2412, Crescin 6, Kindreth; Jered Kilemna

Rhys slammed his hands on the table. The sound was muffled by the ice, making it sound like a fish slapped the surface. Tch. He couldn't even get the satisfaction of expressing his anger successfully. He blew a breath, braced his hands on his hips, and paced.

"Stop it. Look, you've already burned the ice with your soles," Cyrdel said.

Rhys looked to his feet then frowned. The brownie heir snorted and took a sip from his steaming cup of tea. It's confusing how the brownie could be so calm especially after what happened earlier. How in Umazure was Cyrdel there, sipping tea like there's nothing going wrong above them?

Rhys resumed his pacing, his mind already buzzing with ideas on how to turn the tide around. This was a bad day possibly because of the holiday. It's Jered Kilemna. The Day of Death. Perhaps, it would have been better if they had forgone the attack today as Rhys had suggested.

Sadly, the Grand Marshal was so eager to drive the enemies out of the Capital she ordered a frontal attack on the main flank. Not only that the platoon they sent failed miserably, the secret of the last resort was out.

The Grand Marshal, apparently, had been monitoring the camp and planned to blow up the earth underneath them. It was a genius plan and would certainly ensure the survival of the Capital and the perishing of the enemies. If it worked.

Nobody counted on how good Kymalin Iaro was at torture, almost as good as Eldan. In less than an hour, she had wrung out every answer she wanted as well as the sanity of the soldiers their enemies had captured.

Rhys's blood burned when he saw the state of the ice sprites dropped at the Capital's west entrance. They were bloodied and could barely talk in complete sentences. Nyxis was still in the healing hall doing his best to restore the ice sprites back to health.

Then, as if the enemy was not finished, the Cardovic unit decided to launch a full-platoon attack on the upper levels. The ice sprites held out at first but it became clear that with limited resources on their countermeasures against the different synnavaimis, they weren't going to last long.

It's Cyrdel's job to oversee the production and to offer his expertise. What was he doing on the one-hundred and fiftieth floor, drinking tea?

Cyrdel raised an eyebrow and took another sip from his cup. "Why are you looking at me like you're angry?" he asked.

"Probably because he is," Ravalee interjected, her tone clipped. It's like she sensed that there's something that's going to happen and that she's trying her best to contain it.

Cyrdel whirled to his girlfriend and snorted. "Him? Angry? What for?"

"Shouldn't you have anything better to do other than drink tea?" Rhys stalked to where Cyrdel sat on a mattress.

"Whoa, chill," Cyrdel spread his hands as he stared up at Rhys. "I'm just resting. I'm going back to the crafters in a moment. What better way to rest than spending it with your loved one?"

Rhys looked away. "How come you're so calm when everything else is falling apart?"

Cyrdel raised an eyebrow. "Well, why are you so worked up when we can hope that the Grand Marshal still has something up her sleeves?"

"If you're listening to the Council meetings at all, the last resort plan cost a ton of resources," Rhys crossed his arms. "The Grand Marshal made a mistake. She is to not be trusted completely to handle this situation."

Cyrdel sipped from his cup. "Good luck to us, then," his tone went down a notch. "Clearly our lives are in her hands."

"And I refuse to let it be so," Rhys faced the Alkaran heir.

Cyrdel shrugged. "Why are you blaming it on me, man? I'm just doing my part. You do yours. That way, we can't be at fault when all this fails."

"Optimism, right there," Rhys rolled his eyes. "Are you not concerned about the ice sprites? For us?"

"No," Cyrdel stared right into Rhys's eyes. Rhys could only see a flat expanse of amber. "The only one I want to save is Ravalee. If I could leave this place, I would. If not for Ravalee insisting that we stay and protect the Virtakios, I'll be the first to stay away from this place, from Penleth, from Alkara. From the freaking brownies, for the gods' sake."

Rhys narrowed his eyes. "You've really given up, haven't you?"

Cyrdel held Rhys's stare. "Yes and that's not a lie."

Rhys snorted. Unbelievable. They were here, in the middle of a war, and all Cyrdel thought about was escaping? How selfish of him! His people were enslaved, even dying. The island he lives on was being turned over on its head. And all he cared about was escaping?

This was...

"What? You think it's selfish?" Cyrdel said aloud, making Rhys blink. Was he beginning to be a thyminka too? Scary. Cyrdel scoffed. "Guess what, I know that. I know myself. It's no use in pretending that I have this noble goal of protecting the island when in reality, I just want to save myself and Ravalee. At least I'm honest. Unlike you."

Rhys didn't speak. Cyrdel had hit a chord. It's true. He didn't have a personal stake in this war except maybe saving the island so he wouldn't die along with it. For his people, the varichriais, and for his sister. He was doing this for the island. He had nothing left to lose. Unlike Cyrdel, he saw the big picture. Unlike Cyrdel, he's not going to run from his responsibility.

"Do you even know where your throne is?" Rhys waved a hand in the air between them. "Or are you that careless that you have given it yourself to the Sovereign's hands?"

"I don't know, okay!" Cyrdel shot up. The contents of his cup splashed out and spilled into the floor. The liquid hissed as the heat sizzled with the ice. Cyrdel, meanwhile, was anything but cold. "Look, I don't have everything figured out like you do," Cyrdel set the cup down on the nearby table. He faced Rhys. "I'm not the heir I was destined to be. I'm not a fighter. I'm not anything. So don't nag me about giving up. I really don't have anything left to fight for."

