The invasion of sunlight drowns me and wakes me up against the hard floor, alongside the migraine that splits my head in half.
Drowsiness still consumes me, always reluctant to move but fearing sleep would make me lose minutes or even hours of my life.
My back hurts and stings as if my spine had contorted and little bits of bone had broken off and perforated my flesh. The results of the days or weeks spent sleeping on this small tent with only a small tapestry serving as a rather lacking cushion, only softening a bit of the ground, but still retained the same rough sensation without it, making my problem less severe than it could be.
I hug my backpack on my belly as hard as I humanely can, the sole thing still remaining by my side after so long. Alongside the books and the smartphone inside, which I abandoned all hope of recharging.
I try to get up from the soil and wake from the toil that has taken hold inside of me after these taxing weeks of march after march, with barely any room for rest. The days stopped feeling like one tangible being composed of orderly hours, minutes and seconds to become a mix of blurry blurbs of boredom and meaningless reigning inside even worse than the palace ever could hope to achieve.
After the grueling struggle against my own unmoving body and laziness and my wish to not get trapped into a sequence of hazy dreams that seemingly never ends, I finally lift myself from the soil and stand on my own two feet for the first time this morning.
A first win for the day, I guess. Or the only thing noteworthy enough to register in my mind. A habitual wake up during another week in Gangrel's army.
I gaze at my options for the day. Get a meal and then march, or read a book and then march. Whatever the option may be… I can't even bother to care anymore, it's just the same option with a bare hint of a disguise. Such is the routine that commands.
My stomach barely makes a sound, but the pain in it was the right call for action. But as it usually goes, my hesitation comes tumbling down as my anxiety once again strikes back with coldness in the belly.
What if the messianic sects are still trying to find new ways to get back their dagger or get revenge for not becoming the sacrifice they wanted me to be? What if I come face to face with Tharja, the betrayer who may want to kill me and that I can barely see without getting angry?
Questions pile up in my mind, but the tingling sensation returns to interrupt my mind and ask for the food I desperately need to survive. My brain shuts up for once and I open the tent to and whose name makes me bitter to no end.
With my pack on the back, I get out and let the sun pulverize me. In the end, I still can't seem to get accustomed to it, even if my face is getting more tanned. It's a pale and sickening tan rather than something considered healthy for a human being.
I see the camp far away, tents tangled together as smoke rises from the place. The absurd amount of soldiers employed can be estimated by the number of tents that seem to cover the entire field they stay in, so vast the green or sand that once stood there disappears to the color of white.
As for myself, I prefer the calm and monotonous way of waking up rather than the confusing and always moving life inside the army. Because if my head already wants to explode in this somewhat secluded and calm place far away from almost everyone, imagine if I was right in the heart of the camp? I would probably be rambling about how I wish that noise would cease to exist rather than how painful my daily routine has become, or rather still continues to be. As they always say, pick your poison and I took the arsenic rather than the cyanide.
I walk towards the camp as the sounds of people become a more monolithic sound, made out of these little voices of dark mages, priests, men, and women composing the most "powerful" Plegian army, the one that "reports" say is going to obliterate the Ylissean army with one swift swoop and everything left to be history. As for my actual experience, I could say they aren't even that close.
A bell calls everyone to the daily prayers and makes all the cacophony ceases. And like ants tracking their pheromones to the colony, the people stop talking to each other, and their daily activities to receive the blessing of the Grimas.
One of the Grimas is the Vessel, the most powerful being on the planet, as the messianic sect believes. The cyclebreaker and other hyperbolic titles characterize the dragon. Because they are more orthodox about their beliefs than even the so-called "orthodox" sect, and because they want to avoid any fighting that would destroy the camp, the messianic pray alongside their brethren and get into their separate part of their church. A makeshift skull of Grima serves as their cross but is different from the capital. Blood or some other dark liquid comes out of the religious symbol.
Like that one prayer at the capital, there is a choir, composed by the priests that sing and pray in the most sacred of hymns, the same chants that make Grima's evocation possible and allows the fragment to glow. The liquid and a pot of ash lay on the table, and everyone pays attention to the priest. All in all, a smaller version of the one where Grima or Reflet decided that it was the greatest idea ever to invade my mind. She is going to pay for that one.
On the other side, there are the orthodox, whose believes are at odds with the messianic and have a way bigger number of people inside. They have a more simplistic and laconic style to their own prayers. Much of it is a reaction to the cultist ritual, but it has been so long ago when the split happened that the reaction has become the tradition. Just like when Rock was considered the radical musical genre, but nowadays has become ubiquitous.
