Displaced

Chapter 141



Samanta Zemzaris didn't know where she was. She didn't know how long she'd been out. All she knew was that she hurt all over, and not just in her body. Something else within her ached and throbbed with a pain that felt different than the rest, though she and her half-conscious mind couldn't quite place it. Despite it all, her exhaustion was worse, and she slipped back under a moment later.

When Sam awoke a second time, she felt better. The pains, though not gone, had dulled enough that they didn't dominate her existence anymore, but she still felt drained of energy. As she waited for her body to join her in the waking world, she let herself just... be.

A soothing warmth and softness surrounded her, threatening to lull her back to sleep. The quiet didn't help either, though the more she listened, the more uncomfortable she became. This quiet was... too quiet. Having lived in Blake's fortress for two years, she'd gotten used to the hustle and bustle that went on there. Even at night, when she tried to sleep, all sorts of whirs, clicks, and other noises could be heard—not to mention the sounds of people or robots walking around two floors away.

This was different. This was the stillness of a graveyard, or perhaps the strange bunker that Blake had brought her to several times—either way, a place for the dead, not the living. Though she strained her ears, she heard nothing but the sound of her own breathing and the slow thump of her own heartbeat. Wait, was that—? Yes. Though extremely muted to the point where she hadn't been sure if she was imagining them, those were voices talking somewhere nearby.

At last, Samanta found the energy to open her eyes.

She found herself in a small room that took the meaning of 'nondescript' to new heights. A small glowing crystal sticking out of the ceiling provided just enough light to bring the place from pitch black to a murky darkness. Ordinarily, that might make it hard for her to see well enough to judge her surroundings so harshly, but in this case it didn't matter because there was nothing around her to see-just flat walls, a bare floor, and the small bed upon which she lay.

The bed, at least, wasn't bad. She'd sunk so deep into the soft garoph-hair mattress that it was practically embracing her, and the wool blanket kept the heat in without getting itchy. It reminded Sam of the sort of bed found in the inns in the larger cities when she was younger. Her family had usually slept in their wagon, and occasionally in a cheap inn, but once or twice a year, when her father managed a particularly lucrative sale, they would rent a room in a more expensive place as a treat.

To her younger self, still ignorant of the world, it had felt like heaven. Soft, clean bedding instead of a few sacks atop the wagon's hard wooden boards; sumptuous meals made fresh, with bread right from the ovens; fewer bugs biting you; somebody else to care for the garoph for a day...

When was the last time she'd thought about her family? Like, really, truly reminisced about them, their thoughts, their quirks, their loves, their selves? Had she abandoned her duty as a daughter and sibling since their death? Was she doing enough for them?

No, now was not the time for getting lost in those sorts of thoughts.

Sam rolled onto her back and stared up at the flat, unadorned ceiling.

If her younger self had been told that she would end up sleeping every day inside on a soft bed, she would have been sure that her future was nothing but bright. The last few years had taught her that bed quality meant little when the bed was found inside a prison.

Was this also a prison? There was only one way to find out, she supposed.

Rolling to the side of the bed, Sam hauled herself into a sitting position on its edge.

"Alpha, come here," she whispered, hoping not to attract the attention of the people outside—a mistake, she immediately realized, as Alpha's metal legs would make far too much noise on the stone floor.

Instead, silence greeted her. Alpha was not in this room. She'd gotten so used to his presence that she hadn't even bothered to check that he was by her side.

Where was he? Last she'd seen him, he'd... he'd...

Memories she'd yet to process flooded Samanta's mind in a torrent of images and sounds threatening to wash her away like a leaf that fell into a raging river. She clutched at her head as if it were going to otherwise fly off, doubled over and groaning to herself as she tried to make headway against this tidal wave of sensations and emotions.

She remembered the attack, going downstairs, the battle, the run through the sewers, and the noise. She remembered yelling at Blake and getting a little too into it. And she remembered climbing inside his weird sphere and... things got more jumbled after that.

A lot of pain, a lot of nausea and discombobulation. Flashes of being thrown every which way, and then...

Waking up amidst the wreckage. Pushing herself up on shaking feet, forcing herself to move despite the agony. Clamping her hands around the person's skull and using every last ounce of energy she had within to send the strongest lightning she could manage coursing through their brain.

It should have felt incredibly satisfying, but no. Instead, all she'd been able to see at the time was the sight of her little friend being shattered to smithereens by a giant disembodied hand.

It didn't feel real. Her mind told her that Alpha was gone, crushed to bits by some asshole who'd decided to show up right when she'd finally started getting somewhere in her new life and ruin everything good about it, but her heart refused to accept it. Any moment now, she'd hear the telltale tapping of his tiny feet scrabbling for purchase and his cute little chirps outside the door.

But, that moment did not come. All that came, instead, were tears. Tears for her pet, for her companion, for her self. Curling into a ball, she wept quietly on the bedside, letting her sorrow hold sway just long enough for it to weaken to the point she could slam the door on it and lock it away.

That was something she'd learned to do a long time ago, back when every day and night trapped in that giant metal fortress had felt like a nightmare of her own making. The feelings made her weak. She couldn't get rid of them, for they were too much a part of her, but she could blunt them, corral them, stuff them away somewhere deep inside where they only had to come out when the situation's demand was too strong for her to resist—like right now.

That was how she'd survived in Blake's company for the first few months without going crazy or letting the grief-filled self-loathing take her to a self-imposed early grave. Sofie said it was unhealthy, that her emotions would just fester inside her until they became twisted and ugly and cancerous. That they would build up until they uncontrollably burst out when she wasn't ready. That they would cause problems she wasn't ready to handle.

Sam didn't disagree. It had happened multiple times already. The latest instance, perhaps the most damaging so far and definitely the most embarrassing, had happened just a little bit ago when she'd gotten so caught up in a sudden wave of rage and disdain that she'd accidentally admitted to Blake that she was learning and cooperating so she could use his own techniques to kill him. That was a crate which, once opened, could never again be closed.

But, the fact that Sam could see the harm didn't change much. She just didn't know how else to handle her life anymore—especially not now, when she didn't even know where she was or how much danger she was in.

And so, she wept and wept until she felt the edge of her sadness dull. Then, she tied those feelings up, threw them into a chest, slammed it shut, and pushed herself off of the bed. Her bare feet slapped against the cold floor. It had been a while since she'd gone barefoot indoors; Blake had always preferred everybody wear shoes in his fortress. Just one more thing to make her feel out of place.

Creeping up to the door, she listened intently, but not even putting her ear to the stone let her eavesdrop. Almost on a lark, she tried to open it and found it unlocked. So... what, was she not a prisoner, then?

No, it would still do to be careful for now, until she knew more.

Very slowly and carefully, she slid the door open, hoping that it wouldn't make enough noise to get her noticed. Somehow, it moved smoothly and quietly. Stopping when there was just enough of a gap for her to see and hear through, she held still, peered out, and observed.

There wasn't much she could see through the thin crack, but it looked like a wide chamber stood on the other side of this door. Other than the drab stone floor, walls, and ceiling, she could only see two things. The first was an assortment of broken metal pieces littering the floor. The second was the pair she'd heard—two people in heated conversation a good forty or so paces away. She had to strain her ears to hear them properly, but she could do it. They weren't exactly being discrete.

The old merchant lessons for evaluating both suppliers and customers that her father had taught her kicked in, and she began evaluating them both. One was a tall bearded man dressed in fairly standard male Otharian merchant's garb, the sort her father used to wear when they were on the road—likely exactly that, a merchant. Or was he? The outfit matched at first glance—the faded colors, the fairly rough but durable wool, and a design that said 'commerce' without being too ostentatious—but the details seemed off. The clothes were too neat, too clean, and so lacking in wear and tear that it was like he'd just donned the outfit for the first time a minute ago.

What skin she could see had the tan of a man who spent a lot of time outside on the road, but his face was too fat and filled out to fit the role his clothes said he played. Anybody able to eat that well had money, enough that they wouldn't have to travel themselves anymore and could instead hire others to run their wagons for them. That had always been her family's dream: to make enough that they could offload their life on the road to another looking for something more reliable than the up-and-down life of an independent roaming merchant and settle down.

