The Lost Bellator

Ten

Semita

They traveled in silence. Arlaige's feet cracked on the top layer of frozen snow, but she made no noise. Her cloak made no noise on the ground, her feet were silent. There weren't even puffs of air from her breathing. He wondered if she even needed air.

"Ask your questions," she says finally, startling him.

"I-,"

"You have them. Your emotions flit across your face freely. You are very...open."

He looks ahead. They had a long journey. He supposed it would feel longer if it was in silence.

"Do you remember your life...before?"

"Before?"

"Yes," he says. "Do you reincarnate? Or do you just die and there is another warrior already training?"

He peers at her out of the corner of his eye, but she was looking ahead.

"I do not know."

It takes him by surprise. Had she really been so lost all this time?

"Could you tell me about before? Anything at all?"

"You mean your king. You wish to know about his reign."

"If possible."

She sighs. "I know that he has been in power for quite some time. I expect he has druids around him, practitioners of magic. He does not age, you see. He is stuck as a boy, not much older than you."

He had known that the king dwelled with magic, and it was not a good thing to dwell in. Magic was an old trade, and his town had long ago sworn it away. Maybe that was why they disliked the Bellator.

"What has he given to have this kind of power?"

She slows her walk, and turns to him. "He has given what we have all given. His soul."

Her eyes shifted to their blackness, and he saw himself in them. She was almost his height, so he could look right into her eyes. And he saw himself how she saw him. Small, human. Someone who was not fit to rise against the king.

"You have no soul?" He questions quietly.

She blinks. Her eyes were normal.

"I lost my soul many years ago. I have no need for it."

She turns, and they begin to walk again. He had so many questions, so many that he knew would go unanswered. If he could find out what went wrong, where it went wrong, he could try to fix it. He could make the world right. But if she was unwilling...there was nothing that he could do. He could not force her.

He turned to look at the path ahead of them, and sucked in a breath, stumbling backwards.

The wolves he had run from before, were circling ahead, disappearing in and out of the trees. They were larger than he had realized, towering over him, with thick coats of white, black, red, gray. They would have been beautiful to him, if they were not as terrifying.

"Why do you cower?" She asks.

She didn't seem afraid of them, and he mentally chided himself. She was a warrior, the warrior, and she needn't be afraid of wolves. He, however, was human. He could die. But as he watched her walk closer to them, he realized that they were, in fact, looking up at her, and slowly bowing their heads as she drew closer.

"You control them?" He asks in surprise.

"No," she says. "They are merely acquaintances. We have mutual respect."