[🎐] a thousand ceaseless dreams

viii. cornelius

Like many other nights, Cornelius couldn't sleep. But unlike many other nights, this one was terrifyingly silent, and not even the wind sang anymore. Clouds blocked out the moon and gathered up thick around the general's heart, pulling and sinking it up and down like a tiny fishing boat upon a stormy sea, where at the bottom it was dark and cold and soundless like the world around him.

It seemed to take days for the sun to finally come to wake them. When Cornelius finally sat up, he did so tediously, as if he were having the most wonderful dream and did not want to leave his bed. But he did not yawn or rub his eyes, and simply stood up as if it was all dull routine to him. He continued in this manner for the next few hours; waking up his soldiers, fixing up the carriage, patching up his horse, and checking on the emperor.

The emperor was still trapped in a coughing fit, and the longest he'd ever stopped coughing only allowed him to speak two sentences. And every time he did cough, the smallest droplets of blood would spill out, but one by one it began to flood both of the emperor's hands and slip between his fingers. No amount of herbal tea they had could get him to stop.

Cornelius busied himself alone by staring at the arrow that attempted to kill the emperor. Even in the light, the arrowhead looked as if it was obscured with shadow, and when Cornelius held it up to the sun, he could faintly see (if he squinted enough) a black smoke-like substance trapped inside, akin to the spirits he encountered the night before. Other than that, the general found himself staring at the arrowhead with his head blank.

He didn't even move when Quang plopped down on the grass beside him. Quang was one of Cornelius' closest friends, back in his training days when he was a year younger than everyone else in the boot camp. Quang was one of the first to introduce himself to Cornelius. So was Hongyu, but one of them praised Cornelius for graduating a week before them, while the other resented him.

"You okay, General?"

Cornelius didn't sigh or roll his eyes or fall back in frustration. He simply sat there as he mumbled, "No."

A few seconds of silence followed. Quang shifted uncomfortably before speaking again. "It's not your fault, sir. You did your best."

"Easy for you to say."

Quang picked up a stick off the ground and began poking at the leaves in the ground — a rather strange habit of his that Cornelius had picked up over the years; Quang had a strange obsession with poking things with sticks. "Hey, don't beat yourself up. We couldn't have done any better. And besides, Fenghuolun likes to send entire battalions for small jobs — they like to boast about their military power, I suppose."

"I was stupid enough to leave when I knew Fenghuolun could attack."

"It was all in good intention, sir. Come on, I've never seen you act like this! You've been stabbed before, but you were cracking jokes on your near-deathbed."

Cornelius grumbled through his teeth, hands tightening into fists as he tossed the arrow into a bamboo stalk. "That's because this isn't about me!"

Quang leaned back slightly, staring at the arrow. "Woah." He watched as Cornelius pressed his hands to his face and leaned back until he fell on his back. "What do you mean?"

Cornelius sighed and dropped his hands from his face. "I can joke about shit when it's about me. But other people could actually get hurt and it'd be messed up to joke about that — the prince could be fucking dead for all I know! What am I supposed to do, tell you 'At least he won't have any more responsibilities!'?" He brought his hands to his face again. "Protecting the price was what the emperor wanted me to do. He asked me to do two things; form a platoon and keep the prince safe. And I couldn't do the important part."