No, she couldn't back this up with anything but her intuition, but something told her this man was not a merchant, but rather somebody disguised as one. For what purpose? She couldn't say.

Or, maybe that cranky old man's efforts to increase the food supply had been so successful that everybody could eat so well that they put on fat? The body of his counterpart suggested otherwise.

The first word to come to Sam's mind when she looked at the woman was 'twig'. Light-skinned and pale as the moons, the woman looked like she hadn't stepped into the sunlight or a restaurant once in the last decade.

Yet, as with the man, first appearances might be deceiving. The first hint was the luster of her red-purple hair. Even from this distance and in the low light of the multiple glowing crystals shining from the ceiling, Sam could see how it shone beautifully. Also as with the man, her face did not appear anywhere near as thin—almost unnaturally so—as her body suggested.

Unlike the man, Sam could not make hide nor hair of her clothing. Thin woven grass sandals on her feet. A full-length skirt dyed green. A shirt of some sort that looked to be light blue, almost entirely covered by a tan coat covered in pockets of various browns, tans, and off-whites. Sam found it near impossible to make even a single judgment concerning the woman's outfit save that she seemed to have the world's worst aesthetic taste. Sofie had told her once that on her world some people were unable to see color. Maybe people like that existed on Scyria too and this woman was a prime example.

The man, who was easily more than a head taller and double the weight of the woman—if not much more—leaned forward to tower over his smaller counterpart. On his face he wore a glower and scowl, and he held his arms by his sides with his elbows half bent and his hands clenched into fists.

The object of his ire stood her ground, back straight and arms crossed with a contemptuous expression on her slight face.

"—just assume her loyalty," the man was saying. "I see no reason we should trust anybody who lived by his side for years, especially in her condition. No signs of torture, healthy, clean... What diabolical deals did she make to be as she is after two years of captivity? She reeks of a traitor who sold out her people for better treatment."

The woman shook her head disapprovingly like one might when dealing with the demands of a particularly spoiled brat.

"And I'm telling you, if you would listen to a single word other than the ones that squirt out from between your lips, that you wouldn't have such skepticism if you had seen what I saw," she replied, her voice equal parts irritation and frustration like there was an insect buzzing about her ears that she couldn't get to leave. "The fire still burns within her even now, perhaps brighter than ever. Instead of doubting her, we should commend her for holding strong through all the trials she must have faced. You know as well as I just how tempting the Usurper's offers were. Better men than you fell to them."

"You—! Those are big words for a wench who hides away while the rest of us face those monsters! What would you know?!"

"Wench?" The woman's voice went cold as ice. "Is that how you address all your superiors, or just me?"

The man stilled, the contents of his remarks seeming to finally come to his awareness.

"I-I apologize for overstepping—"

The woman stepped forward and leaned in close to him. Reaching into one of her many pockets, she withdrew a hand-held implement that Sam didn't recognize but looked vaguely dangerous. The moment the man saw it, he visibly paled and took a half-step back.

"The only reason I won't castrate you here and now is because a child is watching," the woman told him.

Sam's blood went cold. She'd been caught already?!

"Leave now and thank your good fortune that I am letting you walk away whole. You will not be so lucky a second time." she continued.

The now terrified man turned tail immediately and fled beyond Sam's ability to see. Sam could only observe the woman as she watched, unmoving, until she was apparently satisfied. Then she swiveled her head to look right at Sam as if the stone between then was invisible.

"You can come out now. That putrid excuse of a man won't be coming back."

Sam quickly ducked behind the door, prompting an amused chuckled.

"It's alright. You are safe here; I promise."

Still, Sam stayed where she was. Fear kept her mouth shut, and the silence stretched on for several long moments.

"Very well, you can stay in there all you like until you change your mind," the woman said. "I'll just be working over here. I know you are confused, so ask me anything you like and I'll answer as best I can."

Still, Sam remained quiet. She didn't know what to say, and the man's words before had left her feeling quite uneasy.

After a few more moments, she heard the sound of something metallic being dropped on a wooden surface, followed by all sorts of noises—banging, grinding, hammering, sawing, and more. As the woman continued doing... whatever it was she was doing, she began to hum a light, upbeat tune to herself. The melody struck Sam as vaguely familiar, enough that she was sure she'd heard it before but couldn't for the life of her place where.

As time wore on, Sam eventually came to the understanding that she was the one who would have to make a move. She was trapped in this small room, unable to leave without going past the woman, and had no information to work with. Meanwhile, the lady outside seemed perfectly happy doing her thing out there for as long as she wanted, content to let the stalemate linger.

Myriad questions ran through her mind, but the one to start with was obvious.

"Um..." she began, peeking through the crack again.

The woman halted mid-swing, her head swiveling around almost like a bird of prey. "Hm?"

"Who are you?"

The lady smiled, a normal, non-threatening smile that seemed genuine. She spun around on her stool, her hands falling to her sides but still gripping her tools.

"You can call me Erta, child. I'm this place's chief scholar and head of mechanical support."

"This place? Where are we?"

"This is the headquarters of the Otharian resistance. But if you meant physically, we are many paces beneath the surface. It's part of how we kept ourselves hidden all this time."

The resistance. Even though she'd expected an answer along those lines, the confirmation filled her with two parts excitement and one part apprehension.

"...did you kidnap me again?"

Erta hesitated. "Pardon?"

"You're the resistance. The last time I met you people a year and a half ago, you kidnapped me to use as bait."

"Oh, no, no. It is terrible that you had to go through that, but you needn't worry. I'm happy to say that we are nothing like those old fools. The people who did that to you haven't been around for nearly a year now."

"Huh?"

"For a long time, the resistance movement working to overthrow that Elseling tyrant was actually a large handful of local organizations independent of each other, each with their own territories, methods, and goals. It's no surprise, really, that such a splintered collection of parties would accomplish precisely nothing. It wasn't until later, when our leader arrived and brought the scattered movements together into one coordinated whole that the movement became what it is today. Whoever thought it was a good idea to do that to you is an utter fool, and Sebastian does not suffer fools."

Well, that was a relief. Maybe she could allow herself to feel good about what was happening. After all, hadn't she long dreamed about working with the resistance? Their previous encounter had soured her on the idea for some time, but if what this woman claimed was true, then maybe things weren't so bad after all. Could it be okay to dream again? To hope?

"I'm Samanta."

"It's wonderful to meet you, Samanta. I've wanted to get to know you for a long time. The mysterious girl who shadows the Elseling in so many public appearances. Is she his prisoner? His pet? Who is she? What life has she lived? It is something I've long wondered but never thought I'd get the chance to find out."

"I'm nobody special..."

"Sure you are. You would have to be to survive this long in a terrible place like that. But enough about such things right now. How do you feel? Do you hurt?"

"I'm... achy."

"Well, that's no surprise. You didn't wake up for nearly four days."

Sam swung the door open in shock.

"Four days?!"

Erta shook her head.

"You were a right mess when we picked you up. All manner of injuries. It was a terrible sight, but you're young and healed up quickly. So, that's good."

She gave Sam a once-over and frowned. "How does that outfit feel on you? It still looks a tad too big."

It wasn't until then that Sam took a look at her clothes and realized they were not what she'd been wearing the last time she'd been conscious. She had on plain brown pants and a gray long-sleeve shirt made of fairly stiff fabric. It looked like the sort of outfit she'd see laborers in cities wear—simple and rather ugly, but cheap and durable. It was also, as Erta noted, just a bit too large for her.

"Here, here, come," the woman called, waving one hand in a come hither gesture while the other dug into another of her many pockets. A moment later, she pulled out a small metal box. "I'll adjust it for you. I had to eyeball it before with you sleeping, but now I can do it right."

Not long ago, Sam would have felt far too trepidatious to leave the small room, but now she found herself taking step after step with little anxiety. Erta was a nice person; Sam had been rescued, not kidnapped; and she was finally in the base of the Otharian resistance—the one she'd imagined, not the one that had turned out to suck.

