“So she’s really gone.”
Brennan didn’t frame it as a question. The statement served to break the ice on a necessary conversation neither of them wanted to have. He’d strike right at the heart of the matter, make sure they didn’t keep dancing around it.
“Yes,” his father answered, following suit with his direct approach. The man blew out a deep sigh, scooting the chair closer to his bed. “Nothing any of us could’ve done would make a difference. Sorry, son. It’s how the world is.”
He made no response, processing the words slowly. They confirmed the reality he’d been grappling with since waking up, but hearing it from a family member as essential to his life as his father still hurt.
“You really scared us there, bleeding out with a…” George’s expression became pinched, and he looked to the side for a second. “With a knife in your lung. I almost didn’t get you to the operating table in time, you know that?”
I’m sorry I failed.
“I apologize for worrying you,” were his actual words. He couldn’t figure out how much they meant because he didn’t regret the results his actions brought him, in spite of everything. If he could go back in time and choose to do nothing instead of that idiotic final knife throw, it would mean holding back his progress. Progress which would be absolutely pivotal from here on out. Agnes would’ve been taken out of the village either way.
George gave a weak chuckle, a calloused finger scratching above his brow. “There you go again, acting all mature for your age. I thought we’d be sitting here working through that for a while. But you already knew.”
The image of his father, sitting here like that, felt strange. Brennan was reminded for the umpteenth time how young this person was, one of the two people who had taken on the task of raising him. George was only in his early thirties. If he were to compare mental ages, they would be closer to peers than father and son, unbeknownst to the man he called dad.
Such was his freedom as a reincarnated child: having full awareness of adult sentiments and lacking the social obligations to adhere to adult responsibilities. It bestowed him with the choice to explore countless life paths without the weight of past decisions holding him back. And yet, at the same time, he had become cognizant of how easy it was to get lost in that freedom. Of how it could make him lose sight of the people around him.
“I did,” he replied. He left it at that.
He got a sympathetic smile in return. “You don’t have to keep acting tough in front of me,” his father said. “I know it hurts.”
How much can you see in the moonlight?
His eyes were probably red from crying, prompting George to say that. Which wasn’t a reason to break down again. Brennan bit his quivering lip and stared hard at his blanket, willing the misty blur to clear from his vision.
She’s alive. You’ll see her again.
The silence lingered between them for a few seconds as he composed himself before he changed the topic. “Where are Mom and Junia?”
With that one sentence, George started to look older than he was. Inhaling deeply, he straightened. “I sent your mother home, your sister’s with her. She needed the rest after staying by your bed day and night. She- she’s had a rough couple days. Rough year, really, she spent a long time dreading the day you’d meet a servant of the royals.”
Pushing down his knee-jerk response, Brennan chose to just listen. His father’s gaze assessed him, as if judging whether he was ready to hear this story or not. Eventually, George muttered something under his breath with a slight shake of the head.
“You know how your mother wasn’t born in Craswidge?”
“Sure?” Brennan hedged, uncertain. While she tended to avoid the subject, he had inferred from context and stories about her time shortly before giving birth to Junia that her experiences in Craswidge only dated back to when she was around sixteen. His assumption had been that she migrated to the village for some reason, but no one had made a big deal out of it so he thought nothing was amiss. “She’s not a foreigner though.”
“No, not foreign.” Dad waited again, mulling over his next words until he proceeded. “She was from a town called Rosebarrow, not too far from here. Three days’ travel at most.”
Brennan was confused. “How come I’ve never heard of it? I studied the whole map of Rannovia.”
“It’s not on the map we gave you. Rosebarrow doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Oh.”
Hearing the apparent non sequitur, he frowned. “Yeah?”
“That was a Rank-1. What do you think would happen if the next Zone to form in the area is too high a rank for the guards to handle?”
“A Zone-Break, if they leave it up long enough,” he answered immediately. “But wouldn’t the royal family send reinforcements first?”
