Bodanen: Cobalt War

Chapter 26: Far From Home

Garele's body relaxed as her eyes began to water. "Uncle Talib...it's so good to see you."

Walking to the bed, Talib leaned in for a hug from Garele as tears ran down both of their faces. "It's all right now; you're safe."

After a moment, the pair released each other as they both dried their eyes. Siegfried stood next to Talib and handed Garele a handkerchief. "What brought you all back so soon? You couldn't have destroyed the Blue's corpse that quickly." Siegfried pulled a pair of chairs against the wall to the bed and sat down, offering the other to Talib.

"We saw a bright light coming from the house, so we hurried back to make sure you were okay. And what do we find? My niece awake, something that shouldn't have been possible without medications...." Talib eyed Siegfried as he sat down next to him.

"Ah, yeah, about that. ...Yeah, so, you know how we've been training me in how to control my inner Omnis, right? I thought that if I focused my Omnis into one point and allowed it to flow through Garele, I could kick start her body's Omnis production. I thought you wouldn't like the idea, so I was going to do it after you had left...sorr-" Siegfried stopped mid apology as Talib's fist connected to the top of his head. It wasn't powerful enough to hurt too much, but it made Talib's point.

"If you had told me about your idea to begin with I'd have told you that it was stupid, dangerous...," Talib pauses as Siegfried flinches back at what he thought was another lecture or fist, but a smile grew across Talib's face before he began again. "...and impossible, but it would seem that I would have been the wrong one. You were the one to wake Garele, my niece, my family." Talib bowed his head to Siegfried. "Thank you, Siegfried, you beautiful lunatic." He looked up at Siegfried again, beaming even brighter than before.

"...Ah, well..." With a sigh, Siegfried patted Talib's shoulder. "I'm just happy that she is safe. It's never easy to lose family. Sorry for going behind everyone's back; Talib, Boris, Sayen." As Siegfried's eyes wander the room from one companion to the next, the four share a short laugh with one another. After the light laughter had died down, Siegfried's face grew serious as he turned to Garele again. "Now, Miss Garele Zima, would it be possible for you to tell us what exactly happened to you that brought you and a company of artificial mortals to this village in the first place? Tal has said that you work with the Raaksha military, but you aren't part of it. So why are you here?"

Sitting up properly, Garele looked Siegfried in the eyes, wanting to show her gratitude to her saviours. "Yes, I was part of a twenty-person medical attachment to a brigade of twenty-five hundred souls from Raaksha that was on its way to aid forces in the Fajr Desert against the artificial mortal threat."

"Only twenty people were part of the medical attachment?" Siegfried cocked his head in confusion.

"Yes, the brigade was made of about one hundred squads of twenty-five warriors, and each squad had at least one medic, so our medical attachment was just for backup as well as to aid civilians that were affected by combat."

"Ah, well, good on you then." Siegfried smiled at a slightly confused Garele.

Talib received a questioning glance from Garele that told him he needed to explain. "You'll have to be patient with Sieg; he was raised on a farm by, and this is his own words here, a 'wild man'. He may not have a formal education, but he's as sharp as a tack and is genuinely inquisitive, always trying to learn. Please be patient with him." Talib just smiled and nodded toward Siegfried, getting Garele to focus on him and her story again.

"Well, we set out from the city of Kiyama, the mountain elf capital and passed over the Suzaku River to enter the Fajr Desert. It was slow going; there have been more sandstorms than usual as of late, but we reached The Apophis Scar after about a month of travel." As Siegfried began to raise his hand to stop Garele, she preempted his question. "The Apophis Scar is a great canyon that lays to the north of The Hema Anvil...a great plateau named after the gods." Siegfried quickly lowered his hand with a happy nod. "Okay. ...sadly, we didn't all get through the Scar. We were ambushed by a force of one thousand blues that decimated our troops in hours. As we retreated east, we escaped the Scar with about fifteen hundred of our forces but were hotly pursued by the blues." As Garele described her brigade's retreat, Boris grew pale, the parallels to his own brigade's destruction all too apparent to him. "Are you okay ...Sir Boris, was it? You look pale."