Lumeria POV

The gates suddenly opened. The soldiers are invited in so they’re hastily packing things up. Soril still hasn’t come back. She doesn’t remember the trip back to Kanra. But she does recall the deaths. It haunts her every waking moment. And in her sleep, she imagines their throaty screams and cries. How horrifying it sounded. Bathory has been smugly taunting her the entire time. But she doesn’t register what she’s saying. Something along the lines of, I told you so.  

She finds herself stumbling into Rakgar’s tent. She didn’t realize she had persuaded the guards to let her through, but now that she’s before him. She dares not even look at his face, but she feels compelled to apologize,  

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry... I didn’t intend to. I swear.”  

“What kind of trickery are you trying to pull this time.” She slouches against the bars. Burying her face into her palms and silences her sobs. What is she even doing here? Is she trying to seek forgiveness from the enemy?   

“Did you get dumped?”   

“I-” her words get caught in her throat. She should confess to her sins. He deserves to know, so she forces the rest of the statement out,  

“Killed your sister, and everyone else that remains in Feror.” his replies take a while to come, but when it does, it feels like a hot knife gutting the pit of her stomach, 

“And you’re here to gloat?” it makes her spin around and yell, 

“Does it look like I’m gloating?” it disarms him. There’s just a confused expression on his face.  

“Stop looking so stunned! Dumb gorilla. Condemn me! Tell me how much you hate me! How much I deserve to die! How much you want to kill me!” he lifts an eyebrow at her,  

“Is that what you want me to do?”  

“Yes!” 

“Then I’m not going to do it. Sounds more to me you want to use my rage to grant yourself moral justification. Get consumed by your own guilt and kill yourself. That’s the best type of retribution for types like you who can’t ever feel like you did something wrong.” Those words weigh so heavily in her heart. She’s drowning beneath a festering pool and she’s struggling to breathe. She can’t take this anymore.  

Standing up, she pulls a dagger out from her sleeve to pick at his lock. What is she doing right now? She isn’t thinking rationally. Is she seriously going to free the enemy? If he gets away, then they have nothing remaining to hold Godor back. Don’t do this, Lumeria. Don’t make this mistake! Don’t act out of emotions! She’ll just get more people killed like this! She forcefully pries herself away before she’s able to completely open it. Hyperventilating. She runs out of the tent afterwards. Stumbling into a tree to throw up. The nausea is catching up to her. Emptying her stomach of all the bile that’s been bubbling up her throat. A napkin is handed to her,  

“What’s wrong, Miss Lumeria?” she turns her head towards the speaker, wiping her mouth. It’s Ovid. And Theo’s following closely behind him,  

“Wait. No way! Are you pregnant? I’m going to go tell Lord Blain-” she grabs him when he attempts to leave, 

“No! That's not it. I- I just feel sick from everything that happened.” but they’re not getting it, instead, they’re giving her a congratulatory slap on the back, 

“Oh! You’re talking about our ambush in Feror? No one else could’ve pulled it off from that great distance except for you.”  

“That’s something to be proud of! You cleaned up everyone that was threatening to kill us.”  

“How can I be proud when I brutally murdered thousands of people who didn’t even anticipate an attack? Who wasn’t even given a fair chance to fight back? How can I be proud when I brutally murdered hundreds of innocent victims that have done no wrong and played no part in this war?” the recollection of their faces chokes her to tears again,  

“There’s no honor and justice in this. That was just indiscriminate slaughter. It’s... wrong.” they exchange a contemplative gaze before tugging on her wrists,  

“Come with us.”  

They bring her towards the top of the battlement. The air here feels bitingly cold. The corpses of Astian soldiers still haven’t been fully cleared out. Instead, they’re just left to fester beneath the flesh flies. Ovid points to one of the half-decomposed carcasses,  

“That’s Jason. His mother is a seamstress, and his father is a shoemaker. He liked to feed stray dogs in his free time.” Theo points to another one,  

“That’s Randolf. He was a father of three, his wife was pregnant with their fourth child when he was drafted. He never got to watch his own children grow up. He’s a gentle man that painted portraits to send to his family every month and now, I suppose, they will no longer be receiving any.”  

