THE APPLE OF SNAKES

lxi. victory for victory

For an entire year, the Hebikoti Clan celebrated. 

Victories were strung together like beads on a string, the Hebikoti Clan collecting one after another. Each beautiful and blood-soaked; plucked from the bodies of Tilican soldiers by the blackened fingertips of a young man and then presented to his father. In these battles, there was little that Tilican soldiers could do.

Burning the plants enraged them. Either drowning or drying the leaves did nothing but ensure more suffering. Uprooting the plants just made those same bitter roots hungry for vengeance. Suffocating them made them twice as determined to suffocate you. Even if you managed to destroy one, ten more would take its place. Five thousand men could die in a matter of minutes to the whims of one.

Death on this scale was not unheard of before. In the battle that the Angel of Death his name, it was said he had frozen two armies solid - down to their blood. But when people with no means to counteract this powerful magick faced it, they had little choice but to retreat. There was no way of defeating it.

Victory after victory. 

Soldier after soldier.

For an entire year, the Hebikoti Clan celebrated these victories and when that year was completed they celebrated even more for at long last, the Tilican force had been driven from their borders. Peace and trade would return, or at least that was what everyone hoped.

Nerluce did not think they should get their hopes up.

Tilican soldiers had died on Itorohian ground. Itorohian soldiers had died on Tilican pikes. Those facts alone were enough to raise hostility. Though Itoroh and Tilica had never officially gone to war - Tilica continuing to deny knowledge of the troops until the very end - there had been enough death on both sides for it to feel like it.

Plucking an apple from the branches of the tree Nerluce had found to be his afternoon perch, Nerluce sighed and took a bite. He wasn't built for politics. He wasn't built for war either. He didn't have much stomach for either. He was built to eat apples and nap in the afternoons. After everything he'd been through in the past four years, Nerluce felt as though this was a well-deserved break.

No battles needed to be fought. No chores needed to be done. No strategies had to be discussed. No magick had to be learned. No expectations of Nerluce in the slightest.

He tossed the core onto the ground and plucked another apple from one of the nearest branches. The farmer knew Nerluce was here. Knew he liked to lounge and steal apples from this tree. He didn't yell or chase Nerluce off as he had when Nerluce was a boy, though. He simply let Nerluce be. It was his way of thanking Nerluce for saving the country.

For some reason, the apple between teeth was no longer as sweet.

"Nerluce," Coam said.

Nerluce had seen her coming. Her long, white hair stood out like a beacon against a world browning with the expectation of colder weather, darker skies, and snow.

"Coam," Nerluce said. "You're back from the border." He smiled. "Did everything work itself out?"

"What do you think?" Coam asked.

Nerluce hummed and took another bite of his apple. "I think that it went to shit. I think that extremists on both ends did what extremists do best." He tossed the core to the ground and licked the juice from his fingertips. "Riot."

"So you've heard," Coam said.

"The border riots are all anyone is talking about lately," Nerluce said. "How could I not hear? I just wanted to know if you settled it."