There is only a small statue of Grima. There are no liquids to drink and everyone stays silent, while they pray alone in conjugation. Sometimes a priest comes to talk about a specific prayer or how Grima is shaped by the now. After all, the orthodox think all alike: Grima is an idea and to think that a Vessel could be able to carry something so metaphysical and holy. Beyond this, since plegia's foundation, the Messianic leaders always claimed they found a worthy vessel, only to collapse under its own head, making them look like ignorant fools. They just didn't eliminate it already, because the messianic is a phoenix that is always kept alive by the same lineage, and it has finally got what they wanted in Reflet.
As such, they stay separated from each other, avoiding any and all contact. The messianic shall stay by the side of the Vessel and the orthodox by the idea. The ideals are as incompatible as water and oil. Can these contradictions and sectarianism keep these armies working as well as Gangrel hopes? I don't know.
What I do know is that I would rather not get in the middle of their conflicts. I have way more important matters to my survival than which sects are correct in their beliefs. I'm not a theologian and this isn't even a theologian's job. But I have to wait until both of their prayers come to an end to have my sacred meal…
After a few minutes, both of them come to a conclusion and life in the camp can go back to the usual. Which means getting my meal and getting out of here before anything bad can come at me. After all, I'm the heir of my bad influence in the capital, and rumors spread faster than fire on dry vegetation.
Getting the bread and butter with some lamb meat wasn't so bad. I just took it and ate quietly on my own, ignoring everyone around me. My mind only registered the texture and nothing more. The flavor evaporated from the food before anyone could smell it. Not that it actually mattered, the less pleasurable it is, the quicker it is to get away from here before the heat of place can get to my mind. Doesn't make my munching any better though.
With the meal finished, my duties within the region are finished for now, and I begin to walk back to my tent. After all, the sound is prickling my ear like salt rubbing into a slash in the stomach. Sounds are the pain of my ears, the hell of my body. Could it get any worse?
Then a pale raven-haired lady came into my field of vision and both of our eyes met. Tharja. I was too slow. If only I had eaten on the way back, I wouldn't have met her.
The air became thick, almost unbreathable as if it had become a paste. We just keep staring, a stranger meeting another stranger, nothing in common between them. The awkwardness drags on until we make the second agreement in silence. Turning our heads, we keep walking in a straight line. This isn't worth the trouble.
The cross towards that one tent is always an exhausting endeavor. Whatever I try to eliminate any difficulties, such as memorizing the route, taking deep breaths and stopping to rest, goes sideways. The route keeps changing, leaving the previous one as a waste of space on the head and the other pays with the currency which always keeps erasing from existence. Damn it.
Grass and the local vegetation don't even change from place to place, just like the sun keeps staring down at us, doing its daily task in this kingdom. They are part of the same familial plane that has taken root inside me. Sadly, there aren't great speakers or listeners, like in books. They exist and that's the only extent of their influence over me, a burning reminder of how the world is empty when there is no one around.
Meanwhile the trail is always a serpentine, labyrinthic net of roads, leaving my legs always threatening to give up, my muscles always left rock solid and trembling by how long and arduous the daily journey is. An unending cramp often overrides the muscle with a contraction, which contorts the bone to the front and stops whatever I'm doing at the moment to grab it and hold on before I begin screaming.
Blisters on my foot burn and make every single touch this shocking and burning experience, where it burst before the finish line, only remaining its case which I dare not to touch or at last, risking infections or shriek to the sky. After all is said and done, I arrive at the location, with the side effects being a vision tunneled towards the ground, a revolted stomach, where I can even taste the bile coming up to the neck and the sweat that robs the oxygen from the air, suffocating me.
The tent is way bigger than mine ever could be, a very thin layer of purple tint in its clothes, and the eyes of Grima as a pattern which keeps repeating. Two guards keep staring at me, annoyed by my presence, and have a sickening smell of perfume coming off of them as they stand in front of the entrance. As always, their smell spikes my nose and makes my nostrils itch like hell, leaving me to always scratch it. They wear cloaks covering them from head to toe, not leaving a single opening to reveal their skin, and masks with human faces over their own.
Despite being a tent, there isn't enough of an opening to see what's inside. Nor is there enough sunlight to make the shadows inside it recognizable for me or anyone else. No sound comes from it, not even that of ink scratching the paper or the breathing of a human being, only static.
"Can I talk with Reflet for just a moment?" I ask as gently as possible, curving myself towards them, and not hiding my intentions, leaving ample opportunities for my body to be stabbed.
