The Sage's Reign

by Shakyra Dunn

  “What?” Kinaju couldn’t stop blinking between the sword on the ground and Solus’s unnervingly calm gaze, trying to process the sudden turn of events. “Why?” he whispered. Solus didn’t acknowledge his words, continuing to baffle the younger boy. Kinaju stomped his foot on the dirt, crushing a branch under his weight. “Why?!” His voice was growing louder with every syllable that escaped him. “How could you spare me, again?!”

  “You aren’t worth the bloodshed,” Solus said simply, shrugging.

  “Are you serious?! How am I not?!”

  “Leave here,” Solus continued. “If Rem and the others show up and catch you, it will mean bad news for you rather than me.” He started past him before pausing, snubbing him with his shoulder. “Kinaju, was it? I can only be so lenient. If you are from the Order of Helix, you are my enemy, and nothing more.”

  Kinaju clenched his teeth, flexing his fingers to ease his boiling tension. The more that this man tried to belittle him with each encounter, the more irritated that he became.

  It reminded him of his father.

  “Oh, and by the way, don’t hold a sword’s hilt loosely. When you pick up a weapon, you must be ready to wield it with ease. If you try to attack again, you’d best be prepared for a real battle.” With those words, Solus exited his sight and trekked off into the open space.

  Kinaju stared at Solus’s back until it disappeared from his sight. With a sigh, he began tossing a crystalline eye up and down, catching it in his hand each time. “A real battle, huh…?”

  He whistled and let the sound carry upon the wind before a black and grey bird came soaring down in front of him. Once it had settled on the ground, he pulled a note from his back pocket and tied it to the bird’s talon.

  “Currio, make sure this reaches home safely, all right?” The bird flapped its wings and took to the skies once more, leaving Kinaju behind. “This is certainly a new development… I hope that father doesn’t take action for himself.”

  Solus’s chest was tight, his body racked with pain. It was reading clear on his face, and he knew that his current state would send his allies into a frenzy. Rare was it that he felt so helpless and exhausted all at once. He had to grip a tree trunk just to catch his breath. When he emerged from the forest, his friends were nowhere to be found. He decided to try his luck by returning to the trees, but before he could get too far, he dropped to his knees. For a moment, he felt disoriented, even a little confused about where his energy had suddenly gone.

  “Get up,” a resounding voice surged through his mind. Hazy images circled the area, and from his spot, he noticed a large man hovering over a child with short brown hair. The child was laying on the ground shaking, covering his ears with both hands, as if to block out the man’s words. “This is no time to break your concentration. On your feet, now.”

  “No!” the child screeched, rolling onto his side to avoid the man. “It was a mistake!”

  Solus could only watch in horror as the man standing above the child raised a hand, grabbing him by the shirt collar and hoisting him to his feet. “This ‘mistake’ you made,” The man pointed behind him as something that neither of them could make out. The child was quick to cover his eyes at the sight. “Was yours and yours alone. Take responsibility for what you’ve done!” He shoved the boy ahead, causing him to stumble forward and fall onto his face, scooting back as quickly as possible while crying.

  Rem broke through the trees, his sleeves slightly torn. Leilana and Sien were directly behind him, Leilana’s left cheek bleeding from a single scratch, a memento of one of the wolves in her path.

  “At least those wolves are finally out of the picture,” Sien mumbled, wiping some blood from Leilana’s face. The younger girl flinched at the contact.

  “Hey, Sol!” Rem called out upon noticing the man still planted in the dirt. “You okay over there?” Solus’s body was swaying, his vision falling through black. Rem’s voice could barely reach him. He turned slightly to face the young Prince, a few tears slipping from his eyes.

  “There’s something… I remember…”

  Rem raced towards Solus as he fell forward, catching him by his shoulders before he impacted. “Hey, Solus!” Leilana covered her mouth with both hands, her words becoming hitched in her throat. Rem shook his shoulders, but Solus was nothing more than dead weight, his back straightened and his body still sitting as tall as a tree due to the young prince’s support. “Come on, get up!”

