The Atheil Chronicles: A Call to Fire

Chapter 9

"Where are we going?" Ariana asked after what felt like an eternity of silence.
Ahead, Ryonen held a branch back so she could pass. "I've been thinking about it, and I'd like to get you some different clothes so you'll blend in a little better." He looked at her shorts and dirty t-shirt. "Right now you stick out like a sore thumb."
"Thanks." She said as she passed him. He let go of the branch and it swung back into place with a snap.
"No problem." He said. He took the lead again and they began walking side by side.
After leaving her house, they had made their way through the forest to the portal, neither of them speaking. The entire time back to the portal, Ariana walked in a stunned silence, her lips pressed tightly together, reeling over the events of the past day. She went over it over and over again in her mind, trying to think about what she could have done differently, what she could have done to prevent all of this from happening. Her heart ached for her mother, her sweet mother who didn't deserve any of this uncertainty or fear. The whole reason she had moved out here into the woods in the first place was to get away from the chaos and pain of the world. Now Ariana had just brought it all down on their heads in one fell swoop.
"So," Ryonen said now, pulling her from her thoughts and continuing from before, "I think our best bet would be to go to Corda." When she didn't respond, he turned and took in her quizzical expression. "Sorry," he said, embarrassingly, "I forgot that you have no idea what I'm talking about. Well, it's just one of the many small towns that run 15-20 miles north of here."
"Oh." She said, nodding mostly to herself. 20 miles? Seriously? "Will it be safe?"
"For the most part." He said, then added, "Honestly, though, nowhere is completely safe anymore. Not since Atheil fell."
Ariana didn't say anything, but she gave him a sideways glance. He was staring ahead in concentration, his body tense and alert as he walked. This was the body language of someone who really was living in constant fear of attack, she thought. Even as she thought this, she noticed he had one hand casually on the hilt of his sword as if anticipating some type of trouble. "What do you mean 'Since Atheil fell'? I thought we were in Atheil."
"We are in Atheil." He repeated. "But Atheil's name comes from the name of the Original Kingdom, the center of our world's hierarchy. Well, what used to be the center of our world's hierarchy."
Ariana was beginning to think she should've packed some sort of notebook to keep track of all these terms he was using. "What happened?" She asked.
"It's sort of a long story." He said, simply, not elaborating any further
Ariana threw her arms out and indicated the forest around them. "We're in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and it's going to be a while before we reach anything. I think a story would probably be perfect at a time like this." She stopped and looked down at her hands, her heart wrenching as she pictured her mom. "Anyways," she said, "I seem to be swept up in the problems here, I need to know what I'm really getting into."
Ryonen took in a breath and then she saw his hand twitch toward her, almost as if he intended to reach over and touch her shoulder, but seemed to think better of it and relaxed it back onto the hilt of his sword. "I suppose you're right." He said with a sigh. He scrunched up his face as he contemplated where to start. "The thing you have to understand is, things weren't always like this. Back before Malor came along, Atheil was a peaceful place. All the kingdoms were flourishing and people seemed to get along well enough. There was the occasional squabble, but that's to be expected when you practically live forever."
He paused and Ariana took the opportunity to gather her thoughts. Practically live forever? She gave him another sideways glance, now seeing him in a new light. So how old was he, really? From the sounds of it, he could be a hundred years old and she would never know it. 
Suddenly, Ryonen started talking again and Ariana tried to focus on what he was saying. "It wasn't until 22 years ago that the city walls of Atheil were invaded by the Rebel Elves. Before that night, the attacks from the Rebels weren't really all that ambitious. They had attacked a few villages here and there between the 4 kingdoms, but no one could figure out their motives; we called them Rebel Elves, yes, but we never really knew until after the attacks what they wanted. They didn't come outright and declare war, never made any demands, never even tried to contact any of the kingdoms at all. They were mainly moving in secret; no one even knew what numbers they had behind them. All 4 kings and queens sent out troops to try to investigate, but the villages seemed to be getting targeted randomly, so they never got there in time."
