Algernon Black

(Chapter 84) A Home Destroyed

The expedition away from Oira's village would have been completely silent if it wasn't for Cal's extreme lack of ability to read even the most basic of social cues. He had no regard for Loy's somberness, and Selice was grateful for the oaf's mindless rambles because it gave her something else to focus on other than the prince's dower mood that was growing ever darker.

"Pain is only a mental game," Cal schooled Beal. "To overcome it you just have to reject the effects of it in your body, like you would poison."

"Right!" Beal agreed, making mental notes of all of Cal's sage wisdom.

"Beal," Selice sighed, in profuse disappointment. "Please put some logical consideration into Cal's claims."

"What's not logical about that!" Cal clapped back. "Any real man shouldn't fall to pain just as he shouldn't die from some liquid."

"Yeah!" Beal agreed. "Real men don't get weighed down by that!" he aimed at Loy, alluding to his poisoning by Farris's laced daggers.

Loy ignored the taunting, too caught up in his own mullings to even register it. Selice regarded Loy worriedly. Normally, Beal's disrespect got instant correction in the form of a swift rock knocking him upside the head, but Loy was eerily quiet ever since Beal's accusations back in the village. She was still curious of the story behind that but figured it might not be something Loy was ready to revisit.

It was early afternoon, the weather pleasantly normal, when for the first time in the last few days of their travel, other than at sunset, Loy paused.

Beal was too fixated on Cal's tutorage to notice his surroundings grow familiar. It was only some six sense that made all the blood in his bones freeze.

"Wh-why, would you come here?" Beal stuttered, his face draining of color.

Loy glanced back at the boy, feeling just as much emotion but concealed behind a well-practiced front.

"I'm not going back there!" Beal yelled, magic rampaging through his system with his heightened emotions. He looked around himself for escape means, his fight or flight instincts taking over. "You can't make me!"

"I won't," Loy said, so softly his voice barley registered as his own. Beal's shouting stopped but his eyes stayed open wide in panic. "You can go on running from this place all your life if you like. Just like I tried too," Loy conceded, his voice tearing with the only traces of regret Selice had ever heard from him. "But you'll never get far enough away to forget."

The prince walked ahead. And Selice noticed how wide his upper body was made to look by his overworked shoulders, but for the first time wondered what it was they truly carried. She followed first.

Cal eyed everyone and couldn't understand what was going on, but was never one to stop moving. "Real men don't run either," he advised Beal, brushing past him.

Beal's fists curled at his side as he was left all alone, which is why he could shamefully admit to himself, "But I'm still a kid."

Beal wiped away some emerging tears and though he felt as if his entire body was made of lead, dragged himself back into his childhood town, where the bodies of everyone that ever cared for him were still rotting in the shallow graves he dug for them.

Selice looked around and thought it seemed like a perfectly normal small town. There were few buildings in the main square and more homes lining the edges all in relatively close proximity. By the size, she guessed it probably could have housed a hundred people, but the wood buildings were slowly deteriorating in neglect. And despite being right next to a river, the center of the town was caked up in dry soil, where no grass grew, and the only signs of life were weeds creeping into empty homes.