Mercy Street

Chapter 01: let's take the boat out [2021-10-12]
Chapter 02: wait until darkness [2021-11-09]

Minoth is not a Driver, and Minoth is not a Blade. When Minoth dies, he will not return to his Core. When Minoth dies, he will not make any other Blades return to their Cores.

Any Blades, not other. For Minoth is not a Blade.

There is more evidence, more foundation, to that pronouncement, that denouncement, after all. It is not just pondrance self-deprecation. Blades can make ether shields. Blades can protect their Driver. Minoth has abandoned protecting Amalthus, and Addam has Mythra. Addam doesn't need Minoth to protect him.

(Amalthus has Malos too, of course, but he only has Malos in an even weaker strain as to that which describes the pitiful singular thread he could, might, but really might not, yank on to say that he has Minoth. Cruel possession, broken but still...no, not broken. Are you his broken possession, Minoth? You are broken.)

Mythra is in Siren. Mythra is in the sky, with Malos. Mythra is ascending back to where she came from, back to where she was always meant to be, back to the higher and the holier. Mythra, in this moment, does not care about protecting Addam. Oh, she may, indeed, she may, but her action speaks louder than her screams, now. Right now.

Hugo cares. Minoth knows from observation and careful conversation that Hugo cares to invest himself in the ways and means of the common folk just as much as Addam does, if not more. He knows what it does for his reputation, what it does for his self-image and for his public image, but Hugo is not possibly, never considerably, so blithely self-interested.

If Hugo were self-interested, he would not have leapt before the bombing blaze that was about to be Torna's Core - Torna's Core, the ether beat that kept them all from falling directly off into the Cloud Sea - to raise his diminutive shield, of a size suited to him exactly, to protect Addam.

Even as the two royals were childhood friends, they considered each other in measured, saged kind; Hugo was just as earnest in his deeming of Minoth a brother locked tight in arms as he would be about the bastard prince himself, and did he not call completely for the laying down of arms before even deigning to allow the merest hint of a smile? He is steadier, more self-possessed than Addam. But he is not self-interested.

Addam is yet frozen on the ground, arms and legs paralyzed from the enormity and the spontaneity of Mythra's true form, true power; the shock and recoil has not left him, even after she had removed the sword so calmly from his shaking hand. Addam can only watch as Mythra, the one he could not control, and Malos, the one Amalthus could not control, battle in the skies above and fire blast after blast on the heart of Torna.

The heart of Torna, that is, as was carried in the hearts of every soul who inhabited her. The hearts of Auresco's finest merchants and craftsmen, Hyber's wisest storytellers, Aletta's bravest fighters, Lasaria's wannest journeymen. The heart of Addam's wife, and the heart of their child that had only recently begun to beat.

Did Addam blame Mythra? Did Addam blame Malos? Did Addam even blame Amalthus? No, Addam blamed himself. And he and Minoth were matched to each other, then, were they not? For Minoth would always, without doubt, failure, or hesitation, accede (it was so definitely not an ascension) directly to self-flagellation, whether there was motive occasion for it or not.

Addam would blame himself. Mythra would blame herself. Minoth would blame himself. Architect knew what Malos thought, then or now. But they would do it.

(Milton, their fourth member, wouldn't be around to blame anyone. So Mikhail would blame Mythra for him, and for him.)

No encounter thus far had left their party in a position of needing any more than one ether shield, usually provided by Aegaeon, as his were the largest and the sturdiest. To be sure, Minoth hadn't even been grouped in isolation with another member at any prior point, the way Lora and Jin, Addam and Mythra, Hugo and both his Blades had been. But, even so. Couldn't you try? He didn't, hadn't.

So there. Minoth mooched. Minoth swindled. Minoth pretended. For Minoth, you see, didn't even know if he had the capability to form an ether shield anymore. They're directed towards the safety of your Driver, most immediately, but without a discretely bonded Driver, that rather throws a wrench in things, doesn't it?

And Minoth was weak. Minoth was ambulatory, but Minoth ambled. Minoth was cranky, but Minoth was also creaky. Minoth, when it came and where it counted, was weak.

Hugo is strong, and his brother is weak. Hugo has morals, and his brother has a vacuous hunger for power. Hugo loves Brighid and Aegaeon with all his heart, and his brother lies continually incapable of doing the same. Can we fault him? I'm not sure. But the fact remains: Hugo is strong.

So what is the picking order, then? Minoth, the weakling, should go out first, should he not? Minoth should not occupy any more oxygen and ether to keep his consciousness circulating for whatever remainder of centuries he has left to live. Minoth should not stand by and let Hugo die for a weaker cause.

Then pounded the boots. Then jarred the knees. Then struck the Core. Minoth rushes in, weapons squeezed so tight in his fists they may dematerialize at any moment - and that is, of course, the point - and pushes Hugo aside, urges him with silent, pleading eyes to run, run, run, I know your legs are short but you can still run, please, Emperor Hugo, please, you have to run--

And then Minoth pours out the entirety of ether that he's ever processed, ever taken in, and shoves it out into a shield large enough to form a globe around Addam - and only Addam. The shield takes the hit, what's left of it after the radiation of ether caught on spectral fire passes through Minoth's fading corporeal form, and Addam's breaths are none halted.

