There are many ways to deal with traumatic events. Sometimes we try to blot them out of our memory entirely, sometimes we take up certain personality traits as a result of these events, and sometimes we deny even being traumatized at all. Ariana decided to take the latter approach. Fighting in battles and killing people was no big deal, she fought many more times since that day. Blood, gore, and people being disfigured were no big deal either. If you wanted to be a tactician, seeing those things was par for the course.

Sometimes she would have flashbacks, and other times, nightmares. That morning, she had one. She dreamt that the angry ghost of the boy she killed that day was whispering terrible things in her ear. She told herself it was just a dream and went through the rest of the day as usual. Now, it was one o'clock, lunch time. In half an hour, it would be time for weapons practice. She finished her food in ten minutes, and spent the rest of the time going through her textbook on war tactics. However, she kept remembering the nightmare. She shook her head; she didn't want people to know that she was having bad dreams.

If she showed fear or weakness, like she did that day four years ago, people would scorn her. Her father would be disappointed in her; she would end up not just friendless but mercilessly mocked. She needed to be intelligent as well. If she got good marks, people would look up to her and flock to her. Maybe she wasn't trying hard enough. Was that why she had no friends? Was that why nobody loved her? Was that why her father saw her as a disappointment?

Sometimes she found herself frustrated with her father; she even felt on many occasions that he never understood what was going on in her mind. He was cold, ruthless, and had a heart of stone, so obviously he expected her to be like that. He saw dreams, fantasies, and leisurely things as a waste of time, so he expected the same from her. But she wasn't like that, and she couldn't help it. When she was very little, sometimes she would try to hug him or cling to him, and he would just push her away. Last summer, when she found herself admiring a dress at the tailor's place, he snapped at her saying he didn't raise her to be some dumb broad. And the summer before that, when she causally mentioned her crush on Curtis, who sat next to her in lessons, he gave her a stern lecture. He said that someone who was studying to be a tactician shouldn't waste their time daydreaming about boys. Then he said that romantic feelings were a sign of vulnerability, and if you left yourself that open to anyone, they would automatically dismiss and disrespect you. She didn't mention the other more risqué things that she thought of, but she drew the conclusion that they probably provoked the same response.

It didn't seem fair. She wanted her father to show her affection, she wanted friends, a boyfriend, and she was ready to bend over backwards for those things. She would study until her hands and head ached, she would practice using tomes until she tired, if she was asked to go to battle again, she would. Yet all she did seemed hopeless. Nobody would approach her; she would be congratulated on occasion for an accomplishment, but never admired or even liked. Anton got terrible marks and he had friends. Celeste was wimpy and frail but her boyfriend treated her well. Cole was both dumb and weak, and even he had friends and a girlfriend. When their parents would come to pick them up at the end of the term, they were loving and affectionate to them in spite of their shortcomings. What did they have that she didn't?

The bell rang, and she couldn't sit there any longer, so she followed the other final years and made her way to the weapons room. She thought that maybe some exercise would make her forget the nightmare. Once they were all there, everyone began to form groups according to their fighting styles, so Ariana made her way to the far left of the room where all the other magic users were. They were using tomes on training dummies, and some of them were practicing with each other using mock tomes, which were of an even lower level than basic ones, all they could do was give the target a mild shock. She rummaged through her bag for some tomes to use, and found an Elthunder, which only had four pages left, so she decided to use it up. After finishing with it, she realized she had only one tome left.

She found it that winter. It was just lying there in the garrison, so she took it, but forgot about it for a while. It wasn't like any tome she had ever seen before. It was purple and had a white circle on it. She wasn't sure if it was safe, so she kept it at the bottom of her bag and saved it for a situation like this one, when she had no other tomes left. So she took it out and opened it. It didn't look like something one would see in Valm, the writing was almost foreign, but somehow she was able to understand it.

"Nosferatu."

As soon as she said it, a black lightning bolt came forth and fired at the dummy, whose remains were now surrounded by dark clouds. She decided to keep a tome with such strange but incredible power, and since nobody else ever used it before, she would probably have an upper hand. She turned around, wondering how her classmates would have reacted.

Once she did, she heard terrified shrieks, and everyone in the room was backed up against the wall, staring at her in a mix of fear and hatred. The teacher came in and wondered what all the commotion was about, and glared at Ariana as if she were some kind of delinquent.

"She's a… she's a…" one voice piped up.

All of a sudden, fingers were pointing at her, students were shivering when they looked at her, and then she heard a familiar voice taunt her.

