007 – Soldier’s Stew

“The Golga is a medium hadrosaur mob, commonly found in early-to-mid game zones. Easily recognizable by its broad, duck-billed snout and bulky frame, this docile herbivore is one of the most reliable pack animals available to players until they can access the Northern Wilds or purchase guild-produced mounts. The Golga excels in logistics roles, boasting one of the highest base carry-weight stats for a non-specialized mount, leading to its preferred use by merchant and crafting guilds for caravan runs.”

Ai woke up in the middle of the night at the sound of someone sobbing outside hers and Sari’s wagon. Ai had turned in a bit early—it was still early enough that Sari was working, so it was just Ai and Aru in the wagon.

The sobbing came from a young man—a boy—and from the sound of it, he was young enough that his voice still cracked with every other sob.

It had to be Laric, the caretaker of the Golga that had died during the bandit attack, who Sari had mentioned earlier. Of course he would be devastated after what had happened. Grief was a familiar animal to Ai as well, one that sat in her heart for years and had never left.

Her parents’ faces flashed in her mind’s eye at the thought, a momentary reminder of what she had lost.

Ai got up. She didn’t know what she’d say, what she could even do, but she’d already begun moving and found that she couldn’t stop. Aru woke up and yipped happily as she landed on the ground with a quiet thump, trotting alongside her.

Laric sat on the ground, his knees tucked into his chest and looking utterly dejected. His body seemed to shudder every few seconds.

He noticed Ai approaching before she could even say hello.

“Oh, Lady Ayle! I… I’m sorry, I didn’t expect…” He began to stand as she came closer, but she waved him off.

“No, no, it’s alright,” Ai began. There was an awful pause. She still didn’t know what to say, which was a rare occurrence for her. There was always a role to play, a function to fulfil, a strategy to execute. She’d moved without thinking, without figuring out a plan, and—

Aru huffed at her incompetence and walked past her, thwacking his feathered tail at her thigh as he did. The lizard-dog pushed his own fuzzy body into Laric’s, nudging at one of his hands so that he’d start scratching.

At that, the floodgates broke. Laric gasped, overcome by his grief, burying his face into Aru’s body. Aru nestled into him in return, demanding that the boy scratch behind that one spot behind his ears. Laric, for his part, obliged, despite shuddering with every sob that wracked his frame.

Several minutes later, Laric had finally stopped sobbing, or at least had stopped crying uncontrollably. Ai sat down next to him while he calmed himself down and he was still hugging Aru tightly, idly patting the lizard-dog’s back with his free hand.

“They’re cuttin’ her up right now.” Laric said, staring into nothing.

“I didn’t think that they’d have to do it now…” Ai responded awkwardly. She couldn’t figure out what needed to be said – it was as if her mind had just stopped working right. Why had her thoughts ground to a halt?

“We hafta do it on the same day, everything’s fresh so we don’t waste nuthin’ we don’t have to. And Karravar Benessel says we only get tonight to do it anyway.” Laric said despondently.

“…You don’t seem okay with all this,” Ai noted, “I mean, are you?”

“We can fend off a wyrm or two if we have to, but the blood’s gonna attract more if we don’t do it tonight.” Laric responded in a nonsequitur, as if reciting something from memory.

Another moment passed between them.

“I want Beaky back,” Laric finally said, his grip around Aru tightening as he did, “But it’s our way. The Soldier’s Way. It has to be done now. And we can’t waste a single bit of ‘er.”

“Tell me something about her,” Ai quietly asked, thinking of her parents. They were her only family, her grandparents having passed away long before she was born. After Mom and Dad died one after the other, she had been utterly alone, the only person in the world who remembered her family as they had been.

Laric looked up at her, his eyes red-rimmed and hollow, startled by the quiet request. For a moment, he just stared, clearly pained. He took a shaky breath, his gaze drifting back to the partition, to the grim, rhythmic sounds of work from behind it.

“She… she was a right terror when she was a calf,” he began, a ghost of a smile touching his lips before quickly vanishing. “Hatched from an egg we brought with us from Balir. Stubbornest thing you ever saw. Wouldn’t eat the standard feed we gave the others if she could avoid it, only really liked the purple-flowered scrub that grows out by the western ridge.”

He shook his head, lost in the memory. “Had to sneak out to pick it for her every other day. My Captain near had my hide for it, said I was spoilin’ her. But she knew. She’d wait for me by the pen, and she’d only eat if I fed her by hand. Made this little happy sound. Still makes it, just a lot bigger. Well. Made it…”

Aru, seemed to sense the shift in Laric’s tone, and nudged his head under his hand again to demand another scratch.

“She was smart, too,” Laric went on, his voice softening in fondness. “Knew the sound of my whistle from real far away, keen ears on her. Always seemed to know when I was sad. Used to nudge her head right under my arm and stand there like a great big rock for me to lean on. It gets quiet out on patrol, but Beaky was always there for me.”

“She was a good girl,” he whispered, his voice cracking. His grip on Aru tightened again, his knuckles white, “The best girl.”

Ai continued to listen to Laric through the night as he recounted story after story about Beaky. Her thoughts raced, thinking back to her parents, to her guildmates, to [Stormold], even to Aru.

Ai’s Semblance was now ranked SSS. Reality could—would—bend itself to her very whims if she so chose.

So why was Beaky dead? During the game, a single dead Golga wasn’t a huge deal. But to Laric, Beaky had been everything.

Ai thought about her own choices, about whether or not she should have – could have – saved Beaky. It had all happened in an instant. But she had waited, perhaps prioritizing the lives of people over what she saw as livestock. Over Beaky. There was no seamless quest generation feature to guide her anymore, no correct roleplay choice, no optimal path. Only her choices. Only her.

She had the power. She might’ve been able to—would have been able to—save Beaky had she put her mind to it. Ai had remade the world in order to rejoin it. Now she had to live with the consequences.

She had been operating as if she was still playing the role of Ayle of Berenna, clearing random encounters and saving NPCs. But she wasn’t, not anymore. She was Ai Kanbara. She’d opened her door and stepped over her threshold, overcoming years of stagnant self-imprisonment. With her newfound, astronomical rise in Semblance, her only real limits were those she imposed on herself.

Ai and Aru sat with Laric for the rest of the night.

Ai awoke to a heavenly aroma. It was a distinctively rich blend of spices – ginger, cinnamon, and pepper – and the unmistakable scent of freshly baked bread.

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She opened her eyes to see a rising sun, a beautiful orange glow setting the world ablaze.

Aru sat between Laric’s legs, happily gnawing on a big piece of bone that was the size of a baseball. A knuckle bone, and judging from the color it had been blanched before being given to Aru. Ai’s mind made the connection – Beaky’s knuckle.

He stopped chewing for a moment, locking eyes with Ai, before giving a happy bark and going back to his bone.

The entire caravan — about thirty people in total — gathered around a large clay pot that came up to Ai’s chest, happily bubbling and clearly the source of the aroma that had woken her up. Beside it, men and women turned flatbreads over a heated stone, the dough puffing and charring in patches.

Sari came out of their wagon, already dressed and ready for the day.