I remember the night I lost them. Although it was ten years ago, and I was barely older than a toddler, I remembered it perfectly. I woke up to the sound of screaming and the bright, orange lights of flames licking the small, wooden cabin I called home. The air was flavored with smoke, and I was taken into a fit of coughing. Strangely enough though, I didn't cry. I didn't scream. Instead, once the coughing ceased, I sat in silence. Somehow, I knew that I'd be alright. As if on cue, my father rushed into my room, scooping me up in the blanket I'd had since my birth. "It'll be alright, Cono." He whispered into my ear. "Your mother won't be coming, but we'll get you out of here."
With my father stopping briefly to kiss my forehead before we left, we ran through the burning village. On either side of us, the townspeople screamed as people dressed in the clothes of the Malim soldiers I'd soon learn to hate cut them down. It's not like my father and I were lucky and never stopped. Plenty of people got in our way, attempting to cut off our exit, but one after the other, the soldiers each fell down as we ran towards them- as if they were pushed by invisible hands. Finally, we burst through the tree line and out of the village. We sprinted through the massive oak trees surrounding us, occasionally tripping over the thick roots blanketing the forest floor until appearing from the shadows, a lone Malim Warrior stood in our way. My father set me onto the floor. "Don't move," he asked. "I'll only be gone a moment."
Still wrapped up in my favorite blanket, I set my bare feet on the cool, damp earth, the cool, night air brushing my face. My father walked towards the warrior, stretching out his hand as if he meant to push the air. I still don't know what my father was trying to do that night, but I do know the warrior he was attempting to face only laughed. Once the laughter subsided, I could hear the faint noises of him talking to my father, although I couldn't make out the words. I could hear my father start to speak back to the stranger, but as soon as he began to speak, he was cut short. A spear appearing to be made out of shadow shot out from the darkness, piercing my father's chest. He fell to the ground, and as quickly as the first one emerged, a second dark spear was hurled into his forehead. His body hit the floor with a thud, and he was gone.
I screamed out, begging for the man to stop, but there was no time for my voice to be heard. The soldier that had killed my father began to walk towards me, and still crying for the man to spare my father, he reached his hand out towards me.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, disturbing me from exploring my memories. I looked up at the hand's owner to see the familiar face of Adelard. "Get up off your knees." His gruff voice echoed through the chapel. "You can't pray forever, and by the looks of it, anymore 'prayer' will end up with you in a psych ward."
"I'm fine, I promise." I responded.
"Sure, let's say you are. We do need to train though. Your first mission's coming up, and I know as well as anybody how dangerous it is to send out unprepared soldiers into the battlefield."
"I'm ready," I bit back.
"Then prove it," Adelard replied.
I picked myself up off of the stone, chapel floor and picked up the broadsword I'd devoted myself to training with since the temple had taken me in.
"You want me to prove it? Get ready to have yourself knocked on the ground, old man." I said, moving past him.
I pushed through the chapel doors and walked into a courtyard. The courtyard was far from empty. Everywhere I looked, Votaries either stood guard on the temple walls or trained in the many fenced off arena's populating it. I looked back towards Adelard. "You sure you wanna do this?" I asked. "Cause I won't let you off easy this time."
Adelard simply looked at me, his old eyes filled with humor, and outlined by the smile lines covering his face. "I suppose, votary Lavineous, it's time for you to either 'put up, or shut up' as today's youth would say."
I laughed at the old man's attempt to be hip and walked into the nearest empty arena. I walked to the furthest side from the gate before grabbing one of the wooden practice weapons lining the fence and holding it up in the traditional Sola Votaries stance. "Just don't get mad when I topple you." I laughed.
Adelard walked up to the selection of training weapons. He was one of the oldest Votaries in the temple and I'd sparred with him a million times, in recent years, I'd even managed to start beating him consistently. However, this time was different. As opposed to choosing the broadsword traditionally wielded by warriors of Sola, Adelard chose a scimitar and got into a low stance, featuring an outstretched leg in front that appeared impractical. "You may have been able to topple me in the past," Adelard began, "but can you topple a soldier of Malim?"
I ran towards him, pointing the tip of the wooden broadsword at him in preparation to thrust, although, almost inexplicably, my blade was no longer in my hand. I looked up from my now empty hand to see Adelard's face covered in a big, goofy smile. "What'd you do!?" I demanded.
"How about this?" He replied. "Try lunging at me again like that and I'll try to go slower."
I got back into my position at the other end of the arena, and Adelard got back into his strange, awkward stance. I ran towards him just like last time, and just like last time, my sword was launched from my hands, only now, I saw what had happened. As I ran towards my mentor, his leg that he'd had outstretched in front of him shot up, hitting the pommel of the training blade in my hands with a power that I'd never seen from a man of Adelard's age, sending it flying into the air..
