Page 120 of Of Empires and Dust

Whatever the reason, Garramon knew there was logic behind it. Fane never did anything without a reason. He was meticulous, precise, and always weaving plans within plans. Garramon had learned to simply trust his old friend. Fane had never let him down, not truly. But that didn’t mean he liked being in the dark.

The sound of huffing and puffing echoed from the arch behind him.

“You made it.”

“Why…” Rist paused, sucking in air. A series of clinks signified Rist dropping the sacks of iron rings to the floor. “Why did you make me climb more stairs?”

“To push past your limits, you must first reach them.”

“That’s poetic…” Rist’s stumbling footsteps sounded across the balcony upon which Garramon stood, and the young man stopped beside him and doubled over, heaving. Hundreds of thin scars decorated his back – Brother Pirnil’s work. “But I don’t like poetry. It takes too long to get to the point.”

Garramon laughed. “Did you keep your food down?”

“Hmmm.” Rist stood slowly, stretching out his back. “But I can’t promise anything for the way back down.”

The young man was a different creature entirely from the one Garramon had met that first day in Al’Nasla. He had been a wisp of a boy, barely capable of holding a sword, never mind wielding one.

The biggest change however was not in his appearance, but in the way he held his chin higher, in the confidence with which he spoke, and in the way he was no longer over-awed by every little thing like a sheltered farm boy. His ascensionto full Brother may have been accelerated by necessity and circumstance, but it had also been earned. And yet, Garramon feared what might happen if Rist took the test of the Arcarians. He was strong, but was he strong enough? Garramon would have rather waited, but Fane was insistent.

“I could have taken you to the top,” Garramon said, resting his hand on the crenellation that topped the balcony’s low wall.

“Please, gods no.” Rist pulled a long breath, stretching his hands behind his head.

From the balcony where they stood, they could see the entire western section of the city sprawling outwards, the Lodhar Mountains in the distance, Lake Berona on their left glittering a blend of orange and red.

“You asked me a question when we entered the city almost a week past.”

Rist straightened, but he didn’t say anything.

“What happened all those years ago? Why did I make the choice I made? It’s a fair question. One most people would have the respect not to ask.”

“Fear can often be mistaken for respect.” The words left Rist’s lips so plainly it caused the corners of Garramon’s mouth to curl. The man’s candour was a refreshing thing.

“True enough.” Garramon leaned forwards, looking out at the light glinting off the rooves of the buildings below. “When I first pledged my life to The Order, I was younger than you were. Ten summers had passed me by when my mother and father sent me to be tested in the elven city of Baraduílin. I cried, a lot. I’d never been away from home. My parents loved me, of that I never doubted, but I was the second son. Tharahír was to inherit my father’s farm, and I had four brothers and three sisters. The Order paid good gold for any initiates who were accepted. The harvest had been bad for three years, and we had many mouths to feed. They tested me first for the Calling. I’d always dreamtof becoming a Draleid, of a dragon egg hatching, of soaring through the skies. As you can see, that didn’t happen. But I could touch the Spark. I was to be a mage of The Order. There were few greater honours in all Epheria. And so The Order became my life.”

Garramon pulled away from the wall and folded his arms, gazing out at the horizon. It had been some time since he’d talked about those years.

“For over a century, everything was as I had imagined. We stopped a Karvosi invasion on the Andean coast – now Arkalen – two from the Ardanians, fought a bloody war along the Lightning Coast with three Urak clans… Gods, there was so much more. But I felt like we were doing good. I felt like a hero in a bard’s tale. After sixty years, I was inducted into the Arcarians. I met Fulya, had a son – a beautiful boy, so full of life, so kind.”

“What changed?” Rist’s stare was as intense as ever, his attention unwavering.

“Everything.” Garramon let out a long sigh. “As you’ve already pointed out, the world is not black and white, no matter how much we will it to be. All we can ever do is what we believe to be right. There wasn’t one event or one moment in time. As it often is, the change was slow and subtle, like a disease or a rot spreading from the heart, creeping through The Order’s lifeblood. We began to be involved in wars we had no place in. Brutal, bloody, and savage. And unlike the past, there wasn’t always a clear reason why – at least not to me. You see, Rist, our purpose wasn’t to become embroiled in every conflict that plagued the continent. Our purpose was to protect those who were caught in the middle, to stand against any one power seizing control of another, to push back any armies that threatened our shores. The warriors of The Order were warriors of the people. We belonged to all Epherians. Somewhere along the way, that was lost.”

“And so you burned it to the ground? Turned on the people you called friends?”

Garramon snapped his head around, his jaw clenching, fingers twitching on the stone. “Watch your tongue.”

“Am I wrong?”

“Without context, no.” Sometimes Garramon forgot how plain the young man was, how simply he thought of the world. Rist was one of the most intelligent souls he had ever met, but he had a habit of thinking only in straight lines. A strength at times, but a weakness at others. “Context is what grants comprehension of any fact, Rist. If a tree is tall, what makes it tall?”

“Its height.”

“No. If a tree stands twenty feet, it is simply that. It is neither tall nor small. Tall is a relative term. One thing can only be tall in context. A twenty-foot tree is tall amongst a forest of trees no taller than ten feet. But if it sits amidst a thicket of hundred-foot titans, it is not simply small, it is tiny. Right and wrong, good and evil, these things are relative also.”

“It is always right to save a life,” Rist countered, his expression unshifting.

“Even if that life goes on to take another? Or ten? Or a hundred? Or a thousand? What if that life rode a two-hundred foot-dragon and was willing to burn an entire city alive to fill a coin chest?”

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