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Laslow stood in the center of the dead city of Windmire, hands shaking around his sword.
He wasn’t sure where Peri had gone. Lord Xander could have been anywhere. Not that any of it particularly mattered; the battle was over. The blood that had managed to soak through the steel of his armor and through the leather of his gloves to stain his skin with his sins was proof enough of that, even as his heartbeat stayed wild and his senses screamed at him to stay on his guard.
There were no Risen in Nohr. But memories of the last time he had fought so desperately in the streets of a city were choking him, the stench of rotting flesh and smoke clogging his mouth and nose, the sound of civilians screaming as mages and Risen alike tore down their doors and chased them through alleyways ringing in his ears. Every time he thought he saw someone he could save out of the corner of his eye, it was just a trick of the light; there was no one to grab, there was no one to throw towards the castle as he apprehended their pursuer with the sword he had inherited from his mother, a little too off-balance and a little too long.
No, all that surrounded him were the corpses of rioters. He wished he’d had a choice, but King Garon would hurt Lord Xander should he have left them alive. He felt sick, looking at the destruction he had brought upon the citizens; it wasn’t their fault that they revolted against the evils of their king. It sickened Laslow to work so directly under Garon, but he had no choice; he had accepted Anankos’ terms, and now he had to live with that. He would not break his oath, no matter how much he felt like a Grimleal soldier, wielding death and demise of their own people at the beck and call of a malicious god, one that would turn on them the moment they did their job too well.
Hadn’t he promised to facilitate growth when Grima was defeated once and for all? Hadn’t they all promised that? After the death and destruction that ravaged their childhoods, turned once blue skies dark, hadn’t they all vowed not to unnecessarily take lives?
So he stood here in this city, dark as night despite it barely being afternoon, ignoring the flickering candles in mostly-shuttered windows. He hoped, somewhere in the back of his mind, that any citizens with children who still lived on the surface had hidden the kids away. A louder part of him screamed that there was no one left in the streets of Windmire.
He had made sure of that.
Oh, he knew about the underground, of course. He knew that the majority of citizens lived there, away from the prying eyes of Garon’s guard, safe from the threats and punishments. But there were so many bodies which littered the ground–it looked like the bad timeline, he thought, bile rising in his throat. The cobblestones were stained with blood, bodies young and old strewn about. (Thank whatever gods would listen that there were no children among the corpses.) He remembered standing in the center of the little Feroxi town he had grown up in, holding a sword in his hand just as he did now, staring at the people who had helped raise him, now rotting on the streets that were supposed to protect them.
(His father’s corpse beside an elderly woman, both of them stained with the black and purple of dark magic. The neighbor who had first started teaching him to shoot a bow. The kids from the next street over who he would always play with, who never made fun of him for being shy or not speaking. The teenager who sometimes played his violin on the street, giving his mother music to dance to. All of them dead, all of them having bled out onto the street, now more akin to a river of red. He felt sick. He felt sick.)
But he wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t in Ferox, he wasn’t in Ylisse, he wasn’t in Plegia. He wasn’t even in Valm, where the war had begun to spread long before he’d touched down there, where he’d been forced to fight again for his survival not just from mages and Risen but from well-trained soldiers, all of whom he put in the ground despite the way it made him sick to do every time. (How could he perpetuate the cycle of violence, of man killing man, when he had seen the way humanity struggled so desperately in a future commanded by Grima? But he had to survive, he had to, he had to. He had jumped back in time to see a better future; he would secure it, he said to himself every night as the images of corpses created by his hand and his hand alone surfaced to the forefront of his mind. He would see his mother again, he would make it a better world for the Inigo of the time he had traveled to. He had to. He had to. He had to–)
“Laslow?”
He tightened his grip on his sword, plastering a smile on his face as he turned to Peri, hoping that he looked reassuring and dashing instead of desperate, instead of horrifying. He sheathed his sword and waved.
“Have you seen Lord Xander yet?” Laslow asked, hoping his voice was smoother than it sounded to him. “I, ah, finished the task he had given me.” He gestured vaguely around him. He wasn’t helping anything, something inside him screamed. He ignored it.
“Laslow, are you alright?” Peri asked, frowning.
“What? Of course I am,” he said, trying to wave her off. She stared at him for a moment before dismounting, coming up to him to look at him closer. He tried to avert her gaze, tried to find something that would distract her, tried to think of anything that would let him just… escape. He didn’t want to have this conversation, whatever it would turn into. He didn’t want her to know just how badly killing people impacted him, even now. He didn’t want anyone to know that.
“You don’t look okay,” she said, frowning. She looked around at the corpses littering the ground. “These people had to die, Laslow. They made that choice. They probably already said good-bye to their loved ones.”
She had guessed it, in a way. Laslow swallowed, laughing quietly at her attempt to cheer him up. Her words were true; these were rioters. They knew that the punishment for going against their king was death; if their family wasn’t beside them, they had likely already said their goodbyes. Each and every one of them had put up a fight; not a single one of the rioters showed any signs of backing down, even when he descended upon them with a sword in hand and bow strapped to his back, not even bothering to bring his horse along. (Perhaps he should have. Perhaps then he wouldn’t feel so sick looking at them. He hadn’t had a choice, after all. He hadn’t had a choice.)
(Would he ever have a choice?)
“I know,” he answered eventually. Part of him was worried he had taken to long, but Peri perked up and simply went back on her horse. He sighed quietly, relieved; though Peri was receptive, she wasn’t the best when it came to emotions. That was his saving grace this time, it seemed.
He gave one last look to the corpses scattered around. He stared up at the sky, dark as night due to natural causes instead of the magic smog that Grima summoned.
“I am better than the Grimleal,” Laslow whispered to himself. “I am better than the Grimleal. I am better than the Grimleal.”
But are you? A voice in his head asked. Are you really? For the Grimleal were just the same, killing in the hopes that they won’t too be killed.
He was fighting for a better future even now, he swore to himself. It would be better when Xander ascended the throne. It would be.
It had to be. Or else all his fighting, all his pain, all his struggles… all of it would be for naught.