They say adventurers make ten-thousand silver Prints a month. They also say it’s dangerous work, but what would I know about that? I was a baby when my dad tripped and hit his head. He woke up in an infirmary, ten days later and a hundred miles from home; he felt funny, like he never had before. Momma told me they ran some sort of test. Turned out, he had mana. He was forty years old, or thereabout; father of five children, and he couldn’t farm anymore. They sent him to the guild to be an adventurer. May as well have sent him to a penal colony.
I guess most folks awaken to their mana early in life, when they’re kids or in their teens. Dad was a strange one, but then maybe he always was; I didn’t really know him. I know he sent us Prints every month or two for a good five years or so, and then it all stopped. One month, instead of money, mother opened a letter. The guild said he died in some dungeon somewhere, I don’t know the name.
In Atheria, every year, there’s a huge parade for the grand dungeon break. Adventurers—the best of the best, I was told—ride decorated floats, arrive the backs of beasts, and walk amidst extravagant entourages. Reporters pile on them for interviews and quotes, and they smile for pictures taken with the latest photography. I wonder now, what would happen if they just didn’t come back? If the land gave out beneath the city, and the dungeon ruler emerged.
Momma once told me “for every action, there’s a reaction.” There are consequences for everything, isn’t that what she tried to say? Since dad went to be an adventurer, it was up to mom to raise us all. Without dad to plow the fields, it fell on my oldest brother. The family was weak at first, but we got stronger, step by step. Then a draught came; several draughts, in fact. A few hard years and our farm was barely holding on. I remember walking back home from the field, it was the evening, and so it was late enough that the sky was cast in all its violet colors. I turned the corner of the fence and saw a truck parked out the front door; it was army colors, blue and brown. My mother was out in front of our plaster house, dry as a bone. She was shivering while she spoke.
They couldn’t take my oldest brother, because he was the strongest and most dependable. They couldn’t take the second oldest, because we scrounged up the money to send him to the university in Atheria. They couldn’t take the third or fourth oldest, because then she wouldn’t have enough good hands for the field. So, that’s why they took me. I didn’t pack a bag or anything, I just saddled up in the back of the truck. I was shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of boys from the neighboring farms, most of whom I knew. They had all suffered because of the draughts, turned thin and ragged, just like I was. We exchanged silent stares with hollow eyes, and I wondered how many had been given up by their families, just to survive.
If my dad hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have been in such a bad way, but that’s selfish of me to think. There were a thousand, or ten thousand other families out there in the highlands with no magic at all. If they could have given up their fathers or their mothers, or their young sons and daughters to the guild, I know they would have. Without magic or talent, the only way off the farm was war. I wonder if momma thought about the consequences of sending me with those officers. I’m thinking about them now.
A churning sky darkened over the hills of Bastilhas while rain disturbed the grass, the lily pads, and the broad-leaf shrubs. Songbirds took cover beneath the branches of small trees and frogs croaked loudly, excited by the change in the air. In a shallow marsh, hidden by the reeds, laid a boy. He was badly bruised, cheeks swollen and bloodied by cuts. His despondent eyes were just above a pool of murky water that rippled with the falling rain.
Because dad died, our life was hard, the boy thought through shallow breaths. Because our life was hard, I was given up to the army. Because I was in the army, I got sent to war. And, when I got here, I saw an angel, and I asked a stupid question. Because I was stupid? Because I was afraid? Maybe I thought an angel would know where that unbroken chain of consequences began. If he knew, then he could answer me: Will I die today, or live to see the next?
The boy’s battered hand clutched a thick reed stem.
Could he have told me why I’m even alive?
Foot steps squashed the mud and splashed through the shallow water. The boy turned his head and saw a shadow loom above him. “I’m sorry,” said a young man. By the accent, the boy could tell it was also an Atilonian from the Highlands. “I thought I’d come to help, but… all I could do was watch.”
That’s alright, the boy thought. I brought it on myself.
“Come here, lift your arm,” the young man said. “If you don’t die from infection, the cold will get you; up and at’em.”
Why is he helping me? the boy wondered while he was pulled by the arm. His every bone ached, beaten by kicks and punches, but in the man’s grip he found the extra strength he needed to stand.
“I’m Lucas,” the young man said. It was hard to see past the eye fluids and the obstruction of his swollen cheek, but what the boy saw was a soldier in a blue greatcoat.
“M-Matteo,” the boy answered, shivered in the chill of a passing breeze.
Lucas nodded and smiled, unbuttoned his coat and handed it to Matteo. “They took your coat,” he said. “Here.”
Matteo looked at the white sleeve of his buttoned-down shirt. It was drenched in mud from his fall. While Lucas held the coat, Matteo undid his shirt and tossed it to the reeds, then slipped his arm through the greatcoat sleeve and bundled himself in its warmth.
“4th Company, 2nd Platoon,” Lucas said. “How about you?”
Matteo nodded.
Lucas chuckled. “I thought so,” he said. “They said they had shipped in blue-patterns.”
“How?” Matteo croaked in pain.
The soldier took Matteo’s arm and crouched down, laid it over his own shoulder. “How did I find you, or how did I know?” he wondered aloud. “Well, when I saw those guys from the 3rd Platoon dragging you off camp I knew something was up. And you could say I figured you were in our platoon because, you see—” Lucas flashed a yellow-tooth smile. “Shouting at an angel from a truck’s dumpster seat is just the sort of thing we’d do.”
Matteo frowned. What should I think of this guy? he thought as he stared at his bright blue eyes. He’s a Highlander, I’m sure of it, but what’s with that smile? It almost makes me a little mad. He clutched his bruised stomach. Is this meeting… also a consequence?
“Don’t say a word,” Lucas said. “I’ll get a medic to look at you. A few bandages, a few antibiotics, and you’ll be fine. Just put one foot forward, can you do that?”
Matteo’s leg shuddered when he tried to move, but despite the protest, it made one step in his soggy boot.
“Great,” Lucas said. “Now we just gotta do that, oh… a few thousands more times.”
There wasn’t a trail back to camp. Matteo had been taken to the end of a valley, far off the beaten paths, and had Lucas not followed he may not have been found at all. Their journey back took them through the marsh and the reeds, before they were on the hills again. Matteo meanwhile dipped in and out of clarity, his wondering thoughts distracted by pain and exhaustion.
By the time they returned to the sea of tents that was the 401st regiment’s improvised barracks, it was already well past nightfall. The rain fell heavily and the moon was hidden by the clouds, but Lucas was comfortable in the dark. When MPs turned up with their lanterns and rifles, Lucas flashed his identifying Signa. Medics arrived with a stretcher, in time to catch Matteo before he collapsed. What passed after were just afterimages in the boy’s eyes. Nurses and doctors flit about a large tent, supplied Matteo’s veins with a saline insertion for hydration, and morphine to ease the pain. He was bandaged and left for the night.
Matteo’s heart fluttered, his eyes flagged with weariness, and finally he slept; safe beneath a blanket in the camp infirmary.
In the dark of his mind, in his deep dream, were falling, golden lights. They crossed a night sky of white stars, burned holes through high clouds, and crossed down over the mountains, the valleys, and sea. The lights crashed in brilliant flashes, joined by the ear-popping crack of distant explosions. In his dream, Matteo turned his head and looked up. A light shined overhead, turned brighter and brighter, until…
… it hit him.
