The Great War: Chapter 50
Four gathered, three to go
Gathered around the end of the grand dining table, the semblance of some sort of group is starting to form. To Ezra, he finds this to be weirdly exciting. On one hand, being given a role to play in the outcome of this war, whatever his official job may be in the near future, reminds him of when he took it upon himself to be the protector of the Great Library’s history books. On the other… well, he’s never really been in a war before, let alone even being some being important in the first place.
As he arrives, settling into a chair nearby, Samuel passes to a sparking blue-skinned Mathew the demands of the Guardians for him to read.
Wide-eyed, Ezra can’t help but reach out and touch one of Mathew’s bare arms with a single finger as he reads the document. And as Ezra’s finger comes into contact with his strange skin, he doesn’t even react to the sensation.
It’s cold to the touch and feels sturdy; somehow, he managed to turn his body into ice by the looks of it alone. Is this his gift from Korodon, or has he always been able to do this?
“What do you make of it?” Samuel asks, referring to the Guardian’s demands.
Mathew’s icy brow furrows as he continues to stare at the paper. Ezra decides to poke his arm again, this time much firmer than the last, but the only reaction he receives is from Devin giving him a dark side-eye stare. Mathew himself remains unfazed.
Does he even feel Ezra’s touch? Maybe his skin hasn’t turned to ice, but instead his skin is coated in a layer of ice. If that’s the case, what would it take to get Mathew to feel anything? So many questions!
Silence drags on. The royals are beginning to grow more and more inpatient as Mathew is lost within his own little world. He could be thinking. He could still be reading. He could be illiterate pretending to read. He could even be dead from the intense cold of the ice covering his body, leaving him a frozen statue, and the rest of them are none the wiser. After all, his body hardly sways or twitches, remaining perfectly still as if he were cut from stone rather than a living being.
Ezra smiles to himself as he raises his hand. His palm and fingers deform and swirl around in a small whirlwind of sand as he wills the end of his arm to become an orange-gold hammer.
He draws his arm back. He doesn’t know if he’ll feel the aftermath of ramming his hand into hard ice with his hand in this sandy state. He’s fully braced for that outcome. But moreover, how will Mathew react? If the strike even fazes him in the first place, that is.
And he brings the sand hammer down against Mathew’s shoulder, a nice, flat surface for him to strike. He sees the impact, the sand rushing outwards as it comes into contact with Mathew, but he doesn’t feel it, making him wonder if he even hit the Cryomancer that hard to begin with.
But the Cryomancer does react this time, turning to Ezra with a confused frown. The two stare at each other for a tense moment as Mathew appears to be trying to process Ezra’s action in his head.
“Did you… hit me?” he finally asks.
“Only to see what you could feel,” Ezra replies with a cheeky grin. “Well?”
Mathew just rolls his eyes and sets down the paper clutched between his hands. “If yer askin’ me, they’re not offering out of good faith. The Guardians are either lookin’ to kill or convert.”
“Convert?” Samuel asks, folding his arms.
“Aye,” Mathew nods. “Right before I ran away, a mate I thought I knew tried to enlist me. Asandra would let us control our magic in exchange for joining Her. Otherwise…” He runs a thumb sharply across his neck. “They’d most likely do the same to the entire island if you side with them: join or die.”
“If that’s the case, wizards would either be left to die out in the Guardian’s forces or bred specifically to be Asandra’s weapons of mass destruction,” Devin predicts. “Either way, magic would cease to be free.”
“Or cease existing at all,” Ezra throws in.
“I don’t think Korodon would allow that to happen,” Devin hums.
“I hope yer not considering their terms,” Mathew says.
Samuel’s expression grows long and dark, his eyes straying to the short yet harsh list of demands. “In truth, if you didn’t agree to be here, I might have accepted them. But now it’s a different story.”
“So what’s the plan?” Ezra can’t help but ask.
“I have a speech almost fully prepared,” Samuel replies. “I’ll be addressing the island the next cycle. I’d like all of you here to be present with me. In short, however, here is what is to come.
“The speech itself is a formality. It will be turning down the Guardians’ offer and announcing to the rest of the citizens some of my plans for the near future. The hunt for the others will continue. By the end, in total there will be seven of us, one for each magic. We will be Generals; each of us will be responsible for overseeing different aspects of the war and island respectively. We will meet frequently and make decisions by committee. The point is to balance parts of the war between the seven of us, making our organization and mobilization much more efficient, even with our limited resources.
“The point is… not really to fight large-scale battles right now, but to secure our safety here on this island. We do not have the numbers of the Guardians nor a naval force equal to theirs, but so long as we are able to defend Korodon, hopefully we’ll be able to damage them as they try to damage us.”
“A war of attrition while under siege?” Ezra asks. The plan sounds ludicrous at face value. The only thing Korodon has to its name is its farmland. They have hardly enough natural resources to build or rebuild buildings, walls, and even ships. Food might not be an issue, but virtually everything else will be. “Will we even be capable of holding on for so long?”
Samuel nods his head sadly. “At this point, it cannot be helped. We can’t stop them from putting us under siege out at sea. Not how we are right now, at any rate. There’s still much about magic we have yet to learn, and until we learn it then we’ll never be ready for head-on battles. But with our farms, our grain reserves, and us defending the island, the Guardians will have a difficult time starving us out if they don’t attempt to engage us. That will be how we learn. And that will be how we win.”
Ezra’s not against the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge is, indeed, the one thing wizards have lacked for many years, not helped by the Guardians “disappearing” many of their kind, hindering efforts to learn more about how far magic can truly extend. Theories have always floated around since magic was first bestowed upon the beings of Astria that the seven magics are simply a starting point, and that many more types of magic exist in the world, waiting to be discovered. He doesn’t doubt it to be true; if they somehow discovered a new magic during this war, it’d most likely put them at a massive advantage over the Guardians. But with such a massive lack of research and difficulty trying to study magic in peace and safety, the seven magics that are known are still more or less in their infancy. Wizards still fight with weapons more often than not. They shouldn’t.
But how long will it take for them to learn about magic while also dealing with a war? How long will it take for the Guardians to figure out how to crush the island before they can even retaliate? How much time they truly have is unknown, but it’s not a lot.
“Mathew, I intend for you to help train our sailors for how to deal with the Guardians and their maneuvers out at sea,” Samuel continues as Ezra is hunched over in his chair, lost in thought. “And Ezra, as a former book keeper, I intend for you to take on several smaller roles. Keeping records, like a scribe, of meetings and encounters with the Guardians, as well as familiarizing yourself with old battles between the Guardians and other nations. Our library should hold more than enough material about that.”
Ezra nods. Books are certainly right up his alley. Writing, maybe not so much, but he’ll do his best. Keeping documentation of meetings, battles, inventory, and all sorts of other things will be incredibly important for remaining organized and determining what sorts of projects they’ll be able to invest time and resources into.
“Aye,” Mathew also agrees. “A good plan.”
The comment puts a strained smile on Samuel’s face for a brief moment.
“It… will certainly be strange to finally become king,” he says, “while not fully being a king.”
“It’s for the best,” Devin tells him. “The citizens still need their leader.”
“Devin can show you to your room, Mathew. Rest well, you and Ezra. The speech will be given early. After that, we’ll all have quite a lot of work to start on.”
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