A Proper Story

When the Kid came back from the Hanging Gardens with Zulf, at first Zulf kept himself well-composed. No doubt the time spent being an Ura ambassador taught him how to keep a cool demeanor. But a man’s eyes tells you what they’re hiding. Tells you what they’re feeling. And Zulf ain’t feeling anything but the sorrow of all those people he’s lost.

I tried my best to console him, we all tried. Tried to help him move on from the Calamity. Yet even as he opened up, told us about himself, there were always parts about him that he kept to himself.

Don’t blame him. Nobody came out of the Calamity the same person.

There was a time though, while Kid was off finding more cores, that he drank himself into a stupor. Spent time holed up in the distillery, filling himself up with some of the Bastion’s fine brandy. I came in to see him in a corner, clutching an empty bottle in his hands. Eyes staring into the distance, like he saw a ghost. Didn’t even turn to see me as I moved closer, only rocking back and forth, lost in thought.

“Tessa,” I remember hearing him scream. “Tessa, Tessa. Come back, Tessa.” His fiancee, I later found out when I asked about her.

He repeated her name over and over again as he clutched his head, tears slowly streaking down his cheeks. Man looked like awful. Complete wreck. I could only sit and watched as he cried and cried. Enough to make me stop and think, to watch this man who was still being affected by the Calamity.

It’s monstrous, that’s what it is.

After he passed out, I helped him into his tent, Zia looking over him as I set that empty bottle of brandy back in the distillery.

Zulf lost his parents to plague. His mentor to time. And his fiancee to the Calamity.

Nobody deserves to face something like that in their life. And nobody but Mother on high could ever understand that kind of suffering.

But there’s hope, isn’t there. Hope in a Kid to finish the Bastion. I might not be able to help Zulf personally in any of this, but I know that at least there’s still a chance to change everything. To fix what was made undone.

Course, even before the Calamity, there were plenty of talk about the Kid. Talk about this white-haired youngster, patrolling the walls with nothing but a hammer. A bit of humor when the gossiping started, lotta folk trading tales at the Sole Regret. But as time wore on, as that kid continued his tour, what was once viewed as nothing more than some amusement turned to hushed whispers of reverence. Of fear.

A kid patrolling the walls, with nothing but a hammer, fighting back all that the Wilds had to toss at him. Lunkheads, Peckers, the occasional Pincushions growing too close for comfort. Kid took it all on, came out no worse for wear. Walking away from things that would make a full-grown man shudder to think about.

Well, when it’s put like that, Kid sounds less like a kid… and more like something worse.

At least the Masons treated him well enough, the way he swings his hammer would make the guild proud. Makes me proud. Makes me scared.

No one deserve this sort of life. A life fighting and putting yourself at risk. Yet the Kid keeps pushing himself. Pushing himself for Caelondia, for the Bastion, for me, for everyone who survived the Calamity.

But does he do it for himself?

“Reason doesn’t matter,” Kid told me once when I mustered the courage to ask him. “I’m just doing what’s expected of me.”

What’s expected of him?

The last safe haven of Caelondia, the last piece left of the city after the Calamity, and he does it because it’s what’s expected of him?

He’s either the bravest person I know, or the craziest, coming back to the Bastion, covered in cuts and bruises, taking a swig from his flask and just going on again. It ain’t normal. Nothing about it seems normal.

Did I ever tell you that I was one of the few survivors of Caelondia’s fateful expedition to breach the Tazal Terminals during the war? Caelondia thought that if we could breach the Terminals, occupy the home of the Ura, we could force the war to end that way. Save many more lives in the long run. What wistful thinking that was, when I was marching with my fellow Triggers down. Down underground. At first we met little resistance, pockets of defenders here and there. Ura never expected us to get that far, so quickly. Thought we’d fight on the frontlines, stick to our walls and keep the Ura out until they lost the will to fight. Days into our expedition, we thought we’d soon be in the famed Terminals themselves, an army holding an entire people hostage.

How wrong we were.

We got lost down there. Whether it was faulty maps, or maybe a bit of Ura sabotage, I don’t think I’ll ever know. All I remember that day, whenever I close my eyes and look back to it, was the sound of the world shaking around me. Thought the whole cave system was gonna collapse on us. But no, scouts from the back reported that something, or someone, caused the tunnel behind us to cave-in. It was the worst news possible. We were trapped underground, behind enemy lines, and no idea how to get out.

Well we panicked for a bit, some steady-minded folks trying to grab whatever tools they could to blast the rocks out of the way. Didn’t last long when we got hit by the biggest ambush we ever seen. Ura from every ledge and precipice that they could fit. Like they were coming out of the rock itself.

Lost track of time as we got into the thick of it, Triggers rounding up whatever supplies they had to build a makeshift barricade. Didn’t matter really, Ura finding all the gaps they could to fire all their bullets and arrows through those flimsy defenses. I watched the man to the left of me collapse to the floor, a hole in his chest. I watched the man to my right fall backwards, an arrow in his gut.

And what about me?

I was clutching my Army Carbine tighter than I had with any woman, staring down the barrel. I was shooting down Ura whenever I had a clean shot, ramming new cartridges as fast as my hands would let me. I kept on shooting and shooting, never bothering to count how many bodies were falling from the alcoves and rockfaces.

Apparently, when I got the medal from my ‘services and deeds to the city’ after the war was over, eye-witnesses said I shot over a hundred Ura that day.

Whatever the amount, I just kept at it. Part of me wondered if this was where I was going to die. Didn’t seem like a possibility for us to escape. I could heard some muttering from a few of my fellow Triggers, praying to the gods to save them, prayers to the Lorn Mother to see them through. Wonder if any of the gods did hear us.

The Ura were getting closer and closer, a few brave warriors rushing the defensive line with blades and pikes. No time to reload, I had my hammer with me to strike them back. The tool for building the wall and Caelondia, now my tool to keep me and my brothers safe.

A shame I took a bullet to the leg for all that effort.

Yet I kept on swinging, kept on fighting. It was then that I heard a large explosion ringing in my ears. I didn’t even think about looking back, even though there were shouts and yells for a full blown retreat. I was barely lifting my hammer when two of my fellow soldiers grabbed me by the arms and dragged me away from the mess, the Ura firing arrows and bullets at us as we made our retreat from the Terminals.

The City called it the Massacre of Zulten Hollow. The Terminals called it the Repulsion of the Cael Invaders. I just remembered it as the day I lost so many of my fellow Triggers.

Funny, being one of the last veterans left. All those people, my brothers in arms. War took most of them, Calamity claimed the rest. Same with the Mancers and same with almost everything else. I wonder if they’re at peace now, though. For some us, the war never ended, not even as we took what we claimed was rightfully ours from the Ura.

If only we realized just what was happening to us as we kept on expanding, kept on going beyond the city. We thought we could own this land, thought that we could master it. The Ura knew right that there was more to the land than something to be tamed, something to be mastered. They were here first, they knew this land and all the secrets that it held. All the treasures that it had. Secrets and treasures that they fought to the bitter end protecting.

People always do have a thing for having hindsight sharper than their foresight.

Guess when the Calamity hit, I didn’t have much for it to take. Life took plenty out of me already. Took my strength. My leg. My hope. My dreams. Maybe if the young man who I used to be ever had the chance to take a look at me, he might just frown. Frown and say to himself, “Damn… how did that man fall so far in life?”