Julius Rictor - Chapter 38 - Faith

A day later, I was sitting on the roof of the castle. It was completely inaccessible by anyone other than an Eater. Even then, only a select few could easily traverse three-dimensional space. Wind Typicals had it easiest.

“I’m such a little baby,” I muttered, falling back until I was staring at the sky. “I’m like fifty, and I’m having screaming matches with twenty-year-olds and making them cry. Haven’t matured a single day.” I bit my lip. “I should be convincing them to help me, not putting them down. The hell is wrong with me?”

The answer to that was numerous and came in several parts. Normal people don’t feel happy beating the shit out of people on trains after having a gun pulled on them. I was never normal. Just pretending to be.

“So tired of the wishy-washy confusing shit.” I shot up. The scene before me was breathtaking. The entirety of Hopeful Lake spanned out before my eyes. Yet it did nothing to me. “Life is so boring. So full of potential, yet completely empty and meaningless.”

I blew raspberries with my lips.

“No!” I suddenly clapped my hands. “Think positive! I’ve successfully become an adventurer! That was cool. Even did a solo mission. I’ve killed monsters. I’ve successfully leveraged my engagement to my advantage. I made up with my parents and see them as parents. That’s huge! If all that’s bothering me is my friends suffocating or betraying me, whatever! It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. Big damn deal.” I leaned back again. “It’s all—Gah!”

Talbert stood over me, frowning.

I shot up again and turned. “How long have you been there?!”

“Halfway through the whining session,” Talbert said. He gestured to the ground. “Let’s train.”

“I’m not really—”

“You’re graduating today.” Talbert cut me off. “Get dressed. Meet me in my room in thirty minutes.”

He leaped off the building while I stared wordlessly after him.

•

I arrived at the promised time, fully suited up in light clothing. Talbert sounded unusually serious, and I wasn’t going to half-ass the fight, whatever it was supposed to mean.

Graduating, huh? I thought as I waved to Talbert upon entering the room. Why now?

“You’re taking this seriously.” Talbert looked me over and smiled. “Good. Get your mind off your failures. Exchange steel and blood. Find the answers you seek.”

Talbert’s room was as big and empty as always. It was the size of a small basketball court with a bed shoved in one corner, weapons bolted to the walls, and a simple trunk for clothes. There were dummies etched with years of sword marks. The floor was worn by years of sliding and jutting feet. There were dried bloodstains molded into the floor. Chips were taken out of the wall.

Yet at the back of the room, there was a lone, long window overlooking the entire Hopeful Lake territory. His room was high up, so the view was beautiful. Violence inside. The world on the outside.

“Three,” began Talbert.

I flinched.

“Two,” he continued.

I closed both my hands and channeled mana. Black blades started forming out of my palms.

“One,” he concluded.

In a flash, he stepped toward me. It was certain and fast, a near-blinding speed I might have fallen for if I hadn’t been fighting the man for years by then.

Quickly closes in. Debilitates with a body shot.

Even though I knew that, the fear and danger were real. Talbert wasn’t swinging at me like we were practicing. It was like he meant to kill or wound me.

The “graduation” part finally settled in my head.

I blocked the shot with my two swords. The force was so intense that I was sent skidding. My feet scraped and scratched the floor.

Before I could recover, Talbert was on me again. His sword bore down on me with an intensity I hadn’t felt from him before.

I dodged, knowing I couldn’t deflect it.

The blade whistled past my nose.

Suddenly, his pommel was in my stomach. My guts burst at the hit.

I was sent sprawling onto the floor, gasping.

I barely had time to react when my head started screaming danger signals. I rolled just in time for a tendril to miss me. It had tried to grab my leg.

“Whole lot of nothing so far,” Talbert said to me. “Get your shit together.”

I stood up. He had six tendrils out of his back. Each one held a large blade of darkness. They swirled, primed and ready to attack like predatory fish waiting in the holes of coral reefs. Any one of them could attack me at any time.

It was a move I’d failed to surmount several times already.

They lunged at me before I had a chance to think, each slightly staggered, creating gaps and weird angles of escape.

The first one came right at my left shoulder. I sashayed right and ducked as the second rolled into my intercept point. I dropped and rolled back as the third and fourth came my way.

But Talbert anticipated this.

The fifth pinned both my arms, and the sixth grabbed my feet.

I knew he wouldn’t, but one yank, and it’d—

He started pulling.

The feeling of my body starting to tear was something I never thought I’d experience and something I would never forget.

“Maybe I should kill you,” Talbert said, startling me. “You have nothing to live for and wasted your life. It’d be better to put you out of your misery. I can grant you that mercy.”