This was alright.

She was alright.

Erta opened her box to reveal a thin rope measure, some needles, and several large spools of thread.

"So, did you used to be a tailor?" Sam asked as the woman got to work.

"Oh, no, not at all," came the reply. "I was a researching scholar for the Church until, well, you know. Some of this I picked up from my mother as a child, the rest I learned in preparation for..." Her voice took on a wistful tone. "...something that never came to be."

"Oh, uh, sorry."

"It's alright, child. Don't mind me. It's nothing but some bad old memories. Now, lift your arms up. Good."

Even with her saying that, Sam felt the need to change the subject. Without the luxury of time, she jumped right into a question that had been on her mind for a few moments.

"Erta, why did you save me?"

"Whatever do you mean? Should we have just left a child to die?"

"But you said it yourself: I'm not just a child. I'm the child who spent the last few years living beside the man who destroyed the country. People think I'm a traitor. People here, even."

"Bah, don't worry about those idiots. They're all words and no action. They won't touch you because they know that, if they did, they'd regret it more than anything in their entire lives.

"That's all the measurements I need. Let's get that shirt off."

Sam dutifully removed her top, the chill of the air immediately becoming more apparent.

"But, to answer your original question," Erta continued, "even if I had thought you a traitor, that would have changed once I heard your delightfully ardent speech. The end, especially, when you said 'I did not spend all this time learning your secrets for you to just lay down and die before I can kill you'? Such passion! Oh, it gave me shivers."

Sam blanched. "Y-You heard that?"

How utterly mortifying! Knowing that there was a witness to her moment of weakness, when she'd accidentally slipped up and revealed her true intentions to Blake left her feeling far more naked than just being topless.

"Indeed!" Erta confirmed, her hand and needle flashing back and forth through the cloth. "Yarec and I both witnessed it right there in those tunnels. To think that somebody so young could still possess such determination like you showed after all the torment you must have suffered... Downright inspirational, it was! Truly, it moved me more than anything I'd heard in years!"

The woman held out the newly shrunken shirt, giving it a critical inspection, and pronounced it good with a nod.

"Alright, now for the pants," she said, handing the shirt back to Sam.

Only a few moments later the pants were done, and Sam found herself re-clad in a much better fitting version of what she'd been wearing.

"There we go. Much better!" Erta stepped back to better appreciate her work. "That should do, at least until we can get you some proper girl's clothes."

"These aren't girl's clothes?"

Sam hadn't considered that. While male and female clothing had very divergent designs when it came to apparel for the wealthy, the opposite could be said for most poor people. It was cheaper to just make clothes with one general design for everybody.

"No, this is the spare outfit of one of the member's sons if I recall correctly. It was the best I could manage given that everybody already has their hands full with the uprising."

"The what?!"

"The uprising, of course. We struck a fatal blow to the Elseling's vile regime, but that doesn't mean we can just stop. No, now is the time to push ever harder. Nearly every last member is currently spending every waking hour planning, scouting, or battling the false lord's machines and the corrupt fools who dared to side against us."

It took Sam a second to process this new information and reboot her brain. This whole time, her thoughts had been entirely focused on herself and her present situation. She hadn't paid even a moment's consideration to the circumstances of the others involved in the fight!

"What about Bl—uh, Lord Ferros? Is he dead?"

Erta shook her head. "Not yet. Would you like to see him?"

The question made Sam pause. Did she want to see him? The person who'd been both her demented jailer and her weird, friendly uncle? The man who'd fed her, housed her, clothed her, and protected her, but also the man who'd done so largely as part of some weird concept of vengeance against her? The man who'd taught her so much but had also demolished almost all that she'd held sacred? The man who'd turned her into a traitor in the eyes of the rest of the country? Who'd made it so that she might never be able to walk down the street in safety ever again?

"I..."

Memories of her life these last few years filled her mind. The odd, ignorant first meeting. The fire. The rescue. The stabbing. The horrors that followed. The chaotic early days in Wroetin. The arrival of Leo and the slow but steady imposition of order. The lessons, the food, the fights. The—

Something warm encircled her, pulling her back to the present.

It was an embrace. Erta was hugging her, wrapping her in her arms and her soft, albeit slightly smelly, coat.

"It's okay," the woman said softly. "He can't hurt you anymore."

Sam didn't know if it was the words or the way she said them, but it was as if they uncorked a bottle inside her filled with emotions she'd hidden from herself and they all suddenly poured out at once. Her whole body trembling, she clutched at Erta's thin waist, tears beginning to flow.

The light touch of a hand patted her gently on her head.

"You've been very brave up until now."

"Yeah..." Sam sobbed, clinging to the shabby coat of this woman she barely knew. "It was... so hard..."

"You're safe here. You don't have to be scared now."

"Yeah..."

"You did well. As well as anyone could ever want from a child."

"Yeah..."

It took some time until Sam was done shedding her tears while Erta patiently held her close and comforted her until the end. The release had left Sam feeling hollowed out emotionally and not much better physically, so she sat quietly in a chair to recover herself.

Erta, meanwhile, immediately went back to her tinkering as soon as the moment allowed it. The way she seemed to forget about Sam's existence the moment her focus returned to her work bench was just one more thing that reminded her of Blake Myers.

Blake. She'd never answered Erta's inquiry about him, had she?

One benefit of her emotional exhaustion was that she felt more able to think without all those noisy feelings butting in, and so she found herself better able to approach the question now than before. Did she or did she not want to see him one last time?

Part of what made the question so tough was that it housed another, unspoken question. Who was Blake Myers to Sam? What did she even think about him anymore?

The man who she'd last seen was different than the one who she had first come to know. Well, perhaps not that different—he was still impossibly stubborn, arrogant, crude, loud, and self-absorbed—but different enough in certain important ways that she sometimes felt like the current and past versions were almost separate people.

The new Blake Myers was more than just a vengeance-obsessed conqueror. Now, he actually seemed to care somewhat about people other than himself. He'd formed bonds with others and had opened up in ways she had never expected. Even his lessons were different now, more relaxed and friendly, like he wasn't so much teaching as he was sharing something he found neat with her. Her mind kept coming back to the last words he'd said to her down in the tunnels. No matter how hard she tried, she could not picture the Blake of the past ever saying the words "I'm sorry" to anybody, and to her least of all.

But, despite all of that, whenever she thought about him, looked at him, or even heard his voice, there was still a large part of her that wanted to scream. No matter how much more 'chill'—as the man himself would put it—the Blake Myers of today might be, he was still Blake Myers the butcher, the man who had carved oh-so-many scars into her psyche through slaughter and terror—scars which remained to this day. No matter how much Blake would like it to be otherwise, the past could not be so easily forgotten or forgiven.

The answer seemed clear. If she were to leave now and never see Blake again, the old Blake would always be there in her mind like a specter haunting her for the rest of her days. She couldn't live her life forever afraid that he lurked within every shadow. If she didn't witness his end, how could she know he was truly gone? The man had a terrible habit of surviving things that should have killed him, and she was all too familiar with how he behaved after an Otharian brought pain and injury upon him.

She needed to see him humbled, brought low, perhaps even humiliated. She needed to be there when he finally passed, to watch the life leave him and know that he was truly gone. Only then would she be fully able to turn the page on this part of her life, close the book entirely, and throw it in a raging bonfire, never to be read or spoken of ever again.

Only then would she be truly free.

As she and Erta made their way through the resistance's underground complex, Sam couldn't help but think about how much the place reminded her of Blake's fortress but in a different color. Both were a complicated maze of hallways and rooms that were chaotic when taken as a whole but were much more structured when you looked at just individual pieces.

Sometimes it seemed like Blake just shoved rooms wherever he could fit them, but she'd noticed long ago that every room that wasn't designed for a unique purpose shared the exact same dimensions. Strangely, she found as she glanced into the chambers they passed, the same could be said here; most rooms were all basically identical in shape and size. The building material might be different, but the builders shared much the same ethos.

