Connected Souls

Mari’s elbow brushed one of the sand towers, causing it to crumble to nothing. “Nooooo! Why? That took forever!” Sori complained. Realizing what she had done, Mari began to apologize profusely.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! I can rebuild it!” She frantically shoved the crumbled sand back together. The two were sitting on the beach, working on a sandcastle. Sori had grand ideas of what he wanted it to look like, but she was beginning to think the design was too complicated. ‘It’s like it was thought up by a child that doesn’t think any further than ‘will it look cool?’’ She thought wryly

“Why do you have to have such a short attention span?” Sori grumbled. “Dazin’ off looking at the boats when you're supposed to be working...what planet is you brain on?”

“Wherever yours ran off to first.” Mari shot back. The two happily piled up sand in the warm ocean breeze. It was a perfect day and, since it was late morning, the sun wasn’t too hot yet.

“I wish there was sand like this at home.” Sori sulked. “Do we have to go back?” Mari could understand his reluctance. Andressa was so big and there was still so many things and places they hadn’t tried yet! But at the same time, she missed the other kids from the village and how peaceful Teatris was. And even if she was enjoying all the ‘girl time’ she was getting with her grandmother and Tetra, it wasn’t the same without Az.

“Hey, we don’t leave until the day after tomorrow! That’s still a whole day and a half to play!” Mari reminded Sori, attempting to keep his spirits up.

“Have you found a present for big brother yet?” Sori asked.

Mari groaned and shoved her hands deep into a pile of sand. “No! I’ve been looking every day when we go out, but nothing feels right!” She sighed. “Guess I’ll just have to get him a gift some other time. But I really did want it to be a souvenir from our trip...”

“You could always give him one of the shells I collected?” Sori offered. “Besides, big brother is way too humble and freaks out whenever people try to do nice things for him or give him stuff. You’ve seen how he handles people trying to pay him extra for helping them with their odd jobs.”

Mari thought back to the time she witnessed a flustered Azreal literally run away to avoid having to take the money that a neighbor had offered him after he had fixed their fence. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She patted the sand down into a bucket, not feeling reassured. It wasn’t just the gift though.

‘I hope Azreal’s okay.’ She worried. ‘I don’t know why, but I got the strangest feeling the other day. It felt like something had happened, but I couldn't say what. Ever since then, I’ve been having random bouts of feeling anxious and unsettled for no reason. Maybe it has nothing to do with Azreal. For all I know, the high altitude could be getting to me. But...’

“Hey, Sori?” She asked. “Has Azreal ever gotten hurt on a mission before?” Sori stared blankly.

“Sissy, he’s a mercenary! Of course he’s gotten injured, you dummy! He comes home beat up all the time! Sometimes with broken bones and stuff. But never anything serious or life threatening.” Sori laughed at her. “Quit worrying about your boyfriend! I might not know a lot, but I am the expert on my brother! Even if he took a few stabs, he’d be fine! He’s tough. Besides, you unicorns have healing abilities, right? Just fix him when he comes back if you're that worried!”

“Oh, I totally forgot I could do that!” Mari forced a smile onto her face as the young boy laughed at her seeming foolishness. She didn’t want Sori to catch onto her worries, but the truth was, she had told herself that already to reassure herself. It hadn’t worked; this feeling she couldn’t name was nagging at the back of her head like an itch she couldn’t scratch. ‘Well...there is a war going on.’ Mari thought as she shoveled sand. ‘Events that take place during them are inherently unusual and unexpected. There hasn’t been an international war on this continent during my lifetime, so the uncertainty is probably frying my nerves.’ She forced herself to focus on building the sandcastle. ‘Still, though...Opal and Tempest aren’t exactly mighty empires. Warfare and death are always awful, but it’s not like anything all that unnatural is happening here.’

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“The point is, the magicians and holy knights will be looking into this,” The messenger summarized. “We’ll need your skills and all the help we can get to repel this threat but, for now, we need to move cautiously. Aside from stopping the main enemy forces from pushing further inland, it’s too risky to do anything else without more information. When he’s ready, the king will summon Azreal for a debrief to discuss the incident but, until then, his orders are for you two to rest until the physician says you can be discharged.”

Sariel, leaning in the window with his arm in a sling nodded. “Noted. Thank you.”

Azreal, sitting in bed, agreed. “Yes, thank you.”

The Messager nodded. “Very good. I’ll be taking my leave then. Good day.” The door swung shut and the two men sat in silence.

‘We’re lucky the royal court has such good doctors and healers.’ Azreal and Sariel had been assigned a shared room in the palace infirmary. Other than being heavily scratched and bruised, Sariel’s serious real injury was his arm. He’d ordinarily be fine to go home, but the physician didn’t trust him to sit still, so he was being forced to stay in the infirmary to be monitored until they were confident his arm was on the mend.