“They would,” Dad agreed. “The threat of a break was constant there, only the Zone on their doorstep had special properties.”
“Like really good rewards?” He imagined enchanted swords and jewels imbued with untold power.
“That’s not what stood out about it,” said George. “Rosebarrow had a similar average level to Craswidge. Normal, peaceful town just like ours. So when a high-ranked Zone spawned, people started getting worried. It always means the royals are coming to lend aid, but something could go wrong. Nothing did, at the start.
“But the prince overseeing the territory wouldn’t allow the Zone to be cleared forever. Too valuable to discard by clearing it before it could recharge. All ‘cause of the amount of time they could spend inside. One second in the town for every four in the Zone. And he kept going in and out.”
Time dilation. Brennan had heard of it in textbooks only. To hear about it occurring in a place he could have conceivably reached in a couple of days showered his mind in implications about what else he had missed in the past few years. Zones that distorted time were rare, and ones that had a higher time differential or no limit to the seconds you could spend inside were exceedingly rare. A picture started to form in his mind about how that could have turned into a contested resource.
It still didn’t make sense. “So a bunch of powerful people were going over their heads. They should have been compensated for running a functional town near a Zone.”
“That’s not counting what the Zone did outside the Veil.”
“It did something to the environment around it,” he guessed.
“That was the townspeople’s problem.” The answer sounded cold and blunt, though Brennan knew his father was simply trying to impress the attitude of House Laithergale upon him. “The Zone started drawing in high-ranked beasts. In the fields, in the forests they hunted around, on trade routes. Basic work became impossible to do for regular folk.”
And basic work was essential for leveling, he had found. The disparity between the community’s level growth and the escalated strength of local fauna created a gap that couldn’t be bridged by royal aid. Leaving would’ve been an option, but he presumed that didn’t happen.
“They wanted the Zone cleared, and the Royal House wanted to keep it around,” he realized, the core conflict obvious now.
“Prince Caedrion had excuses. Future generations would benefit, this would keep everyone safer if they waited, the crown wanted to make the town better. Horseshit like th- I mean nonsense like that,” George corrected himself, belatedly censoring his swear word. “Rosebarrow wasn’t having it. First the leadership went into talks with the royals posted nearby, then when that didn’t work a set of drafted letters got sent out to other noble Houses and the King.”
“And when that didn’t work?”
“They made plans to appeal to a bigger Church of Renewal branch. Could have worked, we'll never know because it didn’t get that far. Evidence of treason turned up in the reeve’s office.” His father paused. “You know what treason means?”
“Yeah. I assume they planted the evidence there?” Brennan found the timing way too convenient. The moment the town’s leadership was about to approach a faction with real influence that might oppose the royal family if their actions didn’t align with the holy scriptures, they just happened to get implicated in a major offense.
“That’s right; sharp,” Dad praised. “They accused the reeve of selling secrets of the crown to Velkhast, scheduled an execution date that same week. The prince wanted to make an example out of him.”
Velkhast. The neighboring country at the nearest border. Substantiated claims of collusion with a hostile nation would provide the prince free reign to do as he pleased with the alleged traitors. And they wanted them gone.
When he expected the story to continue, his father struggled to get the next part out of his mouth. After a few tries, he managed. “The reeve was your grandfather, Brennan. Your mother watched Caedrion burn him alive in broad daylight.”
What the fuck.
“The people were enraged, but they couldn’t do anything against Classers over the fourth strata. Not on their own.” He held Brennan’s gaze. “So they decided they might as well do what the prince said they did. A small group of them went to Velkhast out of spite, sold everything they could find out about the Zone for dirt cheap.
“It got out of hand real quick. Both sides sent high level forces to secure the Zone ahead of the other. The Zone disappeared sometime in the fifth week of that, I think, and it didn’t take long for the town to become the battleground. Not a single building left standing.” Dad was telling someone else’s story, yet he clicked his tongue as if that particular detail was a personal slight. Brennan supposed it would be, to a Builder like him.
