Girl of Iron and Magic

8.

8.
PRESENT DAY

Lotte knew that to reach Serades she had first to travel inland, out of the peninsula and then head east to Port Kelt to take the ferry across the Mirksea.

On foot it would take weeks, but after her success with the vellum, she just needed to obtain more and then she'd be flying.

By noon they reached...somewhere. Maloru claimed he knew where they were going, that he was going to meet some friends of his and they could help Lotte get to Serades.

He wouldn't say more about these friends, or where exactly they lived.
The woods ended sooner than she expected.

It looked like some sort of town made out of warehouses. Rows upon rows of neat structures incased in a barb wire fence that hummed with electricity.

They could see it all from within the safety of the trees. "So many..." Maloru said darkly. "You know what these hangers contain?"

Lotte shook her head.

"Bombs."

Lotte's jaw dropped, and then she looked more closely at her companion. Something was decidedly off with him. He gazed at the warehouses intently, fists bunched. "You did know where we're going..." she said. "Maloru..."

"Those bombs are nothing but death," he said. "They mowed down the woods to build this place. I watched them do it all."

"And?"

He turned to her, suddenly wearing an amicable smile. "There's a reason we met, Lotte. You knew who I am, didn't you? Then you're meant to help me get home, right? It's fate."

"You're of nowhere. You're of nothing. You belong to no one and thus free to make your own destiny." Poe's words from months ago, on the night he came to bid her farewell, were the kind Lotte stored inside her heart. It was the kind of thing Poe used to say that made her know he actually did care.

"How will this help you?" Lotte asked, trying her best not to judge.

"I can destroy these bombs, and I can prove to them...I can prove to them that I'm not compromised. I'm loyal to my own kind."

Lotte closed her eyes. She didn't want to say what she was about to say, but she had to. She put a hand on his shoulder. "Maloru, you're a Yomi."

He blinked at her without a shred of understanding.

"I don't know as much about your kind as I do about the Leilan," she continued. "But Yomi magic is based on creation, protection, on healing and love. Why do you think there are so many Yomi Lotte?"

Maloru shook his head.

"Because Yomi are extremely capable of loving, Maloru. They're the embodiment of kindness. Even if destroying bombs will help the course of the elven war, it will only prove one thing to the Yomi elves..."

Maloru paled to a ghastly grey and began trembling. He moved away from her touch, shaking his head from side to side.

But Lotte had to finish, even though she really didn't want to. "It will only prove to them that you're...different."

Maloru all but collapsed onto the ground, face falling into his hands.
Lotte clasped her hand over her mouth. She felt very close to tears herself. She shouldn't have said what she said. It was too harsh.
She thought Maloru was crying again, but when she finally gathered the courage to approach him, he looked up at her with dry eyes.

"If you know so much," he said cooly. "Then tell me... what else am I supposed to do? How the hell am I supposed to convince them to take me? How am I even going to exist if there's nowhere that will let me?" With every question, his voice rose in pitch and the tears brimmed in his eyes.