  Sien approached the two, pressing her index and middle finger to Solus’s neck, her expression becoming relieved upon retrieving his pulse. “He’s alive, and his pulse is still relatively normal,” she concluded. Rem was chewing on his bottom lip to ease his thoughts out of the cracks in his darkness.

  “Something happened to him,” he mumbled, wrapping Solus’s arm around his shoulders, grabbing him by his belt before hoisting him to a stand. “Let’s get a move on. The closest town shouldn’t be far from here now.”

  Leilana gazed upon the tear stains that Solus had left behind on the road. She wasn’t the only one suffering from a form of amnesia; Solus was the same. There was something that he remembered, something that brought him to tears. He was still just a mystery to her.

  Solus jolted awake, a cold towel sliding from his forehead and into his hand. When he did manage to catch his breath, he noticed Sien sitting in a chair at his bedside, holding her racing heart. She didn’t ease out of her concerns until he settled down. The room they were in was dimly lit, only a candle left to illuminate the room. Solus’s eyes settled on Rem, who was rubbing his tired eyes and tossing his blanket off to the side.

  “I-I’m sorry,” he settled with as Rem was approaching his bedside. It was at the last second that Solus noticed the rage in the young prince’s eyes, though his expression was calm. He could barely sense the slap coming for him and couldn’t react until after it had struck his face. Solus gingerly touched his throbbing left cheek.

  “You idiot,” Rem snarled. Solus was fighting the urge to strike him back, his face riddled with a touch of confusion. What had he done to warrant himself as an ‘idiot’ this time? “I don’t know what you were doing back there, but you are not to act on your own accord again!” He clenched his fists, shaking his head. “Not like this.”

  “You do not rule my life, Remiel,” Solus protested, fighting to keep his voice level. This whole ordeal seemed to come out of the blue. “Don’t tell me what to do with it.”

  “I am Prince!” Rem exclaimed, extending his arms outward. “And you are still my servant!” Solus shot his lord a dark look, his emotions beginning to boil. So, he’d resorted to selfishness, bargaining for the upper hand.

  Sien grabbed Rem’s arms to try and mellow the situation. “Rem, stop! This is pointless!”

  Rem ended up pushing her slightly out of the way. Though there was no force behind the gesture, Sien fell to the floor, glaring up at him. “Don’t interfere, Sien! This has nothing to do with you anymore!” Rem approached the bed, grabbing Solus by his shirt collar, bringing his face close to his. Solus didn’t bat an eyelash. “And you. Who do you think you are, trying to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong when you can’t even do that for yourself?”

  “The only one keeping you in line,” Solus retorted, prying Rem’s hands from his shirt before shooting to a stand. The two didn’t stop glaring at one another.

  “You aren’t doing anything of meaning,” Rem hissed.

  Sien shook her head slowly. “You two are being so irrational.” She knew that the words were lost on the two, but their argument was even more meaningless than their considerations.

  “I am still uprooting that meaning,” Solus implied. “And now that I have one piece of myself intact, that path is being set before me.”

  “What the hell are you trying to say?!” Rem roared.

  The door opened and Leilana stepped in with a tray of four bowls of steaming soup, taken aback by the sudden turn of events. Somehow, she was expecting things to come t
o this sooner or later though; tensions between them were rather high.

  “I have dedicated this life to you, Remiel. I can use it how I wish. If I want to use it for your sake, save your life, or even give it to someone else, you have no reason to stop me.” He jabbed his finger into Rem’s chest. “You are a prince of a fallen kingdom. A kingdom that we are not yet ready to reclaim. And as you are right now, you will never make a proper king. You will never be ready to take your place.”