“Are you crazy?!” I managed to shout.

My muscles in my back started to pop. They were on the verge of tearing. My skin felt tight. All of it. He was serious!

“Isn’t this what you want?” Talbert asked. His words were oddly soft. “To fight and die for something? A true fight means forfeiting your life in the end. For this to mean something, you need to die when you fail. So die.” I could almost hear the smile in his voice. “All your worries will go away. Your half-baked ambitions will fade to dust.”

His tendrils raised above me. They were all pointed down, ready to pierce my belly and head.

I could tell it wasn’t a joke. He was actually planning to kill me.

“I’m fine sacrificing myself if it fulfills the dreams of my dear pupil,” Talbert said.

His tendrils moved.

I released a percussive blast of light energy, much stronger than the one I’d used against my friends.

It dissolved the tendrils and sent a wave of force through the room.

The windows burst, weapons fell off the walls, the walls cracked, the door cracked, and the floor split.

Talbert was sent flying.

I hit the ground with my back, rolled, and sprang to my feet. Black swords materialized in my hands. I rotated and threw them right at Talbert.

He ducked his head left, dodging one, and materialized a black shield to catch the other. It stuck and slid through, but he diverted the shield at the last second. The tip barely scratched his face, drawing only a little blood.

Light energy flooded through my entire body, enhancing me far beyond even that of an Eater. In an instant, I was bearing down on Talbert, another sword in my hand, its tip pointed down at him.

Blind rage flowed through me. Yet that same sadistic feeling of fighting I’d felt on the train back in New York shot waves of endorphins down my back.

Talbert, smiling, raised his hands in defeat. “Atta girl.”

His words were so soft and kind, the fight in me instantly left. My energy receded into my body, and the sword in my hand disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

“This old man doesn’t have any more to teach you.” He got up, grunting, and wiped dust off his body. “You’ve still got a lot to learn, but that’ll come from living. At least you’re willing to fight for yourself.” He patted my shoulder and walked past me. “Good job. Let’s talk, swordsman to swordsman.”

I hadn’t realized it, but it was the first time I’d been acknowledged for my own efforts rather than something handed to me. My intelligence was because I was a “Chosen Child,” my gifts were given to me “by the Gods,” and I was a good fighter because “I was taught by Master Talbert.” This was something I’d earned myself. Totally. I was powerful because I wanted to be, and I pushed for it, not because it was handed to me.

I closed my eyes briefly, took in the moment, and followed after Talbert.

He had a small table with a bottle of alcohol and glasses sitting on it by the window. With the window now broken, glass was spread across and around the table. Talbert merely brushed some off the top and the seats, pulled one out for me, and sat in the other. He then took the two glasses, which were luckily upside down, flipped them, and poured his personal reserve of whiskey into them. It was a twelve-year vintage he’d been saving for special occasions.

Apparently, this was one.

I sat quietly in the open chair and grabbed the glass.

“In my eyes, you’re a confident adult capable of making your own decisions. Especially now that you’ve beaten me,” Talbert said. He raised his glass and tipped it toward me. “I’m proud of you.”

I stared for a moment, then tapped my glass to his. “Thank you.”

He turned away, sipped from his drink, then stared out his broken window. “This’ll take a while to fix.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’ll use it as a back door for a while.”

“It’s convenient.”

“That it is.” Talbert drained the rest of his glass and set it down. “We’ve never had a real conversation on something other than training or fighting, have we?”

“No, we have not,” I affirmed.

“Then let me give you some advice.”

“Please.” I crossed my legs and relaxed back in the seat, finishing my whiskey in tandem. “I’m a lost soul.”

“You’re an avid reader. What’s the basic component of a story?” Talbert asked me.

“Hmm… an entertaining concept a reader wants to read?”

“That’s what gets them to start the book, but I’m talking about the story itself.” Talbert held out three fingers. “It’s broken into three parts. A beginning, a middle, and an end.”

“Obviously.”

“May be obvious, but you didn’t say it,” Talbert chastised me with a sarcastic smile, refilling his glass. “It’s a basic three-act structure, and it’s compelling, but predictable. No stakes. Deep down, you know what’s going to happen to some degree. But there’s something to it.” He tapped the table with the bottom of his glass. “Everyone needs a beginning, but that beginning should propel them to a certain ending. An outcome they desire. A drive. What you want. But you need to have a beginning first. Most people never have that.”

I crinkled my nose. “What do you mean?”

“If you break down someone’s life structure in that style, people are basically born, they live, they die,” he explained. “But that’s not a story. That’s not unique. Everyone is born. Everyone dies. It’s the middle where the fun is. The story that leads to the end. The circumstances of your birth influence the middle, but you own the middle.”

