyria. In just two days time, scavengers had descended on the battle field, picking flesh clean, and leaving a blanket of scattered bone among the ravaged wasteland.
The warrior shivered. While having been exposed to battle, never before had she seen, or even imagined, death upon such a scale. Corpses as far as her eyes could see, ripped in pieces, strewn about across the burnt ground she now walked. Then finally, she saw her destination, the ledge and outcropping in which mere two days ago, Grazz had raised the head of his slain brother, and assumed leadership of the Charr… and where Ascalon's king sat, knees curled to his chest, staring vacantly across the battlefield.
"Coran… you can't stop beating yourself up like this." Devona chided softly as she worked around the more manageable slope behind her betrothed. "You did what you had to do… you saved Ascalon."
"Did I?" The king asked, not even turning to face her. "Or have I doomed it to an even worse fate than the Charr?"
"What… how could you think that?"
Coran gestured towards the devastation before them. "Did the Searing ever do that? Could anything the Charr have concocted come close to something so total? Not even I have the knowledge to restore what I see here. This area is going to be sterile for years."
"But for what reason would we have to bring visit such destruction upon ourselves?"
Coran tossed a rolled up sheet of paper in her general direction. She picked up the sheet, unfurled it, and held it out from her body to examine it. "It looks like one of your cannons… a little different… but…"
"Examine the dimensions." Coran said, "That was a preliminary design for a 'personal cannon'… something the average person could carry around, theoretically for self-defense. I managed to convince the designer that his design wouldn't work… and it wouldn't… but it's only a matter of time before someone figures it out."
His head then contorted so that his profile was facing the Shiverpeaks. "Meanwhile, as much as I tried to keep the cannons secret, I am entirely certain that lunatic Budger Blackpowder gleaned more than enough information to replicate the weapon. I fully expect the Deldrimor to have working cannons within the end of the year. From there, Kryta… Cantha… and Grazz was more than familiar with them… imagine one day the Charr bringing a line of cannons that rival those along the Northern Wall. What then?"
"But…" Devona began, wanting to point out the state of peace between the various lands of the world, but knew from experience that such states could never seem to be long-lasting. War would emerge again, and if what Coran said was true, they would utilize weapons similar, if not better, than those Ascalon used against the Charr two days ago.
"I lied… when I said there was no connection between those Glint named in the Elements Quatrain. I… guess I didn't want to believe it myself." He said, his voice cracking under his self-inflicted guilt.
Devona sat down next to her bondmate, and circled one arm around his waist in a supportive gesture.
Coran didn't react, his eyes again straight ahead, as if boring into something far in the distance that only he could see. "The four that Glint foresaw were linked because they all had a common thread… they were all destined to facilitate great destruction. I think you personally saw what the Flameseeker was poised to do…"
"Khilbron nearly destroyed the entire world… you burnt up one already mostly dead strip of land."
"And how long will that last? I may not pull the trigger on the cannons or the handheld ballistic weapons of the future… but it will have been my influence that made them happen. One day… the people of this world will curse my name as they do the other great villains of the past."
"No!" Devona asserted. "I refuse to believe that. I think you underestimate the resiliency of humans, and of life in general. We'll adapt, we'll adjust. I just know that our people will never hate you for what you did. Without you, humanity would have been a memory… I'm sure of it… and if they curse you for that, then they deserve whatever barren, lifeless world they get."
That engendered a slight hint of a smile across the young king's mouth. "Always devoted, aren't you, my dear? Maybe if your version of events can keep hold through the generations, perhaps you'll be right."
He then finally stood, helping Devona to her feet with a gentlemanly hand. "Well, at any rate, we do have a wedding to plan for, don't we? I guess it doesn't suit for me to mope endlessly out here, now does it?"
Devona again wrapped her arm around her betrothed's waist, and took a slow, comfortable stride alongside Coran, forcing herself to pay no more attention to the wasteland around her, and hoping Coran would do the same. She knew he was only trying to accommodate her, and pretending to take his mind off whatever was troubling him… because she could sense it wasn't only about cannons.
Devona was getting better at reading her husband-to-be, because she was completely correct. In truth, the cannons had only proven to him that his math had been right. Who would have thought the link between matter and energy would be that immense? It left him at awe of the power of the gods, who apparently fashioned this entire world from the energies of the Rift.
But it also injected him with great fear… because he knew one day the final destroyer, the Holder of Earth, would harness the power that Coran had found in theory… and that it would spell the final days of Tyria…
… and perhaps the entire world…
He took a deep breath. That time was likely scores of generations off, and there was little that Coran could do now that would endure to stop that potential future. Sslani had often told him a proverb from the times of the earliest human civilizations…
"Give me the wisdom to accept that which I cannot change… and the strength to change that which I cannot accept."
"Hmm?" Devona asked.
Coran flushed slightly, realizing he had muttered that out loud. "Nothing dear… merely the barely coherent musings of your overly thoughtful bondmate. Perhaps I do worry far too much about the future… especially considering that the present looks to be remarkably bright indeed."
From the wall, they saw a petite figure waving animatedly. "There you two are!" The voice of Cynn drifted across the distance. "Devona, the wedding is in one month, and we have to get your gown sized as soon as possible! You've been stalling for weeks! We have to get it done now!"
Coran couldn't help but smirk at his love's forlorn expression. "Well… the present looks to be bright for one of us at least…"
"If you don't keep quiet, I am going to be unattached before we ever reach the wall." She grumbled.
The End