"Well," I began. "I can't say I've seen a move like that before."
"Put your blade back on the rack," the old man ordered. " Physical training's over for now. Come with me."
I did as Adelard asked and followed him out of the arena. He led me through the labyrinth of various training tools littering the courtyard and past the blacksmith's station, stopping in front of a plain, wooden door. "Head inside the library and find a seat." He asked. "I need to grab a few books, but I'll be with you in a second."
I found finding an empty table to be easy as we were the only ones in the library at the time, and as I sat, my mind began to wander. A huge part of me wondered what it was that Adelard planned to show me. We'd come to the library for our lessons plenty of times before, so I wasn't all that surprised, but I'd never seen him fight the way he did just moments ago. Was it about that?
The moment the thought had crossed my mind, a large book slammed onto the table, sending a cloud of dust flying into my mouth. "Ugh, what's that?" I coughed
"This will be our lesson today," Adelard began. "This book holds the secret into how I've become the oldest living Votary in the temple. Now tell me, Cono. What do you know of Malim?"
"Nothing good, " I laughed. I looked up from the book to find that Adelard wasn't smiling with me at all. Instead, a sad frown had appeared in his face.
"Come on," I followed up. "You can't expect me to like Malim after what they've done to my parents, not to mention what they've done to the rest of Sola. They're nothing more than terrorists."
Adelard gave me a faint smile. "You're not alone in that belief. You have the heart of a warrior and the mind of a soldier. It is admirable to be so resolute to one's beliefs, however, by believing that one understands the world, they succeed only in achieving blindness."
I could feel my temper rising. "So what? You expect me to humanize these monsters?
"I expect you to seek after truth, and if that involves seeing the people we're sent out to kill as more than livestock ready for the slaughter, then yes. Just as we hold the city of Antolan as sacred, so do they. They have beliefs just as we do, Cono. Nobody deserves to die, and that includes the people of Malim." Adelard replied.
I sat for a moment, waiting for my mood to stabilize a little bit. Adelard may be foolish, but he deserves more than for me to lash out at him. Unfortunately, I couldn't hold back any longer. "Fine," I spat out. "Let's hear ALL ABOUT how great the people of Malim are."
Adelard placed his hand, calloused from years of rigorous training onto my own. "Thank you, Cono. Believe me, this lesson is not for the purpose of exonerating those that kill the innocent such as your mother and father. For them, they will be punished, either in this life or the next."
I pulled my hand away and nodded. "Let's just start the lesson," I bit out.
"Cono. I've seen you as my son since the day you arrived at the Catori temple, and I need you to know that I don't do this to bring up the past and hurt you. I do this for quite the opposite reason. I teach you these things so that we may learn to prevent ourselves from repeating it, both in the lives of ourselves as well as the lives of othersā¦ Let's begin."
As Adelard began to read from the book, I listened, learning of Malim traditions, and of course, religious beliefs, but as he taught me of how one of their fundamental tenets is to protect the children of the Great Creator, I'd had enough. "Adelard, you can't seriously tell me that you see the people of Malim as human, can you?" I scoffed.
"Not many people today remember the days before the war, but we used to live with them, Cono. We saw them in the streets and traded with them. They aren't so different from us-"
"Adelard, they KILLED my parents, and not just them but our entire village. That's why I'm here." I interrupted. "People don't do that, and I'm grateful for you taking me under your wing ten years ago, but I've had enough. I'm going back outside and I'm going to train in something that actually matters. I'm going to train so I can prevent that same kind of murder from happening again."
Although I stood up to leave, I couldn't bring myself to look up at the old Votary. Instead, I turned around and left the library, slamming the door behind me. As I stepped down onto the brick path of the courtyard, I could hear the door open back up behind me.
"Cono, please stop." The old man asked. "Please just listen to me."
I didn't respond. Instead, I ran. I left Adelard standing on his own, and once again, I refused to look back at him. I just kept running, eventually finding myself in a field of the straw, man shaped objects our training dummies consisted of. Grabbing the heaviest practice sword I could find, a massive bastard sword, I swung at the dummy- only, when I closed my eyes, the dummy disappeared and the burlap covering the straw head became a dark, purple headscarf, the body changing into a set of robes as black as the night. There was no longer a figure made of straw and wood, instead, it became a man in the same traditional robes of the Malim soldier who took my childhood- no, my life away from me; The same robes of the man who killed the only thing of worth a four year-old could have in the world. My parents. I swung harder, and faster until I'd exhausted nearly every ounce of energy in my body.
