He was giving the pot a stir as she passed back into the little clearing, putting down the armful of branches she had gathered and wrinkling her nose.

“It smells like its burning,” she offered.  He hung his head and shook it.

“I don’t understand why I struggle with this,” he muttered to himself, banging the spoon on the rim of the pot to loosen its contents.  He hit it harder than he needed to.

“I’d say because it’s art and not regiment but then some Landians must’ve been able to cook or you’d have all died out before you could cause any trouble.”  He shook his head again as she neared.  Keto took the spoon he surrendered and the Last Landian moved instead to stack the pile of branches and sticks they had gathered.  He hadn’t burnt it as bad as he seemed to have thought, though burning a stew was still impressive.  She added some water and with things largely rescued they settled in around the fire to wait for the slow simmer to do its work.

As these nights often went, she waited for the silence to stretch and then looked to the Landian.  He was waiting for her and gave a sigh, without much feeling, as he leaned forward.

“What’s you’re question?” he asked once he was situated.

A little bit of cold made itself known in her belly as she opened her mouth.  It warned that maybe this wasn’t a good idea, but at the same time it was a vital piece of the story.

“Quartes, what was the last day of your Cycle like?”  She’d unconsciously looked away as she asked, took a turn at stirring the contents of the pot and when she finished and looked up she found him staring at the fire.  When he didn’t respond, didn’t move for a moment she continued “Quartes, I know it’s gotta be tough…”

“Ask a different question,” he responded without looking her way.  The ice in her stomach rose to her throat, blossoming into guilt as the pain in his voice reached her.  It was a pain she had only heard from him once before, when he admitted his fears to her.  She stirred the pot again, picked a new question and the night moved on.

* * * * *

“I remember when this was intact,” he had commented as they had settled in around the fire.  They were each holding sticks over the flames, doughy bannocks she had mixed wrapped about the ends.  She rotated hers, it outside lightly golden, before looking to him.  He saw her move and rotated his bannock but it was already turning towards a dark brown.  Keto smiled as he tried raising his meal higher from the flames, a studious frown on the Landian’s face.

“This would’ve been a Silver Empire outpost?”  Keto asked, giving her stick another twist.  Quartes nodded.  Keto looked about.  To her, there wasn’t much to see.  Some of the lower level of the tower remained and gave them shelter from the winds of the plains.  However, most of anything was just rubble, within and about, overcome by nature.  Just barely something that hinted at remnants of a tower.  “I assume it was a sight in its time.”

“It must’ve been destroyed after the end of the Cycle,” Quartes sighed but Keto wasn’t sure if for the memory or the bannock.  Part of his meal had progressed past brown on was on its way to black and he withdrew it.  Propping the bread against a rock to cool, Quartes turned his eyes back to the flames.  Keto watched him for a bit, reached out squeeze her own bannock to ensure it was done and then setting it against a rock to cool as well.  Turning back to the Landian she weighed the moment but he had mentioned the end of the Cycle first after all.  Perhaps if she approached it differently.

“Where would you have been at that time?”

He looked across the flames to her, Keto could see his pale eyes considering her question.  He gave a sigh and returned to watching the flames.  “When a Cycle ends, when the First Dragon is at least temporarily cast out, the other Dragons that remain scatter.”  Quartes raised his right palm, covered in scars, and gazed at it.  “It’s likely that one of those cast out Dragons destroyed this tower, given how has it been cast down.  What remained of the armies loyal to me fell apart, scattered back to their lands to try and either protect them or to claim something in the start of a new Cycle.”  There was a bitterness in his voice for a moment, a thought Keto hadn’t considered in what the motivations of members of the alliance the old Landian had built would have been.  “The kingdom built up around Calelden, the one where we had started building allies in my Cycle, dazed at my survival I made my way there at first.”  The Last Landian’s hands had returned to tightly clasping together.

“What did you find there?”  Keto asked, finding her own voiced cowed into a whisper.  Quartes took a breath before he looked back to her.

“Death and destruction,” he started, “and where I didn’t find that I found hatred.  Hatred for all the loved ones I left dead in my ambitions to win a victory where it was never truly possible.”

“The last day was truly that awful?”  Keto asked.  He gave only the smallest of nods but when nothing more came she tried one more gambit.  “I’ll trade my bannock for yours if you tell me.  I do need to know Quartes, if I’m to work the story.”

He shook his head more forcibly, “Not now,” his tone was flat, final, but softened as he continued.  “Story or my bannock means I have a bad taste in my mouth, may as well avoid us both having to endure it.”

* * * * *

The wide view about them stretched from foam tipped oceans in the east to the purple haze of mountains in the west.  It had dawned bright and clear, the sun quickly dispelling the night’s chill.  Likewise did the tea that they both sipped as they sat on the top of the lone hill.  Boiling water was one cooking skill the Last Landian apparently could manage.

Keto had blown across the top of the tea, watching the steam drift away, and taken her first sip when Quartes had begun.

