Chapter 46 - Aftermath

“Wake up.”

Tetsuo gently slapped Alon a wake. He smelled of smoke, and the ends of his hair seemed crispy, but otherwise he seemed fine. Tetsuo held his hand out to him.

Tetsuo deepened his voice sarcastically. “Tell me, do you know where you are?”

Alon still barely groaned and swatted his hand away. “Leave me alone dude…”

Despite his complaints, Tetsuo helped Alon up off the ground. Alon saw Eleanor being pulled forwards by Bianca. She had her head low, her face hidden by her hair. Alon walked towards her and motioned to Bianca to let him handle her. She obliged and moved aside. Alon grabbed his hair tie and removed it, letting his hair down. It was a rare sight, although Tetsuo didn’t think it was the right moment to mention it. Alon carefully reached in front of Eleanor and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. He used his hair tie to hold it in place.

“You know…” He began. “Despite everything, I still consider you as my friend.”

A pang of guilt appeared on Eleanor’s face, but she didn’t respond.

Tetsuo turned to Bianca. “There’s only one thing left to do.”

Tetsuo picked up a piece of broken chalk laying on the ground from the fight and began to walk towards the bell.

Eleanor’s eyes widened. “Please! No! Don’t!” Tears began to stream from her eyes. “Please I need to see him again! I need to!”

Tetsuo did his best to try to ignore her pleas.

“You can’t do this! You can’t!”

Bianca interrupted her. “Would you keep it do–”

“Bianca.” Tetsuo looked back at her and shook his head. Scornfully, she remained silent.

“Please, I’ll help you get back home! We can find a way! I was so close!”

Tetsuo looked at her. “How many more Earthens will it create?”

“The next one! I’ll get it on the next try for sure! It’ll only take one try!”

Mournfully, he shook his head. “Eleanor. The price is way too high. We can’t keep sacrificing everything just for one person.”

With that he walked over to the bell. He attempted to drown out the sound of her cries, and readied the chalk. He looked closely at the bell. Tiny drawings of sigils interconnected over the entire mass of the bell, all preserved for centuries. The creator truly was a master of their craft.

Tetsuo sighed, and drew one large messy slash across the bell, ruining centuries of his master's work.

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“I just wanted to be with him again…”

Eleanor kept repeating these words again and again, as they walked back out the tunnel.

Tetsuo leaned over to Alon and asked him, “What’s going to happen to her?”

Alon shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Normally, she’d be arrested for treason and all sorts of things, but we don’t know how far Remes’ reach into our kingdom really is. For now she’ll be imprisoned, but the kingdom will have to go through some major reforms to adjust for the shift in power dynamics.”

It made enough sense. The kingdom was founded on the principle of the summoning phenomenon. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Eleanor and her brother created Alvania and Remes. Though it was still odd to think that Eleanor truly was immortal. Sobbing to herself certainly made her seem just as human as the rest of them.

Tetsuo looked over to Eleanor who was still repeating the phrase. “Say Eleanor?”

“Don’t speak to me…”

“Sorry… I was just wondering. Why do you think your brother brought you back?”

“Because he loved me. Same reason I’m going to bring him back.”

Tetsuo paused and thought about her answer. “I think that’s wrong.”

Eleanor turned, staring daggers at him. “What would you know?!”

Tetsuo raised his hands up in defense. “Well, I just think you’re missing the obvious answer, don’t you think?

“Which is..?”

“He wanted you to live.”

Eleanor was about to give a sarcastic rebuttal but she stopped herself. Tetsuo’s words seemed to have stirred something in her, so he continued.

“You’ve spent three hundred years sitting in a cave trying to give up your life for him. Every week, you were hoping to die, the complete opposite of what he wanted.”

Eleanor looked down solemnly.

“Maybe I don’t know anything, I mean I’m only twenty-eight years old. But maybe it’s time you start living your life for yourself. If not for you, then at least to respect his final decision.”

Tetsuo got sort of embarrassed and began rustling his hair. It felt a bit odd for him to attempt to be genuine with someone. However, this time he felt it was important. For the rest of the walk back Eleanor remained silent, though she was no longer crying.

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Along the way they had found Veera and Lunette passed out in the hallway they had been fighting. Broken walls, scattered snow, and chunks of rubble contrasted well against their sleeping frames. When they were both asleep, Tetsuo could start to see the father daughter resemblance.

Bianca nudged Veera awake. Once he got up he gently hoisted Lunette onto his back and began to carry her out with them.

Outside of the workshop, Tetsuo found Roscoe and Wilbur carrying out the other half of their plan. The two of them were treating the soldiers they had fought earlier, while showing them the images Pia had produced at Remes. If things were going according to plan, Pia, Trevor, and the rest of the rebels were doing the same over in Tervana.

Roscoe shared his story of being an assassin for Remes to the soldiers, albeit with limited wording, and tried to explain to them that the cult at Remes was the real enemy, not Earthens. If they had failed to apprehend Eleanor or found nothing below the workshop, it would have been far more difficult to convince them. However, with multiple sources of evidence, and the credibility of some of the most powerful knights in the kingdom, it seemed like the truth had a chance to prevail.