  Rem’s head was swimming. He couldn’t stop flexing his fingers to regain a grip on reality, but it did him no good to distract himself. How dare he. How dare he willingly toss shade at him. By now, his head was pounding, his stomach turning. He slammed his fist into a wall, the chipped paint smoking after his rather lethal contact. Solus didn’t blink, but he felt grateful that punch didn’t come to his face instead. Rem wound up storming out of the room before anyone could speak a word to him. Sien was quick to follow him, mainly to keep the other patrons in the hotel from being disturbed—Rem’s fiery temperance would very well get them kicked out.

  Leilana set the tray on the nightstand next to Solus’s bed as the elder boy started rubbing his temples. “Dare I ask what that was about?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” he mumbled, taking a seat. “Rem gets this way when he hears about what others think, and he doesn’t know how to accept it. It’s true, I don’t feel like he’s ready to become King of Adrylis just yet. He’s still got so much that he needs to learn, and it takes time.”

  Leilana sat next to him, resting a hand on his. “But that’s time he doesn’t have. We’re at war, Solus. We don’t have the fortune of waiting for Rem to catch up to the reality of what his actions could do for this world. All that we can do is continue to stand at his side and hope for the best with him.”

  Solus tried to smile, but it came off rather forced instead. She couldn’t blame him for not knowing the right approach—he was under a lot of pressure himself, and now he was regaining pieces of his splintered past. She had already regained some knowledge of her life in Minsura, and like her, he had the potential to remember life before Rem.

  “I’m going to sleep more. Putting that ordeal to rest wore me out,” he proclaimed, pulling the covers over himself, concealing even his hair underneath the thin sheets. “Good night, Leilana.”

  “Good night,” she mumbled. Maybe Sien managed to get through to Rem and the worst of the argument was reaching a simmer now that they were split up. She could only hope.

  As the silence drew on, she swore that she heard sobs from the other side of the room. Sinking further under the covers, she allowed Solus to have the space that he needed. He and Rem were on edge, it was only natural that things could come to this.

  “You were wrong, and you know it.”

  Rem was sitting on the porch of the inn, gazing upon the sleepy town of Sankuri, only lanterns left to illuminate what remained in the region. Unlike most towns this size, they not only had an inn, but they also had several homes built from mahogany wood—rare to find, difficult to cut down due to how scarce the trees were becoming, and yet this town used the material willy-nilly. The cultural differences throughout Adrylis were far too evident. Some were dependent on their resources, others on nurturing the land with their own hands. And then there was Linmus, a country that stood on its own plains, separate from the lands struggling to survive and flourish.

  Sometimes he was almost thankful for being pushed away from his home. Without that budge from the leader of the Order of Helix, his thoughts on life outside of the kingdom would have remained a mystery. He didn’t deny that he missed the close-knit fondness brought on by his family and subjects and that the actions taken by the kingdom’s proclaimed terrorists were unjustified, but there had to be some sort of arrangement for it all.

  Sien sighed. “You’re not even listening to me.”

  “Why should I listen to a speech about how I was wrong for wanting my best friend to be safe? He does so much to push himself, and he can’t seem to comprehend his limits.”

  “You’re not much different,” Sien stated, pulling her skirt down a little to keep her ankles from being caught in a chill of the night wind while she sat. “Think about it, Rem. Solus is used to supporting you because that’s his duty. He places your life above his, even if it puts him in danger. I understand why you’re reacting this way too. Now that things have changed and you’re fighting to take back your home, you don’t want to do it alone. You’re scared of losing the only person left to tie you back to Linmus.” Rem’s back was sinking further with each word until he was burying his face in his knees to keep her from seeing his overwhelming anguish.

  “It’s all right to be afraid,” she told him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “And it’s okay to be concerned and protect your friends. But what you did wasn’t the right approach to handling it. You could have really damaged him.”

  “I didn’t hurt him,” he mumbled.

  “Psychologically, not physically.” Rem looked up at her in the corner of his eye. “It’s probably got him thinking. I think that you need to give him some space before you try to properly talk about this kind of situation. Let him know that you care about him. And make sure that you don’t go clinging to his support because that will show that you treat him more as a servant than your best friend.”

