The Ninth Wave

The next few days passed without much to remember.

Lilly still wasn’t giving us much to work with, but the fact we were heading for the Eastol-Gallai border was obvious at this point. The villages started to slowly lose the cluttered, steampunk vibes of Gallai, where buildings of stone and wood replaced the purely wooden buildings I’d gotten used to.

“We reach the border in an hour,” Lilly said as we walked around the well-worn dirt road.

This far out, there wasn’t much other than us. The most we had seen in the past day was the occasional carriage transporting goods from one country to the other. Apparently, most traders took the less windy roads.

“Then what?” Aila ran ahead and faced Lilly. If there was one skill Aila had shown on this trip, it was her perseverance. “How many more days until we reach your supposed base?”

“Less than one. It’s not far.”

“Not far?” Aila raised an eyebrow. “Where is this base? You’ve never told us!”

“You’ll see by tomorrow.”

“That’s not an answer! What? Do you think we're secretly spies for Thien or something? Stop hiding every little thing from us and at least let us in on where we're going!”

“For all I kno,w you are.” Lilly said, keeping her voice calm. “Rin trusts you, but you haven’t given me a reason to.”

“And you haven’t given one to me either!” Aila scowled.

“You’re the one following me,” Lilly shrugged. “If you’re so concerned, Gallai's back the way we came.”

Aila glanced toward the dirt with her face a bright red. “Whatever.”

After that neither of them were in the mood to talk. The wind whipped through my hair like tangled vines, though it was nothing compared to the west of Gallai. Here, things felt more stable. Though I had a feeling the second we passed into Estol that would all change.

“Lilly?” She glanced toward me. “At least tell me what you’ve been up to for the past two years. For me, our stupid meal at WcDonalds was barely a month ago, I don’t have the baggage you do. At least tell me what happened to you.”

“Where did that come from?” Lilly asked, though I noticed the tips of her mouth curl up.

“We’re friends, Lilly, it would be weird for me not to wonder!”

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” Lilly said before clearing her throat. “It’s a long story.”

“We got time,” I said.

“Well, it started with a bang,” She took a deep breath and dusted her cloak off one more time.

“After we got separated in that damned gray portal, I woke up near the border of Alzgar and Eastol. It was weird, you know—that delight of waking up in a world like this. The trees seemed to sway like grass, and everywhere I looked, everything felt so fantastical! I didn’t get to keep that naiveté for long.”

She pulled back her right sleeve. A faint red scar ran across the length of her arm, well-worn with age. “I’m assuming you haven’t heard of the Raphiel Wars?”

“I have,” Aila muttered. “At least the portions that leaked into Gallai.”

“Be glad those are the only parts. It’s been raging for the last five years at the Alzgar and Eastol border. Whatever god sent me here threw me ten minutes from the front lines.”

She unconsciously let a dagger form in her right hand. “I was just a dumb girl [1] [CG2] then. I walked straight into the Alzgar encampment. It didn't take them long to figure out I wasn’t from there.

“The next few days are still a blur. I just remember the inquisitor asking me question after question, using the whip every time my answer didn’t satisfy him. It took three days for the man to realize I didn’t know anything.”

Aila and I looked on as Lilly’s eyes started to water. “It was only thanks to a riverlight spy in the camp that I was able to escape. I remember him breaking into my cell at night and whisking me away like it was nothing. You know him as Seth.”

“That Seth?” Aila narrowed her eyes. “You must know half of what he’s done.”

“I helped him do it,” Lilly shrugged. “But nevertheless, he was the one who recruited me into RiverLight the very night we escaped.

“The journey there was the first time I truly felt helpless. You know what I was like, Rin; that dumb, naive girl who thought her athletics and test scores would let her coast through life.”

“You? Lilly, you're the most down to earth girl I know?! Both back then and now, that hasn’t changed.”

“I’m glad I can at least still keep up that image.” She glanced toward the sky. “I’m just as lost, Rin. Even now I’m asking myself if this was the right path to take. I think I was lucky, you know. After I arrived at RiverLight, they gave me the best training I could have asked for. Instead of that scared little girl who got captured in her first ten minutes, I learned to survive.”

“All so they could use you as a pawn,” Aila said.

“No, I volunteered to kill. Seth was originally the one set on collecting the gems, I volunteered despite him insisting otherwise.”

“Did you want to die?!” Aila said, aghast.

“Maybe,” Lilly said, with the same tone as someone ordering breakfast. “My stories are pretty boring from there. RiverLight helped me discover what my Senn could do; add in a bunch of training, and you get the me that stands before you. It’s nothing special.”

Nothing special, I could hardly believe my ears. Her whole story sounded like a hell way worse than what I went though, yet here she just shrugged it off. “Lilly, you should have been a hero! Your Senn destroys what I can do! I–”

“The gods said otherwise. If they wanted me to be a hero they wouldn’t have bothered to throw me into a warzone.” She unconsciously glared at the bit of my Senn sticking out from my cloak. “If I have to be a villain, so be it. All for the sake of saving the people here.”

“They didn’t do anything wrong,” I sighed. Somewhere in there I could see the same fiery determination that drew me to Lilly. “Unlike us.”

“Come on,” Lilly trotted toward the front of the party. “This time around, let's both be villains.”