'What does that mean?'
I stopped cutting into the meat. It was good but the idea of Steel being someone else is.
What more could he be?
'I only ever that of him as a father figure that has been raising me for a year, but what if he that. Afterall what type of father figure thinks it's okay to come home with blood on his face, to bring his son out near what could be a death grove. And still be completely fine with it?'
Is Steel someone dangerous?
The woman in front of me looking very sickly coughs once.
"So, do you wanna know about the man you call father?"
It's like she's asking a trick question. The way her tone is calm.
"Wha… what type of person is he?"
The words were like it was spiced with poison like asking this will completely blow my mind open and change my life.
"I guess the best way to say it… is, to your he's a war hero, someone that you all love and respect, admire, want to be. In a sense…"
More was coming, and it felt like she was speaking to me in a sharp tone.
"…But, to elves he was a war criminal. He fought with so much ruthlessness, murdered, killed, destroyed, and most of all he was feared, any elf born any time nearing the Centennial war, had heard his name, even now he's feared. Feared that one day he'd end up back on death rampage."
"What do you mean? Why would Steel ever do that?"
I speak to the person in front of me, scared, and feeling like I've been told a lie.
"Because he's The Bastard Born for War. The one that was to scare us into hiding. As long as Steel is alive the elves are stuck in this very forest."
"Why would he ever do that? No why should I believe you, and what you are saying?"
I pause, thinking of my words carefully, as I put my hands beside me and just barely look over the table at her eye.
"Because he was told to."
"What?"
My voice cracked when I asked that question.
"Yup, he was told to. And if you don't believe me he's always close enough to you to ask about it."
She chuckles.
"I can't even find the in between from anyone because of how my life is now."
"An inbetween from anyone? Who?"
She pauses and looks down at me and coughs. This time thrice. One and two is calm, the third one it was more raspy, stronger.
She cleared her throat with a good tap to her chest.
And continued:
"Between Elves and between Humans and Beast men."
She coughed again.
"What does that mean?"
"Well, take it like this. What are you?"
I pause.
"I'm a human."
"Oh… okay, then we're not gonna go far I'm also a hu… now this idea could work."
She paused and let out a cough.
"How would you feel if I told you that I was in love with an elf?"
She continued. Asking with a calm tone.
"I'd feel indifferent…"
I say, my voice calm.
"My sister is an elf."
She looks at me with a weird look, her facing tilting and eyes squinting.
"Steel is raising an elf and there's nothing bad happening to her? At all?"
I shake my head.
"No, nothing."
She raises her eye brows and says with pure surprise.
"Well, that's something."
She says.
"Let me give a different example."
She paused and rethought about what she said. As if I had just foiled all of her plans.
"During a war, let's say you fought with integrity and with your sole, you saw your closest allies die before you, and when it was over you had been calmer now, but the elves still were alive in the forest, especially the ones that killed you allies. Would you want them dead?"
I look around then reluctantly:
"I guess so, yes I'd want them dead."
"Now think of it from the Elves perspective…"
She said without wasting a beat.
"Not only were they fighting a war, they had fought against to different allying forces, both equally capable of defeating them by themselves but together elves had less of a chance to even fight back."
She paused.
"But they did, until the Foramost Family joined, the Family that bears the Soul Ability of infinite Soul Energy. Giving them the fighting capability against elves."
"But then why did the war last so long?"
"That's the part, The Foremost Family can only have one bear the Soul Ability, making it it's greatest drawback."
She paused.
"The elves knew that if they had been in a frontline battle against him they'd end up losing again and again, so they did something that was cowardly but necessary, they had snuck into his house on tried to take him out, it didn't work though. Instead it fueled the fire even more and he fought harder. But a few years after he had suffered from a Soul Attack."
I tilt my head. Questioning what it was with my eyes.
"A Soul Attack?"
"It's something that only affects the unlucky humans, making their Soul Energy attack its host, and practically flooding their own brain. Leaving them brain dead. Meaning that once he got afflicted with that then there was no way for him to fight."
She shook her head.
"We are getting off topic now."
I nod and follow along with what she was saying anyway.
"Steel was born between a bull beast man and a strong willed woman."
She paused, a cough escaped her.
"Once they were born, Steel was born, and once he was old enough to walk, it was said that the bull taught him one thing, to fight and fight and fight, those things corrupted his mind like a drug. Making him grow up fighting, once he was old enough the Knights of Virvanum took him in. Making him a knight and it took less than three years at war for Steel to rise up the ranks."
She coughed again.
She got up and went over to the stove again, grabbing a kettle. She whispers something and the flames appear just at the point where the stove is at, then with another whisper she fills the kettle with water.
She puts the kettle over the flames and shuts it tight as she grabs a glass tea cup and walks back over to me, sitting across from me.
"Where was I?"
"Steel rose the ranks…"
"Yeah, after rising the ranks he was put on very meticulous tasks, that weren't very good, I'd say."
"What does that mean?"
"He'd burn… village after village of elves."
"What..?"
"He'd do it with the calmest expression on his face, not one to look with a frown to look happy, just a man with a job, but, eventually he disappeared, but the war was nearing its end by the time he had disappeared from the battlefield."
She coughed.
"But the damage was done he had pushed the elves into the forests and left me having to sit in the fence with them both."
"But why do you have to fence sit…? Are you not an elf."
"Oh, dear no, my sweet boy. I'm a human."
"Then why are you out here?"
She laughed.
"I thought you knew, I fell in love with an elf, sure he took some convincing…"
She looked sly at the thought of what she said:
"…but he eventually fell to my charm."
She smiles, briming with sarcasm. Then a heavy cough.
"Oh, is that why you're out here?"
"Yes, and he's for the same reason."
"What do you mean?"
"Sweet boy, this isn't even the real community for the elves, it's being hidden by many elves with as controlled form around their villages."
She coughs.
"Gods this cough, I'm going to die from this rather then the disease."
The food in front of me had gotten cold, my stomach full with the amount of information she gave to me.
"Why do you have a cough anyway? Wouldn't you just heal yourself?"
She chuckles, then three coughs, same as before, two calm, one heavy.
"I tried, but something is wrong with my Soul Energy, making me worse, in the end, I've found out that, my Soul Energy is eating itself."
My hand lifts up to touch my eye patch wanting to see but afraid to do so with out asking.
"Is your eye okay?"
She says as she gets up.
The kettle starts to whistle.
She looks at me, I nod, she heads over to the kettle to deal with it.
Pouring some of the hot water into the glass cup she's held.
"How did you know about this?"
She finished with the water and left the kettle back on the stove, snuffing the flame out.
"I knew because I could feel it eating at my body."
"There's a difference between both Soul Attack and what you have?"
She chuckles.
"Yup!"
She says as she walks back.
"Both are a piece of shi… crap."
She stopped herself last second and corrected herself before she said something bad around a kid.
"How's it different?"
She sits back down.
"Soul Attack, corrupts your mind, crippling it, but leaving you alive. This, it's not something I can stop, but I feel it. It's genuinely just killing me."
She lets out a laughed breath of air.
"I taugh Apatite about magic pretty late too…"
She looks down, reminiscing on her decision.
"..but I know she'll do great, she took all my Soul Books and put them inside her room."
She laughed at that.
"Even wanted to heal me, again and again she thought she could just for her to not be able to…"
She chuckled, a cough, then a sip of the hot water, to cool her throat.
"Now she'll be stuck with that old man and be alone."
That hits a bad place, because she's a person that helped to save me, and her father is a person that saved Marcilene.
"What if I came here to be around her..?"
She looked at me with a tilt of her head, and a sly smile.
"Just say you like my daughter…"