Legacy of Hope
By: Chibi-chan
Chapter 1d: “To Tell the Truth”
*
Bernard found himself face-to-face with one of the amphibian slimes while looking under a table for something heavy to throw. Instinctively, he thrust his sword through it, but found himself unable to pull it back out again. What a day… My search for him had given me nothing but trouble. Is the truth really worth all this? he thought.
*
Two days ago, in Surf Village…
The town of Surf had not greatly changed since the last battle of the last war with the Metal Demons. Chickens remained abundant, the horses still grew great and strong, and the people remained xenophobic despite the exile they made so many years ago’s role in the final battle. There was something particularly unsettling to them about this strange fellow who arrived in town named Bernard who seemed to quite interested in the one the exiled. Whenever they asked why he was asking so many questions, he told them with an enigmatic smile, “Because the truth is my passion.”
Bernard ignored the cold stares, the rude brush-offs, and angry chickens that followed him everywhere he went. “Ah, you know I am doubly damned, do you not?” he’d mutter to the chickens. Occasionally someone would hear him and ask to know what he meant, to which he would say, “I am descended from a family of cowards and sadists, and that was just my mother’s side; that is all you need to know.”
“I need to get a lead on him… It’s his right to be the first in ages to know the truth, and with his position, if he will believe me and spreads the truth, the people will believe him. It’s his right, isn’t it, Auntie?” he muttered to himself, taking out and opening a small locket. He often muttered to himself; it was a habit he had all his life and found he could not break. “I’m muttering to myself again; Lovey always tells me I should stop that; people might start to think I’m insane…”
“You aren’t? Good, I was starting to worry about you,” a young man’s voice said.
Bernard quickly snapped the locket shut and put it away. “You don’t need to do that; I worry enough about myself already,” he said.
“If you say so,” the voice said again. A man in his late twenties to early thirties walked out from behind Bernard and into the bard’s view. “You’re the one looking for ‘im, huh? Well, follow me; I’ll tell you what I know…”
*
The man’s name was Tony, and it turns out he had a decidedly more positive attitude towards the man in question. “He’s a good man, he is. The people responsible for kicking him out were just scared of him because he used ARMs. They blamed him for the earthquake almost eighteen years ago because not much was, hell, still isn’t known about ‘em,” Tony said. “I know better, tho’. I know because I was there with him. He was only trying to help me get Holy Berries to heal my dad. He didn’t know what would happen; I didn’t either! He didn’t mean any harm!”
“I see,” Bernard said. He, in all truth, didn’t give a flying flip about this, but he couldn’t just tell the one person who had been civil to him to tell him what he needed to know or just bugger off. “Well, do you know where he went from here? I’ve been trying to find him for some time, but alas, I’m always a day late, it seems,” he asked.
“Why do you wanna see him? He didn’t do anything wrong or anything, right?” Tony asked back. He wasn’t so willing to turn in someone he thought of in such high regard if that was the case.
“What? Oh no, no, I just want to talk to him, hear his story and so forth. Nothing major,” Bernard lied. He did in fact need to talk to him, and he was curious to know his target’s side of the story of the war, but it was something major; something that would radically change the history books. It was a tale of intrigue, love, rebellion, genocide, and cowardice. It was a tale that needed to be told, but Bernard’s patience was starting to wear thin at this point in his search. Innumerable close misses were driving him up the wall and he often felt like he should just give up.
“Well, you seem like a good fellow…” Tony said hesitantly. “He said he was headed to Saint Centour, something about asking a guy named Zed about the monsters attacking towns, and then to Adlehyde after that.”
Adlehyde… Figures; he’s friends with the queen there… Maybe I should just stay there and wait for him to come back if I miss him again… Bernard thought. “Thanks for the information; it was most helpful…”
*
Outside, it was too quiet. Dark clouds filled the sky. The people still went about their business (albeit more quickly, due to imminent rainfall), as people tend to do, but there wasn’t a chicken in sight, and the horses were quiet in their stable, looking about worriedly. They knew things weren’t right. Something was going to go down, and it was going to go down soon.
This did not escape Bernard’s notice. “What is this? Brother horse, what’s the matter?” he asked a nearby horse. A wordless conversation took place and then he understood. “Monsters preparing an attack? How do I warn the people without making them think I’m just some idiot loon?”
