The Dreamer's Fall

Chapter 56 - Grishan

A young boy sat silently on the floor of a shoddy little room, resting his head on the side of his mother's bed. In his hand, he held hers while his eyes stared lifelessly at the dirty floor beneath him.

A familiar low whistling sound reached his ears, and despite knowing what would soon follow, the boy remained as unmoving as his mother on the bed. The foundations of his tiny home shuddered as a building collapsed nearby, knocking loose a light rain of dust from the ceiling.

When the commotion died down, life returned to the boy's eyes, but with it came the truth he refused to face. His tears splashed on the dust-ridden floor beneath him despite his best efforts to contain them.

"M..om?" The boy called out quietly, his voice shaking with a bitter hope that would remain unfulfilled.

He knew that he wouldn't receive a response because the truth he so desperately sought to deny was that the hand he held had gone cold hours prior.

"Please, Mom... Please, wake up." The boy whimpered as his tears flowed like streams.

Still, the boy refused to raise his head. He knew that if he did, he'd see her, and the truth he denied with all his heart would become real. That his mother was gone and nothing he could do could bring her back.

As his whimpers grew more desperate, the front door to his tiny home slammed open.

"—barely been a month, yet our mages can't even defend the damned wall! You've seen it. It's falling apart! Now the Ollerinians don't even bother hitting it anymore and instead focus on our homes!" A young man's voice hollered as two men entered inside.

"Calm down, Petya. The mages are exhausted from endlessly using their magic to defend us. They're outnumbered many times over, and the Ollerinians build more trebuchets with each passing day. There's simply not enough of them to block every stone that gets thrown." The other young man replied.

The boy recognized the voices as belonging to his older brothers, Petya and Jora, but he made no motion to leave his mother's bedroom to greet them. If he did that, he'd have to raise his head and face the truth, but he wasn't yet ready.

"Minaan be damned! We're all exhausted!" Petya roared, slamming his fist into the wall. "Where are Earl Gabon and his men? Where is King Goetian? Where are the damned Agelians? Are we meant to die for nothing?! Is that Minaan's great plan?!"

"Careful with your words, brother!" Jora shouted back. "I'm as angry as you are, but Minaan's name shouldn't be used so casually. It's exactly because of such actions that we weren't chosen to take part in his great plan."

Petya scoffed. "And what a great plan it is! Let the majority of the country be slaughtered while every Bernish mage, priest, and noble runs off to complete his stupid fucking plan... For what?! What will be left of Bern even if it succeeds?"

"We have to believe Minaan will succeed soon. If not, we can die knowing that Ollerin is soon to follow." Jora replied as the house trembled from the shock of another building being hit by a trebuchet nearby.

"Soon?" Petya sighed as the rage drained from his voice. "Jora, the last of our siege equipment was destroyed four days ago. They can now lob boulders past our walls with impunity. Do you not hear it out there? We've lost. If not today, then tomorrow or the next."

"What would you have us do? Surrender?" Jora asked mockingly. "We'll be killed or enslaved if lucky and burned alive if we're not."

"I have no intention to surrender to those Ollerinian dogs, but neither am I so ignorant as to believe that Minaan will rescue us. The only way to survive this is to take our lives into our own hands."