Episode Five, Part 2:
The Girl from the Ground

On their venture down to Tobias' body, the Sovereigns had located Reegan and her guard on their descent and by Sol's quick thinking, they trailed along behind them, making sure that they were quiet and kept out of sight.

Sol wasn't completely sure what her plan was, but she knew that at least some of her questions would be answered when Reegan discovered Tobias was dead, and she would figure out the rest when it came to it.

"They're almost there," she whispered over her shoulder, pulling her blade out of her waistband and signalling for Wynn and Kodiak to do the same. "Stay behind me and let me do the talking. I was the one there when he died, I couldn't change his mind - I have to be the one to deal with this."

"Sol, what happened out there isn't on you," Wynn reached out and grabbed onto her arm, knowing too well that if she didn't want to hear it, she would simply turn around and refuse to acknowledge it. "We're facing this together; the four of us."

"Fine," she agreed, not in the mood to argue. The pressure of what was waiting for her was resting heavy on her shoulders - a weight she couldn't shift. "But I'm still the one doing the talking."

"Riv-" Kodiak began to interject, but a sudden shriek from the other side of the trees cut him off.

"Tobias!?"

Sol clicked her tongue, informing Kodiak that there was no time to persuade her, and hurried down to the commotion, already having her blade at the ready for the Exile Allegiance guard she knew would be ready to defend against them.

"Reegan," Sol called out, her voice surprisingly calm as she stopped a reasonable distance from the young girl, both Wynn and Kodiak coming to a halt behind her. "We need to talk."

"You... You killed him? You killed Tobias!?"

"No-"

"You knew he was dead. That's why you came to camp and that's why you followed me down here; because you knew he was dead because you killed him!"

"Reegan, calm down and listen to me-"

"Kill them!" Reegan screamed at her guard. "All of them, starting with her."

Without hesitating, the guard lunged forward on command, drawing his blade out and attempting to take a hit at the Nobel but he was knocked down and disarmed before he could comprehend what had happened.

Sol secured his weapon and passed it behind her for Kodiak to take whilst Wynn grabbed onto the guard and locked him in his hold, making sure there was no chance he could escape and hurt one of them.

"We're not here to hurt you," Sol raised her voice, desperate to get her message across. "We just need you to listen to us. That's all."

"And if I say 'no' you're going to do the same thing to me as what you did to Tobias? A-are you going to be kind enough to put my body in it's grave, or are you just going to leave me out on the ground to rot-"

"Reegan, shut up!" Sol yelled, finally losing her patience. Thankfully, the frustration in her words startled the younger girl, and she received a few moments of silence that she had been waiting for.

"None of my people hurt Tobias. We did not kill him. Okay? When we realised he was dead, we came up to your camp to tell you, but we didn't want to do it with everyone around."

"It had to be one of your people," Reegan said. "We've killed all of Terra Firma Tribe hours ago - Tobias told me himself. You're lying!"

"I'm not-"

"Why should I believe you!?"

"Because I was there when he died!" Sol confessed, unable to establish whether her answer had relieved Reegan or if it left her with more questions than before. "When he...killed himself."

Reegan scoffed. "You're full of-"

"I'm telling you the truth. He buried Ivy in that covered-over grave, dug one for himself, and then shot himself. Look - the gun is right next to him."

"You planted that there," she argued. "You were the ones to shoot him and then you staged this to be a suicide."

"Why the hell would we kill him?" Sol asked. "We established an alliance with him and defeated Terra Firma together. There's no reason for us to betray him now that the war is over, especially with both of our clans still on this island."

"Fine. I don't know why you did it, but I know this wasn't something he did; Tobias would never abandon us, especially when we're trying to recover from a war. I know him too well."

"I have a traumatised, young girl back at the shore who witnessed his suicide, and she could testify otherwise," Sol warned her. "We followed you down here because we knew you would find him, and we wanted to give you the closure of knowing what had happened because as I have said a hundred damn times already, we did not kill him."

Reegan didn't know how to process the Sovereign's words; the tears in her eyes were blinding her vision, and the emotion swirling in her gut doing the same to her judgement. Unsure what else to do, she reached into her back pocket and pulled out her weapon - a gun - immediately aimed to Sol.

But Sol didn't so much as flinch.

If Reegan really was capable of killing the Sovereigns, she would have done so when they first appeared - seconds after finding Tobias' body - rather than ordering her guard to do it for her. Kodiak, on the other hand, wasn't as confident and when Reegan shifted her aim after her threats against Sol were proving fallible, he stumbled back a few steps, having to gulp in a deep breath to compose himself.

Reegan was almost as surprised as Kodiak was over how nervous her weapon made him. It surely hadn't helped to have learned what Elara faced only hours ago and relieve the same trauma from Neptunum all over again, but just like her, he thought he was past this.

Sol stepped to her side, subtly shielding Kodiak with her body and walking back in the line of fire, recapturing Reegan's attention. "Look," she sighed. "I was talking to him earlier before he died; we were trying to come to a compromise."