"No, you aren't allowed. The vessel has way more important tasks to do than speaking with someone as lowly as you," one of the guards replied with a harsh tone that came as another part of the daily slap to my face.
"Why can't I? I don't think that it is impossible to have a single conversation with her. Are five minutes going to hurt the plans so much?" I ask as the script comes back to fruition, the one we kept practicing.
"You aren't allowed. Don't forget there is a reason the Vessel doesn't speak with anyone," they reply at the same time, while their eyes begin to stare at me, making me go and gaze at something else to not make it painful.
"Just let me talk with Reflet. Just a simple hi could work just fine. I don't want to waste her time." I keep my head down, just gazing at the sand, shame coming back to me like an old friend, urging my muscle to get the hell out of it.
"First of all, you can't talk about the Vessel with such a lowly name. Or are you implying she is the lowest being in existence?" he shouts and chides, staggering me.
"No! Not at all." I scream in confusion. Damn, damn, damn it!
"This is just the first of your many infractions. Second of all, do you think you can just walk with her? The Vessel? Who do you think you are? Gangrel? Validar? Stop messing with us." Ah yes. As if Gangrel ever bothered to speak with her. It still stings, though.
"But… but…"
"You keep staggering. Just from that, it shows how much you are unworthy of meeting the Vessel. Get out now, before you pay the consequences for infantile and pathetic excuses." He aims a lance toward my head, just like always. One single misstep and I will die, one of the many times that it could happen. But before I could get out and lick my wounds, a hand with a message came out.
"Why is the most sacred Vessel doing this for someone so lowly?" the guard says baffled, before he is shut up by the dark energy emanating out of the tent, making me cower in fear while the guards start breaking down as if their spirits were being sucked out of them.
It stops when one of the guards almost falls to the ground. It takes a while, but they begin to recover from it and pick up the message, although they resemble more corpses than humans, as they contort in unnatural ways when they pick up the message.
"Get out before we change our mind. The Vessel may be important, but Validar and his laws are more important."
I get out of their sight. Today I made some progress. After all, I didn't get any messages the other days. Well, something to be happy about for once.
Sorry Gabriel
Sadly, I don't have any free time to speak with you anymore. The war is more important now and I have to focus on it and win against the bastards of Ylisse. The troops need strategy and tactics right now. Every single plan must be perfect, and talking to you will not let me get close to any of it. So just stop coming and forget about my tent.
I'm sorry
Reflet
I sigh. That was pretty pointless, after all. Why do I even keep caring? How many times have I tried to contact and speak with her now? In the end, I should have known better. She has way more important things to worry about than someone so lowly as me, as the guards said. I'm pathetic, just like my mother said. What I always did was waste her time. Time she could have spent by doing things for herself if I wasn't interfering.
I was so naive and selfish to think she would have five minutes to spare with me. In the end, this isn't worth the trouble. The walk just makes me mad and tired to have the same result. Let's leave her alone, just like she said. After all, who needs me around?
The daily training is always a mess. It isn't the hardest thing to do, of course. But to do it every single time alongside Henry is reminding me why I always hated his teaching style.
"C'mon Gabriel. I know your guts very well. Don't you think you can hide from me. Just shoot the flux like you used to do! It isn't like you are making yourself a corpse that I will use for my experiments!" Henry says frustrated, almost grabbing me by the shoulder.
"Okay," I say without a single hesitation or thought. They are all meaningless in this context.
"Don't just keep using meaningless words. Focus on the spell of the tome! Flux is so simple that even an intestine could shoot it! Just do it, unless you want to die." Henry almost cracks with me with his furious phrase, although he never drops the smile etched on his face.
"OK"
With that said, I keep my concentration and let the energy flow through me. Um, dois, três like a waltz. And in a few seconds, the orbs that were so hard to make in the beginning come as easily as breathing air. I launch them, but they don't hit the target. My mind doesn't think at the moment, just a pure simple void. Don't aim, just do it and nobody will care about it. Despite the miss, Henry doesn't get as angry. A rather unusual result, if I'm being honest.
"Now I get it! You aren't failing with the dark magic. No, that would be impossible considering how much blood and gore I've spent with you and our little spars. You are just lazing around like a cadaver. How didn't I notice before? Well, I have a simple trick to fix this." Henry cackles with himself. What madness is he planning?
"You don't need this for the moment." He grabs my flux and throws it away without a single care in the world and puts in my hand another one with a page already open. "Read it," Henry demands with a bloody grin, as if he found the solution to the world's entire problems.
