Yeah, someone's shit the bed and it stinks, I thought. "Of course. You're my best friend, Ed. Come on, let's take a walk," I said invitingly.
After a few minutes of silently walking to make sure that we were far away from prying eyes and sensitive ears, we finally stopped at a small clearing in the woods just beside the fortress wall. "So, what is it you wanted to talk about?" I asked, breaking the silence. You could cut the tension with a knife, I felt. I could see his hands fiddling and twitching behind his back by the movements of his forearms, and the nervous look on his face.
"Do you remember the collapse of the cave right after we pulled Nenvalur and his army from the Portal Stone?" he asked. "Of course… we lost a lot of people that day," I said, solemnly remembering the situation. "I remembered we had all wondered if Irun had died, but I…" he cut himself off. "You already knew he was the traitor, didn't you?" I said, piecing it together. He could only nod tersely.
"Before we left Coltend the first time, apparently Father Mourtis, that grumpy, old fuck had gotten a hold of him somewhere inside the castle. He was influenced into joining the Masked One, and became an official spy for him since then. The day he was supposed to leave earlier than the rest of us with Master Garret, I found evidence under his bed that he had received some kind of artifact that disabled a charm of some sort, but I couldn't figure out what it was for," he explained.
My eyes widened. "So he undid the charm on the ochelons in the cave," I said quietly. Ed nodded. "But if you knew all of this, why didn't you say something? Anything? A massive chunk of our problem could've been avoided," I asked, trying to figure out what his reasoning was. His face, once riddled with guilt, was stricken immediately by a quivering bottom lip and tears flushing from his eyes.
"He threatened our families," Ed said, coming clean. "What do you mean?" I asked. "He saw me trying to ask Batch if he knew what it was. Batch said he didn't know, but that we should confront the two of you about it. Apparently, he saw the pair of us holding the charm breaker in our hands," Edryd said, his voice beginning to tremble. "Batch was the first one to ask him about it, but as soon as the words left his mouth, Irun used some sort of spell I'd never seen before to pin both of us to the ground. I felt like… like I was going to die," Ed said, wrapping his arms around himself.
I only nodded in response, allowing him to fight through whatever was going through his head and continue to tell his side of the story.
"I was scared, Thoma. You can't begin to imagine what that felt like," he said, the tears streaming down his face. "The spell communicated what would happen if either of us said anything. It felt like all the joy in the world had died, and I was the cause of it, somehow chained to an eternal wheel of suffering and torment, as thoughts of my remaining family dying began to flow through my mind. It was horrible, a-and I…" he quivered, turning away.
I put a hand on his shoulder, feeling his entire body quiver and shake. "And… and now Batch is gone. He didn't even get the chance to apologize for keeping so quiet after we'd both found out. He told me, when we'd noticed Irun was missing in the tunnel, that he was angry at himself for not telling you he knew, too. I'm lucky enough to have had that chance, but now that I've said something about it, I don't know what's going to happen," he continued, his body trembling like a dog coming out of an icy pond.
"It's been fucking me up since we got back from Coltend that first time. When Ren repaired my core, it felt like the spell had finally broken off of me, so I talked to your brother about it before coming to you," he explained. It finally made sense. The weirdness during the journey north, the sadness and anger after Batch died, his emotional state the past few weeks.
Gods above and below, I'm going to turn that bastard from an is into a was the next time I see him, I thought.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Ed," I said, trying my best to be understanding of what he'd suffered. "I don't blame you for hiding it, and I never will. I can't. I wasn't in that situation, and I know you were only doing the best you could with the knowledge you had at the time," I said, trying to instill a sense of atonement for him to latch onto. "Coming clean about something like that isn't easy, and I think it took a lot of courage for you to come and tell me about it, especially after seeing how much it affected you," I continued.
Ed's entire body looked like a weight had been dropped from it, as he sobbed uncontrollably. "I'm sorry," he bubbled through a string of drool. "I'm sorry I d-didn't have the strength to say something earlier. I just didn't know how to handle all the a-anger and regret I've held until now," he continued.
"It's alright, Ed. I don't blame you for it, because I don't know how I would have reacted in your situation," I said comfortingly. "Again, you did what you could with the knowledge you had, and I respect you for coming to me with this," I said, trying my best to comfort him, as I put an arm around his shoulder.
"F-f-fank you," he bubbled again.
The following weeks went by in a blur, as Thorn instructed Meliss and I about dwarven and elvish culture. Alongside our training, each one of us was exhausted by the end of those few weeks. Staying up late and studying became a norm for Meliss and I, and it honestly helped me fall asleep a little easier, as my mind constantly raced with questions. Taegin allowed me to use his library from time to time, where I studied different aspects of mana manipulation on my own, as well as the first steps of stage three depicted in a dusty, old book I found.
Hmm, that's an interesting concept, I thought.