Ariana waited as Ryonen checked their surroundings, deciding on whether or not they were still headed in the right direction. After adjusting themselves a bit, he seemed satisfied and they continued on their way. Ariana noticed that he kept absentmindedly playing with the hilt of his sword, his thumb running over the green jewel nestled there.
Ariana spoke. "So if the Rebels had such small numbers, how were they able to attack Atheil?" She asked.
He gave her a shrug and cocked his head sideways. "No one really knows. One day they were reporting only seeing a dozen or so of them, next thing we knew they were scaling the walls of every Kingdom. The attack was worst in Atheil, where the majority of the Rebel forces were sent. No one ever thought they'd be bold enough to attack Atheil itself. That is to say," he went on, clarifying, "they attacked the Original Kingdom, the heart of Atheil, and the place that inspired the naming of our world. It's where our High King and Queen once resided."
"And they don't anymore?" Ariana asked.
Ryonen smiled, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half-amused sort of way. "I'm getting to that." He said, then continued. "Anyway, on that night 22 years ago, the Rebel Elves scaled the walls of each of the 4 kingdoms. Simultaneously, each kingdom was attacked in the middle of the night, in every case the guards at the gate being murdered before the Rebels let their massive armies in. Since all of the guards were taken care of first, they were able to make their way through the city quietly while everyone still lay sleeping in their beds, not knowing what was about to happen. No army had ever breached Atheil's walls and, to this day, no one is quite sure how they did it at all. There were things beyond guards keeping those walls safe, but somehow all of them failed. In the Eastern and Southern Kingdoms, forces were dispatched fairly quickly after being alerted to the Rebels presence, though significant casualties did occur in both cases. The Northern Kingdom wasn't so lucky." He said, bowing his head. Ariana swallowed, waiting for the next part. "They were absolutely slaughtered. They never did worry as much about training troops or keeping an army. They were a more peaceful people. Their specialty was always in the food they grew and the plants they raised. Their land was particularly fertile, the most exotic plants growing there, but now it's just a wasteland." He finished, a dark note to his voice.
The sun was nearly at its peak now, and Ariana wondered if they would stop soon to eat. She could feel her stomach aching, though she suspected it was more from anxiety than need for food. Either way, she said "Hey Ryonen, do you mind if we stop for a bit?"
He agreed and they sat down at a pair of large trees with moss growing at the roots. He reached into his satchel and pulled out what she recognized as a bag of trail mix.
"Hey!" She said, incredulous as he began opening it. "Did you swipe that from my kitchen?"
Ryonen nodded, shoving a handful of nuts and pretzels into his mouth. With a wide eyed swallow, he said, "Wow, this stuff is GOOD!" He reached in the bag for another handful and greedily ate it.
"Okayyy." She said, drawing out the word. "When the heck did you raid the cabinets?" She asked. She was watching him chew the food with incredible concentration, his brows pulled together like he couldn't believe what he was experiencing and needed to savor every second of it.
Ryonen shrugged. "You were busy gathering your clothes and I slipped out to search for food. I found a lot of good stuff in the kitchen. We should be set for a while."
Ariana let out a low chuckle and shook her head. "Okay, fine." She said, reaching across and taking a handful for herself. She picked through it before plopping a few cashews into her mouth. She almost let out a sigh of relief at the familiar saltiness of them, throwing a few more in her mouth as she realized she was much hungrier than she realized. Satisfied, she turned to Ryonen and grew serious again. "You didn't finish your story." She said, a note of accusation in her voice.