I read the words out from the tome.
Let disorder become the center of actions and you shall end up ruling the world.
The strange phrase doesn't seem to do much, but I keep letting the energy flow towards my veins, trying to visualize what this aphorism even means. Um, dois três. Nothing happens, it seems the waltz doesn't work with chaos. I stop paying attention and let more energy come as if I'm trying to use the mist necessary for flux.
But then circles around me appear and shake the earth and myself into a dizzying dance. My hands tremble in it, while all the flow of the magical energy explodes everywhere inside me, stabbing my body from the inside out. Losing control would be an understatement, it would be more like losing oneself. The excessive energy flows into the palm of the hand, the flow coming towards it, while I begin to see little lacerations in my hands.
Damn it, what does this tome even do!?
A sudden surge of rays burst out of my hands, electrifying everything around and burning the soil into darkness, making little fires that disappear out of existence the moment the rays stop touching it. And the target, what can I even say about the target, beyond that it explodes into a bunch of chunks while fire lays on what is left of it. What freaking tome did he put in my hands?
The discharge keeps going on and on. Stop. Just stop it. How the heck can I stop it before it kills me? The energy spreads through my body without any control, the lacerations begin to form in my arms and legs, inflaming in case of electricity where I can only salivate in pain. I close the tome and shut off the flow, making me fall to the ground in agony. I breathe, trying to calm myself from the shocking experience. Meanwhile, Henry gazes at me with a smug smile, the bastard!
"Told ya, that would fix it. But be more careful next time. You don't want to overcharge something you don't know. Lucky your pain made you stop, otherwise, you would be very much crisped alive with that."
"Henry… what hellish tome is this?' I say while trying to avoid any movement in the muscle beyond necessary. Hell even speaking makes my lips burn with pain.
"Goetia. After all, you were lazing around. And what better way than Goetia to fix this problem?" he replies proud of the fact. Damn the raven guy! This would have probably gone better if it weren't for him. Or maybe worse, I don't really know.
"This didn't solve anything…" I reply while I still try to regain my breath.
"Well, it made your guts way less lazy, so it worked."
I think we are working with different criteria of what works.
"Could you give me back my Flux?"
"Sure," he chirps, picking up the tome, then putting it on my chest, going away without saying goodbye. Great, he left me alone on the ground for a single moment of trying to help me.
Damn that bastard. Why couldn't he leave me a flask of vulnerary? Maybe that is for the better, I may need to crawl my way into walking again, but it's way better than dealing with the expertise of someone like Henry. He and medicine are two worlds that shall never mix for good reasons. I pick up the tome and crawl away from the training area.
One can never be sure what to expect in life. Concepts like fate or destiny are not set in stone. Nobody can really try and predict the future as the present always changes and evolves.
Yes, there is the fact that I knew that a war was coming because of the story of a videogame, but then again the game never told me the finer details relating to what the hell is truly happening in the country. And also didn't account for Reflet being on the Grimleal side and never went to the Shepherds.
But that is straying from the topic at hand. I think we are dealing with a type of situation wherein a traditional narrative, it would be called fate influencing the world around us or in this case, a finer detail being missed from the bigger picture.
A local Emir came to the most public area of the entire camp and said: "I'm not getting out of here without any good explanations. After this so-called army appeared on this simple emirate, the people of my land went missing. I don't even know how many reports of missing peasants or devotees have been received."
The emir has a more Ylissean look to him, wearing more vibrant colors like blue instead of the typical purple and black from the capital and clothing that resembles more medieval Europe than our more of a middle eastern look.
To say this is a ruckus would be an understatement. Because, well, it has lasted until now. It would be much easier to get out if the crowds weren't so immense that it's impossible to cross without causing another major source of drama in here. After all, I can only stagger so much until I lose all my patience and decide to rest somewhere where I can't be stomped. Sadly, I will have to contend with the scene that is happening right in front of my eyes.
"King Gangrel, can you kindly explain why my subject has suddenly started going missing?" The emir says, boiling with anger, ushering a storm of words, while Gangrel looks too annoyed to give an answer as if this were only a child throwing a tantrum.
"I don't have to explain anything. I'm not related to these disappearances. So stop this ruckus or you will have to pay for it."
"This isn't enough, Gangrel. Nobody was going missing until you and your army suddenly appeared here one day. Then, all of a sudden it started. You must know something."
Gangrel patience begins to erode with the phrase uttered by the Emir. I'm not surprised, even a toddler would be a more willing participant than whatever Gangrel is trying to be.