As my arms began to tire and my head became cooler, I felt a hand on my shoulder, pulling me out of the trance I'd fallen into. "Cono," the voice said. "You doing alright?"
I stopped swinging and turning around, found that the hand belonged to Balderic, the temple master. His algae green eyes scanned me. Perhaps he saw my eyes, unfocused on anything but my own emotions, but he seemed to realize that I wouldn't be speaking back to him any time soon. He broke the silence himself. "Walk with me, Cono. We have some stuff to talk about."
With his arm around my shoulder, we walked towards the front of the outer walls and he waved at the temple guards to raise the massive, wooden door preventing entrance into the temple. We stepped out into the main market of Catori. In contrast to the elegant interior of the temple, the main village of Catori was run down, and covered in mud. Adelard once told me the town was nice at one point, butā¦ Adelardā¦ For a moment, I'd forgotten about the old man. I really shouldn't of yelled at him the way I di-
Balderic snapped me out of the pool of thought I'd lost myself in. "You want to tell me what's going on, Votary Lavineous?" He asked.
"Nothing really." I responded. "I was with Adelard doing our morning studies like usual. He got into what he told me was a traditional Malim fighting stance and fought with a power I hadn't seen before. I know he was trying to help me, and it all would've been fine, but we went into the library, and as we read a book on the history of Malim, I got a weird feelingā¦"
"And what was that feeling?" Balderic asked. "Try and describe it for me."
"I'm not sure, but he almost seemed to be sympathizing with the people of Malim."
"Ah," Balderic responded. "And with your past, Cono, I'm sure that couldn't have been easy for you to hear."
I nodded. "Temple Master?" I asked. "He told me that when he was younger, we used to trade with them. Was there really a time before the war that we got along with the people of Malim?"
Balderic looked at me and stopped walking. "Listen to me, Cono. You'll leave on your first mission tomorrow morning guarding a convoy of tradesmen to Antolan. You already know this, but you may face the enemy, and if you do, there's one thing I'll need you to remember over all else. Adelard's gotten old, and he may be having trouble remembering things, but the people of Malim are monstersā¦" Balderic drifted off, as if lost in thought before continuing on. "I'll make sure to speak with him," he finished.
Assuming our talk was over, I turned around to leave while I spoke, "No, that's fine Temple Master. I'll try and smooth things over with him."
As I began to walk away, Balderic gripped my wrist with surprising strength and for a moment, it hurt. "No," he bagan. "I can't have Adelard misinforming the youngest Votary to leave on a mission in this temple's history, can I?"
I turned around, looking into his eyes that burned with a fierce intensity I hadn't seen before. "Remember, " Balderic started again. "They're monsters."
Balderic let me go and in silence, we walked back through the temple gate. Although I desperately wanted to apologize to Adelard, I continued to train a little longer before entering the dining hall for supper. I'd hoped to see the old mentor there, but he was nowhere to be seen. With my oldest friend missing, I sat down alone and resigned to eat the bowl of potato stew that my meal consisted of, keeping a spot open for Adelard just in case he showed up.
Although I'd been living at the temple for the last 10 years, my early adoption as an initiate was a special exception. Most entered the armed service around the age of 18, whereas many joined closer to 25 or 30. As a result of the age gap, although I was now 14, I found it hard to befriend the other votaries. In reality, Adelard was the only friend I've ever had here. He'd been more than supportive of me, and now, I feared that I'd pushed him away.
I finished up my meal, and with nobody in sight to train me, I returned to the library. The smell of dust entered my nose as I inhaled, and I thought back to how I yelled at the old mentor. Once again, I was filled with guilt. After all, he wasn't one of the soldiers that hurt me back then, nor had he ever hurt me outside of our sparring sessions. He was the best friend I'd ever had.
If I couldn't talk to Adelard, I figured the least I could do was try to understand what he wanted to teach me. I browsed the many shelves, hoping to find the book on Malim's history that the old man had pulled out for us to study, and yet, as hard as I looked, it didn't seem to be in the library. I sat back at the same table Adelard and I were at earlier that day, gazing at the dust and names carved into the tabletop from votaries as bored as myself.
I began to trace the names, attempting to feel the history in each line when the sound of an object hitting the floor beneath me caused me to jump. I looked down to find that one of my buttons had fallen off of the tabard around my chest and hit the floor. As I bent down to pick it up, a familiar, ancient object caught my eye. The worn down book that we'd studied earlier that morning sat tucked beneath the chair, a single, small wooden support beam keeping it from falling into plain view.
A strange feeling swept over me. I was meant to find this book.