Ryonen raised his eyebrows at her tone but nodded, swallowing what he had in his mouth and then handing the bag over to Ariana. "Alright," He said, seeming to be steeling himself for something, "so this is what happened. Like I said, the Eastern and Southern Kingdoms were somehow able to manage to fight off the forces that were sent there, but the Northern Kingdom wasn't so lucky. If anyone survived, we never found them. The place was still burning when troops arrived to help; no animals, no people, nothing at all. It was like some kind of wasteland, but the one who got hit the worst of all was Atheil. Specifically, the palace, Peridien. Now, the kingdoms are split in an easy enough way to understand: Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Atheil. Each lay in their respective directions, with Atheil being in the Western territory. When Atheil was attacked, somehow the rebels were able to get past all the security measures they had in place." Ryonen stopped and leaned forward. "The thing you need to understand about Atheil is that it's the root of seriously ancient magic. They say that it's the spot where magic itself was born long ago, so it's always had a protection of its own that kept it safe and thriving, something left behind from old times by beings more powerful than anything in this world today. For whatever reason, their leader, the dark Elf Malor, was able to penetrate those defenses, and he proceeded to lead his forces into the castle himself. By the time Atheil's remaining guards knew what was happening, the Rebels had already begun to burn the city. Malor, on a mission to kill the King and Queen personally, took three Elves with him to their chambers to dispose of them. No one knows what happened there, but the King and Queen were never heard from again and ruled to be dead. Sometime later, while the two sides were still battling fiercely in the city, an explosion could be heard as Peridien was overtaken by flames. The royal guard knew their King and Queen were gone and so they made it their mission to quickly lead any survivors of the attack out of the city, all of them turning to watch silently from afar as Atheil burned bright against the night's sky.
"After Atheil fell, the Eastern and Southern kingdoms, combined with the remnants of Atheils royals guards, did their best to safely place those who had lost their homes that night. The people were supposed to be split between the two kingdoms, but many chose to venture out on their own to find a place in distant villages. The trauma of the slaughter was too much for many families, and they thought their best bet was to not align themselves with any kingdoms. You see, they knew it was only a matter of time before things escalated again, and they wanted it to be known that they were simply staying out of it. Not," he noted, putting an emphasis on it, "that it really mattered who their allegiance lay with. Malor was already slaughtering villages without bias long before the major attack. Anyway, for a while it seemed that Malor was satisfied with the destruction of Atheil and the Northern Kingdom, and he lessened his attacks to a few here and there. Actually, for a few months, all activity from the Rebels stopped completely, which was a relief for anyone who had suffered at their hands that night. But when Malor did come back, he came back claiming to be the new king of Atheil, a Dark King that would bring the world to its destined form. In the Northern Kingdom he built himself a castle amongst the blackened land, and no plants would grow there anymore, the animals migrating further and further away from its borders. Eventually, those lands became known as the Darklands, a Mecca for dark magic and evil to gather." Ryonen kicked at a loose rock on the ground in front of him and Ariana watched as it rolled away into the leaves. He looked at her with a sort of grim smile on his face. "Not exactly the best story, is it?"
Ariana didn't know what to do, so she returned the smile, though somewhat weakly. "It's certainly-interesting." She said, finally, after not being able to find a sufficient word. "Although," she admitted, "it was mostly just depressing."
Ryonen gave a saracastic chuckle. "Try living it." He said wryly.
Ariana gave him a sideways glance. "Were-" She stopped and then cleared her throat before continuing. "Um, were you there, then?" She asked.
He pursed his lips and then sighed. "I was just a kid." He said finally. Then he looked at her. "I was only 4 when the attacks happened; I remember waking up to the sounds of fighting, and then my father was in my room, grabbing me." He shifted uncomfortably. "My mother was waiting outside and we hid on the roof with some other families that we lived with. My parents tried to keep me shielded from the view but, even then, I still saw it all." He stopped and it looked like he was remembering it, his eyes staring off into the distance at something she couldn't see. "The way the fire burned was like nothing I'd ever seen before." He said, finally. "The city was aglow with it, the fire raging from house to house as it ravaged anything in its path." He shook his head against the memories. "Some nights, I can still remember the screaming of the people as they were slaughtered and burned."
Once again, a silence spread between them. Ariana didn't know what to say, but she reached across the space between them and touched a hand gently to his thigh. He looked down at it, startled, and a flush crept into his neck. He quickly averted his eyes from her, looking off to his other side and letting out a breath. They just sat like that, her with her hand on his leg and him staring quietly away, for several minutes.
