Chapter 146: Dilemma (1)
Eriksson’s POV
“It seems as if the golden moon would laugh at us from its place up there.”
—Eriksson Lennard
The room holds silence and a faint relief, a hollow happiness pressed into every corner.
The scent of Nigil beer—my homeland’s pride—clings to the air. My hands still tremble, though not from drink.
The memory burns: his body devoured by flames, the screams echoing with the ghost of my own past. I see again the silhouettes that mocked me, while my wife and daughter were butchered before my eyes.
The weight crushes me, but then—small fingers, light and fragile, yet grounding—wrap around mine—a hand not mine, not my daughters, yet familiar.
It is Elena’s hand.
We drink and listen to Harmon’s voice cutting through the dim hum. “Today we fought and sacrificed. But we knew these consequences. All of us were ready to give our lives for the greater good, for the future of a place to live with justice.”
His breath hangs in the air, heavy with meaning, and forcing every one of us seated at this round, scarred table to dwell on Arthur.
I hear his screams again. Those raw and foreign blue. His tears, his pleading.
It is not my grief, yet it fuses with mine, and I cannot cast it away; my jaw locks, and I turn left, forcing a smile, though brittle.
And then Elena smiles back unbroken, pure in its finest decor. The false grin I wear dies, and is replaced by something true, however fleeting.
Harmon continues. “We all would have given our all, and still, we live in the future thanks to our two brave warriors. Once, the ever-living Arthur, now residing in the eternal holy flames of Helios, a place unworthy of us lesser. And the ever-living King Killer, who brought us the upcoming peace.”
He turns to Aston, wrapped head to toe in bandages. No green blood—too dangerous after all, what he’s consumed so far. It is nearly over 150 milliliters of green and orange.
He sits unmoving, his face blank, yet even behind that stillness, he cannot conceal the proud curve of his bluish lips.
Studying him with sorrow, I look through the others. Their eyes glimmer: Joy. Relief. Perhaps hope.
My chin scrapes under my beard as I grumble, but my gaze holds fast on Harmon; his speech closes, and the room bursts into clinking mugs, voices lifted, and beer spilling across the table and ground, soaking through cloth and leather.
The stench thickens, allowing Harmon to smile, his dark orange gums opening to reveal white teeth. The sight sickens me.
It festers until I cannot bear it, and I rise.
Elena follows, instinctively and tethered to me like a shadow.
“I’m going for a short walk.” My words fall dull and absurd amidst triumph; celebration does not belong to me. At least not yet.
“Grumpy faces aren’t needed here anyway.” Grim’s rasp splits the air, drowned in the haze of far too many drinks.
For him, a dozen mugs are only a beginning. Half turning, my lips part, but I do not waste breath on him in this moment. Instead, my eyes meet Elena’s.
“Go and read something, alright?”
Her gaze—those puppet-like eyes, topaz hidden beneath—locks into mine. I shake my head.
“I’ll read you something later...”
We step into the next room, leaving the drunken chorus behind. Voices blur into song, the laughter thick with intoxication.
“...I’m going for a short walk, and it’s way too cold for you now.” She seeks a window, but here, deep in stone, there is none. Her head lowers, and her cheeks puff as she exhales without sound, the air trapped within.
-----A/N-----
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