Reegan simply rolled her eyes and emphasised her grip on her gun, but the fact that she refused to act confirmed to Sol that she was listening to what she had to say.

"He was telling me about Hestia-"

"Hestia?"

Sol nodded. "Salvation from The City; the ship that carried your people from there over to here. We were discussing plans for my people taking possession of the ship so that we could leave this island, but because there was 'something he needed to do', he told me the best person to ask was you - Reegan Tyler - his Second. That's how I knew to ask for you when I showed up at your camp."

The younger girl retreated her gun a little, realising there must be some truth in what she had said, but she still couldn't accept the fact that Tobias had killed himself. Nor did she want to... And, if she could admit it to herself, Reegan knew she just wanted someone to blame.

"I understand now isn't the right time to try and figure this out; you've just lost your friend and believe me, all of us know the feeling. Once you've broken the news to your people and have had some time to process what has happened, we can meet and continue the conversation Tobias and I were having-"

"Excuse me?" Reegan tilted her head, one of her eyebrows arching. "You're seriously implying that I'm supposed to help you? Either I'm right about this and you did kill Tobias, or you stood by and watched as he took his own life and to be honest with you Sovereign," she spat, "I'm not sure which is worse."

"Reegan-"

"I might not have fired this thing yet, but I will if you and your people don't get out of my sight," she warned, waving her gun around viciously. "Leave! Whilst you still have your chance, or you'll regret it."

Sol wasn't usually one to back away from a fight, but she was so out of her depth that she didn't know what else to do. She gradually began moving backwards - one hand on Kodiak to make sure he was still with her, and called out to Wynn to follow her lead.

She kept her eyes locked on Reegan until she pushed Wynn and Kodiak out of sight, moving fast as she took her eyes away from the young girl and hurried behind the cover of the trees, already picking up her pace as the three Sovereigns fled the scene, determined to make it to the shore before another tragedy had a chance to catch up to them.

//////////

The three Sovereigns arrived back at the beach, panting, and were promptly met by Dreea who looked concerned, to say the least.

"Guys?" She asked, waiting impatiently as they all tried to catch their breaths. She glanced over her shoulder, noticing several of their people looking their way at the commotion, but Dreea's cold glare made them all divert their attention. "I'm guessing it didn't go so well, huh."

Wynn shook his head, looking to his side and noticing that neither Kodiak or Sol were too keen to deliver the bad news. "We talked to Reegan - Tobias' Second," he said, "and I can confidently say that she hates us."

"What the hell did you guys do?"

"We didn't do anything," Sol said. "We went to their camp and asked to speak to her, but she didn't want to be alone with us so tried to force us to speak in front of all of her people, which we of course didn't do."

"Does she know about Tobias?"

Kodiak nodded. "She was leaving under the impression that Tobias needed to talk to her," he explained. "He must have preemptively asked her to meet him at a later time when he would already be dead, and it worked. We followed Reegan and one of her guards down there and tried to confront them."

"Key word being 'tried', I assume," Dreea sighed. "How bad was it?"

"She thinks we killed him," Kodiak said. "And that gave us the fun experience of her trying to kill us."

"You're all okay?" Dreea asked, hating to think that Exile Allegiance had managed to hurt one of them.

"Yeah, we're fine," Sol nodded, "fortunately, because there's no time to rest."

Wynn and Kodiak shared a puzzled look with each other, not having realised that Sol had already put together the next part of their plan. The only thing they knew they had to do was run like hell to get back to camp without Reegan or her guard catching one of them.

"What are you talking about?" Wynn asked. "We need to figure out how to get the blame of Tobias' death off of our shoulders before anything else-"

"We do need to do that, you're right," Sol nodded. "But I don't think we should let this shift all of our priorities. We still need to find Hestia," she said, "and that takes first place. If we don't find that damn ship, we might as well surrender any hope of going home."

"So what are you saying we do now?" Wynn continued. "Go back out there? Even after what she said?"

"Yeah," Sol shrugged, refusing to feel any pity for herself. "If no one from Exile Allegiance is going to honour the alliance and help us, then we have to do it ourselves. We're going to find Hestia, even if that means sneaking our way into their camp..." 

Five // Part Two
And to be honest, Sovereign, I'm not sure which is worse.

Trouble on the horizon for Basilisk. Maybe Tobias is starting to look like the better option of the two? He might have been crazy and manipulative, but at least Sol felt like she stood a chance at ever getting some answers out of him...

In exciting (and sad!) news, I finally planned out the last two episodes of The Boy from the Bunker. I can't actually put into words how upset that makes me to have detailed the end and to know that this is really going to be over soon, but I'm really hoping the last few chapters of this book (including the epilogue) will make it worth it. ♡ It's so crazy to know this entire story from start to finish now, rather than just knowing the books before and what I'm writing. I know the full circle, the ends our characters face, and the very last page.

Thank you for sticking around for 10 seasons. It means everything to me. ♡ Here's to the last 18 chapters. ♡

20/08/21.