"What about Ravalee?" Rhys glanced at the young thyminka still seated on the mattress. She wasn't looking at Cyrdel. Were they in some sort of a lovers' quarrel?

Cyrdel stared at the floor like ice was the most intriguing thing in the world. "You don't understand."

"What he meant is that he still hasn't accepted the fact that my mind is set towards the Grand Marshal's real last resort," Ravalee interjected, joining them in the center of the room to form a hazy circle. "Bringing Xanthy back."

Rhys sputtered as his saliva almost went back the wrong way down his throat. Bring Xanthy back? Ravalee mentioned it to the Grand Marshal. Wow. He never thought it would go this far. That meant...

"Excuse me," Cyrdel gave them both a quick bow before walking in swift strides towards the door. A quick word and the brownie disappeared on a shimmer of light.

Rhys turned to Ravalee who went back to prop herself atop the mattress. Her composure might be of the best calm behavior but her face and eyes were not. In fact, they're so full of turmoil Rhys had to sit down next to Ravalee and just...be there.

"I don't have it all sorted out," Rhys said to no one as Cyrdel's accusation echoed over and over in his head. "I don't know where my throne is, either."

Ravalee tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Will you take care of him when I am gone?" she stared at him from the side of her eye. "Make him realize that he still has a lot to fight for?"

"Is there really no other way?" Rhys smoothed his hair out of his face. It's getting longer than he normally kept it at. His memory played the exact moment Ravalee and Airese explained everything to him regarding the state of the Virtakios.

Xanthy's soul was staked through the Soulcleanser and it takes another soul to bring it back. Sadly, June lost Xanthy's form back when they're running from the people pursuing them. That meant unless they could find a corpse or any other creature to house Xanthy's soul in, they wouldn't be able to do it. The only way was to use Ravalee's fairy-made form to house the soul of the Virtakios.

That means Ravalee has to be the one to offer up hers.

By reason, they could just take another soul and trade theirs to have Ravalee back. But the soulcleanser was an incomplete throne due to the way it was hidden for centuries. They could only use it twice. Well, Xanthy used the first and in bringing her back, they would have used the second.

Ravalee met Rhys's gaze then. "What better use of my life, right?" Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "I was never meant to be here. I was never meant to have a life. I shouldn't exist. I am merely giving back what is not mine."

"And Cyrdel..." Rhys trailed off, glancing at the door hoping that maybe the brownie heir came back. "How was he taking things?"

Ravalee heaved off a sigh. "I wish I could make him understand. This is a problematic time to part. I am aware he thinks this is all unfair but I'm not excusing my choice. He needs to know that between the world and him, I will choose the world," she said almost to herself more than to Rhys. "I will choose to do my duty rather than have innocents suffer. Not when I can do something about it."

Rhys hummed. "How noble."

"You're noble yourself," Ravale raised an eyebrow. "Or is there something more you're not telling me?"

Rhys leaned back against the mattress and braced his weight using his palms. "Cyrdel was right on some points. I'm not fighting for the world because I want to or because I'm that good of a person. I'm not one of those hero types. I'm sure you know where I came from. I was the banished heir of Narfalk. All my life, me and my sister, all we wanted was to make our father proud of us."

He winced when the Narfalk King's words back when he and Reeca were being driven out of the Palace played back in his head.

" 'Go. You're not going to be anything. You're all worthless', " Ravalee recited, reading it all from Rhys's memory.

The words cut fresh wounds in his heart once more. He wished it wasn't the case if not at all, at least not now. But it still stung like it was only said to him yesterday. If he was the only receiving end of those words maybe he could have swallowed that in and lived the rest of his life with it. When it was more directed towards Reeca, his sweet little sister that did nothing wrong, he couldn't just let it go.

"Deep down, maybe I just wanted to show to my father that we, especially Reeca, are indeed worth something," Rhys pinched the skin in his palm. He always thought of this but he never said it out loud to anyone before, including his sister. Strange. That's what this was.

"Reeca doesn't deserve all the hardships she went through," Rhys swallowed against his drying throat. "I can't stand beside her every day, knowing that she carries our father's words in her heart and believing them. I had to overwrite that somehow. I need to do something. So I did. We did. We were winning, I would like to think. I was good at what I do. She was good at hers. Until she ended up like...that.

Rhys glanced at Ravalee who remained silent. She was biting her lip as she played with the ends of her hair. "You've seen Reeca's state," he said against the lump growing in his throat. "She's broken. I don't think I can fix her. I don't think even thyminkais like you and Airese could."

"I could erase her memory," Ravalee let go of her hair to meet Rhys's gaze again. "Like a clean slate."

Rhys shook his head. "That wasn't going to be worth anything. She became who she is because of those words and because of everything she went through. She fought through them. She's a strong girl."

"So I will fight," Rhys flicked his gaze to the floor. "I will fight so I can finally tell the world 'Hey, this is my sister. She saved the world!'. We would no longer be disgraced even just in our father's eyes. I want him to be proud of us and to realize the wrong he had done. That's why I have to fight. I have to live until I see Reeca redeem herself."

Ravalee nudged him with an elbow. "See? You're a noble soul," she chuckled. It was a foreign sound among the noise of bloodshed and tension around them. "We all have our motives, Rhys. A selfless one is what makes us noble."

A smile tore through Rhys's lips. It may be strange but it's not unwelcome. In fact, this...felt good. Ravalee returned his gesture and they continued to be in this space of comfortable silence for the next hour until the horns of war blew throughout the Capital signaling the conclusion of the fight for the day.

Would he still be able to smile tomorrow? Moreover, would there be even a tomorrow for them?