“Few of the residents made it out—the survivors mostly fled to Velkhast,” he went on. “Your mother didn’t. Craswidge had a new visitor named Doris. She’d just recently lost her family, so I offered to show her around. I didn’t think much of it at the time, I was just excited someone was finally listening to my ramblings about my job.” This story is hosted at NovelPing.
A fond look flashed over his rugged features. “She was slow to come out of her shell. I gave her the guest bed at my place, and she would help the village during the day. I didn’t notice we were becoming like that until she was staying in my room, and eh, one thing led to another…”
“I know what sex is,” Brennan cut in, rolling his eyes.
The face his father made almost got a smile out of him, like George couldn’t decide whether to be relieved that the implications of his story were understood or horrified that his son had somehow learned too much about grown-up business.
“Of course you do,” George laughed in defeat. “The point is, we had your sister about two years later. With her past experience, your mother was worried about mandatory affinity testing because it would put her children at risk of being taken away, just not too worried since there are no mages in our family trees.
“But her attitude changed by the time you came along. She had this superstition about you, because of the way you learned things so fast growing up. It made her terrified thinking the test would show something impressive and it’d draw the wrong kind of attention.” He relaxed in his chair, looking at Brennan’s leg. “Not exactly what went down, just, well.”
Something still happened.
“I understand,” Brennan said slowly, processing the whole story. Her behavior made a ton of sense if he thought of it as a trauma response, in retrospect. Emotions weren’t always logical. Not to mention, having gotten a sense of that same cruelty, he could comprehend her fear of losing another family member to it.
Receiving a last nod from his father, the conversation ended there. He considered what it would mean if Doris’ past ever got brought up while she was in the room. How would she react? Had she given his dad permission to talk about it?
Whatever the case, he hoped to see her again soon. A feeling that surprised him in its intensity. He tried to remember at what point the line had blurred between going through the motions of acting out the role of their son, and genuinely being him. Or maybe the distinction had never existed.
Pushing the uncomfortable truths away, he focused on the present. “Uh,” he began, trying to think of what he’d missed. “Oh yeah, what happened to Graham? Is he dead?” For some reason, he glanced at the door like the huge man would storm in and wring his neck for daring to refer to him by his first name.
“Graham Whytmere? He’ll recover. High Constitution, that man.” George fell quiet for a moment. “It’s wrong to say this, but I’m glad it’s him and not me. I don’t know what I’d do in his place, losing my daughter and getting fired for defending her.”
Brennan stared. “Kane fired him?”
“The court wizard demanded it. But no one’s mad at him, he can probably come back after things wind down a bit.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” he said, letting his tired body sink into the mattress. “Wait,” he spoke, suddenly realizing something. “Why don’t I need to pee?”
More than three days had passed after he lost consciousness, and he couldn’t see a catheter attached to his body anywhere. But he’d drunk water that morning, he was pretty sure, so how…?
“The medics fed you a standard patient’s brew,” Dad said as if that explained the manipulation of his digestive system for the purpose of post-surgery rest.
This village never stopped surprising him. Whenever he became confident he’d figured it out, a casual revelation would shake his entire understanding of what it meant to be a resident of Craswidge. He lived with resourceful people.
“You’re not in too much pain? You don’t feel sleepy?” George asked in a concerned tone.
“I’ll go to sleep, yeah. Thank you.”
“Thank you?”
“Mellie told me to say that because you saved my life.”
Squinting, George rubbed his forehead. “You’re my son. Did you think I wouldn’t- hmph, just go sleep, alright?”
“I will,” Brennan promised, this time wearing a real smile.
He did plan on sleeping, once he addressed the problem he now possessed the tools to address. Mana pulsed from his soul as he closed his eyes.
Sense Magic would reach the next upgrade tonight.