“That’s Michael, he’s from the same town as us. Always been a bit of a prick. A bully. He’s bitter because his mother is a whore, and his father beats him. But I’d rather still have him alive than rotting on a wall-walk miles away from home.” Ovid turns to her,  

“What we’re trying to show you here is, war is indiscriminate slaughter no matter what.”  

“And we’ll much rather it be our enemies, than us. It’s frustrating honestly to hear you say that you regret your actions.” Theo scoffs,  

“If I had your abilities, I will happily demolish a thousand enemy camps and I will not even bat an eye.” 

“But I’m not like this! You didn’t see the destruction. Whatever that was, was pure evil. The very same deeds that I condemn others for! And for what? Pride? Vengeance? Stupidity? I don’t even have a reasonable vendetta against Godor! I can’t justify that as the only solution.”  

They sigh. Seating her down on the ledges of the battlement. Swinging their legs over the walls on each of her side,  

“We understand how you feel. Truly, we do.” 

“How could you! Did you ever turn an entire town to dust?” but they’re being patient with her outburst. Rubbing circles on her back to try and calm her down.  

“Not to that extend.” Ovid says with a grim voice,  

“But shortly after we joined the army. We got deployed to ambush one of the Estelian towns during the night. It was completely unguarded. Rand Wascald gave the order to take any one with able bodies as slaves and kill the rest that won’t be useful at manual labor.” 

“That includes, women, and very young children.”  

“So, did you?” Theo continues, 

“It wasn’t easy for us. We never had to fight a battle like that. I would hardly even call it a battle. They didn’t even retaliate. There was not a single soldier in sight. Just helpless farmers. Civilians.”  

“Still, I plunged my sword into a crying child staring straight into my eyes. Pleading me for mercy. And I felt sick. I felt disgusted afterwards. I was thinking of just deserting. I didn’t want to do this anymore if this is what it takes to win a war.” Theo looks at Ovid with half a chuckle, nudging his side to remind him,  

“We did try to run actually.” he recalls with a wry laugh, 

“In the dead of night. Remember how frightened we felt?”  

“But a few of our upper men came to stop us. Found us packing our bags in the room.”  

“They tried to persuade us out of it.”  

“But that didn’t stop us. We said, fuck this. It’s either we lose our heads to our own people, or we lose our heads eventually on the fields. There wasn’t even a choice that was given to us, so we wanted to make our own. We wanted to get far, far away from Astia, from Estelis. Maybe go East to Xerysus, or even further than that. To continents we’ve only heard of in books and plays.”  

“But you’re still here. What happened?” Ovid reaffirms with Theo, 

“Jace, his name was Jace, wasn’t it?”  

“Yeah. Jace was our teacher who taught us how to wield a sword. He said something then. Asked us a question.” and now they’re directing the question to her,  

“Have you ever lost someone dear to you?” 

“I did. It’s just... a long, long time ago.”  

“But do you remember how it felt?”  

She closes her eyes to try and recall those emotions,  

“Helpless...” She held his dead body in her arms. A puddling of blood spilling from his chest and the corpse has long turned cold.  

“Anger. I wanted to kill the man responsible. I wanted to get even.” She was before Father. She remembers the fire hot fury seething through her veins. Wildly tussling against her restraints whilst screaming bloody murder.   

“Then devastation. Knowing that there’s no way I can fight back.” She was locked in a cell in solitary for an entire century after that to reflect. She did not even get to meet him again before he reincarnates.  

“What happened to those feelings?”  

“I learnt to forget. So, I can live again. So, I can feel alive again. I learnt to bend my knee to the overlord that rules me.”  

“But it doesn't have to be this way anymore. You’re now given the opportunity to fight. So don’t be the same helpless person you once were.”  

“The honor and justice you speak of are flowery morals that can only exist in stories. What drove us to stay in the end, was pride, vengeance and stupidity.”  

“We came to terms that we can’t be the good guys. We all have others we like, others we don’t like, and others we do not even think about. So, fuck all those things. What matters in the end is keeping people that we care about safe. No matter the costs.”  

“Perhaps you should think about that instead, Miss Lumeria. Are we people worth protecting unconditionally even if it means you must be the bad guy sometimes?”