“How’s your arm doing?” Azreal asked. Sariel looked down at his sling.

“It hurts like hell, but the healers were able to reconstruct it with magic. It’ll look ugly but I won’t have any permanent damage.”

Azreal sighed in relief. “Thank God...it was so shredded that I was worried you’d lose movement in it.”

Sariel looked over at Azreal. “How about you?”

Azreal’s back and side wounds had required dozens of stiches, and he’d fractured multiple bones when the creature had slammed him into the ground but, like Sariel, it wasn’t anything debilitating. “I’m in pain, but I’ll only have some fresh scars. Nothing new.” He shrugged. Azreal’s body was already covered in scars, so what was a few more? “Was Cryph here earlier? I thought I heard him while I was sleeping.”

“Yeah. He came to hear what the King wanted us to do next, and he stopped by to see how our wounds were looking. He left as soon as he knew the healing magic worked and we wouldn’t have any permeant damage.”

“To the point as always.” Azreal gave a bitter smile. The memory of Scath’s empty, surprised eyes staring vacantly at the sky rose in his mind at the mention of the old man. ‘I’m glad I didn’t have to see Cryph. What could I even say to him? His nephew died and I couldn’t do anything to save him. Even if there wasn’t anything anyone could have done...I still feel too guilty to look him in the eye right now.’

“He made me mad.” Sariel said suddenly, surprising Azreal.

“What did he do?”

“That bastard...” Sariel clenched his uninjured fist. “Do you know what he said about Scath?” Azreal’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Is he mad at me?’

“He...he asked me about what happened to him. Calm as could be, no emotion whatsoever. I told him that he got skewered by one of those demonic entities and you tried to save him, but it was too late to do anything. And that...that son of a bitch...”

‘Sariel doesn’t normally swear. And I’ve never seen him be angry.’ Azreal reflected. Sariel’s agitation was so great, it took him a moment to compose himself.

“He said ‘oh it’s fine. It’s no loss to me, so don’t worry about it. If he was weak enough to go down that easily, then he got what he deserved.’ About his great nephew.”

Azreal’s blood ran cold and his mouth fell open. “H-he didn’t-?!” He couldn’t believe what Sariel had just said, even though he knew Sariel wasn’t the type to exaggerate or lie.

Sariel was visibly trembling with fury. “Yes, he did. He really went there. That’s why I’m mad. Who wouldn’t be?” Sariel turned to look at Azreal. “Scath wasn’t a good person. He was needlessly violent and a bully. I won’t miss his attitude. But he was Cryph’s flesh and blood. What sort of monster doesn’t care if their own nephew dies?”

Azreal looked down at his hands. ‘He’s right. I didn’t think that even Cryph was capable of being that heartless. It’s still unusual for Sariel to feel this strongly, though. But I can’t blame him. How that thing mangled Scath...that was a brutal way to go out.’

“I keep thinking about Scath” Azreal admited. “Was there something I could have done differently? Was there some way I could have saved him?”

Sariel raised an eyebrow. “I would think you should be happy he’s gone. The man treated you as his verbal punching bag. All he ever did was torment you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Azreal sighed. “I’m not deluded or anything. I know Scath wasn’t a great person. As much as I’d like to think otherwise...with the way he was, it’s obvious that he’s not exactly going to Heaven. But still...” He remembered how Scath had desperately reached out to him and begged for help after being injured, dropping all his bravado. “He was still a human. No one deserves to die like that. It was...” He shuddered. “At the end, after he got injured, he was scared and vulnerable. He didn’t look like the person who looked down on me and mocked me every chance he got. He looked...like any other person you’d find on the street.”

The two sat in the heavy silence. “It’s not your fault, you know.” Sariel suddenly said. “You’re an odd one. Even though he treated you the way he did, you still tried to save him. The second I knew he had a fatal wound I would have left him behind. We all fought as a team in theory but never had any attachments or obligations to each other. But you still refused to leave Scath behind. You did more than anyone else in the same situation would have done. Sometimes, people get killed in battle and it’s no one’s fault but the person who delt the blow. You were able to doge the creature, but he wasn’t. Scath’s death isn’t something that reflects negatively on you or your skills. It just happened.”

“W-wha-?” Azreal blinked in surprise at Sariel. Everything he said was true; Azreal had been feeling guilty about not being able to do anything for Scath. But at the same time, he could objectively acknowledge that they had been in a desperate emergency. He’d done everything he could and should have done in the situation, but nothing had been normal or gone as expected. He’d turned it over and over in his mind, but he couldn’t think of anything he could have done differently to prevent Scath’s death.

