Battlefields: Veil Walkers Book Three

Chapter Eleven

Home, Modern Era - Danika

Danika had experienced a couple of hangovers after purloining wine from the queen's table as a handmaiden. But this was so much worse. She took a long breath, another draw from Ming Yue's famous headache tea, and reconsidered her life choices. She could see why Sumiko had groaned at the ritual's mention, and why Ming Yue had called it a last resort. Her teammates, for she reckoned she should call them thus, huddled over their mugs in various stages of alertness and regret.

"So how long does this confusion last?" She asked, lifting her head slowly so as not to disturb the threatening dizziness.

"It should start passing soon," Astrid called.

She and Galen alone had left their beds. They tended to Deza, the only teammate still asleep.

From what Danika overheard, the woman had struck her head when she fell while trying to get to Sumiko. Galen coaxed her around, while Astrid tended to the goose egg on her forehead. That enormous lump just looked painful. The clock was still ticking down to what felt like the end of days. She sipped the tea again and wondered why she had been spared, why she, of everyone, had been given this second chance, especially if it was just going to end in battle a couple of weeks later.

Keegan slid from his bed and made her way to hers, leaning on each bed as he passed them. When he arrived, he climbed onto hers, so close that their shoulders almost touched. He sipped his own tea and stared at the ground. "Please don't think of it like that, Danny," he whispered. "This isn't some twisted reality where you were spared, only to be taken away."

"You mean like Vita?" she asked, keeping her voice equally soft.

Keegan glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

"I can read, you know," Danika continued. "And that confounded computer thing can give me any information I ask for in my language. When I started hearing other names, I got curious. I've read about everyone. Not much, mind you, not personal writings or anything like that. But I know who Caye was, and Vita and Imala. I learned what happened to Deza, and what happened to Cahya, and I know of the suicides, the 'rejections,' as they're politely called. I know that life here is rough, and that death is expected."

A sigh came from Keegan's lips. He set his mug on the bed and draped his arm around her shoulder. "It's not that death is expected so much as it becomes a friend. If you've read the records, you know that many of us have lived more than a thousand years. Reciting the number and understanding what it means are vastly different things. Under normal circumstances, we see battle maybe twice a week. We've been all over creation, seen civilizations that are still unknown to the modern world, and we've experienced every situation you can imagine. I've killed ... I don't know how many hundreds of people who survived when they shouldn't've. I've walked through cities that now lie buried under desert sands, seen empires rise and fall, and even survived a brush with a couple of plagues.

"Eventually, it wears you down. The spark disappears from your eyes and the smiles become a little more forced every day. You gather scars that stand out every time you look in the mirror after a shower." He leaned to one side and tugged his shirt collar away, revealing the white scar that stood out against his skin tone. It ran across his shoulder and down his arm. He shifted to roll up his sleeve and show the other end of it, which stopped just below his elbow.

Danika couldn't help herself. She ran her fingers along the scar near his elbow, then met his eyes. "How did?"

He shook his head. "The battle where my sister died. Which just reinforces my point. We come and we go. You'll meet new people, see them learn and thrive, and they will carve a place in your heart. They become a part of you in ways you never imagined. And then one day, they're gone. It hurts. It always hurts, and it will never get easier, but at some point it stops being devastating and instead becomes a blessing. Their work is complete, they've earned their rest, that sort of thing."