CHAPTER 3-10
Heinrich
It had been a wonderful yet taxing day - anxiety could be physically exhausting to an absolutely staggering degree, he thought, not for the first time - and Heinrich was glad to be settling down once more in front of one of the logs arranged around the now-roaring bonfire, with Phoenix seated on the log itself beside him. In some fashion that Heinrich wouldn't have been able to qualify, all of them gathering together around a fire each night as darkness fell was beginning to feel like some kind of coming home.
His ears were still ringing from the triplets' screams of joy and idolization earlier that day when he and the flag had emerged dripping from the Drowned Channel down the coastline a ways. Fynn had already been there at Prisoners' Point too, for even the sorry excuse of a footpath through the forest had been easier going than swimming most of the way back. The way his face had split open into an enormous grin upon laying eyes on an utterly spent but triumphant Heinrich still brought flashing clenches to the latter's stomach, and made him feel as though he were underwater for too long again and had quite lost his breath. It was a terribly strange feeling.
So was the increasingly clear fact that the triplets regarded him as some kind of hero. All because he had paddled around in the water a bit, and very quietly grabbed an old t-shirt? Heinrich viewed his enduring befuddlement philosophically, though, because in the end, it probably didn't really matter if he was worthy of their adulation or not. They thought he was, and actually...it felt rather nice. He held the fact of their affection and admiration close, like a beloved treasure, where it warmed him and made the terrors that forever stalked him, as well as the shame of feeling so unable to understand others, all seem just a little bit further away.
He looked around the fire at the faces of the other members of their group, all evidencing the contentedness resulting from the dinner they had just enjoyed. All were bright in the heat of the firelight, and all were eagerly awaiting Áthas' story for the evening, none moreso than the triplets, each of whom wore expressions of such titanic anticipation that they looked as though they might spontaneously detonate.
"Everyone had enough?" Áthas finally asked, and everyone nodded. Heinrich noticed more than a few bowls that still had some pasta and vegetables left in them, not because dinner hadn't been very good - it was excellent, as all of the meals on Sidereal Isle had been thus far - but because "finishing" dinner meant Áthas would get to the story faster. In fact, it looked like the triplets had scarcely touched their food at all. She'd left them hanging all day, and now it was finally time for her to deliver.
"Alright then," she continued. "Time for tonight's story. As I mentioned this morning, there are some rumors of hidden treasure here. And now, I am going to tell you the tale of how at least some of those rumors began.
"Twenty years ago, in 2045, relations between the Helic Republic and the Guylos Empire were in a terrible state, just like now, and the Republic had severed all economic ties with the Empire." One of the triplets raised their hand. Heinrich couldn't see which, since they were simply a jumble of limbs on the other side of the bonfire. "Yes, Owain?"
"What does that mean?" he asked. "'Severed'...?"
"When nations are angry with each other, they may stop selling the things they grow, mine, or create to each other. They may boycott each other's products, which means refusing to buy something because you're upset with who's selling or making it and, out of principle, don't want to give them your money." Owain nodded, satisfied. "There was a lot of inflation affecting the Republican pound then, too," she continued, and added, with a look to the triplets, "and that means that the money that people earn and spend isn't worth as much as it used to be, which means that everything is more expensive. There was a good income to be made in smuggling at that time, because Imperial currency was worth so much more, and because it was so hard to get some of the Empire's best products that were no longer sold here.
"Sidereal Isle is situated in a choice location for smugglers bringing goods and cash back to the Republic from the Empire. It's very secluded here, owing to the rip currents surrounding it, and the fact that the land bridge is only easily usable a couple of times per day. Thanks to the legend I'll be telling you about tomorrow night, no one lived here or even visited. It was the perfect place for smugglers crossing over the Isthmus of Rona, or rounding the Jiorei Cape, to rest and make camp before moving on to New Helic City to sell their haul.
"Having all of these smugglers selling illegal goods in Helic markets, or devaluing the Helic pound even further by flooding the economy with Imperial marks, made the Republican government look weak, unable to secure their own borders, and unable to make their citizens happy. And no government wants that to be their reputation! And so, on one dark, cloudy night a lot like this one, Republican leaders dispatched a team of special ops soldiers to this island to destroy the smugglers who happened to be resting here, and, in so doing, give notice to all the smugglers who weren't here that the Republic wasn't going to let them get away with their illegal activities anymore.
