“Would you like to know why the dead are always so gracefully venerated?” Rometo asked.
Aiden shrugged. “Because people like to feel good about themselves? And saying good things about other people who are dead is societally acceptable?”
Rometo raised his head from where he was sitting and looked up at him. Aiden returned the look with a blank one of his own then shrugged noncommittally, knowing that the darkness of the night hid none of it from Rometo’s gaze.
“I am curious about something,” Rometo said.
“No, the man in charge can’t make me join the Order,” Aiden said flatly. “And I’m not interested in joining the Order.”
Rometo shook his head. “Not that.”
“I wear a size seven,” Aiden followed through.
Rometo blinked. “Is that true?”
“No.” Aiden shook his head, again, he looked past Rometo to his point of focus. “I’m just saying things and seeing how many expressions I can spot.”
Rometo pointed at himself. “On me?”
“Uhuh,” Aiden answered. “You wear your emotions in an odd way. You mask it all behind placidity… or in your case, hardness.” His eyes still never focused on Rometo. “There is one thing I’ve been curious about for the longest time.”
Rometo cocked a brow, as if bidding him to continue.
“The pain,” Aiden said, now moving his eyes from who he was looking at to meet Rometo’s. “Do you wear the real thing or is it a captured emotion—a facsimile of the real deal?”
Rometo frowned a little. It was the slightest thing, almost imperceptible in the darkness. Aiden could see that his question had gotten to him. Perhaps it was wrong of him to ask. In truth, the question had been one of the mysteries his life. When he was in the Order, he hadn’t been able to ask the question because even when they had been instructors together, they had still once had a student and instructor relationship, so Rometo had possessed no interest in answering his questions.
Now that they were arguably on equal terms, perhaps he could get something out of him. It was just a piece of curiosity, nothing harmful. At least he hoped so. On Nastild it was not unheard of among the strong to have specific things that drove them to chaos. As the Order liked to teach; everyone had a breaking point.
Rometo remained quiet for what seemed to last forever. In his silence, Aiden felt the gentle touch of the wind against his skin, listened to the careful steps of the tiny rodents running around in the forest. One bumped into one of his enchantments and bounced off it. The script surrounded the entire area they occupied. Those without mana would meet a physical interference, prevented from proceeding further. Those with mana would walk through but Aiden would be alerted.
Off not too far away, the others were sleeping. To Ted’s clear chagrin they were in the forest again, growing ever closer to Aiden’s goal. If they could find their way beyond the mountains, he would be one step closer to the location he sought. One step closer to the [Enemy of the Order].
Ted wasn’t necessarily asleep since a familiar was currently on his head. It was like a monkey the size of Aiden’s palm, the creature picking at his hair as if looking for lice and ticks. Aiden wondered if it was just some repetitive action for the sake of the action or if it was actually doing something. But his eyes were not on Ted. No. They were on Elami, the [Healer] sitting next to Ted’s sleeping head, ever watchful, ever vigilante.
Always. Over. Ted.
“I’ll answer your question,” Rometos said out of nowhere. But there was something in his voice, a touch that Aiden understood.
“On what condition?” Aiden asked.
“On the condition that you answer two of mine.”
Aiden tilted his head slowly to the side. “That doesn’t sound like a fair exchange.”
“I was not offering a fair exchange.”
Aiden thought about it for a moment then shrugged. “I’ll answer two questions out of the many that you have, but I’ll choose the two out of the many. Warning, I won’t answer things that I believe will give you too much power over me. Things that can endanger my goals.”
“Sounds like a fair deal,” Rometo concluded.
“Good.” Aiden smiled. “So, what’s the answer to the expression you’ve chosen; real or fake?”
“Real,” Rometo said. “I have a pain I hold in my heart and every time I put it on my face, I remind myself of the pain and my desire to never forget it. But then, you know something about that pain, don’t you? If not you would not have made me the offer you made me.”
Aiden nodded. At least now he had an answer to one of the questions that had always bothered him. It wasn’t important or bearing of any depth. It was just a curiosity. At least now he understood why when the barrier between both sides of Nastild had finally come down, Rometo had thrown himself into the suicide mission. He understood why Rometo had disobeyed the Order.
If he had been so devoted to a pain he’d held since before even joining the Order, it must’ve done a number on his mind over the years.
And he died for it, Aiden thought with a sigh. But that future was gone already. He at least knew that. Why? Because for Rometo to die the same way he had died in his past life, Aiden had to be under the command of the Order. The master of the Order had to send Aiden after Rometo.