Addam's breaths are not halted, but his breath does hitch. Something does and has yanked on his heart. There is a crunching sound, as Minoth falls over on a twist of his ankle in the cowboyed boot. Haze gasps, makes to rush over through the smoke to do something, anything, but Hugo puts out a single silent hand. Not now. Not any longer. Not ever again.

Aegaeon and Brighid share a similar solemn glance, even as the former is still supplying a shield around the rear guard party and the latter is still laying the final blows upon a stray Gargoyle that never made its advance into the Core. They know what Minoth has done. They couldn't but know.

If Addam wants to cry over a corpse, if Brighid wants to open her eyes and see beyond the pale of what has gone on, if Jin wants to remove his mask and cast respect upon those dear lost...well, they can't. There is nothing left, not even a grim wisp of cyan-fuschia smoke.

Minoth will never tell their tale. Brighid will fill her journal with all the details she can muster, but she will not be so artistic, so fierce in her loving depictions, as Minoth would have been. She will never be able to deliver narration before a captive audience the same way he did. Brighid never thought that anyone should have to replace someone so novel as Minoth. Now she sees that, truly, no one ever could.

Minoth was not a Driver, and Minoth was not a Blade. When Minoth died, he did not return to his Core. When Minoth died, he saved two other Blades from returning to their Cores.

Other Blades, yes. For Minoth was a Blade. And Minoth protected his Driver.

"Daddy, how come I'm named the way I am?"

The evening moonlight was glib, upon the first foundrings of Hero's Rest in Leftheria. Addam stood on the porch of his and Flora's humble stone house, looking over the railing at the empty, seldom-trodden cobblestone street. There had always been people in Auresco, in Aletta. In Hyber, and even in Lasaria, before Malos had wiped it out.

Now, there was no one. The militia had gone to Spessia and been wiped out flat, despite Hugo's best efforts against the Senate to summon an Ardainian faction to bolster their strength and numbers. The Aegises are gone, they had said, and the Aegises were the ones who sank Torna, so why should we involve Mor Ardain in further strife? Let it be done.

Let it be done. Mungo had passed away. Hedwyn, Kali and Kelly had gone back to Gormott, by and by, to help rebuild Torigoth. Vez stayed in with his grandmother, and then without his grandmother. Most of the citizens of Auresco, especially the young ones, had been killed in the pseudo-nuclear blast.

Milton and Mikhail, of course, were both gone. Minoth's sacrifice hadn't stopped Malos's attack minutes before, of course it hadn't, as much as it had eventually helped the Ardainian government keep upright and mount an investigation into Amalthus's work (none serving, anyway, because Jin had taken the only real evidence that Minoth the crucial specimen had ever been alive, and like as not as good as burnt it), and so Mythra had vanished inward with her guilt.

And so Evie, for the most part, was alone. A normal child, as you might call it, would take whatever revelation she sought and rush off to tell her compatriots, and ask, well why is your name so and so? Is it as special as mine? And not really mean it, because children know that each parent loves their child more than any of the other children ever will, in general, and it's not nice to bully others over their names, cool and special or not.

So Addam, without taking his eyes off the pale white path before him, reached an arm around Evie's shoulder as she approached from behind him and pulled her in to his side.

"You know that special plot we have off in the corner of the garden? Where the rotting leaves grow over the Sumpkins?"

Since Minoth had gone, and Jin and Aegaeon and even Brighid, Addam had become tall again. Had become gangly, useless, not just a man among his merry men. Too much taller than Pyra, painfully much, and so achingly far away from Flora, now. It made him want to cry, thinking about Evie so distant below his shoulder, feeling the space too wide, but then he didn't cry much, anymore. The reservoir was rather empty.

But they didn't just stand in the stillness, in the stagnance. Evie had come out to talk. And so talk they would.

"Yeah...I remember one time I tried to clear them away, but Mama rushed outside to stop me." She turned her head up, a physical question. "How come you let those ugly leaves grow all over the pretty pumpkins?"

Addam sighed. The ugly leaves, corrupting the fullest natural growth, but only if you truly chose to see them that way, and not for all the deeper, more beautiful - most beautiful - potential they had. Wasn't it poetic, then? For Minoth, everything was. Everything had been.

"Here, I'll tell you. Let's go down to the shore." And Addam took Evie's hand, because even though Leftheria was peaceful, and there was nothing here or anywhere that would hurt a simple human girl, he was still afraid of letting go. Afraid of letting things slip through his fingers. He squeezed, and Evie squeezed back. She didn't know, yet, but she knew. She knew.

Once out by the clouds, the silence became awkward again. Why? To them? To you? To me? To us? Addam sat, and Evie settled in between his legs. His chin was bony, and dug into the crown of her head. No crowns do we wear, the noble Origos. I was a prince to one...only one, who truly mattered.