The way that others glanced at her as she walked felt much the same as well. Most of the people who'd worked at the fortress would view her with wariness and their consensus on how to treat her had largely been to just ignore her and go about their duties unless she bothered them. It hadn't been that bad an arrangement in her view. It wasn't like she'd wanted to talk with random officials she didn't know either.

Sam had always had a loose definition of 'home'. Her family had traveled around the country more often than they'd stayed put in any one place. There had been a few places where they would stop every year, sometimes renting out a few rooms for a third of a season or so while her parents took care of various things, but she had never thought of any of those places as 'home'. The concept had always been something more blurred, and she'd never really been able to pin down what exactly made something her home. Having your family around was part of it, but that didn't seem like enough.

Strangely enough, that giant hunk of metal had been perhaps the closest thing she'd ever had to a home. She should have hated that ugly thing. It had been more of a prison than a house, and yet, she found, with some distaste, that she kind of missed it a bit. It had grown familiar, at least, and some of the people there had been nice to her. The fact that her friend also lived there helped a lot as well.

Sam's parents had always taught her to think about the future and plan accordingly. She knew that she would never be going back to Blake's fortress, and likely all of Wroetin, so where could she find a new home? Would a place like this be able to become her new home? She wasn't sure yet, but the sour looks others were giving her as they passed didn't feel very welcoming. She would need to find out more about where they were and figure out some other options just in case.

Turning one last corner, Sam came to a halt in front of a large gaggle of people all crowded around a doorway. Erta's stride, on the other hand, did not falter. She marched towards the crowd like a schoolteacher entering a rowdy classroom.

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"Oi! All you gawkers get back to your assignments!" she snapped. "Or did you all forget that we're at war?!"

The assorted mix of Otharians—mostly men—jumped and rushed off to who knew where, fearful looks on their faces as they ran.

Watching the commotion, Sam began to wonder if Erta's claims of superior competence compared to the previous resistance organizations were a bit overstated. That thought, however, evaporated the moment the two of them walked through the doorway and she caught sight of the reason for the gathering of curious onlookers.

Samanta Zemzaris had seen Blake Myers in various states of poor health many times. She'd watched his upper body writhe after she'd stabbed his spine. She'd seen him after his battle with Miss Gabby. She'd seen him after Sofie's powers had wrecked him from the inside out, putting him in a near-coma for a bit. But she had never before seen her longtime adversary in a state as terrible as this.

Blake stood with his back against a bare stone wall on the other side of the chamber they'd just entered. No, that wasn't right. 'Standing' was something you did with your own strength. His body was arranged in such a way—legs slightly spread, arms out—that it resembled somebody on their own two feet, but just one look was all it took to realize that was not possible here.

First of all, he was buck naked, and Sam had stabbed away his ability to stand without his armor to hold him up. But even were that not the case, nobody could stand with their legs like that.

Pale and shriveled like dried berries, they stood in stark contrast to his far more muscular and healthy upper half, but that was not the main reason. Simply put, nobody would be able to stand with their legs that broken. Both his upper and lower halves of his legs were bent in several places where no joint could be found. His left knee had been twisted so severely that the kneecap and lower leg were rotated nearly perpendicular to the alignment of his torso, his right ankle similarly crooked to the point that she could see bones pressing hard enough against his skin to stretch it. His one and a half arms had fared little better, each unnaturally crooked in multiple places.

Blake was only defied gravity due to one thing. Six things, to be more precise—three pairs of brutal, blood-covered spikes pinned him to the wall like a dead insect in a display case. One pair pierced through his shoulders, with another pair puncturing both sides of his hips. The third pair protruded from the middle of his thighs.

Meanwhile, blister-like stone blobs grown from the wall swallowed both the stubby end of his amputated arm and all of his one remaining hand, preventing them from moving. It all came together so that he remained upright with both his feet able to touch the floor in a mockery of the standing position, but instead his body hung limply like a doll, suspended by little more than stone and bone.

Blood stained him in stark streams. The crimson ichor that oozed from his many wounds mixed with the brown of that which had leaked out long ago and dried on his skin. Then, there were the bruises—dozens and dozens of them all over, merging together to paint a body-wide tapestry of black and blue.

But, what truly captured her gaze and refused to let go were his eyes, or more importantly, the lack thereof. Twin rods of stone protruded from his eye sockets where his eyeballs should have been like gravestones marking the demise of his sight. Like the rest of him, lines of crusted blood ran down his face from those sockets, though at least these did not seem to be currently bleeding. Every so often, she thought she could see the remnants of his punctured eyelids twitch, his body still trying to blink even with the rock obstructions preventing anything of the sort.

On her way here, Sam had given some thought as to what she should say when she saw Blake again. Should she taunt him? Should she declare victory? Should she use her connection to help the resistance get more information?

Now that she was here, she found that none of that speculation mattered; the view before her had snatched her voice away.

His head hanging feebly, Blake let out a quiet breath that stretched out for moments, almost like a sigh. Sam thought she heard a soft gurgle within that sound, though she wasn't quite sure. The message wrapped inside the breath came through far more clear.

"Come now, Yarec, this is getting downright tedious. If you're going to drag this on for so long, at least add some more variety. Or, are you all out of ideas already?"

It wasn't until then that Sam realized there was another person in the room. Sitting in a wheelchair on the opposite side of the chamber from Blake was a man. Was this the Yarec that both Erta and Blake had mentioned?

Sam didn't know what to make of him. The man seemed to be half statue or something, and the statue half was winning. How he was alive, Sam didn't know. Maybe he was just too filled with hatred to die; he wouldn't be the first person she'd known like that. He wouldn't even be the first person like that in this room.

"Your bluster rings hollow, Elseling," the wheelchair-bound man grunted, the pair of them conversing without either of them pronouncing a single word. "You cling to your facade, but we both know the truth. There isn't a single piece of usable metal anywhere within your range. Nothing to be found but stone in all directions. You are helpless, at my mercy, and I will see you crushed not just in body but in spirit before I will allow you to die."

Blake coughed, though Sam swore she saw him smirk slightly.

"And here I thought you knew me better than that. Did our days together mean nothing to you? If I'm going to die, I'll leave this world with a smile and the knowledge that, for all your hamfisted attempts, you weren't able to get jack squat out of me. You think I don't know pain? Bitch, I've fucking bathed in it for years now. What you got is weak, Yarec. I—hnng!"

Blake's body shuddered as Sam heard several soft crunching sounds come from within the stone enveloping his right arm.

"Your body betrays your bravado. Keep clinging so desperately to it while you can. It will only make the moment sweeter when you crumble."

"Oh please, I used to feel worse than this just getting out of bed in the morning. Let's face facts, loser. It's too late. I've already won, Yarec. You're years too late for anything you do now to really matter.

"I took down the church you served, killed the people you respected, destroyed all the institutions you swore to protect, and where were you that whole time? Taking a nap?

"You can't put the genie back in the bottle, you sad little man. You failed. You failed completely and utterly, and no matter how much you think making me scream now will undo that, it won't. You can't bring them back."

"Silence, you cur!"

Blake writhed again as Yarec did something Sam couldn't see, but the pinned man didn't just smile—he laughed. It wasn't a chuckle either; the sound came out weak and wet, but it was an honest to goodness laugh.

"But it doesn't matter since you'll never be able to break me, Yarec. I'll go to my grave with a smile as long as I know that doing so will piss you the fuck off. Even in death, I'll have once again triumphed over Otharia's greatest loser—hggk!"

Blake's head whipped back, smacking the back of his skull against the wall with a sickening crack and revealing a loop of stone wrapped tightly around his neck. The cord tightened even further, cutting off his air.

"I said be silent!"

"By Othar's grace, Yarec! Cease this at once!" Erta finally cut in.

"Go elsewhere, woman," he grunted. "This matter is between the two of us."

"Absolutely not!" she snapped, marching over to the wheelchair. "You can't let the Elseling get to you like that! You know how deceitful and scheming they can be! He's goading you into killing him! Honestly, you shouldn't be falling for such barefaced provocations..."

She gave the man a stern examining look and scowled at what she saw.

"You haven't eaten a thing since I fed you yesterday, have you?"

"That is none of your concern."