Aiden pressed his lips in a thin line as he thought about it, about who he had become in his past life. He did not feel bad about it, though. It wasn’t as if he had been some monster devoted to some level of debauchery or evil. He had just been something slightly empty. Sometimes he often wondered if his drive towards saving Ted had been completely about his love for his brother or hiss duty as a brother. It had certainly started out as love, but when you got to know enough people and had to kill them for doing the things that they were not supposed to do, you either ran mad, your mind cracking under the weight of what you forced it to carry, or you lost pieces of yourself.
At some point, Aiden could identify when his emotions were no longer real—when he felt things not because he felt them but because he was supposed to feel them.
“My turn,” Rometo said.
Aiden nodded. “Your turn.”
“How do you know about me and my family?” Rometo asked without missing a beat.
“The name I have to offer you,” Aiden answered, “is a person who knows about the events from that specific day. I learned of him during one of my network interactions. He was useful, after all, much would be expected of a man who’d helped end the reign of one of the oldest human royal families on the other side.”
“Vague answers,” Rometo said with a touch of annoyance. “I asked how you know about me and my family not the man in question.”
“I know about you and your family because the man said that I should find you and ask for your forgiveness. He asked that I find the last son of the Arad-Ea bloodline. He asked that I find Rometo and apologize.”
“But here you are,” Rometo gestured dramatically at him, “selling him out instead of helping him.”
Aiden shrugged. What he was about to say now, unlike what he had just said, was not a lie. “I’m selling him out because he makes a living increasing his level by killing the unsuspecting innocent in the shithole he lives in. My network will do nothing to kill him or bring him to justice because his knowledge and intel far surpass what they have.”
“Your intel should surpass what he has if you have the master making deals with you.”
“My intel is far beyond the scope of what my network is able to organize,” Aiden said with disinterest. “They will find no value in it.”
“And what scope is that?” Rometo asked.
Aiden cocked a brow. “Is that your second question?”
“No,” Rometo answered quickly. “My apologies for that. My next question is how you were able to bring the master of the Order to make a bargain with you.”
Aiden shook his head. “Ask another question. If I answer that, it will be a lie, because the truth gives you an unhealthy amount of power over me.”
“Okay,” Rometo sighed. “How about this; what was your world like that it produced someone who has become like you at such a young age?”
Aiden shrugged. “Peaceful.”
“I call jepat shit,” Rometo said casually. “You and your companions haven’t spent up to six months on Nastild and, apart from Dentis, the crystal and now Nosrath, I don’t think you’ve seen enough to jade you so dangerously.”
“So the Order sent you to investigate Dentis,” Aiden mused, latching on to that piece of information. “Willing to tell me why?”
“Only for another two questions.”
Aiden smiled. “Are you even at liberty to share it?”
“The master told me to tell you if I want,” Rometo answered. “For some reason he figured you might be curious. I know for a fact that you will be curious.”
That was interesting. For the master to believe that something that had happened in Dentis was so important that he would at least be curious about it was intriguing. Now Aiden wanted to know.
He held up a finger. “One question. You get one in exchange for it.”
Rometo took a moment then shrugged. “But you have to answer the question about your world first.”
“I already did,” Aiden said. “My world was peaceful. Yes there were conflicts here and there, humans always fall into conflicts, but it was nothing grand. And when there were conflicts, it mostly happened elsewhere, to someone else. I heard of them as stories while I read my books and did my assignments and watched my cartoons.”
“What are cartoons?” Rometo asked, clearly unable to stop himself.
“Moving drawings,” Aiden answered easily.
Rometo paused. “So your world had magic.”
“Technology,” Aiden corrected. “Crossbow versus mana bullet.”
“So you had magic that you could create, replicate and explain.”
Aiden tilted his head in thought. “I guess you can say that. And cartoons were one of these things. What did you find in Dentis that should interest me? What did you find that I don’t know of?”
“Do you remember the creature that came out of nowhere and came after you and your brother?”
“I do.”
“Do you know what it is?”
Aiden frowned. “I do not.”
Rometo grinned. “Would you like to know what it is? What exactly it is, I mean.”
They had him there. This was definitely something he wanted to know. “I would.”
“Then what do you know about why you and your kind have been summoned here?”