After some time, Ryonen leaned back against the tree's trunk and sighed. "I really didn't think things would get so depressing," he said. He gave Ariana a small smile and she, too, leaned back on her tree, pulling her hand with her. He watched as she brought it onto her lap and then met her gaze. "We really should start walking again if we want to get there sometime tonight." He said, finally.
Ariana nodded and stood up. She threw her arms above her head in a tremendous stretch, the hem of her shirt riding up on her hip and exposing a small patch of skin there. When she noticed Ryonen watching her, she quickly dropped her arms, pulling the fabric back down sheepishly. After a moment of awkwardness, Ryonen got up from his spot, too, adjusting his sword with his gaze trained downward pointedly.
Ariana kept opening her mouth to say something and then shutting it again. What the heck had just happened? She thought, looking at Ryonen out of the corner of her eye. They had begun walking again, but there was a strangeness between them, now. Maybe Ryonen had told her more than he intended to and now he felt uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the moment they had shared between them, the unspoken understanding about his own past trauma and her new one bonding them in a way neither had expected. Or just maybe it was the way she had reached over without thinking to comfort him. Or the look that had flickered in his eyes when he saw her exposed skin.
Something seemed to be passing between them, neither of them fully understanding it. Ariana could practically hear his mind whirring next to her as he walked quietly, his eyes fixed ahead. She wanted to reach over again, just to let him know that she was there, but she thought better of it. Surely that was what caused this in the first place, she scolded herself. Instead, she looked ahead through the trees in quiet contemplation. The plants here were so completely odd, so bizarre, that she truly felt like she was in an alien world. It made her sad, the realization that she was just as wholly out of place here as she always felt in her own world. Her only solace, her own forest, was a whole world away, literally, with her home left abandoned and in ruin. At this, Ariana suddenly had a thought occur to her and she gasped, stopping in her tracks.
This startled Ryonen and he whirled to face her. "What is it?" He asked, his hand tightly gripping the hilt of his sword. He was alert as he waited for her to answer.
"Henry!" She exclaimed, feeling a new sense of grief begin to overwhelm her. She turned to Ryonen and her eyes were filled with hot tears. "Oh, god, I forgot all about him."
"Who's Henry?" Ryonen asked. He sounded a bit put off, but there was still concern and confusion in his tone. He had now loosened his grip on his sword, though he still looked tense.
"My cat!" Ariana said. She closed her eyes for a moment, picturing his fat form ambling through the yard back home. He would probably be so confused when he realized no one was there waiting for him.
"Cat?" He asked, raising an eyebrow, but making an attempt to look concerned despite his clear lack of understanding of the situation.
"He's my pet." She said, absentmindedly grabbing a lock of her light auburn hair and fiddling with it nervously. "He wasn't home when we got there, but he'll probably come back and see that no one's there." She let out a low breath. "God, I hope he's okay." She said, and the tears were back.
There was a long silence before Ryonen spoke and, when he did, his voice was gentle. "We don't have cats." He said. "But we do have our own pets. I take it he goes outside often?"
"Yes." Ariana said softly.
"Then I bet he knows how to take care of himself." Ryonen said in reply, reaching out to touch Ariana's arm but, instead, dropping his hand.
Ariana watched his hand fall and looked away. "I guess." She said finally. She thought about Henry as they restarted walking, their footsteps on the fallen leaves beneath them the only sound around. He was usually gone most of the time anyway, she reasoned to herself, thinking back to the past few weeks where he was literally only home for his nighttime and morning feedings. She supposed he probably hunted to supplement his food intake, especially considering he was hardly ever home. He must be self-sustaining enough if he's away so much. She knew it wasn't much, but it did give her a bit of reassurance.
"Ryonen."She said, seeming to pull him from his own thoughts, too.
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry if I overstepped by insisting you tell me that story earlier...I didn't mean to bring up bad memories for you." She thought for a moment. "It's just-" She sighed. "I just don't know what to do right now." She admitted, swallowing back the lump in her throat. "I've never even left home for a vacation. My mom and I, we've always just had each other. And Henry." She added.
