My fervent prayers were finally answered and my story was pirated. I take this as a great honour bestowed upon me and as a milestone in my career as an author. Wherever you may be reading this book (rip lightnovelpub), I hope you enjoy it.
If you don't, I am sure I do not need to restate the consequences that you shall incur. Namely my unending wrath.
Anyways, I hereby absolve you of any guilt from your piracy and let you continue to do so with my personal seal of approval.
Now then, onto the chapter:
[Unitopia, Southern Archipelego]
The deafening noises had quietened down, leaving behind a hollow silence that ate away at the soul, leaving only despair in its wake. The sky was shrouded in fog, casting an unnatural gloom over the city, as though the heavens themselves hid their gazes from the actions of the mortals below.
City was a generous word for the expanse of rubble that remained. The skyscrapers in the core district still stood, built around those eternal ruins. But their figures were far from proud, instead haggard and weary, missing chunks the size of entire blocks like the bite marks of some colossal titan.
Those buildings that did not have the privilege of such an indestructible skeleton were not so lucky. And so those once-magnificent skyscrapers looked particularly forlorn in that sea of rubble and bodies.
By now the fires had died down. By some ironic twist of fate, the winds had been favourable that day and they had died down quickly.
Not that it made much of a difference in the end.
The sky was darkening now even behind the thick curtain of smog and dust. Without the glittering lights of civilisation, the impenetrable darkness encroached unopposed.
Much of the outer districts were indistinguishable now, razed near enough to the ground in an almost complete state of obliteration. No life stirred, as though the battle had not ended hours but centuries ago. Already, it seemed to carry the weight and history of a graveyard.
In one of the streets in District 42, a district from the outermost ring of the city, there was a crater several metres diameter laying in the road. In the centre of that crater lay a smoking heap. Its features were hard to distinguish in the dim twilight. A shadowy mass vaguely resembling a human, though its proportions were much larger.
Approaching the crater from further down the road, listless and lifeless, was the gaunt figure of a young girl. A mass of cloth was clutched in her left hand so tightly that her knuckles were a stark white contrasting against the rest of her grimy skin. Her clothes were dirty, a thick layer of dust settling on it, making it impossible to tell where skin ended and clothes began.
She walked forward with aimlessly, as though simply for the sake of walking. Her eyes were glassy and hollow. The spark that once resided therein had been snuffed out violently. This was not the gaze of despair.
This was the gaze of one who had fallen down into the infinite depths of the abyss and, having reached the bottom, realised in pyrrhic acceptance that at least there was no further to fall.
No tears escaped those eyes, but the dried streaks on her cheeks belied the apparent stoicism of her expression. She reached the lip of the crater and for the first time seemed to acknowledge the existence of the world around her.
Glancing downwards, her eyes passed over that of the indistinct figure lying in the centre of the crater, but her gaze didn't waver as if it did not even register in her mind.
She took a step over the lip, crunching gravel underfoot as she slipped down the slope. She caught her slide, stumbling only to her knees, but the sharp gravel sliced open a cut that welled with red blood. For a moment, she knelt there unmoving, but she quickly stood back up, ignoring the cut as though not having noticed it in the first place.
Throughout it all, the grip of her left hand remained tightly closed around that piece of fabric as though that was the only thing that truly mattered.
Walking forwards, she approached the fallen figure, its shape becoming clearer as she approached. Before, it blended in with the shadows, but up close its true size could be seen. And its form.
It was a suit of armour.
The metal it was made from was torn and ripped, in some places splayed outwards as though some internal explosion had torn it apart. Its already large size exaggerated even further by the pitiful figure of the girl, about the same size as a single arm of the colossal armour.
She approached the fallen soldier fearlessly, a hint of something in her hollow gaze that quickly faded like the memory of a dream. Trailing a hand against its cold metal, she approached the torso of the soldier. An insignia was there engraved into its huge pauldron, but covered in grime and blood it's shape was indeterminate.
Abruptly, a low rumbled sounded out from the lifeless suit and its head shifted slightly to look at the girl. Its eyes flickered a soft shade of green a few times before fading. A breathless chuckle sounded out, before a voice spoke, slicing through the silence like a jagged blade.
"Kid"
The voice was metallic and rough, shades of fury that had been wrung of every drop, leaving behind only weariness.
"What're you doing", a wet cough sounded out before the voice continued. "What're you doing all the way out here?"
The girl was unfazed by the sudden voice coming from the lifeless armour and only stared blankly, no indication of comprehension. Instead, she moved to the outstretched right arm of the soldier.
The eyes of the helmet followed her figure curiously, but the voice remained silent.
The girl reached down and grabbed onto the gauntleted hands of the soldier, one hand barely wrapping around a single digit. And then she stood up, pulling with all her pitiful might.
Cheeks ballooning with the effort, but her hand was slick with sweat and dust, slipping off the finger and she fell backwards.
The voice chuckled once more.
"Not a bad try kid"
Seemingly ignoring the interjection, she stood up once more. This time, she stared at her unused left hand still clutching that torn rag. She looked back at the gauntleted hand of the soldier.
For a moment, there was silence in that crater. The hollowness in her eyes seemed especially pronounced in that moment, shrouded in the growing shadows of fading twilight.