“The usual thing. Prophecies and apocalypses.” Aiden shrugged. “We are meant to rise up and stop the rising darkness. In my world there are actually stories like what is currently happening to us. Unsuspecting young adults, sometimes children, summoned to another world to protect it from the monsters coming out of the shadows because some idiot chose to rise to the top of the shadows and lead them.”
Rometo’s eyes widened in shock. “Really?”
“Yep,” Aiden nodded. “The human mind can be very imaginative.”
“What else do these stories come up with?”
Aiden shrugged. “There’s a buck load of things. Like I said, humans are a very imaginative species. There’s magic too. All this,” he gestured around, “someone’s told a story like this before. Multiple people have.”
Rometo ran a hand through his hair. “Fucking hell,” he muttered. “This is why he was more than happy to offer me to you.” He laughed a little. “He thinks that this is fate.”
Aiden paused. “I’m sorry, what?”
“The master of the Order,” Rometo clarified. “He has this thing where he has some kind of link with fate. This? Both of us?” He gestured between them. “He probably thinks that you requesting for me is fate.”
“Why?”
“Because of my family.” Rometo took a calming breath, as if controlling his excitement. “This person responsible for my family’s downfall, did he ever tell you what my family was; why we are actually as old as we are? What did he tell you about the Arad-Ea bloodline.”
“Nothing,” Aiden answered, because it was the truth and because he actually knew nothing about the Arad-Ea bloodline except that they were Rometo’s family on the other side of Nastild.
“All this while,” Rometo muttered as if talking to himself. “I thought they came for us, but what if that was not the case. What if they came for me.” He looked down at the ground, his eyes darting around in his head as he put together whatever it was that he was putting together. Finally, they fixed on Aiden. “The master orchestrated all of this from the beginning.” He chuckled a little. “He’s always been smart like that. You can never tell what’s a coincidence with a man who can see ten years ahead of anything you can ever see.”
“Uhm… Rometo.” Aiden was getting worried by the sudden sharp look in Rometo’s eyes. He’d never seen this side of Rometo before.
Rometo took another deep and calming breath. “The Order orchestrated the death of my family so that this day will happen.” He looked at Aiden. “My family was killed so that the man with an arm covered in demonic mana will find himself in a position where he will learn of me then the master of the Order will approach him on a very specific day at a very specific time and have a conversation that will lead you to asking of me. And the master made sure that when that day came, he would be able to present us to each other—so that we will meet and talk on this day.”
“Rometo, I don’t get what you’re trying to say,” Aiden said, doing his best to keep his worry from his face, from his voice. “But I think we should take a breather and try again.” He could sense the desertion in Rometo’s eyes. He’d seen it in someone else before. “You’ve got a question for me, and I owe you an answer. Ask the question.”
“Do you know the reason Nastild in a world of death and rebirth of your kind?” Rometo asked. “Do you know why there is always a rising darkness and children are always summoned?”
“Let’s change the subject.”
“No,” Rometo refused emphatically. “They choose children because the spell picks a certain age range. Old enough to just be coming into their mana command, but young enough that they are yet to possess a true sense of self.”
“My age group aren’t really stupid,” Aiden said, trying to join Rometo’s baseline and control the direction of the conversation. “We know who we are. We have a sense of self.”
Rometo was already shaking his head. “You are an outlier, Lacheart, an exception to the rule. Your peers think they know who they are, your age mates think they have a sense of self. Your age group are chosen because you are arrogant enough to be led and directed while thinking you are playing a part in your decision and, at the same time, young enough for your mana type to still be malleable. Aiden Lacheart,” he got up from the ground and walked up to him. “Anyone could be summoned, but they summoned those of your age, those of your age in your specific cultural positioning. Why? Because they’ve summoned more competent people before, people who knew what they were doing, people who knew who they were.”
Aiden grabbed Rometo by the shoulders. “Stop!” he commanded. “We do not want to go down this line of conversations.”
Rometo moved and grabbed Aiden’s shoulders as well. “But you need to know, child. You think you are playing the master of the Order, but you are not. He knows everything that you think he does not. He has made you offerings that you want. He has played you. You are but a child, but you have the mind of an adult, so you must understand.”
“Rometo!” Aiden barked, stunning the man into sudden stiffness, and drawing the attention of those around. “Stop it. Keep your knowledge to yourself. Keep your discovery to yourself. Keep your revelations to yourself.”
