Walking elegy (Tensura/Marvel self insert): chapter9 : Respite

Humanity is a seed of hope planted in salted earth, stubbornly sprouting only to be devoured by the worms it nourishes.

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The respite was a hollow thing. We had held the Nexus, but at a cost that would have bankrupted a lesser nation.

Our forces were pulled back to the fortified city of Runeguard, one of the last major dwarven strongholds before the heartlands of Tempest itself.

I found my small cadre of personal subordinates in a dimly lit bunker carved deep into the mountain. The air smelled of damp stone, ozone, and blood. This was my sanctuary, my own twisted reflection of Harmony's copse.

There was Shale, the Ogre war-chief, patiently sharpening an axe that could cleave a battle-tank in two.

There was Lyra, the elf, meticulously cleaning her spell-focus, a staff of white wood that had once been part of what she had told me had been a sacred Tree.

There was Kael, the young lizardman, his arm now healed by a healer's arts, nervously practicing his spear forms.

And there was Borin, a dwarf from Runeguard itself, with a beard braided with runes of warding and a laugh that could shake dust from the ceiling. He was pouring a viscous, dark liquid into five small clay cups.

"Ambrosia of the Deep," he announced, his voice a gravelly comfort. "That's what we call it. It's a dwarven recipe. One part mushroom ale, two parts liquid courage, and a dash of powdered drake-heart for kick. It'll put hair on your scales, Kael."

Kael blushed, a deep green. "I already have scales, Master Borin."

"Then it'll put scales on your scales!" Borin boomed, handing me the first cup. "For you, Viceroy. To take the edge off."

I took the cup. The Stillness made such things redundant, but the gesture was… warm. I could simulate the appreciation, even if I couldn't fully feel it.

"To all those that are gone and those that would be coming after," Shale said, raising his cup, his voice a low rumble.

"To the fallen," Lyra added, her voice soft.

We drank. The ambrosia was foul and wonderful, a fire that burned its way down to my core. For a fleeting second, I thought I felt the Stillness waver.

"Do you think it will ever end?" Kael asked, his voice small in the vastness of the bunker.

"It will," Lyra said, with a conviction that felt like a physical force. "The Viceroy and Lord Rimuru will see to it."

"Aye," Borin grunted. "We just have to be the anvil. Let their lordships be the hammer. We hold the line, we make the bastards pay for every inch of stone, and when they're tired and bloodied, the hammer falls."

"And what then?" I asked, the question leaving my lips before I could stop it. "When the hammer has fallen, and the last enemy is dust? What is left after all of this? What is left for the survivors? A victory at this point, no matter how grand, would be a pyrrhic one. Millions would never see their mothers, their children, their fathers, their friends, their siblings again. What is the point of a victory where the corpses are the winner?"

It sounded bleak, but I had done the math. For all monsters, three out of five would be heavily affected by this war. A nation of traumatized killers, mourners, and orphans. That's what this war made Tempest.

The room went quiet. They all looked at me. I was their viceroy, a True Dragon, a being of incalculable power. They expected certainty. What I was giving them was more an insult than anything else.

Imagine hearing the one you look up to saying, proclaiming, declaring that all the horrors, all the hardships were in a way pointless.

I had only a yawning void to give to them and it felt shitty.

It seemed that the current dose of Stillness I was on wasn't enough.

I needed to up it.

"What's left," Shale said, slowly, deliberately, "is the people we protected. Kael's clutch. Lyra's people's groves. Borin's halls. My… my people's memory. That's what's left. It has to be."

His words were like a seed, trying to find purchase in the salted earth of my soul.

I looked at them, the mountain, the spirit, the youth, the rock and felt a terrifying, fragile tendril of attachment.

These were not just subordinates.

They did not feel as such only.

I was a liar and familiar with lying to myself as with others but I couldn't lie about the fact that I did truly care.

Maybe it was because they were the ones who had survived so long with me through this hellish war, who had been at my side and loyal and kind even when I acted in ways undeserving of that.

I was tired, still tired as the beginning of this second life if not more but I didn't want to go, to die until each and any of them survived beyond this war, which I was sure was the case and that after that, they would have a chance to be happy.

I didn't care what happened to me, what I had to do as long as they lived.

It was a beautiful, painful feeling. And like all beautiful things in this war, I should have known that it was something destined to be broken.

The alarm horns sounded, a deep, mournful bellow that shook the very mountain. Not a standard assault.

This was the highest alert.

The sound of the highest level threat possible.

And it only meant one thing.

We were on our feet in an instant.

We rushed to the command outlook, a shielded balcony overlooking the Runeguard valley.

The sky was on fire.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

The very air was burning, turning to plasma in a wave of incandescent heat that rolled toward the city.

And at the heart of the inferno was a figure wreathed in wings of flame.

The greatest threat possible.

Velgrynd.

She had come herself.

"Shield-domes to maximum!" Borin was roaring into a communication crystal. "All non-essential personnel to the deep shelters! By my ancestors, she means to crack the mountain open!"

I turned to my subordinates. The moment stretched, an eternity in a heartbeat.

"Lyra, you are with me. I will engage her directly and you lead the air forces to deal with the force surely to follow her. Shale, you have command of the ground defences. Borin, get the civilians out. Kael…"

I looked at the young lizardman.

His eyes were wide with fear, but his grip on his spear was firm. "You are to protect the evacuation route. Nothing gets through. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Viceroy!" he said, his voice trembling but clear.

It was a lie. I was sending him to a chokepoint that would be the first targeted if the main defense failed.

It felt as if I was giving him a warrior's death.

The math was, once again, one that felt atrocious.

I laid a hand on his shoulder. The scales were warm. "Be safe, Kael."

He nodded, a fierce, final look in his eyes, and then he was gone, running to his post.

I looked at Lyra and Shale. "This is it. The line must hold."

Then I took to the sky, Lyra a streak of silver light at my side, to face the hammer that was meant to break us.