"Nonsense!" she scoffed. Stepping around to the back of the wheelchair, she grabbed the handlebars and began to wheel him towards the entrance. "We both know how grumpy you get when you are hungry. No wonder you're falling for the simplest jabs."

"What's this, Yarec, did you need your mommy to come help you?" Blake wheezed.

Erta ignored him. Judging by the way Blake's body spasmed right after, Yarec did not.

"Let's go get you some food. A well-fed interrogator is a productive interrogator."

"I am busy, Erta."

"So am I, but I can still find time to eat at the very least. You can leave him for a little while. He won't be going anywhere."

The resulting grumble gave Sam the impression that this was far from the first time Yarec had been forced to concede to Erta's flow.

"Come, Samanta," she said as she wheeled the glowering man out of the chamber. "You should eat too, and I can show you the kitchen area while we're at it."

Sam glanced back at Blake's battered form, but he just hung there, head down with no reaction to her name. Had he not heard? Or, did he just not care? After a moment's pause where nothing happened, she followed the others out the door.

When she caught up, she caught up to an argument.

"—get your indulgence, and I get mine."

"My 'indulgence', as you put it, falls in line with your organization's stated goals. Yours runs counter to them. Anybody who interacted with the Elseling is tainted, but her most of all. She doesn't belong here. She belongs on the executioner's block."

"Yarec! Don't say such horrid things! Especially in front of her! Do you want to give the poor girl nightmares?!"

"I am well beyond caring," he grunted.

"Don't listen to him, Samanta," Erta hurriedly told her. "He's just a cranky man who needs to eat, take a nap, and reevaluate his goals in life. He won't be doing anything to you; nobody will. I will make sure of that."

"...It's okay," Sam quietly replied.

Honestly, that sort of attitude was what she'd spent the past two years bracing herself for. After seeing her at the tyrant's side for so long, why would the people ever think she was clean? In some ways, she found Erta's wholehearted defense of her more off-putting than the others.

Erta was in a huff the rest of the way and didn't say much of anything. Neither did Yarec, who did not seem the talkative type anyway. The three of them just traveled down a maze of hallways to nothing but the sounds of their steps and the clatter of the chair's wheels—one of them was coming loose and wobbled a bit.

Eventually, they came upon a larger chamber that Sam assumed to be 'the kitchens', in large part because of the way that the heat climbed steadily the closer they got to the doorway. Within, she found what appeared to be less one very large room and more two fairly large rooms mashed into one. On the left were all sorts of cooking-related equipment—pots and pans, bread ovens, knives, and more—while on the right was a sort of mess hall with several rows of benches and tables.

Only a handful of people occupied the benches at the moment, but Erta seemed to spot the person she was looking for as she immediately marched over to a rather rough looking man chewing on some bread.

"Here," she said, shoving Yarec's chair forward so it rolled towards the sitting man and bumped into the table. "Take him and make sure he is well-fed, no matter now much he objects. Do not let him leave until he can't eat another bite."

The scruffy man eyed Yarec with no small amount of trepidation.

"Uh, I have—" he began.

"This is not a request—unless you'd like to spend the next few days scrubbing the latrines while the others gain glory in righteous battle?"

"Y-Yes, of course," he quickly acquiesced.

Now Yarec-free, Erta and Sam took a seat at the bench the furthest away on the opposite end of the room. The woman left for a quick chat with one of the cooks and soon came back with two bread trenchers topped with a mix of minced meat and sliced radishes, covered in a yellow gravy and topped with some chopped nuts—a traditional Otharian meal known as a 'coudir'—and cups filled with some sort of herbal tea.

Sam hungrily dug into the coudir and was happy to find it quite tasty. How long had it been since she'd had one of these?

Still, despite the meal, she found herself glancing back across the room at Yarec and the unlucky sap saddled with the task of feeding him. It did not seem to be going well.

"A word of advice, child," Erta told her. "Don't bother yourself with men when you grow older. Males have the unfortunate tendency to fixate on what they desire regardless of the damage they do to those around them."

"...what's wrong with him?".

"He lost a fight to the false lord several years ago, and now he's obsessed with revenge. Did your keeper not tell you?"

Sam shook her head. "Bl—the false lord never mentioned him."

The woman gave a wry smirk. "Don't let him hear that. It'll only make him worse."

"Okay... But, what I meant was... what's wrong with... you know..."

She waved her hands over her body.

"Oh, that? I believe it to be a consequence of using his powers—the curse of the chimirin that gave him the power he now wields."

"Chimirin? Doesn't that kill anybody who takes it?"

Erta cocked an eyebrow. "You are familiar with the substance? Its existence was a closely guarded secret, you know."

Sam nodded. "People using it attacked us more than once, and he didn't consider it a secret worth keeping from me."

"I see. The story goes that Yarec took chimirin so he could defeat the Elseling, but he still lost. How, I cannot say. He refuses to this day to talk about it. Some of the acolytes involved in the hunt for the Elseling back then came upon his body. According to them, he was so close to death that it didn't seem like he was even breathing. They nearly buried him before realizing their error.

"They took care of him for some time, but as the days went on and the country fell to pieces, they realized he wasn't going to wake up. After the Elseling's massacre, I was the only scholar they could find. They asked me to take him instead. The deal was that I could study him as long as I took good care of him. Chimirin was hardly my field, but I couldn't resist such a unique object of study, you know?"

She flashed a bright grin.

"So, that's what I did. I had many other things to worry about, of course, but I took care of his comatose body on the side for multiple seasons—feeding him, cleaning him, and, of course, pulling out data from him as best I could. Then, out of nowhere, one day he simply woke up. Back then, his body had deteriorated from the lack of use, but he quickly returned to full health."

"He wasn't all stony then?"

Erta shook her head. "Pure flesh and blood as far as I could tell. It wasn't until later that parts of his body began to harden into rock like you see now. It started with just a tiny patch on his arm, but that slowly grew as time went on, and other spots appeared as well."

Erta sighed and took a sip of tea.

"With more data sources, I would feel more confident constructing a theory as to the nature of his affliction, but alas, none exist. Even so, it's hard to imagine that it is not a result of his unique condition."

"Unique condition?"

The woman leaned in over the table, propped up on her elbows.

"Do you know what happens to somebody who imbibes chimirin, child?"

"Uh, I've never seen it myself, but I heard that they... kinda... pop?"

"Pop? An apt enough term, I suppose. But yes, their organs simultaneously rupture in ways that can only be described as 'gruesomely violent' and 'extremely messy'. It is not a pretty sight, to say the least. To take that fateful drug is to sell your life for temporary power, and once it is within you, there is no going back. So, I can see you asking, how is that man still alive? Well, a definitive answer is impossible with so little data to work with, but I do have what I believe to be a fairly compelling theory. And, I bet you can guess what it is."

What? How would Sam be able to guess it?

"Uhhh... I don't know."

A small frown grew on her lips. "Come now, I'm sure you can figure it out."

Still fumbling blindly for an answer, Sam went with the first thing she could think of. "Is it... the coma?"

Erta's smile returned, bigger and brighter than before.

"Precisely! I knew you were smart!"

That was close. The last thing Sam wanted to do right now was disappoint Erta. Not only because she was generally nice to her and treated her well, but also because if the scholar were to decide that Sam wasn't worth her time and attention, Sam would find herself alone and without allies here in this place. The thought scared her.

"I just so happened to come into possession of a written record of chimirin's use when we appropriated the contents of one of the Church's lesser-known facilities. Wisely, they monitored every aspect of their secret weapon and kept detailed records. They stretch back centuries and document every vial given, to whom, and both the reasons it was given and results of its use.

"Every single one happened because of some big, terrible threat that could not be handled otherwise, such as an invasion that Otharia's armed forces would not be able to defeat. So, it should be no surprise that the chimirin user either succeeded and then died to the drug, or was eventually overwhelmed as they took hundreds or thousands of Elselings with them into death. The circumstances simply did not allow for that possibility."

"Until now."

Sam wasn't surprised. Blake had a bad habit of bringing unusual and unlikely events into reality. What was one more example?