Rometo frowned a little now. His eyes searched Aiden’s. Aiden saw the realization in them. They just stood there, staring into each other’s eyes. Aiden looked past Rometo for a moment. His eyes locked with Valdan’s then Ted’s. He hoped that the look he gave them let them know that he was alright, that nothing was wrong.
It did because both of them returned to lying down, gesturing the others to do the same.
As if waiting for everyone to return to minding their business, Rometo spoke again. This time his voice had returned to being calm, thoughtful.
“You know,” he said in realization. “You already know. You are not some arrogant brat with too much knowledge and understanding. You know that he is to be feared.” His eyes softened now. “This is all just your bravado. You are scared of him. Not terrified, but sufficiently cautious.” His eyes sharpened again. “You know a lot, more than even most in our Order do, don’t you?”
“I know enough to know that you should stop talking on this subject,” Aiden replied in a whisper. “The Order has eyes everywhere.”
The very words reset his mind. The Order did, in fact, have eyes everywhere. And here, their eyes were Rometo. Realization dawned on him, and he felt like a fool. He had almost been drawn into Rometo’s chaos. Even now, he could not analyze how smoothly Rometo had created the chaos, only that he had been trying to save Rometo from it, to stop him from doing something crazy.
But what if that was not what was happening?
For all he knew, this might simply be a ruse from Rometo. The man could be playing him, using a tactic that was something of a last resort. It was a classic, panic into realization, then bring the fear, then the understanding, then the offering.
And I was the one who started it.
Eventually, your target got drawn into your clusterfuck of emotions and, before they knew it, you were guiding their emotions, making them understand you. Then there was the part of the offering. It was easier to trust someone if they offered you something about themselves. People did not understand just how powerful offerings were. Even something as simple as a person offering you their name before speaking to you lowered your suspicion of them by the smallest microcosm.
And you were arrogant enough to almost fall into it.
For all Aiden knew, he had already said too much the moment he said the Order had eyes everywhere.
“You have to listen to me, Lacheart,” Rometo said. “What do you know about the first summons? What did the libraries and the teachers of Bandiv tell you?”
“Nothing,” Aiden answered. “We didn’t even know that there were others.”
“There were, all of them around your age.” Rometo paused to look back at the others, those supposed to be asleep. He frowned and pulled out a small orb from his pocket. “All except the first.”
He channeled mana into the small orb, and Aiden knew what it was before it was even activated. He felt the vibrations, then the slight distortion as an [Enchantment of Silence] was activated.
“The first summoned were their greatest mistake,” Rometo said. “They were too old. Too capable. Too much in control. So they made the next batch younger, more malleable. They made the next batch like you, and the batch after that, and the batch after that.”
What the fuck is going on?
“You are their next focus, Aiden,” Rometo said. “I didn’t think about it before, but you are the target.”
“The target for what?”
“Listen and listen carefully, Aiden Lacheart of Earth.” Rometo’s grip tightened on his shoulders. “I am Rometo Arad-Ea, born to a long line of the Arad-Ea bloodline, last of its bloodline. A bloodline that traces its roots to Shesh Arad-Ea, brother to the first [Hero], servant to the king Gilgamesh.”
That rocked Aiden. He felt his knees threaten to buckle beneath him. If he was to believe Rometo, then it meant that Nastild had been summoning heroes since the time of Gilgamesh. It wasn’t impossible, it was just difficult to believe.
Still, he couldn’t shake off why the name was so familiar.
“And what does that have to do with me?” he asked, something challenging in his voice.
“It’s because if the information my family died thinking they were protecting is to be believed, then the one who saves Nastild isn’t the [Hero], it’s the [Demon King].”
“And?”
“And the [Demon King] is not a coincidence, Aiden Lacheart.” Rometo looked down at Aiden’s blackened arm. “The [Demon King] isn’t chosen or made.” He looked him in the eye. “The [Demon King] is born.”
The name struck him now. It was not common, but he had stumbled upon it once upon a time in the Order archives.
Rometo’s ancestor. The part about him having descendants was new to him. The part about him being the brother of the [Hero] was new to him. What wasn’t new to Aiden was who he was.
Shesh Arad-Ea was one of the [Demon King]s before Ted.
“There is a saying in my family,” Rometo said carefully. “Buyit sallak, buyit seretam.”
It was one of the older languages spoken on the other side of Nastild and, knowing it, Aiden’s mind did a quick translation of Rometo’s words.
“Save the king…” he muttered and Rometo finished the sentence for him.
“… Save the world.”