“The day my Cycle ended started like this,” Keto rushed to swallow her sip, nearly thrown into a coughing fit from the hot liquid, as she looked to Quartes.  He gave a slight smirk at her shock but it dropped away as he continued.  “It gave me hope, such a beautiful day wouldn’t be one to end in such sorrow.”  He was wearing his bracers, Keto hadn’t noticed him put them on, and he fidgeted with the straps as he continued.  “I came down from the hill and looked about the armies that had rallied to my cause.  It was,” he paused, spending a moment searching for the words, “a sight I don’t imagine I’ll ever see again.  The last of the sky fortresses hovered above us, the fleet of airships of Ras and Cheriss on the ground ready to take up their crews.  Around them on the ground were the forces of the Silver Empire under Andel and with them the stout soldiers of Keid who had been with my fellow Landians and I since the retaking of Calelden.”

“My fellow Landians,” Quartes fell silent for a moment and Keto reached out, tapping his hand so that he would take her own.  “Seventeen of us had survived to this battle.  Some would lead the men and women they had rallied on their own.  Some paired with another flying above, artifacts we had found allowing them to communicate and best move our forces.  A handful travelled with me, knowing that I would go to where the battle would be the fiercest.  Knowing that I would go to fight the First Dragon and wanting to have their own moment of greatness or of vengeance.”

The Last Landian took a deep breath, shaking his shoulders and squaring himself as he looked west to the mountains.  “Elhandriel was one of those with me, by my side as she had been from the beginning.  She had been the one who had planned the battles, ever able to direct our forces, and to often find victory where we should’ve faced defeat.  She would be with me that entire day.”  He looked to Keto now as he continued.  “On that day I would be at all the majors battles, slaying the greatest of the Dragons that the First Dragon had dominated to its cause.  Each one that fell cost me friends but also bolstered my belief that I was headed towards victory.  That the deaths would be worth the cause.”  The Landian’s voice fell to a whisper and he cleared his throat before taking a sip of the tea.

When he didn’t continue Keto whispered, “You fought him?”

Quartes nodded, taking yet another sip before he continued.  “Islands and sky ships fell from the sky.  Dragons laid slain in the dozens as Humai, Aenesi, and others laid dead by the thousands.  The Last Dragon came forth, raising destruction of my allies in parallel to the death of its spawn I left behind me.  When I reached it the only one left with me was Elhandriel.”  He was looking at her now, the Last Landian’s gaze fixed on Keto and she shivered.  “You’ve seen what I can do with the Shards of Lehn,” Quartes continued, “it’s a fraction of what I could do with the Sword of Lehn whole.”

“I broke the sky open and it wasn’t enough to slay my foe,” he added.  Keto could see them now, the tears running freely down the Landian’s face.  “I and the sword were not enough, the armies were but fodder brought to a slaying.  Elhandriel was killed, there besides me as I fumbled to find some way to defeat my foe and,” he voiced cracked and Keto squeezed his hand as Quartes’ gaze dropped to their fire.   He took a breath and forced himself on, “The First Dragon doesn’t talk but…its intent and emotions permeate the lands under its corruption.”

“Each Heir of Lehn is born new in each Cycle but the First Dragon…it returns in each Cycle.  I could feel its frustration and fury but also bemusement as we battled.  It had seen it time after time.  It knew that it would kill me and in that final moment I’d somehow manage to land a blow that would kill it, and the Cycle would turn back to the beginning.”  Quartes’ eyes flicked up to Keto for a moment and she offered his hand a squeeze.  “To say I was shocked at being able to feel the beast’s emotions, nearly understand its thoughts, would be a bit of an understatement but after all none of my predecessors would’ve lived to pass on that bit of the tale.  I don’t believe the First Dragon wanted to convince me to try something different, I don’t believe it thinks that way, it just is but…to have faced the losses of the day, to realize it would happen again and again.”  Quartes paused and took a hard swallow, “I abandon the nobility of the cause, the hope for what we were building, and I gave into my anger and my rage at the story I was stuck in.  I funneled that into the Sword and against that, against all my hatred, the First Dragon broke, but so did the Sword…so did I.”

He withdrew his hand from Keto’s, squaring his shoulder as he looked at the flames and finished.  “What I had done had rendered me unconscious but when I came to there was no First Dragon but neither were there the armies that had rallied to me.  There was only death and destruction, and a shattered blade in my hand.”  Quartes had reached down as he spoke, held the broken sword in his hand now, the firelight glinting off its blue steel.  He tucked the hilt shard away and gave a sigh, wiped at his tears.

“You have asked what the last day of my Cycle was like,” his pale gaze drifted back to Keto.  She stared back, hardly able to blink much less look away from the pain of the Landian’s pale eyes.  “It was so hopeful and then it was violent and awful and in the end I saved the world, if only to doom it in this Cycle.”

Qurtes’ gaze broke away and Keto exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.  The fire cackled in the silence between them.  Quartes raised and sipped his mug of tea, gaze on the flames.  Keto’s hand started to reach out to him, paused.  Her mind reeled, part of her knowing she needed to grab her scroll and quill and write this down but also unable to turn away from the Landian.  In time she found her voice, “Why agree to tell me this now?”

“Because bad memories and the dark make poor friends.”  The Landian nodded at the view before them, the growing light as the sun rose.  “Today will be a fair day, and under sunlight I will be better able to handle these memories.  You have long been patient with me and are right that our work means I can’t be the only one left who knows this tale.”  He looked towards her now as he continued.  “Because doing what we hope to accomplish will mean struggle and pain for me, and telling this tale is a part of that , it’s just another sacrifice I have to be ready to make.”