Tearha: The Number 139

Chapter Thirty: Lord of the Beasts

The woman with short, messy blue hair and a pretty boy face that glistened with sweat stabbed the training spear into the ground. Her sweat stained tight fitting singlet showed off her slightly built body and the hem of her cargo pants was stained with dirt. She raised her hand to the left in gesture and Luce tossed her a bottle of water from the sidelines.

Luce asked, "Have you seen the new movie?"

After taking a swig of water, she replied, "What movie?"

Luce walked up to her, taking in the surrounding indoor stadium with floodlights shining from the far corners of the field. Save for a maintenance worker fiddling with a panel on the far end of the track, everyone else had left.

Luce replied, "Jacques, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about."

"Relax, love." She stepped forward and gave Luce a welcomed kiss. "I know the one. About crossing the Helm, right?"

"Yeah. What do you think of it?" Luce crossed her arms seriously.

"About the movie? I thought it was a little campy. Effects were pretty decent, but they could use a little more Eikly. That man can act."

Luce raised a brow. "I'm talking about them walking The Path. Going across to Eltar. Leaving this sentient forsaken place."

"Are you worried about not killing that Titan?"

"Yes!" Luce shouted back, pacing away from Jacques in frustration. She turned back on her feet. "It's treason, Jacques! I walked away in the middle of a fight! They could lock me up! Put me in front of a firing line!"

"Can I ask you why you did it? Or rather, didn't do it?"

"I don't know? What do you want me to say?" Luce was on the verge of screaming. "That I didn't have the guts to kill something that's alive? That I think all living things deserves a chance to try? I'm a coward? I'm a terrible soldier? What?"

Jacques nodded understandingly and walked up to the younger girl, placing two gentle hands on her shoulders for calm. "No one has ever been tried for being a conscientious objector and it's not going to happen to you."

Luce took a deep breath, closing her eyes to take peace in the temporary darkness. She looked back up to Jacques and asked, "What if they do?"

A smile back. "Then we run. As far as we can. To somewhere where, hopefully, there won't be any wars."

***

Lucinda Baerrinska woke to a cold breeze that floated through the edge of the town. Cirus, the lone of the Twin stars that was left in the sky for the winter was ported to set over the edge of the world in the west. In front of Luce, to the south, the ridges of the Titan Plains ended in a sheer drop, left-lined by the protruding treeline of the forest and stretched with roads of grass. The silhouettes of a marching line approached the town of Valent.

The bench she sat on was one of the many that lined the outskirts' fences of the town. The quaint but countryside gesture of openness almost overshadowed the events of the previous day, where hundreds of the town's citizens condemned Adelaide with violent prejudice, a prejudice Luce could not fully dissuade against.

Adelaide was a murderer, someone who had killed countless number of people over the years. Defending her actions were next to impossible. But 'next to' was Luce's argument. Adelaide fought against what she saw as an invading force against her home. The same argument used by every war that had ever been fought in the history of the world. What gave so many people before her the leeway to escape judgement but not her?

It was thin.

But Luce wanted to be right. Needed to.

"Luce?"