He drained his glass, put it down, and placed two fingers on the table to create an invisible line of sorts.

“Yet, in the middle, there are several new beginnings and endings, if you can call them that. But the main plot thread of human existence is absolute.” He tapped with one finger. “We are born.” He slowly started sliding it to the other. “We live.” They connected. “We die.” He looked at me. “But that does not make you great, nor mean that you matter. To matter, to change the world and be significant with purpose, I think somewhere in the middle, you have to find a new beginning.” He spread out his fingers. “Everything before that is a prologue preparing you for that beginning.” He relaxed and pointed at me. “You’re still in your prologue.”

His words reminded me of Astria, causing me to frown. “You mean I haven’t discovered my purpose yet?”

“No, you haven’t found a reason to live and die,” Talbert corrected. “Most people are in a prologue their entire lives. They die without ever starting a story. They’re content to work, reproduce, grow old, and die, leaving behind a name that’ll be forgotten in less than two generations. Lives unworthy of the annals of history, being branded into tomes for generations to come.” He was getting more and more passionate as he spoke. “An exceptional person changes the world. They get a beginning, because their story is worth telling. Find your beginning.”

“I don’t even really know what that all means,” I admitted, feeling dumb for some reason.

“You do.” He gestured to his room, filled with glass and cracked walls. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have fought so hard all this time. There’s a seed of greatness resting in you.” He pointed at my brain, as if jabbing an invisible blade at it. “What kind of seed is it? And how can you make it grow?”

I was still so confused. I got the overall analogy, but I didn’t know exactly what he meant as it pertained to me specifically. It was like he wanted me to nod and give him an answer.

Talbert seemed to sense that.

“What do I want to do?” he asked. “That’s not the right way of phrasing it. What a person wants to do changes on a whim. Ask yourself this: how will I change the world?” He relaxed. “For me, I wanted to end war. I never got the chance, but it’s all I ever wanted. Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of that goal long ago. I wasn’t strong enough to finish my own story.” He peered at me, suddenly very serious. It felt imposing. “If you could change the world tonight, what would you do?”

It was supposedly a hard question. For some reason, though, an answer spilled out of me without much thought.

“I’d give everyone a way out.”

Talbert stared at me. “Meaning?”

“A way out of… whatever is restricting them. Marriage. Poverty. Debt. Despair. Whatever.” I couldn’t face him while I was speaking. I found my gaze turning to Hopeful Lake and its vast blue water, which seemed like an ocean in the distance. “Freedom. Or chaos,” I said simply. “I want people to be able to live life as they see fit, or figure it out.” I paused. “Taking your analogy, I want everyone to have a beginning, if they can.”

“It’s impossible.”

“I know.”

“If people got in your way?”

My eyes drooped slightly. “If… people got in my way… and I was actually trying to achieve this goal… I’d do what I must.”

“Would you die for it if you had to?”

I turned to Talbert, eyes clear and powerful. “Yes.”

Talbert looked at me for a long time and smiled. “I see.” He relaxed in his chair. “When did you decide this?”

“Very recently,” I admitted, relaxing as well. We were both staring out the shattered window. “A combination of people helped me reach this conclusion. I took everything I knew and came up with some sort of answer.”

“To your beginning.”

“In your example, yes.”

Talbert was quiet for a moment. Then, “Does this killer signify a direct affront to your beliefs?”

My face darkened. “He took the lives of five people, denied them their futures, and pointed a finger right at me. Yes.”

Talbert tapped the table thoughtfully. A part of me really wished I could read his mind.

“Then you should do whatever you can to rectify the situation, even if it means harming those you love,” Talbert said. His voice was almost like a whisper. “Changing the world will always leave people in your wake.”

My stomach and mind rejected that conclusion as much as it rejoiced in its simplicity. Past me would have eagerly agreed. People were meant to betray you, to be left behind. It was easier to do that to them before they did that to you.

Yet, even though I felt that way, I was always trying to help people. I wanted people to love and need me.

I felt like two people split in half. 

Talbert was staring at me, waiting for me to respond. 

“I don’t know if I agree,” I told him.

He paused for a moment, then nodded. “Good.”

“Good?”

“If I had all the answers, you wouldn’t learn anything.” His finger rapped against the table. “But hopefully I still helped.”

“You did.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I replayed Talbert’s words in my head. His beliefs about others and his harsh conclusion about most people still reminded me of bits of what Astria said to me, though he phrased it slightly differently. 

A detail I’d forgotten and had been meaning to ask popped back in my head. 

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“You said you’ve met a Voiced before, back when we were planning what to do about Astria,” I reminded him. “When was that? Was it Astria?”