“...you’re right. There’s no point in dwelling on it now. It’s not like I’ll be able to rewind time if I think hard enough. Thanks, Sariel. I’m surprised you could tell what I was thinking though.”

"Really? It’s not that hard. Reading the subtly in human behavior is an essential skill for a mercenary. And I’ve observed how you act countless times. You’re easy to analyze and predict.”

“I see.” Azreal sighed. “Cryph and Scath aside...this was an absolute nightmare of a mission. As humiliating as it is that we lost three men, it’s impressive the two of us made it out because literally everything that could go wrong did. "He shuddered. “Demons and evil magic...I know that we couldn’t figure out why Tempest would just attack us for no reason, but the influence of dark magic wasn't something I was expect.

“Well, in a sense it does explain it.” Sariel said thoughtfully. “If they are willing to contract with Demons and utilize dark magic, then Tempest clearly has malicious intent. It’s not shocking that people willing to embrace the power of evil would start an unprovoked war just because they could. Though...I do think that they have some sort of goal in attacking Opal, beyond just wanting to kill and destroy. But that’s just my own hunch.”

“Yeah. Whatever is going to happen going forward...this isn’t just going to be a simple matter of running Tempest’s forces off the continent.” Azreal stared off into the distance. He was still stunned by everything that had happened during the mission. As horrifying as it had been, the true gravity of the situating in Open still hadn’t fully sunk in yet.

“We’re going to be busy in the coming months. You should go home as soon as the physician will let you and get all the rest you can.” Sariel said suddenly. “Make sure you make your time with your family and girlfriend count.”

“Girlfriend...” Azreal still didn’t know what he felt for Mari, but he did know that she was precious to him. While he was lying in bed with nothing to do but think, her face kept coming into his mind. Her presence was soothing; he felt happy and at ease with her. ‘I want to be with her again. If I can just see her smile and hear her laugh...I think I’d feel a bit better’ Regardless of the specific nature of his feelings, he did care for her. In fact, he was surprised at how much he missed her. Being separated from her created an acute boredom and ache in his soul; he was lonely without her. ‘I want to see Mari again soon. I need to get better as fast as possible. I don’t know what’s going to come next, but I don’t really care. Right now, I just want to see her and that’s all that matters.'

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“Come on, Sori!” Mari called from the sidewalk. “It’s time to meet Nanny and Tetra for lunch!” Sori trudged across the beach, slowed significantly by his bulging pockets. “Really kid? Your suitcase is already stuffed with shells! Leave some of the beach for other people to enjoy!” Someone next to her laughed. Mari glanced over and saw an old woman sitting on a blanket

“Pardon me! I couldn’t help it. Children are such characters! Seeing them brings me joy.”

Mari smiled. “Oh, it’s okay! I understand that feeling completely! And my little brother sure is a character...of some sort anyway.” She noticed the trinkets spread out on the blanket. “Are you selling those?”

“Yes. I made each of these by hand from stones that are found in the mountains. You’re welcome to take a look.”

Mari knelt and examined the items. It was mostly necklaces and bracelets. Everything was well-made. The designs were simple, but the woman had clearly poured her love and talent into each piece. ‘I wonder if there’s something here Azreal would like?’ Mari wondered. ‘I can’t see him wearing a bracelet. So...a necklace then?’ She scanned the items. Suddenly, her eyes fell on it.

It was a small, black cross on a matching chain. Mari picked it up and held it in front of her. “Oh!” When the sun hit the cross, it revealed flecks of bright red in the stone. The old woman smiled.

“That’s a special stone...blood obsidian. Pretty, isn’t it?” Mari looked at the sparkling cross.

‘The red.’ She realized. ‘It looks just like Azreal’s eyes. And the black is as dark as his hair.’ She smiled. “Yes, it’s so beautiful. And perfect. I’ll take it.” Sori finally waddled up as Mari was paying the old woman what she owed.

“Oh, did you finally find something for big brother?” He asked, peeking over her shoulder. “Yep!” She cheerfully held up the cross. Sori studied it for a moment.

“A cross is perfect for him, but did you have to get a black one? He doesn’t need to look like he’s trying to do satanic rituals or something. People already think he’s creepy.” Mari swatted his head.

“It’s not creepy! I think it would be comforting to Az to have something little to remind him of God when he’s scared, and he’s always dressed in black and has dark hair and eyes! It’s perfect for him.” Sori scrunched up his nose.

“I don’t know. I still think a shell would be a prettier gift.” Mari shook her head.

“No, I’m sure. I can feel it in my heart.” She looked lovingly at the small cross cupped in her palm. “This is perfect for Az.”