Algernon Black

(Chapter 117) A Child to Revive

Devane meandered through the forest following the directional sense of a nine-year-old child with a magic compass. He never imagined himself in such a situation, or that he would ever be stupid enough to follow the child for two days now, but the place Oira was leading them, was the same direction as the coordinates he had mapped months back, and though he might be situational stupid, he was smart enough to see a connection and prudent enough to make sure there was no threat there.

Jared trailed slightly behind Devane. At their parting, the shrouded man had smiled while telling him to take care of his sister, sending Jared's stomach lurching as he never recalled mentioning Lucy. But the blind man seemed to see and know more than anyone he had ever met. Jared's mind toiled over their host's comment and one of Devane's that had been persistently bothering him.

"When you said you had people you cared about," Jared spoke to Devane, referencing their argument from days before. "Were you referring to Loy?"

Devane hesitated, debating what and if he should disclose anything of his past. "Somewhat."

Jared's silence asked for more, though he didn't expect much. But to his surprise, Devane offered more than just silence as a response to his. "I had a brother." The advisor admitted. "I still have, if he's alive wherever he's stationed himself." Though he liked to imagine Marve comfortable and content, unbothered by anyone in a peaceful life. "When we were younger, we were in countless battles, and only lived because we defended each other. And keeping each other alive was the only successful attempt of protecting the ones we cared for." He imagined back to the days where they formed a happy family with the other surveyed children, and how quickly and instantly they all died at their first battle.

"Besides him, I thought there was no one I could protect." Devane said, speaking with little emotion.

"Even as we got older, and better at fighting, we still weren't able to save the younger children and could only dig their shallow graves afterward. Eventually, I stopped trying to protect anyone at all, and viewed all the children brought into the camps for what reality would bring to them, small corpses." Devane reminisced. "I kept that mentality into my all of life, and when I first met Loy dismissed him as I would dismiss the others." He pondered back to that time, still recalling Loy's bright blue eyes taking up half his face. "Still distancing myself from him, was treating him better than just about any adult around him." Devane continued, reminiscing on the first time he truly had any interaction with the fledgling prince and Loy's big toothy grin after a caustic scolding. "And when I realized that, I realized that this could be the one-child I might not fail to protect."

"Was it the same for Selice then?" Jared asked, knowing he had special favoritism for her as well.

"Selice was different," Devane said, his long steps taking him much farther ahead than Jared. "Loy was a child I could save, Selice was a child I could revive," He still remembered how depressed she had been, a child who had never experienced joy. And when he first saw her on those castle steps, being offered by her Aunt, he saw what he himself must have looked like as a child being sold to a surveyor. And Devane realized that he could be that savior he had wished for when his time came. And in protecting her he might have seen what he could have been if he hadn't been raised to be evil.

"They were lucky to have you," Jared said, disparaging over his own failings as a guardian.

"That's still to be seen." 

"Oh!" They heard Oira suddenly shriek while pointing off into the distance. "I think we're here! Jared and Devane walked the rest of the way to her side to look over a cliff's edge where they could see a miniature village with children jumping around fields and splashing in a river. A small paradise in the middle of nowhere.

"What is this place?" Jared questioned allowed.

"I have no idea," Devane and Oria answered in unison.