The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 483 - A Survivor’s Path & Purpose
After about a week in the Astral Exclave, Aleck sat at the edge of a water feature’s terrace and looked over the area below. The cultivator meditatively watched blocks of refined Salt glide, from wherever it was the underground deposit had been found, along a conveyance track that he felt was nothing like the train system of the continent. He’d offered to work as labor for things like that, lifting and carrying what she needed or want from point to point. But the heiress always seemed to have a tailored solution... that he was not *entirely* sure actually saved any time or effort in the short term.
’At least... she let me lift and move some of the track’s sections from where they were before we got here.’
Though it was rather disheartening for him to ’only’ be able to lift one in each arm while Elua took four total. The Adhesion technique was something that both he and the girl’s father were rather looking forward to learning. After all, their weapon styles were already highly technique based - and the potential of adding invisible pivot points by suddenly locking a section of chain or whip in place was exciting for the two martial minded cultivators.
However, while some excitement for that potential still simmered, a lot of the marvel of the location itself had already worn thin. It was certainly grand, especially for a large estate in the middle of ’nowhere’. However, it was not grandeur and majesty that made him decide to come here. Just a sort of emotional weight that had followed him ever since the Saltfire Storm Alliance raids that he had been a part of.
Despite his initial refusal, he’d even turned to helping Madrigil with a research project the day before. Or rather, he’d stood nearby holding tools while the exiled noble muttered technical observations to Dima that Aleck only half understood. Both of the sigilists would talk over each other with jargon and rarely asked him to input anything meaningfully to the conversation. It still made him feel useful and productive... in an utterly hollow way, considering the feeling fled when he was alone again.
Turning his face from the conveyor, he instead watched a stone block settle into place in the distance with a perfection that would make any mason weep. The storehouse expansion that the Goltbred was doing, after some advice from her father, at the other end of the track was coming along very well. Spiritual constructs didn’t need breaks, didn’t make mistakes (that he could see), and didn’t tire or worry. They just... worked.
"Quite the view you found."
The unguilded cultivator turned to find Ondua approaching with two wooden cups of something that smelled vaguely... herbal. He just knew it had to be another batch of that diluted tree-sap monstrosity that the ancient cultivator forced them all to try. It was as if they’d promised to aid in her experiments to make it ’palatable’ by *daring* to eat any of the food brought in from outside. He would have preferred to not eat back then at all!
"It is. Your daughter’s work is... impressive doesn’t really feel like enough, but I’m not the strongest speaker."
The Goltbred patriarch offered one cup, though looked like he didn’t really want to. It was terrible, but it was still his little girl’s ’home cooking’... and he’d started to grow a taste for it. He told himself that repeatedly, even while gagging experimental batch seventeen down the third night with a thumbs up that only made Elua hold her chin in her palm and lower one of her eyebrows in a concerned squint.
After all, she’d mixed something in that one that had made even her throw up in minutes, clearly useful only as an emetic agent, when testing the properties of things growing in the Exclave. Granted, she was intentionally *not* catalyzing its energy immediately back then, like she normally would, so that she could actually catalog all of the effects. It still impressed her enough that she appreciatively rubbed his back as he sat in a general healing formation - nothing as strong as the tissue regenerator, but still far more potent than her brooches littering the continent with their mild effect.
Aleck sipped the tea, finding it actually quite good this time. So much so that he began to wonder if the ’young’ cultivator was not just messing with them all week. After all, how could someone go five millennia and learn nothing of culinary tastes? Not everything was just adding random spices together and calling it a day! His hand tightened on the cup as he finally started to speak to the man who had been silently offering his ear for days now.
"I keep thinking I should feel more amazed by it all. That it should have inspired me and fixed... but instead I’m just... here. Again."
Ondua said nothing, just moved to lean against the terrace railing beside him while looking down at the water flowing for no real purpose other than to look pretty. The quiet after Aleck talked wasn’t as unpleasant as he expected and the older brunette man seemed content to wait until he had more to say. So he decided to start with the beginning of his ’issues’, as he saw it.
"You know that I worked under Madrigil before all this. Briefly. Bodyguard work during the Descent, it was supposed to be. When he rushed into that situation with the... realmshard, I should have been there."
"Don’t take this as blame, but why weren’t you?"
"I was checking the perimeter of the camp like he’d asked. By the time I realized something was wrong, he was gone. Just... vanished of on his own without any of his important research materials and only a nonsensical note."
Aleck’s laugh came out bitter. It was all of those things of the exiled noble that slowed him down in his search. Worrying over his things until they were hidden away , trying to memorize the landmarks to get back, and then tracking his path through the wilderness.... all of it prevented him from potentially being one of the three transported here. Something always seemed to keep him relatively safe. Even when others were put in more danger and got hurt or died.
"I spent the rest of the Descent fighting with a detachment under Commander Huri. Then the Saltfire situation escalated. I participated in many of those assaults, to help clean up the mess their Guild was making. Including the time your wife was injured."
"So I’ve heard. She told me you were on the perimeter cleanup that day?"
"Yes. They wanted me where there was more open space. Since-"
"Since your weapon type is excellent for denying the enemy ease of movement over a large area. I know a thing or two about that."
Interrupting with a smile, the whip blade user felt just a bit of companionship with the meteor hammer wielder. Training hard enough and well enough to be *successful* with something non-standard was uncommon in their era. Especially when there were much easier paths to learning to fight successfully for the Descents. But sometimes an idea calls to a person and they just have to try and make it work.
"Yes, well. Thanks to that, nearly everyone else came back with scars or didn’t come back at all. And I was left without a scratch. It makes me feel like... I keep surviving when I shouldn’t."
The brunette man was again silent, but this time his gaze was distant. Ondua was a former Hero and one who was still surprised to this day that he made it through those fights with the Leader class of Voidlings with little in the way of damage to his self. Backup was limited to keep their team moving to locations... and essentially consisted of Anper and a few other supporters pulling all of the attention of the Lessers just to allow the Goltbred fighter a chance to engage.
Even still, they were frantic scrambles that were never over as quickly as it had been for Qatrand. The attention her father pulled on the battlefield was nothing as compelling as Cynosure. He was just enough of a threat and annoyance to draw them off - not enough to keep them off. A number of these battles ended up rejoining each other. And in them... cultivator and mortal Army member’s lives were lost.
So when he finally did speak to Aleck, his voice carried the experience that came from years spent as a well recognized survivor that carried faces and circumstances. Even then, he knew that words alone didn’t help. Only time.
"During my second Descent, the one everyone hails as my success, I led a force into a collapsed section of a breached fortress. We were trying to extract the civilians still trapped in the lower levels. I made the call to split our group. The mortals and a few token cultivators went down one corridor while I took the other."
Dredging up and sharing his worst experience of the wars - at least the public one - wasn’t an easy thing to do. He’d almost rather try batch seventeen again. But still, his tight jaw opened as brown eyes turned toward the other fighter beside him.
"My group found the people we were looking for. The other corridor... it was an ambush. Voidling’s had hidden there expecting our return back through the entrance. They had a large advantage in numbers and an Intermediate in their midst. By the time we got there, only two of seven Army members survived."
Aleck wanted to say something, but could only lower his face. His own feelings felt muted compared to what he imagined that must have felt like. Commanding others had never been a desire of his, which is one of the reasons why he refused to entertain the idea of being part of a Guild.
"I made the choice. I guessed wrong about which path held the danger. Danger that was originally my duty to face. As far as I am and was concerned, I failed that day."
’And the successes that followed never made me think otherwise.’