"That team was headed by two brothers, twins named Aodh and Aonghus. They had risen up through the ranks of the military together, each forever trying to outdo the other, though they both became captains at the same time, anyway. The military was their whole life, and they were proud to represent their beloved country in this way, and prove their talents and skill with such an important assignment. They led their team silently across the Drowned Channel and then headed north, staying near the coast to stay out of the rip currents."
"Just like Heinrich after he stole the flag!" one of the triplets exclaimed. Emyr shushed whoever had made the outburst and Heinrich smiled bashfully, feeling the heat rising in his cheeks, which became hotter still when a grinning Fynn caught his eye.
"I can't underscore enough that, when in the waters of the Channel, remaining near the land bridge or the coast is your best bet for staying out of any dangerous currents," Áthas advised them. "Anyway, on the night of the Republican unit's attack...there was a terrible storm."
The triplets huddled closer together; everyone else, Heinrich noticed, leaned forward slightly.
"Aodh, Aonghus, and their team, all piloting Stealth Vipers, had managed to slip through the forest and make contact with the smugglers where they were camped on the seaward side of the island, next to the eastern bay, before the storm struck. The smugglers, who were piloting Sea Panthers, realized they were outnumbered and outgunned and attempted to flee into the ocean, where they would have an advantage over the Stealth Vipers. Vipers are amphibious and can be piloted in water, but they're more at home on land, you see, where their stealth capabilities function far better."
Áthas paused, then said slowly, "The smugglers never made it out into the open ocean."
"What happened?" asked one of the triplets, who was again shushed by Emyr.
"The storm struck with a terrible, indescribably powerful force. Even to this day, it is one of the most severe that has ever been recorded in southern Europa. The wind howled, lashing at the trees, knocking them down, and knocking over the Zoids themselves. The ocean's waves were whipped into towering walls of water. Those waves crashed against Sidereal Isle, flooding it with seawater far inland.
"The smugglers in their Sea Panthers were in the bay, all lined up to pass through its narrow mouth, frantically trying to escape not just the Republican unit, now, but the storm itself. They would be safe in deeper water, where they could ride out the storm - but the bottleneck at the mouth of the bay prevented their being able to escape in time. The monstrous waves came smashing into the bay, working the normally calm waters into yet more frothing, plunging, violent waves, crashing the Sea Panthers into the rocky coast and against each other with such ferocity that all of them sank to the bottom of the bay, where every one of the smugglers drowned."
There was silence now, save for the crackling of the fire and the quiet waves distant. It didn't seem possible to Heinrich that such gentle things could, under the right circumstances, attain that level of destructive power. Klara and Acair, perhaps thinking similarly, looked over their shoulders at the shore.
"The Republic had achieved its mission," Áthas continued, "but at a terrible cost. Their entire unit was wiped out, too, crashed into the rocks and the smugglers and dragged out to sea. All except for one of the brothers: Aodh, who miraculously survived, though no one ever learned how, because he never spoke of what happened that terrible night. It is believed that one of the Stealth Vipers had been pulled out to sea and the others were attempting to help their comrade. Everything we now know about those events came from an official investigation the Republic conducted a few months later, though no Stealth Viper wrecks were ever found. And Aodh died by the end of that year anyway, perhaps from a broken heart from losing Aonghus, perhaps because of the guilt he carried for surviving when his brother and all of his teammates had perished.
"Some believe that the treasure the smugglers had been carrying en route to New Helic City sunk with them and their Sea Panthers, and even now lies at the bottom of Sidereal Isle's eastern bay. And it is said that on a clear night, when there is enough moonslight, the smugglers' Sea Panthers can be seen coming back to life, searching for the treasure that they lost...until a spectral Stealth Viper, rumored to be piloted by the ghost of Aodh himself, chases them away as he searches and searches for Aonghus for all eternity."
With the story thus concluded, the silence this time was far deeper than before. The triplets were all staring at Áthas with eyes like saucers, while everyone else gazed meditatively into the fire, absorbing the weight of what they had just heard. For his part, Heinrich was deeply intrigued by the tale. He thought he might understand something of what Aodh must have experienced, being forced to helplessly stand by as his brother was taken away, perhaps forever.
He shook his head slightly to dislodge these painful memories and felt Phoenix's caring hand alight on his shoulder for just a moment.