Erta nodded. "Until now. Yarec told me that his abilities right now are roughly equivalent to how they were before he was knocked out. I can only conjecture, but I believe that by rendering him unconscious, the Elseling somehow froze his abilities at the height they were at at the time. Why that would have such an effect is beyond my ability to explain, but it is the only explanation that I can come up with that fits what I know."

The woman shrugged and shook her head with disappointment.

"As for the stone wrecking his body now, I can only speculate. It could be some long term side effect of the chimirin, or perhaps our bodies are simply unable to handle that much power for so long a time without succumbing to it. I have noticed that the rate of spread seems to increase the more he Observes.

"That's the one thing I can say for sure: it's growing faster and faster. At first, the spread happened so slowly that I had to take detailed, minute measurements just to even tell it was happening at all. Now, you can see it worsen day by day just by looking at him."

She leaned back again and took another sip of tea.

"At this rate, it won't be long before his own powers kill him, and he knows that."

"But if he can control stone, why can't he just stop it from spreading?" Sam wondered. "And, why can't he use it to move, for that matter, instead of staying stuck in a chair?"

"Because he can't control it."

"Huh?"

"The stone that eats away at him is the only stone on which his Observation will not work. Othar knows he's tried. Why, and what that means, is just one more question without a satisfactory answer."

Sam shivered. This discussion, while incredibly informative, had also greatly increased her fear of the chair-bound man. Few people were more dangerous than somebody who knew they were going to die. Add in crazy powers and seething hatred, and you had one worryingly menacing combination. She would have to try her best to avoid him as much as possible in the future, lest he decide that just killing Blake was not enough to satisfy his anger.

A man walked up to them, his manner brisk and direct.

"Director Feldmanis, the Leader requests that you and your..." He gave Sam an uncertain but wary glance. "...companion attend the planning session that is starting in a few moments."

In a flash, Erta's attitude went from light and merry to annoyed. "I thought I told him that she would need time before such things. She's only just awoken. She needs at least another day after what she's been through, if not more."

"He said you would say that and told me to tell you that your concerns have been noted and overruled."

Erta was not a woman who hid her feelings well, Sam was coming to realize. She watched as the woman's irritation grew, seeing the thoughts whirring behind her eyes as she tried to find a way out of whatever this was that she clearly did not want to be involved in. Sam could even see the moment when she ran out of ideas and gave up, letting out an aggrieved huff.

"Fine. We will head over as soon as we are finished eating. Is that all?"

"Yes, Director."

"Then leave."

The man bowed again and did just that.

"Your family name is Feldmanis?" Sam asked with a mouthful of food. "Leo, Bla—uh, the Elseling's Chief of Staff is a Feldmanis too. Are you related to him?"

Erta's face darkened immediately at the sound of his name.

"No." Her words were cold and sharp. "I have nothing to do with that man."

"He's been looking for his family for years now," Sam continued. "He's convinced his wife is still alive and searches for her every day, but he's never been able to find—"

"Stop talking and finish your meal," Erta Feldmanis told her. "Our leader does not like it when people are late."

The planning room, or whatever this room was called, didn't look much different from any of the other rooms. There were more glowing crystals on the ceiling than elsewhere, giving a bit more light, and a big table about ten paces long stood in the center. Other than that, it was just another boxy chamber with nothing much to say for itself.

Sam was starting to wonder just how long people spent down here at one time. It felt like spending too long in here without getting to see the sunlight would drive somebody crazy. Even in these larger spaces, everything felt just a little too cramped.

But then again, maybe that was just because of all the people in here.

Fourteen people stood around the central table, by far the most she'd seen in one place since waking up. Sam tried to ignore the multitude of stares pointed her way—some curious, some annoyed, most distrustful—but found herself involuntarily ducking behind Erta. Luckily, most of the gazes didn't last long, as everybody's attention quickly returned to the large man standing at the center of the table.

Sam knew immediately that this man was the leader of this resistance from the aura of authority he projected alone. Large and broad, standing a good head above everybody else, and handsome to boot, the man appeared to be one of those "Prince Charming" people that Sofie's stories mentioned, except real. The only blemishes were his right limbs. Instead of flesh and blood, most of both his right arm and leg had been replaced with metal prosthetics.

Sam's eyes went wide as the man reached out over the table to grab something, giving her a better look at the artificial arm. Those were cantacrenyx crystals sticking out of the metal! This was clearly not something Blake would create. It was far more rudimentary than even his earliest creations, for starters; most of the arm was just two stick-thin rods, with thicker, blocky mechanisms for the elbow, wrist, and hand. What's more, Blake never exposed the crystals in his designs unless they had a specific function like providing light. This arm, on the other hand, had multiple stones only half-embedded in the metal, whole sides exposed to the air.

Maybe the Sam from a season ago wouldn't have cared, but now, with her developing knowledge of the field, exposing the power sources to damage irked her. Didn't they know just how hard it was to get proper crystals these days?! All it would take was one unintentional, moderately forceful bump and...

But why was she getting worked up about that? On second thought, the fact that it irked her irked her even more. What really mattered wasn't the design. What mattered was that somebody other than Blake had managed to create a working machine that ran on the same general principles as his creations. This was a huge deal!

Who had made this? What genius had cracked the code? Was it Erta? She seemed very good with machines... If she could make more, then she could teach others, right? Then more people could—

Wait a second... since when did she want Otharians to use Blake's technology? Why did the thought excite her? Wasn't this the tool of the enemy? Didn't using Elseling knowledge go against the teachings of Othar and the Church?

Sure, Sam had planned to learn Blake's knowledge and use it to kill him, but she was already stained with irredeemable sin. Integrating it into Otharian society on a nationwide scale was something else entirely. Making cantacrenyx technology a part of everybody's everyday life was what he wanted. She wasn't supposed to agree with it, not even a little!

"Keqont is falling behind," the leader man rumbled, snapping Sam out of her spiraling introspection. His voice was strong and clear, adding to his commanding presence. "Anton, you will go take charge of the efforts there. Find the cause of their disorganization and remove it."

"Yes, sir!" a man across the table replied, snapping a quick salute. A moment later, he was gone.

Erta and Sam approached the table, giving her a view of what was on it: a large cloth map of Otharia. Strangely, this drove home just how different a world these people lived in more than anything else. Blake had a room like this too, with a middle table for maps and other things. Except, his maps were three dimensional, formed by a computer using thousands of little metal pieces to recreate a city or the entire country's topography to exacting detail. Here, they had a flat drawing, the details rather crude and likely not entirely accurate, with little figurines placed at various places. It looked like a child's toy in comparison.

And yet, she had to remind herself, they'd won. Blake, behind his high walls and with his robot army, had lost to these people with their crude maps and wooden figures.

"Finally decided to show yourself, I see," the man said, turning their way. His gaze slid from Erta to Sam, and Sam felt a chill go down her spine.

This man didn't like her. His face was a practiced, non-offensive neutral—not too dissimilar from the way merchants like her father would control their expressions to keep from giving away information—but her fine-tuned intuition told her that behind the mask he greatly disliked her.

One more person who disapproved of her being here. It hit differently when it was the person in charge, though.

But then, why had he allowed Erta to take care of her? Was Erta that influential here? The title of Director sounded very important, but surely that didn't mean she got anything she wanted, right?

"Samanta, this is Sebastian Cunningham, our leader and the man who turned the war around and brought us victory," Erta told her.

"Most call me Leader Cunningham, but for you, I'll make an exception. Call me Sebastian."

He looked around the room.

"The rest of you are dismissed for now. Take a break and come back in half an hour."

"Except you," Erta said, grabbing a man by the shoulder as he passed. "Find something she can stand on to get a better view. A box, a stool, doesn't matter."

"Now, then," Sebastian resumed once the room was emptied, his gaze boring into her like a drill in Blake's workshop, "I'm told that your captor kept you on a tight leash and took you everywhere he went. Is that actually true?"

It was obvious from the vibes in the room and how everybody else reacted to Sebastian's presence that he was the 'Lord Ferros' of this place. Staying in his good graces as best she could was vital to her future here. Yet, Sam found her courage wilting under than man's attention, and she averted her gaze down to the floor. To make it even worse, her nervousness caused her to trip over her words.

