WE BECOME THOUGHTLESS

thirty-five | horrors of war

Tobias might've had an astounding lack of any sort of moral conscience, but he wasn't unfair – or at least, that was what he had somehow convinced himself of.

Alistair could see it in the way he wiped out villages and ordered around his soldiers, that flash of serene righteousness in his eyes, the full belief that what he was doing was right and that he needn't feel guilty for it. And maybe for the first time, Alistair wondered whether the man was just as indoctrinated as he had been, years before.

But the thought was quickly pushed into the very back of his mind. The thought that Tobias, the general, was just as much a victim of bad Chrysosian influence made him shiver. Chrysos is the best, so we have every right to do whatever we want to everyone else.

He didn't want to think about that. Tobias was bad in every sense of the word, he was the villain – he'd not only taken the Welish from their homes and forced them out of their own country, but murdered Chrysosians like Alistair's mother. Sliced and rendered without an ounce of empathy.

If Tobias had been indoctrinated and twisted by Chrysosian ideals (never show emotion, always be ruthless), and if he'd once been just as impressionable as Alistair, that person was gone. All that was left was this black-cloaked horror.

"Well," the general kicked his feet up onto the desk. They'd clambered back up the stern of the ship while his soldiers counted heads and tallied off their dead, and Alistair was hit with a wave of memories as he entered Tobias' makeshift office. There was incense burning in the corner. "I'm going to have to assume desertion, Alistair. Do you know what they do to deserters?"

"I didn't desert," Alistair said, pointedly ignoring the seat opposite the desk. He remained standing with his hands, now gloved again, held behind his back. "But it wouldn't matter even if I had. You won't kill one of your mindrenderers."

Tobias' eyes glowed in the dim lamplight, taking in the strange image of Alistair, a Chrysosian soldier, in Welish clothing. "You seem overly confident."

He clenched his jaw, pulse kept steady by the distraction of his nails buried deep into his palms. He had to push especially hard to feel it beneath the leather of his gloves. "You want to know what I've been doing?"

The general nodded slowly.

"After the ship fell, I had no way of finding my way back. I had to get help." Alistair felt something turn in his stomach. Mentally, he was struggling to make the choice between telling Tobias that he had, indeed, used magic to get Cole to guide him through the forest, or to reveal to him that the Welish were also capable of common sense in less than savoury situations, and that they'd needed to help each other (without magic) in order to survive. But that was almost too close to the truth of what happened later.

Tobias leaned in closer. His expression shifted marginally, the slight quirk of his brow, raise of his lip. "And so – you found it in the advena that was trying to kill you in the first place?"

This time it was Alistair's turn to nod.

"Oh, isn't that especially cruel," the general crooned. "Was he still aware when you warped his mind and made him betray his people?"

Betray his people? No, they had just been two people in a very tricky situation, trying to make it out alive.

Alistair tensed and looked up at the man, noting the satisfied flicker in his eyes. Was he purposely trying to rile him up? This time, he couldn't resist it – he wouldn't give Tobias the satisfaction of seeing him succumbed to his fate as a mindrenderer. "No, actually. All it took was the use of my astonishing charm and good-looks."