Talbert tensed. His gaze was distant, and I saw fear in him I’d never seen before. But he calmed the crack as soon as it appeared. I almost felt like I had imagined it. 

For the first time since I’d known him, Talbert looked old. Whatever memory I’d touched, it wasn’t buried as deeply as he wanted it to be.

“I enlisted as a soldier when I was eleven and earned a Divine Treat that same year. I had a knack for fighting, as you’ve seen,” he began. “Once you’ve been given a Divine Treat by a Lord, you’re bound to them in some form, even if you de-enlist someday. Earning a gift connects you permanently to your country, and you need to fight for it when need be.”

These were things I already knew, but I patiently listened and waited for what I wanted to hear. 

“When I was 21, I took a leave of absence from my knighthood to roam the country. I received permission from Marquis Flader in Port Prosper, and set out for a two-year journey as an adventurer.” Talbert held out his tongue. The emblem on the Guild appeared. It looked like Gai’s, only it had four wings instead of two. He was a B-rank adventurer. 

“Impressive,” I acknowledged.

Talbert scoffed. “I don’t need compliments, kid.” He tussled my hair anyway, knowing it annoyed me. “I spent a year stateside building up a reputation, then I agreed to join as a guard for a trading vessel headed for Agias. We rounded the western side of the continent after our vessel left Port Prosper. There was very little resistance.” His gaze shot off into the distance, as if he were witnessing the memory all over again. “When we reached Agias, our ship fell upon some bad weather, and it crashed into the frozen western wilderness of Agias.”

Agias was a harsh country, almost entirely snowy year-round, save for the calming summer months that felt more like a warm fall or a light spring. They had a climate similar to Nordic countries, with people of similar demeanors and builds. The environment was harsh for the unprepared, even worse for a shipwreck survivor. It spoke volumes of Talbert’s will to survive.

“There were twelve of us aboard that ship. Half of us survived. We gathered what gear we could and hiked toward the nearest town one of the ship members could remember,” he continued.

The rest of his tale was filled with near-death encounters, weather-related deaths, and accidents. In total, by the time they reached the nearest town, Talbert was pulling along the last remaining member of the crew, barely alive as the man was strapped to his back.

“I was the only Eater on the ship, so the toils didn’t affect me as much,” he said.

But the man died mere hours after they reached the village from a combination of a leg infection and the cold. The man was full of regret, but seemed to pass peacefully in his sleep. They’d left his body out in the cold, intent on burying him, but he came back as a Synborn of Envy, which was a snake-like creature with immense speed and hunger. 

It went through killing people in the village. Talbert was strong enough to fend it off, but too weak to complete a killing blow.

“Then out of the sky like a God, he appeared.” Talbert’s voice was reverent, as if he were a plant praising the sun. “Caine. He was tall and broad, like a mountain who’d become man on a whim. His eyes were the gold color you saw in Astria’s, and he had long white hair, just like hers.” He paused. “His bloodlust was overwhelming. With a swipe of his hand, the sky descended and destroyed the creature, turning it into dust.”

I stared in surprise. “And?”

“He singled me out in the crowd in an instant. Before I knew it, he and I were on a plane of ice far from civilization.”

Like teleportation?

“I felt his killing intent. He was going to kill me,” Talbert continued. “Then, he hesitated. Said that, for helping his people, even though I was an enemy from another country, he’d give me a chance at survival.” Talbert looked down. “In that moment before he left, I called out to him. I asked him… how I could become like him. I saw him as a hero for his people. I was young. I wanted to be that more than anything else.”

I tensed. “And?”

“He told me I was not the kind of person with a will to change the world and die for it.” Talbert let out a dark laugh. “That my death would only mean death.” His expression softened with pain. “Then he was gone. I barely found civilization then. I think he expected me to die.”

Death would only mean death? What does that mean?

We were quiet for a moment. 

“I think that was the actual answer, though. I just don’t know what it means. Likely never will. I think it’s the key,” Talbert said. He looked at me. “Do you understand why I’ve said what I’ve said today?”

“I do.” He wanted me to be someone at least willing to change the world. The Voiced seemed to make that a criterion of some sort, and it was the only piece of evidence I’d ever heard on how to become a Voiced. 

It was vague, but it was something, whatever it meant. 

“Good.” He patted the table twice and stood. “Think on it. I’ll leave you be. It’s been good training you, Lady Scarlet. You were an exceptional student. I will miss our time together.”

Miss our time together?

My nose crinkled, and I stood up, looking after him. “What does that mean?”

But he was already gone, silently, the image of his back the last thing I saw of him before he disappeared into the castle.