NOVEL NEXT WORLD 242. Preparing for the Next Round
Ike showed Wisp to the river. She quickly set about making herself at home, testing the various trees' strength for use as the primary poles of her future web. He watched her work for a while, but when he realized he was useless, he set off back to the castle. For a while, he helped the smiths with making the traps. He couldn't forge metal or work with their heavy tools, but he could bend thick wires around one another to form caltrops. With his strength, it didn't even hurt his fingers. Even so, they'd hurt if he stepped on one unexpectedly. And hopefully it'll hurt the monsters, too. The pig monsters had had hooves. If the next round of monsters had hooves, too, the caltrops wouldn't do much.
"Better than nothing," he muttered to himself. At least this way, he wasn't the useless boss Wisp was accusing him of being.
"What was that?" Relin asked.
Ike shook his head. "Nothing."
She glanced at him. "Are the words of your subordinate bothering you?"
"She isn't my subordinate. We're friends," Ike replied. "And yes and no. I mean, we rib each other all the time, but useless? That's… you know, that hurts."
Relin snorted. "I can't tell if you're serious or not."
"A little. Mostly not. But who doesn't worry about being useless from time to time? Besides, look at us. Wisp is out there, holding down the river on her own, and I'm twisting wires," Ike said. He gave the wires he was holding a twist and held them up.
"We're all contributing, in our own way," Relin said evenly.
"I know. But she's contributing so much more. I feel… inadequate."
Relin glanced at him. "Do you think she's never felt inadequate around you?"
Ike paused. The moment after the battle with Llewyn played in his head—the moment when Wisp tried to leave on her own. For training. To catch up to him.
He snorted and glanced down. "No… she has."
"Then be at peace. It's not that either of you are unable to measure up to the other. You're equals, but equals with different specializations. There are times when her specializations will outdo your skill level, and when your specializations will outdo hers. If you always dominate her, or the reverse, then you aren't equals. Then you are no longer friends, but truly leader and subordinate."
Ike thought for a moment. "I guess I hadn't thought of it like that."
Find adventures at empire
She laughed. "I have simplified the matter a little. It's not as though people with differing power levels can't be friends, or even see one another as equals. But there's something precious about friends who are as strong as you. Friends you can pace yourself with, and face in a friendly rivalry." Her gaze grew distant for a moment, and her hands slowed in twisting the wires.
"Did you once have someone like that?" Ike asked, picking up on the cues.
Relin sighed. For a while, they worked in silence. Ike waited, occasionally watching her face. Relin stared at her hands, lost in thought.
"I did," she said at last. "Someone I thought of as irreplaceable. I thought I couldn't go on without him. That he and I were destined to be rivals for eternity."
Ike glanced at her. He could guess the ending, but he waited anyways. It was her story to tell, not his.
She sighed again. Her hands stopped, and she stared blankly at the half-twisted wire. "And then he died. It was a glorious death. We fought shoulder to shoulder in battle. That spear could have taken either of us, but it took him. Like a strike from the heavens, it came too quickly for either of us to see. Hammered him out of the sky. One second, he stood beside me; the next, he was gone."
"I'm sorry," Ike said quietly.
"That's what it's like, to fight a mages' war," she said. "We were low-Rank. The spear was thrown by someone higher Rank. It wasn't even meant to strike us. In fact, one of our higher-Rank mages had thoughtlessly deflected it. Nonetheless, it was enough to kill. And just like that, someone so precious to me was gone."
Ike lowered his eyes. And that's what Wisp and I mean to do. Or, at least, I do, and Wisp would probably come along. Once we get stronger, I'm going to challenge Lord Brightbriar. But if he calls a higher-Rank mage, if more powerful forces get swept up in the battle… we could easily end up that same kind of collateral damage. "How terrible."
"Hmm. I don't know that there's a lesson to pass on. Except to prepare for death at all times, on the battlefield. Yourself, and your friends. If you ever think of someone as invincible or irreplaceable, they'll be stripped from you in the next moment."
"Then is the lesson to strive for peace?" Ike asked.
"I hope so. For a peaceful world, without strife or war."
"But there's someone I must kill."
She looked him in the eye. "Are you willing to stake your friend's life on it?"
He met her gaze. "I don't think she'd forgive me if I held back on her account."
Relin chuckled. "He was the same. No, and I would have been the same, too, if I'd found out he was holding back for me. I suppose that's what makes us warriors, isn't it? That we would rather die for our beliefs, than live for our friends."
Ike grinned and scratched the back of his head. "We're kind of stupid like that, aren't we?"
"Someone has to do it. If we all picked peace, then the tyrants of this world would never be overthrown. All the good people of the world would be trampled by the few unjust who were willing to choose conflict."
He glanced at Relin. "Is that what happened here?"
She shut her mouth. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You know we can't speak of that."
"I know. But it's starting to come together anyways." Ike nodded outside. "These castles represent the capital of the kingdom, don't they? The capital of the kingdom that's looking for a king. Except that kingdom is lost. Has been lost, for as long as this trial has existed. In fact, you could say that this trial is the last echo of that lost kingdom."
"What an interesting theory," Relin murmured. Still, she didn't contradict him.
"The other candidates who think this is truly a trial to pick a king are delusional. The kingdom is long gone. There are no people to rule, no land to claim. The king chosen by this trial is king of nothing, king of no one. All this place hides is the other half of an overpowered skill. A skill so dangerous that it was split in the last days of whatever conflict ruined this kingdom, and hidden in this trial to prevent the occupying force from taking it." Ike paused, then shrugged. "Well. Half of it was, anyways."
Relin's eyes narrowed. "How do you know that?"
Ike smiled at her slowly. "Let's just say I have my ways. But listen. None of us want to be king. All we want is that skill. Is there any way to grab it and dash, or—"
"If your guesses are correct, and this trial is meant to hide half of the skill, what makes you think that it's possible to take the half of the skill before the trial is complete? Wouldn't someone else have taken it long ago, in that case? Perhaps even the occupying force," Relin pointed out.
Ike lowered his head and spread his hands toward her. "As you say." Unfortunate. It seems like we're really in it to win it, even if we don't care about being king. "In that case, then I suppose we have no choice but to crush this trial and take that skill."
"Is it that easy?" Relin asked.
"No. But we aren't going to lose." With that, Ike lowered his head and went back to twisting caltrops.
Relin gazed at him for a few more seconds, then chuckled under her breath. She, too, turned back to the wires. Shaking her head, she muttered, "I knew I had a good feeling about you."