Definitive Collisions: Fire and Ice

Chapter 2 - Lionel

"Lionel, have we done something wrong to deserve this?" She had asked him one evening while he was pouring over the charts and parchments of Accarundi. She was leaning against the window pane with her arms folded and staring at the moonlit tops of the Tai'Dari Mountains in the distance. "This war, I mean. Have we done anything to be slaughtered and killed like this? It just doesn't make sense. Nature doesn't suddenly decide to get up out of the blue and start to attack. That's ridiculous on so many levels, and yet it's really happening, and I'm not just talking about things that go wrong. Even my recovery was swift and unusual, which is bizarre, to say the least," she said, caressing her bulging belly.

"It's like the whole world has turned upside down and I just don't understand what's going to how to make sense of anything. I don't know. I have a feeling something sinister is going on, and I can't help but wonder if my life and my baby's life somehow came at a cost." He wasn't following her every word, but he did hear her last sentence. He looked up and squinted at her. 'Why would she think that?' he wondered. 'There's no way the world would suddenly demand retribution or repayment for her life. Can that happen? No, it's a preposterous idea' he countered himself immediately.

"I'm not sure," he said, genuinely. "But I don't think it has anything to do with you, honey. It doesn't even make any sense."

"Perhaps not, but it is rather strange and peculiar that someone managed to save me when I was at the brink of death. I'm glad obviously, but I also healed very rapidly. Too rapidly, in fact. No traditional medicine or remedy can heal a person that fast, and it scares me. Do you don't think the enemy has somehow marked or singled me out?"

"Carla, whoa," he said, standing up and walking over to her before she spurted some other stupid and crazy stuff out. "I know it's been rough going for us over the past few months, but don't you think you're running a bit wild with ideas here? I mean, this army of the walking trees, poisonous plants, and electric spirits have appeared over the years, and they've always attacked humans without mercy. There's nothing any of us have done, but I would like to know why this is happening. So, don't go running around making connections that don't exist, okay," he told her calmly and caressed her chin.

"I know that, but it just doesn't seem like mere coincidence anymore," she said. "I feel like something is after me. Like it's coming for me. These things must have a supernatural origin, and that man didn't give me medicine of natural origins. You know that as well as I do."

He studied her carefully and gripped her shoulders gently.

"Maybe there is something strange going on, I don't know, but it wouldn't do us any good if we jump to conclusions and start connecting dots that don't exist. But, if you really want answers, provided we survive this war, then I'll commission my men to track down the mysterious traveller and ask him about it myself. Is that a deal? If he had anything to do with it, then I'll wrangle it from him," he assured her. "But for now, please don't make an elephant of an anthill, alright? And I don't think worrying like this is good for you or the baby" he said as a matter of fact. She gave him a wry smile and returned to the window and continued to survey the mountains in the distance.

"So how are you going to defend the city?" she asked him a while later.

'She just can't relax, can she? She's even more obsessed with this war than I am' he thought. It was a plaguing issue, though, and he didn't have the faintest idea of how he was going to stop a seemingly unstoppable force. In almost all the wars of the past, nature stepped in, and the army never got as far as the outskirts of the continent, which was where most humans stayed. He was expecting something like that to happen this time around as well, but only a fool blindly believes nature will come to his or her rescue. He sighed heavily and dropped his pen on his maps and charts.