The others' silence stretched on and on until finally, Olwen could hold her peace no longer.
"Are you saying that Sidereal Isle really is...haunted?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Áthas replied. "Of course, no one knows for sure if that's true. But I've seen the Sea Panthers at the bottom of the bay with my own two eyes. They are broken and battered, as if by violent collisions, just as the story says they were."
"Have - have you ever seen the ghost Sea Panthers?" Heinrich asked. He swallowed. "Or the ghost Stealth Viper?" He wasn't sure which of her possible answers he most wanted; both were wonderful and terrible.
"Honestly? No, I haven't. But with that said, I have more than once felt some kind of a nearby presence here, even when I knew for certain that I was alone on the island."
"What did the presence feel like?" Fynn wanted to know. Heinrich had been about to ask the same thing.
"Not hostile, just...melancholy. Sad. Lonely. But determined, too."
Heinrich found himself nodding, because this was exactly what he had expected her to say. He had read many a tale of hauntings and supernatural occurrences; some were merely fiction, meant to entertain, but a handful of others were memoirs, written by real people desperate to be believed. If, indeed, there were ghosts here on this island, and if the story Áthas had told them about the Zoidians' fates were true, he reasoned, then the ghosts probably were restless, doomed to wander in limbo as they searched forever for what they had lost.
"I wonder if any lonely ghosts are near us right now, listening to the story," Siân murmured, causing everyone to unconsciously look over their shoulders.
"Maybe," Áthas said.
"Are you afraid of ghosts?" Fynn asked the triplets.
If their stricken expressions were anything to go by, the truthful answer was that they probably were, but instead all three made an impressive attempt at bravado, with a chorus of "No!"s and "Not me!"s, leading Emyr to chuckle quietly to himself.
"Oh, they're afraid of ghosts all right," he confided to the group, to cries of indignation and outrage from the triplets. "The thing is, that's never stopped them from trying to find one."
"That's what bravery is, after all," Phoenix told the three. "It doesn't mean that you're not afraid."
"It doesn't?" asked one of the boys.
"Nope. Bravery means you feel fear but still don't alter your path. Which in your case means: look for ghosts." They appeared mollified by this.
"Speaking of bravery," Áthas said, tossing a grateful smile to Phoenix for the segue that Heinrich's sharp eyes caught, "it's time to announce the day's winner."
As if following an unspoken command they had all been given, everyone looked as one to Heinrich, who immediately flushed and broke out in a light sweat under the weight of so many eyes.
"I see I don't need to make any introductions," Áthas noted wryly. She held out one of the star pins to him. "This is for your stealth, your cunning, your endurance, and your preternaturally piscine talents. Well-deserved, Heinrich."
Everyone clapped as he awkwardly stood, brushing sand off of himself and stepping over to her to take the pin. He felt rather than saw the triplets wide, adoring eyes on him as he pinned it with fumbling digits to his jacket.
"And my assigned helper?" Áthas prompted.
Heinrich's gaze swept across all of the faces looking back at him. He had known all of them save Phoenix for such a short time, but already, already...
When his bright eyes landed on the only other set of eyes present - the only ones on Zi, even - that were nearly identical to his own, there was almost a pleading quality present there.
Heinrich hadn't been at all clear on what to make of whatever was burgeoning between his brother and Áthas all this time. He wasn't sure he liked it, but then, there wasn't much reason - so far, anyway - to dislike it. And he saw now, in Phoenix's eyes, the brother who was always there when Heinrich needed him. The brother who would sit quietly next to him on the side of the bed in the middle of the night, holding him close in a sideways hug and tousling his hair when Heinrich had awoken for the umpteenth time from that terrible nightmare that relentlessly haunted him. The brother who had patiently taught him innumerable things like how to read and how to swim and how to, well, be something of a normal person in the world. The brother who had never made him feel inferior, stunted, or broken for not knowing these things that everyone else already knew...or for being so different. The brother who was ceaselessly kind and uncomplaining, no matter how many times he was pushed away because of that sickening dread, that heart-stopping terror, that Heinrich was forever only scarcely able to hold in check.
He turned now to look back at Áthas, who was waiting for him to answer her question.
"Phoenix," he told her with a smile, and he loved the way she smiled back at him: warmly, comfortably, as if they had already been friends for ages.