It was tempting to simply wait until the darkness fell, until the sins of the day had transgressed, but fear will only stunt. Fear will only keep you from what matters most. Again, you must talk, Addam. You must tell the tale.

"Before you were born, I had a friend. A very dear friend - the best I'd ever had, besides your mother."

He could feel Evie screw up her nose in consternation even without seeing her face. "And I'm named after her?"

"No no, Minoth was a man. Or rather, a Blade. Both, really." Before Evie could jut in with the obvious retort that that's not possible, silly daddy, Addam clarified: "His Driver did...experiments, with Blades. He made Minoth into what they called a Flesh Eater."

"Gross," muttered Evie. Yes, perhaps gross, like the rotting leaves, but still with its own beauty. Because there was then humanity in his soul, perhaps more truly than there had ever been. Would Minoth have loved the way he had if he hadn't had a heart? Talk of interspecies equality said yes. Spirit of immemorial preservation said no.

"Him taking part in that procedure, however willingly, was what allowed him to gain some independence, and come to Torna. That's when he got to know your mother and I. And that's where you came in."

"But I wasn't born in Torna..." came the listless factoid. Oh, darling, don't remind me...how I wish you had been. I hadn't. I was born here. But I love it all the same. So I suppose after all it's fine that you weren't, isn't it? But you'll never know her. You'll never know her sun, and her sand.

Oh, never you mind it, Addam. What's done is done.

"Minoth knew that if we had a boy, we were going to name him after Uncle Hugo. Now, he didn't want to be a full namesake, so Uncle Aegaeon suggested that we use Hugo as a middle name, and Alexander as the first name. They mean the same thing, you see: defender of men."

"Alexander Hugo Origo," Evie tried it, and wrinkled up her nose. "It's so...formal. I wouldn't want that to be my name."

Addam laughed gently. Of course. "That's what your mother thought. She's always thought her middle name was rather 'namby-pamby', as she liked, or perhaps didn't like, to put it. Now, Minoth thought that was quite silly of her, so he bet her that one day he'd convince her to like her name after all."

"Who won?" To go with the prompting question, Evie wiggled her legs in the sand, trying to puzzle it out.

"Well, you're Evelyn, aren't you? So I think you can guess. But, it's not so simple as all that. Minoth...he died saving my life, in the war."

Saving my life? Saving Hugo's life. And Brighid and Aegaeon too. He knew what he did. And then again, he knew not what he did. Of course, he hadn't intended to guilt Addam and Flora into taking him up on his offer. But still...

Oh, Evie thought. Oh. I may be very young and very small, but...oh. I get it now. Reaching to either side, she pulled her father's arms in from where they'd rested restlessly on his knees, to wrap around her. Tight. So tight.

"Don't you remember that story we used to read you? Years ago?" Would be about five, since she'd been three, and eagerly attentive to the tale of Evelyn the Wise at least twice a week. It had been her favorite, of course it had. Minoth wouldn't have written something meant to fall into its audiences' hearts any other way.

Evie nodded. The notion of speaking didn't...didn't feel all too comfortable, right about now. But Addam, chin on her head, still felt it.

"Minoth wrote that." It was kept on the tippy-top shelf of Addam's bookcase, now, thin and pressed underneath a pot full of charms that didn't half measure up to all that Lora had ever tried to teach him.

Inside the front cover, over the colloquial colophon, scrawled in his trademark mysterious flair: "To Addam and Evie, should you ever need it. And if you ever need me...I'm there." And, shoddily pasted over, just down and to the right: "All my love, Minoth."

A child's eyes, unaccustomed to any but the simplest, roundest glyphs (which the rest of the text was painstaking carved in as), would never have noticed. But Addam's eyes...oh, they knew. They knew.

Flora's eyes watched the wobbling his as he traced a disbelieving finger over the bumpy, care-worn page, Evie's closed as she slept her way into the second hour of her life. Tears lingered in all three sets, but all for different reasons.

There wasn't anything more to be said about it. Somehow, Evie knew that. Those three last words hung in the air, heavy. Bold. Minoth wrote that. How many stories would that have applied to if he hadn't passed on? What tales would he have told her as she grew up? As she really came to be so kind and wise?

"But what about my middle name?" she ventured at last.

Libre. Freedom. His way of protecting Addam, in straits more usual, less dire, shielding him from even the pettiest of monsters' fiendishly spying eyes.

"You are free, Evie. Minoth...he wasn't free, truly free, until the moment he died. The choice of your first name was beautiful, really, but...that wasn't him. That wasn't his soul. I'm quite confident, or at least I hope, that he would appreciate being remembered in this way, and that what he would have wanted most for you was for you to be free and happy, to achieve whatever it is that you yourself wanted most."

"But I know..." Oh, he couldn't go on. His throat was closing like it hadn't in years. There was a reason he'd not told this story before, not revealed the author of the novel.

Just one more thing, and then it will be over. Then you will all be at peace. Go on, Addam. You can do it.

"And I know he would have loved you so much."