"Oh, you think I know what happens in your little insignificant place? Oh, stop pestering me, I have way more important stuff than caring about peasants missing or something." And then Gangrel turns around and tries to go back to wherever his tent is, but…
"King Gangrel. I know you couldn't care less about what happens to my people, but don't come here thinking you can just command everyone to do your bidding. You will pay dearly one day"
"Whatever, now get out before I need to start killing before it's necessary."
Gangrel leaves without a second thought. Meanwhile, the Emir just looks down. All his protests amounted to nothing and the crowd scatters, leaving him without someone to entertain his thoughts on the whole thing, his people now doomed to disappear to a destiny only the victims know.
For all his political clout in the local area, what does it matter next to the violence and power concentrated in the nation? What is this man but an insignificant thorned fragment of what Gangrel's dream is capable of doing to a man, to an entire nation?
After all the walking around in constant pain, feeling more like a bug than a proper person, I finally found my way to the small tent I still have, the one I may need to remove yet again when crossing the mountains towards Ylisse. My body is still recovering from Henry's little play with me. What a wasted day, the same one which keeps repeating like a loop in my head.
Procrastination, my little moment of sanity in this storm of instability and awful living conditions. In a way, I have become way more pathetic than at the beginning of my stay in Plegia. Look at me, the man who barely has anyone to talk to and rants on and on, the stranger stuck in an alien land that would make even the most nihilist of idiots blush to my condition.
What meaning do I even have in this land, devoid of anything resembling a friendship or anything to make me happy, besides my own books? There is simply no point to my existence, but rambling ad nauseam, at least, keeping my mouth shut will lead to no one coming to destroy this little piece of peace I still can hold on to. Thin it may be, but it's better to hold this little hope that leads to nowhere, rather than the abyss under the ocean.
At this point, how do I even keep continuing anymore? it's a matter of stubbornness, of trying to still live to get back home, or is it something else? But even then what should I be feeling? Despite how awful everything around has been. Why can't I just simply stay in anger or o have even a little bit of joy while entering this small tent of mine? Either option just feels the same. Either death or life, it only amounts to the same thing: Being stuck in here.
My eyebrows begin to close while my body gets more sluggish, and for once, sleep claims me. The only thing left is to appreciate the dreamless landscape, where nothing happens and nothing exists, where the only thing that matters is non-counciness.
This is the first chapter of the new arc! The war against Ylisse! I'm very excited to show off the chapter and the consequent arc, working since May or June to write it, and along the way, I have finished the writing of the first part, putting me with a backlog to work with. I hope I can at least in this year, finish writing this arc and maybe even start and finish the third and final arc of the fic, something I have been waiting to do in a while. I have some intentions to begin publishing the chapters in a weekly format once the second arc is finished and the third arc is in productions, but that I will still have yet to see if that happens or not. After all, English is not my native language and I prefer to be consistent over releasing chapters left and right without a single thought or care put into it. Beyond that, I hope you enjoy the work so far!
Besides this, I want to thank Cavik for beta reading this fic. Also thanks everyone that still follows and reads this fic. It isn't the best, it doesn't have that much good grammar and can go way too much on the angsty side of things, perhaps because this is my first fic. But even with all that, you still read it and I can only say thank you for doing that
Also if you want to chat with me or other authors, you can join us in the following server: discord . gg / 9XG3U7a
Now without further ado, the A/N comments(or I hope that is what is called this):
Crowbars357: Yea, good idea. Just too lazy to edit it, right now. Sorry
kreeft123xx: Well, thanks for the message! Yes, I will try not to stress out much, but I sadly can't guarantee that. In the end, is more like hope for the best and expect the worst.
2010si: mmmmm... Well, I think that we are something way worse in the bad timeline. Since well, Reflet is with the Grimleal( To be exact, the messianic) and not with the Shepards like the original bad timeline. I'm pleasantly surprised that you enjoyed the last scene, I didn't like it that much, but then again it's my opinion. Yeah, Gabriel isn't exactly inside a prison, but his life still sucks, glad that I made you laugh. If the tone wasn't serious, this fic would be a combination of absurdist humor and kafkaesque humor so yeah. Gregor is Gregor, if it ain't broken, don't fix it.
TutuMega: Hell yeah! Brazilian literature is amazing and I'm spreading to other people my job is done. But I'm not a specialist, so don't crucify me because I didn't read that one poem of Paulo Leminski or read Prosopopéia and other classics.