  Rem remained silent. Sien allowed him to sit back and think about her words before she stood, stretching her arms, and breathing a sigh of relief. She crossed her arms, the grace of the stars budding in the midnight air welcoming. A new moon was approaching in one more day. That gave them some windows of opportunity. The demons swarming Adrylis, innocent animals corrupted by the Order of Helix’s whispers, would be rising stronger, the elegance of a hopeful absent silhouette turning the world anew. One night would bring them despair, and the following morning, temporary peace.

  “We should be reaching Ocula tomorrow,” she told Rem. Though she smiled at the stars, the hint of sorrow on Rem’s face deterred her. They were nestled together under the world’s blessing, and yet, they seemed so far apart, broken by a single interaction. “I hope that everything will be all right. Not only for the two of you but for all of us.” She folded her hands, resting them against her chest as if asking for validation to her prayer. “We need to have cool heads in times of crisis.”

  Sien stole a glance at him and found that he was still staring at her, his position unchanged. His brown eyes glistened under the light of the crescent moon, his skin like porcelain. Magnificent and elegant, but expected of a noble. His expression was soft despite his growing distress, his mere presence drawing life to her empty world. He’d never see his regal stature evolving before her eyes. Traveling with him gave her a new sense of hope, and he would never know the gratitude that she wanted to return.

  She knelt next to him, cupping his face in her hands. The two stared at one another in silence; Rem was met with undeniable tenderness. She was pressing her lips against his forehead, so gingerly out of fear that her lips were dry enough to cut through his flawless skin. Rem’s lips parted, but words didn’t come to the surface. Sien blinked a few times before backing away, leaving to return to her room, covering her blushing face with her hand. Rem cleared his throat, using the collar of his shirt to fan himself once he’d tucked away enough of the layering.

  That talk turned into something more, but it couldn’t drag him out of his thoughts. He reached for the orb in his pocket and decided to call up Amiria.

  The sun had yet to rise when Leilana awoke to shuffle about the room. A once-over showed her that Sien and Solus weren’t distracted by the noise, remaining asleep. She looked to the door, where she made out a messy patch of dark hair in the dusk. She yawned, rubbing her eyes.

  “Rem, what are you doing…?” He wordlessly took off into the hall. More awake now, she didn’t hesitate to follow until he was near the entrance. “Rem.” Rem had his palm on the door and a bag in his right hand when her voice reached his ears
again. “Going somewhere?”

  “I need to get away for a while,” he told her softly. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  “Wait, what?” She was rubbing her eyes to cleanse the exhaustion, unsure if what he said was truly what she heard. He waited long enough for her to gather herself, his eyes narrowing more with each second of travel time lost. “Where are you going? Why are you going?”

  “Away,” he repeated, causing Leilana to do a double-take. “I don’t have a destination in mind. But I need time to think, and I can’t do it here, not with you guys.”

  “But it’s dangerous out there!”

  “For you, maybe, but you’ll have Solus and Sien to protect you.” She almost scoffed. Here he was, belittling her again despite overcoming their issues. Every time that she thought that she was closer to understanding him, he pulled back into his shell and the process would begin anew. This game of tug-of-war was getting stale, fast. “I can handle things on my own.”

  “You won’t make it far with the Order of Helix at your back and Adrylis falling at your feet,” she tried to reason. “Nobody knows that you’re alive. How will you bail yourself out if you get into trouble?”

  “I’ll figure it out.” She couldn’t stand the arrogance that he was throwing at her, practically pushing all logic out of the window. He was too far gone to convince him otherwise, and that was what made his mentality more dangerous.

  “Is this because of Solus, Rem?” Now he wasn’t the only one pulling statements from thin air. “He feels really guilty about what happened. He was crying, and I’ve never really seen Solus cry, which means that he took it as seriously as you are right now-”