He had no time to warn anyone. Lightning flashed in the sky, the thunder rolled, and following it were a torrential downpour of rain and shrieking monsters, attacking whatever and whoever was close enough. The villagers who could run did, and those that couldn’t were either too scared to move or were being attacked.
“Dammit, there’s so many of them! What should I do…?!” Bernard muttered to himself. “I might have to… but there’s so many people here! I can’t; rumors will spread… My life as a human…!”
He looked all around him at the chaos that spread before him. He saw most certainly some of the villagers were already dead; the life taken from them by the unnatural fury the monsters had taken on for some reason. “No… I must chance it. I can’t stand by and let this happen… I only pray that this will not be like that day, so long ago…”
He closed his eyes and let go of the tight controls he had imposed on himself all his life…
*
Lightning flashed, illuminating the tiny, one-room house Tony owned. When the thunder roared after it, it merged with another, unfamiliar roar.
Storms do not only rage in the sky…
*
After the storm…
The ground had become a muddy mess. Most of it was because of the rain, but some of the mud was made by the blood of the slain villagers, dyeing the ground red. There were some strange things about the scene, however. Aside from the villager’s bodies and the damage to property, no trace of the monsters remained. Also, brightly-colored flowers that were not there before were everywhere, spreading out from one highly concentrated, thickly populated center; the further away from the middle, the more spaced apart the flowers were.
At the
epicenter of the new plant life laid a thoroughly drenched and barely-conscious
Bernard. He didn’t seem injured, but
whatever it was that happened seemed to take a lot out of him. “That…
was kinda cool…” he muttered to himself before blacking out.
*
“Did
anyone see what happened?”
“I thought
I did, but it’s too unbelievable; it couldn’t have been what I thought it was.”
“That
stranger…”
“The
flowers…”
“He was
in the center of it all!”
“Do you
think he prompted the attack?”
“Don’t
be silly, humans don’t have that kind of power!”
“How do
we know he’s even human?”
“What do
you mean by that?”
“Did you
see his ears when we first went to investigate? They were discolored and shrinking!”
“People
do not have shrinking ears! It’s just
not possible!”
“Still,
maybe asking him to leave is wisest…”
*
Bernard woke up in the one-room house of Tony’s. “Guardians, I have a headache the size of the Outer Ocean…” the bard muttered.
Tony heard this and immediately turned to look at the bard from his seat a little ways away. “Oh, you’re awake! How’re ya feeling?” he asked.
“Like a wild horse just trampled my head, but other than that…” Bernard replied. He noticed the nervous expression on Tony’s face and asked, “What? What’s that matter?”
“Everyone voted when you were out of it; they want you to leave as soon as your ready to travel,” Tony said slowly. “It’s not fair! Why do they keep doing this to innocent people?! You didn’t do anything wrong, did you?” he protested, clenching his fists and digging his mails into the palms of his hands.
“Wrong, I don’t think so. Stupid and potentially risky, yes,” Bernard told him. “I couldn’t stand there and do nothing, Tony, you have to understand that. People were dying, and I could do something to stop it…” He paused and hesitantly added, “Although if things went the other way it could have, I’m not sure this village would still be here.”
Tony remained silent, so Bernard kept talking. “Humans are strange, aren’t they? They can do wonderful things, wonderful things, but they can be so short-sighted. They need something, someone to blame for tragedies; they need that something to blame as a rallying point, to bring them back together from the scattering effects of fear. It’s sad; tragic, in a way…”
Tony’s expression became unreadable. “Bernard… are you human? Or are you something else? It’s OK, you can tell me; I won’t tell them. They’d probably string you up if I did anyway, and I don’t want that on my conscious.”
“Let me put it this way,” said the bard, “To err is human, and I’ve done my share of erring, Tony…”
*
Bernard left not long after. Left saddened and a little confused, he decided to cut his quarry off at the pass and headed to the nearest city; Adlehyde, the “Land of Light”…
*
End Chapter 1c
Go read 1b or 1c if you haven’t already.
Chibi’s notes:
What the hell did Bernard do? What’s with the flowers? The shrinking ears a villager saw? Tune in… ah… some time from now for answers. ^^;;
Chapter one’s one big-ass chapter, ain’t it? Four parts; 1a’s nine pages long, 1b, 1c, and 1d each between 5 and 7 pages… Oh well, on to chapter two; boss battle and plot funzies!