5
1309 Words
They had to travel back to the city of the Star Rain clan together with the wounded warriors and Galenon, who was still going only thanks to alchemical pills and a few healers. Such an army of the nearly-crippled wasn’t capable of moving as quickly as a small, elite strike squad.
“Why didn't you let them be executed?” Lathea asked suddenly. “It wasn’t a dishonorable act. Those who go to war know that they may not return from it. Now our clan has a sworn enemy. We’ll always have to be on alert, because who knows when they might be able to strike.”
She was right. Hadjar really had created quite a serious threat for the Star Rain clan with his actions. Going by Anise Dinos and himself, Hadjar knew all too well what a single person was capable of.
He looked up at the stars. They didn’t look at all like they did back in Darnassus. He had already walked so many thousands of miles. He’d come so far that most people from Lidus and Dahanatan would consider a summary of his adventures to be the ramblings of a drunken bard. The Orc Lands, the jungles of Karnak, the mountains of Greven’Dor, Tír na nÓg, the Demon Lands, the Dragon Lands, the mountains of the dwarves, and now the Strange Lands. He had gone farther than anyone else he’d ever known. How many more roads lay ahead, leading him even farther beyond the horizon? This was truly an endless, vast world. Not a planet, but something else.
“Once upon a time,” Hadjar’s fingers froze over the strings. “I obeyed my Emperor’s orders.”
“An Emperor?” Lathea asked. “Isn’t there only one Emperor? The one who sits on the Jasper Throne?”
Hadjar smiled a little. According to the traditions of the Strange Lands, they had no Emperors, no Kings, no nobles or aristocrats. Only power was valued here. And family. They were complicated people.
“Probably,” Hadjar shrugged.
Lathea stretched out her hand toward the fire, “Are you sorry about what happened?”
Hadjar looked at his hands. The expression ‘elbow deep in blood’ couldn’t describe even a small fraction of what he saw when he looked at them.
“It was the same war,” Hadjar plucked some more strings. “All wars are the same, Lathea.”
“You sound just like Cassius, and you’re only a little over a century old.”
It had been a century of endless wanderings, wars, and battles.
“Sometimes, when I fall asleep, I see their faces,” he looked at the stars again.
“Whose faces?”
Hadjar remembered the wars of the Northern Kingdoms, the city that he’d taken thanks to a cunning plan. You have no honor! The dying cry of the female General echoed in his ears.
“I killed a man once,” he said. “He wanted to destroy all the weak people, so that only the strong would remain in this world. If everyone is strong, he claimed, there would be no oppression, there would be no wars. Only peace. After all, if only the strong can fight-”
“Mutual destruction is assured,” the Princess finished for him. “It sounds a bit deranged, but I can see the logic behind it.”
Hadjar nodded. Sunshine Sankesh had really sounded convincing at one point.
“But he was wrong.”
“Why?”
Hadjar looked at Lathea, and then back to his Ron’Jah.
“For every strong person, there will always be someone who is stronger.”
“So you’re suggesting that everyone would’ve become weak instead?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I just didn’t want you to dream about the faces of people who died because of the decisions you made or were made for you.”
They fell silent. On this day, several decades ago, Hadjar had destroyed the Moon Sect on the orders of Emperor Morgan.
“Do you ever forget about them?” Lathea asked.
Instead of answering her, he continued to pluck the strings. Maybe one day he would be able to answer this question, and her previous one about the strong and the weak as well. But not today. Today, he would just play his Ron’Jah while looking at the fire and sitting next to a friend that he felt like he’d known all his life.
Chapter 1475
T
he Star Rain City’s residents welcomed their warriors with cheers and adoration. People crowded in the streets, throwing flower petals at the warriors’ feet, shouting and waving handkerchiefs at them. Various women, making their way through the crowd, tried to see if there were any relatives of theirs amongst the wounded parading down the central avenue.
Hadjar had noticed that the further along the path of cultivation one got, the fewer women there were among the most powerful cultivators. Back when he had served in the Moon army, a third of his army had consisted of women. Now, in the Strange Lands, there were barely a hundred females in every group of ten thousand fighters. This was probably due to some objective reason he couldn’t grasp, but Hadjar wasn’t up to the task of figuring it out just then.
“I could get used to this,” Gustaf caught the petals and then let them drop back down to the ground.
Sometimes, he locked eyes with one of the girls or exchanged some words with them about something. The life of a warrior was quite simple: either war or love, and only the greatest of sages knew which of these could kill a warrior faster.
Hadjar walked, as he’d refused to ride a horse. Abraham, who was riding his mount Bedouin-style, ruffled the mane of his six-legged horse and asked:
“Honorable Mad General, why are you so gloomy?”
Hadjar didn’t answer him. Stopping to pick up a petal, he put it in his shirt pocket and then kept going. The cheering crowd didn’t mean much to him. He had seen and experienced this kind of thing too often in his life.
Soon, the procession reached the clan’s territory. The gates swung open and Light Feather came out into the street, surrounded by numbered warriors. The old woman, who was at the peak of power within the mortal world, ran to her son, stumbling all the way, and wrapped him up in a tender, strong maternal embrace. Even almost Immortal mothers were still mothers. And their sons… Galenon hugged her to him and closed his eyes. They stood like this for a few long moments.
“We celebrate!” Pulling away from the old woman, Galenon turned to the army and loudly proclaimed, “We’re going to celebrate, my faithful warriors! Glorious victory forever marks our banners! Tonight, we’re celebrating that fact, and tomorrow morning, we’re dividing up the loot!”
“Hooray!” The warriors shouted.
It was clear that the clan’s innermost territory couldn’t accommodate all the warriors, so the healers, who were fussing over the wounded, gradually quartered them in medical rooms and barracks located within the city. It was quite a curious sight to witness a Nameless being dragged to the barracks on a stretcher made from a cloud. After Darnassus, where Hadjar had gotten used to Nameless level cultivators living in palaces and being the pillars of power upon which the entire Empire rested, it looked somewhat surreal to him.
After watching the bustling crowd for a while, Hadjar and the rest of the squad went through the closing gates. The gardens and courtyards of the Star Rain clan had been converted into medical areas. There were camping tents set up here, and the air smelled heavily of various medicines and ointments.
- Writer