"Uhh—I—Umm—That is—Ahh—Yes? Kind of?"

Glancing up, she found him still staring at her, his eyes narrowed. "Explain."

"He—uhh—he dragged me everywhere for a long while," she quickly squeaked out, "but eventually, he stopped taking me with him all the time and went out on his own a lot."

"That should still be enough for you to know many of his secrets," he determined. "Tell me everything."

"Uh... I don't really—"

The man scoffed, sending Erta a derisive look.

"I'm sure you know plenty of things," Erta reassured her.

"I mean... I'm not sure what you want from me..."

"Spies, for example," the woman prodded. "Can you recall any names of informants that he used? People who worked for him in secret?"

"Not really," she answered, sheepishly scratching the back of her neck. "He never met anybody like that while I was around, and he didn't talk about it, either."

"Surely you are not suggesting that he had no spies?" Erta asked in disbelief.

"W-well, he probably didn't think he needed any since he could watch everything anybody did from up in the sky," Sam quickly added. "And he wouldn't have trusted any Otharian for that, anyway. I would say that was Arlette's job, if I had to guess."

Sam jumped from the sharp click of Sebastian's metallic hand snapping shut, but Erta quickly reeled her attention back in by placing a hand on her shoulder. "What about hidden armories? Supply caches? Secret hideouts?"

"Uh... I don't think he had any of those. He didn't really think he needed them."

"Balderdash," Sebastian growled. "Only a fool would be so brazen."

"Instead of making places to run away to, he said it was a better use of his resources to just make his fortress even stronger. 'If you're running, you've already lost', he would say."

"Hmph. I told you she would be useless," Sebastian said to Erta as if Sam wasn't right there.

Erta didn't show any external reaction to his statement, but her pleading gaze when she asked, "Samanta, child, surely you can think of something?" said all that needed to be said. Sam was on thin ice.

"We're still trying to find the leaders of the false lord's regime. Are you sure there are no hiding places you might have heard about? No hidden bunkers, no clandestine allies betraying the people? Anything?"

Sam wracked her brain, sorting through her mishmash of memories as quickly as she could, but she kept coming up empty.

"No... I..."

She cursed herself for being such an idiot. She'd been so wrapped up in her own personal revenge that she'd never considered how she might use her inside position to help those on the outside. Maybe there had been mentions of things she could have learned, but she'd never bothered to care. And now, she couldn't think of anything at all. No spies, no special facilities, no hidden bunkers...

Wait...

"Actually, there is something."

"Yes?" Erta urged, faint hope on her face. Sebastian, on the other hand, seemed entirely dismissive of her claim.

"Maybe it's not what you're looking for, but one place he took me to a lot was this bunker hidden inside a hill. He didn't make it, though. He said it was made back in the days of Othar himself, and a whole bunch of his machines are based off of the ones in there."

From the way the both of their eyes flashed, Sam could tell that she'd found something they valued. Sam decided to refrain from mentioning that Blake had taken most of the machinery out of there recently and moved it to the fortress.

"Show me," Sebastian commanded, his demeanor somehow even more serious and oppressive than before.

Sam was more than willing; the ruins and relics of Otharia's past belonged not to Blake but to the Otharians, after all. There was just one problem: she could barely see over the tall table.

"Ah! Just in time," Erta said, looking over Sam's shoulder.

Sam spun around to find that the man from before had returned with the box that Erta had ordered. Placing it beside Sam, he turned and left without a word.

Climbing up, Sam smiled as she found herself able to easily see and read the entirety of the map without issue at last. She searched her memory again, going through their usual route, and then began to trace it on the map with her finger. She started at Wroetin, which was covered by a large red X, then slid her fingertip up past Eflok—which did not have an X over it; weird, none of the other cities had one either—until she was pointing at a small range of hills near the northeast corner of the country.

"It's right around here, but you won't be able to find it just by looking. It's hidden really well, but I know what it looks like so I could guide somebody there. It might be really hard to get inside, though. He would just use his powers to open it up."

"Well done, Samanta!" Erta exclaimed. "Truly marvelous! I cannot wait to see what treasures await!"

The praise filled Sam with a warm, fuzzy sensation, and she embraced the feeling wholeheartedly. In her happiness, she decided to risk trying to satisfy her curiosity.

"Umm, what is with the big X over Wroetin? Is that just a weird way of marking the capital?"

"What nonsense are you speaking now?" Sebastian growled. "It obviously marks that the city is gone."

"Gone?" Sam puzzled at the word. "I don't understand."

"He means that Wroetin is no more, Sam," Erta told her matter-of-factly.

"No more?" A dark and chill foreboding slowly spread through her, consuming the warmth of just moments prior. She still didn't quite grasp what they were talking about, but she could tell that whatever it was, it wasn't good. "W-What do you mean?"

"She means that it's nothing more than a crater, you stupid girl!" he snapped. "A hole in the ground! Did you think an explosion of that magnitude would do nothing?!"

In a sense, she had. In truth, so out of her element had she been since waking up, Sam had not thought about it at all. She'd remembered Blake preparing for a blast and the feeling as it hit her, but that had been the extent of her pondering on the matter. In her mind, it had been a personal issue, something between her, Blake, whatever it was that had exploded, and maybe the weird lady with no limbs.

Not until this very moment did the various pieces in her mind come together to form one terrible whole. Blake's discombobulating back-and-forth gallop through the maze-like underground had left her rather lost as to where they'd ended up, but she'd known they'd gained some significant distance from the fortress before they'd stopped. What's more, the terrible ringing had been coming from far below, down where Blake kept his vault of crystals, putting even more matter between them and the source.

Thanks to her friendship with Pari, Sam had learned through osmosis alone far more about explosives than any child should ever know. She knew well just how effectively the ground absorbed the force of a detonation. For there to be so many hundreds, perhaps thousands of paces of earth between them and the epicenter, and for it to still hit them so hard that she'd nearly died even with Blake's extra protection, and for the force to be so great that they'd been knocked fully out of the city and into the countryside...

Practically nothing would survive that—nothing save, perhaps, the fortress itself, and she doubted even that could stand against such destructive power. And the people themselves, the hardworking citizens of the nation's capital...

"No..."

The orphans at the orphanage where Miss Gabby had helped out, running around the yard, screaming and playing, sometimes even with her...

Gone.

Kozak's Tavern, rebuilt after the inferno that had turned it to ash, and the jovial denizens who made merry within it, doing their best to ignore her and the very conspicuous people who would go with her...

Gone.

Birel and Tereta and their blacksmith shop, ringing with the sounds of hammers or the ruckus of their petty squabbling...

Gone.

The grumpy old man who ran the farming department and gave Blake headaches, the cooks in the cafeteria who sometimes gave her extra bread, the assorted others who swallowed their fear every day to walk into the tyrant's halls and work for him to support their families...

Gone, gone, all gone.

"No!"

The populace might view her as some traitorous, wicked child, but that did not mean that Samanta did not love her countrymen. That love had helped to keep her going even in the most trying of times, but now it brought only pain, the idea of so many of her fellow Otharians so suddenly slain piercing her like a knife through her heart.

It was all too much, too fast. Sam physically recoiled, stepping back onto nothing but air and tumbling to the floor. Yet, she barely noticed that at all.

"How?! How could you kill all those people?!"

The scowl on Sebastian's face could have frozen boiling water in an instant.

"We didn't," Erta told her, walking over to Sam and crouching down. "Wroetin was our biggest recruitment area. Why would we destroy it? We're spreading the word that the Elseling did it."

"H-he didn't!"

"That is immaterial," the woman said, crouching down beside her with a slight smile. "All that matters is that the public believes it."

Sam just looked at her, bewildered and aghast, tears beginning to blur her sight.

"I see this upsets you," Erta continued, "but know that through their many sacrifices, they have helped to save Otharia from evil. Their deaths, like all things, are Othar's will."

Sam let out a choked sob. "B-but—"

"Enough," Sebastian cut in. "Cease your pathetic whimpering and leave! There is no room for such weakness here!"