"I knew it! I knew something was wrong with you! You don't even LOOK Valmese! Get out of here you Plegian whore! Get out! Go back to your country of filth and savages and never threaten our nation again!" Curtis then threw a javelin at her, though she managed to get out of the way, it still grazed Ariana's arm which now had a bloody gash.

Other students followed suit, throwing tomes, sticks, weapons, whatever they could think of and screaming at her.

"Your kind killed my mother!"

"Enemy of Valm!"

"Die, you filthy Grimleal Scum!"

All Ariana could do was stand there, frozen in shock, and take the insults and beatings. She always knew she was adopted and couldn't care less about it. Her father said her mother was a civilian caught in the crossfire during the Plegian war, and as far as she was concerned, that was all there was to it. When she tried to ask more about her origins, he would evade her questions.

Perhaps this was why. Perhaps that was a tome that only Plegians could use, and Plegians were hated, even more so than Yilsseans. Yilsseans may have tried to eradicate their culture, treated their country as if they owned it and bathed in riches while the Valmese starved, but compared to Plegians, they were saints. Plegians were the enemy during the war; they invaded Valm so many years ago, and were much less merciful than the Yilsseans when they invaded. They killed innocent civilians, tortured the soldiers they captured, raped the women, destroyed cities, and burnt down statues of Mila so they could put up sanctuaries to the Fell Dragon in their place.

So she was the enemy? So did this mean she was spiteful and cruel? No, she most certainly wasn't. Was she fanatical? She wasn't that either. Was she promiscuous? Again, she wasn't. Though she was Plegian, and all the evidence was laid out before her, she didn't seem to have any of the vices that Plegians supposedly had. Was it because she was raised in Valm? But she wasn't Valmese. As Curtis rightfully said, she didn't look Valmese at all. Instead of rose tinted or blue, her hair was black, her eyes were not light shaded, but brown, and she was much paler and had a weaker build than her classmates. She also didn't think like a Valmese either. Her textbooks went out of the way to portray Valm as the poor nation that was made to suffer at the hands of Yilsse and Plegia throughout its history, and once her classmates found out she was Plegian, they forgot about all the times she fought for Valm and assumed she was automatically evil. Perhaps Valmese were not free of vice either. They held grudges, loved to play as the victim, were fearful of other races and faiths, and had the gall to preach tolerance when they themselves were being intolerant.

She was neither Plegian nor Valmese… where did she belong?

She was in a trance for who knows how long before the teacher came in and stopped the commotion, and he saw her beaten and bruised, with a couple of bloody gashes and kneeling down on the floor with her hands covering her head. She looked at him pleadingly, hoping he would save her from the torment of her peers.

"Listen everyone, what is this?" He picked up the Nosferatu that Ariana used. They nodded, which meant that they knew what it was, but how come Ariana had never seen it before?

"Can any of you tell me what it is?" They were silent.

"This is Nosferatu, a dark tome. They contain The Fell Dragon's power, and are extremely dangerous. They can only be used by those who carry The Fell Dragon's bloodline, in other words, Plegians and those of Plegian descent."

The other students began to yell angrily when the word 'Plegian' was mentioned.

"Silence!"

The yelling stopped.

"Most of you know what these things are, your parents probably told you, yet of course, some of us were in the dark about this matter. After the Plegian war, it was assumed that we would never have to encounter these things again. Plegia has gone into self-imposed isolation since and has been doing Mila knows what, so we chose not to teach you about them. Unfortunately, we were gravely wrong." He kicked Ariana in the ribs and looked down at her with a neutral expression.

"Rise!"

She stood up, fearing punishment if she didn't.

"What do you see before you? A fellow classmate, an honours student, a soldier, perhaps maybe a friend…"

Ariana mentally heaved a sigh of relief. Authority figures were harsh, but knew how to diffuse a conflict when they saw one, perhaps not all Valmese were bitter and vengeful…

"…but we cannot rewrite history. You all know what Plegia has done to our country; many of you have parents who fought in the war, or even parents who died in it. The fact that we have been able to let this… Grimleal fight among us, stay in the same roof as us, converse with us, is sheer stupidity on all our parts. She might even be a spy, trained from birth to resurrect the Dragon of Darkness Himself."

And at that moment Ariana felt like a glass vase that shattered into a thousand pieces.

"Never forget the lesson you learned today. You cannot trust anyone. Your friends, your classmates, your boyfriends and girlfriends may be Yilssean or even Plegian, like this one here. They are all the same, no matter where they are, they will always show their allegiance to their birthplace in the end. When that happens, you must be prepared to fight them, and cut them down as you would any other enemy, you understand?"

"Sir, yes, Sir!" the students cried in unison.

"Class dismissed."

The students left in a straight line, but Ariana was still there with the teacher, standing in the centre of the room dumbstruck.