He looked sideways at Ariana. "You didn't upset me. At least," he said, clearing his throat, "not in the way you might think."
This made Ariana's frown. "What do you mean?" She asked, confused.
"I don't know." He said, looking down at his open hands and then clenching them. "Telling you that story, it made me realize how little we talk about what happened to us here..." He looked up at a patch of sky that was visible through the canopy. "All those people that got killed, they deserve better than to just be forgotten."
Ariana let out a gentle outtake of breath. "Why don't they want to talk about it?"
Ryonen brought his gaze up now and met hers. "The kings and queens of this world don't feel the need to reclaim Atheil. They feel like it would be futile; basically just not something worth fighting for if they don't think we can win." He paused. "By waging war with Malor, the kings and queens believe that we would be signing our death warrants."
"What do you think that they should do?" She asked him.
Ryonen gave her a sad smile. "It doesn't matter what I think. They've made up their minds. Anyway, I have no authority, I'm just...me."
Ariana shook her head. "Just because you're one person doesn't mean your voice doesn't matter." She said simply.
He gave her a small smile, though it was more thoughtful than anything. "Perhaps" He said, then he got quiet and they resumed their silent walking again for a while. 
They must have been walking much longer than she thought because she saw now, with some alarm, that the sun was on its way to setting. The trees were thinning out in this part of the forest and the horizon was just barely visible in the distance. She could see swirls of orange and pink being painted in the sky where the sun was receding, the colors melding together in places and turning an almost peach color there.
"It's so beautiful." She said suddenly, speaking without really meaning to.
"What is?" He asked, clearly not expecting her to speak at all, let alone to say that.
Ariana nodded toward the horizon, the sun now barely visible there. "The sky."
He followed her gaze and saw the burst of colors there, a smile lighting up his face. "It is."
Ariana looked at him, feeling that tug in her stomach again, and couldn't help but notice that the dimples in his cheeks came out when he smiled. It was because she was looking at him that she failed to see the bush in front of her and suddenly she felt her shirt getting caught up in it. She looked down at the thorny branch that had wrapped around the soft fabric there, ripping a hole just above her belly button. Ryonen stopped when he realized that she wasn't next to him anymore.
She tugged on the branch, irritatedly, and felt the stinging of a thorn as it pierced her skin. Blood sprung to the surface, a fat crimson drop forming on the tip of her index finger. Ryonen pushed her hands away gently and touched the fabric of her shirt. "Let me." He said, his hands brushing her stomach.
Ariana watched as he worked the thorns out of her shirt, finally freeing her. His eyes briefly scanned the bare skin of her belly before looking up. He brought his eyes to meet hers and she could feel some unspoken thought happening behind them, but he only nodded his head in the direction directly in front of them. "Corda's should be just ahead, it was closer than I thought. We only have a few more miles"
The silence that stretched between them this time wasn't an awkward one, it was simply just a comfortable one. Ariana found herself randomly reaching down to feel the hole in her shirt, her mind wandering to what was going on between Ryonen and her. She wasn't particularly experienced in the world of romance and dating, but she did know that she was beginning to feel some type of way about him, exactly what that was, she wasn't sure yet... On top of this, she was equally as unsure about if this was being fueled simply by their unique situation or if everything she had lost was making her want to cling to something. Either way, she was acutely aware that she had begun looking at him through new eyes. There was a gentleness about him that struck her as truly remarkable considering all that he had been through, and was still going through. He had taken the time to get to know her, to care about her. Well, she thought he cared about her, but sometimes she noticed a hesitation in him that she couldn't quite figure out.
It was about an hour and a half later that Ryonen put a hand out and grabbed hers, nodding forward. She felt a little startled by the sudden contact between them, but she let him hold onto her anyway. The trees were beginning to thin out until they were only sparse columns of bark in the growing darkness. As distant buildings could be seen coming into view, Ryonen let go of her hand and motioned for her to stand behind him. Together, they snuck forward, hiding behind a tree just on the edge of where the town began. They had finally arrived in Corda.