Before he was even finished with his last sentence, Sam was already scrambling for the doorway, her feet sliding on the stone as she threw herself out into the hallway as fast as her legs could.

"Samanta, wait!" she heard Erta cry out as she ran out the door.

"Stay," Sebastian commanded, his tone unbending. "We still have much to discuss."

Both their voices bounced down the hard and flat stone hallway, making them easily audible even as she ran.

"Sebastian! You shouldn't have done that!"

"Hmph. I agreed to allow you to keep her, but I never agreed to be nice. You know I despise little girls."

Samanta ran and ran through the complex, heedless to where she might be going. All she cared about was getting away from any and every person in that place, so whenever she managed to spot the blurry figure of a person through her tear-filled eyes, she would turn into the nearest hallway and keep moving. All the while, she wept and she mourned, her thoughts spinning endlessly around and around in her head.

Tens—if not hundreds—of thousands of people dead in single instant, and they didn't even bat an eye. No, Erta seemed completely unbothered by the sudden erasure of the largest city in Otharia and all the people in it, while Sebastian seemed annoyed that Sam had even brought it up!

And what about the other members of the resistance that she'd met so far?? It had only been what, three days since the greatest disaster in modern Otharian history and everybody here seemed entirely over it. None of them cared.

And why would they? After all, they'd gotten their great victory, hadn't they? Compared to that, the lives of those people—the everyday, ordinary people like Samanta and her late family—weren't worth considering. Those lives and loves and dreams might as well have never existed, for all they mattered in the eyes of the people here. No, to them, other people like her were just concepts, numbers on a sheet to be crossed off. It was all so... so transactional. A purchase to be made, paid for in blood, but always the blood of others.

The resistance was supposed to be fighting for the people of Otharia. That they could be so blasé about such a tragedy affecting the very people they were supposed to be saving felt like a terrible betrayal. She felt like she had been caught in a flash flood and swept away, desperately trying to grab hold of a rock, or a branch, or anything at all that could give her even a single moment of stability and rest amidst this raging, rushing torrent pulling her under, but her hands always came up empty.

Eventually, Sam came to a halt, her lungs heaving for air while shuddering sobs shook her whole body. Leaning against the cold stone wall of the hallway she'd stopped in, it took her some time to calm down enough to center herself even the slightest bit. When she did, she tried to find her bearings but failed. Every hallway in this place looked the same and nobody was in sight.

With nothing else to do, Sam began to slowly trudge down the hall, her shoulder dragging against the wall. Her hair was a tangled mess, falling in front of her eyes. She felt empty, as she often did after a long cry, but this time things were different. Her every step felt unstable even on this flat, smooth surface. Her world felt unstable, like anything and everything could fall apart at any moment.

The first room she came across was a storage room filled with crates and barrels. While it might have made a good place to hide and be alone, she didn't see any easy gaps to slip into and wasn't in the mood to work for it. Maybe later. The second room was mostly empty and she couldn't determine its purpose at a glance. The third room contained Blake Myers. In all her half-blind running, she'd somehow ended up back where he was being held.

Her former kidnapper and guardian appeared even worse-off than he had when she'd last seen him just hours before. In fact, from this distance, she wasn't even sure if he was still alive. She glanced inside and found that the room was otherwise empty, with no Yarec in sight.

The next thing she knew, her legs began moving her step by step closer to him. But why, she asked herself? She'd already seen all she needed to see the last time, right? So, why was she doing this? What drove her forward? Try as she might, she couldn't come up with answers to those questions.

It wasn't long before she found herself standing in right in front of him. Now that she was so close, Sam found that Blake was, in fact, breathing, but just barely; his chest moved so slightly and slowly that she would never have been able to spot it otherwise.

Up close, she could clearly see just how much worse shape he was in than before. Even more blood seeped from his many wounds. His right arm had somehow gotten free of the stone bubble that had held it up, and it now dangled limply by his side, but its hand had been mangled, with the ring and pinkie finger both missing their last two knuckles. His head was drooped, his stone-pierced eyes staring unmoving at the floor by her feet.

All in all, it was a—

"Hello?"

The sudden mote of meaning imparted upon her, barely understandable and carried to her ears by a soft, all but inaudible gurgle coming from the Elseling's mouth, still brought forth a reflexive flinch.

"Is... someone there?"

Right, this was a bad idea. Sam turned around and headed back the way she'd come.

"Please don't go..."

Her pace faltered two steps in.

"Please..."

Sam came to a halt as powerful, conflicting feelings waged war within her. Should she ignore him and leave him to his suffering, or stay?

After a moment of indecision, she turned around again and cautiously approached Blake once more.

Maybe it was silly, but given that she would not be overthrowing his tyrannical rule with machines built with the knowledge she stole from him, this struck her as her final opportunity to best her now-former antagonist. Just this once, she would take the side of empathy, an emotion he'd often seemed incapable of comprehending, and be the better, more moral person. If her final victory had to be a moral one, then so be it. It was better than nothing.

Or, perhaps, she just pitied the waning man and couldn't bring herself to forsake his desperate pleas. Perhaps she felt guilt walking away from somebody in such a dire situation.

No, definitely the first reason and nothing more.

Stopping right in front of him, Sam, looked up and met Blake's blinded gaze. Blood had begun to seep again from his eye sockets, slowly flowing down the stone rods that had replaced his eyes to fall, one drop at a time, to the floor like crimson tears.

Like before, Sam found that words eluded her. Even had she words to speak, she doubted her mouth would open to let them out.

"Hello?" Blake gurgled again. "Are you still... there?"

Slowly, carefully, she reached out with her left hand and touched her fingers against the palm of his one remaining hand. After a long moment, longer than she'd expected, his remaining feeble fingers, shaking from the strain, curled upwards to embrace hers.

Blake went silent for some time, though whether he was thinking or the act had just taken a lot out of him she could not say. Still, she kept her four fingers inside his two, her thumb wrapping around them from the outside. His fingers were pale and cool to the touch. Through them, she could feel the minute tremors that ran down his arm with every barely perceptible inhalation; even the simple acts of living were becoming too much for his body to handle.

"Is that... you, Sam?" he finally asked.

Sam squeezed lightly.

"Are you... alright?... Did they... hurt you?"

Sam ran her thumb down the tops of his remaining fingers.

"Good... I'm glad..."

Once more he lapsed into silence, seeming to withdraw into himself. Only the glacially slow and shallow breaths and the subtle pressure on her hand told her that he was even still there.

Time seemed to stretch on and on, though whether it was a couple of minutes or half an hour, Sam couldn't say. Either way, she wasn't sure what to do. Was she going to be stuck there forever, waiting for this man to finally expire? There was a worry bubbling in the back of her mind of what might happen if Yarec came back in while she was like this. But it just felt wrong to simply let go and walk away from somebody in their final moments.

"I'm scared, Sam..." Blake finally wheezed out. "I'm... so afraid... Please don't... leave me alone... I don't want... to die... alone..."

Sam squeezed his hand a bit tighter. It had always bothered her that she'd seen so many of those around her die but had never been able to do anything for them. It had always reinforced the feeling of helplessness that had never left since that terrible day when their caravan had been attacked. She hadn't been able to help her family, she hadn't been able to do anything for Pari—nothing, not even the simplest gesture. Whatever her feelings about Blake, she could at least do this, even if only for herself.

"I never wanted... it to be... like this... There's so much... I never got... to do..."

His whole body spasmed for a fraction of a second, and Sam had to quickly step to the side to avoid the handful of scarlet droplets that spewed from his mouth.

"It's... not fair... Why me?... What did I... do to... deserve this?"

A second full-body shudder, another small spray of blood.

"I don't... want to... go... Sam... please remember... me... Don't...... forget......"

Slowly, the subtle tremor running through his hand weakened, until at last it faded into nothingness. The fingers loosened and went slack, releasing her hand from his hold, and she let her arm fall back to her side.

"I won't," Samanta Zemzaris whispered, but the words she'd finally found came too late for Blake Myers to hear them.


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