"Pack your bags, go home, and never darken our doorway again, Grimleal scum."

She did not speak, or even make the slightest sound as she made her way to the girls' dormitory to pack her bags. The school would send a letter to her father telling about the incident in detail, and it would reach him in a couple of days at most. Then she was called to the headmaster's office, who said nothing to her, but took out his quill and struck out her number, and proceeded to do the same to the honour student roster, to every document on which her number was there, and then shooed her out. Then she went to the front gate, took one last look at the place that had been her school and place of residence for nine years, and walked out, looking for the nearest carriage that would take her back home.


She did not cry when the former object of her affection called her a Plegian whore, she did not cry when her classmates tortured her, she did not cry when her teacher supported them, she did not cry when she was kicked out of school, she didn't even cry during the entire two day trip back.

But she did cry in the presence of her father.

He had received the letter the day she returned, and surprisingly, did not seem upset. However, he did give a sigh of painful acceptance and resignation, as if he had foreseen this to happen. That was when she could take it no more and all the emotions she had been bottling up manifested themselves.

"I should have… I should have known. No wonder… I tried so hard… I tried… but nobody liked me… nobody would be my friend… nobody would be friends with a Plegian because they're all evil and whores…"

Her father showed no emotion, he didn't even seem to react, and he just continued to treat her bruises and wounds, as she came back in the same sorry state that she was in when she left.

"That's… that's why you never praised me… that's why you were disappointed in me… you hate me… you always hated me… you knew that I could never make you proud-"

He slapped her cheek, so hard that there was a red gash on her face.

"Shut up. Just shut up. Look at yourself, you're blubbering like an idiot, talking nonsense, and here I am treating YOUR injuries. How does that make you look?"

"...weak."

"What's even more pathetic is that you let those kids treat you like a training dummy, you allowed yourself to get affected by that bastard's remarks because you held a goddamn soft spot for him! Have you learned nothing? Has everything I have been saying falling on deaf ears?"

"I'm sorry…"

"Get out of my sight."

She walked to her room and closed the door. She threw herself on the bed and lay there until she fell asleep, when she came to; it had been a couple of hours. She was thirsty, so she took a step outside to get some water from the pitcher. When she was about to go back to bed, she heard a peculiar noise coming from her father's bedroom.

Her father was crying.


Two weeks later, they were out on the streets. Their only option now was to travel from place to place and do odd jobs.

News of Ariana's heritage spread quickly, and though General Walhart didn't really see it as a big deal, pretty much everyone else did. They acted almost the same way as the students and teachers in school did, so yes, she was unfortunately right. All Valmese were vengeful and bitter… but maybe her father was an exception, or was he? She did not know.

She looked at her father as they rode around in the carriage that would take them to the next town. She looked at him, and then at her. Ragged red hair tied in a ponytail, blue eyes, a slight tan, and a muscular build, they looked nothing like father and daughter at all, but that was what they were.

"Father?"

He did not answer her.

"I'm Plegian, aren't I?"

He grunted.

"But I'm not cruel, or vicious, or evil… and I'm not Valmese either, because I'm not vengeful and bitter… you are not my real father, I don't know who my real parents were… so where do I belong? What is my place in this world?"

He sighed, and turned to face the window.

"That's the problem with our education system… you learn good things, but you also learn to see people as Valmese, or Plegian, or Yilssean. You learn to categorize, and judge, and put people in groups when humanity is actually much more complex than that."

"What does that mean?"

"Just because a couple of Plegian fanatics were evil, doesn't mean every Plegian is evil. Just because some Valmese are vengeful, doesn't mean all of them are. Just because some Yilsseans were arrogant, doesn't mean all of them are. People aren't just defined by where they come from. There are so many factors that make a person, not just race or religion."

"Oh…"

"And as for your parentage… take off your right glove."

She did, and looked at the odd-shaped birthmark on her right hand.

"That mark and the scars all over your body are proof that you're Plegian. That's why I made you never take those gloves off. But remember, your biological mother's death was…"

He winced for a moment, and sighed as though he was remembering something unpleasant, something he wanted to say, but didn't.

"…was inevitable, given the circumstances. And one can only guess what your real father was like. Your parents are people who raise you and teach you about the world, and your biological parents could not do that, but I did."

"So my race is not the only thing I am, my parentage is not the only thing I am… so then, what am I? Where do I really belong then?"

"Only you can find the answer to that, and don't be so sure. You won't find the place where you belong today or tomorrow, but after years and years of experience, and when you find it, nobody will have to tell you, you will know."

Then they both sat in silence as the carriage went on the cobblestone road.