Choices, So They Said...

I was laying down in a bed of some sort. They must have carried me into this room while I was knocked out. Good. I refused to open my eyes. Maybe if I pretended to remain asleep, they would leave me alone. No, I realized. They were not going to leave me alone. They knew I had awoken.

“Halliyah,” Hilami insisted. “You must drink this.”

“Your potions won't help,” I told her with a raspy breath. “Not this time. Too much pain.”

“Foolish man,” Hilami scolded me. “Drink.”

She nearly forced the liquid down my throat. Much of it spilled onto my clothes instead. “Ugh… it tastes like boiled cabbage and poppy milk.”

“That's because it is boiled cabbage and poppy milk,” Hilami replied. “Drink. It will dull the pain.”

“I promise you no amount of poppy milk will dull the pain I feel right now,” I answered. Technically true, I thought to myself. The pain I felt was not physical, at least not this time. Not anymore. A few side-to-side rolls later, I continued, “Watcher's Eye, why did it have to be me?”

“You were the best man for the job,” Ipas answered as she entered the room. “Or so they thought.”

“Well, they were wrong,” I responded. Every motion, every breath felt like it could have been my last. “I failed. I lost that fight just when I thought I had the win. I allowed my bravado to get the better of me.”

The Elf King turned to Hilami and Ipas and asked them, “May I speak to Zikatta in private?” The two of them walked out of the room in silence, allowing Edagri to confront me alone.

“So you chose to let the world suffer because of one failure,” Edagri took his turn to scold me. “I suppose no one ever told you that one failure does not relieve you of your responsibility under the Choosing.”

“Nobody asked me to be the hero,” I countered. “I had retired. My fair share of battles had already been fought. Could they not have chosen anyone else?”

King Edagri combed through his hair with a hand, presumably to think about his next response. “Nobody should have to ask you to be the hero,” he told me. “You should take on the responsibility with pride and honor.”

“I did… once. Look where pride and honor got me. Forty-eight stab wounds, twenty-four spikes right through the body. I should have died that day.”

“But you didn't,” replied Edagri. “Hilami has told me quite a bit about you and how you survived that battle. But at the same time, she has left much unsaid.”

“That's Hilami for you,” I said as I rolled over to face away from him. “A good witch never reveals her secrets, she says.”

“That she has said,” he agreed. “That she has.”

An awkward silence filled the air after that. I wanted to say something about fate and curses and stupid people and wanting this endless nightmare to end, but the words would not leave my tongue.

He spoke first, “If you try to say you have no choice now, you're just lying to yourself to get out of the responsibility of your actions. You always had a choice. It was you who chose to hide yourself away after a single failure. You could have chosen to run away even before you had a chance to fail. But you didn't. Why?”

My breathing became lighter over time, but words were still hard to come by. Some of the pain even started to subside. Was this conversation all just a ploy for the elf to heal me? I actually stopped caring, frankly. It mattered not to me what hidden motives anyone had anymore. A yawn escaped my mouth. Sleepy…

“I felt like I had no choice,” I finally answered him. “King Hattu told me that saying no was not an option, lest I face the wrath of gods and men.”

“Those were his words?”

“Those were his words. That was, I assume, the cost this magic ritual you speak of beckoned. So I felt compelled to serve my country again.”

“I see,” the Elf King realized where I came from regarding this silly little debate.

“Speaking of my country,” I continued. “Has there been any news of the Kingdom of Neshi? What of King Hattu? His sons or daughters, perhaps?”

The Elf King sighed and took a deep breath. Even in my current state, I could tell he debated with himself on whether to say what he wanted to say next. “There is no Kingdom of Neshi. Not anymore. Your kingdom fell when Luwas fell and the entire royal line was sent to the slaughterhouse. What remains is either controlled by the Demon Lord or by various warlords.”

So he merely confirmed what I had already suspected. The attacks by demon hordes or warring clans and the constant shuffling around of who to give tribute to each year were the signs that there was no kingdom left. Of course. I already knew, but at the same time, I felt like I should have known better.

“So Hattu made me serve my country,” I told Edagri. By now, I struggled to toss and turn to and fro on the bed. My body told me to sleep, but I wanted answers. “Now, no country remains for me to have any sort of obligation to serve.”

“An unfortunate choice of wording from him, I'm afraid,” he responded. “You still have a choice in the matter. You -”

“I choose to sleep, then,” I answered sheepishly, wanting to retreat further into my bed. “When is this meeting of yours again?”

“Tomorrow night in the feast hall,” Edagri explained. “Get as much rest as you need in the meantime.”

With that, he had also left the room. I was now alone. I still had a choice, hmm? Sure. We could have gone with that. I could have chosen to jump out of that window behind me, if my body allowed it. No. Too sleepy. Fine. I could have chosen to walk right out the gates of Freehold tomorrow morning. No. Not possible. Well… It was possible, not that it would have done me any good.

I would have to fight the Demon Lord Ayya again eventually. I did not realize it at the time, but Edagri was right. The choice to fight was in fact mine and mine alone. I just had to choose when. But I was not ready, for I had no sword, no other weapons. My body was still old and tattered. If I had to fight him eventually, I needed to be in top shape for the task at hand.

For now, though… I just needed to rest.

•

The next night came, and with it my strength had returned fully. I had somehow slept through the entire previous night and the entirety of the day. The meeting was surely starting soon, so I had to make haste through the city in order to reach the feast hall. Giorg had told me that so many important people were going to be there.

I might not have been the most knowledgeable about the state of affairs from the last fifteen years, but I could remember a few small details. Other than what used to be the Kingdom of Neshi, there were various other nations and an assortment of free cities around the known world. Some of those locales had one ruler, a king or a minister perhaps. Others had a primary ruler and several minor rulers under them. All of them had a nasty tendency to hate their neighbors.

At last, I reached the feast hall. If Edagri really succeeded in his quest to bring the world's leaders together, this was my one chance to see what that actually looked like. Would peace be achieved within these city walls or would hundreds, if not thousands of years of rivalries boil over and lead to a world war on a miniature scale? I had but one opportunity to find out.