But her left hand did not let go to its burden. Perhaps it couldn't let go, not now. And so she stood there, gaze alternating between the fallen soldier and her left hand. Eventually, she simply hung her head low and stood there, motionless.
The helmet hid the face of the soldier, only his voice sounding out. Its rough and metallic sound was unsuited for compassionate words, but perhaps anything was better than silence.
Bad thoughts multiply in the salvation of silence, when there is nothing that separates the inner from the outer. Speech is what solidified the boundary between the self and the world. And so the soldier did what he could.
He spoke.
"Don't look so glum, kid. I'm just resting here for a bit. A few minutes more and I'll get up. Just a few minutes"
Even that amount of speech seemed too much for the soldier, wheezing breaths so loudly so as to be heard from outside the helmet. The girl stirred for the first time, glancing at the helmet. Whether with hope or suspicion, it was hard to tell. She was holding onto that rag with both hands, clutching it to her chest.
The soldier coughed again and continued, unfazed by the lack of response.
"What, you don't believe me? How can I make you trust me then."
He paused, thinking for a few seconds.
"How about a promise?"
The girl moved for the first time, so slightly, but the sharp eyes of the soldier could not miss the movement of her chin downwards.
"Ha, a promise it is then. I promise that I will rest for a few more minutes and then get up. How's that?"
The girl did not respond, but something in her expression hid a hint of dissatisfaction. She shook her head once, staring at the soldier with hollow eyes.
"What", the soldier protested. He went silent for a few seconds, thinking.
"How about I make an oath then.", he suggested. "For me and my brothers, that is the strongest and most powerful promise we can make"
His voice was low and the girl leaned in closer, a faint hint of interest in her eyes.
"I knew that would catch your interest", he chuckled. "All we need to do is a simple thing. Wrap your little finger around mine, and the oath will be made."
The girl was motionless for a few seconds, but then she moved slowly. Kneeling down, she let go of the rag with her right hand, still gripping it with every fibre of her being in her left, and attempted to wrap her little finger around that of the unmoving gauntlet.
It could barely reach halfway around the gauntleted finger but still, she kept it there, staring at it intensely before turning to the helmeted soldier with a silent question.
The fallen soldier stifled a laugh at the comical sight, the crouched figure of the girl was barely largely than his forearm and the sight of her finger wrapped around his reminded him of that of a tiny monkey clinging to a branch.
Still, he replied in a serious tone, matching the grave expression adopted by the girl.
"Then it is done", he intoned. "I, Bane son of Geos, vow to uphold this oath. I, Bane son of Geos, swear to get up in a few minutes after just a lil rest. In the name of Mercy, Compassion and Honour."
There was no special effects at his proclamation, echoing weakly in that crater like the world itself mocked him. But girl was completely entranced by the ceremony. She nodded very solemnly at his proclamation before retracting her finger and standing up.
Her body language was the same as ever, still gripping that rag with all her might and perhaps it was the hallucinations of an exhausted mind, but the soldier could have sworn he saw a glint of something in her eyes.
But it was gone, replaced by that haunting emptiness.
Barely ten years old. And to have experienced a lifetime's of sorrow in but a single day.
The cruelty of the universe was not new to the soldier, but it did not make the thought any easier to digest. He fixed his gaze behind his helmeted face on the little girl. She had stood back and was staring intently at his hand, as though counting down the seconds in the few minutes he had promised.
Heh, promised. Let's see about that promise then.
With a subvocal intonation, he brought up the head-up display of his suit. Broken strings of numbers flashed across his sight, eyes flashing side to side as he followed the computer running through various diagnostics.
Whatever vague hopes he had were quickly and efficiently slaughtered by the cold rationality of the machine.
There was still power left in his suit, about a third in fact, but the explosion that had thrown him all the way from the centre of the city to this outermost district had devastated pretty much everything else.
Nothing electrical was working, not even basics like night vision.
Other than that, he had been hit by several high ordnance explosive rounds that had lodged into his suit before exploded, messing up the internals and locking his left wrist and elbow joint.
The landing had knocked him unconscious. The tide of smog made judging from the ambient light difficult, but he estimated he lay there for at least several hours.
I guess its over then.
The silence he had woken up to was a welcome change to the non-stop combat of the previous 48 hours.
Protocol would say to go to the rendez-vous point but my beacon is inactive and I've got no access to nav software.
He glanced at the girl whose forlorn figure was so painfully familiar to him.
To be honest, his choice had been made as soon as he saw the stumbling figure of the girl slipping down the crater, gripping that rag tightly in her small hand.
Mercy, Compassion, Honour. These were the tenets upheld by his faith. The tenets he had sword to uphold himself in his service to the Alliance. Before he had seen the girl, he was a hair's breadth away from just...letting go.
Holding on seemed so difficult, and no voice in the silence spoke out against him until he could hardly convince himself to carry on. That was until he saw the girl. Like a single spark burning away at a hay bale, the gloom that shrouded his mind was purified in an instant.
The girl must live.
Ending it in that crater would have left only regret festering in his heart. The girl was a chance for something more. Perhaps it was just semantics, or the selfish needs of a dying man.
At the end of the day, it made no difference. And so his decision was made with iron certainty.
One last mission. And then I can rest.